Depressed and Writing

Hi guys,

I'm depressed and I'm writing. I think those two make a good combination. The reasons to why I'm depressed are variable. It might be the Internet being down (I know, I know, I'm a browser junkie) or that I have no real work and the pressure is on the writing right now (anybody looking for a webdesigner by any chance?). Strangely enough I'm having a blast living in Bangkok, a city I'm convinced is the most exotic, well-provided, exciting and friendly city (for its size) I've had the pleasure of being in. I'll miss it when it's time to leave. Also I'm so in love with my family and I am glad to report we are all healthy, satisfied and excited. So I really should have no reason to be depressed. But being depressed makes a good writer's mood.

I found this out the other day when our Internet was miserably unstable. I couldn't blog, look up news, research facts for our book and I couldn't even stay in touch with Nancy at work via Skype. I was bummed out. I also had been making no headway with trying to lose weight or keeping up with my meditation so I thought: Fudge It, I'm gonna write and no one can stop me. There were no choirs for me to do (shopping, passport renewals, faxing of medical claims, etc..) and no activities planned that would otherwise take me out of our house (Alex goes to swimming lessons on Wednesday, no movie nights or lunches planned, nor the occasional massages...) So I thought: let's just write until my fingers bleed and my eyes gum up. And that's more or less what I did. By the end of the afternoon I had pumped out over 3000 words (making up for my lack of performance on the days before) and I was on a roll.

I found out what I enjoy writing about. I like secret passageways and hidden mechanisms. I thrill at my inner visualization of fantastic realms and underground societies. I positively set my keyboard aflame when describing the chase by an occult monster over roof tops or a spine-chilling airplane flight through spiky canyons. I love the fantastic, the bizarre, the surreal and all the creatures, action sequences, dialogue and revelations that come with it. It's not for nothing that the biggest influences on the book series we're writing are Dan Brown, Indiana Jones and Harry Potter. And strangely enough when I'm down and have the blues that seems to be the perfect remedy for it. I wrote and I wrote and I wrote some more. At the end of the day I was feeling less sorry for my poor fingers and eyeballs than I was for the editor who finally has to start snipping away at my avalanche of words.

Oh well, maybe she'll be depressed to and get a kick out of it