{"id":81,"date":"2008-08-06T00:08:14","date_gmt":"2008-08-06T05:08:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/mojo\/?p=81"},"modified":"2025-07-31T16:15:08","modified_gmt":"2025-07-31T21:15:08","slug":"the-voices-in-my-head-tell-me-to","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/blog\/the-voices-in-my-head-tell-me-to\/","title":{"rendered":"The voices in my head tell me to"},"content":{"rendered":"

I call them my imaginary friends. When I talk about these people, my husband usually doesn\u2019t know if I\u2019m talking about someone real or not. Occasionally, he doesn\u2019t dare ask because he knows he should know<\/em> if they are or not. I\u2019d like him to be as invested in them as I am, but that\u2019s not possible. And while he really doesn\u2019t understand, he helps me hammer out details of their motivations and consequences.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t write about them because I want to; I write about them because I must. I am compelled. I don\u2019t think you\u2019ll find another writer anywhere who won\u2019t tell you he\u2019s compelled<\/em> to write.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

I\u2019d written 5 full-length novels between \u201992 and \u201996 (not counting my first effort, which, well, you know about first novels). Then, for about 5 years, I went without writing anything and I had ceased telling anyone I wrote anything ever. I had a giant mess of a plot I couldn\u2019t work out with a giant mess of an anti-hero\u2014<\/p>\n

\"Black-and-white
Knox Hilliard<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u2014and then life intruded and then I got married and then I had a baby, then I had another baby. I still thought about my imaginary friends occasionally, but with a sense of sadness, of loss. I felt as if they had abandoned me, so I avoided that section of my hard drive assiduously and devoted myself to the task of being practical<\/em> and making an effort to find some joy in it.<\/p>\n

Yeah, that didn\u2019t work.<\/p>\n

I started a business (not this one). It\u2019s creative. I knew I wouldn\u2019t make much money from it but it makes a little and I get to indulge my one other true passion. I enjoyed it. I still enjoy it.<\/p>\n

But not as much I enjoy my imaginary friends, who came back to me one night after I had been especially practical that week, topping the previous 4 years of excruciating practicality. I was tired and feeling unfulfilled, aforementioned creative business notwithstanding.<\/p>\n

So they made me pick up my pen again. Now I\u2019m involved with a \u201cnew\u201d set of imaginary friends, my old ones hanging around on the periphery, popping in the manuscripts as secondary characters. An ongoing epilogue without an actual epilogue.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t know if they\u2019ll ever let me go now.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I call them my imaginary friends. When I talk about these people, my husband usually doesn\u2019t know if I\u2019m talking about someone real or not. Occasionally, he doesn\u2019t dare ask because he knows he should know if they are or not. I\u2019d like him to be as invested in them as I am, but that\u2019s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[81,186,424],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-81","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-the-proviso","category-miscellaneous","category-writing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=81"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16995,"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81\/revisions\/16995"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=81"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=81"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=81"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}