Lost, With Purpose

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I have found myself in a wilderness. Story won't come. Neither purpose nor direction. My compass has stalled. A season of mental desert. Rather than wandering aimlessly, giving in to confusion, disorientation, fear and despair, I have chosen to be still and embrace this portion of the journey.

Instead of roaming the sands, scorched by a blazing sun and pricked by brittle brush underfoot, I sit in the shade of a great Tree and wait. Contemplating. Analyzing. Taking my own measure. Digging deep and finding how far I must go to find life-giving water. It is closer to the surface than I realized.

An asp lurks under the sand. It approaches unseen, but I hear its whispers. I must not listen. It speaks only lies. I slam my heel into the sand with a shout like a blade, and it flees. The breath, rustling in the leaves overhead, carries the truth. It is this, and only this, I must heed. I am no longer afraid.

This prolonged stillness may look like idleness, but it is hard work. My legs itch to run. My hands long to embrace a richer soil, my arms to swim in abundant water. But that is for later. This is my now.

I will be stronger when I walk out of here. Leaner. Purer. Perhaps even wiser.

In the meantime:  Do not panic. Pitch the tent. Gaze in awe upon unfettered stars and watch the sunrise ignite the dunes with roseate fire.

The Happiest Retreat

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People who knew me when I was a child say I was given to writing anyway, but all I can remember is retreating into my imagination to hide. Usually from social situations I didn't know how to handle. Tension at home. Boredom in school. A mind palace. Isn't that what Sherlock calls it?

I guess it made me one of those strange children. A classmate told me, just before we graduated, that she avoided me because she thought I was weird. "You used to talk to yourself."

Mortification! Did I? Then I remembered. Yes. I was so bored in class that I had entertained myself by watching my favorite movies in my head and quoting my favorite lines. In a whisper. But still my mouth had to have been moving, and this apparently had not gone unnoticed. Luckily by senior year I had grown out of it, to the point that I couldn't remember ever having done it.

Embarrassing moments aside, the mental palace remains a place of refuge, not to ignore the world, but to process it in healthy ways that my emotions can handle.

And out of it is birthed Story.

Midnight Companions

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May sleep never desert us

but if it does

may we never be found

empty-handed.

Lesson Learned

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To read and gain no depth, no new insight, no new wisdom makes for either a very poor book or a rather poor reader.

A few novels that have broadened my horizons:

To Kill a Mockingbird

The Help

The Joy Luck Club

The Book Thief

Angela's Ashes

The Woman Warrior

The Diary of Anne Frank

Tess of the D'Urbervilles

Why We Love Story

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Thoughts?

The series that comes immediately to mind is N.K. Jemisin's Broken Earth Trilogy. Stellar reads, all three. Explorations of heavy themes like racism, freedom, sacrifice, and consequences of messing with the planet, all in apolitical ways. Bald truth without preaching. Meaningful storytelling done right. The complex, convoluted, charged fuck-ups of history removed from real-world context and placed neatly into our laps in the form of a heartrending tale. Peel away the story's exquisite wrapping, and the author has challenged each reader to look directly at these approach-at-your-own-risk topics.

That's what the quote above means to me.

Ignore Everything and Read

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Ignore the failures, the regrets, the undone tasks, the ineptitudes, the stressful relationships, and sink into another world. For a little while. Until the courage to face it all arises. And definitely voice gratitude for the opportunity to be quiet and still delve into words and, thereby, find a bit of healing.

Currently (re)reading: Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

Currently reading: A Thousand Miles Up The Nile

The latter is a bit of research. I'm seriously toying with the idea of moving the setting of Blackbird from England to Egypt, and Amelia Edwards' account is the perfect resource to study and glean tidbits from.

Creating Legends

Seems I like writing about misfits whose destiny forges them into living legends.

First came Thorn Kingshield in the Falcons Saga--the easily embarrassed, always-late, scatterbrained scholar who ends up becoming quite the earth-shaker and storm-maker. Literally.

Now comes Sanjen Laurelius, a lute-player with a past, who possesses the singular talent of being able to manipulate his environment through the magic inherent in music. In his first (written) adventure, A Nocturne in Red, Sanjen is hired to save the City of Mages from a rampaging harpy. And in his second?

Lute, detail from "The Ambassadors" by Holbein, 1533

As soon as Nocturne was published by The Society of Misfit Stories in August, I started writing Sanjen's next adventure. He has no idea that participating in a bardic competition will lead to a complete shift in his destiny, and in the destiny of an empire.

Encompassing a far larger scope than Nocturne, the new tale (title undecided) currently clocks in at just over 60,000 words. So now the decision is whether to shorten it to make it more comfortably fit the word count of a novella, or to expand it and turn it into a full-length novel. Or to just say screw it, and let the story be the length it naturally is.

Anyway, legends... I have big plans for Sanjen. He no longer gets to remain the obscure tavern performer. His stage is about to expand exponentially.

Good thing characters can't read the minds of their creators. They'd run screaming in terror, right over the edge of the page.