I just finished a huge (huge!) article for Newcity, and I want to capture the feeling that I have at this moment.

I’ve been working on this thing for about two weeks. It’s about stand-up in Chicago, and I’ve gone around to about five different shows, and interviewed maybe eight or nine people– this is the biggest thing I’ve ever worked on. And I’ve been fretting the whole time. Like ulcer-creating worried about it.

One of the stand-up comics is a really talented guy who really cares about how stand-up does in Chicago. He works hard and really wants to see it take off. He told me he was really expecting big things of this article. That’s pressure. I was so worried that I wouldn’t live up to both the pressure of my subjects to represent them well, and the pressure of my readers to represent my subjects truly. Basically, I was freaking out. And considering this is the biggest thing I’ve ever professionally written, there was a lot of worrying that I would never get this done, and I’d disappoint not only my editor, but also everyone I interviewed that wanted to see what I thought of them.

And so when I got home tonight (tonight was the deadline), I was pretty worried. I tooled around on the internet for a few hours, just reading blogs, with my two Word documents in the background (one is where the texts of my interviews were, and the other is where my article was supposed to go). I tried listening to music, but nothing worked– it was either too distracting or too quiet. Eventually, I gave up and watched an episode of Heroes, fretting the whole time that I would waste my evening watching TV, never write the article, and ruin my career.

After the show ended (they saved the cheerleader), I went back to the computer and tried writing. I wrote a paragraph, deleted it, and cursed. I wrote another, deleted it, and cursed again. I wrote three, deleted them, and threw something. I read some more blogs. I wrote another paragraph, deleted it, threw my notes down, and cursed myself for ever thinking I could write this.

I’m never going to be a writer. I’m never going to deliver on this one. It’s over.

And then I started again, and I wrote a paragraph and it finally sounded honest and interesting. And I wrote some more, and included some bits of interviews, and edited a paragraph to make sure I got a point in that I wanted.

And then, suddenly (and this is the feeling I was talking about), it’s two hours later, and I’m hitting send on the email to my editor with a perfect, really long, touching and insightful, spell-checked and proofread article.

I literally (ha) have no idea where the time went, or what happened to me for the last two hours. I know I was sitting here at the computer as the sun went down, and there were two people playing basketball outside. I know I was typing, and copying and pasting and editing and changing and moving and reading. But I have no idea how I did it. I have no idea where this article came from or how it got on my screen.

Earlier this week, I was cursing myself for ever taking this assignment (it didn’t help that my tape recorder broke and I completely lost half my interviews on Monday). I was so pissed that it had taken over my life, and that I had invested so much time in it, because I knew that when the time would come for me to stop researching, taking up these nice people’s time with interviews, and actually pour out some insightful text, I wouldn’t be able to do it. I swore to myself that if I ever did finish this article, it would be the last long article I would ever do, because nothing was worth this.

But now, I feel awesome. I feel accomplished and fulfilled. I feel like every note, every interview, every minute of every night spent out watching stand-up, made it into the article and was worth it.

And this is what I really can’t believe, but it’s totally what I’m thinking right now: I can’t wait to do it again sometime.