Writers and Walls

    I'm not a sharer. I never have been. Don't get me wrong; I highly enjoy talking about myself, but not if that includes telling people everything. I build walls. I'm not ashamed of my walls; I built them for a reason.
    I do share some things. I share the safe stuff. I share the stuff that sounds personal but really isn't, the stuff that might touch your heart, but won't freeze my vocal cords on the way out. And every time I think I'm ready to tell someone one of the dangerous things, my voice fades away and I end up saying something else like "never mind."
    It's easier to put up walls, to surround the pain, and the fear, and the damage with stone and steel. Telling people terrifies me. Telling people makes it real, or real all over again. Telling people gives them the opportunity to downplay my suffering, or look at me like I'm a seven-foot-tall, mohawked pigeon riding a unicycle (and you are welcome for that mental image), so I have devised a way of getting it out of my head and into the world safely: I hide the wriggly, and scratchy, and scary stuff in the dialogue of my characters and in the plot lines of my stories. I know, it's not really sharing, but at least I'm putting it out there...where no one will be able to discern which aches are mine and which aches are fiction.
    All writers do this. I don't have any quotes to back that up. I don't need them. All writers do it, or all writers worth their salt do it. If a writer doesn't pour the painful pieces of her/his soul into her/his work, she/he clearly doesn't understand the gravity and intimacy of a story.

    That's the power of literature: We pick up a book, and we hold in our hands the heart of another human being, sometimes a human being who left this world centuries ago. Literature is the direct connection of one soul to another. How beautiful is that? How miraculous!
    This is the burden writers carry upon our poor shoulders. This is why writing terrifies me. I adore it, but, let's be real, it's petrifying. Through my words, through the words I have haltingly, obsessively, and lovingly tied together I am giving faceless people, who have never met me, and possibly will never meet me entry into who I am. I am giving them a sledgehammer to knock down my walls.
    When you pick up a book, if the writer has sewn her/his own soul into the pages, you'll know. You can feel it. It's a sixth sense situation. And if that is the case, if you can feel the pulsing of a heart in your hands, your hands which are so useful for crushing and grinding and wounding but which are equally good for building and comforting, try not to be too harsh. Try not to be too judge-y. Consider yourself privileged; they broke down their walls for you. They let you into their twisty brokenness in the hopes that it would help to heal yours.