Or “I promised myself I would do a little writing every day, and I refuse to break that promise” with a dash of “I resigned myself to not being productive tonight, so I had to prove myself wrong somehow or another.”

I need to write. It’s a compulsion, bordering on a requirement for my very survival (careful, I’m already getting all dramatic about writing and it’s only one line in, because the sub-title doesn’t actually count). If I don’t give my worlds a stage, or my characters the proper chance to have voices, who will? I mean, yes, you could argue that there are only so many, or so few, actual stories, and everything just reworks them to some degree or another, and I would agree to some extent. It’s all in the presentation, I say in such a powerful statement of the obvious that people pointing out how the sky is blue seem to have discovered a brave, new world full of awe-inspiring truths. That sentence was probably a lot more fun to write than it is to read, I imagine.

There’s a certain magic in seeing people react to what I’ve written, too. In what may be the most selfish sounding confession I could make, I don’t really write for others. Ideas happen, and if I like them enough they end up happening over several drafts in a Microsoft Word document (Microsoft Office 2013 is absolutely gorgeous, by the way, so you folks at Microsoft get a gold star this time around; two gold stars if someone from Microsoft sees this and decides it’s a good idea to send me a copy of whatever new copy of Office comes out down the road*).  If I like a story idea I’ve had, and I don’t get around to writing it, I will actually lose sleep. The characters make it a point to remind me I’ve not given them their due time, and how they really have a lot to say and do. Sure, it could be three in the morning, but they don’t have fixed sleep schedules.

To double up on the selfish tones present here: I may not write for others, but that certainly doesn’t stop me from enjoying other people reacting positively to my work (I mean, really, this is a pretty impressive blanket statement that could be applied to most careers; there’s nothing better than the feeling of someone saying how good your creation is). I especially like seeing people smile or laugh at the humor in my stories, though that’s equal parts pride and happiness all of my jokes didn’t turn out to be absolute shit.

Given that I’m still recovering from having my trouble molar pulled this past Friday (Damn, you might ask, why are you such a wimp about pain? Because it hurts, obviously. My face feels like someone put on their best cleats and gave me a few kicks.), so I’m not nearly as well-focused as I’d like to be. However, that’s not stopping the ideas from happening. Honestly, it sounds less like being inspired and more like the symptoms of a very colorful mental illness. I politely remind the characters I’m not going to do them much justice if I’m on painkillers and half-asleep, to which they mostly thumb their noses or stick out their tongues.

It’s vexing. I’ve said it before, and I”ll say it again. I, like many other people, would be more than happy to stay home and write all day for a living. Give me a nice office-library combination, as many hours as I need, and I’d be perfectly content so long as someone would remind me to eat occasionally. I’m not joking; I will occasionally forget to eat, or sleep, when writing. That may qualify as a problem of sorts, I guess.

Anyway, I’ve got a story to write now because someone went and inspired an idea that I just know will nag the hell out of me if I don’t give it at least a little attention tonight.

Update: I knew I’d forget the damned footnote.

* This is wishful thinking on an especially impressive level. Seriously, though. If someone from Microsoft sees this and thinks “Hey. You know what a great use for Office is? Writing things. We should send this guy a free copy of our latest software because he seems like he’d make good use of it.” I would be a-okay with that. Just throwing that out there.