Colette Obrien

Well, does it make any sound if there’s no one there to hear it?  I love the question for it is unanswerable by the mind and since my mind is often known to think too highly of itself, I use it for humbling that character.

My proverbial tree is my novel, and as I’ve ventured into the realm of social media for the purpose of having its fall heard, some days I despair about the answer.

I have written seriously for 20 years; travel articles, essays, and 3 long novels, most of which have fallen on deaf ears.  But I pick up the tree again and again and let it drop, ker plumk!!   There have sometimes been long months when I’ve just let it lie there forlorn, sad and abandoned.

But eventually I trip over it and pick it up once again; recommited to the responsibility to answer my favorite philosophic question yet again.  The tricksy part of this dilemna is that I love to write and it’s difficult to give myself permission to write if the previous endeavor has not been adequately heard.

Therefore, in order to support my writing habit, I will project my voice out into the blogisphere and sing with all my might; sing as beautifully, as harmoniously, as joyfully as the nightengale.  Not that my singing could ever compare to that glorious bird, for she is a most skilled singer, but it is a worthy goal.

What if the Big Bang were the first kiss?

Aphrodite’s favorite child is Eros, or as the Romans named him, Amour. What does it mean to be the child of the goddess of Love but that he is her messenger? When that powerful goddess chooses to unite 2 objects by sending her son with his quiver of arrows, union is assured. Eros is the connecting force sent by the essence; Aphrodite.

The planet we inhabit revolves around a sun in a spiraling galaxy. On earth, the constant creation of life depends on a cycle of seasons; each one following the other in a continual round.  For life as we know it to endure, there must be a time of birth, growth, and destruction.

Aphrodite/Eros assure creation. Without the attraction of objects to one another there would be no new life.  The earth would stop spinning; the sun, having lost an admirer, would wobble out of control in dark despair and lose its place in the galaxy; with the loss of one of its members the billions of other stars would also loss hope/connection, and very quickly, what began as a first kiss, would end in a rout of unconnected atoms.

Thus spoke an incurable romantic.

But seriously, love connects everything– it is a force–and maybe what physics calls the electromagnetic force is what we call love.

Maybe the reason that we as humans cannot resist Eros’ arrow is because it’s correct to be so humbled; to realize through the experience of inescapable attraction, we’re being moved by a greater force than our small wills, and that that force is benevolent.

Like an overworked muscle when the transmitter fluid is used up, my ability to jump up and down in one form or another to gather friends and admirers for the purpose of marketing my novel, is kapute!!

The first symptoms of this emptiness were a general bedraggled state in which all I could manage was to nap and lie listlessly on the couch with my cats and watch mindless television.  Even the thought of turning on the computor and going to Twitter or Facebook made me gag.  Sorry friends, it’s not you, it’s me–on empty.

The warn out, is a warning indeed that an alternate activity is called for.  At dinner with my daughter and her boy friend Sunday night I found myself sadly recounting my decision not to go to Italy in April to research the 2nd novel in my current series, due to the need to work on marketing the 1st novel for publication this summer and be practical– not an activity I’m well known for.

As the evening progressed I found myself whining a great deal.  My daughter, looking more and more concerned about my state, finally said, “Mom, go to Italy.”   Shocked by her assertion–she is usually my practical voice–I was instantly happy, even sat up on the couch from my slumped position.

Ruminating in the days since, I know my inspiration to do the hard work of marketing comes from research and writing; it  fills up the containers of transmitter fluid for the muscles used in that particular effort.  Though writing is not always easy, I love it and so am continually filled up as I empty out words on a page.  Not so, the business side of writing.  In that endeavor I just get emptied.

If anyone out there has had this experience and can offer advise, I’m all ears.  If anyone out there does not have this experience and can offer advise, I’d even listen to that.

But I am going to Italy!!

I have a horror of losing things:  socks, my shopping list, earrings, precious objects of all sorts, and definitely thoughts.  When the thing is not immediately found, I panic and becoming the proverbial chicken, you know, the one with its head cut off? It’s like other phobias, only it it lossaphobia.

The earliest memory of such loss occurred when I was under 5 years old and had been playing with a neighbor girl when my favorite doll went missing. At the time I blamed her. I cried and cried with the loss of that doll and was evermore suspicious of the friend, guarding my things carefully when she came over.  But nothing else disappeared when she was around, and with time and more losses I came to wonder if there might be a special place where lost things go, and imagined that place must exert a magnetic force like gravity for its collecting.

That first lost doll had been given to me by my beloved grandmother.  As the years rolled by she gave me other things,and most of them went the way of the first gift–to the collection.; a trunk of antique doll clothes, her mother’s ring, her cameo broach, a lace mantilla my grandfather had brought from Spain.  There were a whole string of losses leading up to the big one; the loss of Grandmother.  Had each object been an early warning of what was to come? Did they prepare me for her death?

