I had never paid much attention to my creative writing process. First, I had not found my niche (or I had not admitted it - if you have spent more than a day with me, you know that I can't help the gentle sarcasm, the joke that is very very wrong, or just trying to be witty.) Second, I am perennially distracted and impulsive, take things as they are without an analysis at the whys, not unless they keep hitting me in the face. Finally, after 6 years of getting hit in the face with Monday deadlines at the newspaper that I absolutely fucking hate, I decided to give it a thought. Why do I hate writing so much, why did I give up music with a heavy heart in 1992 and why have I not painted/sculpted/doodled anything important since graduating as a plastic artist in 1996? Why do I quit the outlets that are the most important and that are fully and almost singularly dependent on me?

Then I realize the culprit: my creative process. Apparently, to be content with a finished creation it needs to be laboured under immense stress and self hatred. This would explain why I am a professional procrastinator, leaving three 500 word articles that need to be researched and people to be interviewed for the same day I am supposed to turn them in. It is the reason why I get snappy and nervous and tell myself what a shitty less-than-human being I am just before a simple comedy sketch. A gratuitous self hatred just to push myself to doing what I am supposed to be, giving credence to the cliché of the artist as a tortured soul. Even if the torture comes from the confines of a manipulative brain and the art is sub standard. Once whatever is created is done, one cannot easily dismiss the thoughts that initiated the process. They stay there, depressing and simmering, parasitic to the creativity.

So, tell me about your creative process.