Yellow Wallpaper

If creative writing is so much more fun than writing the news, why does my news column get written, all 300 words, faithfully every week while my blog suffers?

I do enjoy covering the community news, but it just isn't as gratifying as immersing myself in my creative non-fiction. My column consumes large portions of my limited attention span while my beloved blog languishes. A cynic might point out that my column pays while the blog is a hobby.

But I know better. It's the Deadline. The Dreaded Deadline. Would there be a single piece of fully completed work without one? Even life has a Deadline. Maybe it's that Deadline that inspires memoirs late in the lives of the Notables.

Deadline is the father of Good Enough. And without Good Enough, writers, really good writers who write for the sake of writing, spin toward a non-existent, insane artistic perfection like some listless, moody, immortal homeric god.

But Good Enough is hard to live with. Convenient, but lacking artistically. A good writer can optimize to Deadline so that Good Enough approaches the artistic vision, but I'm afraid that takes more genius than I'll ever have. I'm hoping that I can earn it the hard way, with years of experience a lot more discipline. I'm still a newbie.

I suspect that artists are just as susceptible to the deadline-less insanity as writers are. It makes me wonder if Picasso and Dali had enough Deadlines. Genius without a Deadline creates insanity. And yet, creativity requires a healthy dose of insanity.

There is no insanity in my weekly column. Although some might argue that I am surrounded by insanity, artistic insanity needs time to ferment and grow, sprouting in the darkened subconscious and gradually leafing and blooming in the conscious. One week just isn't enough time. Just the facts, Ma'am, are all you're going to get in a weekly column. Daily writers have even less time for their art which, without a slightly and continuously insane author, emerges dry and bland.

So it's been nearly ten weeks since my last blog post. And it looks like it was definitely enough time for insanity to set in. I told you I was researching new material.

You still here? Still reading this? You are? Stop it and go get an easel or a notebook. You've got a Deadline.