Shall We Gather By the River?
Eng

     When I started writing (back in proto-Jurassic times, I think it was) I knew absolutely nothing about the process. I didn't have those magic words that marked me a knowledgeable author. I didn't speak "writing."

           I did read. I did speak English passably. I could type.

           More importantly, though, I am and always was, an opinionated bitch, and even more important than this, I had a story to tell. In the beginning I was acting out this story in my life--not a good idea, totally destructive. It was a revelation of highest order that I didn't have to BE my story, that I could put it down on paper and let other people be it. Phewww.

          After that I wrote and wrote and wrote. Dreck, mostly, but I knew it would be dreck, so it didn't bother me much, and it was most instructive. My grandfather, the Father of All Horses in my life, once explained to me that he had tried to start a novel once, but was so thoroughly disgusted with the result, that he vowed never to write again. His main problem, as he expressed it, was all the characters sounded the same, that it was impossible for him to write believable people.

         I took this to heart (as I took most of what he told me...my own gospel, as it were) and when I started writing I picked a story where I already knew all the characters and just added two new ones, so I could practice bringing them up to speed with the known personalities and balance them off as credible beings in a preordained universe. I also spent a lot of time memorizing the existing characters, what they did, how, why, and along the way learned something about pacing and rhythm and so on.

        Which resulted in an unforeseen problem wherein my new characters over- shadowed the old. They already had a life of their own. I never knew what they were about. They were constantly throwing the whole story into the drink and bobbing up laughing at my meager attempts to keep up with them. And worse, they took the original characters off on these wild rides with never a backward glance.

        That's when I stopped being a writer and surrendered to being a reporter. I honed my word skills and relegated my position to that of attentive observer. These devious spirits taught me a great deal about an ocean of things, some of which I still don't understand to this day.

         As time went on, I did finally learn some specifics about the craft. I learned what concordance means. I learned what I was doing at the beginning is called derivative fiction, or more modernly, "fanfic." I learned there is a word, "arc," which describes the narrative and plot flow as a coherent whole. I learned about "muses" and the term for explaining what the hell is going on, "exposition."

         It was much later that I learned about slash. Having encountered the same problem with legitimizing characters in terms of genderless equalities, I came up with another solution entirely. My folks (I cannot, to this day, think of them as muses) are arenotelicons, sometimes they are men, sometimes women, actually neither.

         And I thank whatever writing gods there be that I was two books into Chaos before I found out there was such a designation as, "Mary Sue." Thank you, Lord. That concept would have set me back considerably. 

        Three years ago I got a computer that connected to the Internet. My brief encounter with agents and publishing and such was replaced by a reading audience who actually wrote me and liked what I was doing and...

         Hog heaven, for sure. God bless him, Dickens was right about how every story has an audience and will find it sometime, somehow. Writing went from being a lonely and solitary occupation to being a social and fun thing. Not that it wasn't fun before, though the odd agent letter or publisher encouragement is pale in comparison to folks who read right along with your writing and become as involved in the tale as you are yourself. And you get to meet and fall in friendship with other people who really know how to write and keep you on your toes and move the work upward, onward, kaboooom.

         So here I am, sitting by the CyberRiver, watching the arc and flow, kicking my toes in the waters and wondering how I came to be so blessed as to be born at a time when the River of Dreaming is only as far away as the tips of my fingers.

          The waters are cool and calm, the air is sultry and laden with expectation and wonder. I'm in my happy place for sure...

         ....and if you are reading this, then you are, in the most real sense, a part of this dream. Words and thoughts and chaos and reason, and pleasure and tears, and wonderful heroes, in and out of the stories, here there be dragons.

         Shall we gather by the river?
 
 

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