Source: Hubblesite.org

The cloud of gases in this picture taken by the Hubble telescope swirl and twist to create a landscape once  seen only in imaginations the imaginations of artists.  Looking back at the renderings of science fiction illustrators of the fifties and sixties, their visions captured details not yet seen by the human eye.  How were they able to do this without seeing the actual image?

The colors captivate my eye, and seeing them I can begin to build scenes in my head filled with detail and structure.  I can invasion a story with characters to act out the scenes.  Did Andre Norton feel this way?  Was she inspired in this manner to write her incredible science fiction and science fantasy novels and short stories?

I want to write; to put on paper the descriptions of the visions in my mind, but how?  I have many words, and I have the skills to put them together to form a sentence, but how do I release them?  I have always pulled away from labeling concepts, but now I suspect I have been wrong to do so.  Being able to identify a word as an adjective might well be the difference between gibberish and coherency.   I once relished the depth of a word.  I wanted to know the definition, the connotation and the denotation.  I love the way a word could change its meaning simply by its position in a sentence.  I grew up, and those rules became restraints.  I seek the lock to unchain them.

I realize that I do not create.  I see vision, and I attempt to match a word with a picture to build a description that someone who cannot see what I see can experience the image as I see it.  The urge to write can be painful in its intensity.  Years have passed, but the compulsion has not faded.  Compulsions can burn one up if not managed properly.

My compulsion mirrors the Hubble picture.  I sit at the center while my ambitions, feelings and memories whirl and tumble around me.  The heat of my personality, my life force flares and collapses, but the fuel within me has limits, and a will eventually burn out.  What shall I do?  When will I take myself seriously?  What lies behind the compulsion, and how do I learn to co-exist with it?

Finally, this photo captures a mere split second in time.  After the shot was taken, the form changed, the colors mutated.  That, I think, sums up what hinders me when I sit down to write.  I am dynamic, alive, nonstop breathing and moving, and not inclined to stop.  The visions in my mind are equally as volatile.  How does one lay out this running dialogue?

Questions, questions.  This is my dilemma, and my passion.