It is a fair thing to say, that I must blog for you each day. It is as tragic as it is true, but authors fear their readers, too. I fear and crave their gaze on me, as I hide behind my keyboard keys.
Have I not given them enough? I ponder. For surely, everything I have to say is in now inside my paper tray. Those stories I have given voice, slaved over, polished and refined, until my fingers bled and died. And every word inside those pages was laboured over, reared and nurtured.
So what more does the reader want from me? I cry out loud for none to hear. I look around the empty room, where I have written dawn till dusk. And understanding come to me…
The author fears that which she cannot see.
Aye, it is true, just bear with me. What makes an author, dare I ask? Days which turn to months, which turn to years, sitting alone inside an empty room, creating worlds … rather than living in one. My friends are few and close. I seek out quiet, empty bars, and private walks in distant lands.
The reader is a friend we fear to meet, the dragon we seek to conquer. They are the ones who’ll judge us, love us, hate us; the ones who’ll save or slay us. The reader is that beautiful stranger we fear to approach. It is for them we write, for them we bare our soul. And it is them we fear to face the most, for when they look at us with their discerning gaze, all insecurities we hide emerge from those dark bottomless depths.
And yet, fear is a potent force, one we shall meet in full, nonetheless.
For now, apologetically, I slink away. I dare say many authors feel that way.
