Eight Pages.

Eight pages of horrifyingly bad prose with the sparkle of an idea buried underneath and I am joyous. It's been a long time since I have felt my fingers flying over a keyboard channeling some inner movement that I often times don't understand. But tonight it happened. I think I allowed myself to write shitty prose and I had no idea what I was writing but it came and it came quickly. I know that almost the entirety of the eight pages will go away but in the course of following "Jeff" through the first part of this first draft, I fumbled upon something interesting. I came across obsession and that is always good.

It took a short story to set me off running and once I touched my fingers to the keyboard, found some semblance of a first sentence, I was off to the races. It's good for me to write poorly because it isn't the act of creation in this first draft that matters. It is only important for me to get some semblance of an idea down on the page and I will hone it and craft it until it is something completely different, but whole, in later drafts. I have to remember this.

I have been obsessing myself lately, watching Tracy from behind a thin veil of resentment and anger that is more to do with my slightly depressed self than anything I think she is really doing "wrong." I don't feel good and I'm pushing that feeling over to her, blaming her, and I can see some of that now. Eight pages and I feel a small portion of the weight lifting from my shoulders.

It's not good for me to be away from writing for too long. It isn't healthy for my mind. I need to exist on the page, pour myself out into fictional characters, know that there are other people out there who suffer and fail, live and love. It is good for me to find that there is a capacity within my soul to hold all of the good and the bad together and still be a man, and maybe someday...a good man.

Eight pages, oh thank you, God!!!