World-building

I’ve spent this summer vacationing in the Six Kingdoms.

Let others have their Nantucket, Yellowstone and Saratoga.  I’ve been where kraken rule the seas and Erseiyrs the skies; where whitewash still brightens the walls of magnificent castles; and where you can walk along timbered roads–don’t look down!–that link villages built high in the canopy of forest wilderness.  As for city nightlife, those bloodsnare dens are a kick:  pale musicians playing live, parasitic  creatures like some Scot does the bagpipes–only these Six Kingdoms’ rock stars  don’t live much longer than Jimi Hendrix or Jim Morrison did.

The vacation was a working vacation, so I went AWOL to Whidbey Island (northwest of Seattle) for five days, with my wife and our year-old dog Olivia.  Lots of beach walks and reading.  No writing, but the book I brought with me, Under the Dome, did remind me of the editing for Pass on the Cup of Dreams that I’d left behind.  Stephen King could have cut out as many pages of his book as mine is long and not missed a beat.

We saw a lot of eagles and rabbits on Whidbey, a further reminder that a good story has to have both (figuratively speaking) in proximity to each other, the closer the better.

Eagle:  Ah, rabbit tenders!  I’m sick of fish.

Bunny:  Uh, oh…

Anyway, back home to Edmonds to finish up the editing for Pass on the Cup of Dreams.  I managed to cut 8,000 words.  The novel, by the way, will be coming out sometime in October.  I’m sure you’ll let me know if I should have found more words to purge.

Editing isn’t nearly as much fun as world-building–one of the delights of writing fiction–whether you’re detailing a place that still exists, imagining one that once did, or never will.  Fantasy is especially pleasurable:  you get to pick and choose your groceries from a supermarket of history and imagination; the only constraints–besides removing the labels–being a reasonable plausibility and consistency.  Yes, those are still necessary even in the ‘what-if’ genres.

The late Richard Matheson (I Am Legend; Twilight Zone episodes and other memorable work) had a favorite quote he kept over his desk:  THAT WHICH YOU THINK BECOMES YOUR WORLD.  He was referring, of course, to his own imagination, which produced some wonderfully unsettling and provocative fiction.  But there’s also probably a cautionary message for the rest of us, and not just writers.

Because everyone builds worlds.  We do it every minute of every hour, dreams included.  Always have.

Somewhere, at some time, someone thought that fire, or a sharpened stone fastened to the end of a stick, could be useful in…several ways.  Or had the thought that there might be a world after death; and if so, wouldn’t the departed want the things that had pleased him or her, gave him status in the one he’d left?  And this:  let’s build a monumental tomb so people will always remember what a terrific and powerful guy he was!   But what if someone deserved no carry-on luggage; in fact had been truly awful?  Here’s a thought:  why not build an after-world where the son-of-a-bitch will damn well get his for what he’s done?

Back to Richard Matheson’s quote, and the hint that our thoughts never remain wholly private.  After all, the steps from the brain to the entrance of the cave are not many.

And  too often we read headlines about worlds of hurt that were built as surely as those of War and Peace, the Statue of Liberty and the Constitution.

We couldn’t have the Pyramids without Sandy Hook–which neither lessens the wonder of one nor the horror of the other.

They just are:  worlds built from the scaffolding of thought.

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