The blank page

There's that old question, 'In a perfect world, who would you invite to your dinner party?' People tend to choose people such as Nelson Mandela or world leaders whom they admire, which makes sense. Me? I'd forgo the dinner party for one really good, long meal in a quiet restaurant with the superb Irish novelist, Colm Toibin.

It's not just that I enjoy his novels so much; that I find him such a skilled writer, but also that he is so generous in sharing his practice and thinking with a wider audience. Since my thoughts and his thoughts often seem to collide, it would be so comforting to talk to him one-on-one and get his reassurance that my ideas, small in a way, very female thoughts and preoccupations, are worthy of exploration in story form. I think he'd say to me something like,

'Yes, forget the literary theory that you've been taught. That's no use, quite right. Those thoughts that have been simmering in your head for years, have the confidence to put them down on the blank page; fill it up with details of how your protagonists thinks and show, page by page, in a progressive rhythm how her mind and her behaviour starts to shift.'

I'd nod and say,

'That's okay? I don't need to be more clever than that? No back story? I can in fact just lay out the story scene by scene, slowly watch her evolve and transform...?'

And he'd smile and then look serious before he said,

'Absolutely. No back story. You don't need car crashes or fires. Just let her go about her days; that's fine. Don't trouble yourself with similes and metaphors; that's not your thing and it isn't required. Let your reader morph into the protagonist and let them come along with her, support her even when she's not behaving well. Don't worry about that. Trust your instincts. Stop taking advice from others when your instincts are working just fine.'

And, he'd emphasize the fiiiiiine in his gorgeous Irish accent and smile, and I'd look at him as the literary genius that he is and feel a glow of relief and gratitude that someone in the world took the trouble to put another writer's mind at ease.

But, more than that, I'd love to talk to him about his self-knowledge that he has different elements of him that can't really be fused together. My goodness, I relate to that. And, I'd love to discuss with him that sense of his separateness to other people; those moments when he walks by them and wishes, for that moment in time, that he could be them. I heard him say recently that he'd passed a group of revellers drinking beer on a Friday night in Dublin and he envied them their lives in that moment, when he, shopping in hand, was going home alone to work some more on his book.

Some university researcher recently wrote to me and asked me to complete a survey about why I wrote on the Internet. I started the survey, it seemed not too much to ask, until it dawned on me that the question was imbecilic, self-evident, and that I would decline to co-operate.

I write because I must write. A fully formed, integrated person is unlikely to have the need to write but a person who feels compelled to investigate not just their own lives but the lives of others has no option but to write. I don't write because I need people to respond and my lack of comments on the posts make that clear. I continue to write regardless of lack of comments. I write on the Internet in order to have an audience, naturally, but it can be a silent audience, just as a novel writer has, mostly, a silent audience.

At the heart of every piece of writing - be it a journal entry, blog post, a short story or a novel - is a preoccupation with something about living life. It might be a current pre-occupation with an issue such as loss, or (dis)connection, or silence and its effects, or some element of sexuality that needs unravelling in the writer's head. It's their way - my way - of expressing those thoughts that ramble about in the head and need some answers, exploration, breaking down, breaking open; moving past.

One of the elements of writing that has really troubled me is the morality of writing about characteristics, quirks and idiosyncratic aspects of people that I know. There was lots of discussion about that in my writer's course and I left the course with the sense that it was all too dangerous and maybe immoral. 'Not at all', Colm would say to me over the dessert. 'If you are not prepared to write about what you know, see, hear, and live, then I'll see what I can do about getting you into Law where you can put your morality to work. You're not a writer if you are skeamish about that.'

I'd give a quiet 'hooray' when he'd say that and I'd press on, a little less scared about the consequences of people finding themselves in my book, in some shape or form. 'I'm afraid it is part of being a writer', I'd explain to them when the complaints come in, 'that I use the material that surrounds me.' (Still, it terrifies me, that they'd know my thoughts in this way...)

I sometimes listen to a female friend speak, a happy sort of women, preocuppied with pleasurable endeavors such as planning the next holiday or shopping expedition. Or, those women I know that enjoy spending their time playing tennis and bridge. I so often think, 'Why can't I be more like them? Why does the thought of Bridge fill me with dread?' Should I share this thought with Toibin he'd probably take his hand up to his bald head and then bring it down again and make a sort of claw with his fingers, as he in inclined to do when making an important point.

'You can't be what you aren't. Writers tend not to be fully baked, you see, not integrated. That's why we can morph into other people, get inside their heads. We can't be like them. We must be solitary a good deal of the time. We must fill blank pages and that is all there is to it. Make peace with it. You can't change it.'

The advice is not unlike that I have been given for years here, in this power dynamic arena. 'You're designed to be an objekt. No thinki is best for cindi'.

It's not entirely possible to stop thinking, for me at least; not just random thoughts about 'to do' lists, but thoughts about characters and why they do what they do; how they think; what matters to them and what will happen to them.

So, the opportunity to close off the mind, the opposite of endless thoughts, is a great relief. It is, in fact, more than a relief. There is a feeling of being moored again; no longer swimming about in a turbulent sea, but tied to the pier; anchored. There is a sense, a visceral sense, of being cared for and understood for the entity that cindi is, in love with the no thinking, deeply felt physical state. There is a peace that transcends over her; a state to which  I am always going to want to return.

 It's a funny thing but it doesn't really matter, I don't think, that nearly everyone doesn't get that; doesn't get who we really are and what we really need to do, so long as someone gets it; so long as we can make peace with ourselves. People can't change us all that much and that makes sense given the struggle that we have making changes in ourselves. I have had a pen in my hand since the earliest age, my mother tells me, so it makes sense that I feel compelled to spend time with the blank page. It, I, must be filled.