Why I write

A world I can escape to. My mind, the one place no one can ever get to me, if I don’t want them to.  The world of fiction, only existent in my own head, my own imagination. That world has always been a constant comfort to me, someplace that would never go away, until I drove it away with drugs and alcohol.  How thankful I am it waited for me to come back.

A world I can escape to, the world of a book.  A place I am in complete control, yet powerless to make the choices, the place where my stories come from.  These characters I have been carrying along with me for years and decades, or maybe just an hour, before they are pressing at my soul to come out, to be set free.  They come to me because I am the one who has the words to tell their story, and I am the one who knows the arrangement, the orchestration of their lives. I am the conductor of the symphony that is their world.  I never know the whole concerto before I begin to write, and it drifts to me slowly, tickling the corners of my knowledge until I can bring it into focus.  Bits and pieces fall into place, like notes or a couple bars of a tune that you know would be beautiful if you could only remember the whole song.  It is I who must remember for them.  For it is I who knew the tune all along.  I am a musician of words, a melodic seamstress of sentences, plucking the strings of language to elicit the strains of a song whose verse was written long ago. It is I who must remember how to play.  For I owe it to this world I found refuge in, to replenish its landscape of imagination. To bear homage to the dependable pages of the book to always catch me no matter how far a fall I was plummeting through, and to take me to the place I could be safe. Within its comforting covers, I slept cradled in the bed made by someone who, like me, spun webs of worlds to catch and devour anothers loneliness, despair, boredom or curiosity.  I owe it to those who live for those worlds, and for the worlds not yet dreamt up, but most of all, I owe it to those worlds not yet dreamt. I write.

The Beginning

This blog was created to track the journey of my novel, The Other Side of the Sea, from where it is currently in production, to where it will one day be available on bookstore shelves.

Aptly titled, this post is the beginning of my blog tracking this journey. I hope to keep in touch with people through this process and share my joys, as well as learn to share my sorrows. Much more of the former will be popping up than the latter, I am sure.

The journey of this historical fiction novel began four years ago with a short story about a girl and a boy I did not know much about. Over the next few years, little insights would randomly dawn on me about these characters, along with additional characters within their world. As I grew to know more and more about them, I finally realized I did not have a short story with some characters that were going to fade away after I wrote about them. I had something much bigger. Their story kept unveiling itself to me and continues to do so. Sometimes beautiful, other times hideous. But all very intensely felt. I have the entire outline mapped out now and have been writing since the beginning of 2014 with a renewed purpose and intensity.

In August, I am going overseas to Ireland to research the setting and people within the setting of my novel. I have many places mapped out to visit, and I have many questions ready to discuss with the local population when I am settled. I intend to keep those interested in my progress up to speed through this blog.

I thank you for reading and I will soon post a synopsis of the novel, along with character descriptions for my three main characters. I will also be sporadically posting excerpts from the novel, if people seem to be interested in reading small samples.

I am unimaginably excited for where this journey will carry me, and for all the remarkable knowledge and experiences that will go along with it!

Thank you for coming with me!
Much love,
b