A case of the writing life blues.

There are days when being creative is a blessing.  Other days, it’s a curse.

Sometimes your muses play nice.  Sometimes you want to drop-kick them.  Hard.

Sometimes the ajita and twitchiness is just enough to write something good.  Other times, it’s way more than you need, and you’re left hoping for a spontaneous lobotomy.

Some days, you have the focus to narrow in on one idea and write the hell out of it.  And yet other days, the various stories and characters in your head sound like what would happen if you set a cat loose in the dog park—a lot of frantic, excited noise all at once, and none of it seems to be in your language.

Many days, you want to go back to bed and sleep it off.  But nope—you’re expected to get up, go out, and do Normal People Things, like go to work, be pleasant to others, and run errands.  Some days it’s easy for a Writer Person to act like a Normal Person.  Some days, the effort is excruciating.

Days like today, all I can do is try to calm my brain down, pluck the good fragments out of all the panicked static, and write them down, knowing that they’ll eventually show up in a compelling story. 

Days like today, when I find myself in an unproductive mindset, I ask myself, “What would Emerson do?” because my character is better at staying calm and focused.  Clear your head.  Think like Emerson, I urge myself.

You know being a writer is hard when you have to talk yourself into thinking like your favorite fictional assassin because that character’s the one who seems more focused.