THE SCULPTOR FIRST SUMMONS THE STONE...

Writing:

First the sculptor must summon the stone that is 
The whole story
Or drag it from the quarry of the subconscious

You have to love that big raw chunk
To find the strength to move it

Then come the Ghosts
Wearing the mask of fiction
Telling you how you must 
Carve it
To final form

The whole time mourning
Every piece you chip away.


I don't write like most people.  

That isn't quite it.  I don't come up with stories the way most people do. I am helpless against the tide of stories.   I could probably spend a good quarter of century do nothing (not eating or sleeping) just writing the stories in my head now. 

First the characters show up and tell me their lives.  Sometimes I don't even know what the story is. Sometimes a character will show up and hijack a story.  

It always becomes a little movie.  I can see all the people doing their thing, moving around, thinking, talking, eating, etc. Often times I don't know ANY of the facts.  Usually I don't know their names.  Although, in my current book, I did know that one of my characters had a certain middle initial, and that middle initial pointed to a "real world" historical family with a name that began with that letter.

Did I somewhere read of this family?  I don't think so.  But I must have, somehow.  Nine times out of ten, whatever a character tells me will have some "real-world" connection, but I have to be careful.  If I insert my own suppositions I could be wrong. 

An Orthodox Jewish character told me that her property passed to her only daughter's husband when my character died.  I surmised something from the plot to explain this.  No. Turns out that is Orthodox Jewish traditional inheritance procedure.  

It's like a mystery.  The "voices in my head" tell me something, then I have to go research it to find out where and why and how and when. 

If I was a real writer, I would make up stories with characters I knew and understood. I would write a neat little chapter outline and type a certain number of pages per day.

Apparently I am not a real writer. I am a transcriber for ghosts wearing masks of fiction.

I am now at the point where it is 99 percent certain I will finish, but am no longer carried by belief the book will have an audience. Which means that I sometimes whole days writing and wondering "will anyone want to read this?" 

I hope so. I love writing, but I also hate it.  It is so much work, so much research, and it is all alone.  Sitting in front of a computer (in the old days a typewriter).  For months and sometimes years on end.

And no one can help you with any of it. 

But it is who I am.  I knew as a small child that I was writer.  I wrote my first story at age 5.  And I taught myself to type when I was 7.  (For a Halloween report for my grade school. :D )
 
Blessings Peeps! I hope this full moon is treating you right!!!

PS-- Here is an interesting article.  I think magickal peeps that read it will be drawn to the same conclusion I was: these are those really fecking smart witches and Jedis.  Look at the clues.  And that Agrippa poem simulation is well worth watching!

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/internet/10468112/The-internet-mystery-that-has-the-world-baffled.html?fb