The question is, can I direct this thing or do I keep swinging blindly–since, considering how little I know about how I tick, makes actual sense?

How do you stay sane when you’re carrying a whole world inside your head, a world or two or three. (“Your head must feel very heavy if you’re carrying that stone in it”, the Zen monk said.) I want to know how do you stay sane if you’re reading something and connecting perfectly with what it is and just knowing what the protagonist is going through and what the writer is going through, and you’re going slowly insane with them. How do you stay sane when your eyes and ears are open; how do you stay sane with the overload of information of birds chirping babies crying cars droning keys beeping and yourself talking to yourself in a steady stream of words. How do you stay sane when you suddenly realize that you’re sitting on a bench, staring at three distant trees and on your shoulders, there’s your dead mother’s leather jacket. How do you stay sane when you’re writing a diary in third person and don’t remember what you’ve written a moment ago. How do you stay sane when–

–well, I guess you sort of could stay sane if you were writing just for money or for fame or something. But if you are writing because you love writing, that shifting of the tectonic plates of your mind, and slowly, the contintents of what you considered “yourself” drown in the blackness of ocean and new ones, the long lost Atlantis of your panic reappears, how do you? What do you hang on to, if the very purpose of your writing is letting go?

What amazes me the most is that people rarely talk about this; they’d rather post yet another article on the-perfect-structure or how-to-begin-your-novel or some other technicality that’s been repeated over and over, but they don’t speak of how they face that ultimate panic of rediscovering themselves. I don’t believe I’m alone in this. Is insanity a taboo, a “we’ll pretend it doesn’t happen and it will just go away” sort of thing? Is going insane (or, well, skating on a thin ice as I seem to be doing sometimes) considered a self-indulging thing, a “yea, she’s deliberately going insane because apparently she thinks it’s sooo cool” thing? Well, it’s not, not always. I very much doubt that all the crazy people are crazy just because they wanted to be. I know that I don’t want to go insane.

There is, of course, a simple way of not writing at all or at least writing about things that do not concern you in any way and don’t touch anything that scares you. That could help. But it’s a last resort, I think. After all, what’s the use of writing if you never touch anything important to you? Besides, I know that it is technically possible to write something genuinely deep and creepy and deranged while staying within acceptable limits of sanity. The question is how. Is it a skill like snowboarding where you have to catch the balance and get the speed up until you’re flying? Or is it something different, like cross-stitching, where you fill in the little spaces, never actually concerning yourself with the big picture? Does it require detachment, an ongoing reassurance that what you’re writing isn’t real? Or maybe it is about finding a “safe place” from where you’re writing, like religion or convinced atheism or strong philosophical grounds or unshakeable righteousness? Or is it as simple as healthy diet, no harmful substances introduced to your poor body, regular 8-hour sleep and working out?

And oh yes, I think there are answers to these questions, I just need to find them.
Actually, even knowing that I can have answers, is soothing.

Probably it’s because there are two different sorts of writing, two different positions from where to write. One, where you are standing on the edge of abyss and looking down, and you don’t mind if you fall (actually, you might even take that step over the edge). There’s that fascination with your own flawed, broken psyche, and from distorting it even more through your writing; or probably trying to straighten it out forcibly. That’s a process that requires some sort of mental instability and the daring recklessness of somebody who is (or feels he is) beyound saving. I’m thinking that many, many people have been writing this way all their lives. I happened to fix myself somewhere along the way.
And the other cardinal position from where to write is when you have found the inner status quo that doesn’t even require your proving it to be correct. You have found a place where you belong, you have found the life that is as good as you can hope it to be, you have found your own moral code and philosophical backing, or your personal religion, and there are very little fights to be fought over that place because you know it is of your own, and you don’t need anybody’s approval for it.
Of course, as with all cardinal theories, every writer is somewhere in the middle. I know now that for me, being closer to my inner temple works way better than being closer to my inner abyss. At least as long as I don’t intend to write from a padded cell.

So yeah, 300+ words done today on a story I dropped a long, long time ago because I couldn’t fix it. Now I think I can. And there’s this long, savory feeling of writing where I write a paragraph that doesn’t necessarily say anything much, nor is ostensibly important, but draws another facet of the story world, of the protagonist, and is simply wonderful to write.

The one resolution I’ve arrived at is to write truthfully and from how I have experienced the world or how I could render that experience, not from the canons of genre or convenience or what’s right and what’s wrong, according to semi-obscure market rules. I had toyed with the thought to never try to sell that piece anyway, so I might as well stay by that decision, only on different grounds.
Besides, I sorta know that I wouldn’t sell anything anyway for next two years or so, thus my concerns about saleability of that thing are unfounded anyway. It’s crazy how convoluted can one’s thinking become when faced with outside rules in combination with inner fear.

And, by the way, in the same vein: I think it’s sorta ridiculous when I, who see being a writer as an ultimate quest for inner freedom, become frozen by rules of what I should or shouldn’t do “as a writer”. It’s all fine and cool as long as I understand why and can relate to these rules (like being polite or having common sense, or writing well instead of puking all over the screen), but when I start thinking “damn, why did I choose to be a writer, now I have to talk to people like THIS and I shouldn’t ever do THAT and if I make THIS MISTAKE, I’ll ruin myself as a writer and all my efforts will go down the drain”, well, it’s time to stop and regroup and remember why I chose this path. Surely not because I wanted to freeze in fear every time I write something.

So yea. I laugh in the face of fear, seek it out and look in it’s eyes, and ask, how have you been, old buddy?

Also, I submitted The Final Turn yesterday and I licked Siren up to a point where it’s ready for beta-reading. That’s the good stuff, that’s what I should be proud of and that’s where I should seek and find my self-assurance, not in the eyes of somebody who doesn’t know me, doesn’t respect me and doesn’t give a damn about my feelings (except the obvious “haha, here’s how I can piss her off” attention).

Just like Vega, I wouldn’t exchange it for anything else.

1300+ words.

If so, are you really willing to get out?

You know, there are demons out here.