Sorry I haven't said anything sooner, but I wanted to say something about how much I was moved by your post below ("The Knife"). I was moved, haunted, floored by your honesty, the pain, how you took me right there, threw it up in front of me like someone ripping open his shirt and baring his chest. I felt like I was driving past a bad accident, horrified, but unable to turn my eyes away.
You have a gift, brother... I know you know that, and I know you struggle with that, and I know I struggle too. But don't forget, in all the craziness, that you have the gift. You do, motherfucker. You do.
So, I jumped in here to bitch and moan a bit before trying to glue my butt to the seat for a thousand words, and I saw your last couple of posts, and you humbled me, you bitch. Fucker. Goat fucker.
So... some bitching and moaning.
I am waiting. The wait swirls around in my body, mostly in my stomach and tight around my heart... an almost constant "fight or flight" feeling surges like I'm seeing police lights in the rearview mirror... sometimes it feels like I've got a fantastic poker hand and I'm about to go all in. But it's constant. It consumes me, invades my sleep, destroys any moment of serenity. Poor, poor me, to be in such a terrible situation. What a stupid, selfish mother fucker I must sound like.
Like most of my character defects, once again it all centers around not having complete control of the situation. I can't do anything about it (I can, but I've at least learned to stay the fuck out of it at this phase) and that drives me up the fucking wall. No control... all in someone else's hands right now... nothing I can do but wait, wait, wait.
I try not to complain, and I try to be mature, and I try not to lash out, and I try to use what I've learned in the program, and I try to hand it over to God, and I try not to go fucking crazy, but I do. I go crazy. I let the waiting consume me, eat me alive, take me every second, tie me to the ground and rape me...
Meanwhile, I try to work on my current project. I've finished the notes, some knock 'em dead characters, chapters outlined, ready to rumble. The characters are vibrant and alive and fresh and young and innocent and they wave silently at me from behind foggy glass, their eyes pleading with me to let them out... they've been in there for so long, for no real reason other than my childish procrastination, my neurotic need for validation... this sense that I must really, truly know that my career really has taken off before I can invest the soul energy to allow myself to be sucked into that world again. And I know, I know, I know that this is the wrong way to think, the wrong way to do. Surviving and continuing to work in this situation is where the real writers swim to the surface...
So I will try to swim... I try to do a little, a tiny bit every day, if anything just to keep the characters alive... otherwise their waving arms will slow down, they'll take out a deck of cards, or worse, plug into a video game, and when I'm finally down from my royal toddler throne, ready to act like I'm a real writer, they will have grown cold, distant, no longer interested in playing... they will have lost the magic, not even enough interest in me to look over their shoulders in disgust.
I will click "Publish Post" now and try to jump back in... desperately try to put one foot in front of the other... word by word, bird by bird... I will try to keep them alive, to nourish them, break the glass and let them free. They want so badly to share this world with us.
