There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.” ~ Ernest Hemingway
We aren’t the typical family. We don’t share familial blood reaching back generations, but we do suffer from a shared madness. Our family curse, non compos mentis, brings us together to chew over our afflictions, to swap outlines and plots.
We hear voices. Voices telling us tales that we are compelled to recount. We see faces. Imaginary people who live, and die according to our pen, according to our words.
A collective mania settles in the fringes of our awareness, leading us into darkness, carrying us along in a torrent of emotions, sometimes tragic, often joyful. Swirling around in our consciousness, struggling to break free, once unfettered, these characters, these entities, are as real, as mortal as we are.
No 12-step support group, instead a conspiracy. What is the best way to poison an unfaithful lover? Should our youthful heroine marry her elitist paramour, or runaway with her working class soul mate?
We won’t know until we finally sit down, open a vein, and bleed out our stories.
I love this, Tara (and the pic)! It’s true, eh? What we’re writing can make us a little crazy in the imagining, follow us into our dreams, and hang on until the blood-letting occurs.
Thanks so much for sharing this piece!
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Great write – Glad to have found other un-composed minds here in Trifecta!
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Fabulous quote, great take on the challenge. You have a gift.
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Bit of a deja-vu thing comes from being a writer reading this story and the images it brings to mind imagining a family of them… nicely done is all I can say.
Cheers! 🙂
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Love love love this! So very true!
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Perfection! Thanks for sharing.
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Perfect. We hear voices telling us tales.. wonderful, Tara. And I love your header and the photograph.
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You said is perfectly.
jj
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This is why we are friends and writing partners. So do we, Tar Rah. So do we.
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Oh yes! And I am of a mind most unsound
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