Speech-less

For the majority of these past few weeks (whilst I've not been updating my blog) I have been struck down with a nasty cold/flu. When I went to see the doctor, he described it as being, "Not bronchitis or pneumonia...yet." Yet?! What does that mean?!

One of the side effects that happened because of this nasty virus was that I lost my voice. Completely. For four days I couldn't form words with sound. I could whisper a bit, but I couldn't talk. At all. This was the first time in my life I've ever experienced what that was like. I literally had to text in sick to work.

I couldn't help but begin to think a lot about words and how we interact with each other through speech. The day I tried to whisper my way through work, I was shocked by how many people began whispering back to me. Eventually they'd ask, "Why are we whispering?"

Most of my writing in high school and early college took the form of poetry. I remember that for me the most daunting part of writing fiction was the dialogue. I didn't know how to begin the framework, let alone how to capture speech and translate it into story.

Truth is, dialogue can be really hard to write. Sometimes, the ebb and flow of conversation will come easy for me, but for the most part, it's still hard. And the framework, the he saids, she saids of it all still require a great deal of effort.

Conversations are unpredictable in real life and I believe they should also be somewhat unpredictable in writing as well. As a person, if I ask someone a question, I (usually) don't have a clear idea of how exactly they're going to answer. As a writer, I've got to both ask the questions and come up with the fresh answers. Some days, I think that may remain one of my greatest struggles as a writer.

Being without speech, it made me think a great deal about dialogue and about communication. One of my favorite things to do, especially at restaurants, is to observe and listen to other people's conversations. This drives my husband absolutely crazy, but I can't help myself. I'm curious. I like to wonder about their history, what brought these (2,3,4) people together for a meal. Not being able to use my own words, really made it clear how much we really do rely on our words. Even home alone, with only the dog and the bird, I didn't realize how much I still vocalize until I lost that ability.

It's a quiet world without words.

The whole experience really made me think about how I use words, how I waste words, how to make words count. I'm interested to see what that will mean for my NaNoWriMo project this year...

Only two more NaNoWriMo free days left...