Inside My Brain

Okay kids, any fans of The Angry Samoans? Check out their discography. They started in the punk wave, and heck, they're still mad

as hell.

But I digress . . . One of their albums was "Inside My Brain." And yesterday, of all things, I realized how much time writers spend inside OTHER people's brains.

My group liked my short story. But, being the tough group that they are, at the end of our meeting, I was asked, "So what are you bringing next time?" Read the subtext: Get our of your f*cking writing funk and get back to your novels, you hapless b*tch. All right, maybe I am being a little bit interpretive of what my best friend, Pammie, REALLY thinks of me. But I got the message.

So I have 160+ pages of an incredible book I can turn into a thriller that deals with a forgotten piece of history, an actual event of demonic possession of an historical figure. And the reason I abandoned the book was I reached an impasse around page 160 where I had to actually figure out the motivations of a demon. Now, I may have a Demon Baby (whose birthday is today), but I personally do not like to spend much time thinking about the possibility of Satan. And I most especially don't like spending much time inside the head of a demon.

But that's precisely what writers do. I literally spent a half-hour last night pondering, "What do the demons really want? What are their motivations?"

Option #2 of a book to work on is even further along, around page 200. The mother in the book commits infanticide. In pondering the rewrite, I've decided she actually did so twice, not once. So now . . . I must spend time thinking, "What must she have thought the precise moment she murdered her own child? Did the infant struggle? How could she do it?"

Is it any wonder that writers sometimes end up in funks? In places they don't really like being?

Two nights ago, I had massive insomnia. I knew why. Just before bed, I had been flipping channels. Click. Click. Click. I decided to read instead (re-reading American Prometheus). But some compulsion always compels me to click up to channel 401 (where it converts to music channels), as if magically some wonderful foreign flick will be on and I can curl up all by my lonesome and watch a Danish film with English subtitles. Wouldn't you know at channel 399, I click and what do I land on? Hostel II. Torture porn. I paused. Not because I would ever watch something like that, but because I was stunned. What compels a person to want to make a film like that . . . and people to watch it. As luck would have it, the scene was horrendous, and so I clicked to 400, and then to music. And then I turned on the light to read. But I couldn't SHAKE the image in my head. Hence . . . insomnia.

That's kind of like being a writer. Sometimes you go inside other brains for a while. And then they are tough to shake. Even if you LIKE your character, you are in a constant state of analysis. What would Kate do when she found out her mother did this? What would Alexandra do when confronted by the alcoholic priest? Know the slogan What Would Jesus Do? (WWJD). What would my character do is a constant state of mind for writers. It makes it hard, for me, to always be present, as in . . . in the moment.

So how many of you brain hop? And do you like the Angry Samoans?