I’ve been quickly assembling the outline to a fantasy novel. I am following Alan Watt’s rule for writing in that I’m working to, “Get it down before the hobgoblins of logic and reason kill the drama and aliveness of what you are trying to say.” What I have to say is less than perfect, a little difficult to get through, and not entirely a complete thought. Still, I’m getting there. Today I’m showing it to my partner–my alpha reader–and I’m straight up nervous.
That is new.
That is entirely because I’ve based a segment of the content on a fear-based interpretation of a major conflict in our relationship. By ‘A’ I mean ‘the’ because there isn’t a lot we battle about. This is pretty much it, and this is openly a lost battle on my end. So it went in the book. It serves as a form of catharsis the way it is written and I fear it is going to hurt her, make her uncomfortable, or affect the way she sees me–even if just a little bit. The conversation tag, “We can’t keep talking about this.” has affixed itself to nearly every interaction of late, and I feel like going through this process truly helps me excise the demon of the thing. So, it has to be done.
Now that it is done, my mind is free to do what creatives do: take a smidge of reality and screw with it so dramatically as to make it into story. In a sense, that small action reminded me that I can do that for a lot of what is happening in my life. In truth, that is how I used to write fiction. When I went away from tapping the real, I quickly ran out of the unreal.
Some Thoughts:
- My kids have been playing this game where they breed monsters on an island and the monsters each sing or make different sounds. They then can put the sounds together at different tempos and pitches–literally laying them out in 4/4 time like music notes. What I’m saying is my kids are flat out composing music in a video game and don’t realize it.