oh happy day!

There have been so many, so so many times over the last three years when I have been ready to give up. I get into these writing frenzies and then all of a sudden I will find myself slipping on this long slide into self-loathing. I will read what I have written and will foam at the mouth. I will curse myself for ever having been born. I will marvel at the paradox of having been given this desire to create and this simultaneous revulsion any time I look at what I have created. Once when I was drunk I cried out, "Why have I been given the desire to understand everything and the inability to comprehend anything?" Such is my misfortune in this world.

And then will come the death knell. It has gotten very predictable. First I will tell myself to stop even trying. I will wish that I had been born someone else, someone without this accursed need to peddle words, and I will tell myself that I should do something useful with my life. I should become a nurse or a massage therapist or a barista or a stripper. Anything but a writer--misery down that path lies. And then I will stop writing for a while. Sometimes days, sometimes weeks, sometimes months.

But the happy news is that I have just gotten over one such period and I am feeling super productive. And the even happier news is that both of my novels in progress--one a meager five pages and the other forty pages so far--are still intact thanks to the magic of word processing. If I were Mikhail Bulgakov I would have burned my work in disgust only to regret it later. Thank god I am not. Some good comes of living in the age of computers rather than the age of parchment and fireplaces. I just reread both of the drafts for my novels, and they ain't half bad. So back to work! As long as I feel happy I can go and go and go. Until next time I become depressed and decide to seek my fortunes as a stewardess.