The Writing Mind

A recent article on NPR books about the self-imposed retirement of novelist, Philip Roth, see here: http://www.npr.org/2013/03/23/174949848/at-80-philip-roth-reflects-on-life-literature-and-the-beauty-of-naps got me to thinking about the Writing Mind. It's high time I face it. This organ isn't like that of the ordinary human. If you happen to be of the Writing Mind, then I won't need to explain. Then any elaboration on my part of this particular brain's traits will be utterly unnecessary. Superfluous, bordering on redundant. (You see? The WM will not permit me to stop searching for the exact right word.)
But for those of you who are like, "What is Nutty Blogger Girl speaking of this time?" I will expand. Perhaps a visual aid might make it easier to understand. I've extracted some images of what I perceive this mind might resemble:

Here you have a peek at the archive of our handiwork. In the WM, every book we have ever laid eyes on serves as an instrument of learning, a how-to guide, a comparison, a piece of our history. We may pretend we have forgotten about them, once we've closed the back cover and moved on to the next. However, there they are, stacked up and spilling over someplace behind the left frontal lobe.

Next you have the Writing Mind's Cast of Characters:

These are the folks who appear inside our heads and demand some page time. They typically arrive without any advance notice and are hard-pressed to leave. Generally speaking the C of C continues to swell in number until the writer herself fears she's one personality shy of becoming Sybil.

In the core of the brain is the Command Center, which for most writers looks a little something like this:

The blue wires represent our ideas. Eek. The black ones are the feed for those ideas to be put into application and the white are the processing of life's ordinary details. As you can plainly see, the idea wires in all their tangled glory, care not about the stilted ratio here. Their main purpose is to see to it that the writer gets a little sleep as humanly possible, in the name of almighty creativity.

Finally you have what I call the Drive Zone. Herein lies the goal that every writer hopes to achieve, the "if only" the brass ring of the fruits of our labor, which for many WM's looks like this:

Most writer's claim they do not care if they ever attain the level of success of somebody like the wildly wonderful Ms. Rowling (or this image might be that of Mr. King or some similar BSA- best-selling-author) -
stating emphatically that they simply want to "be read."
Ahem. Not.
You should also note that the Writing Mind panders toward fabrication, exaggeration, denial, anxiety, hysteria, and at times, just plain old insanity.
Is it any wonder then that Mr. Roth, at age 80, needs a nap? I think not.