What is June for in your world? Feel free to link to your answer below, or leave a comment in the the comment section: now accessible through clicking post title, or clicking the link in the post’s left hand sidebar. Hope your weekend is a sweet one. Cheers.

As a child I was always a storyteller. Some of my imaginings were so vivid that I would share them, oh so earnestly, truly believing they were real. No little Kimberly, the Easter Bunny never asked you to help him paint his eggs. No, you never found a mysterious cottage on your neighbour’s small acreage. No, there were no strange shadow beings hiding in the boy next door’s crawl space, chasing you and your friends out with their long fingers and unearthly moans. No, you can’t fly by pushing buttons on a telephone. They were all just dreams and fancies.

But dreams and fancies have a life of their own at times, and this is what I’m discovering. That words, the right words, can make them real. Can bring them to life in the same way my young imagination once did. Yesterday I wrote a scene and I could see it, smell it, feel it as I wrote. Just a story, yes. Just words on a screen. But real nonetheless. And I realized that this is the feeling I’m chasing. Not the nailing down of plot points, the story arc, the perfect bit of dialogue or description. I want that feeling of life pouring from my fingertips. I want to paint oceans and forests on my mind’s canvas. I want to breathe life into characters who will seem so real that people will want to hit them or hug them or shout warnings or curses at them. I want to write stories which, whether silly or dramatic, make people FEEL.

It’s a lot to want. It’s a sort of lust for power, I think. And maybe that’s why it’s so hard to step forward and admit how desperately I want it. I feel like a monologuing super-villain, sharing her dastardly plan with the world. Yes, I’m going to work and slave. I’m going to write and rewrite and revise dozens upon dozens of times until I get it just right. Until I take control of your feelings and use them to serve my own nefarious purposes. Mwahahahahah! I am writer, hear me cackle maniacally!

Sometimes I feel like the stories bouncing around in my head, clamouring to be written, have all been written before. Literary history is replete with ordinary people suddenly made heroes. With shy glances and the sudden blossoming of love. With spectacles and wonders. With worlds that exist only in the confines of human imagination.

The fabric of human ingenuity has been recycled countless times. As I piece together the quilt of ideas that is my tale, I recognize the faded colours and worn edges and I begin to feel weary. Useless. I find myself yearning for something new. Something that is uniquely my own. I want to spin new thread, deftly weave it on the loom of my storytelling. I want to create the fabric that other stories will be cut from.

And I smile, and shake my head a little at my grand dreams. And I write again. Piece my quilt. See how the colours and textures of it come together to make something new. Not shiny and glittering new, but new enough. And then I laugh as I write about a radioactive toilet plunger bestowing super powers. Old fabric used in new ways. Yes. That will do.