The Malice team is so excited to welcome Alyce on as a blog contributor! Check out her hilarious insight into the fathomless depths of a writer's mind down below.
THE RITUALS OF RITING
Now I’m sure I’m not the only one that struggles when it comes to writing. We all have our bad days,
our, I’d even say, “fruitless” days, if you will. When you’re hunched over your keyboard like Quasimodo trying as hard as you can to jot something down instead of clicking on the YouTube video that says “Wiener dogs dressed as minions.” I know, that one was especially hard. So in dire circumstances such as these I know all of us become a little OCD. Don’t deny it, once you think about it all writers have a special kind of sickness. A sickness all our own. Though, sometimes I’ve noticed I exhibit behaviors a little too close to a homeless man talking to air for my liking.
It’s a mild form of some mental disability that we develop through our unproductiveness. I myself am afflicted with this malady. A malady that makes me whisper-shout at walls, and try my hardest to make myself cry in front of the mirror just to see what it looks like. Now I bet you’re beginning to wonder what the hell I’m talking about. I’m talking about those moments of such pure, utter frustration when we’re stuck in our books that we decide to step out of the sanity room and into our characters shoes. Quite literally sometimes. I bet by now you’re beginning to get what I mean. If not let me elaborate a little more. Listed below are the symptoms you’ll see if you’ve been afflicted with “Writers Mind.”
The constant need to act out your book. No matter what type of person you are, there’s always a moment in a writer’s life when he or she will turn to an imaginary figure next to them and start speaking. There have been many near death-by-mortification-experiences for me where someone has walked in on me talking to the wall, or crying over my computer keys. Even trying to see what a face slap felt like. How do you explain that exactly? You can’t say you’re talking to your book character. That’s a one way ticket on a bus to where the men in white coats live.
If certain food puts you in the mood. Now I’m by no means an unhealthy eater. Most of the time I try to stuff my face with food that’s good for me but there’s just something about friggin dessert that makes me write better. Believe me this is no laughing matter! I’ve driven twenty minutes before to pick up a pack of fresh beignets and a nonalcoholic mint-julep just to get a burst of sugary inspiration. Not so much because, when I eat pastries the sugar seems to travel to my brain and do magic. No. I get cool looking food because it makes me look like a writer. Just picture it, you see a skinny, frizzy redhead sitting at a quaint coffee house with a sleek, black computer—delicately biting into a sugary delight? In my mind people automatically think “that girl right there is a writer,” and if other people think it, it sure as heck better be true.
I find that I write better when I look good, no idea why. . .
THE MUSIC! I must always have music playing when I write. Music I like, we all know what that means—hours upon hours of searching and compiling lists of songs, all sorted to what mood I’m writing in.
Talking to yourself. It deserved to be mentioned twice.
And last but not least! The writing itself. Whatever crazy, wonderfully peculiar idea we’ve conjured up, it has to come out! Which entails lack of sleep, red puffy eyes, mood swings, frustration, late night pacing, more mood swings (maybe some tears for the truly desperate). Trying as hard as you can not to click on the YouTube video, where a tiger adopted a pig. Violently pressing the back-space when you hate what you’ve written. Contemplating murder, wondering exactly why you wanted to be a writer. I could go on but I fear I’d die before I listed them all.
Nevertheless! This is what makes writers, writers. It’s what makes us, well, us! There may be no end to our eccentricities, but it helps of bring together a whole bunch of words and form them together until they actually mean something of value. And the best part about it is each one of our stories is unique. It is very rare, I feel, that people actually think on this but I’ll say it now (feel free to quote me on this). We have infinity at our fingertips. An endless, vast space of thought that’s just waiting to be filled with our imaginations. And sure, the road to get to that place can be a little bumpy and possibly psychotic, but it’s worth it. Happy writing crazies.
__________________________________________
ABOUT ALYCE:
If the amount of time you've been writing for is measured in years then I, Alice, have been writing for about seven of them. However, Netflix has sunk it's glorious., red claws into me which makes my writing time considerably less than I boast it to be (hey! Orange is the New Black is good!). My feet are never on the ground so I often find myself torn between writing whatever fantastical things I can dream up (some which I fear are a little too odd for the page) and drifting in the other direction towards real life grit.
You can find Alyce on Wattpad