Stories There to Save You

Tags

fear, life, stories

I used to be afraid of nighttime.

I don’t remember the dark being what bothered me (although there must have been a reason for year after year of nightlight): it was more the silence, the aloneness of being the only one awake in the middle of the dark. Today, adult me craves being alone with her thoughts while the whole world sleeps, but then me, little me, was terrified of those thoughts. Frightening visions, cruel voices – all of them alive in my head, and so loud at night.

What are you supposed to do, when the torment’s coming from your own mind? When there’s no one to escape but yourself?

My parents helped me work through a lot of this stuff, the way so many parents before them have helped so many children before me (with many different techniques), but the thing I remember best – used most, and still use today – is stories.

They read to me, when I couldn’t sleep. They told me I could read, if I woke up and couldn’t get back to sleep. The nightlight in my bedroom didn’t rescue me by itself, but it did light the path to escape. I’d crouch beside it, careful not to wake my sisters, and I’d open a book, angle the page to catch the dim glow, and read myself into another place.

My parents told me I could write, too: it began a learning process that taught me to make stories myself. The visions in my head didn’t have to be frightening; the voices there didn’t have to be cruel. Maybe they were loud, but . . . could something else, something better, be even louder?

My daughter is afraid of nighttime. We’re doing our best to help her through it: she’s too young to try and hold back the dark herself. When she wakes up crying, I stagger into her room, blearily checking on her, reassuring her that we’re here, that she isn’t alone in the night.

Weeping, she points to the shelves, “Books?“

I settle on the floor beside her bed, angle a page of storybook to catch the glow from her nightlight, and I read to her. Because stories hold back the dark. That’s what they’re for. That’s why I write. Even after all this time, I’m still not big enough to go through the night alone, but . . . I do have stories.

And now she’ll have them too.

Not Only When It’s Easy

Tags

life, try try again, writing

It’s one thing to say you’re going to write even when – or especially when – it’s hard. It’s another to do it. Sort of like how it’s one thing to say, “I’m going to eat better,” or “I’m going to exercise three times a week,” or “I’m going to spend less time on my phone,” or, or, or . . . what-have-you.

Easy to say. Harder to do. Hardest of all to keep doing.

When the writing’s easy it’s almost harder not to write. The words build up and overflow like a flooding river; you scramble, always a bit behind – some creaking waterwheel, spinning so fast you’re afraid you’ll come apart.

When it’s hard, you feel empty. Spent. You have nothing to say, because the words are used up. Or the ones you have left are hollow and silly: you can’t make them make sense. You’re not sure any of your words ever made sense. You’re scraping at barren rock, as if trying will get you something, but why should it?

Because . . .

Because sometimes the rock gives way. Sometimes the floodwaters return. Words come to the blank page, whether it’s the first or the hundredth, or the six hundredth. And you have to be ready for them.

Well. You don’t have to be ready for them. There’s plenty of other things to do. But I want to be ready for them. And in order to be ready for them, I have to be here, with my pen. Believing there can be more – believing that something can come from what feels empty.

Today, it was the next bit of story. Tomorrow, I’ll be back here, ready.

And trying again.

Dead Fires in Cold Rooms

Tags

community, life, online space

My writers group met yesterday, in a little coffeeshop where we can enjoy seasonal lattes or handcrafted sodas, while discussing our current projects. We call ourselves the RW (the Rarely Writers), and our meetups are as much about bouncing ideas around or recommending books to one another as they are about reading our work aloud and getting / giving out feedback.

Spending time with others – gathering in-person around a common goal, in a pleasant place – always puts the time I spend online into perspective. Stark, unflattering perspective.

When I was younger (longer and longer ago), being online felt like being in a kind of community. I don’t know if I’m just grouchier, now that I’m fourteen years past my first social media account, but being online doesn’t feel like Cool Community Fun anymore. It feels like those first weeks entering the cafeteria as a college freshman.

So many people . . . so much noise. Everyone’s talking and laughing and – and I don’t know where to sit. I don’t know what to say. Will they all look at me? Or will no one look at me? Which is worse? I want to join in, but . . . how?

