What Writing Feels Like

I am deep into the draft of 10.04, so this won't be a long entry.

I just wanted to say...this is the reason. This is the point. This is the joy and the love and the ecstasy.

It's just me and the words and the letters and the draft and the words are starting to show themselves to me, starting to shape themselves into images with meaning that I didn't see at first, that I couldn't see until I'd chipped enough away from the slab of blank page.

When it's like this, when everything is white and light and beautiful, the stats page doesn't matter. The comments don't matter. The trolls don't matter. None of it matters. That's all...that's all on the outside. It's thin and it's superficial and it's not real and it doesn't matter.

What matters....what matters is the beauty. What matters is the words. What matters is the music. The rest of it - the rest of it fades off into the darkness and all I can see is the story. All I can see is Seth and his plants and the sun and his shears and Caitlyn coming up behind him.

I must be as perfect as I can be at this moment. In the past I didn't know as much and in the future I will learn more. The words have to be as perfect as they can be here, now. This perfectionism is not self-hatred. This is not distorted thinking. This is not ugliness and hate and tears in the night.

This is...

This is sacred.