My antagonist in my first novel, Blue, fights an ongoing battle for normalcy that he eventually loses so he can serve his ultimate life’s purpose, which is to become a crazy person and lend dramatic action to another character’s story line.  I am not kind to Peter, ’cause he’s beautiful and talented and pretty much gives up everything to make someone much less interesting look good.  He really can’t help it, however, and despite valiant attempts at holding himself together, he fails like a good little villain and does what he must, which is indulge his psychological instabilities until he goes off like a bomb.

I suspect that, at times, none of us can help feeding our more destructive tendencies, and this is the matter I want to explicate in my very first-ever blog post that I expect precisely no one to read. (Aside from the ‘who-are-you-and-why-should-I-care’ factor, well, really, people, it’s not even 5 a.m.  Surely you have something better to do?  No?  Me, neither.  All right then, I’ll keep you company.)

I think we are all nuts.  Well, I know I am, because writing will do that to a girl, and maybe it’s just a crutch I use to make myself feel better, but I’m pretty sure you’re nuts, too.  Not like sociopathic or anything; I’m exploring all the tortuous ways novelists put themselves out there in an effort to get published, and you probably follow some similar protocol to make a living doing whatever you do, and these efforts, by their nature, breed nuttiness.  Normally, I think we take the edge off – defuse the bomb, as it were – with distractions, a la Pascal, so we don’t think about the more violent forms of rebellion we could employ against our frustrations.  And for the most part, I think it works, too, to engage in something diversionary when you’re about to go off the deep end.  I mean, gardening or running or folding the socks is better than throwing knives or setting the house on fire, right?

But some days, the effort to contain one’s inner insanity rather than reveal it – truly reveal it, I mean, let that rabid dog off the leash to wreak havoc on anyone within spitting distance – wears thin.  Having just gone through several such days, I’ve cracked and started this site/blog.  I think it’s crazy to do this.  Crazy. But, as I’m hoping it will help me avoid the more troublesome opportunities my hidden, burgeoning psychoses could provide the world, I’m doing it.  Makes me think of the quote I used to couch the third section of my first book.  Remember the inner struggles of our friend, Robinson Crusoe?  Defoe nailed it:

And yet so deep had the mistake taken root in my temper that I could not satisfy myself in my station, but was continually poring upon the means and possibility of my escape from this place.

I cannot satisfy myself in my station of endless querying and no publishing, so I’m striking back (wah-ha-haaaa) and starting a blog.  Take that all you people who, wisely, don’t even care!  It beats throwing knives and starting the house on fire, right?

Oh, wait – why am I asking you?  You’re crazy.