In real life, the cafeteria stops feeling like overwhelming mess – becomes a place where you scan for your friends, then grin and hurry over when they wave to you. But it’s a rare online space that ever makes this transition, at least for me. It just . . . keeps on feeling like that big room, echoing with wave upon wave of chatter among strangers. I feel lost in it. I lose track of the time spent online, and when I shake free, I wonder why I feel so empty. It puts me in mind of a bit from The Screwtape Letters:

You can make him do nothing at all for long periods. You can keep him up late at night, not roistering, but staring at a dead fire in a cold room. All the healthy and out-going activities which we want him to avoid can be inhibited and nothing given in return, so that at [last] he may say, as one of my own patients said on his arrival down here, ‘I now see that I spent most of my life in doing neither what I ought nor what I liked.’ . . . . steal away a man’s best years not in sweet sins but in a dreary flickering of the mind over it knows not what and knows not why, in the gratification of curiosities so feeble that the man is only half aware of them . . .”

C.S. Lewis

I might simply be uniquely bad at being online, and certainly not all my time on the internet is unfulfilling. But I’m trying to be more careful, about it. More intentional. I believe there are bright fires in warm rooms, out here in this virtual world. Cafeteria tables where it’s safe to sit down. Finding them – creating them – may be a challenge, but, it’s a worthwhile one, I think.

It’s why I’m still in this little corner, and why I’m grateful to anyone who’s stuck around in their own places, still willing to talk, to listen – to share their lives with the rest of us. Thank you, for that. And stay well. <3

Following the Leader?

Tags

writers, writing, writing groups

I’ve destroyed every writing group I’ve ever been a part of. Not on purpose: it’s never on purpose. But the pattern is clear.

I attend. I end up in charge. The group breaks up.

Coincidence? Maybe.

I am ill-suited to leadership. This isn’t modesty – isn’t disguising my light via bushel. There are people drawn to leadership roles due to personality and natural / learned skills, and then there are people like – well, me. People who look as if they’ve stepped forward, but only because everyone else stepped back. Or, left the room entirely.

“How about you be in charge for a while?” some desperate soul will say. “You’ll be great!”

“Oh, I don’t think so,” I say, once I realize they’re talking to me.

“Sure you will!”

“Based on what, exactly? I don’t have what it takes to -“

“You can learn! It’ll be good for you!”

What am I supposed to do when faced with those beseeching eyes? I can’t say no. (One of the top ten reasons I’m a bad leader.) And, it may be good for me, but I’ve not seen much evidence it’s good for the groups themselves.

Although . . . maybe I’ve learned a thing or two? The latest group (current, still-alive group) will celebrate Year Eight next month, as long as I don’t get in the way. Is that part of what leadership is? Not getting in the way?

I hope so. The people here are amazing: gifted writers, witty conversationalists – passionate about words, art, and story. I’m glad they’ve stuck with me as long as they have. Writing is lonely. It’s why I keep coming back to writing groups, in spite of past failures. I believe there’s a benefit to traveling with others, sharing in the journey, and listening to voices not from your own head.

Anyway, here’s to Year Eight, and the hope of many years more.

Not Supposed to Be Writing

Tags

life, writers, writing

I’ve never felt this much like quitting. Like, if I stopped writing, it would be a relief. To me. To those around me. If I stopped writing, then I could also stop thinking about it. Stop talking about it. I could talk about boys and weddings and babies and housekeeping and fitness, instead. I could talk about books – real books – that other people like, instead of . . . whatever it is I’ve got collecting dust in my desk drawers.

Writing has been this thing I was meant for – this thing I was supposed to do – for so long. I kept at “being a writer” while I was in high school, then college, then when I graduated. I kept at it while dating, while engaged, when married, when job-searching and then job-juggling.

I don’t know how to keep at it while being a mom. I keep trying to figure it out, only to return to the same question (why bother at all?), even on the rare days where I manage to get some words onto the page.

I did it, I say to myself, smiling. And then the smile fades because so what? What for? It’s not like anyone cares.

And it’s not like anyone should care. There’s so much to care about, in this world, and now a louder and louder part of me wonders who I’m kidding, hunching over these notebooks, imagining silly adventures that don’t matter to anyone but me. What if they shouldn’t matter to me, either? What if . . . I’m not supposed to be writing? What if I’m supposed to focus on something else? On being someone else?

I know you’re not supposed to quit, just because the job’s gotten harder. Sometimes, when the going gets rough, that means it’s more important than ever to press on. I guess, I just wanted to say the going’s rough. It’s been rough for a while. And I get downhearted, thinking about how much longer the roughness may continue.

