Because I keep processing them (the horrors I see) into fiction I keep resisting the outside forces that want me — us — to shut up and take it.
Sometimes I feel suffocated, a feeling I profoundly hate. The whole world happening at the same time is too much and suddenly I’m underwater, grasping for air and at the same time floating in a reality that feels too real to grasp. I’ve been feeling a lot like this, how could I feel any different when our reality feels like is melting through both global warming and political wars. And yet, somehow, I keep writing.
Most days writing keeps me going. I sit down and either edit something I already read, write something new or just think about one of my projects. On other days, when I’m lost in a spiral of negative thoughts and headlines, writing is something I dread. I see no reason for it, I feel alone and unseen and at the same time I’m profoundly afraid of being seen. It’s a weird feeling. On days like today, writing helps me process everything that’s been going on in the world.
As the deadline for releasing my novel on Tapas approach — a self-inflicted deadline, I must admit — I keep having mixed feelings over why I’m writing. Why I chose to keep writing. I have a 9-5, writing is no longer my primary work, so why do I do it? I reject the narrative that artists must work out of love, especially when I know that creating something from thin air is sometimes a labour of hate and stubbornness. I might love creating stories and characters and universes, but there’s so much work involved in it, be it practical work like research, emotional/creative labour or just sitting down and typing the right words in the right order. So why do I do this?
Because I must. Even if no one will read, even if none of my publishing projects ever get a green light, I just must. That’s the best answer I’ve had for this question. No matter how many times I try to rationalize, I just can’t. If I don’t put these words in the paper, even if it’s a digital paper, I get sick. My mind spirals even more, I feel my “self” dissolving in a stuffy foggy matter and I lose myself. I’m once again grasping for air but this time in an ocean of stories and words and feelings of my own creation. Instead of just floating around it, I need to find the balance. I must.
Before I even considered writing as a career I started writing down whatever was on my mind right before bed. I’ve always had horribly realistic dreams. I wake up tired after dreaming about fighting, collecting oranges from an orchard or reviving bad experiences. My lucid dreams are not playful, most of the times they are toilsome and stressful. Writing down my worries or silly thoughts helped me free my mind from the thoughts that would trigger these dreams.
Writing fiction helps me free my mind from the worries that will keep my nights tiresome, not because I’m emptying it, but because I’m processing all my worries, and hopes, and afflictions, and loves, and the injustices I see and the horrors I witness and transforming them into stories. Because I keep processing them into fiction I keep resisting the outside forces that want me — us — to shut up and take it. I’m at the same time fighting my urge for silence and their urge to silence me, to silence us. The dissonant voices in a stream of hate. I write because I love and therefore because I must.
See you soon!
To love and to must is the heart of art. A 9-5 feeds the body, but art feeds the soul – even if it comes and creates pain. We write, we sing, we create because some part of our inner core wants and needs to overflow and bleed into the world and connect and communicate. Something talked to us once and now we pay it forward. Art is too bullheaded to be overcome by something so simple as rationality. Make art, it usually finds a way to find who they are meant to reach.
PS: You take care and please send my best regards to the other half of the duet. =)
To love and to must is the heart of art. A 9-5 feeds the body, but art feeds the soul – even if it comes and creates pain. We write, we sing, we create because some part of our inner core wants and needs to overflow and bleed into the world and connect and communicate. Something talked to us once and now we pay it forward. Art is too bullheaded to be overcome by something so simple as rationality. Make art, it usually finds a way to find who they are meant to reach.
PS: You take care and please send my best regards to the other half of the duet. =)