#BehindTheScenes 71 - The Screaming Void
Sometimes, we feel like we are screaming into a void. Nobody is listening and our infinite frustration echoes into an empty space. But what if you were the void and you were doing the screaming into the silence? What would you do then?
#BehindTheScenes here. And today, I am going to talk about the next chapter of my writing journey. If you need to get caught up, you can check out parts one and two.
At this point, it was the spring of 2012. I was living in Aroostock County, Maine. My husband (then boyfriend, AKA Scribe Jeeves) and I were learning how to live together. Between us was our son. And being a new parent with a man who used to be homeless was a challenge. One of them was compromise.
I generally took care of our baby. Scribe Jeeves aimed to go to work and provide while I figured out what I was going to do. While the circumstances were different from living with my parents (to say the least), he learned about my writing. When he saw how frustrated I was being the 24/7 caretaker (because he was working long hours or he was in another part of the state for weeks on end), he saw my writing as a way to vent. Scribe Jeeves strove to allow me space to grow.
Of course, I was too shy to show him something yet. I wanted to continue having this little secret to myself. Someday, I vowed to let him read something.
Whenever I could, I wrote to my heart's content, at all hours. I was in my mid-twenties and felt like I could do anything. When our son, Calvin, napped, I was on my laptop. When he decided that the playpen was fun, I was writing next to him. My small desk was locked into the dining room and living room, and wherever he was, I was too.
By early 2013, there were some changes. I began working at a call center to make ends meet and going to school online, and writing was the only way I could let some steam out. That job first had me taking calls for walmart.com and then for Comcast. The customers were nasty and the hours were horrible. Not to mention, co-workers who keep dating the same people and causing office drama. It made my head spin!
But for the moment, it was only fan fiction I splashed onto the pages of Microsoft Word. I had ideas for historical fiction stories, like the Titanic and a spy from World War I, but none of them panned out. I did not really think of something outside of fan fiction until the day I got super bored at work. At this point, it was 2014.
Call centers are a strange business. Sometimes, you are slammed with customer calls and there is no break. Other days, it's so quiet that we're tapping our feet and talking to each other or playing games. This day was the latter, and I had done everything that was requested by my manager.
Someone we knew (I'll call her Matilda) was talking calls for another company. She was a few rows away from me, and I wished fervently to connect. But she and her daughter (Cathy) were out of reach and I could not just yell. Because of customer calls, we were not allowed to. Paper and pens were not allowed either. Frustrated, I twirled in my chair and tangled my cords. Then, a thought came to me.
Matilda challenged me to write a story about a mermaid. I did that already, but there was an itch I wanted to scratch. I had a picture in mind, of a queen watching an execution - of her own sister. How did they get to that point? What had happened to the sisters that caused one to be hateful? Who stood to inherit and could it be both? Did evil finally topple the good?
I sat and worked out chapters to this idea. We had just been given access to email (internal only) and I thought that Cathy and Matilda needed as much entertainment as I did. So, in between calls, I crafted one portion after another. Soon, the whole story was done...and passed around the whole building.
I was embarrassed and nervous. How could Cathy and Matilda send the story around? It was supposed to be for them!
But to them, it was too good not to share.
Several co-workers came up to me asked if I had truly written it. When I confirmed it, they gushed about it. How detailed it was, how exciting they found the characters, etc. I was amazed and mortified at the same time. I wanted to shrink.
I meant for the story to remain between friends. But now, a whole building knew that I could create a story out of thin air. And I had all this attention on me that was I not used to. I clammed up and thanked everyone for their kind words.
That idea never died, but it proved to me that I could rely on something more than fan fiction. However, my eyes remained on the same prize. Anonymous posting and watching the traffic on my stories, hoping for reviews. It was the best life as a writer.
But it also meant that I had knowledge of an insider. This was a new life, something I was unprepared for, and I was utterly alone, being that mysterious fan fiction writer. I did not know who to talk to. Writing allowed me to scream within a nothingness, a vast space that was void of everything else. All it waited for was for me to begin the next chapter.
But I learned that I was a void of my own. I had put myself there. I wanted to paint a new canvass after trauma. Yet, I had no idea what I could do with it. It was dark and scary, and I did not understand how to reach up and ask for help. All I could do was continue to scream until someone else dared to join me.
Nobody did...yet.
In the next #BehindTheScenes (in two weeks' time), I am going to continue my writing journey. We're moving towards 2015. Scribe Jeeves and I were tired of doing a lot of driving. Hundreds of dollars in expenses for funerals was piling up, and we were urged to return to Connecticut. The job market was vanishing in our area of Maine, and we decided to head back...and my writing took another turn along with it.
Next week, #TriviaTuesday will be featured. It helps to connect persons, places and things to the fictional world I have created. Have a great rest of your week. Namaste!
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