The Manic Mirage
The Hollywood idea of mania makes it seem like a creative superpower. The reality is very, very different. I once had an overwhelming urge to draw. I don’t draw. I’m not good at drawing, but I wanted to fucking DRAW. I drew pictures all day, every day for a week. Anything I could see, I drew: people, water bottles, bananas, real thought-provoking stuff. I filled two notebooks in a week and remember thinking to myself, “This is how Picasso must have felt.” Another time I didn’t sleep for three days and spent the nights applying for jobs I wasn’t qualified for. In between University Professor and Museum Curator, I impulse-bought things I didn’t need. Aroma diffusers. Every book Amazon recommends. If buying a ton of random stuff at 3:01 a.m. sounds normal to you, great, but it’s not usually my thing. I’m — how can I put this? — really fucking cheap. Earlier this year, I wrote 10,000 words in one day. I’m not a fast writer usually. I continued to write and rewrite. After four days, I had