The Bloody Doors Off

I’ve had this window open for hours, looking for inspiration.

That’s a common theme this week.

I’ve been writing in the RPG. Those characters are active. Discovered last night that I’ve been writing them since 2003 (thought the first evidence of that online game has long since faded into the ether). Going through some of the old entries, two things occur:

1. I wrote some funny shit
2. I wrote some horrible crap

And that’s the truth of writing, isn’t it? You’re going to write some putrid stuff. But inside of that, there are gems. Like hard-pressed coal, you can find little diamonds. My issue right now is not wanting to write the crap to get to the good stuff. Which is stupid. Rome wasn’t built in a day, and while I turned a draft of my play Song for Rachel in 2 weeks, it took me a lot longer than that to get to a worthwhile draft. The first version was, in hindsight, pretty awful. I was trying far too hard to be poetic. And that’s not me. But when I finally realized it was semi-autobiographical, delving into my struggle with depression… that’s when it started to resonate.

The two characters I write in the role play game? They resonate. They’re a reflection of my Id and my Ego.

Maybe I just need to write free-form for a bit. Let the Id and Ego take over. And within all that coal dust, maybe I’ll find a tiny diamond to polish.