I thought perhaps it was a stage of exhaustion miles past tired, levels beyond stinging eyes and tear-inducing yawns, more severe than hearing things and forgetting mid-sentence what question you were answering. Maybe it was a new kind of exhaustion, an otherworldly spent where your body feels wrong, skin tighter than your muscles and bones pulsing like your veins.

But that wasn’t it. I got some rest to confirm it, slept in and took a few naps while cool rain pelted the windows and gusty wind scattered palm fronds in my front yard. I still woke up feeling off, my eyebrows missing and only one nostril.

My left eye has been twitching for weeks. Old wives tales decodes it as an omen; someone is going to make me mad. And I’ve caught myself walking without bending my knees. I guess I sorta feel like a zombie too, empty headed except for this insane hunger to devour something, someone. I won’t even to tell you about my fingers, how odd they feel, how…

What’s happening to me? What’s wrong?

Some type of crisis probably. My birthday’s coming up. My book of short stories has been out three months, and I’m nervous about keeping up the momentum. You know, once all my family and friends have a copy, it’s time to rely on the curiosity and generosity of strangers. Yet, we’re told early on that we shouldn’t talk to them; strangers, I mean. We shouldn’t help them find their dogs, shouldn’t accept rides, and should never, ever take candy from them. So, approaching strangers to buy my book becomes a risky endeavor. Sure, I look nice, but I’m a stranger. And she looks interested, but she’s a stranger, too. “Get your hand out my pocket!” I’ve got a finished novel that mocks me, sitting all smug and disappointed, clearing its throat and adjusting its binder clip. I reach out to hold it, lift it up and promise to finish these queries — for real this time. As I extend my hand to grab it, I notice my fingers are fused. I’ve got flippers and they’re trembling.

I scream.

See. I’ve gone mad. The old wives got it wrong; it isn’t somebody else that’s going to make me mad. It’s me.

The answer? The antidote? The way back to normal?

I hate to be corny or trite, but this is the answer. This is the cure. Writing my new blog on Tumblr, writing for Hypertext, lining up a few leads for submissions with the anticipation of writing something new — something that’s not my novel re-write or synopsis, something that’s not a project description or abstract — writing something that surprises even me as the words make their way to the page is the first time in a long time that I’ve felt okay, level even.

I’ve got to make time for more writing. More original, new writing. If not, I face the confounding doom of a body that doesn’t fit and a mind that betrays my good sense. Wigging out that crazy isn’t even in my nature.

We’re in the season of the Virgo. My birthday is in a couple days, and I’ve been trying to use my birthday energy for something else. The horoscope that I read every week tells of creativity, references MakeMake, the god of fertility, and continues to encourage me with signs that the stars are aligning, all the right planets are going retro with excitement fit for a disco queen. I say let’s go.

It’s magic time. I feel it in this post, and I’m ain’t typing with flippers.

If I could write a book with the time that I booked writing notes on the play they were performing, notes that I had for each kid, and about their individual growth as human beings, I certainly would have accomplished my goal. But that’s not what my book is about.

For the first time, I’m realizing how hard it really is to want myself to have real world goals and real writer goals. It’s scary to realize that one can get in the way of the other, that one can stop me from accomplishing the other. It makes me scared that I’m losing interest in one if I put all the energy I have into the other. “Have I lost my passion for my own work if all I want to do is teach?” I hear myself asking this all the time. Am I looking for things to keep myself busy so that I don’t finish? Am I avoiding it?

After seven weeks of working with these kids, I was run ragged. My sinuses ached, I had two straight days of migraines, and I wanted nothing more than to hibernate. Don’t get me wrong, the kids were great, but I almost felt as though I’d gone through my undergraduate career all over again. I had all those same aches and pains that I had to push through in less than 24 hours so I could finish wedding preparation in 2011.

My body is finally starting to feel recovered. And I’m finally starting to feel ready to get back to writing.

As an “intro” to the display, I’m contemplating using the intriguing painting Dan has produced for the teaser cover (a 5-10 page sampler forthcoming this fall from Wicker Park Press). Perhaps, some of my handwritten notes and preliminary page layouts would be appropriate next. After that, a few pages of the formatted script will be necessary to show how I communicated what I want the reader to see in the end.

