"You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you." -- Ray Bradbury
Reality is a harsh mistress.
We're not chained to her for life. We can step away and forge a new, kinder, gentler reality. Should it become boring, we can introduce excitement, angst and harsh mistresses who live on the page as long as we desire them.
As writers, we're not running away from the world; we're creating new worlds, as many as we need. Sooner or later we'll get it right. Anjuell Floyd reminds us that the hero's journey includes hard times and dark nights of the soul. These provide our protagonists, and ultimately ourselves and our readers, an opportunity for meaningful change.
The reality of dreams, and the reality on the page, often respond faster to our thoughts and actions than the illusory, garden variety we place ourselves within on the world's stage. Either way, our play is our work, the stuff that builds character and adds crow's feet lines to our faces.
As writers, we have a slight edge on the universal drawing board when it comes to trying out one mask and another, one persona or another and one life or another. What a gift this is.
Writing News: Tosca Lee, author of the widely acclaimed debut novel DEMON has signed with B&H Fiction to do a book focused on Judas set for release in 2011. See my review of DEMON on "The March of Books."
Post of the Day: The Suffering of Our Protagonist by Anjuell Floyd
Coming in August - "Jock Stewart and the Missing Sea of Fire"
Hard-boiled reporter Jock Stewart wakes up on the morning after the Star-Gazer office party with a hangover and an old flame in his bed and he cuddles up with the mayor’s wife in the back seat of a 1953 Desoto. Between these defining moments, he investigates the theft of the mayor’s race horse Sea of Fire and the murder of his publisher’s girl friend, Bambi Hill.
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