Every time I sit down to write, I get this nasty anxiety attack. I begin to sweat that sick, uncomfortable sweat that only seems to happen right before you lose control of your bowels out of fear… Not that that has ever happened… or at least not while I was writing. Artists talk about the “pain of creation”, and I get that. But sometimes, when I sit down to “open a vein” creatively, it hurts so badly that I really have to do a double-take to be sure I’m not really bleeding.

If I have ever been able to define myself as anything, EVER, it would be “storyteller”, which is why I took the title “Raconteur”. If I had to distill that down even further, it would be “writer”. Writing is the first thing I ever remember doing. It is the first thing I ever knew I was good at (or so I was told), and it is the first thing on the list of things that occupy my every thought, every day.

So why, in the Gods’ names, is it SO BLOODY painful to do? I mean I LOVE it when I get into it, for a few minutes at a stretch. Sometimes I can even lose myself, and not realize that the sun has fallen and the house is mysteriously empty when not 15 minutes before… oh. Oops… 6 hours went by. You know what I mean? But usually it is avoid, abate, admonish, repeat.

Now, here is the really cool part. Several years ago at Screenwriting Expo 1 or 2, one of the very early ones, we listened to Frank Darabont speak. Now this is a guy to look up to. He adapted and directed “The Shawshank Redemption”, and if he did nothing else for the rest of his life, that was enough. At the time he was working on “Raiders of the Lost Ark 4”, and the 1000 or so people in the audience we abuzz with the excitement of him being the one to scribe that long-awaited project.

Of all of the incredible nuggets of wisdom and craft that came out of his mouth that day, though, the one thing I remember most was him saying this: “You know that awful feeling you all get when you sit down to write…? It NEVER goes away. No matter how many times you have done it, or how successful you are, it is always difficult.”

So many authors over the centuries have disserted on this topic, and I know I am not writing anything here that hasn’t been said, thought or previously written about, but man, it sure was nice to hear Mr. Darabont describe so accurately the feeling, and let me off the hook for feeling it.

Now I just need to figure out how to avoid writing these blasted blog entries that no one will ever read, and go back to work on my projects that hopefully everyone will read.

Write on you huskies!