Thursday, May 08, 2003
I feel dull this morning. Unresponsive. Disinterested. The trick of writing, the only trick that actually matters, is, I believe, passion. The possession of and communication of passion. This morning I seem devoid of any scrap of passion. Perhaps it's a consequence of all the editing, all the work that isn't writing. There was at least a little passion last week, and the week before, when I was working on "Riding the White Bull."
The year is slipping by too fast. The shorter time gets, the greater the weight of the work to be done.
This morning I was lamenting the furious pace at which I worked just a few years ago. I brought up, as an example, May 1997. That month alone I wrote four short stories, a script for The Dreaming, went to the World Horror Convention in Niagara Falls, and attended to various other things, no doubt. Back then, I used to relish the challenge, purposefully taking on more than I should be able to handle, just to see if I could do it. I had passion to spare. Now I seem to be drifting.
The recent encounter with The Wall serves as an illustration of this lack of direction, passion, drive. I worry that the very act of writing is, for me, dangerously close to having become automatic. That I may be reaching a point where I will write because I write, not because I have something to say that I think is worth saying, something to show, some passion to spill out into the world. Looking at Low Red Moon and my short fiction the past year or so, I see the very best work I've done, but it seems to be getting more difficult to nuture the fire that produces that work.
I promised myself, back in November '01, when I began this blog, that I wouldn't make this sort of confessional entry. It seems somehow exhibitionist, maudlin, to parade my doubts and insecurities this way. On the other hand, it's right there at the heart of writing a novel, or anything else for that matter, and so is in keeping with the stated mission of the blog. And, I have to face the fact that this entry may be the best, or only, thing I write today.
Wake up, Caitlín. I know you're in there somewhere. Come on, bitch. Wake up. The curtain's rising.
The curtain's always rising.
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