Molls to the Wall

Writers hit walls almost daily, just part of the trade, but the hardest wall is the demand to explain what it is we do exactly. The How of it. So let me try again. Okay, say some thought or notion or wild dance of words pops into your head. If the moment makes you smile or in any way causes blood to rush to your brain, stop what you’re doing, take a shot of whisky, and write it down. Never mind that the odds of it being anything important are so staggeringly lopsided that only a crazy person would bother recording it. Having written it down, you will not be able to resist tinkering with the words, moving them about, standing them on their heads, turning them inside out until the combination seems satisfactory and maybe even pregnant with possibilities. At this point you will begin to wonder if it’s too early to make hotel and airline reservations to the National Book Awards. But first there is the problem of a second sentence. So you focus again on the task at hand and think of another batch of words. After a while, the process takes hold.
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Over many years I’ve discovered that the process of writing is an agonizingly slower, far more painful adventure than jotting random thoughts into a school notebook. By that time, of course, I was addicted to the process—the work, the loneliness, the panic attacks, the super highs, the soul-searing lows, even the crushing failures which educate the writer to be intolerant of shortcuts. It’s the life I cut out for myself, and I was stuck with it. Small comfort in discovering that I was right all along—only a crazy person would attempt it. Anyway, it worked for me. Just like breathing in and breathing out, only with a red hot poker stuck up your ass. The trick, if there is one, is this: Don’t lose your nerve. Don’t let the bastards know that you’re not in control.