Putting Up With Your Ass: Living With Writers

I would lick this picture if it wouldn’t taste like computer. (Photo credit: rosebengal)

Writers are batshit insane.

No joke, man. What else would you call someone who imagines things happening constantly?* If we didn’t try to put words around it, we’d be borderline delusional. As it is, there’s some kind of new disorder up for inclusion in the DSM called Maladaptive Daydreaming, which, judging by the extremely loose criteria, I and nearly everybody I know has. Seriously. I can’t make this shit up.**

But sometimes we find someone who will put up with the unending stream of red-hot crazy that spews forth from us, burying our lives under the madness. Parents, friends, lovers, spouses, children…if you’re a writer, and you’re not living in glorious, slightly creepy solitude like Salinger, then someone, somewhere, is putting up with your ass.

So, for all the people out there who give us the space and time to write: thank you. Really. You put up with a lot. You don’t get too worried when we start muttering to ourselves about firearms ballistics, or the genetics of cheetahs. You’re there when the acceptance letters come, and when the rejection letters pile up. And sometimes you bring us tea/bourbon/tea with bourbon/an entire bottle of wine and a chocolate cake.

And, yeah, you deal with our odd hours, our spaciness, our weird references to things that don’t exist anywhere outside our own heads, our demands for printer ink and even more bourbon. Most of the time you don’t even complain. If you do complain, it’s probably because we’ve forgotten to shower for a week again. Sorry about that.

But it’s not all bad. In return for your patience and support and baked-good-fetching, we show you cool things, or sad things, or things that are just a little bit too weird for words, but that we tried to put words around anyway. Sometimes there’s a little bit of magic in it. Sometimes it’s just crazy. But that’s who we are.

So again, thanks. And pass the bourbon, would you?

*Other than creative. But according to some people I’ve met, that’s worse than being insane.
**Well, I could, but I would have made it cooler. Symptom of a superpower, maybe.