Compulsive writing

Compulsive writing yesterday in my pretty Moleskine, instead of working – there are days like that when I'm like a lion in a cage, I open my notebook and close it, go through the pages, look for something to scribble, draw, write, something to move me forward as if I had a project in progress, which I might... often failing to create anything, I build projects, I plan, I delimit, I lay the foundations... foundations of nothing... it's just a matter of calming anguish and the need to create-something in the same way as others need to get drunk or punch someone...

Luckily, at any rate, I managed to overcome this state yesterday, with a mental kick up the backside, which enabled me to write instead of eternally preparing to write. I owe this to Dean R. Koontz, who got me unstuck from the pulp novel by rereading Lightning.

Stories only really come to life when you write them, not before. The story is created as you write it, it imposes itself: the characters, the events, the rhythm of the narrative. When I read that Stephen King wrote Running Man in three days (or is it three weeks? either way, it's madness), I tell myself I've still got a long way to go...

When I also think that Danielewski worked on House of Leaves for twelve years...