So I've hit 90,000 words last Saturday, a feat I hardly thought I could reach, let alone still need to continue past that point. I cant stop typing, the story is expanding like a balloon without the relief of it bursting. It grows and twists. After this book, I have a second to write, birthing this story as been marred by ideas for other stories. On this side of the fence, writing is sort of thankless, long hours after work, long hours stolen from sleep, stolen from responsibilities burning in the back of my head and pressing devilishly against my eyes.
Why do I do this then? Because I need to. Non-writer don't fully appreciate the need to create, a carpenter stops making furniture when he puts down his hammer and nails, a painter stops painting when he puts down his brushes. The closest equivalent is to a businessman or a doctor on call 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. The way our broken brains work is every experience we get, every sweet morning kiss, every laugh, every terror that we find in the dark night is used to serve our craft. We enjoy for the fleeting moment that it's there and then spills onto the page, masked in other fictional people. A tender kiss in sincere relief after a terrible battle. A joke to lighten a blackened mood. A looming nightmare stooping down a darkened corridor. It seems weird, it seems backward to say that one would want to share their most intimate moments with the world, but that's exactly what we want to do, so we keep writing. So I keep writing, far past 90,000 words and probably into 100,000 words.
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