roses

roses

Saturday, October 01, 2005

Essay: Writing Fiction, 7/05

Writing fiction used to be easy for me. I would put pen to paper and these vast stories and singing poems would pour out of me. Now, I feel gnawing sorrow and disappointment creep over me as I reach the outer edge of that place where the world hans suspended as I write. It turns that magical moment into aching silence, shutting off inspiriation before fully voiced.

I feel deep sorrow. It's like the reputed "phantom limb" because i remember that rapture so clearly. it doesn't come to me any more. I have a few lines and then nothing. How can one fulfill the yearning to write when the muse has abandoned them? How can you sing with out a voice or song? No tounges in all the world can be loosed from the imprisioning hell of this cold sorrow that stops my pen from dancing acros the page.

And yet, just as fire burns in the impossible vast cold darkness of space,the star of hope burns in my breast. My dream of a novel. My vast mountian of half started attempts. Partially woven plot lines and characters in need of colors in their sketches... This is what haunts me. This is what drives me to write. The ghosts of a girl's love of the fantastic, of dreams, and childhood games.

My novel was born of a child's play acting. Scenes and images played out for m a hidden place, where no audience could decry me. As a women, these things are not afforded to me. My days are full of grown up things and haunted by the questions of propriety that forbid girlish games.

Thus does my adult life prove harbringer of an author's demise. Now I have only this stilted melencholy tone. these words of dismay, angst, regret and grief. Gone are the fantasy flights that transported me to realms of dazzling fiction and bore me home on the wings of precious inspiration.

No comments: