REALIZATIONS

 

                           Success seems to be largely a matter of hanging on after others have let go.

                                                                                                                        William Feather

        Writing feels like that to me, especially right now.

Writing gives me this feeling 85% of most days and nights.

Because images come to me, they arise in me (I guess in my imagination),

I feel drawn to follow...

I can even decide on the future outcome of my plot.  I note it down...

But then, the moment comes when I must fill in the intervening images, and this is where THE HARD PART COMES.

Filling in means heading out into THAT SPACE up THERE:   it's beautiful, it's wide open, 

and it is what writing truly is.

Because it's EMPTY.   You must now populate it.

So what do I do?

I start to read all kinds of stuff... that my intuition tells me:  "Go read that!"  I watch all kinds of videos, listen to all kinds of stories...  I take lots and lots of notes (because, remember, I write in Spanish:  I read Spanish books, 19th century memoirs, historical accounts, and I copy down phrases that I like, words that are new to me whose definitions I note down). 

I go into latency.  My brain opens up to the empty, wide-open space of creation.

I PRAY.

LITERALLY.

I ask my ancestors to whisper to me.

I ask my own awareness to populate that space.

The characters that already are there (already in what I've written of my novel), come to my rescue.

Then new characters appear because the already known ones seek them out.

I realized that this chapter was going to be the most difficult one for me to write.

That it wasn't going to be easy to imagine.

This was why I had been internally twisting and turning for YEARS over it.

Because the preliminary draft came to me in 2021.

I am not kidding:   FIVE YEARS AGO.

Creating fiction is like giving birth.

In my case anyway, in the case of this, my very first full-length novel.

And it gives me comfort to know that (thanks to the fact that I have had the experience of giving birth twice),

the last part of having a baby is actually the MOST DIFFICULT PART:  

LABOR.

You have to push, push, push.

You have to breathe, a special way of breathing.

When you feel the contraction kick in, you start breathing.

Until the contraction completes its arc and starts to die down.

Then you must REST.  Breathe normally.

So in a way, I am going through the final stage here...

  El trabajo de parto final.  The parte EXPULSIVA.

Yeah, I must hang on.

Hang in there...

I am not alone.

I need to work with my awareness,

my unconscious,

BE ATTENTIVE AND LISTEN TO

my Ancestors and my Guides.

This is my Realization.

I don't know what will come out... the baby will have a face I have never seen before.

But I will recognize him/her. I will be amazed by his or her beauty...

...so...I'll keep you in the loop!