Do I Write Because I'm A Wreck Or Am I A Wreck Because I Write?

What could be said that hasn't already been said? What could be done that hasn't already been done? Welcome inside my head, it's a pinball machine, it's a storm of chaos and rage. I can't stop to think or I'll break. I can't stop to feel or I'll break.

There's a million things I should be doing right this moment, rather than typing this. A million things all weighing on my heart together with questions asked, questions unanswered, questions with answers I never wanted. Everything blurs together, races, is limitless. It's like my head is a ticking time bomb and sooner or later it's going to explode.

I can't stop to think.
I can't stop to feel.

The only thing I feel like doing creatively is writing and yet I haven't touched any of the stories I've been dying to write. There's so many options as to what I could spend my time doing, so many areas in which I need improving, so many things to practice, so many things to learn. It's all too much, too heavy. It's fucking with my head. I don't know what to think anymore, don't know what to do.

Today I read a passage from Stephen King's masterpiece handbook of how to write fiction. It said remember your character's back story. It felt like a whole world opened up to me. It felt like I could see all the lives of the characters I've created, each life as jagged as mine, each life so unruly, spreading out in multiple branches. It felt like I could just reach out and touch their darkness. Touch my own darkness.

I recognize these feelings, recognize the dark well of potential they are opening. It's like I'm being revisited by my muse. The one that used to burn so bright. The one that spread throughout my mind as if it was cancer but instead seemed to grant me an unlimited supply of words.

This is what I do when that happens. This is where I turn. The only craft I ever felt like I was close to mastering. The only craft so subjective, so persuasive, so tempting. The only craft that was ever fully mine. That felt like the area where I belonged.

Writing is an addiction to me. I've abandoned it and returned to it more times than I could possibly account for. When I'm not writing, my fingers are itching, my mind is racing. I feel like a traitor for not maintaining the only thing in the world that ever made me feel like I was immortal. I fight writer's block. I fight my own hubris. Most of all I fight life. With the attitude I've seemingly been gaining lately - the idea that life sucks, and is always going to work against you.

Why is it that when the world seems the most pointless, the words appear; why is it so easy to fall into the fantasy of my own head when life doesn't play out like I expected? Can you call it a muse, can you call it a craft? Can you call it the downside of any creative work? Are all writers like me? Is everyone who appreciates the work of written words a self-doubting wreck? Or do I write, BECAUSE I'm a self-doubting wreck?

I think I turn to art when I feel lost in the world. When the way of things seem meaningless. When there are things going on out there that I don't understand. When the world saddens me. When I feel like I'm miles behind everyone else. When my life makes no sense.

I feel like I'm not in control of my own life. I feel like it's spinning ahead without my consent. Like I couldn't affect it even if I wanted to or if I tried. I have to rewrite parts of my report for my thesis in order to get a passing grade. My practical work is fun and teaches me so much, but what I create is hardly state of the art. I've defined to myself the kind of artist I would want to be, but how does that help, when I've realized there's no way I'll ever become that artist?

Good news pour in with the bad news. If I go into any detail about the bad news I'll break. I feel so confused, so split in half. I'm doing great at the same time as I'm doing terrible. I feel more and more distanced from the world at the same time as I feel more and more connected to it. I think this might just drive me crazy. The only way I know how to deal with it is this. Writing. Again. Maybe if I pour my racing thoughts onto paper they'll stop haunting me inside my head. Maybe if I leave the real world long enough to enter a fantasy world... things will stop sucking. Or at least provide me with some kind of concrete escape. Something more tangible, something more respected, something more valuable, than escaping into a game world for hours on end. I have to do something with my time. I have to create.

I have to create or I'm going to burst.

See you at Camp Nanowrimo.
POET IN THE JAR