Aethiria lives on??

I’ve started writing again. In part out of boredom and in part because it’s time. The story that has been creating itself inside my brain for the last ten years or so, has finally matured into something more than an idea that tickles at the back of my mind. I have a tendency to write dark stories. They are perhaps darker than most write, and usually I need a normal person (yes that is everything it implies) to read them and tell me, “That’s too dark, tone it down.” My barometer for that has been broken.

Write what you know is what a literature professor told me. I did, as a final paper for his class the assignment was to write a story, on anything, 150 pages long. I turned the story in, that story was the first fragment or flicker of what I write now. I got an A, but his comment was one I’ll never forget. “This is the darkest story I have ever read. You write well, but this is more than the average reader can read.” That bugged me. It was simply, unclear. For a literature professor to write an unclear statement seemed….well strange to me. I waited the month long break for the next semester to begin to go back and ask him what exactly that meant. He explained that implied darkness was one thing, but most people cannot read graphical descriptions of horrific things. He said he liked horror stories, but that withstanding, it was dark even for a horror story. I had him that semester as well and asked if I could rewrite it and have him review it again as it wasn’t supposed to be a horror story at all. He agreed to review it. After some hundred or so rewrites as the semester progressed I hit a wall. How do you convey something without conveying it? You can only imply or elude to something so well without finally coming out and saying it. A number of us would gather to talk about writing every week over coffee, and he was one of them. He asked how the story was going and I told him I had given up. He asked why. I explained that he told us to write what we knew, and knew well, and then asked me to write about normal, and I didn’t know what that was, or how to write it. He asked to see my latest rewrite. I agreed and the next week gave it to him.

We spent the next few weeks going over the story, the group of us. Each section was dissected as I viewed normal through their eyes. It was interesting, and at the same time, somewhat disturbing. My barometer wasn’t merely broken it was nonexistent. I learned in these sessions how to not only elude to things that were left largely unsaid, but also to write in such a way as to convey one message to those who did not look beyond the words upon the page, and another to those who did. It was perhaps my most valued tool when it comes to writing. When we had finished going through the entire story, bit by bit and piece by piece I rewrote it. Of those who had read the original story only two saw the secondary thread lying within the story, the others did not. They congratulated me for being able to tie it together without having to use too much of the darkness I had the first time. The others saw the same darkness just laid within the story below the surface for those who chose to see it.

This is perhaps where I picked up on my great love for understatement. I truly enjoy saying something with two meanings and those who hear it can pick for themselves what it is I am implying by my words, or simply take them for what they are. The choice is theirs. I am a bit of a brat that way. Usually when I’m asked something that I’d rather not discuss or in order to not create someone stress or worry I use understatement to a large degree. I prefer people choose the answers they would rather hear when I know the one they don’t is the only one I can offer in truth. This way, I don’t have to lie and they can choose to believe whatever they wish. I’m not good at lying, but I am a professional when it comes to understatement.

So I’ve sketched out a rough format for my story, and it’s been forming from there bit by bit and piece by piece. The setting is one I am intimately familiar with, and some others will be as well, as my husband created it. It’s comfortable for me, and while some of it will be largely altered, much will remain very much the same. I’m excited to see how it will come together even though I know how it is going to end. I hope I can do the story and setting justice, and I know Ill have some friends go over it when I’ve finished some of it for ‘darkness checks’, as while I have gotten better at that it does still need some work.

So Aethiria will be coming to life again, and although the character herself never existed there as she will in this story, bits and pieces of her were spread among many of the females set within that world. Combining them into a singular figure will be interesting to say the least, and one challenge I greatly look forward to attempting to meet.