There's one more chapter of Rosemary- it sort of ties up just a few more loose endings, but my other writing has distracted me.
My mom pointed out that Cederic is a lot like my husband, and while that makes me laugh, I have to agree. He is kind of is.
I think I was a couple years into my marriage before I realized that I had actually married a man much like my characters; it took me that long to recognize this because all the outer trappings are completely different, as is the vocabulary. It's the heart and character that holds the similarity.
I've tentatively decided to try a sequel to Torii. I'm about ten pages in and I have a vague but growing sense of the inner and outer conflicts that the story might center around.
I want to write it, and that sense of desire is a good sign. Where there's desire, there's usually a lot of creative energy waiting to be accessed, in my experience.
As I've started this, I've realized all over again just how much work it is, to write, and how the beginning can be so deceptive.
Whenever I start a story, I'm thinking of a hundred different things that I'm failing to do or to capture; I'm aware of all the things I don't know about my story. I'm almost never sure of my direction.
The thing is, if I stay true to my desire- if I write the thing that I want, in my gut, to exist, the story eventually writes itself true.
But it doesn't look like it at first, because it's nearly impossible to capture everything in the first go. So it's imperative to trust one's instincts at the first. Everything can be edited later, and probably will be.
When trying to write the Allegory, my instincts kept taking me out into deeper water than I was ready for, and I kept bracing myself against it, like a stubborn donkey. Maybe one day I will be ready to engage those things in words. I hope so.
In the meantime, I am finding this new story compelling and interesting. It's the first time I've ever tried a sequel and it is unexpectedly fun to meet up with the characters again- to see how they've grown, adapted or stayed the same, and to create the new ways that they interact with each other.
