The Seed.

Everyone must start somewhere. All of these roads, seem to have aligned a bit better to where it makes sense to do something like this. To open up, and share what we have, and not think twice about it, just put it out there. This is every page that comes out of my typewriter, and you will see this happen for you, when it’s done right. Right for the soul. Right for the ideal reader. Right for the critic. Honest. Right for you and me.

Today I must have wished to start off bold. And perhaps take a risk in losing the faith of the reader right away, but more than anything, intrigue them. I haven’t crashed yet, as far as recovering the feeling that what I am doing has a positive end-result. I wish to not be turned off by what I write. I wish to be turned on, skeptical, pissed off as much as I have seen myself and others, and have faith that it eventually figures itself out. And it does. Always, when you get out of your own way as a writer.

Now technically, some things stand out on all the pages I write. First, I bless the pages with OM SAI RAM in the top left, before all else. Then, I put the page number of the novel I am working on, followed by the date, and then off I go…

There will be mistakes. Lots of them. Glaring at times, and frustrating to have to read through. I used to mind it, now I don’t mind it. I don’t pay much attention to it as much as I wish to know if the line reads well, when I’m reading as I would imagine an ideal reader would peruse.

And as the process continues, for about fifteen to twenty minutes, things level out, and there comes a moment where all questions are answered as far as where I think this is going, and the exercise becomes more like a workout, keeping up with the words and the dialogue as it arrives, and taking my time, always taking my time. Speed comes after you exercise this enough.

This story has familiar origins. First, it’s important to know I lost my daughter at childbirth ten years ago. She is a part of most all I write. In addition, about a month ago, at an event where I was asked to “auto-type” for people, I met a woman from Russia and before I wrote her a letter I told her that she needed to write, and by the end of the conversation, I handed her one of my original manuscripts written this year, entitled, Decoding the Tarot: A Manual For Creatives.

As the weeks went by, and I heard nothing, I began to go through the acceptance that this manuscript was likely gone, though I wished more than anything that it would come back, and this was the back and forth. And it leads to stories like these, from some deep wellspring that is highly personal, where today I ended up pairing the loss of a manuscript to that of a child. And elaborated on what this means for me as a father, and a caretaker, in that I so easily gave this child away. Like it was nothing. And what comes from that sudden loss, is a fire that cannot be stifled.

Through time, after feeling sour enough about this, a place of peace is offered through the typing machine. That’s how this machine works. Guilt turns into story: a spell that Olden Lockeheart Smith was under, and beyond that, this all appears to have been planned by him from the start…

But we still don’t entirely know the truth about all this, as we are fifty pages deep in a book with several pages you haven’t read, and not that anything matters as much as we are now aware this is all happening on a movie set. That part’s clear. And the Director (who is seemingly the God Iupiter in civilian clothes) and Olden Smith the writer, are not getting along. This too, is probably planned as well, but the more the reader suspects things, the more the twists happen, when you’re playing with a well-oiled typing machine, and a fan of thrillers. I like to pretend that I am going to the movies, with all of this. Always something new playing. Always full of surprises. That’s how I prefer it.

I felt the need to express intimacy on the page. I didn’t know where it was going, but I tried to keep my heart open to it the entire time, and this page. after it was done, made me stop and read, and it felt good.

And then there was the next page, where lines are crossed again, just when I thought all was safe, I found my faintest suspicions creeping in to show me the real truth again, about Olden Smith. And it’s likely you may lose faith with the page too, and then at the end, a newfound appreciation for mortality.

A few chapters back, you discover that the Director and the Lightbringer are having a romance that seems well-established and full of trust. But the fact of the matter remains, Olden Smith writes the stories and the actors must play it out, real-time. Which complicates things when Olden Smith gets involved in these novels, which takes us back several books now, in which we talk about ‘Deep Fake’ and how the likeness of someone will eventually be sold, in some digital form of NFT (non-fungible token) but the fact of the matter remains, Olden Smith has the ability to be in several places at once. And he is a man of many faces. To be present with Olden Smith, is to be presented with a hall of mirrors. A hall that he never escapes. But he helps others to get out. Through hard life lessons. He writes the blueprints for this construct these characters are living in.

I viewed a Tarot reading last night that said I would be going on a new adventure, trying something totally new that is a new expression of my creativity, and I assumed it to be this project. And then the diviner said that I would be confronting the Devil in some form before all of this starts really accelerating. So I asked for my life to be accelerated, and it brought me the Devil on day one.

I wished for there to be a blending of rich actors doing crazy things on set, with some reality TV elements—we may suspect there is no real emergency, as they are likely glamping, but making this out to be something much more horrible in mind. Like instead of the water pouring in and there being no roof, there is likely just a leak. I wished to stress how things can be blown way out of proportion, and that everyone overreacts at times, but what we do with that afterward, is what counts the most.

Here I wanted to bring out the fact that everyone was overexaggerating, except their daughter Dolly, who is now fed up with her parents’ bickering. In the end, her father wishes to keep on fighting the Devil, and sees no other option, and his wife realizes this too, and is deciding to give up on trying to change his mind.

What I found after reading this page was that the father was seeking war and redemption, and knew the pathway to peace and harmony, but chose to play with the Devil all the same. As if it were some mutual pact between the two of them, that he would come around and shake things up, once in a while, in order to keep his mind and body in shape.

All in all, it was 22 pages for the day. Very productive. I give myself a goal of at least ten pages like this completed, every day, no matter what. And on days when I’m with my children I barely make it to this goal, but I always do. What that means for us, who are going through this together, is I may take the weekends off with the newsletter and go hard Monday through Friday. We’ll see how things go. Let’s just take this one word at a time.

This was a heavy read in volume and content and I am not downplaying it. You should see all twenty-two pages. You would get to see how Olden Smith and Lightbringer come to meet, and what they say to one another (before they make love on the set). You get to learn a little more about Iupiter and Olden’s tie to one another. And I name drop a few characters from books already written this year, that you will come to know and love and hate, and eventually tolerate in the end.

Cheers to more of this,

-W.V.Carleton