Image by JeremyHall via FlickrThey are hard to see, and if you do catch a glimpse of them they disappear quick as a wink. Most often, you do not see them at all, but just feel this tiny little ache of something, something missing or something that is not what it wants to be, and what it wants to be is a thing made out of words in your heart.
It is the story we want to write, but can't write, because we don't know what it is. The only way to find out is try to fill it with some clumsy first words, pat them in gently, and see if they fit. Usually the words don't fit at all, but we may end up with something pretty and amusing and worth having been done anyway. If we are lucky.
If we are not writing, we might find something another writer has made out of words that fits.
A while back, Maja Djikic at OnFiction.ca asked:
"Do you ever stand before your bookcase, wanting something, but not quite knowing what? Like having an unnamed food craving and ferreting through the fridge, through the cabinets, hoping that even though you don’t know what you are searching for, you might find it anyway. That is how it feels to me, scanning through the spines, pulling out a book here, only to put it back there, dissatisfied. What is this nameless hunger only a right book will sate?"When you crave a certain food, it might be your body telling you it needs something, some kind of vitamin or nutrient you have been neglecting.
Perhaps it works the same way when you crave some book unknown, some story untold.
Perhaps it is your life telling you -- this, this thing that is nothing but absence, this is the one true thing you can say. And if we ever manage to say it, to fill it with just the right words in the right shape, we will be finally done with writing.
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