Next, I’ll show some of Dan’s original sketches, which will introduce us to the beginnings of his process: working out the characters and the style he wants to draw in. After this, I’ll display some of the pages of the graphic novel’s “first draft.” (A few years ago in Mort Castle’s ‘Writing for Graphic Forms’ class where the comics version of this story began, we had to produce the first six art pages of our project.) After this early version, I think, would be a good place to put an abridged copy of the contract I agreed to with Dan, because it was after this juncture that he went back and redid the first six pages. And of course, the finale will be the “redone” pages that reflect the style Dan wants to use throughout the entire 72-page novel.

What are your thoughts on this proposed display? Too ‘meta?’ Not ‘meta’ enough? Any constructive feedback is surely appreciated.

*There is an exhibition featuring all the 2012 Weisman recipients at the Arcade Gallery (618 S Michigan Ave., 2nd floor, Chicago, IL 60605) from 5-8 pm on Thursday, September 6, and the showcase is open for viewing weekdays between 9am and 5pm from September 4 through November 2.

Five years. Five years of long commutes from the North Side of Chicago. Five years of working full-time in the West Suburbs. Five years of late night grad classes in the South Loop. Five years of loner weeknights and loser weekends in front of my computer. Five years of life. Five years of finding time, scraping together minutes, barely finishing. Five years of going, going, going. Five years of trying to write a novel. Five years of fighting for a dream just beyond my reach.

It feels like such a long time. It feels like not nearly long enough.

I’m arranging my thesis in the backseat of a cab. I didn’t want it to happen this way. I wanted to feel cool and calm and confident. I wanted to feel ready. I wanted to feel done. Instead, I haven’t slept, I haven’t showered, and I haven’t finished my novel. I’m only submitting the first 250 pages to my thesis committee in order to graduate. These pages add up to hours and weeks and years of writing, but I can’t stop thinking there should be more. There should be so, so much more.

On the way downtown, everything moves in a kind of slow motion. I’m riding in the only cab in Chicago abiding by the laws. We should be speeding. We should be cutting people off. We should be making illegal turns. We should be honking and swearing and yelling and making hand gestures out windows. But we’re not doing any of those things. It’s rush hour. We’re barely crawling along in bumper-to-bumper traffic on Lake Shore Drive. I keep looking down at the clock on my phone. I’m late. The Fiction Writing office closes soon. Without fail, the students lock the doors right at 6pm. It is now 5:58pm. In my mind, I am already calling out to them, “Someone, please. Hold the door! Hold the door!”

When we get close enough to see the Columbia College building, I tell the cab driver to pull over. “This is good,” I say. “Right here. Stop the cab.” I pass him some money and leap out. I have decided that I am faster than a cab now. I will outrun him with ease. I am a gazelle. I am a cheetah. I am a wildebeest. I am barely shuffling along the sidewalk when the cab flies past me. My heart beats faster and faster. I can’t stop sweating. I pull something in my leg. The shoes I’m wearing are not meant for running. I’m carrying three bags with me because there was no time for condensing or rational decision making when it came down to what to bring. I needed everything. I wanted to be prepared.

Bag #1: A plastic tote containing three copies of my thesis, which took me two cartridges, two reams of paper, and a lot of swearing to print.

Bag #2: A carrying case with my laptop inside in case I need to make any crucial, last minutes changes. Some people bring a jump drive; I bring my entire laptop.

Bag #3: A too-large purse holding only my wallet because I dumped the rest of the contents out onto my floor while searching for my keys and forgot to put them back.

When I finally reach the front entrance, I step onto the first elevator that opens, but it only stops at the odd levels. I’m going to the twelfth floor. A smarter individual would’ve opted for the thirteenth floor and walked down a flight. I choose to exit at eleven and run up a flight of stairs. For some reason, I think it will be faster. I’m convinced I can beat the elevator, too. As I start my climb, it occurs to me then that I probably should’ve changed out of my sweatpants. I should’ve brushed my hair. I should’ve slapped on some lipstick. There is a reason writers work behind closed doors. No one needs to witness this part of the process. No one really wants to see behind the curtain. It’s not pretty. It’s better not to know.

