I am writing a new story entitled: The Priest, the Schoolgirl and the Taxi driver.
I have very little time to write (1 hour per day) strictly speaking and this story is threatening to ruin my business, which I need to give adequate time. It just wont let me go - I think about it all the time. It has to be an will be my best ever story. The girl is legal age by the way.
But anyway I could spend 24 hours non stop on this tale it is so hot.
Please tell me I'm not alone that this obsession is not just mine and you guys have had the same passion for a horny tale.
Sometimes it feels like I'm living in the story as I write it. I ride that high as far as it lets me.
Then I edit, because I never write it well the first time and I hope to actually make the reader feel like they're living in the story too... :P
When a good idea keeps me up at night, haunts my dreams, and clouds my mind, I find the time to write it down. Then I walk away, come back, and edit the shit out of it becasue like Delphi, my first drafts are a mess.
When it's a comp entry, it really becomes a struggle especially if there is a word limit. Figuring out a way to say what needs to be said without losing the punch of the story or fucking up the ending becomes the real challenge. Sometimes I'm really happy with what I wrote... other times no matter what anyone says, I'm not fully satisfied. Those I rarely publish unless I really feel what others are telling me are correct and what I'm stressing over is just my own insecurities.
I need to write, like I need to eat or breathe. It keeps me sane and I get cranky when I am kept away from it for too long.
It happens to me all the time. I think if a story doesn't consume every waking (and most sleeping) moments of your day, you aren't truly a writer! I can't tell you how many sleepless nights I've had, rolling a story around in my head, "writing" it as I thought about it and having to go over it and over it until I could get a chance to write it down. I have often thought about getting a tape recorder to "dictate" to myself but then I'd be committed for walking around talking to myself!
If you can limit the amount of time you devote to writing something, or set hours for when you do it - it's work. If it makes you stay up at night or try to squeeze every possible second, risk getting caught "loafing off" at work, and interrupt mealtimes, it's a hobby. And if you forego eating, miss work and give up sex to do it - you are obsessed! LOL!
My curse is not obsession. It's perfectionism (okay, okay... that is an obsession). I write. I delete. I rewrite. Over and over, ad absurdum! I have over a dozen stories in the works at any one time. One I have been working on for over 7 years. There have been only two or three stories I have started and completed within the span of a few days. Not because I was passionately obsessed with getting them finished, but because they almost literally wrote themselves. I LOVE when that happens!
So nice to hear that enthusiasm. And after being here 10 years! I rarely get that excited, because I write so slowly and have a tendency to get bogged down in the minutia. I do get devoured by the smaller bits - a paragraph or a sentence I'm excited about, or a plot twist. Sometimes just looking for (and finding) the right word.
Jeez, I sound so boring.
So then, may we say writing is a passion. Moreover, in a way, it is not us who writes the story, but the story writes itself, and we are just its medium. Yes, this sounds counter-intuitive but it is the current belief, and was the past believe, of many well known writers. It is, as I said originally, a passion.
I have been writing and researching, researching and writing, a history book about Manchuria for over 40 years. What is making me have to publish soon? My age. If I don't publish now, it may not be published at all. What a waste of a life! MINE! It, my son said, is "becoming my Great White."
In his song, "I Shall Be Released" Dylan sings, "when I paint my masterpiece." Writing can take us over and take over our lives if what you are that passionate about is that potent an aphrodisiac to you. Dylan finishes, "I see my life comes shining, from the West down to the East. Any day now. Any day now. I shall be released."
