To be or not to be

When I am writing a story, going through this preliminary phase of creating in my head, one thing that always stops me for awhile is when I am considering adding a spiritual/paranormal element. When I wrote Sky Daughter it was one of the aspects with which I wrestled. Should the spiritual element be real or imaginary? Either are possible in such stories.

I woke up thinking about this problem because some aspect of it is going to be in the Tucson historical romance. Tucson, Arizona and the valley in which it sets is a place with a tremendous number of spiritual elements all coming together in what at one time was a flowing river and its surrounding riparian zone. It inspires the possibility of real spiritual power-- of positive and negative sorts.

Picture Rocks

Tucson is a good place to find love but also violence. The events that have happened, keep happening, have created an atmosphere of conflict and resolution, beauty and danger. If you are sensitive, you will feel it in the air and come across the evidence that others have felt it with their petroglyphs, the shrines, the churches.  It's a good place to be when wondering about spiritual traditions, mysteries, and the source of life.

 San Xavier, the White Dove of the Desert

Friday morning I awoke thinking about all this in terms of the story, which I had laid aside to write the Christmas novella. The one thing I knew is that this story will have a spiritual element with a heroine who is curious about the psychic world, a Yaqui sidekick for the hero, the setting in Tucson, but how far did I want to take that?


I know a lot of the plot, the dilemmas the couple will face and feel I know these people but what about the part I don't know? How much of that shall I put into it? There will be some spiritual searching but how about the paranormal itself? I find it fascinating and have done a lot of research over the years, but how far do I want to go in this book?

While I’ve been in Tucson, I’ve gone to some of my favorite petroglyph sites, which show at the least an attempt to understand the Cosmos, possibly tell their stories, but were they placed where they are with a feeling these were sacred sites or are they all that is left? They do feel like sacred space which is to be respected in the same way a church does. Is there real energy of some sort and it's why they exist where they are? The site for San Xavier was a holy site to the Tohono O'odham before the Spanish priests came and erected a church there.

Shrine in downtown Tucson

There are many sacred sites around the United States and, of course, the world. Do they hold some kind of power as some believe of the Sedona vortexes? Or Stonehenge in England? Is there some kind of reality to the paranormal, that which we might experience but cannot explain? Could there be power from a physical source like say ions in the air which is why the energy is good around a waterfall?

For the book I am soon to start writing, my big question is not whether the questing will be there. It will be part of the underlying theme. The question is how real do I make it?

Once in awhile I have wrestled with that for a story as I am not traditionally religious and am more of an agnostic than an atheist. I don't write sci fi or fantasy where you can let fly with what you might imagine. Romances can have all of that, but mine have not. They have been grounded in the 'real' world as much as I know of it. It would be possible to put the spiritual elements in the story and have the characters recognize it as a false quest or equally it would be possible to have them touch the unknown, to come out of their experiences with a greater understanding of the unexplainable, the mystery of life. That's the quandary of a writer.
 

 el Tiradito

Humans really do want to believe there is magic and you see the evidence of it everywhere. Should this book be a place to find some of that magic or is it better to be 'realistic' about what is true...  if we know what that is.

Bringing it together

While it's been a busy time while in Tucson, that doesn't mean writing isn't on my mind. I keep looking (fruitlessly) for a quote I saw when the Portland Art Museum had a Claude Monet show. The gist was that a neighbor saw Monet sitting in a lawn chair and said-- I see you're not working today. Monet said, no, he was very much working. Later when the neighbor observed him painting, he said, now you are working. Monet said, no, now I'm not.

And that's how a lot of writing is-- the ideas germinate and grow until they are ready to be put down on paper or a computer. I take an idea, in my head, so far down that road and then think, nah, doesn't work because of this or that. I go back to the start, in my head, and try a new direction. Ideas I might try come from many sources-- on the wind, from other people, something in the paper, a discussion,  a walk, and maybe the muse standing by wondering how long it'll take to get through to me where I really need to go with this.

For me, as a story comes, it will be in stages. I cannot describe how someone who writes a mystery, sci-fi, or fantasy would progress, but I can give an idea of how my romances do.

