For two years I have been taking a creative writing class at my local community college. It is one of those community education classes given along with wine tasting, learning to invest in the stock market and quilting. Prior to this class, I imagined writing. I never believed I could truly write. Maybe eight people read this blog faithfully. I think it is cool but I write in this space as an exercise: be positive, contemplate things, enjoy the wonderment, thrill in the whimsy and generally celebrate life. I have used the last two years during the divorce process to channel my energy. My sister asked me how, with all that has transpired, could I have found time or brain space to write fiction. I told her that without the writing, without these characters and this embellishment, I would have gone mad. I would have also been madder. The nights without my sons would have ground me into dust. Their father loves them. They love their father. Boys need their dad. For their father and I to navigate the craziness of post-marriage parenting, it means we each have solitary nights. It is the fairest and inherently unfair. So…..I write to fill that hole in my soul every Monday and Tuesday night and every other weekend.
I have written a novel. I am on the cusp of the final chapters. I printed the entire thing sans this conclusion and gave it to my professor to read. And then I read chapter 24 aloud to my fellow classmates of aspiring writers and poets. It is a new session and tonight was the first class. I read, and in the middle of it, I started crying. The words so true and the characters so distinct that I was choked with emotions. And when I finished, the class was quiet, holding their breath. Then, the questions poured forth. This is a new audience. Only four of the 13 know my characters, and they were still hooked.
Then I was bouncing. I had created real people from nothing. Out of the synapses of my brain came wisps that have condensed to a solid state. And….other people GET IT TOO!! Suddenly, I was that hyperactive, bouncing, flapping jabberjaws of a kid….maybe we really don’t change. We just box ourselves up to make other people more comfortable. I feel like that rubber ball in a glass room that my mother lamented.