AUTHOR'S CORNER;
IT'S GONE QUIET IN MY HEAD!
Um, hate to admit this, but my mind had become somewhat extraordinary quiet of late! It is not that that I have suddenly found myself brain dead and unable to connect thought, it is not the sort of quiet where sleep takes over and all one could do is drift drearily through the day waiting for bedtime to arrive! No, one does find thought connection, and the eyes are not heavy and filled with sleep (though at my age, sleep is always welcomed) nor am I finding it difficult to interact! So what, you may ask, is this quietness of mind?
Let me explain; I am a writer, I have been since I was born, though of course to the untrained eye, this was not noticeable at first (it took my parents almost two decade to realise this) as my condition was interpreted by teachers and family as being a hopeless dreamer! My dreams or imagination, so to speak, have been with me from day one, speaking to me, whispering in my ear, telling me stories and enlightening my path through life! Not one moment has passed without my trusty shadows walking beside me, guiding me and keeping me company, smoothing the day and quenching my overwhelming thirst for adventure! My characters have not been so much made up - as more accurately interpreted from the depth of my mind, described upon the pages of my books and brought to life in colour, given a voice and allowed to roam free within the context of a novel!
But of late, due to life forces and rude incidences of uncontrollable events, I find that the people in my head have slowly but surely become quieter! I am not used to such abandonment and it unsettles my fragile soul! I go to the computer, click onto a blank page and try to summon forth a friend or two, but they are reluctant to appear, and they whimper and scurry to the far corners of my mind; leaving behind a space right in the centre of my head....and it's empty and cold and all I hear are everyday thoughts. I coax them with images of landscapes, gangster dens, broken homes.... but still they turn their faces away and shield themselves behind masses of grey matter and will not participate in my quest for storytelling! Perhaps they have tired of me and have given up; perhaps I was not a good enough host and they seek another! Perhaps they were never meant to be there in the first place!
I cannot abide a life without my mind friends; they are the only characters I trust, the ones I relate to and take comfort from, they are the only quirky people who understand me... and what's more, as real as they are (and they are) they are not real, not people as such, not like the human race that eventually lets one down! Because of them, I have been able to go places I could have never physically gone, I have been able to do things I would have never done, I have been in love and out of love, in lust and out of lust, in danger, in greed, in unbridled aggression and untamed adventures - all within the pages of my novels, all within a world which is infinite and vast and deep! They are part of me, part of my fractionated self, part of my essence; all individual, real and oh so very much alive! Through them I have lived many lives, died many deaths and filled my lungs with sordid air, exhaled twisted tales, let life pulsate through my veins!
And yet, you say this to your average Joe, and what does he call it? Writer's block!!
As most writers will tell and relate; any idiot who refers to this condition as mere writers block is a babbling buffoon! For us writers, our characters are not just words to story; they are our friends, our brethren, our inner, most secret, fractionated parts of ourselves!
