Date: Tue, 19 Oct 1999 21:21:25 -0600 From: Robyn Herrington Organization: University of Calgary Subject: [WRITERS] SUB: HALLOWEEN CONTEST: Blank Fear Blank Fear Johnny, oh my Johnny, I know you don't understand what's going on with me. I'll try to explain. I might have time if the effect of the drugs I just took lasts. I've probably got an hour or so, then... if I'm not done explaining, I'll just have to try something else. I've been hiding my pills every day. Living with the effects of not taking them, but I'd rather be able to write to you for at least an hour one day than be slightly foggy every day. Besides, if I took these pills every day like a good little girl, the docs would be changing me over to something else by the end of the week. Drugs never work for long. The data just keeps pouring in through the cracks. I must be fooling the doctors. They think I'm getting better. I mean, they're letting me do some writing, aren't they? Even if it's only with a crayon. Never heard anything about the crayon being mightier than the sword, have we? Ha! I I think they're worried I'd kill myself with a pencil. Shows how much they think about it, doesn't it? If I was that desperate, I would paper cut myself to death. Not that I've thought about it. Killing myself, that is. Anyway... if the dosage of drugs I took today doesn't kill me at least I'll get to try to explain. Later they'll find this. I'm hoping they'll give it to you. They might not, but... well I'll guess I'll have to deal with that when the time comes. I used to wish I wasn't so blanked as a writer. Not blocked, but completely blanked. There'd be days when I'd write just the greatest stuff. Then... nothing. For weeks, months, even years. I wouldn't have a story idea, a fragment of a poem, not even a dirty limerick come into my head. Now I can't make them go away. Hour after hour my head is filled with epics, odes, song fragments... I can't get them out fast enough. I tried writing all of it down, but my hand would cramp and the muse would continue. I tried typing -- no old manual typewriter or electric for me, I went straight to the computer. I still couldn't keep up. I even tried the voice programs. You know, the ones on your computer that you train to understand you? I couldn't train them -- none of them could understand even the simplest phrase. None of it came out coherently, or even simply. "The quick brown dog jumps over the lazy fox." turned into "The expeditious mahogany canine vaults transversely the torpid sienna colored wild dog with a long bushy tail and pointy nose." Nothing worked. Not even getting someone to listen to tapes of me talking. A...a... oh what are they called? Stenographer? Typesetter? What was it? I can't remember... The words came too fast, too much. And worst of all? It was all junk. Utter garbage. Really really bad. If any of the stuff filtering out of my head onto paper was any good I'd be overjoyed. But no. This stuff wasn't even good enough to enter in that "Worst Story" contest they hold every year. And it's getting worse. I've got those thousand monkeys pounding away on typewriters in my head. Maybe someday they'll come up with Shakespeare, but until then I'll just have to go mad. And it won't be quietly either. The ideas are no longer limiting themselves to being written down. I've started to speak it. That's why I've sounded so strange lately, or looked like I've tried on a muzzle. I'm trying to keep it in. I'm trying, but it's getting harder and harder. Maybe this is what some of those street people have. That's why they wander around muttering to themselves. If it wasn't for you, I'd be out there now. Oh Johnny. The doctors here don't believe me. They think I'm hearing voices. I'm not! It's not voices, it's story lines, characters, plots, technical data, meter, writing styles -- and all of it coming so fast I can't catch it. Have you ever had a song fragment in your head that you just can't get rid of? That's what it's like. But in my case it jumps from tune to tune. First it's an idea about a science fiction story; halfway through that I'm getting all the different synonyms of orange, the synonyms of those synonyms and everything that rhymes with them -- including nonsense words! Then I'll be having some musings on how the blind see or experience color. They're all good things to think about, but they're totally incomprehensible because they stream through my head in a minute or less. And then it's on to something else. Why me? I ask myself that all the time. I just wished_yes, that's it. I wished too hard, in the wrong place at the wrong time. My memory is all muddled -- a side effect of having so much stuff in my head (and the drugs haven't helped much either). I think it started about three months ago. I went to this reading in... in... I remember bats and books and... it must have been... I guess it was around Halloween. It was in that bookstore on... oh some street downtown. There was this gal there who I had read