Science fiction, fantasy, mystery and what-not
My muses seem drunk today.
Picture this: it’s a party, mostly of strangers, maybe co-workers who’ve never socialized outside of the office. Everyone is subdued, withdrawn and watchful, spying on others from safe corners and walls. Then some alcohol enters the scene. Glasses are filled. Sips are indulged. Alcohol slips into the bloodstreams. All start loosening up and chatting away, becoming livelier.
The latter are my muses today. They’ve had a few. Now they’re giggling and flirting, throwing ideas at me like I’m a dart board, frequently scoring high marks. As the scenes, characters, and ideas hit, I urge them, “Slow down, slow down, I can’t keep up.” That only encourages the tipsy little buggers to offer more at a faster rate, feeding off one another.
Not complaining, just noting. It’s a lot better than those days when the stand statuesque to the sad, cold and contemptuous, offering little other than disdain.
Got my coffee. Time to heed the muses and write like crazy before they pass out.
Mutterings of a harsh and mean nature whipped around him. All of it wasn’t about him, although that omniscient and omnipotent unseen ‘they’ kept forking him more than anything else.
Although he’d been going straight, a tunnel had swerved over him. Light became dark, up became down, and all became meaningless, a perfect mood, if you’re in an abused porta-potty — which he wasn’t, although, “in his mind,” quote, unquote, everything that he touched was shit, as was, in fact, everything that he’d ever done or had tried to do, and the world was hastening down the sluice, so, Good God, what’s the fucking use?
The obvious remained a quicksilver truth until he saw, damn, this is where I’m at. Make no sudden moves and keep your words to yourself. Be wary of the tunnel animals. They’re real and they’re not, but their teeth and claws are sharp. Keep going as straight as you can. The tunnel will swerve again.
It did, pouring him into sunshine on a smoked-filled day, letting him breath again, even though the air was polluted with particulates. Just been that time again, when he was going through a tunnel.
I’m bouncing along the spectrum this week, sliding from hopeless negativity into enthusiastic, boundless optimism.
I know there’s a sweet spot there. Just can’t seem to find that balance.
That’s not overly surprising, and I don’t knowingly let myself fixate on it. ‘Knowingly’ is key, because my mind has created traps that I fall into without realizing, following worn paths that I should avoid, except they’re so damn easy to follow. Do you write fiction or pursue goals and dreams? If so, you might understand what I mean when I refer to these dark, weary paths.
I don’t know all the nuances that trigger my spectrum slides. I have ideas and insights into that process. When I win writing battles, my spirits soar toward the positive end. Good food, a good time, and a surprising compliment can take me there, too. Struggling with writing decisions, events that seem beyond my control, and simple frustration can drag me down into sour, doleful depths.
I know those things. Unseen health issues affect me with sneak attacks. Or, are they health issues? Maybe they’re not. I note, I feel off, and ask myself, what’s going on? Is it too little sleep, something I ate, part of the aging process, the first symptoms of a disease, or intellectual activities affecting my emotional activities affecting my physical activities affecting my spiritual activities affecting my intellectual activities?
Yes, that circle exists. It’s more complex than those few arcs described. That’s the spectrum. It’s not an orderly, linear line, but a circle, perhaps even a mobius. I think of it as a spectrum on a circle. Abstract visualization is one of my strengths, so I turn to it to help me think through things.
Being aware of the circle’s existence, like the monster in the dark, is helpful. Dreams can sometimes help, but last night’s dreams about aliens and seeking understanding seemed to highlight my morass rather than illuminating a way through it. Bummer. Fortunately, finding a satisfying resolution to whatever artistic-writing-intellectual problem is challenging me helps as well.
Today, after dwelling on the dreams during my morning coffee, I did find a satisfying approach to resolving the problem (which, yes, was of a writing nature), feeding my positive energy. It came while I dawdled, putting aside my normal routine to read some fiction and goof off, rather than to go out to walk and write. After just a few pages of distracting my brain with another’s fiction, my sub-conscious announced, aha, and an idea was floated. The solution isn’t fully formed, but has enough substance that I can grasp and shape it into something more and move myself forward.
Knowing this minutiae about myself is helpful to coping with its repercussions and trying to contain it. It’s easy to let these things eat me up, starting a more self-destructive circle. I encountered those when I was younger, when I didn’t know how to sort myself, when the territory that is me was darker and more unknown. I did a lot of destruction to myself and my life in those days. Fortunately, others helped me with patience, kindness, and insights. When I think back on some of the craziness, I gulp with amazement that I’m alive, intact, and not incarcerated.
Time to write like crazy, at least one more time.
I passed through the monthly darkness this week. Darkness strikes me every month. I became aware of it a few decades ago, when I was in my thirties, but I can’t confess to understanding it.
I can’t predict it, either, except it’s a monthly thing. I ended up comparing it to volcanoes this week, because volcanoes are in the news. Like volcanoes, you’re not positive about what’s going on underneath. Yes, a few fissures and tremors can provide clues. But mostly, awareness that something is there is about all that’s accomplished.
Then boom, eruptions clarify the moment.
I expect this every damn month, yet, it’s such a dark, stealthy flow, that it overtakes me and has me in its grip before I recognize it. Everything is touched; nothing is spared. Those areas where I think myself weakness are savaged the greatest. It strikes hard at my self-esteem, self-image, and self-confidence, debilitating my belief I can write fiction and my determination to do so. Thoughts like, “What’s the fucking use?” multiply like mosquitoes in a warming tundra. “Just quit. Walk away. Live a normal life of….” Complete the sentence.
Partway through it, I gathered awareness that I was in it. Awareness is probably the most comprehensive tool I have in my set. Knowing that I’m going through the monthly darkness lets me endure the rest, knowing it’ll past.
