Look! Look! I've got a writing revelation!

I love traveling but I have not traveled much. A dragon flying tends to bring unwanted attention. Since there are not planes with dragon size seats I had to use the “look human AND sane” old trick in order to get to one. Destination: Mazunte. It’s a nearly virgin beach about an hour drive from Huatulco. My travelling companion was a real globe trekker. 

Since she had seen several marvels of the world, she didn’t look half amazed of the sights as I did. She was amazed though at how I reacted to everything I saw. I spent most of the time pointing my finger everywhere and urging her to take a picture. It was always: “Look! Look at that! Take a picture!”

She took a picture of a dolphin and I made her take a picture of a buzzard. She took a picture of a beautiful sunrise and I asked her to take a picture of a stone white of seagull droppings. Yes, our levels of amazement were different, no doubt. I thought every single thing was awesome and worth the picture, including a picture of her running with a cloud of mosquitoes around her head. (Mosquitoes are not interested in dragon’s blood, btw.)

What does anything of this have to do with writing? You may wonder. Ever since I got the idea to write a story of publishable quality, I set myself on the quest of learning everything I could about writing. During this quest, I’ve experienced the same feeling than when I travelled to Mazunte. I feel everybody knows things I’m only starting to discover.

This has happened to me:

“Look! Look at this! Characterization, isn’t that a wonder?”

“Hum, I’ve seen that before.”

Also this:

“Geez, didn’t think dialogue tags were so bad!”

“Oh, don’t worry too much about it.” And “Yes, it’s huge, worry about it, A LOT!” (At the same time from different people.)

Honestly, the more I learn the more I am aware of the whole bunch I still ignore. Some writer’s maxims seem like inside jokes to me. Everyone seems to get it except for me.

“Write what you know.” – Well, if I write only about what I know I wouldn’t be writing a story about Indians and secrets societies.

“Writers lie to tell the truth” – Say what?

“Writing is an act of courage” – Oh, you bet! But something tells me this is not referring to the way I’m getting it.

Some light came from Jeff Hargett and his Sunday Surfing (which I HIGHLY recommend for anyone who, like me, is trying to figure out an unknown business in a foreign language). He posted a link to free on-line courses and there I found this Short Story Course at the MIT.

The truth is you really have to be Sherlock Holmes and have some average knowledge on the matter to fully understand the Lecture Notes without the teacher. For a novice like me, some things made very little sense. However, I found some important revelations as the explanations to the “inside jokes”. I share them with you aware I might be pointing out at the white rock covered in seagull droppings, but it still amazes me as if it were the sunrise.

“Write what you know” is one of the great maxims of the field, but we have to define what that really means.  You cannot limit yourself to writing ONLY about characters just like you. 

(Otherwise, you could only write your own gender, age range, ethnicity, and this would be rather limiting.)

So what does it mean to know, and what do you know?

- physical truth

(This is what you know from physical experience—how a place looks, smells, what scratchy wool or zero degrees feels like on your skin)

- emotional truth

(This is the central truth for a writer, the emotional reality of the “now” moment which the reader MUST accept.  If the reader does not believe that moment of revelation/change, then the reader will not accept any part of the story.)

Writers lie to tell the truth – emotional truth lies in the cloak of fiction.

Fiction, that is, the act of embedding emotional truth in situation that never happened, is the way we find the courage to reveal that truth.

Writing is an act of courage.

 It takes courage to express emotional truth.  It means that you have to know yourself and be willing to put the depths of emotional reality out there where anyone can read it.  Fiction is what keeps us safe, what lets us express and the audience experience that truth.

Psychologists say that people have experienced the full range of emotion by the age of six. 

You must trust your own emotional experience and believe that you have adequate understanding and memory in order to have something to say.  

You need the courage first to be honest about your own emotional reality/experience, and then to express it.  Honesty is hard because every character we write comes from us, the villains as well as the heroes.  And we owe the villains as much as we owe the heroes, we must respect and understand their humanity, their motivations, and their desires.  Which means that we have to be honest about our own less-than-admirable desires, actions, etc.

