Those difficult moments of emotion. No one doubts the power, science, and genius of words except in these moments. We stumble foolishly. "I'm confused, just so confused." We say the same thing over and over. And never say anything at all. Mean slips through our fingers.
When our throats clog. When our tongue capsizes. When our vocal cords go taunt and all sounds are snuffed out.
In those times we often find that holding hands, touching a shoulder or a cheek, kissing a brow, brushing noses provide salvation. It saves us where words have failed us.
Those times are difficult for a writer. What do we say when we know there's nothing we can say?
This is why eulogies are so taxing. And why we are painfully helpless when trying to explain why we love our beloved. This is why all new mothers can do cry.
Aghh! Excruciating!
As writers, we feel compelled to pin these glorious moments to the page, because they are life and we have committed ourselves to capturing life. What can we do, though, to capture such incomprehensible moments? Each writer much face this; we can't just shelve the subject. It's an additional Everest to the Everest of surviving wordless moments.
There are only so many ways of saying your characters as speechless. That they've reached a moment when living feels like suffocating. The reader can plainly see that you are the speechless one. Sometimes readers can be merciless.
We fiction writers must learn from our poet brothers. They've been endeavoring to do this for centuries. And many succeed. (Show-offs.)
Study poetry. Learn to capture the emotions for which we have no words by manipulating image and sounds, rhythm! Work the words, dig in as with clay, with feeling. Shout! Drive! Never think big enough. Go for the superlative. Awesome, in no small words. Grip! Clench, you! Write until your veins burst in splendor like beating wings.
When you've written until it hurts, you may have succeeded.
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