The Who, the What, and the Why

I love wordplay. Ever since the first time my mother succeeded in wearing down my stubborn defenses, and I reluctantly agreed to try and read one of these “books” she was on about.

It’s probably the fact that she insisted I read Sir Terry Pratchett’s discworld novels that doomed me.

I tried to resist. I kept diligently to the latest tv craze, and video games, and then found myself up past midnight with my nose buried in Raymond Feists “Magician”, certain that one more page would satisfy my curiosity and I could let sleep take me. Then it occured to me I could write things too, it didn’t need anything more than my imagination and words on a page, and I could share the worlds of my imagination with my friends!

And then life happened. My mother fell ill and passed away. Living costs went up. Life got busy. I finished writing a novel of my own through sheer determination and self-published, before immediately convincing myself it’s terrible garbage and releasing it to the world had ruined my author career at the starting line. More life happened.

And now I suddenly find myself weirdly estranged from the written word. Partly because I spent too much time at a computer screen already for my day job, rushing through robotic templates of notes for record keeping while the timer beeps in my ear to hurry the hell up. Partly because the world is noisy and doesn't give the time to be still with my thoughts that once came naturally during the day. Partly because I’ve taken to adding to that noise to drown out my thoughts, lest I allow my mind to wander onto the many faceted anxieties of growing into full adulthood (the term “young adult” doesn’t quite fit once you hit you thirties) which prowl around the edge of my awareness like hungry wolves around the light of a campfire.

So, what is there to be done? The desire is still there, the love of the craft. But flickering just out of reach. Almost faded. I have tried to find time to set aside to write and feel overwhelmed at the task. The pressure I impose upon myself to return to the work making it flee. My internal editor voice, screaming at me endlessly with things like “You can’t say things like ‘the pressure I impose upon myself to return to the work’ you pretentious prick, go back and make it sound normal", drowning out the simple magic of putting one word in front of another until they sound pretty and stir something more than just information.

What is to be done is all that can ever be done. To take action. To spend time with the craft I wish to reconnect with. Give myself space to be that pretentious prick who throws around fancy big words because they feel right, even when half a sentence later I’m doing the word-making not so clever.

Thus I make this blog. Yet another attempt to write online. With a much simpler goal this time. Just to give myself a playground of words. Maybe what I put out here will be hot garbage that nobody ever reads. Maybe I’ll accidentally string together words that sound nice and somebody likes. Maybe I’ll write two posts and vanish, abducted by an alien race who soon after decides humanity isn’t worth invading after all because they’ve already heard more about the anime Bleach than they can stomach.

Why do this on a website where these writings are public, instead of doing what a sane person would do and hiding it away in a scrapbook that can be readily incinerated if anyone dares to read it? Two reasons. First, writing I know will never be read doesn’t have the same spark to it for me. Writing in the sand where it will immediately be wiped away feels too much like cooking with the intent of throwing out the results immediately. Cooking a meal that turns out bad and nobody wants to eat is one thing, cooking a meal with no intent of anyone even tasting it feels… incomplete.

The second reason is that I still want to write stories for people. I want to write things that make people feel heard and feel like they aren’t alone when everything else makes them feel like they are. I’ve been that sad kid sitting in a room full of friends and loved ones and still feeling isolated, still feeling convinced that if I’m not careful they’ll all suddenly realize there’s been a terrible mix up and they’re actually supposed to hate my guts. If you want to speak in public, practicing in front of the bathroom mirror can help, but sooner or later you have to actually get up in front of everyone and make a twit of yourself a few times.

And a third, because I’m on a roll. When I have tried writing in a private journal and such, I get an overwhelming sense of paranoia that someone is going to steal it and read all my thoughts. On the other hand when I put things out in a public space I feel fairly confident that nobody will care enough to pay the slightest bit of attention. Other than the various security agencies who will no doubt end up being paid to scour this someday when I get myself on a watchlist after googling some obscure thing for a story. Hi Harold!