2.

I usually write in the morning. Except lately. Lately I’ve been writing all day. Some psychiatrists consider compulsive writing a psychotic symptom. It probably is.

The problem is this: I view my creative writing as art. Hence my desire to actually get my novels published. How many have I written? More than I want to admit. They all sit on my computer waiting for me to go through and edit them, and once I am done they go back into that sad oblivion of the unread novel. It doesn’t, ultimately, matter if I get them published. But focusing on fantasies of the future—future appreciation of my art—has an important function in my present mental health. Without such fantasies about the future—and it doesn’t matter in the least if that future comes true—I would be left to fantasize psychotically about much worse things. I have found over the years that I need at least some level of a delusion; if I go very long with none, a new one will develop. I have, over the past few years, quite neatly avoided this. I write, I hope to get published, I am an under-appreciated artist who will one day get recognition—this is sane enough. With this idea to occupy my mind, I am able to live a little more normally.

But is it true?