Friday, June 22, 2012

I Learned… Writing Makes Me Crazy.


In the wonderful process that is revisions, you learn a lot about yourself. The way your mind works and the way your words flow in certain directions. I’m approximately halfway through my revisions and my conclusion about myself is the following:

I am insane.

Not kidding either. When I take note of myself, the way I react to things, the things I write, it really makes me seem like I am insane. Do all writers go crazy while they write and revise?

I am going to share with you some of these thoughts and let you be the judge.

~*~

1.  There was one moment in a scene where I kept using the word 'today' in what seemed like every sentence. So I yelled to myself, “There are too many today’s in this scene!

2.
  After writing that, I had to go back to my draft and search to see whether I left that scene in there to fix or if I already fixed it. I clicked through each and discovered I must have taken care of it. Then I felt there were too many today’s in the draft. A quick count of 10 out of 25,000 made me feel better.

3.
  While revising my NaNoWriMo draft, I discovered a spot where I added in some extra adjectives for a certain sentence. I wasn’t sure which to replace it with, so I left them all (like 5 or 6 of them). Then after the list I wrote the sentence, “Just keep on adding up those adjectives they are golden.” Yes. That’s right. I wrote in some encouraging words to myself in my NaNo draft. That’s what staring at the screen too long every day for four weeks does to you.

4.
  I decided that the thesaurus is my best friend forever. The dictionary is a close second. And that my brain needs to learn a thing or two from them.

5.
  I found out that music that makes you want to head bang and/or dance is distracting. Dancing around the room is counterproductive. So is pretending to be in a music video.

6.
  When I see myself type something incorrectly, it drives me nuts. So I have to keep fixing it. Every. Time. This begins to get old fast. I consider letting it go. To no avail. My mind just doesn’t work that way.

7.
  I get a chocolate craving. Then realize there is none in the house. I can’t focus. So I need to go to the store. I’m not sure whether I should just walk to the gas station or drive to Wal-Mart. I want to be lazy and just go to the closest place, but I want to get more for my money. Which causes me to spend 15 minutes debating on where I should go. I go through all the cupboards again and find nothing again. And this makes the chocolate craving worse. *

8.
  While I was trying to come up with details about what my character is going to wear, my mind kept blanking and I said to myself, “What do people wear?” There are some days I still have no answer to that question.

9.
  I have a momentary lapse in my creativity spark while sitting down in front of the laptop. Yet, two hours later, while in the car, away from the laptop, inspiration hits and doesn’t stop. So I spend the whole drive typing 8 notes into my phone. And instead of writing them down or writing out the scenes, I start writing this list.

10.
  I just gave myself a headache trying to think of another thought to add to this list. When I take something for it, I come up with one. Then decide to leave this one on here for the sake of continuity.

11.
  Before finishing any manuscript, I think too ahead into the future. I’m talking cover art, blog tours, and author photos. If a light bulb turns on in my mind, I dive in. Spend hours searching for ideas. Or taking pictures of myself. Then realizing I need to have someone else take it for me because the whole arm extended to take pictures of myself thing won’t go over too well as an author photo. Otherwise my author photo would look like this:


12.  Some days I wish I had an imaginary friend. Not to be my cheerleader. I want her to be able to physically yank me away from the internet kicking and screaming and force me to sit in my room, free from distractions in front of my laptop so that I would write, instead of reading about writing. Then I would argue with her and tell her that I was honing in on proper writing techniques and skills. So she would let me go back on the internet and then find me half an hour later on eBay looking for Veronica Mars memorabilia. And the whole process would start again. Never mind. An imaginary writing friend would be useless with my logic and my ability to defy my own logic.


~*~

Do you see? I’m really losing my mind. The funny thing is, I am truly enjoying my insanity. For without it, I would be pretty boring. And my stories would be too.

Are all writers and authors crazy?
Or, at least somewhat crazy?
Let me know your thoughts in the comments!

* There is chocolate in the house now, thank goodness. However, there are no chips or cracker packs. I miss my cracker packs.

11 comments:

  1. hahaha reading that made me insane :P JK what drives me insane is every time I talk about doing something about my writing the hubby feels the need to pipe in with the whole Stewie/Brian thing from Family Guy (it actually kind of makes me giggle sometimes and takes some pressure off).

    Or the fact that (again as the hubby points out) I use the backspace key more than any other on a key board!

    On occassion I wake up with spiral notebook ring marks on my face, along with pen marks too.

    Or there is always the fact that I will avoid going into the room where my writing supplies are at all costs on certain days, I mean completely, that room no longer exists as part of my house!

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    1. Oh Angie! You make me smile. :) I'm so glad to have a writing friend like you to keep me remotely sane, or is it because we're insane together that we think we're sane? Hehehe!

      I think I use the backspace key a lot too... then I realize I needed that line and have to undo my backspacing, LOL.

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  2. LOL! I don't think you're alone. We're all a little crazy. I find that I write better when I'm pissed at someone. So I go around picking fights and then racing to the computer when I'm all worked up.

    Love the self photo! You should totally use it for your profile pic.

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    1. I write poems out of anger/frustration/irritation. I was just going through mine last night and chuckling to myself over how many of them seem either depressing or mad at the world, lol.

      Hahaha! I'm surprised I even kept that picture, but I liked how silly and 'not typical me' it was. :P Maybe I should...

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  3. I am so glad to know that I'm not the only crazy writer/reviser around! Numbers 6,9 and 11 are the ones that hit home the most with me.

    Number 6 I actually got so much better at after NaNoWriMo. No I spent much less time agonising about it, although it still bugs me.

    Number 9 literally drives me nuts because for some unknown reason I always get my best ideas in the car/on the train or bus. I don't know what it is about transport but it always gives me inspiration. So my phone is chock full of reminders and inspiration!!

    Number 11 I still haven't overcome. Even as I write this comment, I am also looking up cover designers and dreaming about the day I will be writing my book in the tropics because I won't need to be doing anything else!

    At least now I know I'm not alone in the craziness.

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    1. It feels good knowing you're not alone, doesn't it? ;)

      I did pretty good during NaNo with #6 because I wanted the word count to keep going. Now I've gotten too leisurely with my writing at times. #9 is a constant for me, while driving, while working, while doing anything away from a computer, lol. And #11, I'll never stop doing. It's just too much fun to daydream about it!

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  4. haha I love this! And yes, all writers are insane. I don't think I know a single one who's not. It's like a prerequisite or something. We spend so much time living inside our own heads, I think it would be impossible NOT to be crazy. For awhile now I've thought our brains are just wired differently...something about the creativity gene or something that's closely linked to insanity lol. So don't worry, you may be crazy, but you're also completely normal...if that makes sense! ;-)

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    1. It makes perfect sense... because the crazy part of me likes thinking I'm normal and the normal part of me likes to think I'm crazy! I think you're right though, we live in an imaginary world when we write that when we have to connect with reality we kind of lose ourselves in the moment during the transfer. Lol. :P

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  5. I come up with every excuse possible to keep from writing. I have no clue why :| Probably because I procrastinate, and can't always stick to self-imposed deadlines. I definitely feel like I'm crazy, too.

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    1. I know what you mean. I used to do that, and certain days and weeks I still do it. It's a lot of work, but I'm glad I've finally kicked myself into doing something. Even if you just take it one day at a time, writing a paragraph here and there. Once you sit down to write, it may just all start to flow out and you've got half a chapter written. Don't give up! :)

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  6. Yeah, I'm still trying to get that push. I DO write every day, but a lot of it is nothing I can use. It's just fun stuff, but even that's better than doing nothing.

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Thank you for commenting and happy reading!