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.

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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.

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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.