… over my bedtime. Yes, that’s right. I’m almost twenty years old and she’s still nagging me about when I go to bed. You see, she is an early bird and I am a night owl. We get along impeccably on everything except this particular issue. I am on the college schedule and find nothing at all odd with retiring at 2AM and rising close to 11, and I daresay most college students would agree with me (although my roommate is prone to getting up in the wee hours, God bless her).
But what, you may ask, keeps me up so late? The answer is my baby. Before anyone suffers from cardiac arrest, it’s not a live infant, but my novels. My writing is just as precious to me as a child; I suppose you could call it my substitute kid for now. I put all of my heart and soul into it and sometimes I just can’t stop myself from staying up all night. One minute it’s 10;30 and the rest of the family has just gone up to bed and the next it’s 2:45 and my hand is cramped, my eyes are burning, and I have to keep getting snacks to keep up my energy. Despite all of that though, I usually find myself in a state of blissful satisfaction because my journal, which has become home to whichever characters are swimming around in my brain at the time (currently it’s dear Prince Thomas and his ladylove Laura, but for most of last year it was Julian and his struggle to clear his name of false charges), is suddenly running out of room and I have to scurry upstairs to snag another one before my ideas flutter away.
Speaking of journals, allow me to lament the sad state of the written word. Its poor, struggling pulse has almost completely stopped beating. When was the last time you saw/heard of an author physically writing with a pen on paper? It’s not common anymore to be certain. Whenever an author is interviewed nowadays they say they immediately dash to their computers when they have a brilliant idea. Whenever I have a brilliant idea I grab my pen and actually write it. Something about it feels that much more authentic, like I’m actually writing a book and not working on a paper or professional document. Now I’m not technologically ignorant by any means and do transcribe my work to my Mac (and I do love my Mac), I recognize the importance of a Word document; no matter how I look at it though, it just doesn’t feel the same.
Am I a hypocrite? After all, here I am writing a blog and am the proud owner of Kindle, both of which significantly detract from the essence of a printed book or journal. Maybe I am. You can judge. But I will say this: nothing turns me on more than a printed book and anytime I sit, squat, or sprawl out to write, the initial first step for me was, is, and always will be reaching for my pen.
