Karolina Faraci

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.