It’s 6:10pm. The door is locked. I knew it would be, but still I check. The massive amount of caffeine coursing through my veins gives me a false sense of power. I stare at the knob, attempting to will it open with my mind, but failing miserably. I consider sliding my thesis under the door page by page when I catch the gaze of a professor, Eric May, through a side window. He’s sitting in a chair and smiling. I never had a class with him. We don’t know each other. But I’ve never been so happy to see his smiling face on the other side of a locked door. He opens it for me and I rush inside before he changes his mind. I’m out of breath. It was only one flight of stairs. I should not be this out of breath. But I feel like I’ve been running this whole time. I haven’t stopped running.

I’m not sure he wants my thesis, but I hand it to him anyway. I need to give it to someone. I struggle to form sentences. I have used up all my words. There are only a few left.

Thesis.

Take.

Please.

Another professor, Betty Shiflett, stands in her office. She glances over at me. She smiles, laughs a little to herself, and continues shuffling papers on her desk. She’s seen this all before. I’m sure she’ll see this again. In general, few writers submit work early. We use every last minute, every last second. We are never fully done. There is always more we can do.

Eric May asks me questions. Who is your advisor? Did you fill out all the forms? Do you have an abstract? I’m not sure if I’m answering him or simply nodding, taking small steps backwards, moving slowly in the direction of the nearest emergency escape route. He promises to personally deliver my thesis to the correct people, and I believe him. As he disappears down a hallway, I slip out of the office and press the down arrow for the elevator like it’s some kind of panic button.

I ride to the bottom alone. When the doors open again, there’s a crowd of students waiting to get on the elevator. They look so young, so excited, so clean and fresh and new. Or maybe they only appear that way to me because it’s the opposite of how I imagine myself to look. They rush past me, our shoulders bumping as I work my way to the exit. There are no high fives. No thumbs up. No fist pumps. No one chants my name. I don’t take a victory lap. It all feels so anticlimactic. If I were writing this moment in a story, I would circle these last few paragraphs and scribble a single word in the margin: Heighten. But it doesn’t work that way in reality. We don’t have the luxury of revision. We can’t always control how things turn out. It’s a difficult truth to accept.

The adrenaline drains from my body as I walk down the sidewalk. I’m wandering. I’m trying to find my way. I feel lost. I feel free. I feel lighter. I feel like I want to do a cartwheel. I feel like I want to learn how to finally do a cartwheel. I feel like I want to throw up. I feel like a writer.

When I get home, I stand in the doorway of my now destroyed office. There are papers everywhere. There are drawers open. For some reason, my chair is tipped over. Books are piled in haphazard stacks. What happened in this room? I wrote a thesis. I submitted my thesis. I gave it away. Someone, please, take my thesis. Do they read it? Does anyone read it? Did I read it? Oh, God. I didn’t have a chance to read it all the way through. I should’ve read it.

Of course, there’s no turning back now. It’s gone. It’s over. The end. Another chapter of my life comes to a close, and like each one that came before, I now have decisions to make. There is time, I tell myself. I deserve a short break. But then, before I have a chance to take it all in, to exhale, to enjoy the peaceful silence of not having something due, people are already asking, “What now? What next?” This is the question on everyone’s mind, the only question it seems, and it’s one, as writers, we ask ourselves all the time. We spend hours in front of a notebook, in front of a computer, brainstorming what happens next. But when it comes to our own lives, when it comes to being a writer, the answer isn’t always that simple. You go to school to become a doctor, and when you’re done, you become a doctor. You go to school to become a lawyer, and when you’re done, you become a lawyer. But you go to school to become a writer, and when you’re done, you become whatever pays the bills, and you become a writer. There’s no newfound free time. Doors don’t start flying open. Your phone doesn’t ring off the hook. There is still work to be done. You spend any and every opportunity you can writing or submitting or reading or networking. You have only just begun.

