Saturday 7 June 2014

I'm neurotic

You know what we writers are like. We're free and easy spirits, living a cool, bohemian kind of lifestyle. We swan in and out of cafes, drinking copious amounts of coffee and watching as life goes by, notepad at the ready to jot down anything we notice that we can use later in the services of our writing.

We're cool customers, unruffled by life. Marching to a different drum as we let ourselves be driven by our creative urges.

Well, I can't speak for any other writers out there, but I absolutely know that this isn't me at all.

I'm not cool. I'm not composed. I don't lead any kind of relaxed, bohemian existence. I'm totally not the sort of person who just goes with the flow. Truth is, I'm neurotic as hell.

I worry about everything. I get myself all worked up about nothing. I make a big deal about even the slightest of disturbances. If there was anybody who could possibly be a poster boy for neurotics anonymous, I reckon it would be me.

I have to say that I am quite cool and relaxed about my neurotic nature. I even find it quite useful. I reckon that obsessing over fiddly little details is actually a pretty valuable quality for a novelist. And this obsessiveness also helps me to maintain my concentration for the extended periods required to actually write a complete novel - and then go back and rewrite it again and again and again.

So far from seeing creativity and neurotic-ness (honestly, I tried to google a noun version of neurotic and couldn't find one - that's how neurotic I am) as exclusive, I actually see them as a good combination. Maybe we need a new word to describe it - creotic or something.

Anyway, to anyone out there, have a great and creotic week. And see you at exactly the same time next week (you know I'll be here, and now you know why).