Alternate Realities

Sometimes I worry that not writing anything creative in a few months is driving Fiction out of my head and into my life -- or into my reactions to everyday life anyway.

While I'm not necessarily 'seeing things' and/or 'hearing voices' (always a good thing), I do tend to feel disconnected and almost alienated from some things that happen in my everyday life. For example, anything bad, unpleasant or unwelcome is instantly met with incredulity and denial. Anything. From news, to screw-ups, to a quarrel, to feeling sick or having a pain in my back or foot or knee. My reaction is not merely, 'oh, this sucks!', or even 'owwie'. No, no, no. My first reaction is 'I must be dreaming' 'This isn't happening' 'Let's just go back in time and fix this.'

I mean, I don't literally think I can actually magically change things, like re-writing a paragraph in a novel -- I'm not that crazy. It's just my first reaction. The immediate reaction to unpleasant stuff, right before the 'ok, let's deal with this' that comes right after and -- thankfully -- takes over.

It's almost like living two separate lives in two separate, alternate realities. One is the practical, day-to-day, mundane existence; the other is the one I can change by deleting chunks of text from my imaginary computer, creating and recreating situations until they feel right and the dialogue flows and...

Gods. I really need to get writing fiction again. It used to keep me somewhat sane. And the ideas are there -- tons of character/dialgue/story ideas lying dormant in my mind.

And what about The Novel? The draft on my desk? Of all the work it still needs, I already have a pretty good idea of things that have to be cut, expanded, destroyed, added... why can't I just find the discipline, motivation and strength to work on it again?