3am and I’m wide awake, dancing through stories I haven’t yet written, flitting through worlds that only exist in my mind. I’ve been awake for hours now, laying in the dark as the clock ticks down to my real life. Soon the darkness of the sky will begin to ease, surrendering to the twittering of the birds harkening in another sunny day. It will be as though this feverish moment never happened. It’s existence will only be hinted at in my periodic yawns and wistful glances out of an office window. Oh to live in a world where I didn’t have to pretend to be happy pushing papers and making phone calls, or typing documents and squeezing one more fifteen minutes into an overly crowded schedule. If only passion could pay my rent. It would be an awfully grand adventure to not stare at the clock on nights like these knowing I will regret this moment in a few hours time.
There’s something about these early morning hours that is magical and surreal. It is as though the curtains between my real world and the ones I envision grow thin, as though the door to Narnia was left cracked open, leaving only the thinnest of lace between us. These are the sweetest of dreams, the ones where you are wide awake and uninhibited. These are the nights when I learn something new about characters I have never met, observe habits I didn’t know they had. I can push them, poke the, mold them, and for once allow them to mold themselves.
You’ll only ever catch a writer talking nonsense like that; as though these characters are true flesh and blood, and not something conjured out of thin air. Only other writers will understand this fine line between art and insanity. The best creations could often be confused with a break in mental stability, an avoidance of the status quo, and honest disregard for the norm. What people often forget when they read those beautiful words is that they were once a jumbled mess in someone’s mind. They were the midnight ravings of a lunatic until they climbed out through the inkwell of a pen and found the solace of a page. That final conjuring is the moment when most are able to finally see those syllables for what they truly are: beautiful.
Perhaps it is because I just left a land full of knights, kings and queens, intrigue, betrayal and love. Perhaps it is due to the fact that I have spent two weeks exploring castles and staring at the headstones of the writers who paved the way for lowly wordsmiths like myself. Perhaps it is simply because I was able to cut ties with my own reality for just a little while to inhabit a life completely different from my own. Regardless of the reason, I can’t keep my mind at bay tonight. It is not content contemplating the normal minutia of my daily world. It is far too busy building castles and filling them with false queens and bastard children. It is too quick to invent imaginary wars and brave damsels fighting fiercely to protect the things they love.
Tonight I will let the story carry me, I will memorize the freckles on my heroine’s face and the sly crooked smile that betrays her secret lovers true intentions. I won’t worry about the alarm clock ticking away beside me or dread the mountain of emails I will be culling through when 8am rolls around. Tonight is for the fairies, it is for the monsters protecting me from the mundane as they stand vigil under my bed. Tonight is for the magic that only happens at 3am, leaving you with wide open eyes that sparkle with the possibilities of other worlds.
Tipsy Typer 