Meaning of a Username (Musings about 'silent' pages)

At a glance, my username doesn’t make much sense. At least when in reference to me, as a person. Whether it’s in real life or online, I tend to ramble. I go on and on, following certain ideas, usually not caring very much whether what I’m saying makes sense to anyone who has the misfortune of being around at the time. Usually I quiet down once the glazed, stunned looks cross their faces.
That’s when I’m talking. About… Forty-three percent of the time?
The rest of the time, I am more quiet. But after a few days of trying out ‘silentpages’ as my username, I started to doubt myself.
“I’m not really silent,” I said to myself with a groan. “What was I thinking?” I yearned for the comfort of my old username – the one I’d been using since I was eleven. But that username didn’t really fit me anymore either, now that I’d given up my near-obsession with horses. So I was left with a dilemma. Go back to the old username? Maintain a misnomer? Make a second attempt at finding a new username?
I remained silentpages.
And now, months later, after rolling ideas around in my head for a while, it’s finally clicked. The idea that first started floating around in my head back when I began looking for a new username, but more clear now. More concrete. I’ve finally started to understand exactly what feeling I was trying to get across. The two words had such a ring to them at first that it drowned out their true meaning. Now, the ringing has subsided and I’m finally ready to try to write out that meaning and explain it to others.
Silent pages.
Picture watching a writer or a reader from the outside. Aside from flickering eyes and maybe some fidgeting, or maybe a twitch of a smile or a crease of the brow, they are intent on what they’re doing. Rustling pages, or the tapping of a foot, or maybe the scrawl of a pen on a page are the only sounds in their space.
They’re silent. And so are the clean, crisp pages of their book or notebook.
But beneath the silence. Beyond the printed word. Words, phrases, ideas, pictures, plots… They’re all being channeled through the mind of the reader or writer.
Beneath those silent pages, there are wars and weddings. Great joys and great tragedies. Battles and parties. Shipwrecks and festivals. Storms and grand parades. Races. Revenge. Hate. Love.
There is screaming, singing, shouting, fighting, loving, crying, sobbing, shrieking, groaning…
And there is laughing.
Stories are loud, noisy things. Whether you’re reading them or writing them, there’s always a sense of chaos there. Even the most well-crafted and planned out novels might at least seem chaotic in places because of all the excitement and intrigue that can sweep up a reader and glue their eyeballs to the page until the last triumphant war cries have died away. Which means that the spontaneous, wild rough drafts that spring from our own ink-stained fingers make just as much – if not more – sound!
Even tense or sorrowful scenes, like executions or characters’ death beds, can make noise. Or, they feel like they should make noise. Weighty silences that make our hearts pound. Or the heavenly chorus of angels that you can imagine in the back of your mind as two characters have a loving, peaceful, quiet moment together.
Maybe it’s not sound so much as it is emotion that these stories bring out in us. Whatever the case, I’m sure I’m not the only one who’s ever wondered what I look like from the outside when I’m lost in a story, planning tornadoes and massacres and celebrations.
“They have no idea,” I think with a little inward smile, “what a whirlwind of thoughts is racing through my mind.”
They probably think that I’m contemplating something boring.
And I think that’s the idea I was trying to capture when I decided on the username ‘silentpages.’ From the outside, writers and readers are generally quiet. Silent. At least when they’re in the process of writing or reading. But under the surface, of us and the book’s pages, there’s so much going on. So much activity, and emotion, and noise! Enough to make our hearts pound and our pulses race.
And aside from that occasional twitch of the lips or crease of the brow, an observer might never be able to tell.
Silent pages. They capture worlds of noise. They can blow you away without making a sound.
So. Maybe my username fits me after all. And not just me, but every writer. Every reader, for that matter. For every person who’s ever been called ‘quiet’ when so much is happening under the surface that no one sees…

