Journal. Something about writing.

I think I am a mood perfectionist, when it comes to writing. Yes, I am learning to just sit down and write and not worry about setting the mood just so. I have to if I wanna be prolific, if I hope to publish many books. The process is in motion. It starts with noticing how I interact with my environment.

Now I have written in the blood-soaked rooms of a boarding house full of junkies, on a laptop so beat up I had to tie the screen back with zipties and twists, with a keyboard whose keys I had to superglue back on. With a boyfriend and junkie whose paranoia could turn on me in a second. With a habit of my own, boy and girl, serious enough it would undoubtedly kill me if it entered my bloodstream now. Clean as I finally am. Now I have written despite real and imagined voices on the other side of the walls. Now I have written under threat of being momentarily evicted. Now I have written with the sun in my face and heavy metal in my ears. Now I have written in a bar. In a car, in the cloud of someone's cigar. Now I have written for my life. Now I have written to death. I have written out the curses from under my goddamn breath.

But being sunshiney clean, I have to deal with myself and my moods. I can no longer control them, manipulate them, force them into submission. But the cool thing about living without all those old toxins pulsing through my blood, yes, the cool thing about it is there is no artifice. No manufactured moods.

The uncool thing is, I have to be a badass bitch with myself and keep myself doing something creative and not just talking about doing something. Use it or lose it. The mood perfectionism sometimes arrests me. I have my cup of coffee and my attitude to match. I have the light just write, coming through fabric cross the window. I have my Pandora One. Or silence. Ceiling fan on low. Doors locked. Phone muted. I sit down behind my desk, in a corner of my room. I open the chromebook and take a deep breath.

Then, well, it's a bit of a turkey shoot with my mind. I either get to writing, one word at a time. Or the tornado of my mood dislodges me from my setup, for any one of a million possible reasons, and I fight and fight and forget to write. I gotta let go, to go on.