When the planets align

When I was finishing up the first draft of LITTLE SUN, I knew it still needed something. Since I had never written a book before, it took me a while to realize that, to begin with, I was a fairly bare-bones kind of writer. I wrote generally what happened and that was about it, kind of like a very thorough outline in prose form with some dialogue. I needed to add what often makes a book a book—the imagery. So one of my tasks was to go back through each chapter and flesh it out a little and describe this and that, sometimes what people were wearing, sometimes what they were doing, sometimes a look they had on their face. I don't like too much description, especially about the scenery or anything too flowery, but you need just enough so the picture you are painting is more easily imagined.

It was about this time that I started reading a book called The Garden by Elsie V. Aidinoff. It tells the story of Adam and Eve, God, and the serpent and all they go through in the garden, mostly from Eve's perspective and from a very different angle. There were a lot of things I didn't like about the story (one being how the serpent is Eve's mentor), but there were several elements I found fascinating. One in particular was how the author portrayed Eve's first experience with everything. The minute I opened the book, I felt caught up in the description and like I, along with Eve, was experiencing what it was like to feel and see and have a body for the first time.

“The Beginning” 

Something heavy on my center, smooth against my skin, shifting very slightly within itself, stretched and retracted, occasionally a tap to the side, always in the same spot. I breathed. Instantly the thing was still. I let out the air. Again I inhaled, deeply, and pushed against the heaviness as I filled my chest. The thing began to move. Slowly, stopping and starting, it wound back and forth across my thing, around my knee, down my leg. it slid over my ankle, passed gently by my heel, with a little touch to my instep along the way. There was a wish. Again, silence and dark. I felt light, unburdened, empty, as if I might float away. Soft things swept my face, my cheek, my ear, wafted across my nose. My hands rose from my sides and brushed them off. There was a tickle in my nose. I gasped, gasped again. A great noise burst from my mouth. My eyelids jerked open. And I saw. 

At first there was only blue, limpid and luminous, stretching wide above me. A white, fluffly mass appeared, scudded across the expanse, tumbled into pieces, and melted into the blue. I lifted my arms, spread my fingers. light came through them; the ends glowed pink. I curled a finger into my palm and felt it scratch the skin. On my arms fine hairs glimmered in the sunlight. Still lying flat, I turned my head to one side. Not far away several forms, tall and dark and topped with green fluff, stretched toward the sky. Scattered around me and floating through the air were weightless bits of pink, turned up around the edges: blossoms falling from trees; it was one of them that had tickled my nose.... 

That first day, of course, I didn’t not know it was the sky I saw, the wind that moved my hair, an apple tree that shed pink petals on my toe. Cloud, face, blossom: all were unknown. I had no knowledge, no words. Each time I turned my head and found, before my eyes, something I had not seen, the world expanded.  

From The Garden by Elsie V. Aidinoff

Anyway, the planets had aligned and it was perfect timing to read something with excellent imagery. Even though this kind of writing isn't really my style, it still helped me learn just when I needed it. Not only does reading something like this give you good ideas about new techniques and all that, but once you do it enough or become entrenched in it, it helps you start thinking that way, and the process comes easier and more natural. 

Kind of like how I felt like my humor reached new heights when I watched all 10 seasons of Friends back-to-back while nursing during Anna's first year. Maybe my time could have been more productively spent, maybe not.