slaying the dragon

i've heard that there are writers who like to write, who enjoy the act of creating a story and committing it to the page, who can write with regularity and discipline.
i have never been one of those writers.

my writing has always felt like an exorcism. like a demon swirling around in me for months and i like it there and i keep it there and i put off writing it down for as long as i possibly can and when i finally do it's a violent, messy, painful thing. it's blood all over the page. it's the battle of st george and the dragon and in the end the dragon lies headless on the page and i stand over it, white-knuckled grip on my sword, but i don't stand tall like st george in the paintings, i stand heaving and panting and bleeding and torn open because this was no minion of some other satan sent to fight me; this dragon tore it's way into the world from inside my guts, and then forced me, still leaking my own entrails, to slay it.

writing is pulling monsters out of your bloodiest deepest insides, cutting them out with scalpels and knives and rusty blades and then fighting them while you lose blood, vomiting your darkest monsters into their corporeal forms and killing them and smearing their blood and yours all over a pure white page, and writing your dying words in the gore.

i've heard murakami sits for the same number of hours every morning and writes with a cup of tea next to him, then goes running, then comes home and re-reads his work and edits it. every day.

my writing is the swirling pit of demons that occasionally becomes so violent it forces me to do battle until i've killed them all.

writing is masochism. writing is an exorcism.