My little corner of the blogosphere has been unusually quiet for the past week.  The reason is simple.  I was being forced to take people that I have lived with for a long time and put them into silos then slam a damn lid down on them, and drown out their voices.  They hated it.  I hated it.  We fought.  They sometimes just fucking punched me in the gut and told me I was doing the wrong thing but I did it anyway.  I shoved each and every one of them into their in-ground cylinders and clamped on the lids all the while hearing them scream back at me for being such an asshole.  Guilty as charged.

I love these people.  I hate these people.  I never want them to be near me again yet they are part of my DNA.  I have been inhabited by fragments of myself.  Pieces of myself that I did not want to tie up and put in their proper place but it was time.  After all the voices are just voices.  Fictional characters from my brain.  They don’t really exist.  All they are our my characters – my creations – and they always kick me in the fucking ass.

As I placed the last period on my latest novel to send off to production my little corner of my home where I write became a war zone as usual.  When I talk to other writers I always let them know I don’t even pretend to have over the people I mold from my mind and place on paper.  Years ago I wanted to control them.  To show them who was in charge.  I was the damn writer and they just were pieces of my imagination set in ink. 

It took years to learn that ink can run like blood.  So this is what I have been dealing with. 

So before you take this posting as the ranting of yet another fucked up Cape Cod writer I want to assure you I was fucked up way before I moved to Cape Cod thirty years ago and certainly before I started publishing.

This past week or so not only have I put my latest novel in the mail (which feels much like leaving a baby on a doorstep) to an editor my first attempt at playwriting somehow managed to get accepted by the New Provincetown Players and will be staged next weekend. Just like that.  How the hell did it happen?

All of lingering fictional fragments are gathering strength and reinvading my mind, but this time the “game’s afoot”.   They are making their move.  I hate it when they do this. There isn’t any more tinkering or rethinking. 

Come this Thursday night my partner and I will sit in a darken theater and two actors will speak my words.  I will want to puke.  I have always found it very unnerving to pass someone reading a book of mine.  I usually want to rip it out of their hands and ask them if they know what the hell they are doing.  I want an immediate conversation of what they think of my world as it lays on paper.  I want them to tell me everything and I want them to shut up.

So while none of this makes sense I have learned long ago it doesn’t have to.  All it has to do is be.  So now I am trying to forget that total strangers editing my words, memorizing my words, figuring out how to act out my thoughts, and I am failing miserably.

I had a final screaming match with a couple of the inhabitants (they really cannot be just characters, can they?) from Wounded Healers last night.  They did not like what I made them do during most of the book.  They hated the ending.  I sat and listened and finally told them it was it time for them to fold up into neat little figments and go the hell away.  They all laughed as they cleared my mind.

Only Alice stayed.  Alice is one of two people in my play Shopping with Alice and the reason I wrote the damn thing in the first place.  Alice just sat on the floor and looked up at me.  “You know,” she said.  “Sometimes your imagination gets the best of you and things get a little out of hand.”

“Isn’t that a good thing for a writer?”

“Sometimes, but you better watch yourself,” Alice said pointing her very direct finger at me.

“Why do I need to ‘watch myself’?”

Alice slowly unfurled her body and stood.  “Because the jig is up.  It is “answered prayers time” and I don’t think you are ready.”

“What do you mean answered prayers time?”

“Oh just cut THAT crap right now.  You know exactly what I am referring to you jackass of a church going gay boy.”

As Alice faded I knew exactly what she meant.  It was St. Theresa who cautioned that we should be careful what we pray for because we might just get it.

So for now I am letting the fragments melt and disappear.  In tidy little note book there are names and ideas scribbled in mainly incomprehensible words sitting on my desk.  I can hear a few of them starting to kick about.  They want out.  They want their turn.  When I tell them I really am not ready they remind that they don’t really care because I am just the guy who strings some words together here and there.  They have the power.  They know better.  I think I like it that way.  

So I am waiting for one of them makes the first move.  I know someone will.  Until then I will just sit and let my mind melt and wonder why I never became the rodeo clown I always want to be.

This entry was posted on Friday, October 24th, 2008 at 7:01 pm and is filed under My Blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.