4 posts tagged “writing”
I'm not sure why I used to love this time of night. There was something about pretending that I was the only person awake, that the whole world slumbered under the enchantment of a shadowy sorceress with a face of opal and water which never inhabited the same appearance twice. It is up to me to save humanity, so I would work late into the night. Shortly before dawn I would launch my notebooks, and they would transform the sky into a single blazing piece of Baltic amber. A banshee wail would vibrate itself free from my throat, and they would all wake, unaware that the very unlikely thing that stood between them and certain doom was a timid girl sequestered in the Western Pennsylvanian countryside.
I don't think like that anymore because I lost the ardent belief that magic lurks in every obscured recess of existence. Maybe I just grew out of four-thirty-in-the-morning. Or maybe it left me behind because it got tired of waiting.
Guess what I've been doing. Eh, nobody wants to read a drawn out string of taunting on my behalf, so I guess I'll just come right out with it. I've been working on my Book with overzealous fervor. See, I go through stages, as listed below:
- I'm excited to be writing! Wheeeeee!
- So many ideas! Good mechanics be damned. I have to get this out of my head and onto paper.
- I am going to spend every free moment I have working on this Book. And not eat or sleep. Or do anything else.
- Why do I suddenly have writers' block?
- This whole idea is stupid, anyway. Nobody would ever want to read this crap.
- It's been one whole month, and I haven't thought about that idiotic crap I was trying to turn into a novel. Thank God! What was I thinking? ...Hey, is that my notebook?
- This stuff isn't half bad. I'm (sort of) a good writer! I should write a book. Oh, wait. I started one. Maybe I should finish it.
Rinse, lather, repeat. Lately I've been coming straight home from work and settling in with my laptop for six-hour stretches. Mostly it's typing and editing my hand-written original rough drafts, but I've been ambitious enough at times to re-work entire scenes that don't sound right. So, at the moment, I'd say I've jumped from Step #8 and am currently comfortable at #3. This has taken place in the span of a few days, which is pretty normal for me, all things considered.
I try to avoid the outside world as much as possible when I am in this state. There have been few exceptions recently. I will list these as well, since lists are that much fun.
- I got a haircut, which means no more curls for a while. Unfortunately, the haircutting lady mistook "short and spiky" as "Chernobyl survivor". I predict that I'll be wearing scarves for a month to cover this misunderstanding up.
- After pulling a four-hour writing session (from 5:00 to 9:00 pm EST), I decided to take a ten-minute break by looking up Eugene Hutz pictures. What I found instead was that Gogol Bordello is playing in Cleveland on July 17th. That's less than a month away! I saw them this past December, and the show was absolutely incredible. I just hope I won't be still wearing scarves by then.
- I met up with Chris, Sam, and Shakia for coffee and stayed about forty-five minutes.
- miss licorice was passing through Youngstown on her way to Philadelphia, so I got to meet her! She's been my LJ friend for a very long time, and it was so cool to finally be able to see her in person. She's technically the first person I have met from the internet(s) who isn't local. We talked about meth labs and BPAL while sipping Zombie-drink. I got too drunk and rode home singing "Purple Toupee" and "Start Wearing Purple" as loud as I was able.
And that's pretty much it. I'm kind of pathetic and suck at life -- I know. Maybe I'll do a bit of cleaning and play some video games today, just to give my head a rest.
There was a time in my life when I was an English major. Actually, I was a double major in two equally useless fields -- British literature and Creative Writing, with a Communications minor to boot. Fresh-faced and brimming with optimistic zeal, my plans were to go into advertising until I wrote the best-seller.
After about a year, I quit being an English major. Actually, Slippery Rock University kicked out on account of my poor grades. This had more to do with the fact that I suffered a cataclysmic nervous breakdown halfway through my first semester. That, however, was not caused by being an English major, so it is a story best left for another time.
