Preach it, yo

Free writing is difficult when you've already written 5 Livejournal entries (and cross-posted another of a friend's) in the last 24 hours. The mind glazes over, words are like wayward children whom you just don't want to watch over. Pudgy fingers and rivers of cliches stick themselves into electrical sockets and sometimes, the shock of what comes out hurts.

But not this morning, as I've ushered the words to sit down in front of the television of my brain. (TV is the greatest babysitter of all, right?)

A friend of mine wrote this KICK ASS entry on why she writes. I really want to emulate it or write something like it. But it just ain't there this morning. I did think about cross posting it here this morning. I just might.

People say that you're not a writer if it hurts or if you have to work at it. False. Totally, completely, totes major false. How in the hell do you think writers get enough practice in order to be writers? They write about the boring, the mundane, and the endlessly repetative until they figure out how to write it in interesting ways. They learn by writing even when they've got nothing to write about. By staring at the screen, at the paper, laying down thought by maddengly slow thought, until something good comes up.

And for me, sometimes nothing good comes out for months. I dislike those times but I know they are nesscary.

Do a U-turn in your writing, says Natalie Goldberg. Mid-sentence, say "What I really want to write about", or "If I could write about anything", or "I DON'T want to write about..." Sometimes that works. Sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes all I do is write about how my cats threw up on the carpet I just vacuumed and I'm almost out of cigarettes and the boyfriend has the tv on way too loud and how I am utterly, unequivocally, sick of my own voice.

The sky has been gray for two days now. I must be careful. Cold, gray weather is a classic cause of depression. I am no exception. I have a sunlamp, which I inevitably forget until my boyfriend is going out of his mind because I am sleeping 12 hours a day and haven't showered in a week.

Depression sucks. It's also pretty smelly.

Unfortunately, I can't be on anti-depressants. Bi-polars, especially Type 1 (which means, left to my own devices, I tend towards the manic side) have extremely unstable amounts of seretonin in their bloodstreams as it is. Antidepressants boost seretonin levels. Or really they just make the synapses in the brain more spongey so they can soak up more seretonin.  But for bi-polars, that's just a recipe for trouble. Occasionally we try antipsychotics, always to disasterous affects. Benzo's are out, too.

So I stay on my mood stabilizer, Lamictal, and just resign myself to spending five months out of the year completely flat in affect and mood.

"Brace yourselves, lads. Winter is coming."

Preach it, brother Stark. Preach it.