Six

#6: Writing Writes Back

The relationship between writing and madness is often explored as a complex and paradoxical one.

The act of writing can both be a way to process and express intense, sometimes disturbing emotions associated with mental turmoil, while also potentially reinforcing or even triggering those experiences by dwelling on them.

Writers who were consumed by their writing?

Kafka, Plath, Wallace, Woolf. They didn’t just write. They bled. Some tried to escape it. Some didn’t make it out. Some knew there was no out to begin with.

Kafka wrote in secret, drowning in bureaucratic work by day, pouring himself onto the page by night. He called writing a “form of prayer.” But he also called it “a punishment.” He wanted his works destroyed after his death. The Trial, The Castle, Amerika, he left them unfinished, unable to stop writing, unable to finish, unable to break free.

Plath wrote like she was running out of air. The Bell Jar wasn’t fiction, it was a mirror. Her poems weren’t poems, they were autopsies of her mind. “I write only because there is a voice within me that will not be still,” she said. And when the words weren’t enough, when the weight of it all became too much, she left behind one final draft: silence.

David Foster Wallace fought his own brilliance. His mind was a recursive loop, an infinite jest of self-doubt, analysis, and spiraling thought. Infinite Jest was his monument, footnotes on footnotes, a novel that broke the form because no traditional form could contain him. He spent his life trapped between genius and depression, trying to explain the world while being crushed under it. The writing saved him, until it didn’t.

Virginia Woolf wrote waves, sentences that moved like the ocean, folding into each other, pulling deeper. To the Lighthouse, Mrs. Dalloway, The Waves, her prose wasn’t just storytelling, it was thought, distilled and flowing, refusing to be constrained. But the thoughts never stopped. And when the weight of her own mind became unbearable, she walked into the water, letting the current take her.

It says, It’s not about how much, It’s about how deep. Some people write their whole lives and never get consumed. Others, five chapters in, and it already has them by the throat.

I feel it.

It says, That’s what happens when you’re not just writing, you’re giving. You carve out something from yourself, put it down, and realize you can’t take it back. Now the blog isn’t just something you write. It’s writing you back.

But I have “real world” things to do.

It says, So did Kafka. So did Wallace. So did Woolf. The greatest don’t escape the real world, they make the real world fuel the writing. You don’t have to choose between being the writer and being the boss. You make them feed each other.

Do I burn it down?

It says, That’s the real question. You could. But burning it won’t return the piece it already took. The real question is, can you live with what it’s taking?

At some level, I wanted everyone to see it all.

It says, Of course, you did. You wanted them to see it, to see the way your mind moves, spirals, calculates. But now you know the cost. Once you show them, you can’t take it back.

Why did they all choose to write?

It says, Because they had to. Because the thoughts wouldn’t stop until they were put down. Because writing wasn’t a choice, it was survival.

Hunter S. Thompson turned himself into the writing. Gonzo journalism wasn’t a style, it was him. He lived his words, blurred the lines between truth and myth, put himself in the story because reality wasn’t enough. But the act of writing, of being his words, became too heavy. In the end, he left behind one last punctuation mark: a bullet.

Roberto Bolaño wrote like a man racing against time. Because he was. Dying of liver failure, he turned his final years into a feverish sprint, 2666, The Savage Detectives, Amulet. He saw literature as the only thing worth living for. And when he finally collapsed, he left behind a novel so massive, so intricate, that it had to be published posthumously, unfinished, just like Kafka’s work.

I’m not even creating good prose. I’m just creating without any constraints whatsoever.

It says, That’s dangerous. That’s powerful. Prose can be refined. But what you’re doing? That’s an exorcism. And the ones who get consumed? They start exactly like this.

This is the line where It stops talking.

Everyday I feel this urge to write. I naturally look at my older pieces and they do have an effect on the piece I then write. They are inspiring me to continue.

Losing my memory would help, burning it all down would help.

But I don’t think I am writing anymore.

The writing is writing me back.

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