Good English majors have an innate ability to suck the fun out of everything. Maybe I should point out that books are my everything. Stuck in an endless loop of over-analyzing every piece of literature that crosses their crooked paths, they behave much like PCP users, substituting extreme violence with snootiness.
I needed to stop before I got in too deep. I was smart enough to realize that continuing down that path would ensure that I would commit suicide in some emo fashion someday. A life spent not enjoying books is not worth living. So, I went with my second love of radiation physics, reasoned I had enough personal experience to be a compassionate healthcare worker, and aced my radiology placement exams. Now I'm taking x-rays until I write the best-seller.
Chances are good that I'll never write that best-seller, but that doesn't stop me from trying. Really, it just gives me an excuse to write for hours every single day, and that's what makes me truly happy.
Upstairs room at a bar, summer heat swarming to a hundred degrees. I push off the stage, across the room, down the stairs. I am in pursuit of cool, fresh air. Those congratulating me on a job well done receive acknowledgment with a simple nod; they will have to make do with that until my quest is completed.
My weary body passes through the door, unfaltering until I reach the brick wall that safely encapsulates the drunk patrons. My back squarely against it, I slide down until I reach the cold concrete. My Sambas firmly rooted to the ground, I open my purse, root around, and silently light myself a cigarette.
Some people have followed me. Fangirls nervously huddle behind a parked SUV, as if I can't see them. The girls from another band skulk at a distance, casting obviously envious stares in my direction. Punk boys swing one another around, laughing through clouds of smoke and empty beer cans. They talk about somebody they know going to jail for drunk driving. After conversation grows stale, they pounce on the females, picking them up and twirling them around as if they were dolls with brightly colored hair, with fluffy stuffing instead of bones.
A fangirl steals a chair from inside the bar and offers it to me. I flick my lit cigarette through the air, nicotine semaphore for all is well. She sets it down by the same SUV and grins at me.
I am focusing on the top of the building that is adjacent to the parking lot. The sky is clear, full, dark, a jet blanket smothering a perfectly summered night into submission. My attention turns to my heavy breathing, the heat escaping my blood, the anger subsiding, the alter-ego slinking into contented slumber. New air enters my lungs, and they force out my nervous stage fright, my worries, the problem I was having with feedback.
The next band can be heard tuning their instruments in the upstairs room. The crowd leaves, but not before checking to see if I'm okay. I smile with not-so-cryptic sign language: I need a minute, but I'll be up soon.
And it is in that moment I reflect with the speed of smashing atoms on my achievements for the evening. My voice filling a room, making people dance and cheer, lifting their moods, thinking about what I'm telling them. It sounds so simple, but there are other variables to the equation. Am I good enough? I'm not as cute as those other girls were. Are my lyrics okay? Did my voice carry well?
Fuck them. I did the very best I could. Performing is when I'm at my happiest, and I went up there and did what I had set out to do. It's not for the accolades, the money, the head count, or anything related to such thing. Instead, the true marker is did I get through to my crowd? Did I meet my impossible standards? I don't care if I'm playing for three people or three-thousand. Did they walk away thinking about things a little differently? That's why I take the stage -- to produce some good punk rock.
And I did. I smile to myself as my cigarette burns down to my fingers. Flicking it aside, I am full of accomplishment. I am content not sharing that feeling with anybody, but rather enjoying it quietly by myself. A car drives past and the passengers give me an odd stare; no doubt they assume I'm a crazy person sitting the way I am in the parking lot. I don't care. These seconds belong to me, and I'm holding on to them, committing them to memory, jotting them down on a piece of notebook paper in my head.
I would not trade the immediate moments after shows for anything. Feeling that internal fizzling dissipating from my body like electrically charged fireflies as my soul slams back into my thoracic cavity is like nothing else. It is time at its most perfect; in the span of a few seconds, I can make that silent intensity last in a way akin to trapping infinity in a box.
Bass scales emanate from an open window. I stand up and dust myself off with a quiet sigh. The fangirls are at the top of the stairs; I know they're waiting for me. I remember what those days were like.
