Solitaire

I realize that the voices in my head are not my characters, as they ought to be. Right now, the voices in my head are my doubts. The voice that looks at everything I do and says, “crap”, “not good enough”, “unimportant”, “uninteresting”, “unworthy”, “useless”, and a host of other adjectives that ultimately amount to the same thing. Suddenly, or at least suddenly in realization if not in action (I suspect this has been a slow erosion of faith over the course of months), I realize that my fear and doubt is raising a ruckus in my mind, clanging and banging, a steady hum that is easily mistaken for white noise of the mind. And I’m standing in the eye, wondering why I can’t hear what I want to create in the din.

What I need to do is shut these voices up. Ignore them. Lock them back in the chest, throw them back under the bed, or in the closet, or into the dark pit that stretches from here to the center of the asteroid planet where the demons live and can feast on them to the end of time. Or at least until I need to edit. Which is not now.

I know this, because I’ve done it before. The last time I needed to drown the voices out, I started a story. And then, another. Then I did novel in a month. After completing that challenge, I thought that I had drowned out those voices. But this period of months where the time and space for creativity has worn thin, those voices have taken a dominant place again. Because it’s always easier to doubt yourself. We are built for doubt and fear. It’s only when we choose a different path that we achieve greatness. Because we are also built for creation and joy. We are built with infinite potential and the possibility of choice.

In some ways, belief in oneself and ability to achieve ones dreams in a form of arrogance. How is it that I’m given the gift of magic that allows me to create realistic worlds? Genuine characters, and engaging stories? This has always seemed like something beyond me. Something that I’ve had to attempt, take on faith, and when it happens, it’s the sort of surprise that makes the pain and uncertainty worth it. But in order to do the trick, you have to believe in it. Sure, it’s a lie, but if you don’t believe in it, the lie won’t work. Before anything exists, it has to exist, formed in some meaningful way, in the mind first. And until it is taken out of the mind, sometimes even when it is taken out of the mind, it is a lie. Or at least, a Not Yet Truth. Not Yet Fact. Not Yet Existent.

It’s very easy to believe in things that exist. It’s fairly easy to believe in things that don’t exist, provided the parameters seem strong enough. Faith is something that is–arguably–inherent to us as human beings. Faith and love are intertwined.

I spent far too much time questioning myself as a writer, as opposed to actually writing, which is why I am not where I want to be. It bothers me at points like this, when I think that I have overcome a problem, only to realize that it was just waiting for me to let my guard down in order to knife me in the back again. Because unlike in movies, where a training montage and a final battle can allow us to overcome our backstory, in real life, we have to fight these battles again and again. And sometimes we don’t even know we are fighting. Sometimes the battle is just white noise, and we are in the eye of it, wondering what’s going on. What happened.

And more often than not, our enemies are ourselves.