Norman Mailer, may his macho soul rest in peace, once said that writing poetry was a "natural activity ... a poem comes to one," whereas prose required making "an appointment with one's mind to write a few thousand words." While I largely agree with both sentiments, there are definite exceptions. Every time I think I've got this writing thing figured out, something happens that makes me rethink it all again. In the end, there's just something completely mysterious and probably innate about doing it well.
A little while back, I wrote a post for my other blog, The Perfidy Report, on speaking out about torture. My brain is in such disarray lately that I'd forgotten I'd written it when it showed up on my Google Reader, and went back and read it again. It was one of those deeply satisfying "damn, I'm good!" moments, and I remember it pouring out of me in the wake of Frank Rich's essay on "good Americans." It's a subject I'm very passionate about; the whole idea of deliberately inflicting pain and terror on someone, especially in this particular manner when it doesn't even result in reliable information, just seems evil to me. Even if it were useful, I still think it's psychopathic and degrading. That belief, and the passion behind it, drove this essay out of me in a rush—one of those perfect flow moments.
I get this way when I'm in discussions with people too. If I care a lot about what we're discussing, especially if it's something I'm knowledgeable about, I lose all sense of self-consciousness and become very intense and focused. This is funny because I"m normally more of a listener and a bit shy with new people. But start talking about something I'm passionate about and you'd never know that.
But when I'm writing, it turns into some kind of fugue state where the only thing I'm aware of is the words, and only while I'm writing. Later, whatever comes out seems the product of somebody else entirely. And it's not just passion that drives it. Sometimes it's merely an idea.
A few weeks ago, I was literally possessed by a story idea. I couldn't get it out of my head and onto the screen fast enough. For five days, I wrote around 2,500 words a day. Part of it was a desperate need to get the story out, part of it was time constraints; I had company coming and couldn't sequester myself at the keyboard while she was here. I managed to get a good chunk of the story written in five days, and knew exactly where it was going and how it would end by the time Helen arrived. The rest of it, when I got back to it, didn't go as quickly, but still came out at a fairly good clip. But those first five days went by in a complete haze. Missed lunch, barely ate dinner, ignored my email and usual job-search routine, fell into bed, chained myself to the keyboard first thing in the morning.
I remember writing big parts of my novel this way, once I found my way into it. It never happens, at least with prose, while I'm "working for the man" in a cubicle. There simply isn't time. When something like this takes hold of me, I either have to give in and let it have its way with me without regard for anything else, or ruthlessly suppress it, in which case it completely disappears and is permanently lost. This is why writing is a solitary process, why phones are a curse, why every writer occasionally needs a caretaker ("Here's a sandwich. Keep writing.").
Of course, it's not all like this. Most of the time, as Mailer said, I have to make an appointment to squeeze anything out of my head. If it's something I'm doing as work, it's like dragging for a body in a large, deep lake to get each sentence down. Poetry's generally a little easier, because it does come to one—or it doesn't. It's more of an off/on proposition, with the work of it in the refinement.
But when it's right, when it just streams out, it's a high like no other, something like what the Oracle at Delphi must have felt, intoxicated by the god or the gases or whatever it was. Maybe that's where the talent part comes in. There must be some kind of hardwiring up in my head that makes it work like this. And I live in fear that it'll burn itself out some time, because it makes all those other "appointments" worth sitting through.
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