Friday, October 26, 2012
The voices in my head
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Photo illustration by Jeff Price
As my wife is fond of saying, "writer's block is when your invisible friends stop talking to you." |
No matter where I go, they are there.
Whispering their secrets in my ear, telling me their stories and filling me in on the intimate details of their lives.
Sometimes I’m shocked by the things they tell me, but I find their constant companionship rather comforting. They make my roughly 45-minute commute to and from work each day pass a little more quickly. They also keep me amused at work when I’m forced to wait for a slow computer or server to boot or to finish running a scan or diagnostic. They also keep me entertained on those now rather rare days when no one is having any computer problems and I’m just sitting around staring at the clock, trying to look busy, waiting for my shift to end.
My friends even keep me company when I’m making “saw dust” in my “workshop” (or as my wife insists on calling it, our garage), though thankfully they know to shut up when I flip on the table saw or other machine with sharp whirling blades.
Usually though, they become the most talkative at night, just as I am going to bed, holding off telling me their most juicy tidbits until I’m about to fall asleep. That’s really annoying, especially on “school nights” when I can’t stay up late, but nowhere as near annoying as those times that they suddenly clam up, refusing to talk to me despite my constant prodding.
Oh and there is something else you should know about these companions of mine.
They are all in my head.
Now I know what you’re probably thinking.
“Jeff, they make drugs for that, and you should probably be on them!”
But I don’t want to stop hearing those voices, ever!
“Jeff, you’re crazy. They lock people like that up. You don’t want us to call those nice young men in their clean white coats do you?”
Relax. The voices aren’t telling me to do anything harmful. They know I’m a writer and all they want me to do is be their biographer.
“Biographer? BIOGRAPHER! You talk like these voices are real people!”
To me they are real people! They are fully formed individuals with their own unique dispositions, hopes and desires, loves and losses. Like us, their personalities were formed by the events of their childhood. Ask me anything about them, from their favorite color or favorite food to the type of person they are attracted to and I can tell you. Sometimes I feel like they are my children, and seem so real to me that if one of them suddenly walked through my door as flesh and blood beings I would not be even a tad bit surprised.
Sometimes I even find myself wishing that the words I write about them could actually bring them to life like in that old “Twilight Zone” episode, “A World of His Own.”
“I don’t know. It still sounds kind of crazy….”
Oh, it probably is. But then again, I think all writers probably are a bit nuts. The only thing that keeps us sane is writing down those things that the voices in our heads tell us.
“Then why do you still sound so nuts?”
Mainly because while my characters are very chatty, they aren’t exactly disciplined. They tell me stuff out of order and often get side tracked and wind up talking about tons of extraneous stuff that’s unrelated to the story I’m writing about them. And because they are characters from science fiction, where alternate timelines are always a possibility, I get told alternate versions of those stories.
Sorting through all this takes a lot of time and can be exhausting and I wish I was able to write at the speed my imaginary friends talk to me. Yet even if I could, I still doubt I’d be able to keep up with them.
And you know what?
That’s okay with me.
As long as they’re willing to keep talking to me, I’m willing to keep listening.
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Jeff, I just read your blog and I have to say...Wait, hey you, be quiet up there! Now, as I as saying, it sounded so...Would you stop with all the noise?! I'm trying to write! Anyway, it sounded so familiar...Look, knock it off. I'm trying to write a comment about my friend Jeff's blog and...No, he's not an imaginary friend, He's real...What do you mean prove it, he's got a blog! No, it's not an imaginary blog! What are you talking about? You are so annoying! Just shut up already! How am I supposed to write anything with you all making such a racket up there? What do you mean, "it's not your problem", I'll make it your problem. Just come down here and I'll brain you with a 2x4! I don't need an army! You are taking annoying to a whole new level! You're like the Star Trek of annoying, seeking out new worlds and new ways to annoy me. Don't call me bullet-head, I hated Picard. Oh yeah, we'll I'll just fire some phasers back at you and some photon torpedoes with it you Borg brains!!!
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