Migration

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Excerpt: I Have Only Gone Mad

We are skipping ahead for this excerpt. Today I felt like writing very much out of order. I won't give any more clues about what's going on here. As it stands, the only spoiler is related to a character's existence, so I don't think this one warrants a spoiler tag. I selected the passage carefully so as to avoid major spoilers. And I'll talk about this character, Astlyr, a lot. So here's your first glimpse of her, interacting with Euryale, who we'll hear from now:

I am gasping for lungfuls of air, the world is spinning on its head, and nothing will ever be the same again. The wet, slick accumulation on the ground chills my feet to burning numbness. I plunge my hands in, too, as I sink to my knees. Face to the earth, my stomach heaves, but nothing comes up. I have eaten nothing since the night before, I remember, and had very little to drink since then. The cold swirls around me like a mad dancer, and I rock back on my heels after the spasms have subsided. It has been only moments since I bolted, and Astlyr is beside me now, her face a shrine to worry. She is holding a thick cloak which she wraps around my shoulders, helping me to my feet and back inside. My glimpses of Rania’s face as she busies herself tending to me give me the impression that my actions have marked me as possibly unhinged, but entirely pitiable. Her concern does her credit, but I am hollow and afraid. 

They have sat me in a chair by the hearth, the one I think usually reserved for Rania’s uncle Sjurd, and I can feel the warmth begin to spread through my extremities only by the sharp pain of biting cold facing and falling to the heat of a roaring fire. Astlyr’s face floats in front of mine. Her hand touches my cheek, my temples, my chin; she lays it against my forehead, feeling for fever. I am not ill. I have only gone mad. I shake my head, trying to tell her, but my tongue is lost in the caverns hollowed out beneath my skin. My hand fumbles under the cloak as I try to lift it to take hers. 

“Astlyr,” I whisper through the fogging haze around my mind. “Lie to me.”

Status report! Today I wrote over 1,500 words just for the story - not counting the earlier blog post. A very satisfying day of hard work. I feel like I am improving, if slowly. There will be off days, I know. But there will also be days like today, and I think that will be good enough for me.

 

Middle-of-the-Night Magic and Miscellany

“You never have to change anything you got up in the middle of the night to write.” 

― Saul Bellow

While that's not strictly true all the time, I quite agree with the writer's sentiment portrayed here. When you're struck by inspiration - especially in the middle of the night - it is invariably good material, even if you can't always communicate it to paper well enough. That's more a matter of skill and developed habits, I believe.

“Your intuition knows what to write, so get out of the way.” 

― Ray Bradbury

It absolutely figures, you know, that I'd be up in the middle of the night dreaming up ideas for not book one, not book two, but book three of this saga. My brain is skipping that far ahead. And it follows, of course, that I would be thinking of the moon goddess Selene late at night. And from there it's no surprise that I would be unable to keep from thinking about plans for moon-related things in my story. The moon is waxing now, the time for new beginnings, growth, new intentions... How perfect and how in tune with my own workings.

Don't ever let anyone tell you that writing is not magic. Everything we do is magic, fueled by intention and purpose given direction. That's what magic is. When I write, I use my intuition extensively. My book knows where it wants to go, it's just a matter of me listening and then taking it there. I frequently make use of my muse in the form of flipping a coin, generating a random number, and most especially asking questions with my Tarot cards. If you're not pagan (or don't use Tarot cards), and I'm sure most of the people who will read this are not, I want to explain a little about that process and a little on the subject of my religion for those who might be curious. Why is that important? Well, it informs a lot of my writing, just as Christian writers might write stories which lean heavily on God's presence in their characters' lives. The only difference is, I am pagan, and my gods have more varied faces and personalities.

I believe in the gods, plural. I believe in the single, all-encompassing source of divinity from which all life and consciousness stems and to which it returns, including the gods themselves. Typically, in my worship, I speak of a Goddess and a God who encompass all the myriad faces of the named gods and goddesses, but I also work with a few goddesses and gods who I resonate with. I am very fond of Inanna and Brighid as well as Dionysos and to some extent Pan. I will not claim an especial relationship with any of them, not yet. In many respects I am still quite in the dark and brand new to all of this, though I've identified as pagan for many years now. I'm not good at talking to gods, at opening up that dialogue. But I hear them, in a way, when I gather inspiration for my novels. I hear, especially, my muse, who tells me how the story goes when I lose the thread of it. By using my Tarot cards, a deck consecrated to my use, I can ask questions pertaining to character personalities, events and timelines, and other details, and receive answers in the form of intuitively-selected cards laid out in order. For a simple question, I'll draw 3-5 cards and arrange them however feels right - usually in sequential order from how they were drawn. Sometimes I need to switch one or two around before I turn them face up.