I must admit, it was a very dark one. I think the stresses of traveling, personal relationships, and visiting with family contributed to the depths. Those activities also limited my writing time. Writing is my primary therapy.
The darkness is gone now. I’m fortunate in that regard. I know my spectrum of moods. I feel for those without that self-awareness, or those whose moods take them more deeply and lovingly into the darkness, holding them down until they can’t breath. I’ve had such darknesses from time to time.
It’s not a fun place to exist.
I took an unplanned writing break. One of those things called death interrupted the usual progression.
A family member died. It was expected, sooner or later. The sooner seemed to be getting closer but it came as a surprise. She’d been hospitalized with flu, pneumonia, congested heart and lungs, things complicated by her Parkinson’s disease. We were originally certain, this might be it, but that morning the doctors said, “Hey, she’s doing better. She can probably leave the hospital in two or three days.” They were wrong. She left that day, but she was no longer alive.
I shut down the writing component in my brain. I know this about myself: the writing component demands a lot of energy. It puts me in another place, but removes me from the moment. Being removed from the moment means that my patience and empathy become compromised. That wouldn’t do. So, shut it down, I ordered.
The writing component was kept shut down for three days. I was given writing time but chose not to indulge it. I knew what it would mean. I took the time to think of life and other matters instead of writing.
What I didn’t expect were the side-effects. I slept miserably, tossing and turning way more than the usual. I also didn’t dream, or didn’t recall any dreams, and I seemed a lot hungrier. I never felt rested.
I imagined the chemical and physiological reasons probably contributing to my side-effects. The drugs my body releases through the creative process and writing. The highs achieved, the flow of neurotransmitters and their interactions, and why writing is an addiction.
I kept the writing component off until today. Notifications of the death are completed. Grieving has commenced and progressed. Funeral and burial arrangements have been made.
When I turned the writing component back on, it was a deluge. Whoomp. I was slammed with words and thoughts to write.
Interesting experience. Fascinating, to me, at least. Time to write like crazy, at least one more time.
You ever been doing something innocuous, like cleaning the cat box (and thinking, I would be rich if cat crap was worth anything) when writing flashes strike?
Happened to me today. Suddenly, scenes fill me. Gaps are bridged, with the story advancing on multiple fronts, like a creative offensive has been launched in my head.
Everything else is squeezed out for time to make room for dialogue, settings, and action scenes. It’s a struggle to keep up, like I’m in the center of several movies playing simultaneously. An impetus to rush off to write seizes me.
But the creative explosion wasn’t limited to writing and the current WIP. Writing is the largest beneficiary. While scenes for the current work in progress proliferate, so do a multitude of new ideas for other concepts in play, and fresh ideas. Catfinitions, those silly ideas involving cats and weak word play, pour in. Ideas for organizing and cleaning spring up like weeds after a rain. My overall energy levels surge. I feel powerful, confident, excited, and optimistic.
Got my coffee. Time to write like crazy, at least one more time.
Somewhere in the middle of the night, the black steamrolled me.
It may have started with a series of disturbing dreams. I was with a group, a class of sorts, and a woman poured coffee onto my computer keyboard as a joke. I cleaned it up as other actions began. Then, in dream fashion, I was vacuuming dry autumn leaves up in the living room with my father…what…? Then I sat on a sofa to rest, and felt a force trying to lift me up from the sofa and move me…. I decided to let it. It took me across the room and set me on the floor.
A cat puking on my chair and demanding let out at 4:15 AM disrupted the dreams and may have contributed to my black mood.
Stepping in the puke could have been a catalyst to further darkness.
Writing in my head as I returned to sleep became a slamfest. Self-esteem drained out as my inner critic took over. “That stuff you’re writing is unimaginative, weak and turgid. That crap you published is a disease to humanity. Chuck it all. Find a useful hobby. Knitting, or water painting. Take up baking. Don’t write, please, for all that’s bright and beautiful in the world, don’t write.”
Sleep was recalcitrant after that, telling me, “I don’t want to get anywhere near you, with that mood coming up. I’m reading the signs, and a bad storm is rising.”
This black is a greatest hits compilation. Low self-esteem, depression, weariness, anger, irritation, resentment, then another cover of depression.
‘It’s okay not to always write,’ I read in another blog.
Maybe I’ll take the day off. Either that, or open any vein, and see what comes out.
I live on spectrums. My moods and energies slide through seasons – or seasons slide along my spectrums. I’m not certain of their true relationship or the degree to which these things are fixed. I don’t know how to predict them. Don’t know what tilting, spinning, revolving, and rotating affects them. I can define specific, larger personal seasons. Lethargy, laziness, apathy, anger, blackness, joy, happiness, excitement, restlessness, I know these seasons among others. Some would call these moods. Moods, a temporary feeling, happens within the seasons, much like you can have a cold summer day or a warm winter day. I can experience a shift through a mood from my season but the season dominates. Moods are more temporary.
I’m in full blown writing season this week. Writing becomes effortless, but more, writing and thinking about writing, rises up. It seems like every thought, observation and experience triggers a desire to write about it. Words, sentences, scenes flow like runoff from a huge rain storm.
Seasons like this have taken me in other realms, too, so they’re not specific to writing. People in other professions and endeavors know what it’s like to be ‘in the zone.’ That’s how this feels. I know about being in the zone from sports and analysis. My vision, thinking and focus are all sharpened, my concentration is heightened. Time becomes more personal and slower. I can feel and sense micro-shifts that position me to be ready.
It’s a beautiful experience, no matter where and when it comes, from sports to math to art, performing, and writing. When it’s a good season, like this, it’s best to enjoy the time. The seasons do turn.
Michael Seidel, writer 