Word Shifting

Wow! It's been so long since I stopped in here that I couldn't remember my password - or maybe it was my user name that was the problem. No excuses to offer. Just having an extended tiff with words. Why, I ask, are they so unruly? They jump up and down clamoring for attention just as I am drifting off to sleep - or when I am trying to grab those last few moments of slumber in the morning. And them, when I want those words, they flee. Scatter about the landscape of my brain, hiding in obscure folds, determined to elude me.

This is not writer's block. It is out and out writer's rebellion. Warfare. The word army against me. I flex my muscles, stand firm and refuse to be goaded into battle. I will NOT write. I will NOT be berated and reproached and, ultimately, thwarted into submission. No. I will turn my back on those unruly words and feign indifference. Who me? Need you? To write? Ha!


But if I put away the blustering and bravado, what am I left with? Fear, I think. Fear of choosing the wrong words. Or of choosing the right words to reveal the wrong things. I love this (long) quote by Stephen King (whose books I cannot submit my mind to, but whose talent as a wordsmith I greatly admire):

"The most important things are the hardest to say. They are the things you get ashamed of, because words diminish them -- words shrink things that seemed limitless when they were in your head to no more than living size when they're brought out. But it's more than that, isn't it? The most important things lie too close to wherever your secret heart is buried, like landmarks to a treasure your enemies would love to steal away. And you may make revelations that cost you dearly only to have people look at you in a funny way, not understanding what you've said at all, or why you thought it was so important that you almost cried while you were saying it. That's the worst, I think. When the secret stays locked within not for want of a teller but for want of an understanding ear."

How fearsome it is to try to put our most important ideas and sentiments into words. We don't want words to shrink what's most important, or to cause people to misunderstand us. Trying to pack those most significant emotions and theses into receptacles as meager as mere words is frightening, intimidating.

So, is it that the words are actually unruly? Or is it that I prefer not to find them? Maybe the safety of silence promises comfort that I do not wish to risk.