Stories can save your soul…

When the princeling was about 4, he started having horrible nightmares. I mentioned that we could go somewhere in our dreams and meet.

And thus, the candy garden bloomed again.

Fountains spilling Skittles, a Sprite stream filled with Swedish Red Fish and gummy sharks. You get the idea. I wrote a flash fiction story about it. The Princeling adds to it, or subtracts, depending on his current likes. He is now 8.

When I was in the hospital in June, he was with my sister in law. In talking on the phone with him, he asked me, sobbing, where to meet him that night. “Do you want to go to the candy garden?”

Sniffling, he replied: How about a candy ocean? The sand is sugar, and….

And we were off. Something amazing happened that night, something amazing that touched my soul in a way no other story that I ever have come up with has.

The Candy Garden is imprinted on my son’s soul. And when we’re separated, he knows, deep down inside, that he can go there and find his mom. It’s an avenue for our creativity to go wild, together, but more than that… It brings my child comfort.

So yes, one story can make a huge difference. Even if it’s a one off, a way to sooth a child at bed time. It can grow, it can morph and take on a life of it’s own… And can feel like a warm hug on a dark and scary night when you’re miles from your mommy.

Beauty for Pain: Poetry as Catharsis

The very best writers pull you in. They take all the pain of life, and they return it to you with beauty.

I have lots of imaginary conversations in my head. This one was about poetry, about how you can take the essence of something incredibly painful and return it transformed. Does the act of transformation also take away some of the pain?

I’m basically a happy person. There have been times when I went through hell. I haven’t really written about them, because every time I tried I got angrier and angrier. As a single parent, I couldn’t just walk around wanting to punch something 24/7. But those attempts were all more of a this happened and then this and then…

Not trying to do anything other than record.

I brought it up briefly in the novella I’m doing, but quickly brushed it aside. It’s there, but not present.

The one thing I have not tried is poetry. Of trying to take the pain and turn it into something beautiful and possibly unrecognizable.

I think it might be time to try it. Just as soon as I finish Camp Nano.

Take care my lovelies,

 

Wyn

Keep your mitts off my books!

There’s been a ration of poo slung around this spring/summer regarding women in fantasy fiction and, more recently even romance. I kind of have to shake my head at these posturing potential potenates…. who don’t realize that if the conversation were fictionalized and thrown into a fantasy setting… well. They would not be the hero. Oh, no. They would definitely be the evil wizard/king/crybaby trying to force everyone into their own way of thinking. You shall not pass.

I mean really. Are you truly trying to tell me that Robin Hobb, Lynn Flewelling, Carol Berg and Mercedes Lackey are… lacking? Shame on you! Don’t like the new crop of fiction coming out? Don’t read it. But don’t presume to know what’s good for me.

What really saddens me is that these kind of arguments have been going on for a very long time. Because something is popular with them, the masses, women it must be inherently bad. Suck it up, buttercup, cuz those readers are still going to read the books they want to. They will buy them in droves, propelling them UP the NYT Best Seller list while your own languishes in the stacks. 

 Oh, and by the way? Shakespeare? Wildly popular with the masses. All those bawdy jokes, don’t you know.

While I was at CSU, I often hid what I was reading due to jack asses. Fantasy was fine, but let someone catch me with a romance? I cringed at the thought. Until someone tried to book shame me, in my creative writing class, and the professor said something to the effect of… well… You can support yourself with that sort of writing. Live very well, if you have the talent.

This was the same instructor who told us on our first day not to even try genre fiction (especially horror or sci-fi / fantasy) in his class. I was terrified when I went up to speak with him. But I write fantasy, I said. “Prove it,” he told me.  Turns out he’s not against the genre, just the bad habits of new writers. I wrote my first novel under his guidance, a work of fantasy fiction.

A lot of what I read and write has to do with belonging. About taking what you’ve got and making it work. Finding a way through the darkness. There are books who have held me up (Anne Bishop) during the worst time of my life, and others that echo those days and reinforce that we are survivors (Cathy Lamb). There’s the joy of love (Eloisa James, Julia Quinn), and family and friends.

If you’re so afraid of women in fiction, then I kind of have to ask. What are you so afraid of?

No matter the answer, keep your mitts off my reading material. I don’t need that sort of help.

Ogres need not apply.

 

Hello, You

Hello, You,

I see you. I know your going through some hard times, I know that you’re hurting inside. I also know that there’s not a damn thing I can do about it except for say “I love you, I’m here for you,” I know that the hard part is up to you, but I need for you to know…

I love you. I love your kindness, the way that you care about everyone and show that care. I see the jewel that you are; flawed perhaps… but that just makes you more interesting. It is the flaws that make us who we are, that gives our wings flight.

I see you.

I see you struggling, trying to balance who you are with who you used to be. The struggle to find the ability to make it day by day. That sometimes, it seems to swallow you hole. It’s like you’re swimming in the ocean, in the middle of the night, and can’t see the shore.

Hang on. Please, hang on. Because I promise you…. The dawn will break. It might not be when you want it to, it might be later than you think you can hold on. But I promise, the dawn will break.

I see you. I wish I could save you. But for now, I leave you with this,

 

The dawn will come.

 

Bawling my eyes out…. Thanks, Elizabeth Moon!

It has been a long time since I’ve read a book that literally made me bawl. Had to get up out of bed at midnight, find some tissue and blow my nose. It happens more often with romance than with fantasy fiction, I will admit to that. But it’s still rare.

And then this week I stayed up way too late, bawling my eyes out because of Elizabeth Moon. The Deed of Paksenarrion (contains all three books of the trilogy) did that to me. Right about the end of the second book, beginning of the third. Paks is a female warrior, and at that point she had nothing left from which she drew her identity. She was broken, desperate and alone. I had to stay with the novel long enough that I could in good conscious put it down until morning.

This is something, by the way, that really great fantasy excels at. I may be a female, but I’ve never held anything other than a foam/plastic sword. The only battles I’ve gone into with those swords were pretend, with my son. On a daily basis, it doesn’t matter whether or not I’m a coward.

But.

But…

It doesn’t matter. Because I do know what it’s like to walk away from a life you thought you couldn’t. I know what it’s like to feel that everything that defines you is gone. Somehow, Paks healed herself, became even more herself than before she was broken.

Sometimes, fantasy, especially epic fantasy, uses the framework to pin down a powerful message. And the mesaage was greatly needed, as was the crying session.

 

Check it out, my lovelies. I think you’ll like it.

Wyn