The Page Cannot Stay Blank
I don’t know how to get back to writing.
In the past I’ve written through all sorts of upheaval – in fact, retreating to a fictional world of my own devising was nothing short of a relief when I was in the midst of a relationship that had turned incredibly sour. Then, it was a way of finding happiness in the midst of terrible things.
With the US election results, Valerie and I certainly feel as though we are in the midst of terrible things. Our overwhelming response is (at this stage) grief, tinged with great uncertainty and fear about the future for the world, and for all our friends and loved ones in America.
But grief spilling over into depression is a stopper for creative expression. It bottlenecks the emotions so the only way they come out is in broken pieces. It wants to drown everything in helplessness. It tells me I am tired, of fighting, of having to get up over and over, of never quitting.
I am desperately tired, but there is still a voice telling me that I do not want to stop doing what I do – writing stories. Humanity heals itself through stories, and even the tales we tell here at Sapphica Books have a small part in that. We write of women like ourselves, living life as best as possible on our our terms. They illustrate the struggles, the triumphs, the needs and desires we face. Is there ever a worse time to stop telling such stories? I know many writers in our community will be confronting these same issues, struggling to maintain creativity when so much has been dealt a blow.
But artists have always taken the role of truth-tellers, even in such small ways as the stories we write. They find threads of commonality, and bring us together, to weep, to celebrate, to find strength.
The blank page has always been an intimidating place, but I think I’m going to pull up my current book file and stare it in the face, then put down some words on it, one at a time. In the end, it’s the most important thing I can do. Keep telling the stories.
Maybe our community, and our world, has never needed them more. Because we are here, as we’ve always been, and we need each other, and we need our voices.
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