I am a woman who writes. I have imaginary friends that I
carry with me. We share adventures, we chat, we build a rapport until, one day,
they tell me their story. I do not always recognise this is what they are doing
immediately and, when I do, I sometimes have to write frantically for days to
pin down their words before they drift away.
Often times my focus becomes centered on the writing and they become bored and leave me. They do not want it to be about the writing – they want the telling of the story and the response of the audience. They want it to be about them, but I am a woman who writes and I care about the writing too much. And so I am alone with a half written tale of a hero.
Often times my focus becomes centered on the writing and they become bored and leave me. They do not want it to be about the writing – they want the telling of the story and the response of the audience. They want it to be about them, but I am a woman who writes and I care about the writing too much. And so I am alone with a half written tale of a hero.
Oh, no, murmurs my hero. I am a pacifist and have been for
my whole adult life. I freeze solid inside as I realise weeks of work are
wasted. How did I miss it? I wonder, reflecting on how clearly this was
depicted in his character throughout his telling of the story. I am a woman who
writes. I grit my teeth and casually ask if there is anything else I should
know. I have never loved, came the sad response, and I will not kill to survive
if there is any other way. Mentally striking out the scene where he met the
lady at a hog roast, I ask; What is your story?
The words flow and I, the woman who writes, am subject to them.
I plough forwards with disjointed paragraphs and multiple attempts to perfectly
describe how this happened, or that failed to happen. I have learned my lesson
and I am a woman who writes his story. That is all. It unfolds before me.
Eventually he is bored again and leaves, but the story is mostly complete. I
know him now and I know how he ended, so when I finished his story the events
are correct. My hero is a healer, not a warrior.
I read through my work. It has been so long in the making
that I forget where I lost him first time round. The tale is woven and some is
clearly wrong but the truth, the real truth is hard to find among the multiple
perspectives and hidden agendas.
I am a woman who writes. I take the rough scope of the tale
and begin to hammer and shape it. It begins comedic and ends maudlin. I destroy
the self, self, self that my storyteller brought and exchange it for a certain
wry acceptance that the world is what it is. He becomes cold. This is wrong. I
reinstate the selfishness and add a sense of fatality, destiny, desire. All
these things tumble before me and never does it tell the right tale. Finally, I
give him despair. He becomes a warrior after all. He heals others, he fights
himself. He is broken, he is despairing, he is lost.
I am a woman who writes and I have written his tale.
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