before. She writes the most amazing stories. Mostly horror, but some other stuff as well. Science fiction I think. She was up there, closing out the night with her story. It was something about an evil power possessing one of the characters. All I know is that it was good. Better than good. And I sat there so jealous, so desirous of her talent, so needy... I think I took something from her. I didn't know it when I went home that night, no it took a couple days for the full impact. For those two days I was able to write -- normally! The things I wrote weren't great, but they weren't bad either. Then...then the rush started. At first I tried to handle it, but soon realized I couldn't. That's when I started with the drugs. That's all I remember with any clarity. Did you find me nearly overdosed on Valium or something? Did you tell me that? Or was it just another story idea? I think part of me reached out and grabbed at her talent. But, since I've never had good aim or much focus... Remember when we took that archery class? I kept hitting either the wall behind me or the wall on the other side of the room? Funny, the things I do remember... Focus. Focus. I must have grabbed at the research part of her talent. I know, sounds weird. But why else would I know all this technical junk, have all these story ideas, be seeing all these characters and places when I close my eyes? Too bad I can't formulate set down phrase precisely it into anything good. Like, there's this great story rolling around in my head about a gal who meets her true love on a planet very much unlike ours. She finds out he isn't what he appears to be, in fact he's_ it's gone. These ideas, they sneak up, give a few details and disappear. Then later they come back, go over those details again, give one or two more and vanish. I've tried to write it out but all that got onto paper was like "There was this lady from Biddy / Who knew this cute little ditty..." It's so frustrating. I can't... I don't want to... I... I don't know. Everything is escaping me. My parents think I'm nuts. Hell, everyone thinks I'm nuts. You think I'm nuts. Don't you? You must. I've seen the way you look at me sometimes. The doctors, I told you about them, didn't I? Didn't I? I think I did. Maybe I should read back... yes, I did. Why don't I remember that? Nuts. I am nuts you know. Totally bonkers. Crazy. Short a few bricks. Lights on, nobody home. Not the brightest bulb on the tree. Loony tunes. That's the mark of a good writer, isn't it? Am I right? Or write? Hah! Do you think someone like Stephen King is sane? How bout Clive Barker? Have you ever read their stuff? Talk about people loosing it_I mean losing it. Now there's a Freudian slip. They must be loosing it -- like water from behind a damn. Have you ever watched a barge go through a lock? They sit there and wait and wait and wait and wait for the water to rise enough so they can go on. Or, if they're going downstream, they have to wait for it to lower. The water, that is. The water has to lower down enough to equal the water downstream. Either way, when the water rushes out from the gates, its quite strong. Have I been holding back too much? Do I need open the flood gates? Maybe try it once these drugs wear off. If I remember. Remind me when you read this. What could do? Maybe I go completely insane, maybe itd cure the problem, maybe just die. May be good. Oh no. The drug effect is go ing. I can feel it, I can see it in my riting. Never long enough. Dont fear for me, Johnny. I'll bee okay You...you go on. Find somone whoo cant think in meter. Don't want anything too bad. You mite regret it. Look towards the cloulds, Johnny. Thats not write RIGHT, is it? Never could spell that word. Not a prob lem now. Its all drifting away...away with the cloulds_ away with the burdies. Nere more nere more. Some blackblack kind of bird sitting on some black kind of perch in some black house in some black woods quothing some nonsense ritten long ago by some crazy riter.. Rambling, I'm rambing rn't I?/ Right along the trail go I. I WILL CONCENTRATE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!@@@@@ Johnny. I'm tring I love you Johnny I will always luv u 2 bad you never Always know that No matter What appens to Me I am a writer I have brain full of ideas i get it onto paper Not brain cerebrum medulla oblongata gray matter in the skull pinky and the ideas it will kill me. It won't kill me!? I am a writier; -- I will fuffill my desity I write with wings of flight in autum light blank paper holds no fear no blANks no BLOCKS ABCDEFG... -- =====================***********======================= Robyn Herrington rmherrin@ucalgary.ca Editor: New Currents in Teaching and Learning/InfoServe University of Calgary Ph: 220-2561 Leadership lifts a person's vision to higher sites, raises a person's performance to higher standards, and builds a personality beyond its normal limitations - Peter Drucker =====================************======================