It’s a Good Thing I Liked Trigonometry
I’m busting out the index cards.
If only you could see my desk at this moment. It is a hurricane of papers, journals, fountain pens, and a bit of garlic salt (from the beans I ate earlier, naturally). I’ve followed my wayward heart, the one that played drums on my ribcage with a hand-carved mallet, and gotten back to work on Fable’s world. That is what it is: I am working on Project Platelet (otherwise known as the second book).
Here’s the thing: I have known this story since I was a child. It was a childhood fantasy game that I played with myself. So I have always known the broad brushstrokes of the world. It was part of my writerly folklore. Despite this, there are a great many moving parts in this series, things I want to go back and work on in the first book, and all the big ideas and small details are rushing at me like I have been plunged into a stream. Thoughts are tumbling at me at all hours. I know what I want this book to be, but there is the familiar issues of getting it down on the page.
For this itty bitty snippet of my life, I am going to be working on sifting through those index cards, figuring out when certain characters will appear and slink away to the eaves of the books.
I have been drawing triangles. These triangles are at the center of the structure of the story. Without giving too much away, the project is inspired by the fractal world of a Sierpinski triangle. Clusters of three are important in all of the stories (and I query agents in threes). Mathematically, I have been following in The Divine Comedy to get some inspiration to developing a story, but also an algorithm. Let me tell you: It is a good thing that I loved trigonometry.
And despite everything being so overwhelming — the index cards are everywhere, nuzzling against the walls and edges of my desk — I haven’t been on fire to this temperature in a long time. I listen to Arcane, which is one of my comp titles and my newly-minted favorite television show. I twirl the pen in my fingers as I try to build this world, as I try to answer the question of why a reader should pick this book up. There has to be a story.
——
Once, my mother and I were hiking in Santa Fe. We wandered around the scrubby brush, the dirt loose beneath our feet. It felt good to step down and feel the earth envelop my ankles, like it was a blanket woven of history and hope. That was where my mother found the triangle rock.
We talked about the Carol Page Institute for Women’s Studies that she worked on until she passed. She wanted a triangle in the logo for the Institute. She valued three things: Freedom, beauty, and connection. I value three things: Freedom, beauty, and wisdom. Our three ideals were a bouquet that we exchanged throughout our lives. I still have the rock. I keep it on my messy desk. At present, it sits atop my journal.
——
This series is not one book divided into five for the reader’s convenience. It is five modular stories such that each book is a standalone. That much I have always known. They shimmer beside each other, a symphony of different colors and genres and plots and even characters and timelines. And yet they all click into each other as pieces of the same triangle.
Thank God for fantasies. Even as I type this, I feel a bit clearer. It is time to draft, and time to write, and time to go on loving this story with all its crags and wings and gills and peaks and triangles. Yeah, I will tussle with the second book, but it’s all part of the grand fun.
