Ganeida's Knots

Being an author is like being in charge of your own personal insane asylum. ~Graycie Harmon

INTRODUCING....

Arian ni Morrigu.

I love to write. It's my way of dealing with all the people who live inside my head. Some of them have been round a long time & I would miss them if they suddenly departed.

Writing is not quite ~There's nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and open a vein. ~Walter Wellesley "Red" Smith ~ but it sometimes comes pretty close. It's more a case of sitting down & describing the movie playing in the background.

Ari wasn't the first person in this saga & hers wasn't the first *picture*. C.S. Lewis describes seeing a faun trotting through the wood, his first *picture* of Narnia. Mine was of an old woman sitting by the fire having found something in the fire one doesn't normally find in fires ~ a song. I did not say that the movie was logical or sensible or even slightly sane but that's what I *saw* & I thought is was interesting enough to go looking for what this was all about. What I found was Ari.

What is interesting is Ari has been around for more than 20 years, before my first child was born, certainly before Ditz bounced into my life. So does art imitate life or does life imitate art because Ari is my redheaded bard, my rather clever, bad tempered bard. I wouldn't wish Ari on anyone, certainly not on her ollamh, Diarmuid. Their squabbling has stalked my dreams for years.

I know not all writers see things & I'm sure it sounds quite mad to anyone who doesn't live with a crowded house full of tenants who have taken up squatter's rights inside their head but as I can't remember a time when I didn't have half a dozen people stalking about in there, numerous conversations going on that have nothing to do with me & a bird's eye view of a landscape that doesn't exist in this or any other world it all seems perfectly normal to me.

I actually don't mind my uninvited tenants. Most have become friends over the years whom I know very well but my youngest brother had some very uncomplimentary things to say about people who keep such fun people to themselves. I see his point but I had a houseful of children & was homeschooling on & off for years before it became a way of life & the reality is there isn't a great deal of time, not to write, but for the much more painful process of rewriting & editing because that is the part of writing I loathe with a passion. I enjoy the creative process, spilling the rush of images onto pristine paper, watching & listening to where the story is headed but going back over it, plugging the holes in the plot, streamlining it, fixing glaring errors ~ that's plain hard work; exhausting work. It requires a clear head & uninterrupted time, 2 things rare in a busy household.

I keep scribbling away, often poetry because poerty was my first love, & year by year the children grow older. When Ditz finally flies the coop what excuse do you think I can find for not getting on with the business of hard work versus the creative process?