Birthday Musings: In Sickness And In Health

When I was young, I read an interview where Stephen King said this:

I used to tell interviewers that I wrote every day except for Christmas, the Fourth of July, and my birthday. That was a lie. I told them that because if you agree to an interview you have to say something, and it plays better if it’s something at least half-clever. Also, I didn’t want to sound like a workaholic dweeb (just a workaholic, I guess). The truth is that when I’m writing, I write every day, workaholic dweeb or not. That includes Christmas, the Fourth, and my birthday.

And I thought that sounded very badass.  A Real Writer wrote every day, hauling that laptop down to the coffee shop as some sort of show of how Hardcore you were.  A Real Writer was always cranking out new words because that’s how you wrote, like, seventy novels a year.  A Real Writer mashed keys.
So when I was young, I set out to write on My Birthday.  The most special day of the year.
Because writing was special.
And today is my birthday, and it’s not very special at all. I am laid up with an ear infection.  I got up at 9:45, went to the doctor for ninety minutes, then came back and slept until 2:30.  I am sapped with grief after Rebecca’s death, and I am sapped with energy with the own roiling mass of angry flesh throbbing inside my ear, and I have just asked my good friend Angie – not that I want to – whether she wants to reconsider coming down for the weekend, since I don’t know if I’ll be up.
I will also write.
Writing is not special.
I write every day, now, and most days I don’t go, “Oh, what inspiration will I unwrap from this golden-foil package hidden within my mind?”  I remember back to my old days, writing only when I was truly In The Zone, when I had a great idea that just burned within me to be unleashed, going fallow for weeks at a time and then cranking out several short stories in a feverish day.
And that process works for some people, don’t get me wrong.
But I write when I’m sick.  I write when I’m tired.  I write when I don’t have time.  I write when I’m uninspired.  I write when I have no good ideas.  I write when I have no hope that this story will ever be any good.  I write when I hate myself.  I write when I’ve failed.
No matter what happens in my life, I sit down, and I write.  The day after Rebecca’s death?  I wrote.  Three weeks after they cracked open my chest to operate on my heart?  A few months ago, I found a flashfic that I’d totally forgotten about, which I’d written deep in Ativan haze, over what turned out to be the course of a couple of days.  Because I write.
And it’s not magic.  It’s not badass.  It’s just what I do, relentless as stone, and…
That is magic.
The magic is a slow process, you don’t see it forming.  It’s a grim procession, knowing that no matter what happens, you must make the words.  But those words then come from every part of you.
Back when I wrote only when I was inspired, I wrote only of a manic energy.  Now I write from all colors of my spectrum – from despair, from exhaustion, from strength, from weakness.  I write from more creative places, because if I am coming up with bad idea after bad idea, then I will begin to think of things I never would have thought of had it been easy.  I write from more tones, because if I write in joy and edit in despair then I have not one me, but two mes looking over my words, and I am wiser in all my moods than in one.
And I work miracles.
I write things and move people in ways I never could have before, when I gave only the shiniest parts of me to my book.
And I am exhausted, now.  My ear throbs, my heart aches.  But after I finish this, I will write on my birthday.  Because this day is not special, and writing is not special, and me writing today is not special.
What I write is special.  And all things serve the beam.