A week later, I’m on the El with my family riding to the Chicago Theatre for graduation. A group, dressed in ponchos with cameras hanging around their necks, crams onto the train car at the Addison stop. As the doors close, one of the girls near the end cries out, “Marina! We left Marina.” People are distraught. No one knows what to do. An older woman actually yells, “What do you want me to do?” The answer escapes them. The train is moving. There’s no turning back now.

I exchange glances with my best friend, Sarah, sitting in the row of seats next to me. I mouth to her, “Poor Marina,” and she smiles. She holds my cap. I hold my gown. I wasn’t ready to put them on yet. It made it all too real, too final. I needed more time.

One of the girls finally calls Marina on her cell phone. She has a thick accent. Polish, maybe? German? I can’t figure it out. She yells over the rumbling el train: “Marina, why didn’t you get on the train? Marina, I tried to tell them. Marina, stay where you are. We will come back for you. Don’t move, Marina. We will come for you.”

I want to shout out to her, too: They will come for you, Marina. But why didn’t you get on the train? I suppose some of us don’t always make it on the train. We delay. We hesitate. We need more time. I understand, Marina. You weren’t ready yet.

At the next stop, the entire group piles off the train and I’m already rewriting the story in my mind. In my new version, one of the guys on the el train has Marina’s cell phone. He borrowed it from her earlier and forgot to return it. He pulls the phone from his pocket very dramatically and holds it up in the air. The girl on the end cries out, “Noooo! Marina!”

Fiction is always better than reality. Once you realize that, there’s no turning back. You’re hooked.

We eventually get off at State and Lake. There’s a homeless man standing near the escalator. He stares at the ground, his body wavering. As we walk past, he starts singing “Somewhere Over the Rainbow.” My novel is loosely inspired by “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.” As this song echoes through the tunnels, I smile. This is something cheesy that would only happen in a movie. But it happens to me. It happens for real, and it feels right. I would never be able to write this in one of my stories. I would pass it off as too coincidental, too sentimental, too perfect.

Sometimes, just sometimes, reality is better than fiction. And these are the moments we remember. These are the moments we cling to as some kind of proof we are heading in the right direction, proof we are making the right decisions.

The inside of the Chicago Theatre is beautiful, intricate, full of amazing details. This building is a story, and I am inside of it. I am a character. There are a few familiar faces, but not as many as I had thought there would be, the rest of the grad students I started with having already finished, having already moved on to the next thing, leaving me behind.

We stand in a line on a staircase and wait for our turn. It’s not long before the music begins. We are close. This is happening. The band plays “Walk This Way.” We follow the lyrics like instructions and head down the main aisle way, taking our seats in the second row. I feel like somebody of importance. I’m sure I will never be this close to a stage again. I’m trying to take it all in.

The ceremony finally begins. We are sitting. We are standing. Our robes are getting caught on chairs. There is tugging. There is pulling. There is yanking. I have my cell phone and a tube of Chapstick shoved down my bra. The necessities. I’m wondering what else I could’ve fit in there. Snacks? Something to drink? Why is there so much room in my bra? We are singing. We are clapping. The band is playing. The gospel choir is belting out a tune. I feel like I’m at church. When was the last time I was at church? I expect someone in the crowd to cry out, “Hallelujah!” or, “Amen!” Hell, that someone might be me. I might yell it.

There are a few various speakers. The valedictorian calls us misfits and we cheer because we are all different and we celebrate our differences. Mavis Staples, one of the Staples Sisters, is given an honorary degree. During her acceptance speech, she breaks into song, her voice and her story filling the Chicago Theatre. She knows a place. She’ll take us there. It’s the same promise writers make to readers with each new story. And so we go with her, just like that, because in the end so many of us are simply trying to find our way and here is someone who knows, someone who is willing to show us.

In that moment, I find myself missing my characters. It feels like they should be here with me now in the audience somewhere. It’s been days since I’ve had a chance to sit with them. A strange connection develops when you spend so much time alone with a group of made-up individuals. Like a child with an imaginary friend, deep down you know they’re not real, but sometimes you want them to be, sometimes you fool even yourself into believing they could be.

