Grunt work somewhere between dream and duty / poking through with all them shoots of beauty
I have, in some fashion, been forever transient.
It isn't a matter of owning a nomadic nature. It isn't the habit of feeling bored with other authors' stories with ten pages remaining. It isn't the act of looking over someone's shoulder during conversation; the studder and pause, no matter how slight, jerk me back to my wide eyed listening.
I have, simply, forever lacked an anchor. I drift, I float, I dream, and when I cannot dream I cry the tears of an amnesiac genius who remembers only that, once upon a yesteryear, they were something more. When I cannot dream - those dreams which are not really dreams, but rather the stories spun of synapses firing with the cool, cool heat of a thousand Vesuvians - my mind's eye sees nothing but dust, as if the mental playground that is my imagination is covered with a molted funeral shroud. When I cannot dream - those dreams which are really dreams, and furthermore the crib sheet to my desires - I lose the tether to my inspiration as a child would lose a kite to September winds.
I once dreamed I was barefoot in a wintergrasped, moonlit forest. A bear walked through my clearing, and pointed with its snout to the quiet fresh water pool I had not yet noticed I was dying from dehydration while searching for.
I once dreamed a coin could leave an angels' hair tracer, passing from pocket to pocket and cash drawer to bank.
I once dreamed I was at war with a foreign nation, an inversed American flag sewn to my jacket's elbow.
Those dreams, and notebooks' others, are mine. Like lost nations' treasures piled to ceilings of cavernous banks, most remain untouched; very few are ever brought streetside. That was to be my fate - a dreamer surrounded by glassy metaphors and zirconium plots.
Until I found my hook. Until I realized, plain as day, there was a spiraling theme to these fragments. Until I decided "This is what I can write. This could serve the opus of my dreams." Until I leaned back on my ankles, knelt low to the floor, surrounded by a frantic 10 page wireframe outline... and finally convinced myself... and finally realized I had a story emerging from years of margin notes and post-it tabs... that changed everything.
It terrified me.
On one hand: I have a concept which may prove to be the most successful story I have ever written, more epic in scope and more poetic in metaphor than any previous offering. On the other: I have a concept which may fail. I am a binge writer. I will get the urge to write, I will fight it for a day or so, and then I will succumb for days or weeks at a time and compose. Since having these aforementioned idea, I have been terrified to write because I know, deep down, whatsoever I pen will lead me back to this story. And, were this story to fail to capture its audience, I would be a broken man. I have hemmed and hawwed and procrastinated and excused my timidity for a year.
Thankfully, I have also dreamed - those dreams which are not really dreams, but the effervescent sunbeam of innovation to the flower that is an idea.
I've decided now is the time to capture my story to paper. Come what may - insofar as seeking/gaining an editor, discovering a format, and publishing - I'm going to stop allowing myself to procrastinate. The final mental block I had to erradicate was that I would miss having this story rattling around my brain. This is the closest thing to a New Year's Resolution I've ever made, and noding is more concrete than writing a note on the whiteboard; I'm ready to mount this white whale to the mantle. It is time to gather my notes from my mind to the page. It is time to weave a tapestry of character development from the happenstance of plot. It is time to write it up and tear it down. It is time. I'm going to take a deep breath, and start sharpening the knives. Expect to see more of me, more often.
Love,
Serjeant's Muse
"Every artist is a cannibal, every poet is a thief / they all murder their inspiration, and sing about the grief."