"I
haven't found a drug yet that can get you anywhere near as high as sitting at a
desk writing"
-Hunter
S. Thompson
Tennessee Williams used to stay up all
night to write, after coming home from work. Robert Louis Stevenson reportedly
wrote "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" in six days while sick (although,
according to rumors he was on cocaine).
Stephen King wrote long novels in short periods of time during the
seventies, while he was taking cocaine. A lot of writers have had addiction
issues, but nothing is more addictive than writing itself.
And the greatest thing about a blog is being
able to place my own name among the aforementioned ones!
After spending almost 60 hours straight
working on rewriting my second novel, which was written almost six years ago, I
felt alive. I was naturally exhausted, all my muscles ached, and I began seeing
colors and shapes on the wall, but still, I felt alive.
It has also been a long time since I had
such a long creative outburst, which made the whole experience that much more
enjoyable. And I can attest I didn't use
any enhancement drugs; only strong coffee and tobacco.
And, although such practices are harmful in
the long run, I can't say I won't do it again. I'll probably have to wait some
time, in order to have the necessary free time, but still, it's something I
know will happen again.
And this brings me to the quote on the top
of this text.
Writing is a drug. It can be detrimental for
one's social life, which is also why most writers know how to enjoy being on
their own. Often, while writing, you can lose the sense of time, or the sense
of what's happening around you.
Just like with many drugs, writing can put
you into a trance, allow you to become multiple persons at the same time and
create vast new worlds and extravagant situations. The feeling of being able to
cause feelings through your writing is exquisite and knowing that your text can
make someone else laugh, cry, feel happy or sad are some of the reasons many
writers spend countless hours on a keyboard or typewriter.
It requires determination, and probably
some madness, to spend 60 hours working on something you may never get paid
for. But it's not about the amount of money I may, or may not, someday receive
for my novels. It's the little voice in my head that kept yelling: "Keep
going, you don't need sleep. But you need this!"
It fueled me to go on, one chapter at the time, all up to the very end.
It's the very same voice, the voice of the
writer within me, that makes me continue writing, despite not knowing what will
happen to the stories sitting inside a folder in my computer, or the ones
waiting to be written.
