Tangled torments

Writing is like, punishing yourself for thinking.

You have a story inside, but it's a tangled mess. Unraveling it is often less fun than trying to overhaul a 1400 yard twisted nylon longline skate with a few hundred halibut hooks all tangled in their beckets and ganyons, festering with the rotten bait that wasn't cleaned off the season before, in the pouring cold April rain of Southeast Alaska.

And before you ask... yes, I know personally how horrible it is to do the above, getting paid $10 per skate, having a monstrous pile of tangled mess on one side of a table, and a tiny little pile representing a meager grocery shopping trip (eggs and maybe milk, but not bread) on the other - a weeks worth of work. Bloody palms rubbed raw with that most exquisite of modern torture devices, the Swedish Fid...but I digress on my digressions.

The point I was trying to make, is pulling a story out of the snarled mess that is my mind on the best of days is one of those life-changing tough challenges like training to be a Navy Seal, or talking a seven-year-old daughter out of another Hello Kitty toy. My problem, such as it is, is that my story isn't just the books I've written - it's about 20 more waiting for their time to filter through my fingers into the screen, and then into the mind of my readers.

I have things I feel like I have to do to set the stage for other things that set the stage for even more things, and honestly, I can't tell you how many times I write the same exact thing, not remembering that I wrote about that 20 pages earlier. I read a sentence, and my head practically explodes with great ideas I have to ruthlessly, savagely denigrate into submission, or I'd never get anything written.

Is it a curse, or a gift? My readers sure seem to like the end result, and for that, I can't thank them enough for the motivation and encouragement to go on... every person that takes the time to write a review on Amazon, is like literally walking up to me and giving me a hug, as if to say "There, there, it'll all be okay... you can do it, just keep writing!"

And so, on I go... into the endless black depths of my head, looking for the thread that lets me unravel this mess into a story we can all be proud of. Wish me luck!

(P.S. As I was writing this, I got my 1000th twitter follower! Congratulations @surrealinsight, you get a free chrome-plated toaster that works. Just kidding, you get a retweet... but you deserve so much more!)