Some examples of ideas that I might use would be from the newspaper like the recent tragedy of firefighters being lured to a fire as an ambush, the embassy attack in Libya, a tsunami, big forest fire, political intrigue, etc. There are some stories I wouldn't touch because they hit too close to home, have too much emotional angst attached for me personally like school shootings.  When I do find an event intriguing, it won't be it exactly but more the energy of what happened set into some other place and time.

Where it comes to writing romances, the lovers are at the core, the center, the heart. And it's not just one of them but both. Who are they? What are their problems? Why would they be attracted? What keeps them apart? And those obstacles, do they seem believable that they can be overcome-- and if so, how would that happen?

Writing a full length book takes months-- even years. To spend that long, even with fictional characters, I have to like them-- both of them. If I find either weak, mean, detestable, stupid, ridiculous, what are the odds readers will see it otherwise?  I have to believe these characters feel real, could exist somewhere-- although none of my hero or heroines have ever been written using people I knew personally.

There are a ton of ideas (ideas are never in short supply) which will be discarded during this ruminating period. They might seem unrealistic or go nowhere. Maybe they never give me a theme. I like to write books that have an underlying structure and theme that goes somewhere. The novella had less responsibility that way as it was more of slice of life. Novels though are stories with meaning. It's not just interesting events that seem unconnected but that in the end, they will be connected-- that's the nirvana of writing.

I've had a lot of dreams that are full movie version, plots, characters, the works but they aren't in an historic period that I want to research, or I just cannot see where they could develop beyond what I saw. I always write those kinds of dreams down in a journal as you never when maybe sometime.

When I start, it's generally with a few thousand words just to see if it has the feel of something I could take all the way. Then I think more on what I have and where it's going. Perhaps an idea requires more research like say a mystical element where I need to know more about how such a thing has impacted others. Once in awhile I have thrown in a mystical element that I don't explain or try to make logical. For those bothered by such, I just want to say-- life does that all the time.

Right now with the business of getting this house ready for the vacation renters, my free-time thinking has been aimed at my second Arizona historical which had been what I thought I'd totally write while here and instead the energy went into A Montana Christmas, the novella that followed up on From Here to There.

The historical western though has not been forgotten as I do some further research and get more ideas from hikes around the valley. Its theme is coming clear to me. I was happy to find a topographical map of this region from 1904 which isn't quite what I wanted with my story set in 1886 but probably not wildly off. Understanding roads is always important in historical books as what we can do today isn't always what was possible back then.

Photos: Harris' hawks at Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum where they do raptor shows twice a day as viewers watch, learn more about the birds and habitat they require. Quail in our backyard here (a hawk's idea of a great lunch). Finally one of Tucson's wonderful December sunsets.

Leaving our stories behind

When we write a story, draw a picture, create a sculpture, we are creating something for others, hopefully leaving something of ourselves, of how we see the world. It will be our interpretation of an event, a spiritual truth, life, nature, the cosmos, but whether the 'others' will see what we intended, who ever knows.

When in Tucson, I always like to visit petroglyph sites. Well actually I like them anywhere I go but here there are quite a few with easy access. One on my someday list is harder to reach, much longer hike, and I wasn't in shape this trip nor had I gotten the necessary permits ahead of time-- someday though.

Because I am starting on another Arizona historical novel, one or more of these sites will be worked into the story, and I might use one of the photos in its trailer. They are a good example of how when you are writing something, being there can add to your ideas for the events. This western always was planned to have some mystical elements, Yaqui and others, and so these sites work into that theme.

Regardless of whether I am writing or not, visiting such places is always important to me. To be there always feels infused with energy which maybe explains why they are where they are... or maybe these are just the places the elements didn't wipe out the etchings into the rocks.

As for their original story or purpose, it's all guesswork. They could be stories of life, sites for sacred work, but whatever the artist intended, visiting them always seems good to me and I've had that pleasure on many sites across the West.

The following petroglyphs are all Hohokam, probably over a thousand years old and in the Tucson area-- Signal Hill, Painted Rock, and Honeybee Canyon.