Laugh at Funerals and Cry At Weddings

Writing is painful. Tedious. Like slaying a thousand invisible dragons no one asked you to. I often feel I have one foot in self-destruction and one foot in something holy. I put pen to paper the way I let my knees hit the floor in prayer. Head bowed. Palms empty. Heart spilled open, letting a sentence bleed.

But the moments no one claps for are the ones that shape our lives.

I’m editing my novel currently. The obvious choice as a writer is, “Someone she loved just died. I’ll make her cry now.” But then I’m typing, and she doesn’t want to cry. Because human emotions are dynamic. We laugh at funerals and cry at weddings. There is a surface river of emotion running, and then there is the river beneath the river.

The characters that mark us forever swim in the river beneath the river.

Maybe the prince doesn’t rage and burn about his love for her, threatening to move mountains. Maybe his shoulders are not yet broad enough to carry their love until he becomes king, and his silence is the loudest sound she will ever hear.

I’m not puppet mastering my characters. They’re leading me into the places I have yet to boldly explore or tenderly understand. There’s a reason so many women love the defiant heroine trained like an assassin. And I wonder—is it because we are given such little societal permission to express our rage, our fierceness, without being called crazy?

Stories let us burn off psychic steam without scorching our waking world.

We all need to be inspired to face ourselves—find a way to let our most repressed archetypes come up for air. Art, sports, relationships….they require us to slay a thousand invisible dragons. I always think of that Joan Didion poem, “You have to pick the places you won’t walk away from.”

Despite the days my spine is shaped like a question mark from spending hours in a chair, despite the days I am running on nothing but caffeine and hope that is worn to threads, I can’t stay away.

And it is a rare, precious thing—to find something you love so much you’re willing to find the courage to slay your dragons, but in the process, actually learn to befriend them.

Xx,

Your Friendly Neighborhood Scribe