Writing is Hard

This is the face of suffering.

            Writing is hard. Sometimes, it's outright maddening. I've had days where I wanted to drive to the beach, stand on the rocky shores of Puget Sound, and scream like a fiery banshee into the salty air, a warning of the impending death of my creativity. Sometimes, I look at the wood chairs around my dining room table and wonder if my unyielding frustration could give me the strength to pound them into toothpicks. If I did follow through on this attempt to relieve my mind of its deteriorating emotional state, my wife and daughter would undoubtedly call a psychiatric ward and have me committed. It would be well deserved and expected, but another blockade in my "creative process," which I affectionately call "the bullshit."

            Yet, I won't stop doing it.

            There have been hot and cold moments in producing words to page, but since I rid my life of my former career and found satisfying work with a surprising amount of work/life balance, and good pay, I've found my spark again. I have patience to wade through the insufferable process of creating because I can leave work at work. Strangely, facing my self-loathing while I write has been an absolute joy. There's no other time I feel that way. It's only when I do what you're reading: words and stuff.

            Coming back to my manuscript has been good. A spring of fresh waters flows in my head, carving a winding path to uncharted ideas to explore on the page. But I will start a new manuscript once I complete the Developmental Edit on my current one and hand it over for copy editing, formatting, artwork, and self-publication. All those things take time and money, but I chip away every week at "getting it right" (whatever that means) so I can begin the next big project.

            In the meantime, these little blurbs about me, my emotional state, my process, or whatever my brain catches, are therapeutic. If you are reading this and saying to yourself, "I get it!" Well, good. I'm glad you do. Hopefully, you don't feel so isolated if you're a poet, photographer, painter, filmmaker, video producer, or writer. I get you, and you get me. As I wrap this up, I feel ready to keep working or go outside barefoot and run at a dead sprint for 10 miles while weeping. It's a toss-up, really.