I’m sitting at my new table writing for the first time. It’s not the first time i’ve sat here and it’s not the first time I’ve written anything, but it’s the first time I sat here writing. So there it is.
I don’t know that a new space will help me write something else or something new, and I’m not sure why I keep hoping to sound like someone else. But each time I sit down to write I keep hoping that a new voice will appear. That someone else will arise from the ashes of my former self and it will be hard and glorious. It will be gentle and strong. It will burn like fire and touch like silk, speaking hard truths to power and pulling wisdom from the mundane. If I keep writing, the voice that’s hidden inside me for forty years will find its way out, and I’ll make the world cry and laugh until it pees its pants.
I don’t often write funny things, although I want to. I find that sitting down to write puts me in a serious mood and that’s a hard thing to manage. If laughter is the gateway to the heart, then it’s always where I should start. Make them laugh to soften them up she told me. Get them feeling something they are already comfortable feeling and then you can dig deeper. Then you can go further. Then you can hit them with the big things and make them feel anything you want.
I want them to feel justice and glory. I want them to long for revenge, desire peace, and thirst for battle. I want them to ache for love and jump in joy and triumph when it prevails. I want my readers to lose themselves in a story, unable to look up or tear themselves away for fear that if they return to this world, they may never get back to the book. That even a moment’s break might be too long, and if they don’t find out what’s going to happen next they’ll cry tears of salt and beg for more.