Something to understand about writers.

Something to understand about writers.

We LIVE what we write. Sometimes it's reliving a traumatic moment, sometimes a pleasant one, sometimes one we simply dreamed in our never-ending boredom with reality. I've lived, in my mind, countless stories from being a small-town hero to cybernetic dragon skulls from the Great Beyond, whose tone, while not entirely without , was sure of one thing: there was nothing but the One Truth. "When we go, we go. When we break, we break. That's all we know." That was the voice of an army, the thudding drone at the conclusion of their transmission. They were fresh from the forge and still felt its fire but were hard, past their suffering, and sure of one thing. It was the voice of the human race, or one very much like it. The Cybernetic Dragon Skulls. They will march to eternity for as long as it takes, they are set in their ways, though naught but dark looms in their vision. Light reflecting nothing. Ashes falling from the furnaces. Warriors smelted from the finest mineral with the skull of the Human Race as their face for their presentation. They were ready. It's almost a declaration of war. There seemed to be no hope in any of those voices.

As writers, we live ARTIFICIALLY. We live in our minds, not our bodies' activities. We can be a dull lot. Some writers spend so much time with their own ideas, so many of them tragic. So many of MINE tragic. Tragic, or desperately hopeful, clinging to a handle over an abyss. While you live your real experiences with real people in real places with real things involved, we are living as if the events in our minds are playing out before us. Some of us are much more detached to the characters we create. When a writer tells young writers to make your characters SUFFER, they're challenging you to find a voice in the darkness that they couldn't find, a voice to lead us on to our destination, whatever it may be. They want you to love your characters deeply and with as much emotion as you can, FEEL their pain as they experience the nightmare you have created for them. So many voices have become so hopeless. If we really want to survive, we'll have to make a decision soon, because the war is really getting old to me. I'm ready for whatever we choose. No more of me.

I do not call this so much a plea, but more a DECLARATION. A statement, to be regarded without judgement. I hear the drum of their Skull clear as day through all their transmissions, their eternal optimism, their will to go on marching. Why do you suppose our parents made us go to war? Was World War One just a hand full of truly evil minds deciding to work together to see that the next generation should suffer? That makes more sense that what actually happened, but we are so far beyond that point now. We have come so far, yet still we quabble amongst one another. We need to just listen to the Cybernetic Dragon Skulls: what lies before us is greater than the pain we faced before. We need to keep going.

I'm not sure I want to think that. But who am I to impose upon humanity? Humanity is out of my depth. I can scarce calculate the simplest equation, how could ANYONE consider my voice?

We write to ourselves, to the next of us. To the ones who'll live what we lived. We need our work to evolve as we evolve, or we may not be worth the effort. We are supposed to be voices to a generation. We have such a great weight on our shoulders: the burden of Humanity. A chain hanging hard on out shoulders: that we go when we go, we break when we break, and that's all we know.

Forge on, Cybernetic Dragon Skulls. Maybe.