The pen feels strange in my hand; I dismiss the feeling and tighten my grip on it. The words will come eventually to me, they always do.
Soldiers are afraid in the face of battle, and yet the put on a brave face, draw their swords and march on. I do the same;
I press on and write nonsense for a while. Sometimes my brain refuses to
cooperate and it’s all nonsense, true. There are times though, that nonsense
turns into proper thoughts, and somehow these thoughts find their way onto the
paper, and word after word after word they start to make sense, and my mind
clears, and the noise finally dies down and it’s just me and the story.
And as I go deeper and deeper into it, and
people and faces begin to form, my writing gets messier, almost incorrigible,
because my hand cannot keep up with my brain, but who cares, I am finally
writing again and that’s what matters: damping my frantic thoughts on a piece
of paper, hoping that they still make sense the day after and that I will not
lose my nerve and share them.
Because my head is full of clatter; so much unimportant stuff taking up space, leaving little room for the things that really matter.
Do I even care if people are interested to look past the clatter? For when I write, I am the realest version of me, because I can "hide" myself in the stories. Everything I am and everything I am not is on my pages.
Every hope and dream, every fear and terror is on there, sometimes subtle, sometimes not so much. I can be a romantic realist; I can be vulnerable and scared and brave, all at once; I can be naïve, yet wise in my naiveté; everything goes because the page is a very bold stage suited for shy people.
Authors have many voices, but still, they are only master prompters, reminding themselves the lines not yet uttered.
But who I am when I am not writing? When I am using only the voice that's mine and mine alone?
I am insecure and clumsy and awkward and humour is my safe space, and yet somehow I still manage to make sense.
