I am trying to find the space to write.It's not a physical space though, it's a space within me. I know it exists, I have been there many times before but for some time now it has eluded me. No more. I am here now, this is the world I live in, the world I chose and it is up to me to to find a way to adapt. I need to find the words that meet the requirements of the world I am in.So, with no further ado I embark upon a mission to recapture the lost moments, the hidden words, that have lain just beyond my grasp. From this Sunday onward I plan to embark on a journey that shall change who I have been for the better. I will take a large step towards something I have always believed in but never been brave enough to achieve. I will live my life as a writer.
Let me tell you a little of what this will entail and why I have chosen to publish it in JAM. Living my life as a writer does not mean locking myself in a room ad writing. Yes, there is a lot in my head; characters, scenes, magic systems and more but being a writer, for myself, is more about exploration. When I wright I am drawing from everything around me and it changes the way you look at everything. Just think about it. You are walking down a street in Tokyo. Bright neon lights. A myriad of people and movement. Strange sounds and sights. The smells that assail your nose. If you open your eyes and mind, as a writer (perhaps as a traveler) suddenly these images become a thousand possible stories. Possible dramas unfold from the way the darkly clad youth leaning against the brick wall casually, perhaps trying to look nonchalant, slowly puffs at his cigarettes. You catch him glance momentarily at the briefcase carrying woman and he eases himself off the wall in pursuit. The story begins.
If you open your writers mind suddenly the true potential of a place you are in, your new world, leaps into reality. Think of walking down that road near that temple that is just round the corner from your house (I live in Japan so that's actually something that is real). The temple is just across from a seven eleven on a pretty major street, so it kinda takes away the glamour a little, or it would. If you open up your writers mind, what I hope will soon simply become my mind, then it is the easiest thing to strip away the sounds of traffic. Tear up the pavement and leave the trodden earth and cart tracks. The houses fall away expanding the small garden into the vast area it once was, clean shaven monks tending the crops in the rice paddies below. In a moment you are transported to a whole new world and it can be the smallest thing that can trigger the moment. A piece of broken pottery almost entirely obscured by dirt and moss. Or the first blossoms of on the ancient cherry tree by the entrance way. It could be anything, it's just a matter of not being afraid of your flights of fancy and letting the writer within become you. I think, and it is a hope I have fostered since high school, when I wanted nothing more than to be a traveling story teller, that if we allowed ourselves to let our imaginations run free more, let our internal writers become more of us than we do, then perhaps hope would return to this world.
