Like Breathing

I often blog during the time when I just put my little guy in for a nap for to bed for the night, before he falls asleep, so that I'm not burning up writing time. Blogging can be done while he's happily babbling away, or screaming, infuriated that I've put him down to sleep when he doesn't want to sleep, damn it! But I don't need to concentrate all that hard to blog.

Writing, I do. If I try really hard I can concentrate on the words while distractions are around. I can plot with chaos going on around, but finding the words with a toddler needing my attention is a little trickier.

I went to Lilith Saintcrow's blog today, because I love her books and find her incredibly inspiring, and loved what I read. I found Lilith last autumn, and I think she's freakin' awesome. In this post she talks about women writers needing space. I think probably all writers need space, but women tend to be pulled in many other directions with taking care of children and the house.

Most of us do the majority of the house work and child care. We do the cooking, for the most part. I'm lucky because my fella does help with the cooking and he does dishes. Which rocks. He also does the outdoor work. So I don't mind doing the indoor cleaning. It's a good compromise. But I'm the major care giver. And toddlers are very distracting and needy, as they should be.

So I'm trying to learn to concentrate while the bean is causing mayhem all around me. But I often feel guilty for not being completely there with him. So this is a struggle.

Like Lilith, I need to do the writing. If I don't write, within a week or two I pay for it. I end up really fatigued. I become an insomiac and when I do sleep, I'm plagued with nightmares or, at the very least, strange dreams. I become edgy and restless, and feel lost and at odds with myself. So I really need the writing, even if it's just a small session here and there. I been like this for as long as I can remember being able to write stories.

It's not a hobby or a passing fancy. It's who I am, and it's how I stay sane. And if I had to, I'd write on the cardboard box I was living in if it ever came to that.

I've written in parking lots in my car in the pouring rain. I've written on buses, on airplanes, on a rooftop, in laundry rooms, under a bed when I was a kid, scribbling away in the midst of insanity.

I've written in the dead of night, finding comfort in tapping away at they keys with trembling fingers while spectres of bad dreams loomed all around me, in the early pre-dawn hours when my eyes snapped open after a scene played out in a dream, or when a character's voice said something so clear it sounded as if they were in the room with me. I could go on forever. But if you need to do write, you find ways. You just do.

In some of my darkest moments I've written entire scenes in my head, when I didn't have the energy to tap them out. But I knew I'd come back to them and write them out later.

If you're a writer, it's who you are. It's your faith, it's your religion, it's the way you make it through life when life turns to shit and it looks like all is lost. The words will always be there. They are the hand being offered when you're sinking in quick sand.

Sound dramatic? It is. For some of us, telling stories makes the difference between living and dying.

I've had people try to cripple me emotionally so that I couldn't write, because they couldn't stand the competition; my attention and love being placed elsewhere, even for a little while. Two almost succeeded, for a little while, but not quite. If I'm not tapping away at the keys or jotting in a notebook, a post-it note, a napkin, whatever the hell is handy, then I'm jotting those notes down in my head.

Please excuse any errors today. My little guy is yelling at me and I have to get him up. Another no nap day. *Sigh*

I guess I'll be sitting in a parking lot in my truck with my netbook after daddy gets home :)