Wednesday, January 18, 2012

Fading into the echo... a writer's decline

Fading into the Echo…
Why is the thought of writing for a living the source of debate. Many people answer phones for living, drive trucks for a living, pretend in front of a camera and even sell their bodies for a living. What is so controversial for someone to put their heart on paper and their passion into fiction … for a living? YET, when we find ourselves out of money people are quick to say…you should have gotten a ‘real’ job.
Why is it expected that we shouldn’t plan to make a living as a writer. Why is it acceptable that the very people making a living off our writing can say to us or expect us not to do the same… with our OWN writing?
I think about all these questions daily when I see my babies up on Amazon, and I gnash my teeth at the thought that I have given them over to a literary-pedophile who has raped them and used them – selling them to the high bidder for entertainment. It’s true… metaphorically speaking… because when they age out; he just goes and get more. He never even sends the previous children back to their parent… he just ‘remainders’ them… ripping off their faces and throwing them in the trash as unidentifiable pieces of trash.
In the meantime I wonder why … how… did I let it happen? As I first see my phone shut off due to having no money to pay my bill, then my cell phone, then my internet…
I clutch my computer filled with other ramblings form my broken brain, and spirit… I wander into coffee shops seeking solace in free wi-fi… out of a ‘knee jerk’ habit; I check the stats on my babies… to see how they are holding up under the conditions … well I see. I see they are behaving and selling… despite the fact that I’m being told they are not.
It’s abusive… it’s a lie… and I’m breaking each day under the pressure I feel. What have I done? I should have listened when others told me to ‘present my babies to the world myself… don’t let someone do it for you… they will steal your babies from you’. I didn’t listen.
I feel like a failure …
I feel like a failure…
I think about my stomach churning as I get no returns on emails sent begging for my money – payment for my sins… the sin of selling my children into literary slavery… I wait for my money to come… money that I’m contractually entitled to yet… ‘denied’ with a harsh symbolic slap on the face. My stomach churns from worry… no wait… that’s hunger as I have no money for food…
That’s not a fan letter on my door… it’s an eviction notice. I gather boxes from the liquor store… empty ones, as my days of drinking away the guilt I feel being told day after day, I’m not working HARD enough to get my babies SOLD… I need to work harder… You’re so LAZY… you’re always whining… work HARDER… stand on the corner if you have to… so that the PIMP can continue to get rich… it will make it easier and you’ll get more money when he comes for your next child!
I fill the boxes up, without the means to even move them anywhere… Dragging the heavy boxes filled with notes and books and clothes and … things I could not sell on Craigslist… I don’t drag them to a moving van. I can’t afford one… I drag them to the trash bin… it’s the only free storage for my life now.
I beg my muse to come and but all she does is ask “Why? So you can throw away the gifts I bring? So you can prostitute my offers as you have the others?” I back away from her pointed finger… tossing and turning my sweated sleep… I bolt awake on the floor where I sleep now… I jolt awake from the nightmare. “No! I promise he will never touch anything you offer me again! I swear it! I’ll never give away my work or sale your precious words to the devil again!” But my voice fades like an echo… into the emptiness.
What will I do next? Where will I go? I’m a writer whose words have been stolen. I’m an artist whose only employment was their art. I’m a resume who has gaps you can drive a diesel truck through… as no takes ‘writer’ seriously as a ‘previous employment’… not when the writer is homeless, penniless and destitute.
How can you have been a bestselling author when you’re books didn’t sell!
Tell me how your books stay in print… and reprint… and reprinted again… when your books didn’t sell… I think that’s the real question here.
Shhhhhh don’t ask that question out loud don’t ‘him’ angry or he’ll…
He’ll what….
He’ll beat the other children… he’ll beat you…
Beat me…? Why waste your time beating the beaten… why waste your time?
I again wake up screaming… “Stop saying that! I’m not dead. There is a fight left in me… I’ll free my children… I promise. I’ll bring them home. Are you listening? Do you hear me…? ARE YOU LISTENING…? DO YOU HEAR ME?”
But again, my voice fades into the echo… of the emptiness.

© Michelle McGriff. I may have lost my mind but I didn’t lose my pen. 2012