But also wanted to say that I don’t mean to quit. Not quite yet.

Leavetakings, Homecomings

Tags

fantastical, stories, writing

I’m still thinking about immersion. Mainly because it feels so monumentally difficult, these days. Not that it’s so hard to be swept up in someone’s story. (It can be challenging, making time to read, but I do it, and I’ve gotten better at it now that my daughter’s older.) I mean another kind of immersion: the immersion I have to achieve in my own head, if I’m going to make the writing happen.

Some days – many days – that kind of immersion feels impossible.

Would it be easier, if I couldn’t remember what it used to be like? How it felt to have this power, to be somewhere else, right in the middle of an adventure, at a moment’s notice? I used to carry my writing everywhere, always working on the latest project, always one foot in the door, ducking in, ducking out – ducking back in, then diving in, wholehearted, whenever I could.

Now it’s like . . . every time I turn around, the door’s closed again. And it’s locked. And I’m stuck turning all my pockets inside out, swearing the key has to be here somewhere.

I never needed a key before.

But then, I’ve never had a child before. There are . . . a thousand really good reasons not to get lost in another world, right now. It’s hard to run off on an adventure when so much of your brain is going, But what about your kid?!

I can forget the dishes, the laundry, the hedges, the garden, the bathroom mirrors, and my own lunch. But my daughter? She makes me forget about the stories, in a way I didn’t think possible until she existed.

[Pauses blog post to get child dressed, comes up from retrieving clean clothes out of the dryer to find child on top of the desk, asking questions about what she finds on the shelves and kicking over the coffee cup on her way down.]

Point being, writing is a struggle where it used to be a joy, and sinking into the words no longer feels like a fantastical journey; it’s more like . . . running away. Shirking responsibility. And I want to believe this will change, over time, but I don’t know, anymore. Maybe this is just the way it is, now. The way I am.

I guess we’ll see. Maybe I’ll find that key – maybe someday I won’t need it. Until then . . .

Onward.

Spurning Spooks

Tags

autumn, life, October

Autumn’s come once more, to my little farm-town, surrounded by fields of browning cornstalks and mile upon mile of apple orchard. The sky’s gone that deep October blue, when it’s not filled with rolling gray and silver clouds, and the wind blows chill.

It’s my favorite time of year: I’ve written about it many times before. Summer’s end. Harvest-time. Thanksgiving. This “spooky season” stuff, though. I don’t get it. I’ve seen the fun in fall for decades, now: apple-picking, watching the big combines comb through acres of soybeans around the farmhouse – the start of the new school year – the excitement of approaching holidays. Fall’s always felt like magic. But I’ve never quite understood the “fun” in Halloween. The ghosts and ghouls going up in my neighbors’ yards. The cobwebs and skeletons. The bloody handprints pasted on windows . . .

I end up watching with the feeling I get during football games: this bemused, outside-looking-in sense, where I’m glad everybody’s having such a great time, but I’m unable to participate. That passion is simply absent. I like to bring a shapely pumpkin home and set it on the front steps. I stock up on candy for the trick-or-treaters, and it makes me smile to see all the families out with their little kids. I’ve even attended a Halloween party, now and then. (Delicious food? Cool costumes? How can you say no?) Most Halloween festivity, though, is lost on me.

I wonder if this is what it’s like for those who can’t get into all the Christmas hubbub, who see me weaving fourteen sets of lights into my tree, carols blasting all through the house.

To each his own, I suppose. =]

My October won’t be spooky, but I’ll enjoy it in my own way. If you see a ghost, tell him I said Hi.

Diving In

Tags

books, reading, stories, writing

I want to talk about immersion. That power, in great writing, to sweep reality away and draw you into another world entirely.

It’s one of the main reasons I go, not simply to books, but books about the fantastical. I don’t want to be immersed in another country or in another time: I want to dwell somewhere much farther away. Distant galaxies. Enchanted forests. Looming mountains. Unexplored seas or stars.

I say dwell because I mean something beyond visiting a place or riding along during the adventures. That’s part of the immersion, but it’s also more. It’s about a sense of just . . . being in the world.

Stop. Stare. Wonder.

Not all writers give this to their readers. Those that do are often picked on for spending too much time on things that hardly matter: bright silks, the smell of breakfast, tavern song and stew, the creak and sway of ancient tree, the light on dragon-scale . . .