I thought about this idea for a few days before I started to actually get my thoughts down in print. More like months, actually. Ever since I started to think up ideas for a new username, but maybe even before that. I hope I’ve made sense. I hope I’m not the only one who understands what I’m trying to say. I hope I’m not the only one who hears the noise that’s under these pages…
But I hope that if there are people out there who’ve thought like this, but couldn’t really put it into words before - like I couldn’t for so long (and for the record, I still feel like I’ve done a bad job expressing myself in this) – that… Hm… That they liked it? That doesn’t seem like the right words for it… That they could relate to it?
Maybe it’s just because I’ve been getting so little sleep over the past few weeks (entirely the fault of me, books, solitaire, and my abilities to procrastinate homework) but I’m getting that feeling again. Maybe you know it? The one where you get the sense you’ve just come up with something that you can only hope will sound really profound and you can bring it up again in interviews someday when you’re published. The one where you get really excited about writing and reading and stories in general, and you start to really, really, really want to write. Not necessarily get published, but just to write. To get your thoughts down… Tell your tales… Make some noise without making a sound…
Yeah, I’m definitely sleep deprived. XD Which is probably why I can’t really end this rambling, thought-jumpy musing session thingamajig.
So… I’m going to end this, post it (without doing more than skimming through it maybe once to work out the formatting stuff) and then go to sleep. This is the end. It’s kind of been the story of my username that I just figured out recently, and it’s kind of been me going on about nothing... But… Yeah…
…
Curse you, sleep deprivation and your way of making me incapable of writing endings. XP
Thanks for reading.

Well, up to the "afterword thing" it actually sounded very good and not too rambly at all! Although that could be because your style of writing reminds me of mine - honestly this sounded very much like one of my blog entries (not in content, just in style). I haven't actually thought those things before, per say, but you had great points that had me nodding my head in agreement. The only thing I can say about this is that maybe it would do better as a blog entry, unless you just wanted comments on your ideas, because it really does sound like one (and I hope you don't take that as a bad thing, because it's not meant to be).

~Blue

I know exactly what you mean. These thoughts have run through my head before. It's depressing, at times, when there are such wonderful things that remain unseen by the world. It's also a pretty amazing and beautiful thing. Think of the power a single page holds. It can be monumental. It's good to know I'm not the only one who contemplates this, and that other people will be able to see and read these thoughts. I'm really glad you wrote about this! :3

>>Annie<<

>Note: Do you narrate your life in your head? It's a random question, I know, but I know so many writers who do this, and I think it will one day become FACTUAL that most writers do this. Factual.

Wow, this really interested me, because I have never really thought that hard about usernames before. I just thought: "Hey, I'm a scorpio, so I'll call myself scorion, except I'll spell it wrong!" It was like talking to you, reading this, and I agreed so much.

When I was 11, I was sitting at school, writing one of my stories in a notebook, when three boys came over, and one of them said: "Is this really what you do when you go home? Write this crap?" I fumed. I really did, I wanted to punch him because he hadn't even read my story!

So, yes I know exactly what you mean.

Razcoon wrote:>Note: Do you narrate your life in your head? It's a random question, I know, but I know so many writers who do this, and I think it will one day become FACTUAL that most writers do this. Factual.

Well, I do it. Or used to. I sometimes think of myself as "she."

This makes my username seem inordinately shallow. I chose it because it sounded nice and I like the colour blue. xD

I opened this expecting something ... well, not that great. After all, what can you really write about a username? I stand corrected and I apologise. This was genuinely interesting, and as well as that it was well written! Take it out of context, remove the username references and it could actually be incorporated into some sort of vignette.

Well, yes, very interesting. I don't think you need to add in an afterword, it's nice as it is.

Thanks, guys. ^^ And yeah, I think I probably will be posting it on my blog at some point... But I was basically just trying to capture all the stuff I'd been thinking about lately, and at the time it felt more like... Not really an essay, but something more substantial than just a simple blog entry. *shrug* Sometimes I think too much of my writing, and other times I think too little of it... Mostly I think both of those things at the same time. XD

And yeah, I've narrated my life before. ^^ Or tried to turn my life into a kind of story that's more interesting than... Well... Than my life. XD