Writing My Way Back In

This is a weird week. I have a ton of art stuff I could be doing-- if I had an actual shop. It's way too cold for me to work in the driveway. Dan says I can probably start moving stuff in next week, so, until then, I have this feeling of the clock ticking on deadlines and all the work I could maybe still get out there in time for the holidays, but can't really do anything about it.

So I'm going to write again. It's been at least 2 months since I've done anything substantive, even though for the first month at least, after I moved into visual mode, my characters would not leave me alone. I had to drown them out with the words of others and loud music until they gave up and found something else to do.

You non-writery types probably won't get this, but your characters become very real to you. It's like their lives are kind of continuing to go on over in their parallel universe, and when you're not writing you could be missing stuff. The time away is very hard, which is kind of warped yes-- that you'd rather go off and live in the world you made up than the real one at times. I don't know any other way to explain it. The experience of writing, when you're really in the zone and you can see all the layers and threads and everything is working is completely absorbing and almost mystical, like the story is just flowing through you and you are doing exactly what you were meant to do. I call it "finding the rabbit hole".

That's what I'll be trying to do today, but from past experience don't have very high expectations. Usually when I've been away it takes a while to get it all back. I usually have to write thousands of words of crap that I wind up tossing before it starts to gel again. It's weird. I've been craving this kind of time, where I can write, and yet I am filled with anxiety-- the same old paranoia-- what if I can't get back? It makes you afraid to start. If you never start the dream can still exist-- that you can really be a WRITER if only... But once you pour your whole self into it, if you still fail, even the dream of it is dead.

But you're a writer, so what the hell. You lower your head and run full speed towards the brick wall hoping the magical rabbit hole opens just before you hit.