By Linda Lee Greene, Author & Artist.
I
am reminded today by way of “Your Facebook Memories,” of a piece I posted five
years ago, dated: September 12, 2014. It describes the terror I felt at the time,
and still feel, at putting my words on the page and disclosing myself to a
reading public.
Correction:
It isn’t that I fear the process of writing and its reception. I am blessed
that my work is usually well received. My terror arises from the hoops through
which we writers must jump to reach a reading public, and the disappointment
that comes when our efforts yield less than we had hoped. The emotion that
overpowers me most strongly during those dry periods of silence from readers is
despondency, and my despondency leads to avoidance of its pain, which results
in evasion of the demanding process of putting myself out there again. I am not
a very brave person. I avoid pain! And I recognize full well that my avoidance
of pain corresponds directly to the scope of my living.
That’s
all for today and as I stated five years ago…”To be continued”…Below is my
Facebook Post, dated September 12, 2014:
September
12, 2014—I sit uneasily before the blank white window of my laptop, my
unproductive fingers jerking like dying pulses above the keyboard, my silent
throat beating like an uncaged bird against my exposed skin, my wild heart
snaking unimpeded in a poisonous orgy to the bottom of my stomach. This
unstroked rectangle might as well be the longest, widest, cruelest stretch of
the Sahara Desert, and I, a lone, fluid-starved initiate who must cross it, but
know not how to get to the nearest source of water.
How long has it been since I’ve credited myself
as Linda Lee Greene, writer of two long-neglected blogs, the bestselling author
of two books, and of three manuscripts chomping at the bit to see the light of
day—to have their words printed on pages other people can read? How
long—sixteen months, eighteen months, twenty? Am I spent—fizzled out? Was I
just a brief burst of brightness in a friendly sky—or is my spirit still
orbiting there—silently—intrepidly digging—no, maybe drawing off by now, a
fountain, a geyser, or just a shy trickle of water yet to reach me? Even a
droplet would fill me now.
The soles of my feet are burning from standing
still. “But the sands of that blanched desert will be hotter!” I remind myself.
Do I stay here within the fringe of this Devil’s disguise, a geography that’s
choking me, hardening me into a pillar of salt? Or are my feet calloused enough
from my grueling, silent traverse through this deadly drought to withstand the
heat of that hotter place? Will I plant my right foot across that awful divide?
Will my footprint rearrange the molecules of that gasping landscape lying
ahead? I don’t know. All I can really hope for today is, “To be continued....”©
Books by Linda Lee Greene are available for
purchase in eBook and soft cover at Amazon.com and other booksellers.
You have a fan in me.
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