I'm overcome with emotion...

So I am working on Chapter Nine of NANUQ and I am writing this really hard scene, and by hard I mean it is very emotional. It wasn't hard to write because the words just flowed out of me and into the laptop. It was hard because I was literally getting choked up as I wrote. I swear I came this close (holds his fingers about an inch apart) to crying. And I haven't finished it yet cause my bus ride had reached the end.

So here is the amazing part, I think: It is one thing to be reading a story, get caught up in the characters and what they are going through, and find your emotions being pulled this way and that.

But to be the writer...to be the one who is fabricating the story...creating the characters...giving them their words...describing their actions...and still get so caught up in what he is writing that he has a lump in his throat as he is typing furiously away on the bus...it just amazes me.

Even now, as I write this blog entry an hour afterwards, I still feel my sorrow tugging at me. I really don't know how to adequately describe this. I'm a writer (or at least I think I am!) but it's hard to find the words to do justice to what I am feeling right now.

I think this really speaks to the power of the written word. That words can not only move the people who read them, but the also the person that writes them. It would be one thing if I was writing about real people...and about real events that had actually happened to them. But these characters only exist in my head! They can only express themselves when I write their words on paper (figuratively speaking, of course). Events and actions can only occur if commit them to my laptop's memory.

Now sure, this stuff could just exist in my head. I could think about it and dream about and never write a single word of it and it would be mine, all mine, Muuuhhhaahhhaa etc. etc. And these thoughts, these musing could affect me emotionally, just as your thoughts and musing can affect you. But I think its different when you take all those thoughts and feelings and put them down on paper. They have to be more congruent...more linear. Grammar and spelling imposes itself, and you can't just pour out images and scenes onto the page...you have to write them! You have to describe what is going on...determine how much detail you should go into...and how much to hold back.

Writing is a solitary process in one sense, but also a very public one in another. When I am writing, I am alone. It doesn't matter if I am riding on a bus with fifty other people--they are not participating with me in the process. I. AM. ALONE.

But in another way I know that these words that I am typing right now will be read by others...by you! I am laying bare my soul as it were. My words, my characters, my stories will either move you or they will not. It is my duty, my obligation to make sure that words I am writing do move you. I need to make you see what I see...hear what I hear...to eavesdrop on the thoughts of a young boy whose father might be dead or lost or...?

Will I succeed? I sincerely hope so. I am doing my darnist to transport you along with me on this ride. There are plenty of seats, and the cost of admission will be the price of a fairly thin paperback. (That's if it gets published, of course.)

Anyways, enough of my ramblings. Thank you for listening...er...reading.

Continuing on my write of passage,
James Baron