Like Somebody dumped Canterbury Tales all over a Modern Map, Part 1, Or, One Mother of an Opening Line

"I lost an arm on my last trip home."

Now that is how to start a story. I can't think of any other sentence that has such impact and meaning, and not be completely understood until The End.

So many questions.

It took a while to read Octavia Butler's Kindred, but I'm glad I did. Many parts of the story were hard to read. I found myself putting down the book, doing something, anything, else, before picking up the book again.

The story has so many layers of conflict, I don't know where to begin. I love the element of surprise, so I tend to be a stickler about spoilers. I'm trying to figure out how to talk about the novel's impact without giving anything away.

You know what's going to happen, but you don't really know.

It's taken me a while to attempt to "verbalize" how important this story is, and how it, in many ways, still resonates now as vibrantly as it did when it was first published.

Okay, I think what really stuck out for me were the relationships among the characters. It was like looking at a panoramic snap shot of ignorance-driven envy and it not being inauthentic. And not inauthentic from a historical point of view, as in, I wasn't there, how would I know, but not being inauthentic from the point of view of people treating each other like crap. It’s a matter of have and have-not. You-have-something-I-want-You-have-something-better-You-are-treated-better.

'Know anyone like this?

I think great stories are universal. The Universality is either very deep at the core or hovers just at the surface. I'm sure someone's already mentioned this. Great stories are the discussions that last long into the night, where there are agreements and agreements to disagree. Great stories are the maps that change from the medieval print of mythical beasts and personified clouds blowing winds toward exotic lands, to the time of Amerigo Vespucci, to any and all versions of Yugoslavia over that last 100 years. The same world. Different views.

I'm sure I'll touch on or around this topic again. But for now, this will have to do.

A Call to Action, Or, The Phone Book Fairies

An interesting thing has occurred for me. Well, a couple of interesting things.

I've heard back from 2 of my beta readers about Tempest Makers. Some of the observations they've made have me thinking, "Huh. I hadn't thought of that." Which, one, is part of the point of having beta readers, and, two, helps me understand the hundreds of plays and stories discussed in classrooms where the author had a certain set of ideas in mind and the reader "found" a few more, new ideas.

I hadn't really thought of Tempest Makers as being "subtle." I just write what comes to my head and sort it all out until it makes sense. Maybe I'm not adding enough emotional meaning to get worked up over it, or maybe I'm tired of freaking out over writing and so I'm effortlessly channeling any anxiety into writing. <shrugs> I dunno.

As I got over the hump of putting Tempest Makers out into the light, more ideas keep knocking at my consciousness, as if they are the people who come to your house to deliver your phone book. You open your door and there sits a phone book [esoteric trivia about ancient customs deleted].

This morning, I woke up to an idea that wasn't words but imagines, and for the most part continues to be images. I run them back through my memory to make sure I remember enough to jot them down in my notebook or draw a picture. When my brain is happy the images and pictures are enough, the mute button is switched off and I can hear some dialog; some of it "coherent," some of it not, yet.

It reminds me of an essay Neil Gaiman wrote about being asked where he gets his ideas. The essay is in Writers Workshop of Science Fiction & Fantasy.

He says, "'I make them up,' I tell [people who ask]. 'Out of my head.'" He explains, "I don't know myself where the ideas come from, what makes them come, or whether one day they'll stop."

And you know, I think that makes absolute sense. I think if you have a spark of an idea, for me, it is the idea of Justice, and with a little bit of "glue and construction paper," and not stress over creating "something", your brain will have the space and power to come up with some pretty creative stuff.

I think the moral of this story is don't rush it. Have patience. A phone book will show up on your doorstep soon enough.