Hi Linda, I didn’t give you much to go on here… thanks for
braving it. It’s to introduce what may
turn into a short story.
I’ve never had any success writing fiction. Just words lying flat on the page, dead as
ink. I’ve been here with you on thinqon
for quite a spell now, and perhaps I’ve learned a bit. I’ve gone back to revisit
three pieces. Where I was stumped
before, not knowing what made my writing so frustratingly lifeless, I saw the
solutions immediately. One piece is
finished, and I think it may be OK. The
other two are each nothing but a series of scenes. What direction they have is overwhelmed by
complexity, which I am striping down, hoping to find a kernel of truth.
You have it right—it’s an attempt to foster thinking. Mine, but I was also hoping to find out what
others thought. As the wheel of ideas
turns it has stopped here: “We become by
being what we should never be.” It’s seeds
sprouted in the story.
Because you so generously spent five minutes there I thought
I should reciprocate, spending some time thinking, apart from the story.
Defamiliarization is wonderful! Nothing is commonplace; we just get so used
to some things in our lives that they lose their magic. One such thing is what we call maturity. We take it for granted that we should change,
that we start out innocent and develop in complexity. But how strange that such a form of life can
be, really!
If I compare myself as I am today to how I was years ago, as
an infant, a teenager, a young man, a middle aged husband and father,
considering how my mind and heart work, then I’m so amazed. I’m truly a new creature. I’m unrecognizable even to the me of ten
years ago.
It’s tempting to say that yesterday held the seeds of
today. Probably true, but statements
like that strip out all of the wonder. I
truly should not have existed, not exist in my present condition. The life of the Soul is improbable. To say that rather than evolving, we mutate,
brings to the surface all the strange machinations of mind, body, and heart that
have been struggled through; and chosen to struggle through and to persevere.
I think I may develop Chelonia, who is an old woman who gets
medicinal substances from turtles that wash ashore, and who has a blind
grandson, and who is being observed, to somehow personify such mutations, maybe
by being familiar with both life on land and underwater, or some such thing.
Hot dog, Ted! Here's a site for you:
Scribophile.com
You can post your stories and get feedback--you pay by critiquing the work of others. It's a point system.
Some of the writers there are very good and some of them are first class critics. Others, not so much.
Take a look at the site and see what you think. I've had some success with the folks there and they're all intelligent and civil.
Anyway, write your heart out. If you need a cheering section you can count on me.
And you haven't mutated--you've been mutable all along.
