I Shall Have 5 Bodies and Minds with Which to Write 5 Stories at Once: The Existential Dread That Comes from Having a Mind Full of Ideas: Or Bloviating for Dummies

I must come to you with honesty, my dear readers. Honesty that quakes my very soul and leaves me flailing in my sleep with nightmares of monsters. A restless kind of feeling fills me as if I’m being dragged along. Batted awake every time I try to rest my weary mind and forced to continue moving on. I have to continue, in case I’m running out of time. But there is no case, because I know that I am. As we all will experience, someday my time will be up, and there will be no more stories I can empty from my swelling soul.

My ability and desire to write is many things. I think I’d name part of it a brownie. No, not the delicious chocolate dessert, but the naked little fairy creature of old, mischievous and proud and sensitive. It wants to be treated well, it wants to be cultivated. It wants to be loved and respected. And if not, it turns into a boggart. It crawls into my bed at night and strips me of any rest or peace. It claws down my back and breathes hot and foul breath into my ear, growling out its displeasure at being forgotten, unloved, abandoned.

I’m standing in the middle of a great amphitheater, and all around me my worlds and characters and creatures I’ve created scream at me. They pull and tug at my heart and my soul. I’ve created them. I’ve unleashed them upon myself. I’ve disrespected them by promising them all beautiful gifts and being unable to deliver fully. They have grown impatient and they haunt me and I often feel quite sure that someday I shall lose my mind entirely. And so I stand in the center of them and I let them rip me apart. And while I crouch in my own blood and the dust thrown up by my own children I simply smile at them and do what I can. I help them. I bring them what beautiful gifts I can offer. I try.

I will cease now wallowing in the muck of my own privilege. Privilege to have the glut of ideas that will inevitably lead to my death. What a pompous, pretentious, puffed up post this is.

Because I realize that some people go their entire lives carrying only one story. If they manage to get it onto a page, their soul is free from that burden. But they also can think of nothing else to write, even if they want to. Even if they quite enjoy the craft of writing.

But people like me drag around a soul full of stories, and no matter how much you pour onto the page in thick liquid geysers it only takes off a miniscule amount of the pressure.

That’s the best way I’ve found to describe it. Pressure. No pretension or arrogance necessary in that description. Ideas for books find me whether I’m awake or asleep, wherever I might be in any given moment. And the ideas pile up in my brain and if I don’t let them out onto the page I start to feel sick, irritable, angry, anxious, all types of negative emotions.

I was so used to chasing my passion when I was younger that I’d jump around to 3 different ideas and I was perfectly happy to do so. But when that number became 8 or 9 my brain started to swell with the overwhelming nature of it all. How will I get to them all?

I think since then I’ve made peace with the fact I won’t. Even though I’m only 25 years old, I spend so much time and effort and research on my books and I’ve always been slow at everything I do. I feel like I’ve been crawling for ages rather than learning to walk and then sprint.

But even though we’ve come to an understanding, me and my brain, my characters and worlds and stories haven’t accepted my limitations yet.

In a human, selfish way I’m grateful for that. What a high you get from building a world that comes to life before your eyes and the things you’ve created see none of your limitations. Because to them you’re the deity, the all-knowing all-perfect god, and while I’m a bit uncomfortable with ever feeling like a god in any setting, I realize that’s what I am to them and it’s something I’ve had to sit with and contemplate about myself. The self-importance of man. I’ve created this world in which I can go when I feel overwhelmed by the real one. I can immerse myself in its comfort and talk to my characters and explore what I’ve created with them. But to them I’m so much more than myself. My escape has become my responsibility and in some ways a gilded cage.

But for some reason that just gives me more passion. More hope for the future. I can’t wait to write better the book I’ve already created, and finish the ones I’ve yet to. And even though I don’t think I could ever finish all of these ideas and do them justice, I’m going to give it the best damn try I possibly can.

Because I owe them that much. They never asked to be created or have a world built for them to live in. The least I can do is try to do them justice.

90% of the time, I am thankful for my affinity for writing and the ideas that constantly fill me. The other 10% of the time, the existential dread gets to me and I suffer under the weight of my own self inflicted responsibility. This may be one of those times, but I am determined to come out of it better, stronger, and ready to tackle any future hurdles. Thank you so much for reading, and I hope you enjoyed this post.

I’m still working on my media breakdowns, if you missed that update it can be found here. I decided I should go ahead and reread the Grishaverse novels just to be sure I don’t miss any plot details or skimp on my notes of the tv show, which will inherently make my script take longer to do. I like to try and be thorough when I do a media analysis. I hope you will consider checking out those posts when I finally get them done as they have been quite time consuming projects already.

Happy reading and I’ll see you next time!