Drawing the strings together ....

All these books I could have written……… So many loose ended strings …….

Back in 2006 I was working on a  film script ‘If You Can’t Join them, Beat Them!”. A first ever attempt inspired by a series of events that took place in my own immediate sphere and catalyzed by the music of Led Zeppelin, particularly "Stairway to Heaven". My mother too was excited about this out-of-the-blue venture that events conspired to seed in my mind, and we would talk about it and brainstorm together  as I frantically scribbled and the characters came to life and the drama unfolded between the pages. I randomly researched all over the net and found - to my surprise but not -  that I was on the right track without ever having tried to validate what I'd found myself doing. I had just felt, "hey this is how it’s done" and dived in. Oddly enough I found at least a couple of respected opinions indicating that was indeed how they did it out there!

Well the film script never completed itself. Most creative streams that rise in the crags of my mind, tumble into some uncharted terrain (interestingly my first online venture was named Terra Incognita from which I derive my pen name) wherein they peter out into the marshland and lose themselves. Leading to a hiatus from writing. 

I groped for the secret energies to direct streams into rivers that swell and flow, building civilizations along their banks and finally emptying with  a surge into the vast and dynamic resource pool – the ocean of creative enterprise that is all of ours. The ocean from which the droplets are again distilled to feed those crags in my mind and the minds of others.

Maybe the secret lay in the hiatus. In the letting go. I realized something important and powerful could be at work unknown to me and I had to give it breathing space to work. And I did! 

Today I feel the emergence of something. A new creative stream. And I grab a pen once more to carry on, recharged. Yes I've had to be patient, often fretting through it. But something tells me it could have been worth it after all.

Could this film script resurrect itself and grow into a better  and more relevant one? Could it actually be completed? Can I continue where I left off  seven years ago - now enriched with experience - those books I was  inspired to write for those who feel lost and grieve that sense of loss and isolation? Those books that in 2007, at the time of my own personal losses, had magically named themselves “Embrace The Darkness” and “Embrace The Silence?” Titles on covers hiding secrets between their blank, unwritten pages that would come to life with a touch of new essence! Navaneeta(new essence) touched me that year in the shape of a person who unexpectedly entered my life but the books remain unrevealed. I realize now that they have written themselves somewhere and been stored, waiting for the power to be switched on and start them flowing to the outlet channels!

I often see the way people collaborate on books. I’ve always wondered how that’s possible. Is it that I start a sentence and you complete it? Or do we each fill in a random phrase and watch a sentence magically create itself? Now I’m starting to think one does the writing and the other is the catalyst, the muse and the beta-reader all in one. And maybe through the process they keep interchanging roles. “Transforming each of them into the other” to quote Loreena Mckennit inspired by St John of the Cross. Maybe, just maybe that's one of the important ways a book actually happens instead of remaining a thought in the mind or a sheaf of papers out away somewhere out of sight.

And maybe posting about this process is one way of collaborating with the potential audience, a way to exchange energy with the universe. To flick that power switch. And to see a book out there at last!

I write …. I hope

And await  the readers' thoughts......