Eleven years ago, I e-mailed a writer friend: “I find myself without the blazing energy that has so often carried my hands across the keys, my pen across paper. So, I read, taking comfort and inspiration from other writers. Mary Stewart’s fine-crafted Merlin trilogy carries me to sleep and dreams each night. Here, from The Last Enchantment, are the words that brought me solidly to earth, free from the terror that the work has ended for me – or worse, that in focussing a year ago on my former lover and his writing, I disrespected my own gift: (I did not write in the three months he visited me.) “Here are the words that reminded me that writing is both craft and magic, and that the only element I can in any way, control is my craft: Young King Arthur speaks to his teacher/oracle Merlin) ‘…it has seemed—not like a dream exactly, but as if something were using me,using all of us…’
(Merlin) ‘Yes. A strong wind blowing, and carrying us all with it.’
(Arthur) ‘And now the wind has died down,’ he said soberly, and we are left to live life by our own strength only. As if—well, as if it had all been magic and miracles, and now they had gone. Have you noticed, Merlin, that not one man has spoken of what happened up yonder in the shrine? Already, it’s as if it had happened well in the past, in some song or story.’
(Merlin) ‘One can see why. The magic was real, and too strong for many of those who witnessed it, but it has burned down into the memories of all who saw it,and into the memory of the folk who made the songs and legends. But, that is for the future…’”
That February I had left the man to whom I had given away my time and my work (not at his demand, but out of fear – and the last shreds of belief that one must earn love.). Two months later I fell while hiking and soon found myself imprisoned by pain. Arthritis racked my hips, shoulder, legs and hands. I began to believe that I would never again be able physically to write. There was no way out of the pain, no way out of the knowledge that writing was more precious to me than the illusion of safety. Hour by hour, day by day, I walked an unmarked path. My hands began to heal and I wrote.
I found clouds and shadows of what I had learned drifting into my re-write of my second novel, affecting the characters, affecting how they treat each other and themselves. But, it was too early to write directly about what had happened during those nine months of loss and pain. When I tried, the flow was dammed, no word seemed true enough—except these: I vow to keep my writing near me at all times; and I vow to teach what I have learned about the hard craft and the radiant magic of writing.
And, even that was not enough. As with baking bread, shaping glass, carving air with music or dance – the ancient craft of alchemy transmutes good writing into greatness. There is a phase in alchemy callled the Black Work. Dross material is sealed into a glass retort and left, by itself, to transform. Any story maker who has sat with only the company of the blank page and her mind-cage imprisoning her words knows real solitude, and may consider the relative ease of a hang-over, a sugar crash, re-entering the sandpaper shelter of a lousy relationship—and does;or does not. The writing life is a flow and ebb of making and gathering; of creation and attrition; of booze and donuts and the phone call she knows she must not make; a flow of time spent instead waiting—then putting one’s hands on the keys.
Two years after I wrote those words, I sat down at my computer on a soft June morning and began a novel I called Scylla. I wrote for three months and the book was done. My lost lover had once said, “You need to write a book about our story.” I believed I’d done just that, knew the book was flawed and put it in a drawer. Six years later, in March, the editor of Torrey House Press asked me if I had a novel. I said, “Yes.” He asked when I could get it to him. I said, “I can send you the first fifty pages.” He read the pages, said he wanted the book and asked me when I could get the finished manuscript to him. I said, “By July 1.” He said, “That’s great.”
I hung up the phone, opened the novel doc and hyperventilated. By the time I sent the finished manuscript, I’d changed the setting from Tucson, Arizona to Twentynine Palms, California, cut 2/3 of the book and written 3/4 more. Scylla became 29. Around the beginning of this year, a friend told me I’d love the on-line t.v. series The Wire. I watched into the deep hours of the night – and more than loved it. I found myself remembering scenes from the episodes, the cadence of dialogue, the subtle layering of themes, atrocities and loves. I remembered the old t.v. series, Northern Exposure, which had been set in a little Alaskan town. It had been an ensemble series, with multiple stories braiding and fraying. One night, as I drifted off to sleep, I thought – more like a ghost thought than a corporeal thought – “I want to write a screenplay – a pilot for an on-line t.v. series – based on 29. Northern Exposure meets The Wire in the Mojave desert.”
The next day I talked with my son and a best friend who are screenwriters, bought Final Draft software and began to write the first scene by hand.
I found the earlier writing about alchemy as I hunted for a theme for today’s Breakthrough Tip. It had taken seven years since I wrote the piece for 29 to become a published novel and nearly eight to begin to become a screen-play. All of that had taken the loss of the man I believed to be the love of my life, and the terror that I would never write again. It had taken a excoriating and unimaginably beautiful year living in the Mojave. It had taken over a decade of the Black Work.
How are you living in your alchemy? What is your Black Work? How have you been carried into something you thought you couldn’t survive? How are you emerging? Please give yourself at least twenty-five minutes to write in response to this prompt: I didn’t think I could make it through… Keep your pen moving. And, I would love to publish what you’ve written – with your name or anonymously. When we give our words to each other, we practice alchemy of the highest order. Thank you, m
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