Leap of faith

I’ve finally done it. I’ve written my first fiction novel.

If you had asked me yesterday whether I’m going to write a sequel, I would have shrugged my shoulders, but I note that my typing fingers have a different opinion. My body knows what my head doesn’t: if this is my first novel, there will be a second, and a third.

I’ve been writing non-fiction for most of my adult life, including my seven books on dreams and dreaming, but when a podcast host asked me about my next project, I surprised myself by saying I wanted to write a novel. My mouth knew what my head didn’t. Even though the podcast admission went public, I still resisted taking action.

Then one day I woke up with an intense drive to find a suitable novel writing course, and, within the week, I took the leap of faith and signed up. ‘You don’t need to have an idea in mind,’ the course blurb said, ‘you’ll discover your story as you go.’ As it turned out, my story arrived a couple of weeks ahead of the course. I was doing a weights workout in my kitchen while listening to a podcast when a cat I had never seen before appeared in my garden, pausing to stare at me through the window before moving on. The combination of the podcast subject and the cat sparked a quirky idea that quickly evolved into the spine of my story. I saw the cat once more during the week when I began to look for the right publisher, and for a third time when I was pondering my potential future – or not – as a fiction writer.

I can’t tell you too much about the book at this stage other than to say that it’s quirky, light-hearted, and UpLit in genre, but I can tell you that I challenged myself to keep any mention of dreams or dreaming out of the story. I managed to do that, although I did include three exotic symbols from dreams I had during the writing period because they appealed to my playful nature and I wanted to see what would happen if I planted them into the story.

Somewhere between announcing that I wanted to write a novel and taking action, I had a vivid dream where I jumped from a well-worn and rather ho-hum path traversing the side of a mountain into the soft, luscious meadow below. I was carrying a bunch of Baby’s Breath flowers, and feeling joyful, elated, free. A friend followed my lead, only she held much bigger bunches of Baby’s Breath, one in each hand, like mini parachutes, so that instead of jumping, like me, she glided through the air and gracefully touched down into the meadow. I remember thinking, in the dream, that because she believed her bunches of flowers were parachutes, they became so.

Baby’s Breath is the title of one of the chapters in my 2020 book, Bird of Paradise. The chapter is about new beginnings. In my dream I met a part of myself that was ready to take a leap of faith and begin something new; and a second part of myself that had even greater faith, faith enough to take the process slowly, to gracefully surrender to the process, knowing that I would land softly on my feet.

So here I am, softly landed, finished manuscript in hand, a story told, the characters jostling daily for my ongoing attention for, as I have discovered, you don’t lay fictional characters to rest at the end of the story: gifting them Baby’s Breath is only a beginning.

Where to from here? I don’t know, but I’m still dancing in the meadow beyond the well-worn ho-hum of the known path waiting to find out.

 

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