Just a little shaken up.

When I write, I can't be too happy. I also can't be too angry or sad--that distracts me. But I have to be some sort of weird medium. I'd call it a happy medium, but...no. I generally don't write well when I'm too happy.

I need to be in a mindset where I'm more or less content, but am just a little shaken up by...something. Maybe an episode of Dexter really got to me. Maybe "Unintended" came on the MP3 player unexpectedly. Maybe something happened with someone to shake me up, to awaken my own dark passenger.

Like, for instance, hearing from him. I've mentioned him before. There have been many men over the course of me writing this book, but there's only one him. For the record, no, I'm not still nuts about him. (I'm nuts about someone else who is similarly nuts about me. That's a good feeling.) But that doesn't mean that his words don't affect me. They do--possibly more than anyone else's words do. Four sentences from him can trip me out just enough that my literary dark passenger uncurls itself, stands up, stretches its wings...and grabs a pen.

He--that him again, he of the trip-me-out emails and text messages--wants very desperately to read this book. "It's art I know I want to read," he said. "It's you."

Except I don't think he knows that. I think he thinks that. Because if he ever does read this thing, I don't know that he's going to want to see it through to the end.

But he's right about one thing. It is me.