 "Look, look! Now I feel a bit more "In" than before. That's amazingly encouraging, isn't it?" 

Write a story as if you were going to publish it

When I first thought on writing my current project I only wanted to gather all my experiences and put them in a story. I had enrolled myself in a personal quest for enlightenment and mental evolution. The Mission: Vanquishing inner demons. It sounds good material for an thrilling novel, isn't it?

Where to begin? Language. My mother tongue is Spanish but I worked as a translator. I thought writing my story in English would help me enhance my grasp on the language. After all, I had a fair knowledge of grammar, I had translated several specialized documents on Engineering, Law and Medicine. I have faced the challenge of highly technical terms so, how difficult could it be to try my "Shakespeare skills" now? I didn't know a single thing about genres, PoV, voice, and all that endless list of niceties involved in writing but, so what? I was doing this for fun and for a better grasp of English. It was not like I was going to publish it anyway.

Enthusiasm and confidence as my armor and shield, I went to my favorite corner in the dragon cave and instructed the dwarves to not pass me any calls. I was inspired, my muse stormed me with wonderful ideas. The first draft of "Path of Fire" was done in 3 days; twenty brilliant pages in English. I was exhilarated. Now I just had to develop it into a novel. Piece of cake. I had written sagas before, only they were in Spanish.

Although I didn't plan to publish it, I wanted it to be good. I have written several novels but I wanted this to be my master piece. My muse said "You must write it as if you were actually publishing it, even if you're not." I gave my word of honor, because dragons do have honor, you know? I didn't understand the full meaning of those words. I was blissfully oblivious to the difficulties ahead.

Until then, little I cared about factual accuracy. I chose my setting in India because my first idea was a war between Hindu God Agni and Goddess Kali. I never considered India was a different country, in a different continent with far different thinking than I have. All those "little" details can make things difficult for a writer but I was still confident. I'm a self-teaching creature and I have taught myself to use the Internet. I love doing research. I could handle this.

India: a country of appealing mysticism but also 20 official tongues, castes and an idiosyncrasy of its own. Just to pick up a name for my main character needed more than 100 hours of search. The echos of my frustration lingered in the dragon lair. "But it is just a name, for all gods!" In India, your name tells about your religion, your family, your caste, the place your family comes from, most likely your profession and in some cases, it will even tell if you are trust worthy or not.

It's not like you pick up a name just because you like the sound of it. I liked the sound of Aryan Khan, but I was pointed out that while Aryan was Hindu, Khan was Muslim and this was not appropriate. You have to be really careful and have a VERY good reason why you would mix Hindu and Muslim names.

I could have kept the name and write the story with characters with a Western thinking. It would have saved me months of research. But I made a promise to my muse. "Write it as if you were going to publish it." Credibility was important, I heard. I had to do things right even if it was the longer road.

This was only the tip of the iceberg. What was I writing? Somebody I asked me the genre. The what? I don't know. Fantasy, I suppose. What kind of Fantasy? Search. Somewhere I read about POV. To me it could mean Preference of Virgins, who needs that? Search. Oh, I write third multiple omniscient and it is outdated and frowned upon. So what? I'm writing for myself.

"Write as if you were going to publish it." I'm already wearing that "Ugh, alright" childish expression. Then it came Deep PoV, Voice, Characterization, Style, Theme, Suspension of Disbelief, Sub-genre, Pace, K Size, Trope, Cliche, Speech Pattern.....Ijoesú! And the list kept growing in a ratio equal to my decreasing enthusiasm.

Arrgh. Enough! I only wanted to write a story for my own entertainment. I have never published any of my stories and I am ok with the "published writer impossible dream." My inner voice told me to write my story to the best of my ability and shelve it with all other stories. My muse pierced me with those fire golden eyes. Yes, I know. I said I wanted this to be my master piece and if I want a master piece I should do it worth to be published. And there is only one way to reach a publishable level and that's not the easy way out.

Welcome to the Father Dragon cave. Here you'll find this dragon's Secret Diary and the records of my journey to throw down the barriers of language, ignorance and doubt in order to walk The Path of Fire.