No Other Kind...

Writing is a drug to me, my addiction to it descending beyond any rehabilitation.

When I write, I am there. I plunge head on and immerse myself fully in my story. I become totally obsessed with it. I see, hear, smell, taste, and touch. Most of the time, I am a woman, but I was a man in three of my stories. My perspective changes accordingly, and also the way I put the words together, or so I was told.

I once read about Anthony Quinn, about how deeply he entered under the skin of the character he played, so intensely in fact that, for example, when he was filming “The Hunchback of Notre-Dame”, he used to walk around hunched, all the time.

Obviously, I do not claim a craft such as Anthony Quinn’s, but the spirit is probably kindred.

Writing gives me incommensurable pleasure and plenty of sorrow at the same time.

I soar to the highest elation when I live the story. But I am also haunted by it. I might, sometimes, wear a haggard look, and, on my face, there might dance a kaleidoscope of all my various feelings. I’m in a trance. The real world represents only fugitive episodes of coming out of this trance.

Then, I feel utterly drained when I finish it, most desperate that it’s finished, and horribly exposed if somebody else reads it. An intimate piece of my soul is out there for the eyes of a stranger – even if it’s my best friend. Worse, a life of mine is out there, completed, lived.

Yet, after a while, all the dread is diluted, dispersed, almost forgotten, and I’m back at writing again. Back at living another life. Playing again. Happy again.

Writer, if you read this, do you do the same? Are you there, among your characters? Do you live in there? Are we sisters or sister and brother into this sweet bitter addiction?