A Sea of Idea

Photo Credit: Tracey Lee

It's back. My writing mojo has returned and with it the unrelenting desire to put words out there, to form stories and thoughts and create scenes in the minds of others.

I wish I could describe how it makes me feel when the waves of it crash into me, buckling my knees with their force, my feet mired in the details like grains of sand settling between my toes. Characters yet unwritten surround me, swooping and swirling, calling to me with their voices, shrill like gulls begging for scraps. The keening of my small voice is swallowed up by the roar of the sea, its vastness stretched out before me, mocking my contributions as one drop added to the whole. I am awed by its beauty, hushed by the air thick with promise, warmed by the sun of blessing. If I could let you into my head as the press of it overwhelms me it may feel like drowning to you; an overwhelming sensation of too much information swirling around your head and your feet, pummeling you with each new idea, insistent on being heard.

For me it is the most exhilarating thing I have ever done. Hours sat before a computer screen, my fingers disconnected from my body, tapping out the thoughts that rush in, almost too fast to capture. It begins with a tingling in the back of my jaw, like that anticipation of taste before a feast, or the first sip of fine wine. It lingers in my belly, the butterflies of trepidation mingling with the warmth of an almost erotic excitement. It is visceral, this thing I do; a most private dance done in the public eye for all to see. The body of it is something I discover, curve by curve, moment by moment, even its faults containing a beauty of their own. I explore each feature, take in the sights, sounds, scents and emotions of it. I wait in the darkness, listen for the quickening, hope for a pinnacle to steer toward. Once I recognize it, commit it to memory, once I determine the final act, I write as one possessed. I have to finish, must complete it, push forward toward the ultimate end. The desire to conclude is insistent, overwhelming and undeniable. I am a woman pursued then, obsessed in every way and at the height of its completion, a tiny twinge of regret. When I finish, I am spent, exhausted in the most delicious of ways but I will miss the characters I described. Because I do not create them, only tell their stories as they have told them to me, I am saddened at their exit. I too wish to know what they go on to accomplish, but they vanish with the morning light as I return to my sea of ideas.

Each heroine, in her own way, has whirled herself away from the flock, lighting on my shoulder to whisper her story in my ear, to persuade me her tale is next and cannot wait another minute. If her story is not enough, the details too vague, her cause lacking, if I am somehow not ready she will launch herself aloft again, rejoining the flock allowing another to descend and vie for my attentions. When I accept a story, when there is flesh and heartbeat and desire to it, she signals her cohorts alight around me. They too tell a tale, regale me with their import, compete for a space on the page.

It is a chaotic scene, a symphony of life and noise and awe. I am forever blessed to be among them, these stories that insist on their telling. Not many could stand in their midst and maintain sanity, and maybe one day I too will succumb to the madness, but not today. Today I write. Can you hear their call around you?