Queen of Swords

As I was walking in to work this morning I realized that I was resenting needing to be here because I have other things I'd rather be doing: getting my project plan in order for the foundation fundraiser, working on some designs for my new art journal, finishing up my devotional pieces (after realizing yesterday what my writer's block has been about).

It would be nice to feel happy and enthused about going to the day job, but I'll settle for having other things in my life that are engaging me. It's felt like a very long time since I've been excited and wanting to work on anything.

I am happy, grateful, even giddy at having story ideas flowing freely again.

I just wish that didn't mean that I was staying up too late at night and then getting up too early in the morning in my need to write everything down.

I'm not going to write about death tomorrow morning. Instead, I'm going to try to tell the story of how Lohain and I met. It's hard, because there are mysteries involved, and the backstory is complex. I simply won't be able to relate anything but the essence.

I used to write here about my daimon, the "masculine muse" and ideal lover. My daimon first began to appear in my fantasies when I was twelve, and although his original, more gentle form was eventually replaced by a warrior-prince, his spirit shone through every romantic hero in my personal mythic stories.

Behind the cut is a brief episode from that very first story. The prose was edited many times over the years, but basic actions and chemistry of the scene have never changed. I wrote this for the first time when I was perhaps fourteen years old, probably before I'd ever actually been kissed.

I'm posting it here now because it has everything to do with meeting Lohain for the first time.

( Adria is a seventeen year old girl who won a fan magazine contest and is guest starring in a popular television show. After a somewhat rocky rehearsal, she's about to shoot a scene in which her character kisses Richard, one of the stars, who she has a huge crush on. Richard was the first personification of my daimon and this was the first kiss I ever wrote. )

This afternoon I did something I haven't done in I-don't-know-how-many-months. I sat down with a spiral-bound, college-ruled notebook and a fine point Bic "better ballpoint" pen, and I started writing down a story that's been haunting me for weeks.

I'd been avoiding this one. It's utterly non-PC; I wasn't sure how it could resolve itself in a satisfying way, and I was sure the background/lead-in would take far too long to write. But this afternoon I realized that I wasn't going to be able to work with any other creative project unless I got this out of my system.

So I sat down at my dinner table with the aforementioned notebook and pen, and started writing.

The first couple of paragraphs were hard. It's been so long since I've written a story, much less one of this type, that I was almost shy of myself. But once I got over that initial discomfort, got the pump primed, everything started flowing.

I honestly don't know how long I sat there with the words simply streaming through the pen onto the page. I paused once or twice to make sure I knew where I was going, or to reconsider a word, but I didn't let myself get bogged down. (Hooray for the lessons of "morning pages"!)

My phone beeped me at 2pm, telling me I had a little less than an hour before I had to get ready to go to an appointment. I hit the one-hour snooze -- but it never came back on. The next time I looked at the clock, it was 3:02 and I had less than an hour to shower, get dressed, and get to where I was going. The time had passed without me noticing at all. I stopped only because I'd reached the point in the narrative where I could stop. (Finally page tally was 15 - counting each side as one.)

It was a marvelous feeling. A feeling I haven't been able to enjoy in a very long time.

What I wrote wasn't great literature. Heck, it wasn't even great erotica. But it was what was inside me, what needed to come out. Having the time and the solitude to get it all out in one long whoosh was deeply nurturing.

This morning I was asked to write "a happy Valentine's Day story" -- and I've overcome my initial resistance sufficiently to come up with a plot. The only question now is whether or not I'll have time to write this evening. It may have to wait until tomorrow's flight.

I realized this morning as I drove to work that I have a second resolution: I'm writing a book this year.

My oldest consistent dream (since I was five years old or so) has been to write and publish a book. When I was young I assumed it would be a novel, but as I've gotten older I've realized that I could write non-fiction as well.

For the past month or two I've been thinking about writing an article about Ereshkigal and her role in The Descent. This morning I acknowledged that my Masters degree work on Inanna has given me the background to write a book about the two goddesses together and their joint -- but differently expressed -- mysteries of death, sex, sovereignty, and transformation. I intend the book to be grounded in sound academic research, but be personal and spiritual enough to have relevance to the lives of those who resonate with these themes and figures.

Contributing to my sense of momentum: I've already had an established, respected Pagan author volunteer to make introductions for me to one or more publishers while we're at Pantheacon.

