Predestination

Image by @joaosilas

Hello! I hope, whoever and wherever you are, you’re having a most beautiful day and that you’re staying sane inside amidst the chaos of COVID-19. For those who are still working, I hope you are safe and well. This blog post is going to be a shorter post than usual, in great part due to the fact that today is the final day of my uni semester. My work has thus been primarily dedicated to ensuring I finish as strongly as I can. In my spare time, I’ve been consuming Joan of Arc: A History by Helen Castor; I finished it last night between study! I have been a fan of Jeanne d’Arc for some time now, and I’ve finally been digging into books of mine about her (including the heart of my previous post, Voices by David Elliott). I’m similarly keen to watch the films I have about her soon. One of the many projects I intend to publish is a retelling of the Maid — but that’s not for some time yet. For now, though, my writing has taken an entirely new path.

That path is one of not writing much at all.

A couple of weeks ago, I watched Once Were Warriors and I quickly found it among my highest-rated films. I was struggling with my main manuscript at the time, driven to a standstill by rewriting dilemmas. Not long after watching the movie, I found myself leaning towards reading Finnish literature. I wanted to know what stories were told in my ancestral homelands. For those unaware, there’s a term, sisu, that is in great part a heart of Finland and its people. According to the Finlandia University website, sisu means:

To the Finnish people, sisu has a mystical, almost magical meaning. Sisu is a unique Finnish concept. It is a Finnish term that can be roughly translated into English as strength of will, determination, perseverance, and acting rationally in the face of adversity. Sisu is not momentary courage, but the ability to sustain that courage. It is a word that cannot be fully translated. It defines the Finnish people and their character. It stands for the philosophy that what must be done will be done, regardless of cost. Sisu is an inherent characteristic of the Finnish people. You might call it backbone, spunk, stamina, guts, or drive and perseverance. It is a measure of integrity that surpasses the hardship and sees through to the end. Sisu is the quality that lets them pick up, move on, and learn something from previous failures. It’s the hard-jawed integrity that makes them pay their war debts in full.

In short, it’s the indomitable will that sets Finns apart and explains many of the incredible things they do.

Watching a film about the heat of a warrior, and reading about warriors all come to a moment. That moment hit me rather hard. A realisation that many things that had gotten lost. The first was the direction of my books; I saw in them better, cleaner, stronger paths. It would mean a lot of change, a change in the questions I was asking and what, in the end, I was trying to say with this novel. With all of them.

The second reality lost was only discovered as I began to remedy it. New films, new books through Finnish literature (the one I’m working through at present being It Came from the North: An Anthology of Finnish Speculative Fiction — you can read more about it here)… I even finished Battlestar Galactica, which I’d tried to watch four or so times before this final and successful attempt; and as expected, I loved it! I realised through this sudden influx of new material, of new stories, that my mind had been starved.

For an artist, the mind is like a fussy cat. It needs to eat, but feed it the same thing again and again and eventually, it’ll start digging in its heels in protest. It’ll make your life hell until you feed it something different. Of course, you can go back to that flavour down the track, just… not now. It needs time to enjoy other things. And not feeding it much at all… how cruel.

When I wasn’t starving my mind, I was giving it all of the same old things. I had my one or two things which included new material — namely The Blacklist — but there was so little that I couldn’t give my work what it needed. As a writer, at first, it makes all the sense to read books solely in the genre about which you’re writing. And yeah, you should definitely dive into it. But you can’t limit yourself to it. I can’t just read YA or adult fantasy. And no matter how much I love it, when I’m sitting down for a movie, I ought to watch something which isn’t The Mummy.

My mama in particular, who is one of the best humans I know, she’s been telling me for a long time that I need to read outside of my narrow aisle. Bless her; she’s put up with me nodding and agreeing — the desire’s there in my brain — but never actually getting there for so long. Honestly, given she’s one of the smartest people I know, I have a self-aimed frustration that I don’t listen to her recommendations where my reading and writing are concerned more often. And yes, a lot of my falling back on old material and similar material has had a lot to do with my health. When your head feels like it’s going to explode pretty much every minute of every day, the energy to read or watch anything new is… not there. Thankfully, I don’t have the pressure headaches causing that explodey pain at present, ever since I had a procedure to help deal with the underlying cause temporarily — there will come the point when those headaches return, but hopefully not for some months yet! But I’m at a lucky point where my head is far clearer, and the road is right there for me to travel.

I know that I will publish novels one day. There are worlds in my mind that are clawing to be let out into the world, its characters and tales equally anxious. I have a hunger to share those stories, but I don’t have the right tools to get them out the way they deserve yet. Becoming a published author is my predestination, there’s no question. But I’m not getting there until I’ve explored historical biographies, poetry, science fiction, crime, action, horror, thriller… and, of course, other fantasies. Books, films, television… There’s no doubt in my mind that I will write fantasy novels. Every single book, though they might dive closer to modern fantasy, with futuristic aesthetics or elements, magic as at the heart of everything I write. It is in every sentence I whittle out, in every character I forge. Be it through wielders of fire or a more natural magic harder defined, that which surrounds us all, where my pen or keyboard goes, magic infuses every letter. I would bet if it did, that magic would smell of rowan trees, coffee, and insanity.

In short, in place of writing, I will let the worlds stew about in my brain. I’ll expose my mind to new tales both in and out of my lanes, and hopefully come out the other end a far better writer.

But that’s all from me today. I’m rather sleep-deprived, but it does feel good to get this number out. All the same, thank you for reading, and I hope you have a most beautiful day!

— Charis.