These Moments

I really, really like it when I have no idea what I'm going to sit down and write about until I actually sit down and start to write about it. Those moments of discovery, the feeling of being led by whatever creative force lurks within the depths of my mind... it's wonderful. It's the secret joy of the artist and the writer, the personal pleasure that we derive from our work that no reader can ever truly experience.

The reader has it good, don't get me wrong. The reader doesn't know how the story is going to end, doesn't know what will happen. The reader usually won't see all the mistakes that the writer imagines are there, won't think about all the things that "could have been," all the ways that the story could have been better. The reader can love the characters unconditionally and without reservation, and not have to worry about them, except in the context of what will happen to them in the story.

But readers don't get to enjoy the thrill and the mystique of the blank page. They don't get to feel what it's like to have the voices guide you, to realize at the end of a marathon session that you weren't really creating anything so much as recording an even that was playing out in your mind. I'm not the god of my little fantasy world; I'm just the fucking court recorder, the guy in the corner busy listening in and typing it all down.

When it works the way it's supposed to (and this is how it's supposed to work, I think), this whole writing enterprise, this whole damn thing is amazing and wonderful and worthwhile. These are moments that we can't share with anybody, because these intimate moments happen between the writer and the muse. It sounds sappy, it sounds trite, it sounds cliched, but it's true. And the fact that it's not easy, that it's a rare and special thing that only comes after many hours of hard work and self-doubt and worry and effort... well, that just makes it all the sweeter, doesn't it?

These are the moments when it's good to be writing. Not to be a writer, not to have written, but to be writing, to be in the throes of the act itself. These are the moments when it's good and it's thrilling and you can't wait to find out what happens next, and later on, when you try to explain that you have no idea how the story is going to end even though you're the god damn person writing the damn thing and people look at you like you're retarded, these moments are what you're trying to explain to them.

I'm not sure these moments are why I write. I think I've reflected on that many times before, and will many times to come, as my perception of myself and my craft changes with the passage of time. I think, at this current moment in time, that the reason I write is because I am unhappy and unable to not write, that the times in which I wasn't working, wasn't creating, wasn't doing anything to make my dreams happen were some of the darkest moments of my life. Certainly, the saddest and emptiest.

So I don't write for this moments of discovery, these times when it just flows naturally and easily and I can enjoy the process. These moments aren't what drive me to sit down at my desk. That would, to paraphrase one of my favorite movies, be like going out into the woods specifically to find the perfect blossom.

You have other reasons for going out into the forest, but damn if it isn't nice when that perfect blossom manages to come along and find you.