Sunday, January 3, 2010

Looking Back...

It has been five years. A long time to play at writing. Smile. Here is a bit I wrote in January of 2005, but still so true even to this day.

The Vigil...
By D.M. Bailey

Writers are eccentric creatures. No one really understands us. Not even our very talented mothers, spouses or our children. They cannot understand the way our brains work. How we can sit hour upon hour with only a pencil and a piece of paper in our hands for company or perhaps only our computer and our music to guide us through the maze of our minds.

Worlds are created, mythologies built, and characters are brought to life all in the mind of a neurotic writer. We create the hero, the heroine, the dastardly villain everyone loves to hate, and the mentor. All within our minds. I think it is safe to say that sometimes we are not totally present in this world.

We can go days without speaking to another soul, go without food or sleep just to write the next word.

Normal people do not understand this. They do not understand the drive, the compulsion to go on or the absolute need to create. It is like inhaling air into our lungs. The life blood of our soul.

It is not something that can be explained. That one exquisite moment when you know what you have written is special, if only to you. But who do we share it with? No one. We sit in our darkened tower, alone, weaving a tapestry of the deepest, darkest, richest threads we can find, praying that one day someone may be able to experience the beauty of what we have created.

Countless hours are spent planning and plotting, dropping breadcrumbs along the way hoping that whomever reads our stories will get to the end of our book and say..."I have got to read that again."

Only then, when our spell has been cast, have we as writers, done our job.

It can be a lonely life when you have no one to share the glory or the pain of creation. I am lucky. I have my goblin sisters. Some are not so fortunate. However, even within the confines of the sisterhood, no one sits with me when I write, or plot, or pull at my hair.

It is only me and the sound of tapping keys.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

How true.

But remember this and it's something I learned the hard way. You have your characters, your story, the world. It's a great place. Just step in....

Hugs....

Michelle said...

Awww...thanks Janie. That's what I'm trying to do. Get my toes wet again. I'm trying to get back to that place. That sweet spot where I forgot the here and now and go somewhere else completely. Very selfish I suppose but I miss writing. It's time to start doing what I want to do and quit feeling sorry for myself. Hard words to swallow but what the hell right?