But that’s what I’m here for. The time spent on little details, which in turn ground me in a particular place. That’s how I lose myself, in your magical realm. How I forget regular me and real life for a while – to become someone new, living Elsewhere.

Describe that tree, is what I’m saying. Then describe it even more.

And thank you. =]

Sorcerer’s Housekeeper

Tags

life, magic, work, writing

There’s a thing that happens when I roll up my sleeves and attend to my household: a thing I find immensely aggravating. While sweeping floors, washing dishes, trimming hedges, or dusting shelves, that part of my brain with one ear toward story-world, wakes up and goes to work as well. I fold clothes and vacuum couch cushions, muttering dialogue and imagining far-away cities — stopping, now and then, to jot down a few of my thoughts before they disappear.

“Nevermind the housework,” I say some days. “I’ll take care of it tomorrow: today, I am writing.” It’s a nice thought: the problem is it rarely works. I sit and stare at the page. My pen hovers and twirls. I feel . . . spent. And I wonder – if I can manage to get the words out – will anyone care?

For some reason, these questions plague sitting-at-writing-desk-with-the-entire-afternoon-before-her Erika, in a way they never bother toilet-scrubbing Erika. She’s busy. And whenever she’s busy, story-brain is boooored.

That’s when it makes something — something that wasn’t there before.

It feels like magic, but that magic should come from something as ordinary as general household drudgery – it drives me crazy. It doesn’t fit any of my high-minded notions about art and creation. It doesn’t seem . . . fair. But fair or not, that’s how it is, for me. It’s been that way for a long time.

I write this, after a morning of looking after my daughter. Wiping crayon from the tv, picking up toys, letting her chase me with the garden hose, cleaning her up so I could feed her lunch and get her down for a nap, to then finally fold and put away laundry, and finish the dishes, and quick scribble a few more paragraphs of the new chapter I’m working on before the start of my evening shift . . .

Does anyone care? Probably not, but . . . I think I care. There’s a little of the same satisfaction, in looking over a tidy room and looking down on a fresh page. The satisfaction of doing, and having done.

I’ll end here, except of course it’s not truly an end. Tomorrow, we begin again. =]

Too Old No Longer

Tags

growing up, life, stories

Have I written about this before? I think I have, somewhere, but I can’t find where, so . . . here we go again.

I remember the last time I played with toys. Childhood toys, my toys. It’d been a while, but it was a gorgeous day: my younger siblings and cousins were all outside, playing, so I thought, hey – why not? I gathered an assembly of favorites, carried them into the yard, set up under a tree, and then . . .

Realized I was too old for this. Had been too old for this, for some time now, and just hadn’t noticed. Sitting in the grass, surrounded by these characters I’d known and loved for years, and yet suddenly unable to move them around on adventures, because it felt so overwhelmingly silly . . .

It was crushing. It didn’t surprise me: I knew that you outgrew interests and activities, the way you outgrew clothes and shoes. But it made me sad. It felt like loss.

Growing up is about loss, in a way, but I think the losses give way to gains. Or at least, ought to. I’d lost the ability to play with my toys, but I was going to gain something else. Something . . . bigger.

If someone else were writing this story, this would be the part where I discover the magical world of tabletop RPGs. I’d have joined a D&D group and gone on to years and years of fantasy storytelling campaigns with friends; alas, someone else isn’t writing this story – it’s me.

And you might think this is going to be about the writing. How, instead of playing with toys, I began to play with words. But it’s not about that, either.

It’s about my daughter, and the first time I picked up one of my old stuffed animals, and made it play with her. The toy is a little turtle, with a dashing mustache and a saber held high. He usually filled villain roles, back when I was young, but today, looking up at my child, this turtle became a mighty warrior. He charged to battle this giantess: laughing, dodging, weaving, swiping his blade as high as he could reach, then leaping to scale the creature.

My little girl hadn’t been walking very long, and couldn’t say much, but her face. She was delighted, and every time I tried to end the game, she hurried to pick the turtle up and hold him out to me.

Don’t stop the story. Tell it again. Tell it again. Tell it again.

It didn’t surprise me, all those years ago, when I lost play. Like I said, it just made me sad. It did surprise me to find it again. I didn’t think I was going to get it back.

It made me smile.