Writing keeps me sane. Writing drives me insane. Often the only stability that I have in a tortured world is my writing. Of course, writing doesn’t pay. Long ago I made myself a note inside the cover of my commonplace book: “whether published or not, I am a writer.”
A factor that is difficult to include in this equation is depression. Like many writers I live in a miasma of low-grade depression much of the time. It even fuels my art. I write my most humorous material when I am despondent. There is a depression that is debilitating, however, and even causes writing to become a strain.
“There is a wisdom that is woe,” Herman Melville wrote, “but there is a woe that is madness.” Yes, Herman, I have been there with you. At times it is so dark that I can only glimpse Poe or Lovecraft as my guides, distantly ahead. In the twilight we find each other.
Since being released from my contract with Vagabondage Press, I have wrestled in the grip of depression. I have never planned to make a living from my writing, but I very much would like to see it read. It is like trying to give away your soul but finding no takers. It may be cheap, but it is the best I’ve got.
Not that it stops me from writing. I continue to complete short stories and I’m in the midst of the next novel—this will make number six, unpublished. Out there is one editor who loved my Medusa story. I don’t know that editor’s name and the publisher won’t tell me. Writing must be a labor of love, for no one gives breaks in this business.
When this Damoclean cloud hangs over me I ponder how this internet has delivered the death thrust to writing. It is impossible to be found amid the endless clutter. A weak soul gasping out in not heard among the bravado of the over-confident.
Whether published or not, I am a writer. And if I find my way not from this valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for in space no one can hear you dream.
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