In Search of The End, Crane Style

"It’s official. I now hate my book. Well, manuscript, it’s still far from being a ‘book’. I keep trying to stitch it together, get the ending ready for my Alpha reader. But I’m stuck in the middle of ICKville.

What to do, what to do?

1)      Suck it up and stick it out in ICKtown?

2)      Or shuffle this one to the side, along with the other two manuscripts similarly abandoned?

I’m better at the second. It is, after all, my Modus Operandi up until now.

Maybe this loathing to see projects to The End has nothing to do with the venture, and everything to do with my Relationship to Endings? And not being good at them, though I have much experience in that regard. But wait. AH-HA! As a reader I dislike, have always disliked, reaching “THE END”. Why?

Because, it signals the story is over and if it’s a good one, I don’t want it to be. Then, more times than not, it’s either anticlimactic, or leaves too much unsaid. For instance, am I the only one who dislikes the way the Lord of the Rings trilogy ended? Or Gone With The Wind (until someone else wrapped it up with Scarlett)? Or the Aragorn series? Every Romance in print? And don’t get me started on Animal Farm.

How often are Endings really and truly satisfying?

I'm pondering giving Peace Makers up for a short story. Or novella. Picking a currently-hot (to me) topic and writing free-style, no edits, for NaNoWriMo which rolls around again in less than two weeks. But something, anything to get back on the writing wagon."

*

I wrote this dissertation several days ago. Since then, one after another, signs have pointed me back to Peace Makers. The most significant glided past on an eight-foot expanse of wings, its rattling cry reaching me first. The pale gray envoy settled gracefully on a pine bough at the edge of my back yard, an enormous clearing that defines the outer limits of downtown.

I sat, head cocked to see beyond the bird feeder, and thunderstruck, welcomed a Great Blue Heron. Even by water, Corr’s visit would be momentous. But in town? One is forced to pay attention, especially one penning a trilogy involving Druids and druid magic. And Corr (druid for crane/heron) plays an integral part in Book Two.

So. Since Peace Makers it is, and I refuse to dwell in the Land of ICK, I’m creating an Option Three in which I overcome my Inner Glass Ceiling and soar with Crane and Eagle, Raven and Wren.

I go inside, ask questions, listen to answers, then write.

Write as if my life depended on The Ending.

~ Olivia J. Herrell

Primum Lector (aka Alpha Reader)

In case I forgot to tell you (I did, I did, I left you hanging, I'm so sorry!), I went with only one Alpha for the first read of Peace Makers. It is rough and ragged, and lacking in too many areas, so I opted to trust just one for now. His the Sententious Vaunter is the first blog I followed (other than mine), and he was one of my first Blogger friends. Our ages and political leanings are vastly far apart, but as writers and citizens of the world, we click.

I know enough about Andrew to know that, like me, he has a vision for our world that seeps in to his writing. He is an idealist with a healthy dose of realism, and prone to fatalism if truth be told. He grabs life with a gusto I long to emulate. I recall a poignant short story he entered in a contest way back when: about a man who met "the One" over drinks. Recently, while globe-trotting** on summer vacation (from his position as an English teacher in Seoul) Andrew asked Heather to marry him and she said yes. Congratulations you two!

As for my manuscript and my Alpha? They will remeet soon. In the zealousness to trim this, that and the other, and 'git 'er done' I cut the seventeen page prologue to a few paragraphs, then hacked up the first chapter. Later I realized I'd ripped its heart out.

So I'm putting the old girl back together. It'll be off to you soon, Andrew. Are you ready?

~ Olivia J. Herrell 

** Andrew has a knack for relating the details (and pics) of his travels, so if you're considering visiting a country (or just want to tiptoe through it in the playground of your mind), check him out at the Sententious Vaunter. 

On Letting Go

The assignment? Write a letter to the girl who torpedoed me last year with her SUV, to write the damn thing and burn it. The order came on Wednesday, yet here I sit, on Saturday night, the task as-yet undone. I've begun it in my head, something like this:

Dear stupid bitch who effed up my life, (not really, that magically appeared when I started typing)

A year has passed since the day you hit me, the trauma that keeps on 'giving'.

I still can't believe you rear-ended me, in my two day-old Benz, nor worse, the insane way that you did it. When I tell the story, I get a dumbfounded look, and the typical reply of:

"You what?"

Eyebrows raised in still-astonished (and disgusted) agreement, I will repeat the bizarre, "I was hit from behind while driving down the road doing the speed limit."

"YOU WERE WHAT?" unfailingly comes the screech.

Yes, really. I was driving the speed limit, minding my own business, happy and satisfied, humming. After five months of arduous searching, I was finally in the perfect car. Then you happened along, barreling down the road (with a child in your belly no less!) not looking at where your 'missile' was headed. You endangered our lives, and for what? Were you texting? Reaching for something? Digging in your purse? 

Whatever you were doing, girl, damn you. Just. Damn you. You certainly damned me.

Do you understand that what you did was careless? It was dangerous, and negligent, and all sorts of stupid. You hurt me, and likely hurt you and your unborn baby. Does your jaw and face ache so deeply that you can't eat or think? Do you hobble from hip pain? Do your hands go numb when you're driving?

Do you think about the woman (ME!) that you hurt?

A less-enlightened me would say: I hate you and wish you harm. Yet how can I despise you, without despising me? I can't and I don't, though my body still carries the pain, and the poker-hot sear of anger.

I only hope that you learned a lesson and will never again endanger another life. This is my prayer. For you. And for me. May we be healed of any and all injuries - physical, mental, emotional and spiritual - that were sustained as a result of that ill-fated whack/attack.

Finally, may this letter mark the turning point from which I/we walk forward free: of restriction and pain, anger and blame, invisibility and unimportance and any remnants left nagging or undone.

Bygones.

And so it is. It is done. Thank you, God.

I will burn this letter, yes. But not in to obscurity. In to infamy. On my blog. For the record. For prosperity. But most of all, for the healing. Mine. Hers. And anyone else's who might happen along here and need it.

Let it go, dear body. Let the bitter, venomous outrage drain away, Master psyche. Let it go. To nothingness. And beyond. Let it go. It is gone.

In place is the memory of calm. And reason. And the deep, strong will to heal.

~ Olivia J. Herrell