Before I was writing regularly, this strange thing used to happen to me, and often on the full moon.
(No, I’m not a werewolf. Not that I know of, at least.)
I would be riding along down the road of life, trying to be good, trying to keep up with the dishes, and then all of the sudden a thing would grip me. It was a feeling of total urgency. A you-must-you-must-you-must. But what did I must? I was never sure.
It was something creative. It was like… a command: create, create, create. I would end up sitting up until 3:30am typing out threads of stories and half-cooked narratives. Then I would fall to bed, exhausted, until a few weeks later, and then it would be back again.
Being a member of a family fairly rife with mental imbalance — a bit here and there, I think we all have it in one way or another — this scared me shitless. I would imagine myself on the counselor’s couch, taking a test for grandiosity:
Do you feel omniscient?
Well, yes. Sometimes.
Do you feel like you have a special calling?
I do…
Do you feel like the whole world is on fire, and like you want to devour it all, bite by bite, licking its honey from your fingers?
Yep.
Now that I write every day, these strange, clenching feelings of must-create do not haunt me in the same way. They still come, but the pass just as quickly as I sit down and write, and get it all out.
A few things this has taught me:
I am made of untold stories. And I have started letting them out. How much more is someone full to the brim, who never writes or tells or creates at all?
Unlike my original fears, when I lavish the inspirations that pop into my head on my most recent work, I do not run out of ideas. Instead, as quickly as I write them out, more flourish in their place. The “problem” now is having more to say than there are hours for saying it. It’s the problem I would rather have, to be sure.
Writing becomes a purpose in itself. I enjoy it so much that I would do it just for myself.
I am glad that the grip of inspiration is a bit gentler these days. I am learning to live alongside it and although we might stop to wrestle for the upper hand every now and then, we are coming to a peaceful coexistence.
Except on the full moon. Then, all bets are off.
Daily Daguerrotype 