It's Alright

The words will come. Of course they will come, they have to come. It's what I have to do. It's alright, even things you have to do don't go on constantly. Do you eat without breaks? Are you forever sleeping? It's alright.

Still, it seems like something is missing. I don't even mind the overwhelming irrationality of this feeling, because I've always been overwhelmingly irrational. I have a need to do something I don't need to do. It's alright, though, because after you get over that part, I'm just a normal person, same as you.

If I tried to explain that part of me to you, you probably wouldn't understand it. I can tell as many people as I want that I love to write. I can patiently describe the excitement I feel when given a new challenge, a new perspective, a new voice. I could tell you over and over again, but you wouldn't feel it like I do. That's alright, though, because you don't need to. You just have to understand it's how I function.

I handed my papers to James once and asked him to pick out the qualities in my characters that resembled mine. It challenged him, and I know exactly why. He can read who I wrote about, and he can understand that these fictional characters are as real as ourselves, but he won't know what's going on in their mind. Only I know that. I could go into as much detail as I want about my characters, but even so, I leave out so many vital clues to their personality. Every character has part of me written into their blood. That's alright, though, because if I based every character on James instead of me, it would be painfully fake and plastic.

James doesn't write, he reads. My friends used to tease me about the boys in my writing clubs, and every week they tried to pair me up with a different one. They didn't understand, though. I already knew how to write, and I already knew how to take my writing to a level that no one else could manage. I didn't need another person with me that could do the same thing; what would we have to talk about? If he understood me completely, and I understood him completely, we would be remarkably bored with each other.

The strange thing about James was that I never thought about him as anything more than someone to discuss different views with until I already loved him. Weird how love creeps up on you like that. It's alright, though, because we are never bored with each other. Why is that? We never see things quite the same way, and so naturally we have to argue about which one is right.

James reads things from a ladder that I don't even know how to climb. He can look at my scribblings and tell me which metaphors I use when I'm in what mood. He can pick out a phrase and tell me what I meant by it, even if I didn't understand exactly why I wrote it. And he's not afraid to be harsh, either. "That's not an original one, Izzie," he'd say seriously. "You based that one completely of this movie such-and-such. And this one, it's far too jumpy. Don't try to even it out, because then it will make your characters flat. Start over."

He doesn't always know what he's talking about, of course, because he doesn't write. Sometimes I can take a story that he thought was a lost cause, and I can rewrite it to make it the best thing he's ever read.

The words aren't coming today, but that's alright. My tower is humid and uncomfortably warm, but I've got a window up here that I can look out of. James and I live in a tiny little white house right at the edge of a forest, and that part is cliche, I know. If I were a painter, it would be even too cliche to paint. It was the only house James could afford, but I didn't mind, because on the other side of this little white house there was a cliff, and below that, the ocean.

We discovered, after a few  months of living there, why exactly it had been so cheap. The winds were horrendous coming off the waters, and we lost electricity five times a week. It was never very warm, even in August, even when there was no wind. That was alright, though, because we were happy there, and that was all that mattered.

The best thing about our little white house was that it had a tower. A real stone tower that had a real spiral staircase and a real little room at the top, like in Rapunzel. I don't know why it was there, or who built it, I just knew that I loved it.

The words aren't coming today, but I can see James from my tower window. I could write about him. I have before, and then he's read it, and frowned at me for making fun of him. The only person who never has part of me in them when I write about them is James. When I write about James, I write about James, and that's it.

He comes up to see me in my tower. "How's it coming, Izzie?"

"It's not coming at all."

"Have you written anything? I want to read it."

"Nothing."

James doesn't believe me, and he starts digging through my paper mess. "Here's something," he calls. "'Izzie's Diary.' What's in here, Izzie girl?"

I laugh. "Even if there was anything in there, it'd all be writing ideas."

"True." He shuffles it aside and then comes to stand by me.

I lean against his shoulder. "Can we paint our house green?"

"Why?"

"Because."

"I think orange would be a better color."

"Stripes?"

He laughs.

We're quiet for a bit. I'm thinking about what to write, because I have to write. It's irrational. I love the word irrational. I had James paint it on the front of my tower door. He painted it green and orange, though, which bothers me every time I see it because "irrational" is a red and white word.

"It's too warm up here," James says.

"Go away, I have to write."

"Be that way." He hugs me quick. "See you later, Izzie."

He's gone, and I go over to my papers. I found another reason why I married him -- he makes me write. He'll read my story later and he'll laugh because he'll know who it's about, because sometimes I don't even try to fictionalize it. I'll hand him these very papers on which I am writing this very moment, and it will be a summary of the last hour. That's alright, though. It's alright.