Passion

My friend, and hitherto greatest fan of my writing, Kathy noted recently that what she enjoys in my tales is the undercurrent of emotion in many scenes.

I am often startled when I feel those emotions. An intriguing question is why some scenes choke me up or reduce me to blubbering - when I think about them, type them, read them aloud to others, or simply talk about them.

[Well, yes, we all know I'm a big softy, but beyond that.]

It happened to me last night. I have sketched out a scene that still lies several chapters later than where I am at the moment. It is actually a dual scene: a nightmare followed the next afternoon with an encounter with a deity. The nightmare is truly horrific and I was dispassionate thinking about it and writing notes for it. The following scene is mystical, challenging, and contains an element of healing. I expect the two scenes to be quite powerful (not too much humility there, eh?). What I did not expect is that in mentioning this to my chum last night I would suddenly choke up. WTF? I did not think that passage, still unwritten, had strong hooks in me.

And yet is describes something of the horror and compassion we all feel when we see a people or a nation being savaged. Put another way, the kind of thing that leads me to cry for complete strangers.

Oh.

Fantasy fiction is really not very removed from our everyday world, even if it seduces us into imagining alternatives.

Today I was writing a bit of the aftermath of another assassination (I am leading up to a full-fledged civil war, in case you are new to this). The narrative issue is how the family reacts to this loss. As I entered more deeply into a sub-scene I felt the powerful, physical reactions to sudden, devastating news.

Pray for those you love.

Pray for strangers.

Pray for us all.

Gospodi, pomiluj.

--the BB