Spiders, Fairies And Elves, Oh My!

Two nights ago it's the rain. Last night, well last night has no reason. I haven’t slept in two days, and yeah, maybe I’ve gone longer before (stupid insomnia) but that doesn’t mean I don’t want to sleep.

I almost fall asleep around nine this morning. Oblivion is so close, and my, is it ever gorgeous.

A spider scurries across my belly.  

I jump from the bed shaking my limbs and tear off my clothes with an urgency I can’t possibly convey.

Intent on finding the nasty creature, I rip my bed apart. There’s no stopping until its dead. I can’t be in my room knowing there’s a spider lurking somewhere, waiting to bite me.

There’s nothing. I shake out and meticulously check the seams of my clothes before putting them back on.

I go upstairs. I’m not on the couch for two minutes before it happens again. The spider.

And then, I see it. The drawstring on my sweatpants. Great, I’m so tired I’m hallucinating. I hate when this happens. My already overactive imagination goes haywire: there’s robbers and axe murderers; clothes turn to weird animals; shadows morph into horrific things; strange images flash across my eyes; things try to kill me.

It’s like a bad acid trip – except I’ve never started trying to peel off my own skin or anything like that. It’s yet to get so bad I vandalize myself. Instead, I hide under the covers like a good four-year-old.

Sometimes my imagination is too much for me. Every morbid or horrific thought of mine plays out, so vividly that they have to be real. It makes distinguishing reality and imagination tedious, the line seems so ambiguous. 

And that got me thinking (productively this time).

My best work is done when I’m in this exhausted state, when I stay up all day and night to work on a project and am so tired there’s no possible way to go on. Yet I do; the work must be crap since I'm barely conscious.

Then I get my marks back. An A. (This happened last week – I stayed up so long over a course of several days working furiously to do all the schoolwork I put off that I made myself physically ill.)

My best writing comes out of this weird half-there state where I start losing my mind. Maybe it’s the separation from my conscious mind. I can’t get in the way of what needs to be said or done. My words can’t interrupt my characters because I can’t possibly come up with one, even if I tried.

My imagination gets free reign, takes full control, and runs rampant.

I wish there was a way I could channel this mind-set without the negative side-effects (like believing I’m on fire or someone’s leaning over me with a knife). But I guess art is suffering.

And what would we writers be without our suffering, struggling image? (Aside from healthier of course)

The only weird thing (and no, hallucinations no longer count as weird) is when I look at what I've written; the words are foreign, new. I always find myself wondering who wrote it – it’s too good to have come from me.

Maybe it’s weird fairies or something – like those ones that made the Shoemakers shoes when he falls asleep. Wait, those are elves. Okay, so maybe elves are doing all the work for me (the stuff that I don’t think is utter crap anyway). I don’t know.

All I know is you can’t have them. (And I mean this in the nicest possible way. I’m sure you have your own weird creatures hopping around fixing things for you, like ninjas or bunnies or something. If you don’t, you should get some).

Where/when are you the most creative? Does your work ever surprise you? 


Word Of The Day: Fatuous: foolish or inane (especially in an unconscious manner); silly; unreal.