So often I feel like I have nothing to say.  That’s not the kind of writer I am.  I have no political agenda, no deep philosophy that will help mold or change the world.  I have NOTHING to say.  I have thoughts, I have moments where I wish that was me.  That I had more passion, more desire to make a difference, to leave an imprint on the world, so that when the end comes I don’t just cease to exist.  But I’m not that kind of writer.  I write fiction, I write fantasy.  I write to escape.

I create worlds into which I can dive, into which I can safely escape and hide from the world I live in.  To hide from the homeless that infest my life.  The homeless, the druggies, the ones with hands reaching out and glazed eyes that I have learned to look away from because they are everywhere and I just can’t care anymore.  The world I live in where my neighbors scream with hate at each other and there’s nothing I can do but try to hide from the memories it stirs up of a traumatic childhood and the reminder that I am helpless to escape this life. 

I write to escape.  I always have.  To escape the childhood that was a prison of my mother’s making, where I was forced to believe and act according to her will, where I learned to read her every mood to determine how I should behave.  Where her moods, good or bad, dictated everything, all my happiness, all my fears, hinged on her moods.  To escape the marriage where I wasn’t enough, where I COULDN’T have ever been enough because I was a scared and bruised child and had no idea who I was or who I was supposed to be.

I write to escape the mental illness passed down to me from my mother, from her mother.  From the deep, deep black of my depressions, or the raging highs of mania and worse, so much worse the abject fear of anxiety that tries to strangle me and take away all of my control.

I write to escape.  It saw me through those prisons, through the worst six years of my life.  I think I would have died without that escape, without that way to free myself from all I was so afraid of, from how hard it was to be in a place where there was no control, where my mental illness was winning every single day and where I have never been more alone without any support coming from home because they were struggling so hard as well.  If I hadn’t written fiction, fantasy, I don’t think I could have made it through.  I don’t think I would still be alive.

If I didn’t write fantasy, if I didn’t write this “nothing” I wouldn’t be here.  I’m just not that kind of writer.

I will never be a great poet, I will never change the world with my words.  That’s not the kind of writer I am.  I’m the kind that you snuggle up with on a rainy day when you just want to escape.  That’s the kind of writer I am.

Sometimes I’m ok with that.  Sometimes…most of the time I feel like I should be more.  That I’m less because I don’t have some agenda.  That I don’t spout out all the time about making the world a better place.  I spend time with young artists, young people so passionate about life, talking about the raging of their emotions and ‘feeling’ and wanting to ‘connect’ and share and change the world and make a difference.  Wanting to reshape things how they should be.  They write spoken word pieces about racism, and class-ism and social injustice and I envy them their ability to have that energy, that passion.  I envy them WANTING to make a difference when all I want is quiet and looking at them raging against the world makes me tired.  I look at them and wonder how they can have that much energy.  I wonder when life will kick it out of them too.  I wonder if I ever had that kind of zeal, if I ever dreamed of making a difference or if I’ve always been content to escape into my fantasies and be NOTHING.

I’d like to say something inspiring, something that would heal the world and help people to have faith in the face of life, life that is SO exhausting.  To tell people they can achieve anything they want.  I’d love to give hope and meaning.  But I’m not that kind of writer.

I don’t have anything to say.  I’m too broken for that.  I’m too damaged I think.  I might have before.  I just don’t have it now.

I’m not that kind of writer.

I finished a book, Pelican Cove, a few months ago and found that after spending thirteen months intimately involved with my characters it was really hard to move on. I thought I could move quickly to the next book, and it seemed I did. But, it was really just a rebound love affair. Two weeks hot and heavy with Revelations and it petered out. Another two weeks of drifting, realizing that that relationship hadn’t been more than a fling.

