Sometimes in the delirious state of being both awake and unconscious, I feel a swell of creativity wash over me like a tsunami obliterating the shoreline. I can’t explain it, but there is some force that compels me to write. Something takes over my body like a spirit possessing a fragile soul. When the force hits, I have no options but to get everything down on paper, in this case on the screen, or let the words blow by me like pollen in the wind.
Though probably not the most coherent, I’ve found that some of my delirious writing often turns out to be my best. It’s funny how the mind works isn’t it? When we become so tired that our eyes glaze over and our bodies begin to weaken, we are often left open and vulnerable. Being exposed like this then which allows us to write of the horror or embarrassment that we cannot face in the daylight. Our deepest darkest secrets or fears be ken fair game all of a sudden. Our minds don’t begin questioning every decision, they simply struggle to keep us awake and typing.
In the witching hours of the night our bodies and minds and souls fuse together in a sort of harmonic tango. They ride a tandem bike of disregard as they blast through the whole in the walls we build up to protect ourselves. In the witching hours, we are freed from the restraints of our over critical minds. And that, my friends, is why I hold this time of night so close to my heart.
My mind can wander as my fingers furiously type away word after word, line after line, paragraph after paragraph. Pages go by in the flutter of an eyelash. The occasional nod off results in numerous spaces or repeated letters that take up lines of writing, but these mistakes are easy fixes.
Ernest Hemingway said he wrote by a certain motto, “Write drunk, edit sober.” And while the occasional nightcap might be helpful from time to time, I don’t have the luxury of drinking every night. I don’t think my professors would appreciate a hung over student waltzing into class everyday hung over or still half drunk. So instead, I pick the next best thing. I write before I dream and I edit when I awake.
Sometimes what I read in the morning makes sense and other times it’s random garbage that I’m ashamed to call my own, but do begrudgingly. But, in the end, there is a percentage of this writing that makes the partially sleepless nights worth it. For in that delirious state of half awake and half asleep, my writing begins to resemble the real me. Not the young woman running from meeting to meeting, or the type-A personality, or the English and journalism double major. In that delirious state, I am simply me, quirks and all, written down for the world to see.
Bittersweet Symphony 