Closure - Occupation

[qos]

Not the same as my vocation or my day job, Occupation is the name of my unfinished novel.

For the last several years I have picked it up, resolved to find some way of finishing it, worked at it in fits and starts, and then put it down again. The biggest problem was not that I didn't have ideas, but that I could no longer enter that world from the same perspective or with the same passion.

For a long time I ascribed this inability to finish as one of the symptoms of the hibernation of my creative passion. That was true in part, and for a long time.

Now, I have released Occupation and any thought of finishing it for this reason: it is the story of a girl who is growing up, being tested, and comes into her power as a sovereign and priestess. I wrote it to explore issues of power, responsibility, growing-up, love, duty, and sacrifice that I was grappling with in my own life.

But that is not my story any more. Trying to finish it would involve immersing myself in a place and a state of being that I have moved beyond. However much I love the story and the characters, I can no longer live with them.

But I will always cherish the memories of the happy hours spent writing in that world, and the insights I gained in the process, and the collaboration I enjoyed with the friends who shared it with me.

Comments

[southernselkie.livejournal.com]

*smile* Love you, seester