I spent a good chunk of time yesterday reading about saints and thinking of them in relation to mythology and fairytale. No. I am not saying they're the same thing, but I had a funny realization a few weeks ago in England. I was sitting in church, listening to a bang up sermon on Ezekiel and how God commanded the ravens to feed him with "bread and flesh" when he was hanging out in the Kerith Ravine drinking from streams, and the pastor kept comparing this story to a fairytale with all of its magic and sparkle and unlikely happenings, and I realized, I think for the first time, that as a writer I'm drawn to mythologizing life and searching out the magic in the everyday because that was the world view I was brought up seeing. Magic has always been a part of my reality because God was always performing these magic tricks for his people. I love, love, love that my faith hands me this big old book that's thousands of years old, tells me to blow off the dust and believe in the fantastical things that happen between those pages. I love the blood, the guts, the evil, the purity, the outrageous, the redemption: I love how humanity really can be reduced to a handful of story lines and character types, but that the goodness is in the detail of each of those stories.
Now, I'm not Catholic and I don't plan on shimmying over that way anytime soon, but damn, those Catholics have some things straight. Sit down with a bible and a book of the saints and you can't help but feel that the saints sound like sequels written by the same author: flesh and blood people with birth and death dates meeting magic in the everyday in the shape of God. That's some good stuff.
I'm working on a project right now trying to tell my own stories in complete truth but within a mythological/fairytale framework. It's kind of fun but I got so into the research yesterday that I did none of the writing I was supposed to do, but came home and wrote that short, short story, "The Woman" instead. I couldn't help writing it.
I love it when I can't help writing it.
Right. I'll keep you posted on how the real writing goes.
This is me getting to work...
p.s. if any of you know of any books that might help me out with all this I'd love you forever if you sent the titles my way.
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4 comments:
I wouldn't call it procrastinating. That's a powerful story. Will it go with your manuscript? Them's powerful books, too...
naw, i was just playing around. but thanks.
hey, your new place is nice. congratulations again on the relief publication. wahoo, for you!
I love to have a glimpse of another's writing process. Those things that can't help but come out are what make writing a drug. You can't beat that feeling.
This idea of mythology in the every day is genius, especially in regard to our faith. I love GGM's One Hundred Years of Solitude for that same reason.
amber,
check it out if you like writing process stuff: http://logogryph.blogspot.com/
that's one of my old writing profs. he was fantastic. he's just published a children's novel, but also wrote "the logogryph" which is one of the books in my stack of influences. so good.
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