What Drives Authors, Poets, and Songwriters to Write
Your published! All signs point forward, success has been achieved, right? Wrong. The publisher and his/her editor have found your work worthy, and they gave it the go. Now unless you are Stephen King, J.R.R. Tolkien, or Dean Koontz, your laboring work will remain trapped between the printing press rollers.
Frustration from waiting for that shot of promotional reviews has worn you down from constantly wondering if you could have done better.
Then suddenly without warning the passion to write grips your mind, heart, and hand, that cursed feeling has taken control, your heart begins to race. The passion awoke you at two o’clock in the morning, and the words flow onto the blank paper from your only friend, the pen in hand. You know that this is the rough draft, but it is the best draft that will be chopped, edited, and considered for publication, the one draft that nobody will ever read.
With words running like a wild river you develop, mold, give birth to each and every character. Each one fights for the title roll, and you are the arbitrator.
Six a.m. and the alarm clock reminds you that work is the lifeline of your family’s happiness. The passion screams for attention, just five more sentences and the paragraph will be done. The nucleus has begun.
Cell phones are ringing, and computers are sending messages of the day. You have left the house, and barely remembered to wish them a nice day. The reasons are clear no matter if you’re the C.E.O., of a successful company, or a janitor at the local beer and a shot solon, all the sounds are related, the voices, the lip movement, facial expressions, are all those of the characters. Their clothing is the wardrobe of the time at hand, some are modified to what you believe is suiting.
Co-workers are valued as personal inspiration of the antagonist, others are possible-protagonist, but none are captivating, and your mind argues of which is which and which should be thrown away. All of these thoughts and words of character voices battle in your mind throughout the day. It will be hours before you get to replay that memory tape, you know it will come and there won’t be any holding it back. Dinner will be served, and you will eat only because your character is hungry, you will drink because they drink, you can live on the passion for days.
Writers write, lawyers fight, robbers rob, and police arrest. Each and everyone has been in and out of your story, some twice. Than there is the one without a name, the one that brings it all together, the one you love, you hate, you need, and most of all, the one that is you. You slept only because your characters did, just as you bathe because of them, everything you do from driving, crying, working, and playing is done because of them. There won’t be any separation until the novella, novel, or stories of any size and category is completed. You’ll sweat when they lose thought, you’re nervous when they change the road, or pick up the pace, change locations, or introduce a stranger as a long time friend, but somehow you find the path back to the smooth flowing river of words.
The weekends come and go while melting into a chapter, maybe two if you’re pleased. Days to night subject to ideas are the only witnesses to your shadow on the wall, as you sat hunched back with a pen in hand.
People look at you as if you’re crazy. You know they saw your lips move without a sound being uttered. Giving a nod and a brief smile while recalling the phrase by the author of The Shibboleth, “A writer is not talking to himself, but he is speaking with his characters.” With the memory of his words, you release a low volume laugh as a new sentence, or paragraph in born.
Just outside the company gate you realize that you could be five or ten minutes late. This is nothing to you, as your words bounce off the car’s dashboard you hear yourself saying, “I must write this down.”
Never before did you understand the meaning of ( It’s not for the money that I write, I write for the money, to write.)
An electric bill, phone bills, food cost, house payment, a car loan, are all reminders of reality that re-enforces the pounding between your eyes. The wife and kids begin to look like someone you knew long ago. Old friends ask if your ill, or even still alive. You began to ask yourself the same questions, as you haven’t been in direct sunlight in a month, you have dark circles under your eyes from lack of sleep, and a hand cramp that will certainly remain with you for decades, but all is well, nine out of twelve chapters are done.
You had two birthdays since you awoke at 2:00 a.m, and you can’t remember which one made you older. No matter anyway, all that dose matter is that you are four words away from the end of the novel titled ( The Fallen Brethren). Three hundred and seventy-two pages, two years and three or four rewrites later you have one last thought as the newly purchased pen surrenders its ink to the paper. That was a long ride to reach a satisfying conclusion to a voice that simply said, “How did this happen?” Questioned detective Carmen DeRouge.
Moving down four bars and indexing thirteen spaces you print the end, and just below you sign the manuscript with your autograph, not your check signing signature, but the one you hope readers around the world will recognize.
Laying the pen down you sit back for a moment and reflect on the feeling of accomplishment, when Sara says to Justin; “Would you like to see my apartment?”
There is no pill, there is no drink, that can stop what ails you. You know that you are…Trapped ‘n’ Passion.
T.J.Mullane is an author of fictional writing. ( The Shibboleth, was published last August. The Fallen Brethren is in the working stage.)