I think about my thesis, about my novel. I imagine a copy of it buried under a stack of papers on a professor’s desk, propped up next to a recycling bin, shoved inside a filing cabinet, these copies existing somewhere without me, my characters existing without me, and it’s no longer enough that they exist. I want them to be heard, to be seen, to be read, to be introduced to as many people as possible. It’s my job to make sure that happens. How do you make that happen?

It’s not long before they start handing out diplomas. As I approach the stage, my picture is taken and my name is called. The guy actually pronounces it right. I’m a little surprised, though I’m also certain I would’ve accepted a diploma on behalf of whatever name they called. After I walk up the stairs, my hood is placed over my head. I’m part of a secret society now, only it’s not so secret. People know. They are applauding. I think I hear my family cheering in the crowd. I’m a writer now. It’s official. Or is it?

What now? What next?

Patty McNair stands on the stage as acting Chair. I hug her. We don’t know each other. We are strangers. But I hug her, and I mean it. I remember going to an open house for Columbia College Chicago and she was there. She made me want to go that school. I was in the audience listening to her talk about the program and it hit me: This is what’s next for me. Sometimes, it’s that simple. If only it were always that simple.

As the rest of the graduates are called, my hood pulls at my neck. I am choking on the weight of it. My thoughts drift back to Marina standing on that El platform. Did they find her? I will write a story about what happened to Marina after she broke off from the group. There will be adventure. There will be romance. There will be struggle. I will write what happens next. This is what we do.

A few days later, I’m already getting emails from Student Financial Services. They want their money. They want to help me get them their money faster. They want to make it really easy for me to send them their money. Oh, God. I owe them a lot of money. It’s gaining interest every minute. How will I ever pay them back all that money?

People ask me, “Do you get a raise at work for having your MFA?”

“No,” I say. “But people ask me to proof their emails more often now.”

“Don’t they have Spell & Grammar Check?”

“Yes,” I say. “They do.”

“So what does your degree get you then?” they ask.

“I’m a better writer now,” I say.

“That’s good, I guess,” they say. “That’s something.”

“Yes, it is something.”

“Well, I’d love to read your book someday,” they tell me.

“Yeah,” I say. “Me, too.”

What now? What next?

The problem with what happens next is that there’s an endless amount of possibilities and no one right answer, each decision simply leading to a slightly different story.  It reminds me of those “Choose Your Own Adventure” books from when I was a kid. I remember being given one for the first time, only no one explained to me that it was different than any other book, so I read it cover to cover, disregarding the directions at the end of each chapter to make a decision. The story made absolutely no sense to me, but I kept reading to the end. No jumps, no leaps, no skips. I just figured it would all eventually become clear to me. I guess I’ve always approached life in the same way. I have no idea what the future holds for me, but I keep trying, I keep fighting, I keep moving forward. I have faith that eventually it will all make sense to me. I will figure it out. The truth is I like not knowing. I’d rather not know. I like the endless possibilities of it all.

But most readers want to know what happens next. It’s what keeps them reading. They don’t want to leave it up to the imagination. They want to know. They want answers. They are convinced we have all of the answers. We must, right? It’s our story. But what they don’t realize is that sometimes we’re figuring it out as we go. We trust that the story will tell us what happens next and we follow wherever it may lead. And then, at a certain point, we move on to the next thing, understanding that stories don’t end, we simply stop telling them. We don’t always need to know what happens next. Sometimes, it’s not nearly as important as what has happened or what is happening right now.

We make so many different decisions when we sit down to write. Every word. Every sentence. Every piece of dialogue. These are decisions we make over and over again. Our lives are no different. Writers are not afraid of what comes next. We think about it all the time. We write about it. We write to a point of change for a character. That is what matters most: the change. It’s what causes something to happen. It’s what propels us forward. I feel changed. I feel different. I feel ready for what comes next.

A novel in a year? That’s plenty of time. Or is it? It’s taken me five years to get an almost full draft of a novel, and there is still so much work to be done. So what’s taken me so long? That’s what people want to know. They don’t understand it. They think it should be quick. They make jokes about my unfinished novel. It breaks me a little. I have six primary characters, six lives. What happens next? I actually know the answer. I’m the only one who does. But these characters are so close to me that each decision holds new weight. They are depending on me to tell their story, and I want to get it right. I want to get it perfect.

