On The Angst of Writing

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TeddyG

The Other Shoe Will Fall!
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Dedicated to KTC & NeuroFizz

There are days when the words simply wont leave my brain and paint themselves upon the paper.
There are days when the only color I see is black.
There are days when no matter what inspirational lesson I try and take from life, there is simply no hope, no future, nothing worthwhile.

Those days pass in a haze without a page, a paragraph, a sentence even nary a word make their way to the paper in front of me. They seem to be a waste of time, of effort - a waste of life.

They scare me those days of nothing. They scare the living daylights out of me. When we don't move forward, when we don't accomplish, we regress. I have no time to regress anymore. I cannot afford the Stygian blackness of life's pain.

The dawn slowly comes. It creeps up, and though the black lingers it is powerless against the light. And then my mind suddenly realizes that it was during that dark period something deep inside of my inner being was at work. Sifting, thinking, judging, feeling, understanding, touching with soft tendrils the very essence of the pain. Somewhere deep inside even while my consciousness was totally centered around the nothingness of no light, while my soul delved deep in Saturnalia, something deep inside was still very much alive creating the letters which form into words the words which form into sentences the sentences into paragraphs and the paragraphs into a story.

I have learned to welcome the dark days. I no longer fear them as I once did. And yet I never remember while sitting without the benefit of a candle to light my way, that there is light at the end of this hell.

This is the only path I know to write what I want to write. It is full of fear, loneliness and the pathways of purgatory. Yet it too is part of the process of creation. Almost as if we strive to imitate God in His creation, where He created darkness and light and they existed as one until he separated them. Thus the darkness too, though feared, is part of the process of creating light. It too is part of creation.

And as writers we strive to create.
 

PeeDee

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TeddyG: The true successor to H.P. Lovecraft, when it comes to thick prose.

Oy.

:D
 

RedWombat

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Now, what I have to wonder is--do accountants talk to each other about stuff like this? Are there morose maunderings bemoaning the agony of life, death, and plumbing out there?

I've been an artist most of my adult life, and we naturally whine about our angst all the time,* but do other professions do this too?




*Not just the ones you'd expect, either, the painters and the sculptors and whatnot. I knew this potter who could get really intense about his emotional connections to clay ripped from the womb of the living earth. Pretty disturbing stuff for a guy who made mugs all day...
 

Bubastes

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UrsulaV said:
Now, what I have to wonder is--do accountants talk to each other about stuff like this? Are there morose maunderings bemoaning the agony of life, death, and plumbing out there?

I've been an artist most of my adult life, and we naturally whine about our angst all the time,* but do other professions do this too?

Ever hear a bunch of lawyers? There's angst for you. Every time I even *think* about getting angsty about my writing, I remind myself that it could be worse -- I could be at the office at that moment instead. Works every time.
 
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