A writer’s heaven on earth, the ultimate introvert’s escape is insanity. It’s safe, it’s secure; a place where you can be anything and anyone you want to be.
If you are smart, and have mastered the art of living in the third person, so to speak, you can manipulate feelings to your advantage. A writer is capable of channeling his anger, fear, worry, desire, and pain into his writing. A part of every writer is immortalized in his writing, (I use the masculine “he” or “his” when referring to a direct object for practical purposes only).
This channeling or diverting of emotions and feelings enables the writer to first contain them, step into insanity, and then release them upon the pages of his stories. Insanity is not a curse, it is not madness, nor a loss of mental capacity or capability. For a writer, insanity is the point at which writing becomes real, personal. The fact that a writer is constantly creating or building characters and imputing parts of himself into their fictitious lives, takes part of that writer away from him. Those parts can often only be accessed through the character, and many times, the writer becomes the character.
With that in mind, a writer is not himself apart from his writings. Indeed, I consider the writing part of Jared Allen to be a entirely different person, or at least a different personality from the performer and singer Jared Allen. The writer me goes by the name Firefly, the other me is known as just Jared; the insane personality goes by Bob mostly.
Not to say that I have MPD, (Multiple Personality Disorder), for if I do, everyone does, I’m saying that there is a clear distinction between these different parts of me. They all come together to make Jared Allen, but each performs a different and unique function to make me who I am. Sometimes they contradict, but that adds complexity and variety to the character of me and feeds my insane personality.
Moral of this story:
People are unique, people have different personalities inside of them. It is important to keep the distinction between these, and to always have a bridge of escape: the insanity self.
It’s not wrong to get confused, it’s human, now the results may not be humane, but it is human to fail, to become lost, confused, and want to go insane. Let me encourage you to go insane, let loose all of those emotions that you have stored up. But, rather than to stay in insanity land as some will do, enjoying the carefree and pleasure side of not having to think, return to the real world leaving everything behind. Insanity is a way to free ourselves of the baggage we all will inescapably collect.
If you’re a writer, insanity is a tool, not a curse, certainly not just a playground. If you let your mind run wild, you will never be able to tame it again. Use the temporary madness, it is a gift to be used with caution and wisdom.
As always, thanks for reading.
–the anonymous novelist
the anonymous novelist 