What now? What next?

Now the real work begins. Now I write like hell. Now I never stop. This is what comes next. It’s what we do.

                Recently, a friend from my writer’s group called me out for not producing work with the regularity he’d come to expect from me.  

 “I think I was a lot smarter when I was unhappy,” I told him.  

“Well in that case,” he responded, “I must be a genius.”

                We’re all familiar with the cliché of the tortured artist.  We admire the suffering of giants like Van Gogh and Hemingway and Woolf nearly as much as we admire their art.  We secretly wonder if such emotional darkness is necessary for creative genius, and we feel both guilty and relieved that we have no desire to fill our pockets with stones and step into a river or cut off our own appendages.

                At the moment, I’m experiencing some pretty major life changes, the primary one being that I am getting married next month.   I’m in love, and I’m really, really happy.

I wonder if this is the reason my writing desk is gathering dust. 

See, lately, instead of hunching over a computer alone in my cluttered second bedroom, dreaming up scenes and conjuring imaginary people, I’ve been doing things like drinking beer with my fiancée on the front stoop, wedding dress shopping with my mom, and unwrapping shiny new kitchen tools.  Fun things.  Normal things.  Things that well-adjusted people the world over do with regularity, but that Ann Sexton would have shaken her head at, mystified.

 I absolutely believe that a certain amount of emotional turmoil is necessary for creativity.  It gives you a way to expel from your churning brain the feelings that are confusing and hurting you, and hopefully, to transform them into something beautiful.  But why is it that sadness gets so much more mileage than happiness?

For me, this is a summer of huge transition.  I’m making  much-needed changes in my professional life. I’m making a lifelong commitment to the man I love.  I’ve lost 12 pounds.  I’ve stopped biting my nails to the bloody quick.  In short, I feel freaking fantastic. But my fear is that in finding happiness, I’m losing a central part of who I am—the writer in me, who by definition, in order to function, must be solitary and inward and alone.

One of the moments when I knew I was going to marry Denis was during an 8 hour drive to Northern Michigan last October when he asked me to explain, in detail, each chapter of the novel I was near completing.  As we drove down the deserted highway, streaking past the orange and red trees of early October, I began to talk, a little stunned that he wanted to listen, a little amazed at the feedback and encouragement he was responding with.  He cared deeply about my writing, and he cared deeply about me.  It was such a simple and profound revelation, but one that I think of whenever somebody asks me, “how did you know he was the one?”

That night, we took a ferry to Mackinac Island, a summer tourist destination that would be shutting down the following weekend for the long, hard winter.  The bars were filled with hotel maids and fudge shop workers, waitresses and carriage drivers, who were partying together one last time before they headed home for Jamaica or Australia or central Illinois.   We stayed out drinking with them until the bars closed, hearing their stories about island culture and the wild times that happen in places where a bunch of young people are flung together far from home.

On the walk home, Denis said, “You should write a story about those people.” 

I never have.  But one day soon, I swear that I will.

.

At first, I was a little bummed about having to schedule a weekly trip to the library to catch up on correspondence (and inevitably have two or three unanticipated emails that end up taking an hour to respond to). “I came to the country to get away from all this and JUST write, damn it.” Well, that just ain’t the way it works these days. If you want to live and have a career in this world, you have to stay connected. And, after knocking off the laments of a techno-phobe and realizing that every writer has a life they have to make time for, I see that these other roles I have to assume are necessary, for me personally and me as a writer.

One of the roles that has been taking a good deal of my time lately is “project manager” of the graphic novel edition of Laying Lincoln Down: 1861. At first, it was hard to not feel anxious about giving up a morning or afternoon writing session to fill out forms, make phone calls, or write emails. But, this project is an important part of my career, too, and proactive time must be dedicated to it.

The primary realization I’ve had during this first half of summer is that being a writer entails much more than JUST writing. It entails a lot of shifting gears. I know this isn’t a new discussion, but I’m interested in what you other writers have to say about how you balance all the roles you have to play.

P.S.: I especially admire you folks who have to balance in the role of “parent.”

