Photo by User:P199 at Wikimedia Commons
There’s a vast difference between a failure to be able to communicate what is in your heart, and having writer’s block. Writer’s block seems to be the result of not really having your heart in what you’re writing. Your heart, your mind, your soul, all these ethereal entities that we considered to be a part of our humanity and our creativity, often fail writers when there is little passion involved in the story, or the part of it that you are currently telling.
Alternately, sometimes a writer will struggle to come up with a device to forward the plot or story in a specific direction. That’s still writer’s block.
But sometimes
Sometimes you know what you want to say. Sometimes there is a passion so charged within you that you need to explain it. And sometimes there seems to be no word or words for what you want to talk about. Or perhaps there are too many and none of them are quite what you want to say.
Sometimes passion overwhelms and we actually reach a point where, as inadequate as it is, silence is the truest and closest to what we wish to convey.
Sad times for a writer
Unable to speak or write. that is truly a sad and painful place for a writer to be.
And not to make light of this situation, but it is the very compost that really bad love poems grow out of. Certainly there are those few that manage to hold onto their wits and manage to pen the great love sonnet or, in a pinch, limerick, but these are the exceptions. If someone writes you a really, truly bad love poem, grab that person and never let go, the tragedy of their bad poetry is an inverse gauge of the power and determination of their ardour and love.
But on a more serious note
Recent news has revealed the extent, or rather the depth of the sorry incivility and depravity of humanity here in my country.
First 215, and next over 700 unmarked graves of children have been revealed.
And they are not the greatest revelation that boggles the mind. It is the fact that these are just the beginning, that is the stunner.
Important details
I do not mention the details about this, not because they are not important, but because those details are the reason these children were treated this way.
You want the relevant details in one statement? Children who should have been with their families were removed from them by our government and placed in the “care” of religious groups in order to alter them from what they were meant to be. And then they died.
And some say they were the lucky ones, as harsh as that statement is, because the survivors have suffered long and horribly.
Words still fail me
I have written several times on how hurt I am about this. How betrayed I feel.
And yet, at the same time I have great and overwhelming feelings of guilt. These people who’s culture was to be “schooled” out of them, they are my friends. We went to school together, and sometimes we did not go to school together when the days were just to alluring to be wasted indoors.
And … I never knew.
They accepted me as a friend. We talked together. We laughed together. We shot pool and drank beer and hung out together. We teased and joked and crushed on and bonded.
And all the while they knew of the atrocities that other people … my people, MY PEOPLE!!! … had done to their people.
And now, they still call me friend. And now they ask for an apology. And words fail me. Still.
How, as a writer?
How could words fail me? I am a writer. This should be easy.
I am so sorry. And I am very aware of how I feel. I love these friends of mine. I’m heartsick with each revelation of the truth. Ill in my soul to know that this was still going on. In my lifetime.
How could words fail me?
The answer is simple. Words, are not enough.
And yet, words, and love, are almost all I have to offer. I am, after all, only a writer.
