Every story is like a court case wherein we, the author, like an attorney, tries a case of our protagonist.
Who is on trial?
Is your protagonist the defendant or the plaintiff seeking judgment and damages for a wrong committed upon her or him?
If she or his had been wronged then what was the crime and the injury inflicted?
Who committed the injustice?
What cries out for change?
Is this injustice still occurring at the outset of the novel?
If so what does the central character need to accomplish to stop the wrongful act?
The story we craft becomes our protagonist’s quest, their journey to achieve justice and survival, a tale of change and transformation.
And then there is our story, that of the writer.
How did we come to tell this story?
How did it come to us?
What impels us to write it?
We know it. But why not keep it to ourselves?
What moves out pen to paper? Our hand to pen or computer keys?
To answer these questions would entitle the questioner to access understanding of some of the greatest mysteries of life.
Why do we live?
God put us here. Is this the answer that arises in your mind?
In writing the author becomes a deity, the queen or king of her or his world, the monarch ruling the page.
But what rules the monarch?
For me it is feelings.
My natal astrology chart show that I have Mars in Cancer. I have read that Toni Morrison too, has this same configuration in her astrology birth chart.
I have also been told that the words of my writing convey deep emotions.
Writing, whether fiction or essays, provides a release.
Laying open my heart I clear my head.
My soul feels free and yet grounded, substantiated, affirmed.
And then trans-substantiated.
By becoming another, tapping into the life of my characters, I draw closer to who I am, my authentic self–the me that lives beneath the layers of the mask that I wear rendering me sometimes unrecognizable to myself.
Writing allows me to come back home.
The characters of my stories, the topics of my essays centering on matters that lay close to my heart–all of these–are my map.
Where are you going?
How will you get there?
How does you writing configure into the odyssey of your life, the travels of your heart?