Cognitive Rebellion: Festering Ideas

"What is the most resilient parasite? Bacteria? A virus? An intestinal worm? An idea. Resilient... highly contagious. Once an idea has taken hold of the brain it's almost impossible to eradicate. An idea that is fully formed - fully understood - that sticks; right in there somewhere."

- Inception (2010)

For some, writing is a relief. It is a place to let your ideas and emotions flow over the paper, a veritable splash of the writer's very soul. It sometimes functions as a catharsis, the ancient idea of cleansing one's emotions by experiencing as many of them as possible all at once in short bursts. It can thrill, criticize, horrify, and please the writer just as much as the reader. After all, they are reading it as it is being written, and sometimes even more.

Unfortunately for me it's feeling a bit more like a curse at the moment.

I have always been a bit more of a cinematic reader. The narrative literally plays a movie in my head as my eyes pass over the words. Now put that movie on a projector screen in a dark bare room. You are now strapped into a wooden chair in the center of the room, your head restricted to simply looking at the screen. You cannot move. You cannot escape. You cannot ignore the screen in front of you. And it repeats the same movie with slight variations over and over and over.

That's me in my bed at night, a poor soul unable to reach out and switch off the broken record that has been repeating for the last relative eternity, and it's worse for things I want to write.

I have sat in bed for hours upon hours thinking about each line of dialog in my story. You think the shock and horror of that first chapter of Everfree: Innocence Lost was bad for you? I was the camera for the cinematic version. And there was more than one take. So many more... A little variation here, a slight change in words there. How did I bring them to that alley again? How did I have her kill him again?

How much of it do I show you? And that is just the beginning of the story.

But wouldn't that make writing a good thing? If the idea of writing is to make these abstract parasites go away by transfering them to something solid, why am I so reluctant to actually do the deed? Surely if I am being driven so insane by my own ideas then getting rid of them is the best course of action. So why don't I simply write until I can write no more?

Because I move on to the next one. Because I jump ahead 7 metaphorical chapters and fixate on something I can't show you yet. Because it means getting stuck on the next scene where I struggle to put the visual into words.

Because the scenes fade.

With every word I write, the scene is pushed back another step. With every sentence, the idea becomes less prevalent. With every paragraph, looking back becomes harder and harder, because it is there. It is spelled out, defined, a veritable recipe for how I decided to come to the next scene plaguing my mind. It may not be completely permanent (thank God for the edit/delete buttons), but the simple fact that it is in writing somehow makes it more real and difficult to change. Something about me doesn't like that.

I have spent years living like this. I read a story, get an idea, and it washes over me day after day. I have lived in so many dreams, so many worlds, for so long that I can't remember what I used to think about while waiting to fall asleep as a child. So what happens when I finish the story? What happens when it all fades?

What happens when the dream ends?

Fear not, I will continue to write. I hope to add a good bit to chapter 3 and write up chapter 4 as a bare minimum this weekend. But now you've had a glimpse into my mind, a peek behind the curtain. Busy or not, writing is a struggle for me. This story tortures my soul.

And I can't decide if I love it or hate it.