I avoid writing like a plague.

When people ask me who I am, I say “I’m a writer.” But how can I be a writer if I don’t write every day? Or even every other day? How can I call myself one when I really truly do wait for inspiration, for something to happen, to push me into the writing mode, and then I spend twelve, sixteen, eighteen hours non-stop, feeling high, my heart pounding, sweat collecting above my upper lip and right under the hairline on my neck? Isn’t this what they call being an amateur?

The more I thought of it, the more I would convince myself that I don’t belong to the elite group of ‘real writers.’ I just figured, I didn’t have what it takes. I don’t have enough toes and fingers to tell you how many times over the years I was ready to quit. I successfully persuaded myself I couldn’t write. However, in reality I did write. Paradox? Nah, not so much.

I call it ‘concealed writing.’

The other day I saw a woman sleeping on the Red Line train. Beautiful, older lady, her black skin thick from the difficulties of life. Each wrinkle on her dark, cocoa-and-honey face prominent, meaningful. Her dark-pink lips big and full, cut with vertical short lines, and they were bold – if that’s even a word to describe lips, but hers – hers were bold. The lower lip slightly larger than the upper, as it relaxed while she leaned her head against the window, her tiredness so visible. She was so real in her sleep; each line, each contour so strong, she already looked as if someone drew and colored her face.

I knew there was no way at this very moment for me to describe her, but I needed to be able to see her again. I pulled out my journal and sketched her beautiful face so I could later write her.

Still, even when sketching her for the purpose of later writing, I felt like a traitor of my craft.

Later that day I tried to write.

I took my laptop to the kitchen because sitting at my desk makes me feel claustrophobic, and I need lots of space. I scattered books, and journals, and notes. I changed three times. I made myself tea. I ate. I watched a kung-fu video on YouTube. I checked and updated my Facebook status. I poured myself a glass of wine. Then another one. Checked my bank account balance. Updated Facebook…I don’t think I need to tell you how the writing went, do I?

I hated myself for next two days, during which I made more sketches, took countless photos and made random notes on random pieces of paper, or book margins, and highlighted and memorized quotes – never once thinking anything of it. I mean, I wasn’t really writing, since none of these things were neither character or scene, or dialog development, right?  I wasn’t writing if I didn’t do my 500 words a day, no matter how dull would these words be, correct?

And then, on the third day there was a silence in my apartment, and my heart started screaming, and I wrote.

If I didn’t have a physical body, I would appear as a big pulsing sphere of raw, steaming emotions. Emotions I can’t protect from the outside, thick-skinned world. Emotions control me; I don’t control them. They run my life. And most of all: they run my writing life.

My lack of reason is epic. Embarrassment that usually follows, as proportional.  My decision-making process doesn’t exist, and so I crawl from one shithole to another. I scream. I cry. I jump conclusions. I make a fool of myself on regular basis. I hurt a lot, and I hurt often because when I love, it’s to the extreme, but when I hate, it’s no different.  This may sound masochistic, but I like to hurt. This is when I write. Pain induces writing in me.

But I am not a writer. I don’t write every day.

I tried writing every day, and hated it. I was disciplined, but writing started becoming a chore, and I missed the deep emotional trip I would send myself on; the state of near-self-hypnosis, trans, disconnect from the physical world, ripping old wounds, bleeding old blood, crying old tears. It somehow happened that I exchanged those for word count.

The guilt consumed me. I didn’t think I ever deserved to be a writer. The more I thought of it, the less I wrote. And hated myself every single day. That was until I realized that it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter if I write ten books that do nothing to me. But if I only write one that during the process will rip my gut open; one that will exhaust me emotionally, knock me down to the ground and make me howl, I’ll know I did the job.

Grant Morrison is on record saying that his graphic novel, The Invisibles, was a hypersigil. He changed his appearance to that of the main character, put the main character into adventures, and these manifested in Morrison’s life, down to the broken ribs. Really, you should hear him tell it.

