mind to page

 pencil to paper, fingers to keys, and font to screen

    I was having a great time reading Fountain of Swans.  I hadn't worked on the draft directly in years. It was fun reading it like a reader, rather than like someone struggling to write it. Sure I noticed things like missing details, merely suggested sections, and areas of suckitude, but I was also totally caught up in the story; excited to be on this ride, this journey. There were scenes I had forgotten, and the words I used to frame ideas surprised me (that doesn't happen with Echo. I've worked on it for so many years, that when I change something the original words reverberate back to me. I don't get caught up when I read it, I get stressed out.). It all went along nicely until I hit page 88, which is where the story suddenly ended, even though it wasn't at its end. Like a reader who bought a book that was missing its ending I was flabbergasted. What the....where is my ending?
  I knew the ending, I knew I had written all this stuff down.. somewhere...oh goodness..all that information...all those ideas..they can't be lost....they have to be somewhere. Where? Oh the mental meltdown as I searched through my computer note pages- the information wasn't there. Ugh. Upstairs to the lair of everything, scooping up piles of notebooks, knowing there are forty of them I might be forced to slosh through. First ten nothing, and obviously not the right sources. Searching high and low, oh not long ago, it was all in piles on the floor according to what it went with, but then I thought I should clean the floor- so now where was everything?
Ah finally I found the right ten notebooks, flipped through them, found a couple of pages in one...then in the official FoS notebook (duh) finally the lost information was found-but of course it was written in my less coherent than chicken scratch style (OMG what if I have found it but can't read it, so it is still lost to me). But wait- every page has a big check in the side margins- which is what I do when I type a page up. So that means at some point it was on my computer. Okay found my back-up discs. Had to beg son to help me- my notes tried to lock me out saying I needed a password- but then finally my own words were opened back up to me. Hello old friends.
Now among many other things, I have found a drunk swan, and a boy with a club foot. But I am still missing some french monks, and a staircase hidden behind a mirror which leads to a secret room under the castle. I don't know if I should keep searching for them,  or try to re-imagine them, or just let them go. Do I need them, do I want them, is something missing without them?  I don't know yet.
Right now I am busy inserting my found information in the correct locations, and then reading through the parts to make sure they work together. A lot more work than reading as a bystander, a lot more writing too.
So far I am enjoying it though. And the best part is I am playing hopscotch, jumping back and forth between FoS and Echo. At times my inability to stay completely focused and see one thing through has upset me- but right now I'll let it be- for this is how I feel safest- hiding from one in the other. And as long as I am seeking shelter from stress over one, in words and pages of the other, then I am writing. And both are moving forward.
My not feeling well before- has led me to realize that this matters to me. These stories I want to finish. What if I don't have tomorrow? What if I am still here but unable physically to write? I don't want this left undone. I want Koji to exist in the world with or without me (and the other characters and stories whisper, "me too."). I have surrendered the idea of making any sort of living off of my stories, but I haven't surrendered the idea of having them mean something to someone. Someone other than me. Whenever I fall, tomorrow, fifty, sixty years from now, I want them to be in a place, to have a chance to go on, without me.
Besides my son, my husband, and the patch of earth I try to bring forth flowers in, I believe this, these stories, are my work, what I am to do. A thousand flowers set in my heart waiting to bloom.
And maybe they never will bloom. Both my gardening abilities and writing abilities are subject to failure- but this is how I have decided to perceive my life: trying to coax a thousand flowers to bloom.