In my mind all the losses, including the person I loved, live together in a place that I now understand is where the lost things go; to a part of my brain that will always treasure them.  Would I love the doll as much as I do now if I had never lost it?  The trunk of doll clothes has been filled out in my imagination on the manyoccasions when I’ve remembered and expanded on its contents in an attempt to recall what had been there.

The lost shopping list or lost thought or other such things are not so precious so they probably do disappear entirely, although according to physics theory nothing that ever was can not be.  The list will have been transformed into atoms that become stars.  I do wonder though where words go since they aren’t physical but do have weight.  A question for another blog.

Having diagnosed my phobia, I do feel a bit calmer, though I doubt it will change my reaction when the next one comes along and is grabbed from my reality and sent to an alternative universe.

The July issue of http://www.suite101.com/  describes the quest genre as one in which a hero sets out to accomplish a task, usually involving some form of exotic travel,  and along the way encounters both danger and friends who help with the challenges to accomplishing the stated goal.  The result is an adventure.

In James Campbell’s classic book  The Hero’s Journey, Campbell discovered that the archetype of the quest and its stages exist in most cultures throughout human history in the form of stories.  He found there are stages where different things must occur and that they are the same for all mankind.  This need to have stories that give us examples of humans who quest , their experiences, and ultimately their success,  have always been with us. We are each heroes on our particular quest to live our particular life.

The Lord of the Rings is a quest series and it changed my life.  I mean it really did change my life.   The first time I read it I was 22 years old, mother of two babies and supporting a crazy husband.  I will always be grateful for the things that came to me through the reading: the magic, the courage, the integrity, the imagination, the map of the possible.

I was utterly enchanted and my own imagination so stimulated, I began to paint for the first time.  I read the series again and again as I continued to paint voraciously.  The combination of those two was a saviour because it gave me models that didn’t exist in my life: striving for goals and surmounting obstacles, the courage to support moral and ethical values, standing for something greater than getting through the day, and that help would come from unknown places.  I saw that I must divorce, go to college, and make a healthy life for myself and my children.

Now, I write quest novels.  Writing itself has been a quest with the requisite goal: to produce a finished manuscript. There are always the stages when challenges are met and overcome and surprising allies to assist along the way.

Any time we go from a vision to reality we are on a Heroes Journey. Every goal achieved, every vision realized follows an archetypal model.  If we know the model we will be able to achieve the goal but if we don’t have the model, we are not likely to set out on the journey at all.

So read quest stories and tell them to your children for without them we will not know how to go from where we are to somewhere else.  We are programmed beings who need maps, models, teachers, to do anything at all.  When I was 22 I had none of those things.  My thanks to J.R.R . and the many others who’ve mapped out the territory ahead of me.

Angelique Arnauld, born 1598 Paris became abbess of Port Royal des Champs at 11 years old. When I discovered this amazing woman, I knew I had to tell the world about her.  Learning La Mere Angelique’s history was a huge endeavor for little information from current sources was available.  She was famous in her own time, which meant that there were records, but they were kept in the deep recesses of the Biblioteque Nationale Library in Paris. Though I say it was an effort, it was also a great adventure.

Fortunately the Biblioteque Library in Paris had several references, and I came upon a biography about her written by someone who had a great deal of information but who obviously did not like or approve of her.  It was interesting to sort through the writer’s obvious criticism of La Mere Angelique.  I felt such a positive connection to the former abbess that I found myself arguing with the biographer and becoming quite offended when she said mean things about her.

What became clear to me was that I would need to form my own opinions based on the actual material, and there was enough to do that, so the character that began to develop in my mind and on the page, though of my own making, was fare to assume from her letters, those letters written to her, and the actual events and accomplishments recorded.   I have asked La Mere’s indulgence for any offense I may have caused.

When in doubt about her motives and desires, I chose to believe the best about her.  She was always a very harsh critic of herself, which made me feel confidant that I did not ere in seeing the best. She spoke often about what she saw as her weaknesses and flaws so I could do likewise, but not with the vitriol of her former biographer who was clearly influenced by forces of which I was unaware.

I LOVE research.  It’s fair to say I could just keep gathering more interesting material, ad infinitum.

One of the reasons I chose to use time travel as a vehicle for the plot of “Nobility,” was that physics has been a passion of mine; I read everything I can lay my hands on that’s geared to lay folks like myself.  I wanted Claire’s physics theory for time travel to actually be feasible, not just, “she flipped a switch and was in the 17th Century.”

That first research decision; to gain an understanding about what current physicists believe about whether it would be possible to move backward in time and under what circumstances, had a profound impact on the plot; we would be with Claire as she made her discoveries, and of course, since such a possibility would be worth billions of dollars, there would be other, not so nice people who would want to take it from her.