This is it.
This is the year.

I cross-posted my Norrington fic over at _norrington, where it's been getting some positive feedback. I know it's the particular audience, but there's not a lot of sympathy for Elizabeth over there, especially on the subject of how she promised Norrington she would marry him if he rescued Will, and then reneged.

I empathize with that position. On the other hand, Norrington was a bit of a fool to accept her bargain in the first place. Someone who offers marriage as a reward for saving their beloved is likely to either find some reason not to go through with the marriage, or not be someone you want as a spouse.

There have been several requests for "more" from the group, so I will continue with the story. An eager audience can be an effective muse.

If I'm embracing my feral aspect, which is largely about a disregard for the restrictions of convention, why am I feeling guilty contemplating writing a fairly ferocious POTC:DMC scene in which Norrington takes his revenge on Jack, Will and Elizabeth?

Yes, such a story would have various characters doing things that would violate my ethics -- but that's one reason I write: to explore things that I have not done or would not do.

Who am I trying to please or impress by censoring myself from writing a story that never need be shown to anyone?

It's not like I don't already know I have a dark side, or haven't spent more than a few hours indulging it through role play and fiction writing.

Or. . . (it suddenly occurs to me) . . . is it that on some level I am so willing to believe in the spiritual reality of characters, that within my own spirit I feel like I would be violating them -- or at least their truth, their integrity as characters -- if I wrote such things?

Or is it that I both want to watch Norrington do certain wicked things and want to believe he would never do such things?

In any case, the only real solution is to write the damn story. If certain acts are truly beyond the pale for Norrington (and/or myself) then the process of writing will reveal it. Characters can be damnedly stubborn when you try to force them to do something that is against their nature. Either they simply refuse to be written, or the whole scene goes utterly flat, so obviously a lie that no pleasure can be taken from writing or reading it.

I was just going through some old notebooks and found "Song for Persephone," dated October 29, 2002.

What follows -- behind the cut -- grew out of my own experiences with a "Dark God" lover (or two), the discussion of Persephone as archetype in Jean Shinoda Bolen's Goddesses in Everywoman, a half-forgotten poem about Persephone with Hades as her black-leather biker boyfriend, and my friend bookchick's assertion that Persephone wasn't kidnapped. She went with Hades "because he was hot."

As I retype this now, exactly as it came from my pen, unedited, more than three years ago, I see it isn't entirely consistent -- or shall I simply assert that, like many myths, it simply reflects the paradoxes of Mystery?

( Persephone )

I promised myself and my old friend that this morning I would write the articles I owe him for his work in putting up my lovely new website. Really, I would rather just pay him the $50 an hour, but I don't have that much discretionary cash right now, and it would be ridiculous to not do the fairly simple but tedious work of grinding out two 500-750 word articles on a subject on which I have no interest.

It is especially annoying today, as I have been enjoying scribbling on my mythic themes over the last few days, and I really don't want to have to turn aside from that to do an assignment.

But it's a "cookie snaps" deal.

One of the few incidents I remember from the TV show Fame was Mr. Shorofsky* giving his music students an assignment to write an advertising jingle for Cookie Snaps. Bruno Martelli objected strenuously, asserting that he was an artist not an advertising flunky. Shorofsky loomed over him. "So, you think you're too good for Cookie Snaps, Mr. Martelli?" he growled. "Yes!" was Bruno's immediate answer.

I seem to remember that Shorofsky's point was that an artist might be called on to make a living in other ways beside composing and performing his own work, and that the ability to create in response to specific requirements was a valuable skill for anyone who might need a paycheck one day.

Like Bruno, I would much rather focus on my own work, springing from my own inspiration.

But since my talent and creativity have not made me rich just yet, I'm going to have to write a couple of Cookie Snaps jingles to meet my obligations. And I should be grateful that someone thinks my writing is of good enough quality that he is willing to accept it in barter rather than demand cash on the barrel for his own services.

So now I shall close LJ and get to work.

* Holiday trivia: Albert Hague, who played Mr. Shorofsky in the film and television versions of Fame was an actual composer. His works include the music for How the Grinch Stole Christmas. Thurl Ravenscroft, who sang "You're a Mean One, Mr. Grinch," was also the voice of Tony the Tiger in the Frosted Flakes commercials.