Daily Haiku 2014.04.19 —

(Image credit: Bert Kaufmann @ Flickr)

These last poppies stand —
stretched over the river to drink
from fleeting dreams

 


 

I must have drank from my dreams this morning; I don’t know how or why, and I certainly don’t remember my dreams, but I woke up with the most perfect solution to one of the problems that has been nagging the development of my story’s plot since I began to push it beyond the borders of our world. I wrote as much as I could manage through the month of November, and then time demands between my job, the home purchasing and selling process, and the holidays forced me to back-burner the project until a time presented itself that I could figure out a new writing schedule.

The time has come, as they once said. After all, how can I dance when my Earth is turning?

You people are starving for a good yarn, I can tell.

I have this character who was originally conceived as an antagonist. During NaNoWriMo I met him on the page for the first time, and it did not fit at all; he was too nice, too well-meaning, and the connections that are required for tying him into the plot cannot be written up as the machinations of a malign player. So this whole time I’m struggling with the question, who is this guy? Can he still be a bad guy somehow? What about a well-meaning person whose agenda will inherently cause harm, is that good enough? I had trouble squaring that away in my mind. If he is one of the “good guys”, then where are the “bad guys” and how do they figure in? I can’t put this story together like the pieces of a puzzle – it has to resolve like something coming out of a fog bank, slowly fading into view with ever-increasing clarity of resolution.

Well.

Origami Crane
(Photo credit: flickrfavorites)

At 5:30 I woke up with a paper crane in my head. On the one wing was written “our power is different”, and on the other was “we play games in the Wood”. I didn’t see the swan, however, until I turned off the alarm and started down the stairs to the kitchen where our coffee maker sits patiently, prepared the night before and ready to brew. The origami bird sailed out of the mists of slumber into the front of my mind and upon realizing its meaning I immediately unfolded it . . .

Wham-blammy.

I now have a full page of notes on the sitch and its implications, much more fleshing out necessary but there and ready to infer from what I’ve gotten down. He’s a good guy, all right, and the bad guys were there the whole time. I have things that need to go down on the page, and it’s a very busy Easter weekend. Life just keeps screwing with me, and it feels like I’m sipping from the waters of a dream.

What kind of adventure is this?

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One comment

  1. It is the adventure of a writer who has a burning story that is aching to be told – but needs time to seed, germinate and grow, before breaking ground into the true light of day.

    Maybe it’s just a good thing that some of the issues are getting resolved? Does this help with the frustration?

    I didn’t think so. Still Rob, take heart, at least some of it makes more sense and has new direction, clarity.

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