Wife's pregnant again, chri$tma$ was not cheap, and my jackhammer of a publisher is getting on my case.
I have to have a treatment and outline by end of business day January 3, or else they get to reneg my advance, and I may have to find a real job or pen under contract if such occurs.
Despite this, my creativity sucks feathers right now, and I'm not in the mood to resort to psychoactives... at least, not while the kids are home from school.
Please do as the subject requests.
Get off the computer, for a start. Maybe get some sunshine. Stop complicating the creative process.
stay awake for an inhuman amount of time
What constitutes inhuman?
I would say a week, at least.
Well... No thanks to you guys... I got it.
He doesn't exist. That's it. He never existed, and sure as he shakes your hand, he's still a figment of posthypnotic suggestion. It may not sound like much, but I've already got several vignettes hashed out.
Got the idea while I was out doing some night photography. From my backporch I can see the hill on the other side of the valley. There's four radiotowers, and the tallest looked a lot taller than it should have. Somehow, the red lights were reflecting on the clouds covering the very top. By reflecting the two lights below (I didn't know clouds could reflect light, I always thought they diffused or refracted it) the tower looked 50 feet taller than it was.
To answer the sleep deprivation question... I've done 79 hours without the assistance of alkaloids. I did A week and 16 hours with my narcolepsy meds.
In any event, right around 60-70 hours, electric light is painful, you start hearing sudden noises, and irrational paranoia takes over. The hardest part is getting through that 3rd day. If you make it, there's a few hours of blissful hallucinations and absurd mental proccesses. After that, you get flu-like symptoms that don't go away and only get worse until you sleep.
If you make it to that stage DO NOT take anything with Dextromorphan in it. You will have something resembling a schizophrenic episode under the influence of henbane. My aunt suffered a nervous breakdown, passed out, and died of dehydration in very similar circumstances, and I can say with first hand experience, that shit is worse than anything you can buy on the street.
My first thought, why would you do that to yourself?
I only do it during that serendipitous time period where financial hurtitude and publishing deadline meet.
By "serendipitous" I mean, why is my wife cooking herself a hot dog for breakfast?
To dust off an old pd.com meme.
Clawhammer.
And then