Longing...

Einstein once said that longing was the motivating force behind all human endeavor and all human creation. Yesterday I spent the entire day working on two of my books --- putting The Old Mermaid's Tale into ebook format and beginning another revision of Each Angel Burns. I made endless pots of coffee and tea, I played CDs I have not played in awhile but which I find evocative and inspiring, and I cried a lot.

The crying part came mostly while I was working on The Old Mermaid's Tale. I had forgotten how much I cried while I was working on it --- all kinds of tears really, sad and joyous. But one thing I realized as i worked on it yesterday was that, once you create characters they are a part of you and you love them and become attached to them and they represent an aspect of your soul that might otherwise not exist in the world. But they also have a limited existence. The are born when you write the book and they live as long as people read the book and talk about it. But as beings with actual existence they sort of die when the story is finished being written and, like with anyone you love, you have the memory of your time together but once the story is told their lives are really over for you.

A number of readers have told me that they thought the characters in The Old Mermaid's Tale felt more real than most characters in books. And that there was such longing in them. The longing for love --- to love and be loved. A few male readers surprised me by saying they loved the book (I've always sort of thought of it as being a book women would love) because they longed to experience the kind of love that Baptiste and Clair share in it --- both to give that love and to receive that love. I am so flattered by those kinds of comments.

So after I finished that and got it uploaded I decided to get back at Each Angel Burns and there was a chapter I have been avoiding so, because I was feeling particularly emotional and vulnerable, I decided it was a good time to work on that. I can't really talk much about the story but in the chapter one of the characters uses the story of Heloise and Abelard to explain a decision she made. When I first wrote it I assumed that most people would know that story but in the last round of test readers neither of the people who read the manuscript knew much about them. So I had to rework that chapter to make the analogy more understandable. While I was working on it I got my copy of the letters of Heloise and Abelard and, as I skimmed through them, I felt that same poignant, palpable longing still vibrant after all these centuries. I hope some of it comes through on my pages.

Gandhi said that prayer is the longing of the soul, that it is the admission of our weaknesses and our vulnerability. I guess writing is that too. Longing is at the core of most belief and all desire. we long to be joined with, we long to be connected to, we long to be a part of... Our lives are glorious things but, ultimately we realize that no matter what we accomplish or attain in life we can always imagine more --- and the gap between the accomplishment and the imagination is the realm of longing. When we are young we long for what we are sure will someday be and when we are old we long for those youthful imaginings and the belief that they are still attainable even though our experience has given us some doubts about that.

Longing is a beautiful thing even if it is frustrating at times. we long for perfection, beauty, understanding, compassion, love... How many times have we seen or experienced the same thing? We long for that beautiful "other" and then that other comes to us and everything is gorgeous for awhile but then we realize that this other isn't the magic being we thought they were. Maybe the relationship goes on, maybe it ends but, finally, we are once again alone with out longing. So we deal with it as best we can. Some of us write books...

In a few days The Old Mermaid's Tale will be available on Amazon as an ebook. Eventually Each Angel Burns will be available too. And then ... and then the longing will tell me what comes next.....

Thanks for reading.