Countdown Day 3: Obsession

What keeps you up at night? What appears in your mind when you close your eyes, that will never leave you alone? What do you love? I mean, really love, like if you could you would marry it and have its babies? What do you hate? I mean, really hate, like if you could, you would beg to have your eyes and ears filled with acid?

These are important, these obsessions.

When I was in college, I took Senior Seminar with John Cameron during my last semester of my senior year. We were collaborating to create a play. But some of the class was writing a paper unrelated to writing and producing our play. The way John gave us our topics was to assign us to write a list of what we think is beatuiful. Each of our lists went on and on for a while, but it was super crazy cool how John came up with our topics. And each and every one was dead on.

Basically what you obsess over, things you love, things you hate--they make you what they are as a writer.

One of the reasons I am working on 'In the Bunker' is because I'm terribly obsessed with the Holocaust. It started when I first read, 'Are you There God, It's Me, Margaret'. It continued through college and to this day. I'm not sure where this came from, besides Judy Blume. I guess it was just being unable to understand the whole thing, and maybe by learning more about it, I could understand why it happened. But the more I learn, the less I understand.

So why does Hedda haunt me? Is it because I see a reflection of myself in her?

That's the thing about obsessions, they do reflect who we are. And sometimes they reflect back something very dark. And the only way to understand is to write.

So what makes your obsessions tick? You might find out in the next three days when you start NaPlWriMo.