I wouldn’t say being a writer is an emotional roller coaster because 1) it’s a cliche and 2) neither flying pigs, wild horses nor any other improbable kind of animal incentive would get me to ride on one. I don’t like what roller coasters do to my guts and my inner ear, but I do like being a writer in spite of its impact on my emotional health. ( A polite way of saying it makes me bonkers.)
If it weren’t for the reasons given above there would be some mileage in the metaphor. Writing is full of dips and troughs, sudden highs when you believe you are a genius and gravity defying plummets when you realise that not only are you not a genius but you can’t even write an interesting sentence. You hurtle along what may or may not be a safe, pre planned path with terrifying switch backs, hairpin bends and expectation defying changes in speed and then comes the sudden terrifying recognition that you don’t actually know whether this wild journey will end in a happy resolution or in some dire tragedy. Being a writer you can even imagine the headlines, the article and the death toll.
Personally I am OK with the doubt and the uncertainty. I love the moments of delight and elation when you feel just out of control enough to enjoy the journey, but I expect them to be followed by vertigo and vomiting. I am able to cope with the sense that it has all gone horribly wrong and the feeble structure in which you have invested such high expectations cannot support your ambition, is badly engineered, has wet rot, metal fatigue and is about to teeter and fall. I can cope with all that. It is the hope that gets me. Every time...
8 comments:
Nicky your post was a perfect read for me this morning as I woke up and found that for no explicable reason I had climbed out of the 'trough' of despond and had found a writing rhythmn.
Oh, yes. The hope. As you say, every time ...
Oh so true! My rollercoaster seems to have plunged into a very deep trough... does that mean there will soon be a very big high? (Hope so!)
Bit worried about that metal fatigue you mention, though. Might it be time to build a shiny new one? A little choo-choo train with very small troughs and peaks, nice gentle corners, and regular health-and-safety checks?
Isn't a rollercoaster too fast for the slow, churning emotion of writing, of books, and of publishing particularly? I feel these emotions are akin to owning a very unreliable car. Sometimes it starts straight away, particularly on sunny mornings. In the winter nothing will bring it to life. It's uneconomical, needs great concentration to keep it heading in the right direction and just when you think you having fun, it breaks down and leaves you stranded somewhere from which it's almost impossible to find your way back.
All so true, you are not alone! What I hate is not knowing the ending...
I suppose it depends how volatile you are. My emotions change hour by hour minute by minute and when I finally get down to writing ( after incredible drama and procrastination) I go at it like a madwoman, but I've no doubt that varies from person to person.
I find there is long stretches of nothingness and then everything happens at once and everyone wants a piece of you!
Brilliant post Nicky. Those last two sentences:'It is the hope that gets me. Every time...' struck home. Hope is such a longing... never fully expressed but there with every piece we work on... a gut-wrenching want or need, that perhaps keeps us going. But those two short sentences highlighted the vulnerablity of hope. For a moment I wanted to howl at the moon...
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