I’ve been having trouble for the past week getting back into the flow of my writing—if Darin takes any more vacations (and then promptly falls ill), I’ll probably be done for.
Beyond that, however, I had the weirdest experience last week while writing.
I described it to a friend of mine this way: You know how when you’re driving, you zone out, and suddenly you come to and think, Why am I in Pasadena? (She lives in LA. It’s far more likely she’d end up in Pasadena than, say, I would.)
I had the same thing happen to me last week while writing.
I had the weirdest feeling of suddenly “coming to” and realizing that everything I was writing was MADE UP.
This was not my usual self-flagellation—I wasn’t on my own case for untrue stuff. This was more along the lines of suddenly realizing that writing fiction is the act of making shit up.
I’ve been writing fiction since I was 4. (Yes. This is true. I wrote—in my own handwriting—a short story for my grandparents about a magic well.) And only last week did I have any sense of how deeply odd this little occupation of mine is. These images in my head? Not really there! These words I put down on the page? Describing things that are beyond not true—they’ve never happened!
It was easily the weirdest out-of-body experience I’ve ever had.
I’ve gotten over it. Well, not the point where the words are flowing again—more like being expelled, one bloody painful syllable at a time, instead of my usual typing mania—but I don’t feel quite so strange about it.
Still: I remember the sensation of looking at the screen and thinking, What the hell? No wonder people believe in possession. When your POV switches like that, it’s deeply disconcerting.