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sessifetSometimes you get an idea which makes you go 'hmm, that looks like fun', but when you try to write it down, it refuses to move from your mind to the paper. These ideas eventually languish and become idle daydreams.
Sometimes you get an idea that feels so real, so right, so urgent that you can't help but sit down straight away and put it on paper. So you scribble frantically, recording snatches of conversation, world building, images, landscapes, sounds and jokes. Then once the fire in your mind dies down, you step back and realise that, at this moment in time, you are not capable of doing this idea justice. You lack the skill. You lack the words. It does not languish because there is the hope that, one day, you will find the words and the skill to make this idea come to life on paper rather than just in your mind. Until that moment, it slumbers.
And sometimes, you get an idea that comes to you unbidden, possibly even unwanted, and it stays in the back of your mind, gathering information and words and images and dreams and previous ideas from all over the place. It grows every day, never coming to the fore but you can feel it gathering strength like a storm. You tingle. You feel something is about to happen. You want this to happen. It expands until it spills over to your conscious mind. And then, all of a sudden, you have this living, breathing idea soaring in your mind, drawing the images in blazing fiery colours across every creative synapse. The words burn in your mind's eye in letters 20 feet tall and a voice whispers incessantly in your ear to write writewriteit write it writeme pleaseplease write me write me and it doesn't care that you don't have the perfect words or if you hack it into a stone wall or write it in the sand with a stick as long as you write, write it, write down this wonderful, glittering, magnificent dream.
The Tales of the Ancient and Venerable Plink is one such idea. I can't ignore this. I can't worry if I don't have the words or if I'm good enough. It doesn't care. The Ancient and Venerable Plink* wants to have his day(s) in the sun. And I'm the one to do it.
But how?
Having run around being very vague in an incredibly focused way today, a small glimmer of a notion appeared and it all clicked together when I had this last puzzle piece.
The answer is simple. I can write for Danielle. She's only tiny now, and I am very far away. I can't be a close-by auntie and spoil her rotten with gifts and attention and all that. But I can write for her. I can put this down on paper with her as my audience. I can start out simple and hopefully as she gets older, my skill will grow and together we can explore this world.
I'd like for her to know of the wondrous adventures of The Ancient and Venerable Plink. To get to know Salamanca the Unwise (a silverfish unwilling to go when her time had come), Trips the Courageous (Plink's long-time friend, ofttimes rescuer and later wife (and, quite frankly, the brains of the outfit)) and Eugene Whitford III (resident cat curmudgeon and relentless critic of Plink**.
I can't see Danielle every day, or even every week or month. I may never be more than the eccentric auntie that lives across the sea in a far-away and exotic land doing big grown-up stuff. But I want her to know that I love her and wish to be part of her life and growing up. What better way than to write a world for her? To have something that has been written for her, with care and attention and to the best of my abilities. It may not beat a garish plastic playhouse or definitely not me physically being there and spoiling her rotten, but it's the next best thing.
*scribbles happily*
*Please to be using his full honorific at all times, thank you so very much.
**He refuses to use the full honorific. Plink lets him get away with it, because Eugene is about 20 times larger than him. Not that Pli*ow*The Ancient and Venerable Plink (this is going to get old fast) will ever admit to that.
Sometimes you get an idea that feels so real, so right, so urgent that you can't help but sit down straight away and put it on paper. So you scribble frantically, recording snatches of conversation, world building, images, landscapes, sounds and jokes. Then once the fire in your mind dies down, you step back and realise that, at this moment in time, you are not capable of doing this idea justice. You lack the skill. You lack the words. It does not languish because there is the hope that, one day, you will find the words and the skill to make this idea come to life on paper rather than just in your mind. Until that moment, it slumbers.
And sometimes, you get an idea that comes to you unbidden, possibly even unwanted, and it stays in the back of your mind, gathering information and words and images and dreams and previous ideas from all over the place. It grows every day, never coming to the fore but you can feel it gathering strength like a storm. You tingle. You feel something is about to happen. You want this to happen. It expands until it spills over to your conscious mind. And then, all of a sudden, you have this living, breathing idea soaring in your mind, drawing the images in blazing fiery colours across every creative synapse. The words burn in your mind's eye in letters 20 feet tall and a voice whispers incessantly in your ear to write writewriteit write it writeme pleaseplease write me write me and it doesn't care that you don't have the perfect words or if you hack it into a stone wall or write it in the sand with a stick as long as you write, write it, write down this wonderful, glittering, magnificent dream.
The Tales of the Ancient and Venerable Plink is one such idea. I can't ignore this. I can't worry if I don't have the words or if I'm good enough. It doesn't care. The Ancient and Venerable Plink* wants to have his day(s) in the sun. And I'm the one to do it.
But how?
Having run around being very vague in an incredibly focused way today, a small glimmer of a notion appeared and it all clicked together when I had this last puzzle piece.
The answer is simple. I can write for Danielle. She's only tiny now, and I am very far away. I can't be a close-by auntie and spoil her rotten with gifts and attention and all that. But I can write for her. I can put this down on paper with her as my audience. I can start out simple and hopefully as she gets older, my skill will grow and together we can explore this world.
I'd like for her to know of the wondrous adventures of The Ancient and Venerable Plink. To get to know Salamanca the Unwise (a silverfish unwilling to go when her time had come), Trips the Courageous (Plink's long-time friend, ofttimes rescuer and later wife (and, quite frankly, the brains of the outfit)) and Eugene Whitford III (resident cat curmudgeon and relentless critic of Plink**.
I can't see Danielle every day, or even every week or month. I may never be more than the eccentric auntie that lives across the sea in a far-away and exotic land doing big grown-up stuff. But I want her to know that I love her and wish to be part of her life and growing up. What better way than to write a world for her? To have something that has been written for her, with care and attention and to the best of my abilities. It may not beat a garish plastic playhouse or definitely not me physically being there and spoiling her rotten, but it's the next best thing.
*scribbles happily*
*Please to be using his full honorific at all times, thank you so very much.
**He refuses to use the full honorific. Plink lets him get away with it, because Eugene is about 20 times larger than him. Not that Pli*ow*The Ancient and Venerable Plink (this is going to get old fast) will ever admit to that.
