…insane even, but not the legal type. Not the need medical help. Let’s not make fun or take likely mental health needs.
You just need to listen to the voices in your head and write what they tell you. Okay, I did specify not making fun or putting down true mental health issues. I’m not making light of these true needs, having needed this type of help at different moments in my life…social anxiety and PTSD.
To write is the craziest profession, craft, anyone can ever do. You’re literally listening to voices, your characters, and putting them into all sorts of trouble. One page their name might be Marg and the next Helen…blonde or redhead…falling in love or unearthing a disaster. Oh, wait, now there’s two different characters screaming their own stories at you. You got it…Marg and Helen each want their romance and their thriller story told separately. Open another file or grab another notebook.
Next comes the great words from yesterday or today becoming tomorrow’s trash. Only to find their replacements are tomorrow’s tomorrow’s trash and you’re desperately trying to remember what those original words were all the time knowing what you’re remembering isn’t anywhere near as good…wait, maybe they are better.
Dangit, you’ve just read someone else’s book and their idea is your idea. Back to the notebook. Let alone you need to change character names, again.
We’ll just skip by the editing headaches.
Now how are you going to publish it? Self? Through an agent? Search through all the publishing companies…rework the manuscript to fit their requirements. And if you’re lucky and get accepted guess what…more of the editing headaches I’m going to skip over.
Then, and then…reviewers and readers…IF you’re lucky.
Do you have a thick skin? Have developed one via the publishing phase? No? Okay, you’re screwed.
This is easy? This is fun? This is what I spend all those hours and sleepless nights doing?
Yup.
Gotta run, characters are calling me.