phoenix from the ashes

I hate to say it but this morning I was obsessed with dying the death of F. Scott Fitzgerald, a man whose writing I greatly admire, and yet a man I have sympathy for because of his van-Gogh-like death. You know, the hurting, sick alcoholic, struggling to turn out typewrit page after typewrit page; alone after dozens of failed relationships and many affairs... yes, this morning I woke up and it felt like someone had prophesied my life to be like that. It was a weird, not very comfortable feeling.

However hard my life is right now, I feel as though I am rising up through it all. I'm writing like mad, accomplishing dozens and dozens of things in a day, scraping away at papers that fly about me; I am doing more work and chores than ever, and drinking more espresso than ever. I have started to take Vitamin B halfway throughout the day, just so I can get through without falling asleep.

Then at 10 o'clock PM, I have an espresso in my bedroom, so I can stay up till midnight and write. Oh, writing. What I would do to write. It is my life, it is the very cord that connects me to my sanity. Or perhaps insanity, depending on your viewpoint. It opens me up. I must admit though, that true writing is very painful, oh damn it is. It hurts like hell. But if it does not hurt, there is no truth in it, there is no meaning and no self in it... it is all fluff, nothing worth keeping, nothing worth publishing. You might as well have been doing cleaning or such.

Oh tut! I'm starting to sound like Brenda Ueland. (Though that may not be such a very bad thing.)