My wild words are the words that want to be heard and seen — as opposed to the ones I want to write. They are the words I keep caged in the depths of my soul. They are the ones I sometimes hear crying, or, even worse, the ones that have forgotten how to cry. They are the words that leak out, or that sabotage my life, in so many realised and unrealised ways. They are as often words of joy and peace as they are words of sorrow or anger.
My wild words are the one story that needs to be told — the answering call to the yearning of my heart and soul. There are as many kinds of wild words as there are creatures on this earth. They vary as much in appearance as the elephant and the mouse, and they behave in as many different ways. Wild words are not necessarily big, loud, or emotional. They might cause a stampede when they arrive, but it’s equally likely that they’ll slide in quietly, flutter their way onto the page, or simply jostle at my elbow.
My wild words can be fiction or non-fiction, and they transcend the distinction between the two. They can be poetry or prose, and they transcend that distinction too. They can be profound, but they don’t have to be. Sometimes they prefer to be shallow, fickle, or superficial. They take no account of ‘the market’ — but then, the greatest novelists never did either. They don’t necessarily use the writing tools I’ve been taught, nor do they reliably follow ‘good’ writing practice. And yet, strangely, they often become what others call ‘great writing’ without any of those supports.
Sometimes it is agonising and exhausting to give birth to these words. At other times, it is a joyful experience, as they slip out almost unaided.
The one thing I can be sure of is that they won’t be what I expect. What I expect is what my thinking mind encourages me to write. That thinking mind prefers tame words, because tame words are no threat. They allow me to stay safely within my comfort zone. Writing truly wild words means facing fear. And what my thinking mind fears, it will not help me to conceptualise. That means I have to find another way in.
For now, the only thing I know for certain is that choosing to meet and reclaim my wild words is to embark on a journey into the unknown — with all the hopes and fears that such a journey inevitably brings.