Welcome to Russland!

The Mountain Top

What is writing?  This isn't some riddle or puzzle.  It isn't a literary definition.  I'm asking you, the reader, to define what writing is to you?  Now, before you answer, I'm not talking about just the process or method with which you employ this age-old habit of committing information to literary speech and text, but what it means.  If you think hard enough, you'll discover your way, something wholly your own, of how you look at the written word, whether reading it, writing it, or just pondering what it means to create.

Some say that their stories are ships out at sea, sailing into port, or others that they are books on shelves, waiting to be written or read.  There are an endless number of analogies of how writing can be defined, this is simply mine.  When I started writing, I did so with the primary intent, not just to give myself some therapy, but to write the stories I always wanted to see, even if they wouldn't be as popular.  I knew the relationships, characters, style, and themes of my books would be rather niche.  I simply could not stomach the idea of writing the same old stories as everyone else.  

My very first book was written in fourth grade, titled: The Good Dragon.  In it, a dragon, friends with a young, meek boy, lives beside a village, ruled by an evil king.  Within those 9, handwritten pages, the Dragon, Arc, takes on this king and his armies of soldiers and beasts, to save the lives of the villagers and most especially his young friend, eventually freeing the land of said tyrant.  Different yes, and as many will note, a distinct lack of Amazonian warrior women.  I hadn't hit my confidence yet at that age.  I was a small, shy, introverted child who didn't measure up to the ridiculously high, often toxic male standards of my peers.  I wanted, more than anything, to find a place to belong, somewhere that was wholly mine.  I was lucky enough to find a woman, my barbarian queen, to come with me as I tried to overcome the pains and fears and troubles of my past.  And thanks to her, I found it at last.

Welcome to Russland.

To me, writing is a Mountain Top.  I sit at its highest peak, comfortable but precarious, and look out across the landscape that is my mind.  My stories, or more specifically my characters, walk below me in a valley strewn with mist.  Rather than towards me, however, they walk away from the mountain where I sit, so high above and removed from their struggles, trials, and triumphs, off on their unique journeys.  They cannot know the endings of their stories, only the adventure they must undergo to reach it.

Some of these paths are easy, straight forward, and where the sun can more easily shine, with plenty of places to rest so that they do not feel rushed and can go their own speed.  Others are winding, shadowy places of intrigue, darkness, and danger, with plenty of twists and turns and thrills to make them feel alive.  They are love stories, war stories, friendship and bonding stories, some with grand quests and epic adventure, and others with wholesome, simple charms and joys.  All of them stand out amongst my brain, even with similarities to tie them all together, a style if you will.  I sit on my mountain and watch them from afar, so proud of what they might achieve.  

Only I know the end-goal for them, as at least someone has to after all, that most illusive and hard to reach ideal that defeats even the best writers with its daunting, just out of reach gleam: Happily Ever After.  For many, especially new-age writers, it seems that they do not want to reach that seemingly unimaginative or 'unrealistic' goal, because that is not what life is.  They want dark, dramatic, grisly, or melancholy stories, and I don't knock them or disregard their views, just that I do not share them.  To me, that is not what writing is all about.  People have accused me of wanting control over a fantasy world to make up for the disorder, chaos, and pain of my own life, and to that I tell them I only want one thing: peace.

Peace, for my characters.  A happy ending at the end of their struggles and strife, for they went through dangers beyond my wildest dreams or ability to perceive.  They fought battles, waged wars, endured hardships, and in the end, they deserve happiness and peace, to be with the ones they love most.  I don't write to make myself the all controlling god, but to write love stories that I've always wanted to see, to look back on and remember.  I don't have to write the next Princess Bride to know I wrote a love story that means so much to me.