The Artistic Temperament is sometimes called “Soft Bipolar” or “Cyclothymic Personality”. Writers often display the signs and symptoms. We tend to be highly sensitive, prone to extremes, laser-focused or totally spaced out, depending on our mood.
I’m a fully functional human being. I work hard, tend to my grooming, clean my house, take care of my daughter, feed my dog, and clean out the kitty litter every day. I’m also a writer with a case of artistic temperament. Is this a diagnosis or a mere label? You decide.
THE UPS AND DOWNS OF IT:
ENDLESS CLICK-CYCLES, WORN-OUT MICE. Facebook – Twitter – Goodreads – Blogs – Facebook – Twitter – Goodreads – Blogs. Hours pass. Work doesn’t get done. When I rise to the surface, I realize the magnitude of this colossal waste of time. Then again, I’m getting pretty damn savvy on all things writing, publishing, reading, and marketing. Seems the click-cycle has scared up some priceless info. Should I shun the dreaded click? Yes! No! I don’t know!
TANTRUMS AT THE NUMBERS.
If a review of The Apocalypse Gene comes in that is even a smidgen less than a five-star praise-fest, I fling myself on my bed (carefully – I don’t want to hurt myself), beat my pillow into a flat feathery corpse, cry to the heavens, fists pumping, asking why? why? why? This is what my paramour/co-writer, Carlyle Clark, calls my “Mini-Chernobyls”. Then the next review comes in, a total fiver, expressing great appreciation, even amazement, for our book. Suddenly the world is a lovely place filled with butterflies and posies, chocolates and stars. I go prancing through the living room dropping rose petals, singing Disney songs. These mercurial changes of mood are instantaneous and entirely out of my control.
THE MOTIVATIONAL POWER OF BOREDOM: Over the years, I’ve made a decent living typing medical reports. However, as Ogden Nash would ask, do you like your tedium rare or medium? Trust me, it’s tedious work at best. All I want to do is write. How the HELL am I going to knuckle down and type a hemorrhoid surgery or a biopsy report? Here’s the upside – to avoid being crushed by utter boredom, I let my imagination wander. During one of those forays into weirdness, I came up with The Apocalypse Gene premise: What if the world were gripped by pandemic and the cure lay outside medical science and squarely in the hands of mystics? Tedium – I thank you. Without your gray expressionlessness, our book would never have been born.
CARLYLE IS CRAZY TOO: The Apocalypse Gene could not have been written by me alone.The story is far too complex. Enter – Carlye Clark, a most patient man, remarkably even-tempered. If he’s a “cyclothymic”, one would never know, but I’m onto him. He’s just better than I at keeping it under wraps. Proof- didn’t he dream up a whale-shaped living star ship bigger than the moon? Didn’t he write the line: “I eat the hearts of my enemies” uttered by a six-inch cyber-avatar who somehow stepped OUT of the cyber world? How can someone write such insane coolness and not have a “diagnosis”? Thanks to our compatible insanity, mine overt, Carlyle’s well-hidden, The Apocalypse Gene is like nothing else out there.
PROOF POSITIVE – I NEED HELP: This brings me to a little jingle I wrote and would love to share. It is sung to the tune of the Oscar Mayer Wiener Song – you know the one – “My Baloney has a First Name” – that one!
Okay. Are you ready kids?
Oooooohhhhh – My dysfunction has a first name, it’s
C – Y- C- L – O,
My dysfunction has a second name, it’s
T – H – Y – M – O,
I love to swing it every day,
And if you ask me why I’ll saaaaaaaayyyyyyy,
‘Cuz cyclothymics have a way with
E – U – F – O – R – I – A !
