334 days of Writing a Novel

07-20-2010

I was sick for about two weeks.

So the novel retreated under a porch, where I couldn’t fix any of its wounds.

*

This novel is a furnace. It’s the engine, keeping me alive.

Some days, I pile in everything

words

thoughts

time

opportunities

relationships

the blue colored yarns of fate,

shoveled in to keep the furnace burning.

*

I haven’t had any espresso in almost two weeks. I have what may or may not be an ulcer. I also had a tooth pulled. The ulcer medicine is bad. But it’s not as bad as the Penicillin they gave me for my tooth. Because I am allergic to Penicillin.

*

I am becoming very interested in Names. And the power they give to a person.

I know, for instance, that if I were to find myself traveling the Endless Realms as a magician, and if I were to meet a creature, goblin, or fairy, I would not give them my birth name. That’s common knowledge. Names are powerful.

I never liked Jr’s and Sr’s and so-and-so the III’s. Names are so important. In marriage, when you choose to take a  name, or when you choose to keep your own, when two people decide to merge their names into something new, that just feels important.

So I know what happens, if a brooding man in a traveler’s cloak shows up to my door. Or if I think I spot a woman, yes, far off in the trees. She’s too tall, and naked. Beautiful but slightly wrong. Her eyes perhaps…

I know what happens, when they ask me my name. I know something bad will happen when they get it. 

But I did not know the power of naming a fictional character. Not until now. I had always just taken it for granted. And now that I know a certain character’s true name, I know who he is. I know who he’s loved, and I’m sure, if I tried, if I was the type of person, I could find out how he died.

-mE.