Now, elbows deep in the blood and guts of rewriting, I’m finding that I’ve actually met these types in real life (different costumes, perhaps, but the same personalities) and I’ve been up-ended in the same way as Bridge, thrust thru a personal paradigm shift (or three), only more difficult in that I didn’t have the safety nets the current draft offers. Further details are too tender to dissect here, but I’ll tell you the correspondences are so uncanny, I can’t just chalk it up to the hero’s journey structure.

Morrison has no need to rewrite The Invisibles (though the first few books feel like a bit o’ throat clearing…), but I do need to rewrite this book. The question for me, as a believer in certain types of magick is, do you fuck with such things? Am I redrafting an old working? If it hasn’t been published (or is it my satisfaction that matters?) is the working finished? Have the tumblers quit spinning? How many years before I know?

I ask, “Do you fuck with such things?” as if it were relevant—as I’m combing through, excising every damn thing that makes my pen itch, tightening what’s to be saved before I begin to expand and extend. It’s too late; I’ve begun. Change it to, “What happens when you fuck with it?”

It sounds like I’m just throwing the old f-bomb out there, but really, writing is very much like fucking. Excellent lover you excellent writer, you listen with your whole being: feel for the result of your cumulative strokes, for whether you’ve been doing one thing too long or racing too hard to the high point, biting a little too mean or not mean enough, and so on. Only now there’s an added variance—does the mojo feel right?

The test right now is to listen to the story. Fear nothing and listen hard.

Is yo’ mama busy?

Epiphany. In my reference to a mother’s busyness, I find myself marveling at the supreme multi-tasking skills of mothers. It’s the working mother, the married mother, the single mother, the student-mother, the sister-mother, daughter-mother, friend-mother, the writer-mother, the performing mother, the teacher-mother, I could go on. Damn. So many roles. In the news, recently, there was all this talk about whether or not being a mother was a job. Mostly, the housewife doesn’t have a real stake in the economy, nor does she need to watch with sweaty palms whether or not the private sector is creating jobs. So in some regard, housewives aren’t watching the economic headlines with bated breath. But as usual, the GOP took it out of context. Yet the overall response was right on: being a mother is one of the hardest jobs in the world. And it only becomes more difficult, more complex, more demanding when you’ve got a bunch of other roles to fill. Nurturing and raising a developing human while managing a home, sustaining a career, fulfilling a dream takes a whole lot of something — focus, passion, magic — and mothers have it in spades.

I need that. I need that sense of management, that knack for juggling, that special capacity for doing a whole bunch of shit at once, being a whole bunch of people at once. I need that Mama-busy.

So many things are pulling at me, needing me and my attention. I can’t ignore them. That’s neglect, and I can’t have anyone calling the people on me. The time is made — the time to write, the time to research, the time to edit and revise, the time to submit and query, the time to publish and create. Demanding? Yes. Sometimes thankless? Yes.  Hmmmm… where else have we seen that combination?

When writing this entry, I set out to talk about my writing on my novel — this new novel, this prequel to the novel I got going out with queries by the end of the month — but I cannot help but talk about the reality of being a writer. We need to pay the bills and keep our jobs, we need to be daughters and sons, boyfriends, girlfriends, wives, husbands, sisters and brothers. We need to take care of the children (sons, daughters, nieces, and nephews), AND we need to, we must, feed the babies (novel, short story collection, script, anthologies, articles).

Yep. Me and the babies are doing well, but I’m busy as a motha, writing like hell.

Shit, it’s June.

Happy Father’s Day.

Whomp, whomp.

This month has felt packed with big things in my life: my first year wedding anniversary, my first nephew’s birth. It hasn’t seemed realistic to sit down and write those missing pieces of the puzzle that is my novel-in-stories.

And every time I think about not writing, a conversation that I had with my Grandma in Arizona on Cinco de Mayo pops into my head, one where she kept telling me I should write a novel. She said, “Every time you tell me something I feel like I’m there, like I can really see it.” She told me that I’m the only person that she knows who can really paint the picture for her using only my words, that she knows exactly what the gesture looks like, and all the while she can picture what I’m doing on the other end of the phone. We spoke for maybe an hour, and I was more energized to write than I had been in a long while, however, the pictures in my head weren’t anything. Sure, I journaled.

But, how long can I journal and keep calling this writing?