N.K. Murray

I had dinner with a dear friend the other night. Through no true fault of either of ours, it had been some time since we had caught up with each other. . . you know, life and all. After rehashing the last several years, she asked me when I was going to finish writing book 2.

Blank stare from the blonde.

I spoke in my last post about how I was learning/relearning my writer’s voice now that more of the lights are on upstairs. That was a true statement – but there is more to that. I have the words. I have the stories. The timelines play themselves in my head like vignettes from a silent film most nights. My characters have such full, rich lives and personalities, yet they can’t seem to find their way from the attic to my fingers to get them on the page. It’s frustrating. I have so many words, so many thoughts, and trying to figure out a way to get them out of my head and onto the page in an order that allows me to have some measure of control is infuriating, because they simply don’t want to play nice. They come tumbling out of me, ends before beginnings, replies to conversations not yet had, and the utter disorder is maddening.

Just write them all down, Nikki. You’ll figure it out.

. . . . oh, if it were only that easy.

There was this interview that some talking head (I mean, Anderson Cooper) did with Eminem, and he brought out this large shoebox full of slips of paper with feverishly written quips and phrases on them. Anderson was taken aback – and told Em (because you know, he and I are on a nickname basis obvs) that he’s seen papers like that written by crazy people. And his reply? Well I am crazy.

That’s how it feels sometimes, but not in the Crazy Cat Lady way, but more in the I need to get all of the ideas out so that more things can fill their spaces. So many ideas. So many hobbies. So many lightbulb moments of things I did and said that I should have handled differently. I can sit here and write down all of my thoughts, but if my thoughts don’t have files, or those files aren’t organized so I know where those thoughts were derived from, what good does writing them down do if I can’t tie them back to something tangible? What does tangible even mean if I only have a shoebox full of ideas without any strategic vision?

The method to my madness seems to lie within the links to the music I listen to, oddly enough. Each one of my not-quite-cooked idea babies has its own playlist – I mean, I literally have playlists A through Z, then some a bit more fleshed out that have colloquial titles given to them because that’s how I refer to them. That’s how I wrote Sister – I heard a song, and then realized some of the other songs that I loved and listened to all fell within the confines of the egg that was percolating in the incubator in my head, until one day – out popped a book. A freaking book, you guys. Out of this head. I have said before, the ending came first, and came easy, because what’s easier than (spoiler alert) the death of your voice? When the dots connected, when the bridge I was building overtop a gaping chasm of nothingness met in the middle without being off by even a millimeter, I had literal tears of joy. Because, that meant that I wasn’t crazy, and I could do this. And now it’s 15 years after hearing a song, 10 years after the first draft was done and more than 6 since I hit that ‘Publish’ button, and I am still chasing that dragon.

Perhaps these next two months of Garden Leave (linked as I realize not many people outside of banking known that means) isn’t a bad thing. I have certainly been able to get all of my gardening in, as the freckles on my arms and the rose tint to my nose can attest to (despite the SPF 2938472736487364283 that I wear, mind you). I have had moments in the recent/not-so-recent past where my idea babies have started to grow tight within their confines, and want to come out. I think I need to figure out which is the most mature, or perhaps which is the one that has been screaming loudest into the ether trying to find someone to listen.

Kerouac said many things in his life that have resonated with me throughout the years. Perhaps the one thing that has stuck with me recently, is “The only people for me are the mad ones: the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who… burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow Roman candles.”

Madness can be beautiful if you know how to wield it. Time to stop chasing the dragon, and finally figure out how to ride it.