My sister Crista was horse crazy. When I was four years old, Crista was knee deep in horse models and riding lessons. She owned all the Marguerite Henry books, and others about horsemanship and horse care. By the time she had her first horse, four years later when she was twelve, she had exhausted the library’s supply of horse books. One day she brought home The Horse And His Boy because of the title, which led to her to read the rest of the Chronicles of Narnia, and then The Hobbit, followed by The Lord of The Rings. I read these and the other fantasy books that Crista recommended to me over the years of my childhood. Crista was hooked on fantasy, and so was I.
One can only read so many fantasy novels before one thinks of writing one’s own. At the age of seventeen, I sat down to release the great story that I knew was within me. I happily rolled up my sleeves to type, but nothing made it to the paper. Every idea I had, and there were many, involved Tolkien’s elves, George MacDonald’s goblins, or a plot from The Dark Is Rising Sequence. I could not come up with an original concept.
This bothered me very much, so I made a vow not to read any more fantasy until I had written my own. This goes against the standard advice for writers, the Number One Rule: If you wish to write, you must read, read, read. Of course, by this time in my life, I had read an enormous amount of fiction, mostly in the fantasy genre. And so I kept my promise, with a caveat. I allowed myself to read fantasy books to my children when I read aloud each night for many years, but only stories I’d read growing up. The exceptions were the early Harry Potter books, which my sons had already read, because they insisted I read them. Yes, aside from the Potter books I kept my vow, even though several decades passed before I began Aru’s Realm.
I wrote a couple of chapters of Aru’s Realm in the same year that Y2K was a big worry. Those short chapters of the early draft were quite different from the eventual story, of course, but did contain the same basic ideas. This is why I sat down and cried when the Prisoner of Azkaban came out. (Spoilers here if that one is on your TBR list.) I cried because one of the unique aspects of Aru’s Realm was that the characters transform between human and animal. My story is written with hints beginning on the first page to spur the reader to slowly figure out that these people are animal people. (It doesn’t spoil the story to know this.) Each passing character on Aru’s journey is described in order to give a chance to guess the type of animal. When J K Rowling wrote about shapeshifters, she was the first popular author to focus on that ancient magical tradition beyond the werewolf or the vampire, at least that I can think of. Tolkein had Beorn, other stories had skin-changers, but it was not a “thing.” After Azkaban, and later, unfortunately, Twilight, “shifter” became a sub-genre. Of paranormal romance, no less.
After those first few chapters made their way into the world, I had to pause my writing for a while. I had another project involving my children which required a great deal of writing, and our family moved to a different state. My story wasn’t a priority. So Aru waited. Fifteen years later, as I drove an eighteen-wheeler among the magnificent red rock formations of Moab, Utah, those rocks spoke to me. Those colorful ancients told me, clearly, that it was time. I’d been gathering notes for my story for decades, since I was seventeen. But now it was Time.
I began by organizing words and ideas by color. I wanted each chapter to give the reader the impression of a different color. This is more difficult than it may at first sound, and is largely why the story took so long to write. The story flowed. I felt as if I were a sculptor, chipping away to reveal an art object which already existed. Never once did I have a moment of writer's block. Even so, although I took jobs which allowed me to write for much of the time, such as home health care, and spent most of each day writing, it was four solid years before the editing began.
If you think about it, not all nouns which bring a certain color to mind will cause people to think of that specific color. For instance, a dandelion is yellow, but only before it has gone to seed. It becomes a white globe. This is how it will come to mind for many people. The sun, however, is consistently pictured as yellow. If you’d like a bit of fun, try this: Think of five items which are more than likely to bring up an image of yellow. Foods are easy, so don’t include those. If this isn’t enough of a challenge, use the color green instead, and exclude plant life. Come up with some green animals! Maybe try some other colors! Words which contain the color name, or refer to a place in our world (cologne, Lipazzan stallions) are not allowed. For a word to have been included in this story, it would have had to exist in the nineteenth century and couldn’t be associated with war. Probably almost anyone would have let the idea of this book about color fade away soon after the thought came to them. I’m not exactly sure what that says about me. I’m happy that I spent the time, though, because through the use of color association in the portrayal of events and emotions, and also through calculated, carefully honed description, each chapter fully surrounds the reader with the feeling of a particular color. This unique approach is one of the reasons I’m proud of my story Aru’s Realm.
I have a pattern of creating hurdles for myself both in my journey through life and in my writing. The difference is, the hurdles I create as creative challenges are much more fun.