Then another month with ANOTHER story, another AMAZING story and I thought this is IT! Surely I’ve found my next long term relationship (That’s really all a book is, a long-ish term relationship with imaginary characters that become more real than anyone else in your life while they are being born and struggling to exist) but then when the inspiration flagged there wasn’t still that burning need to find out what came next. The kind of desire to struggle past the lack of inspiration into the real hard WORK of writing a novel. And believe me it IS work. Just like any relationship, the ones that make it to that final ‘The End’ are the ones you’re really willing to put in the blood, sweat and tears. Or for a writer, the caffeine, endless hours staring at your keyboard and chaining yourself to your laptop/computer/ notebook/whatever even when you’d rather be watching TV. And when you find the story, the one that you know you can write even when the inspiration starts petering out and the idea isn’t as bright and shiny and the unicorns are no longer farting rainbows, that’s when the true love affair begins. Have I found my next long romance? Maybe…I’ll let you know.

Until next time!

L

How can you pick a favorite movie? It is very hard to choose just ONE movie. How can you describe your favorite when there are so many good movies out there competing?  There are movies that are simply eye candy, ones that are just for amusement, and then of course there are those that stay with you forever.  Since I can only choose one, I think I would have to choose The Never Ending Story.  Why? Well it brought to life my favorite thing in the world, books.  I saw it for the first time when I was five years old and it was visually stunning, funny, horrifying and emotionally gripping.  It pulled me into a fantasy world that lived inside of a book and allowed this imaginary world to invade the real world.  I loved it and remember it still as an experience as if I personally took the journey beside Atreyu.  The best movies are the ones that fully engage you, and for me, at five, this movie succeeded.

The world of Fantasia is seen by Bastian, a young boy who discovers a wonderful book.  This world he reads about is filled with fantastic creatures, giants and dragons and the beautiful Childlike Empress who lives in an ivory tower.  This beautiful world is being invaded by a darkness, The Nothing, a thing of childhood nightmares and a single hero, Atreyu, is sent to stop the Nothing.  Only he can survive and as he struggles through each trial, losing his beloved horse, Artax (yes, at five I cried and will admit I was somewhat traumatized by his death), the audience struggles with him.  At the end, after so much struggle, even Atreyu, the courageous hero doesn’t have what it takes and it is left up to a single, normal, human child who lives in our world!  Fantasy and reality collide and the child Bastian, who like the audience has merely observed the story is pulled into the world and only he can save the beautiful world, his imagination is the source of new life and Fantasia lives on, to never end.

Thirteen months ago I began working on a story. I couldn’t see the end of it, not like I usually can.  Surprisingly, every time I thought I’d found the end, it would shift and surprise. Yesterday, after working on it on and off for over a year I finished writing Pelican Cove and again the end surprised me. I had thought the conclusion would be wrapped up with a big finally, lots of fire and screaming and paranormal shenanigans and found instead a peace falling over my characters. Redemption was found and who I had thought the monster of the tale got a happy ending as well as my protagonists. Everything ended in a way much more satisfying than I could have imagined. That’s the wonder and joy of writing. You never know exactly what the story will do.  You think you do. You plot and write and plan and then it runs away from you. Creating something so wonderful you just want to hug yourself and tell the world all about it.

After thirteen months I finished Pelican Cove and there is so much joy in that. So much pride in such an accomplishment and yet, there is a sadness that fills my heart every time I write “The End” and close out a story. I will miss these characters, for over a year I have loved them and struggled with them.  I have been in love with the male protagonist Van for a year. It’s strange to not open his story and be with him. It’s strange and sad not to learn more about Erin, to see her grow, to spend time with her. Somehow in that year, these characters came to life and I got to know them and now I don’t get to see them again. I don’t get to hang out and find out what happens next. In a weird way it’s like breaking up and moving on. So with the joy of finishing a book there is a time of mourning until I fall in love again.

