Thursday, December 09, 2004

Daggers of the Mind

Usually stories are complacent. You give them the "baa-ram-ewe" password and then lead them around the corral all you want, making sure to tell them how nice they were afterwards.

Every now and then, though, a story's going to go rogue, and usually in extreme fashion. These are the stories that feel that their time has come, and that they're going to see themselves in writing no matter what.

I have no idea what happened in the last three hours. I just know that my mind started wandering in the middle of work, and that all of a sudden, I had the story sitting in front of me. Not to mention almost half the workday wasted doing something that I hardly even remember.

Sometimes, when people ask me how I write, I describe it as a sort of madness. It's a dazedness that consumes me and gets me waking up next to some of the most interesting stories I've ever read, wondering where the time went. Sometimes I even wonder whether I'm actually the one writing these, or if it's some alternate personality who looks to take over my soul one day. God help me if that ever happens.

At the moment, I'm reading the new story, wondering if it'll be worth posting here. Perhaps it is, and perhaps it's not, but for the moment it might be best to let it stew for a while. Maybe I'll just sleep on it or something.


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