A little off...

I'm a writer, a creator or characters and even worlds. I spend countless hours churning out a dizzying word count and getting lost in the things that play behind my eyes. Sometimes I really do lose myself in the process and time just slips away when I get into the groove. It's as close to magic as I've ever come and I can't express how much I enjoy the process.

People often ask if I outline and make notes and write up descriptions of my characters and heir history and other such organised things before I write. The answer is simple. NO. I usually come up with a character or two, pluck them from the ether of my diseased mind, and throw them into some setting which has come to me in a fever dream-like imagining. From there the character starts to take shape, and even as I'm refining the settings and plot the character develops and becomes their own person.
My characters drive my plot. They do things that surprise me and alarm me, they dictate their own history and future. It's their lives so who am I to intervene?
Does this make me mad? Maybe, even probably. It's not just having voices in my head at times, it's having whole communities, sometimes at odds with one another, living inside of me and screaming as they compete to be heard because, like everyone else, they just want me to listen.
It isn't always the loudest that gets my attention, however. Sometimes there is a character that sets themselves up in such a way that they automatically find the limelight. Some of them just have the bigger personalities or the right set of traits, or the quiet resolve that makes them the perfect hero or villain. Some of them aren't even human, or not entirely so. Some or mutated or deformed, some are different species or a strange hybrid of human and animal, some are already dead and living in my mind as a spirit. Either way the right character finds its way out and comes to life in the right story. Of this I am sure.
The raging insanity that ebbs and flows between my ears keeps the rest of me sane and helps me live a normal and usually functioning life. I get to live out dark fantasies, harsh realities, and daydreams to  startling degree. At times it feels like I've already lived several dozen lifetimes as the past and history of some of these characters melds with my own and becomes a strange kind of reality.
Does this make me a little bit off... I think it does. What do you think?

Over the next week I am going to be adding to my compendium of horror knowledge and taking strict notes as I prepare for a PODCAST I am doing on Friday the 13th. I'll be writing another blogpost with some of the highlights of this show, some of the things I want you to know in more detail, and other interesting facts. Stay tuned and I'll throw out the information as it becomes available.

Thanks for reading and stay tuned...