What About The Story You Fear To Write?

“In a good bookroom you feel in some mysterious way that you are absorbing the wisdom contained in all the books through your skin, without even opening them.”
― Mark Twain

“You can talk with someone for years, everyday, and still, it won’t mean as much as what you can have when you sit in front of someone, not saying a word, yet you feel that person with your heart, you feel like you have known the person for forever…. connections are made with the heart, not the tongue.”
― C. JoyBell C.

“The only way to find true happiness is to risk being completely cut open.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Invisible Monsters

I thought about telling you about what happened when my kids and I watched 42. Thought about telling you about the conversation we had about people and racism. It is a good story and it is the kind of tale that reflects well upon me because it makes me look like a good father.

Well, I am a good father. I am not without my faults, but I am a good dad. But that is not what I want from this post. Not looking to impress you or generate compliments.

No, this post is me thinking about storytelling, boundaries and how to create compelling content.

What About The Story You Fear To Write?

There is a story trapped inside my head but I am almost afraid to put it down on paper.

I don’t know if you believe in fate. Don’t know if you think the universe sends us messages or if you think life is one big coincidence but things are happening now and I have this feeling in my gut about it all.

Just read The Song Of My Heart Makes My Soul Sing and smiled because those words spoke to me in a different way than the past.

“when you make certain choices in life you find out that as you close doors they lock behind you. You can’t go backwards and there is no exit other than that at the end of the tunnel- so you go through.”

There was a time when those words were said with a bitter finality and a wistful shrug of the shoulders, but no longer. Now I look at it as part of a grand adventure and while it would be nice to go back that is not of interest to me.

Forward is where I want to go. Life is about today and tomorrow, not yesterday.

I hear the song and I wonder if I should answer it or wait.

“Fantasy is escapist, and that is its glory. If a soldier is imprisioned by the enemy, don’t we consider it his duty to escape?. . .If we value the freedom of mind and soul, if we’re partisans of liberty, then it’s our plain duty to escape, and to take as many people with us as we can!”
― J.R.R. Tolkien

Want to know what really frustrates me about writing? It is the story you feel inside you that you can’t put down on paper. It is the tale you try to tale but scream because you know the people aren’t hearing/seeing what you want them to see.

There is always someone out there who can read in between the lines, a person who knows you well enough to recognize and understand the awkward expressions for what you intend them to be.

But what is really killing me, what is making me crazy at this very moment is that the story I see refuses to be shared. It is hiding in the recesses and corners of my mind.

It is not writer’s block, this thing I am experiencing now. It is writer’s frustration, but not block.

Either way the bottom line is that am not pleased with the outcome but I’ll hit publish because you don’t improve without practice. And besides, you never know what will resonate with people. Sometimes the words we hate the most are the ones someone else loves best.

• Saved: Writing