return to the morning pages

good morning.

we were supposed to sleep late, says the body but the mind don't give a damn. free time! free time! it says. why waste it sleeping? but body knows the consequences of little rest, after all body does all the bidding.

the morning is quiet. want to own my own home, to parade around naked everyday, because i can. but that costs all sorts of money and i can barely pay my phone bill. it scares me and yet it doesn't that writers make very little money. why? because i'm a romantic. either i'll be one in thousands that does make money OR i won't need money because my art will sustain me, body and mind. (body huffs and raises a middle finger).

i just got out of a deeply emotional relationship with a very real and engaging story. now i'm a free agent, free floating. i feel naked (and still no room of my own really) without the characters i drew or the settings i built. i'm returning to earth in my little spaceship and the thought of gravity is heavy and reality is oppressive. i'm returning in my little space ship patting my pockets, searching for a seed so i can go traveling again.

it's rigorous work, writing. people sometimes don't understand that. they think you sit in a room and you fiddle with a fountain pen and dream your hours out of existence. people think it's a calm and mellow thing like smoke exhaled from your lover's lips. but what other writers tell you is true. it's not romantic (though it has it's moments), it's a very difficult and very wild profession. it never stops. one story finished then there must be another. a writer cannot stop writing for fear or losing everything: the inspiration, the hope, the love, the self.

so i pour cup after cup of coffee trying to stay a little ahead of the pen because to drop it, to drop out, is defeat and i would be too full of sorrow to carry on without... this is because artists have found their own unique way of talking to the world. sometimes i don't feel like talking and that's understandable BUT to be unable to talk, essentially what happens when you stop creating, feels too close to death. that sort of surrender might as well be ultimate.

i cling to lines and gather up words, trying to cover my naked body.