Hello, Mythketeers!
Summer is in full swing, and the days are much more manageable at my desk here in Ontario, Canada. The nights are starting to hold a distinct crispness, but the days chase away the fear of fall with the warmth of the sun.
It’s hard to write when it is so warm that even your skin feels like it is too much to be wearing. It’s hard to even think! But write I did.
I had an idea brewing. Just a niblet, a kernel, and I let it stay that way. I didn’t force it, and I didn’t coax it with flowery words on a page that went nowhere. I let it take root and grow in my imagination. I would go to sleep at night, playing out scenarios with the characters I had created until I fell asleep. I call it Active Dreaming.
I started to make notes, lots of them. Sometimes I would use AI to map out conversations so I could get a feel for the other side of it. Then I would change it completely because, really, who talks like that?
Those notes began to consume the space on my phone. Tons of them: jot notes, conversations, scenes, place descriptions, and how I wanted it to end. Not as a one-off short story, of course. Oh no, that isn’t me. Not even a little bit. But as a book. Or at least, as the first book.
I had played with the idea of the Orchid Court last summer. Even wrote a whole book. Which I hate. It didn’t have the umph I wanted. But I was trying to force it. So, I left it.
Some of the scenes in that book are stellar, if I do say so myself, but they just didn’t do what I wanted them to do as a whole. I still wanted to do Chronicles of the Orchid Court, but now it was changing from the original idea. A crossover, this time period, and a time period that runs beside this one. A world unseen by human eyes, sort of.
Anyway, the point I am trying to make with all that is, even though it took me a couple or three years to get back to telling a good story, I did get back there. It took many false starts. One really bad book, and a direction that, until this morning, I didn’t realize I was going.
I wanted this book to be attached to another, but that was not what my characters wanted. As writers, we all know that they speak louder than we do, and if we take them in a direction they don’t want to go, or aren’t ready to go, it can be disastrous.
The lesson I want to impart, or the words of wisdom, are this: keep trying, keep writing, keep dreaming. Dreams can turn into amazing stories. Ask Stephen King! Let your subconscious do the work that your conscious mind won’t let you do. What some call a block, I call getting out of your own way.
Now on to the business end of this intro.
I want to congratulate Naga Vydyanathan for winning Member of the Month! Congratulations!
I also want to congratulate Ed Bickford for our cover art. Well done!
As I wrap this intro up, I want to thank every one of you who showed up for our milestone issue. It was incredible! Thank you all.
I also want to pose a question: We have circled this idea before, but who would be interested in buying a copy of the magazine if it was made available in print each month? If there is enough interest, I would put it together and put it out there while still retaining the free version online. Let me know.
Respectfully,
Stephanie J. Bardy
Editor of Dreams, Determination and Directions Unknown