The Itchies

The primary reason I quit my doctoral program right after I completed all my classwork and my qualifying exams, lo these many years ago, was because I didn’t want a career in academia that sucked up every moment of my waking day. When I looked at my parents and their academic careers—particularly my father—it seemed as if all he did, from breakfast to midnight, was sit in his home study and pore over his notes, laboring over his little index cards and always slaving over each new article. The only time he seemed to leave the house was for his classes, and then he’d be right back home to work on his monographs or addresses again.

When I got to the point where I realized I'd irrevocably be locked into that career path, I balked. I didn’t want to have to spend every moment of every waking day working, or wondering if I should be working, or itch all over from the guilties because I wasn’t working.

So in that grand tradition of never escaping the traps that our parents have set for us, eventually I’ve became a full-time writer instead.

I have never, ever worked so hard in my life as I have these last ten weeks, with my two-book deadlines last month. All during February and March, the only things I did seven days a week were to get up in the mornings, plant myself with my laptop, write until lunch, eat, write until dinner, eat, write until bedtime, and then sleep and start the whole thing over again. My ass was glued to the sofa in the den. When I’d go to bed at night, all I could do was think about the work I wasn’t doing and that needed to be done. There were nights that my brain was on fire enough to keep me awake until two in the morning; the day I was working on the climactic next-to-last chapter of Crate & Peril, I pulled an all-nighter just to have that chapter done with.

Writing is one of those activities that, while one might be enormously proud of it after it’s done, is miserable actually to do. That mess in one’s brain, no matter how grand and glorious it seems, has to come out one word at a time, in a single, simple stream. It feels like trying to use nothing more than a pastry tip and an icing bag full of coal nuggets to squeeze out a very fine line of diamonds. Fourteen hours a day of it makes one weary to the bone.

So I’ll be taking a little bit of time to myself, these next couple of weeks. I’m going to goof off! And do nothing! And watch movies! And play World of Warcraft! And maybe even do some pleasure reading!

Already I can feel the guilties prickling at my skin. They’ll just have to lump it, baby.