Ah, love. The sweet caress of twi­light.

The mag­ic in the air. Men­tal syn­chro­niza­tion so amaz­ing that you fin­ish each other’s… sand­wich­es.

(You know that edgy ref­er­ence is now THIRTEEN years old, right?)

And, of course, that com­plete tor­pe­do of vaso­pressin, adren­a­line, dopamine, and oxy­tocin straight to your abil­i­ty to sit down, sit still, and have a coher­ent thought.

~sound of record scratch­ing~

Wait. What?

Yes, it’s true. For writ­ers, artists, cre­atives and prob­a­bly all kinds of folks who have cer­tain kinds of jobs with asyn­chro­nous income and flex­i­ble sched­ules that are capa­ble of set­ting aside their day-to-day lives tem­porar­i­ly with­out imme­di­ate­ly expe­ri­enc­ing the back­lash of being an unpro­duc­tive mem­ber of a cap­i­tal­ist soci­ety, falling head over heels in love can be a real threat to pro­duc­tiv­i­ty.

Of course I mean that in the best way. Love is a won­der­ful slip­pery, out-of-con­trol bliss feel­ing, and let’s write a poem and a song (or five mil­lion) about it. Bryan Adams has a few. But it’s also a time of imbal­anced brain chem­istry, poor impulse con­trol, low­er judge­ment, the same phys­i­o­log­i­cal bio­chem­istry as a cocaine addic­tion, which isn’t scary at all, try­ing so hard to see the red flags through rose-col­ored glass­es (they just look like flags!), work­ing hard to avoid that bad habit you had in your twen­ties of sym­bol­i­cal­ly being attract­ed to the parent(s) you had a rough rela­tion­ship with so that you can “fix” the past, and oh, did we men­tion out-of-con­trol?

Yes, it’s no won­der that, even though some peo­ple absolute­ly get addict­ed to that feel­ing of FALLING in love—or New Rela­tion­ship Ener­gy (NRE)—and will even bun­ny hop straight into a new rela­tion­ship just the instant that falling feel­ing starts to fade… most folks (MOST folks) are actu­al­ly a lit­tle relieved when the haze starts to clear and they can kind of feel them­selves and think straight again. 

Artists and writ­ers have to deal with this just as much as anyone—and maybe more. As much as anoth­er human can some­times be an artist’s “muse,” inspir­ing them to great cre­ative heights, it is equal­ly like­ly that they will fall head first into what is hap­pen­ing and find that focus and con­cen­tra­tion elude them. Art is a blend­ing of ideas and tech­ni­cal­i­ty. That’s why every­one has a book idea, and almost no one has writ­ten a book. Some­where between inspi­ra­tion and exe­cu­tion, there is a fuck­ing shit ton of work. While ideas and inspi­ra­tion dur­ing this phase can pop like a bag of microwav­able pop­corn in the sec­ond minute*, the abil­i­ty to sit down and do the work takes a pret­ty decent hit. Sud­den­ly you’re tak­ing all your vaca­tion time, blow­ing off dead­lines, and def­i­nite­ly phon­ing it in some­times even though you know you real­ly. Should. Not. Do. That.

(*Wow, you real­ly worked that metaphor, Chris.)

Par­tic­u­lar­ly for the ADHD artists who ride those dead­lines clos­er than the neu­tro­n­i­um mol­e­cules in the dense core of a neu­tron star,* your sched­ule is prone to be affect­ed in real time in a way that you can’t obfus­cate, unlike like a writer who might work more behind the scenes or in big­ger chunks. Although I’ve def­i­nite­ly heard of writ­ers who had to tell their agents they had noth­ing after glo­ri­ous­ly miss­ing a dead­line three months after they fell in love, which is prob­a­bly pro­fes­sion­al­ly more haz­ardous and dif­fi­cult a feel­ing of fail­ure than a cou­ple of blown arti­cles and a few phoned-in posts. But prob­a­bly for the most part, we dai­ly con­tent cre­ators share our goo-goo-eyed walk­ing into walls on our sleeves a bit.

(*I see we’re going to be work­ing ALL the metaphors pret­ty hard today, eh, Chris?)

I promised that this blog would be a real-time chron­i­cle of the things I learn—both tricks that work and pit­falls to avoid. And while the best advice to a writer for their dead­lines might be to nev­er fall in love, I couldn’t in good con­science give such advice to any­one, par­tic­u­lar­ly not an artist. You might need to write (or do what­ev­er your craft is) with a bor­ing, reg­i­ment­ed dis­ci­pline, but around those mar­gins of work, life is messy, and an artist isn’t like most peo­ple. Most peo­ple try to spend their lives try­ing to make it less messy. An artist tries to bury their arms in the messy up to the elbows like an unsu­per­vised two-year-old who found the art sup­plies cab­i­net*.

(*Are you kid­ding me with this shit?)

Yes, some peo­ple are aro­man­tic, and this advice is prob­a­bly not par­tic­u­lar­ly for them; to every­one else I say, “be not afraid.” Go let your life get a lit­tle bit com­pli­cat­ed, and be the rich­er for the expe­ri­ence. I’m also eth­i­cal­ly non-monog­a­mous, so I might have slight­ly dif­fer­ent advice than most peo­ple about falling in love if/when you hap­pen to already BE in a rela­tion­ship, but the eth­i­cal is still the impor­tant part! Blow a cou­ple of dead­lines. Get car­ried away. Let go and be just a lit­tle bit scared of how out of con­trol you feel. Be like Alice Walker’s char­ac­ters*. Love and falling into it obses­sive­ly is one of the most fun­da­men­tal expe­ri­ences of the human con­di­tion, and in ten years you won’t care that you had a rough pro­fes­sion­al time for a few months, but you might care if you didn’t take the leap into a life-chang­ing expe­ri­ence with a resound­ing “hell, yes.”

(*No one is going to get this ref­er­ence. You need to stop.)

Per­haps the most impor­tant thing to remem­ber if you find your­self a writer in love (and bare­ly able to squeeze out a few sen­tences, nev­er mind that 40-hour pace that had come to define you) is the fol­low­ing com­fort:

THIS PART WILL END.

Not the love. Well, maybe. I don’t know your life. But I HOPE not the love. But the part where you can’t entire­ly think straight unless you are phys­i­cal­ly touch­ing them… that’ll calm down.

If you’re like me, that blast of dopamine, adren­a­line, and sero­tonin is only going to be replaced with vaso­pressin and oxy­tocin, and open up a lot of deep­er and more bond­ed emo­tions. But the mind-numb­ing, brain-scram­bling moment where you stare at a blank com­put­er page and a blink­ing cur­sor think­ing about noth­ing but tex­ting them and when you see them next (and that is only when you can tear your­self away from THEM at all) will fade. That feel­ing that you’re spin­ning and twist­ing and the ground isn’t beneath your feet, and there’s noth­ing to grab onto, and the only thing that makes it any bet­ter at all is being in their arms… that’ll at least get man­age­able. You’ll get your brain func­tion back. In a month or two, you’ll be able to write for an hour at a time, and in about six months, you’ll start find­ing that old spark comes right back like high-waist­ed den­im jeans and buck­et hats in a Gen X sin­gles bar*. I’m not say­ing you start ignor­ing some­one you’re in love with or take them for grant­ed in favor of writ­ing time or any­thing (and if you do, you have some oth­er prob­lems that you might want to work through), but, at the very least, you should not be blast­ed for all of time with this pro­found inabil­i­ty to word.

(*Holy fuck­balls. I’m out of here.)