Talking to Myself

Crikey.

I haven’t penned thoughts for this blog in over two years. Instead, I’ve been turning myself inside out writing and rewriting a novel. Emerging only recently, exhausted and disoriented, from a self-imposed quarantine due to that writer’s disease for which there’s only periods of blessed remission.

Not surprisingly I’d lost touch with others, My husband had cobbled a life around my unavailability for anything lasting more than fifteen minutes. And I’d submerged my own feelings in those of my characters, suspended my life in favor of theirs. (I envy those who can restrict their obsession scribbling to mornings or the quiet hours between midnight and dawn.)

I’m taking a break before the next book, enjoying bike rides and lunches out on the final summer days of British Columbia. Wondering what I should write about on Silent Girl Speaks and why. Who gives a rip what an aging WASP woman who has the luxury of indulging in novel writing has to say about anything in a world pocked with war, poverty and oppression?

Guilty As Charged

This guilt over privilege may be more of the reason for my silence over the past two years than the intensity of novel writing. I’m mute in the face of women who are raped, stoned, held as prisoners in their homes, forced to journey miles for water. How dare I indulge in literary fantasies while my sisters suffer?

But here I am, with a room of my own, a space on the blogosphere in which I can talk to myself and spammers. A chance to say what I feel, not just what I think. I’m gonna give it another go. If anybody cares to join the conversation, so much the better.  If not, that’s okay, too.