A to Z meme

A rare indulgence.

( Behind the cut )

Exploding quietly

Owens Corning fibreglass plant, viewed from a children's playground, Guelph, Wednesday afternoon.

~~~~~~~~~~

I have hit a nexus of ideas, ones that apply to both personal growth and my ideas for writing.

Sometimes in the writer's garden, a project must lie fallow. After NaNoWriMo in 2003 I was overwhelmed by the challenges of revising Tendril Through Cyberspace: I didn't know enough about virtual communities to construct a convincing universe. I would need to do considerable research before rewriting Tendril's story. I was overwhelmed and set the project aside.

A year later here I am struggling to write the final chapters of Pilgrim's Cross, an entirely different story without science fiction elements and hardly any surrealism. But I've been changing the way I use the internet and process ideas. This week I keep running into ideas relevant to Tendril's world. avad pointed out the notion of memory palaces, using memory to reconstruct real spaces on virtual sites (So many useful/startling ideas come from you, girl!). Then I came across a blurb about an online game erupting into life, with gang violence and police arrests. Another article describes how scientists have created digital organisms that reproduce and mutate far faster than living things, allowing them to test problems of Darwin's theory.

These tidbits suggest elements of Tendril's world: a virtual landscape, wildlife and culture. Will her virtual antagonists emerge from a real city subway stop to perpetrate revenge? Will life forms mutate before her eyes?

Meanwhile, my thoughts about "letting go" and "giving up" are merging with a refreshed sense of "going with the flow." Today I read a friend of a friend's comment about a book by Thomas Moore, Dark Nights of the Soul. Another reminder that our inner seasons are natural, too. Rather than struggling with them, we need to pay attention.

I am an introvert strongly compelled by the creative impulse. To neglect it is perilous. I need to find ways of making it work for me, rather than solving life's problems according to conventional wisdom. I am trying to listen more to my own desires and utilize my strengths. None of this is particularly new, but it's coming from every direction today, like the universe imploding into a giant black hole. Maybe next I'll explode brilliantly.

Patience, man. I've got all life. Even the Big Bang lasted hundreds of thousands of years.





Another photo from Wednesday's walk: Eramosa River.