when the bloody title contains scare quotes, you know you’re in trouble. (^___^) I HAVE RISEN LIKE THE PHOENIX! FROM A 3000 WORD DEFICIT, I HAVE COME BACK! LIKE AN UNHAPPY VAMPIRE REAWAKENED FROM THE GRAVE! ONLY, HAPPY! oh my god i am so high right now. not the illegal kind, the adrenaline kind. the other day, there was a question on the Office of Letters/Light blog (at least, i think that’s where it was, my neural pathways are a bit scattered at the moment) about why you write. some people said things like, i have to write or i get angry about all the stupid shit in my life. some people said things like, i want to experience things that would/could never happen in real life. some people even said the thing that i always tell people, which is, the thrill of writing is the thrill of reading, you get to find out what happens next. but the deeper truth is this: i get high, from writing. a totally legal, occasionally money-making, often admired past-time, and when i’m done, i’m totally, gigglingly, singing-loud-ly, divuldging-far-too-much-information-when-asked-only-innocuous-questions (using-too-many-hyphens) HIGH. like drunk, but on words. (^_^) (incidentally, this kind of high is also what happens to me when i read something good, hence my tendancy to read at home, alone. but that’s a discussion for another post~) and then of course, there’s the killing people. no, seriously. half the reason i’m so high right now is because no less than four people have died horrible horrible deaths in the past 2000 words. i set them on fire, while revealing some scary plot stuff about my main character. he behaved poorly, and it scared his naive friend. now they’re stuck in a creepy Moria-esque (only much smaller, and without short bearded people) hidey-hole (isn’t that like the second time i’ve used that phrase this november? what is WRONG with me? … oh. yeah.), so main character is going to have to explain himself to naive friend, or at least deal with the fallout from his poor behavior, which is far more likely, since he has not thus far displayed a habit of explaining himself to people. but slowly, we are finding out why. and the whole setting-people-on-fire thing started when the bad guys killed one of main character’s friends, and shafting your main character is one of those pleasures of writing that keeps an author at the keyboard when it seems there is no other reason to be there. nothing gets me reinvested in a story more quickly than making something horrible happen to my beloved characters. also helping me at this point is that i have a vague idea of where i’m going with this. i’ve had an ending in mind all along, and it seems i might actually make it there (find something wooden, dude, because i need to knock), and so i’m eager to find out exactly how the new things that are happening right now (for example, i thought the chick who just died was going to be an escaped rebel leader, but it turns out she’s the escaped government employee i had originally planned the naive friend to be) are going to play into the super awesome bombing run i’ve got planned for the end. the fun of writing is the fun of reading: you get to find out what happens next. that, and the killing. (^_^)-b .
FACT 174 – the “high” life