Humans by nature are pack animals; we are typically social, gregarious creatures who crave companionship.  This is an instinct that has developed over thousands of years of evolution, a mechanism that guaranteed the survival of our species.  As a unit we are stronger, we have the support we need to stay alive, care for our young, etc.  This genetic, survival based instinct has instilled in us a need for family, and this need is something that we strive to have and create in all situations.  We create ‘families’ where we work, where we play, and in our homes.  We fall into ‘families’ instinctively and when we do not have them we will find them.  If we cannot find a human family we will create one with our pets, or even in a fantasy world of our imaginations.  This need for family and intimacy can be seen in small children, who without physical, real world companions will invent imaginary ones in the form of stuffed toys or even the invisible friends who are always with them.  This desire for family is engrained in us as a survival instinct, driving us to create families even if those we choose to include are not the right people in our lives.  Even in this day and age, where families, children, etc, seem to be an outdated notion, people are still trying to find that intimacy.  We need to fill that hole, which seems to be the trend that drives so many people into one relationship after another.  This chronic need for companionship, though motivated by instinctual and ‘good’ reasons, can be extremely dysfunctional in the sense that humans tend to fill the need for family with the wrong persons.  We attach ourselves to groups that offer us acceptance, even if it is the wrong form of attention.  Each relationship we develop takes a part of us, and each relationship we lose takes that part with them.  Because we don’t always make the right decisions in whom to trust and share our lives with, we create more and more scars and more and more dysfunction in the world around us. 

Our need for relationships is not something we can completely disregard.  There is a purpose for it in our lives.  If we try to become completely self sustained and self sufficient, we lose much of ourselves.  We create isolation and lose many of the benefits of having these relationships in our lives.  In this modern world we may no longer need companions and family for survival, we are more than capable of proceeding through this life on our own.  But it is not merely the physical needs that we must have met.  On an emotional level, we need companions; we need emotional validation and exchange.  We need to be cared for and care for someone.  Individualism like most things is healthy in a balanced amount.  If we spend all of our energies and time on being alone and self contained, we become apathetic, separate and distanced from the world in which we live.  Too much solitude can be as detrimental as no solitude.  There are times when we must be alone, and it is then that it is valuable to be individualized.  It gives us time to develop ourselves, get in touch with our needs and only then are we able to interact with others in our lives in a functional and healthy manner.

There is no argument one can make to eliminate our need for solitude and our need for companionship.  There must be a balance within all of us.  We must have physical, emotional and mental intimacy with other humans as well as in depth solitude to replenish ourselves. Intimacy is key to mental and emotional health, “Intimacy is intense affection for, commitment to and sharing of intellectual, physical and emotional connections with another person” (Williams, Sawyer, Wahlstrom, pg 16).  It is only in this balancing of perspectives that we can find harmony to create functional relationships with ourselves and others.

I belong to a few writers groups.  Ones filled with writers of all ages and all levels of experience.  There are published and unpublished, traditionally published and self-published.  There are those who only write fanfiction and those who write only original work.  I read their posts and listen to their thoughts and find myself unrepresented. I am on many levels a ‘new’ writer, I’ve never been successfully published, though I did have my very first book traditionally published at nineteen.  As a ‘new’ writer I should see myself in other writers out there.  I should find their questions familiar, instead I find them confusing because they ask questions whose answers seem obvious to me.  They ask how to develop characters; they ask for permission to create their worlds how they see fit. They worry that THEIR own emotions might affect their writing.  They worry so much about what everyone thinks they forget that writing is only for you, the writer.  These are YOUR words, YOUR worlds.  Each character you create you must embody and become.  You must FEEL their pain or you can’t write it.  You must fall in love with who they are supposed to love.  Everything your character experiences and feels you must feel right there with them. 

Don’t ask if you have permission to do something, you are the creator of these worlds and only you have the right to them.  No one else has a say or an opinion that matters until the words have all been written.  The first draft is all yours and it’s precious because of that.  Don’t let anyone tell you how you should be writing YOUR story.  Don’t ask permission to write.  Write because you can’t breathe unless you do.  Write because it is YOUR world and your words.  Just write.