Running With Asthma

I find it quite frustrating when I approach the page and my mind suddenly goes blank.  Especially when just hours, or minutes before, I narrated a beautiful and compelling tale in my mind while driving or cleaning up the kitchen.  But it never fails; I’ll say to myself, “Ooh, that was good, I need to write that down,” and then I’ll dash to my keyboard, only to forget everything as soon as my eyes catch a glimpse of the empty space waiting to be filled.  The pressure!  Of course, it must be poetic, concrete, use the elements of fiction…

The expectation of excellence the page demands is different than the freedom of excellence in my head.  When I”m driving, the story in my head is free to just be, free to explore the wonderous caverns of my soul and how that soul navigates around other peoples’ souls.  I’m free to be me.  The sound of my own voice is comforting; like a mother’s heard inside the womb.  But once I approach the page, there are rules to abide by, elements to employ, an expectation from the awaiting readers.  There is a container to fit into, a thesis to follow, characters to craft within certain guidelines.  The story that just minutes earlier flowed freely, is now hidden in the depths and I must seek and seek to no avail.

The story always changes when I make it tangible on the page; the black letters punching away into the vast whiteness.  It is a translation from one medium to another, from one cavern to the other; only, the original spot, where the story was created, is where the story runs freely through meadow in its truest form.  If I compare the two stories side by side, the one in my head and the one on the page, they might look like relatives but never twins.  The translation is always wrong, never organic, and certainly not accurate.

Why can’t I ever get my story straight?  Is it that I’m keeping the best part hidden for rediscovery, or is it that I don’t want it to be seen at all?  Or, is it that I’m so overwhelmed by the rules of the page that I can’t trust the original story to fit neatly into the new container?  The process of translation may just be too rigourous for the delicate threads basting the new seams of the story hiding in the shadows of my mind.  When I seek to pull it out into the sun, will I be emabarrassed?  Will it be dumb?  Will it be strong enough to resist the restraints of the page?

My voice is different on the page; guarded.  There is an audience now.  It sounds odd to me, the story that is now out in the open, the narrating voice seeming to come from someone else.  Now it is the page’s turn to discover what is hidden, what needs to be uncovered, to play hide-and-seek.  Will it discover me?