Oh, you think it’s easy; you think the words flow from my fingers like wine at a wedding. You think this shit writes itself; or maybe I have a clan of satanic chimps that pluck words at random from my Emo refrigerator-poetry magnet set, and I just click-clack them onto the interwebs until you’re ready to slash my wrists for me.
Well, have I got news for you Punkin; every sentence, every single word, is agonized over. Sometimes, I sit for minutes on end writing the same sentence again and again; arranging, rearranging, and re-rearranging over and over until it rings just right, until it sounds like the frantic screams inside my head.
The words scrape, claw, and dig into my mind, they whisper in my ear; they wiggle and waggle before my eyes. They take root, spread throughout my skull until every thought is another fruit bore by its mighty branches. I am given no choice in these matters, I will write these pages, or I will mutter these words to myself wearing a not-so-straight jacket in a 6×9 with rubber walls and imagined windows.
As I walk through my day and manage conversation, they lie idly by sunning themselves and sipping cocktails. They pretend at indifference; they are calm and cool, as amiable as a horny husband with high hopes, but as the sun waddles over the horizon and gives a knowing wink to the loneliness lurking in the shadows waiting to pounce as soon as the coast is clear, the cacophony erupts in my mind and the haste is born anew. There are nights when I tick-tack-click-clack until the sun comes rolling back over the Atlantic. I have no choice; it’s write, write, write, or die, die, die.
Oh, but Punkin, when I get it right; when all the smoke and mirrors fall exactly into place and I can give you a sample of the flavors of my madness, when you can finally see into my mind and hear the clanking of the cogs and gears, then and only then, my dear, will they give me peace. Then, I can sleep; then, I can breathe. When every word is exactly where it belongs, and the page draws the perfect picture, it is in that moment that I can think, if only briefly, that there is something I am good at.
Jason rights some amazing things over on his blog, Jason’s Brain. You should be sure to check him out on twitter, and also, buy his e-book. It’s brilliant!