You cannot create something that you can’t envision.

I am working on a novel called “The Edgar Allan Poe Simulator” that is about Edgar Allan Poe, video games, simulations, magic, love and grief. I have not finished a novel since the last time I wrote a memoir, but I published a short story called Ecstatic Inferno and several short stories. I was in an anthology with some famous horror writers including Stephen King. I went to writing conventions and attended a signing party where I actually got to sign my own story in an anthology. Robert makes enough money now that I no longer have to work, so I quit my job and spend most of my time writing and/or trying to learn how to be human.

I’d say it’s the most frustrating and difficult thing I’ve ever done, but that’s a lie, because I’ve been a video game tester.
I am working toward the life that I envisioned for myself and in many ways I have already achieved what I wanted - to be able to write and to write as much as I want.
If only that was all I needed to fix my problems.
If only I could feel like I am free to envision a future for myself but after all that time chained to the dogwood tree I am still unsure of how to live my life.
The Poe Simulator is about love, yes, but it’s also about a love that I have trouble envisioning. One which is free of drama and heart-ache. One which doesn’t end in an inevitable falling out. I wanted to write a story about characters who were more than smoke-filled caricatures that crawled out of a dream. I wanted to write a novel that was about the nostalgia of playing videogames in my father’s studio at the young age of 6 and a way to transfer magic to a subject that was usually ignored, had all the magic sucked out of it.
The Edgar Allan Poe Simulator is supposed to get me closer to making my dreams come true.
But sometimes I can’t even imagine the way dreams are supposed to change me.
And if I can’t even imagine a new life, one in which I do not wake up every day having to reassemble myself, than how am I supposed to create it?

You can’t. That is the truth.
You cannot create something that you can’t envision.
So I work to envision it.
I work carefully, moment by moment.
I work purposefully, moment by moment.
Sometimes I fall asleep at the keyboard because I want to deny myself the truth.
It’s difficult to look right into the heart and center of everything that you’ve been doing wrong.
Being wrong is painful, and I’ve read before that our brains sometimes equate being wrong with physical pain. Because wrongness means death, we cling to the idea that we aren’t.
Even by ignoring everything.

Sometimes for me it’s even difficult to look into the heart and center of life, because I want to deny life itself.
I am on the third draft of EAPS (I use acronyms for all my novel titles.) but I don’t know when I’ll feel truly finished.
When I’ve accomplished the ending that I want.
I wake sometimes in a panic because I fear that I will never finished it. I try to remind myself in those moments, to soothe myself, that it’s okay, because we’re all going to die anyway. It doesn’t comfort me, because I’ve used that excuse too many times, and I still care, but it doesn’t stop me from trying.