The second big research decision was to go to France and locate the places Angelique had lived; her two abbeys, her family home, and her church, as well as to go to the Biblioteque National Library and see what I could find about hers, and the other family in the book, the Perrault’s.  Many aspects of the plot came from that adventure, both for what would happen for Claire and for my understanding of Angelique’s life.

Angelique’s parish church, St. Merri’s in the Marais, Paris today.

I’ve traveled many places in my life and had wonderful adventures, and the research in France for the book goes to the top of the list. Finding the places where Angelique lived and worked, making discoveries at the library about the connection between the two families I was writing about, was all far beyond what I’d imagined.  It also gave me the idea that Claire herself would have these experiences.  Once again aspects of the plot were revealed, not by the specific information I’d found but by the process being one I could give my character.  It would just need a little tweeking.

This painting from St. Merri’s became a touchstone for Claire and for Angelique.

My most unfavorite and important  writing gurus are my critics.  One in particular has never come back to me without something to fix.  I know when I send him a piece, he will first say a nice thing, as though that makes it any easier.  I think he learned the technique in a communication seminar  so as not to seem too mean.  But it doesn’t really work.  I know what’s coming.  And even though I know criticism is on it’s way it always hurts, and I always get a little and sometimes a lot, defensive.  If it’s been particularly brutal, I may need a few days before I can recover my objectivity and look at what he’s said.  So far, his comments have always required that I make changes, additions, subtractions and sometimes a whole new direction, and the work is improved.

Sigh . . .

Life is hard, and writing is life.  It’s darned hard.  The only thing I’ve found that gets any easier is I have a sense of what’s coming and know I’ll make it through the difficulty.  I also know it is this very struggle with the story and its characters that gives the work richness and depth, for if art imitates life and it is full of challenge, then so must the writing be a mirror of the same.

Without the trouble the writing will be inauthentic.  The other day I wrote about the importance of the reader being able to suspend disbelief to be willing to follow the writer.  Authenticity is the key to that suspension.

By keeping as close as possible to what is believable the reader will come almost anywhere with you.  Fantasy, science fiction and fiction in general rely on trust; trust that the writer knows of what they speak, and that even if it is outside the readers experience, if the writer is convincing, the reader will want to come on the journey and enjoy the ride.

I read fiction for the ride.  It is also why I write.  When I convince myself that the story is real, I get an even bigger thrill than when I’m reading because I get to be part of the process.

So the science part of the science fiction aspect of “Nobility” was deeply researched in terms of what physicists today believe about time travel and, if it is possible, how it would be done.  By the way, most agree that it is possible.  However, what would make it possible is outside the scope of our current ability to manifest enough energy to propel an object from one time to another. Something like the energy of a supernova could do it, but how would one harness such energy?

How to Build a Time Machine by Paul Davies, and The New Time Travelers by David Toomey were both important references and great fun to read for any reason.  One new theory I came upon called VSL, the variable speed of light, flies in the face of Einstein’s theory about the speed of light being a constant and suggests that,  in some places at some times light speed can vary.  A radical idea whose proof is not accepted by everyone but holds potential.

By understanding the need for vast energy to time travel and that light speed may vary,  my heroine, the physicist,  Claire could put together a believable theory for time travel. She would discover that there is enough energy at the earth’s core to accomplish her desire, and in Iceland, because of it’s seismic activity, that energy could be accessed.  At least as far as I as writer was concerned.

Iceland then became an important place for the novel, and I discovered new and unexpected twists to add to the  thriller aspect.

As I continue to explore the process of  writing Nobility, the unlimited realm of the imaginative mingles with what already is and conceives a new something.  Claire as imagined visionary meets Angelique, a real flesh and blood woman and together the story begins to take shape. Actually it’s not that simple.  Many of Claire’s experiences came from my own real ones.

Claire would go to France and while there she would have many experiences that were based on my own when I was there.  So she was both imagined and real; a figment of my imagination laced with reality.  Then when I was writing Angelique’s story, which almost all came from biographies, I would see connections between places and events in Angelique’s life and where they would intersect with Claire’s.

So the beat, the mix, goes on. It is as if within my own mind memories, dreams and fantasies get pulled together from disparate parts of the brain as I focus on putting it all together in one place; the novel.  I couldn’t possibly have figured it out ahead; each revelation activated another like a pinball machine.

Working on the novel opened doors I’d never have thought to open giving me fabulous experiences.  Being at the library and what I discovered there was so exciting I could hardly wait to give Claire something of that experience.  When I found Angelique’s abbey and her childhood church, I was thrilled, and it was obvious that Claire would have to have that happen to her as well.

These are only a couple of examples of how writing this novel impacted my life in a real way.

I treasure both the actual and the imaginative that was stimulated by it.  I couldn’t have done it any other way.