Loss

There is a terrible crassness which sometimes pervades the inner life of a writer. Okay, I need to explain that a little.

Our inner life involves a dialogue, an on-going internal about what we say, think and do. Bit like an “extra” on a DVD – the director’s commentary. We all do it to a certain extent; it takes a bit of growing to ignore those voices which denigrate our self esteem but we grow and learn to identify the false voices. We are, after all, our worst critics. Part of growing up involves being able to shut down a lot of this inner commentary and be able to reflect with some consideration on our actions. Stay with me, almost there….

I suspect I’m not alone in the writing community when I say that I shelve every incident of emotional impact, store it away for when I need to express a sentiment on paper. It may be why some teenage writers struggle to convince when they write from the POV of an elderly, crotchety old man.  Like me. And why us males often get it wrong when writing for the female market. We don’t have that in-depth knowledge. Yes, I see you in the back…you’re in touch with your feminine side. Well done, that man.

So when an emotional event hits a writer we run a little internal dialogue where we analyse the feelings for later.

And I don’t like it. Here’s why:

The last month or so has been hard for me and the community, we lost someone special – two someones – and we’ve been dealing with a community wide grief.  And grief  is a journey we all travel in our own way,  it’s a bus ride we would rather do without; you go somewhere, get off the bus to look around and realise that you’re somewhere different, somewhere strange. Grief is the journey and you can’t get off that bus until the journey is done. My inner writer has watched and noted what I went through, what a lot of folk went through (several thousand, such was the impact of these two marvelous people).

And I don’t like me very much for doing it, grief is personal; for me it’s a private journey but – and this is going to sound just silly – every time I turn around there I am, the inner me is watching and I want him to give me a bit of privacy.

But I don’t think writers get that privacy. Anyway, my journey’s about done, I’m about ready to get off that bus. Just not that happy about missing a friend.

Vale, Alan and Kari.