When I am ready, I turn the cards over and read the message within. The message has layers and layers of meaning, and I pick out the ones I can read and the ones that seem relevant. It's really like being a child watching a Disney movie - there are things in there that only the grown-ups catch, but you can still get a lot out of it as a young'un. So then I take these answers to my questions and I run with them. My imagination takes off in twelve different directions, just as intended, and I write down everything I can, including the names and order of the cards drawn and the question I asked, so that later I can go back, re-interpret, and discover more meaning.

There's nothing scary in it. That's really all there is to it, and you can call the force behind the inspiration whatever you wish. For me, it is my muse, my goddess. Maybe to you it seems like pure imaginative association. Whatever you believe, it works for me. I don't often consult my cards for answers, because the muse drives me pretty hard and most of my ideas sprout organically from reading new information, or helpful conversations with friends, or they wake me up at 1:30 in the morning on Imbolc. (Blessed Imbolc to those who celebrate it! 🕯💛🕯)

Because of my beliefs, I approach writing about the gods a little differently. It's why my research is so important to me, why just Googling information is not good enough. I need to know the myths inside and out, I need to breathe in myth and exhale story. It's important to me that I do as much justice to the gods as possible when they come into play in my story. Even when I twist things, I try to do so respectfully. It's just a different approach. To me, it's the difference between lip-syncing and singing your heart out.

I'm aware that in sharing detailed information about my beliefs, beliefs that are most likely not held by a majority of readers, I may drive some people away. That's okay; you probably wouldn't like my work anyway if this makes you uncomfortable. Thanks for coming in, be well on your journey. This is who I am, and this isn't the time to censor that. This is the time to find deeper layers of myself and expose them, raw, in my writing and my blogging. So yes, I am proudly pagan, and it influences my work greatly in both theme and approach.

Tonight I've been thinking, as I mentioned briefly earlier, about book three of this saga. It involves a young girl named Menedora, whose name is modified slightly from Menodora, and a disappearance. I can't say much yet, because this is so far ahead in the timeline of events that I've yet to write that saying much of anything would give away earlier plot resolutions. I can share one small idea, however. The voice of the moon has been stolen and trapped inside a golden comb fashioned in the shape of a half-sun. A devious siren captured it when the moon disappeared from the sky, and she saw the last wave cross the sea. The moon's voice was in the last wave, and the siren wanted it for herself, so she took it. What kind of havoc does this cause? Who is this siren? Can she be reasoned with, bargained with? What power does the voice of the moon hold? These are the questions I've yet to answer.

I've been finding my research very interesting, but I've been distracted from it, too. I won't go into deep detail, but I suffer from several chronic illnesses that cause me ridiculous amounts of pain, and one of my doctors prescribed me a medication that has, for the first time in years, given me substantial relief from my joint pain. It's just a short run of steroids to sort of rule out other causes of pain or confirm that it's probably arthritis (and it probably is), so the relief may not last for long. I've been so wrapped up in making the absolute most of this relief while it does last that I've been grasshoppering from project to project. Knitting a little here, crocheting there, reading research books and taking notes over there, writing, blogging, trying to get the hang of mind mapping... I'm everywhere at once in this jubilant feeling of normality. But earlier today, or no, I guess that's yesterday now, I made a spreadsheet in Excel for keeping track of my daily, monthly, and yearly word count. I am serious about this, and trying to set myself up for success.

So I've come up with some interesting ideas and played with them a little. It's funny as hell to me to be coming up with ideas for so far ahead, but the beginning and end of book 1 are pretty solid, and I've got impetus for book 2, and something sparked the other day that made me realize there's definitely room for book 3. The rest, I'm sure, will fill itself out as I do more research and make more connections.

It really is exhilarating to be in the thick of so much creative energy. And speaking of energy, I am running low, so I had better end this post and get my ass back to bed so that I can get up tomorrow and put this story in high gear.

Oh, and I found a name for Euryale's father: Athanasios. I think it suits him. So there's another problem fixed! I'll leave you with that, and a "thanks for reading".