Getting Off Track

Being the Flip Side of Yesterday's Post...

I love research. I love digging into a subject and finding that the more I deeply I delve, the most it seems to "fit" my project. There is a strange synergy to research. How often have you found, while reading up on a topic, that some aspect of it already fits the fiction you are making up?

Not to get all woo-woo and mystical about it, but it's as if this information is out in the ether, being soaked up by the muse. In actuality, it's probably more like the things we imagine just rationally (and imaginably!) follow from the same cause, so it's little wonder that the real life counterparts unfold the same way. That, and we just choose to ignore the parts that don't fit into the fiction.

But I'd intended to write about getting off track, before I, um, got off track. The flip side of this research is that occasionally I get so hung up on the research, sometimes I have so much great info that FITS, that I forget that the only purpose of research is to serve the purpose of the story. No matter how cool it is that I dug up little factoids, no matter how fascinating the factoids are, the story isn't ehre for factoids. The story is here for story.

It's a battle. I spent most of the morning trying to concoct a ritual scene and convincing myself that there had to be more information available to help me before I realized that I already had all the material I needed for the story.

The story, the story, the story. I should have it put in big, blinking neon lights above my computer.

vox inauditae melodiae

Latin for "the voice of the unheard melody."

Hildegard of Bingen is by some considered a saint of the Catholic church (though she was never officially canonized), a 12th century abbess (though she was never officially recognized as such by her archdiocese), and a medical writer, philosopher, and composer who from a very young age, experienced divine visions (which may or may not have been migraines). She was tithed to a German nunnery at the slender age of eight.

She invented her own language, wrote a variety of medical and botanical treatises, and created a large body of music, much of which is extant and performed today. Occasionally some lyrics are written in this lingua ignota (unknown language), the alphabet of which is totally freaky looking. It is written for mostly females (because, in the nunnery, who else would perform it?) and the occasional male role (often playing the devil). Many of the words sung in the songs using the lingua ignota remain untranslated today. When choirs perform these songs, they don't know what they are singing, except that the words are derived from eight hundred year old visions from God.

How cool is that?

The first time I heard the music performed, I knew it belonged to my story. Listen to yourself to the song entitled: "O Virtus Sapientiae" (O, strength of Wisdom). It's a little like Gregorian chant...if Gregorian chant were ecstatic and feminine.

I know, I know, what does contemporary urban fantasy have to do with 12th century German nuns? Man, I hope this thing holds together.

Open the heart

When I visit blogs, and click to the first post, it's always some sort of introduction of the blogger, or a mission statement about the point of the blog. That's tired. (And more than a little disingenuous, since how can I know what this blog is going to be about once I get it rolling?) So instead, I'm going to talk about how I made the decision -- a momentous decision, to stop thinking and dreaming and talking about the book I wanted to write and actually write it.

Have you heard of tasseography? It's a type of divination in which you read tea leaves, coffee grounds, even wine sediment, from the bottom of a cup. "Tassa" is Arabic for "cup." There are few forms of divination I believe in (a bit like the characters in Harry Potter that way, in that I think it's all rot), but the ones that require a personal, almost psychoanalytical interpretation of the message is one that I do find have relevance. Tarot cards, for instance. Yes, the cards may be random (unless you are one of those who believes that your psychic sense drew you to certain cards), but what you choose to take from the widely interpreted symbols is up to you.

Tasseography, when seen through this light, is almost like a sort of Rorschach test. They are just smudges of wet leaves or sediment swirled around a cup. Any messages they hold are created by your mind. This is why, at the start of a reading, the subject is asked to "open her heart." You need to believe that the grounds will give you a message, or all you'll see is bitter trash.

Anyway, one day, I was drinking my tea and thinking about the book I dreamed of writing -- of writing "someday" or "when I was good enough" or "when I had more time." And I looked down into my empty cup.And I knew I had to go for it. The universe was telling me that it was time.