The Soundtrack of the Endless Sandbox
I had a frank reckoning with myself in my diary the other day. On its pages and to my beloved elk friend, I splashed out my concerns that Project Guernica remains impregnable, its casing still stiff and inflexible. Meanwhile, Project Trains is still in the brainstorming stage as I read journal article after journal article. I await word from the University of New Mexico as to whether I will be accepted into graduate school or not. In short, I am spinning in circles. This is not a confession: It is only to say that I can play endlessly in one sandbox, and that is the world of Fable (the character, not my good looking cat).
I always envisioned Fable’s story to be a strange, non-linear one. Theirs unfolds over five somewhat disjointed books. It is a Sierpinski triangle, with each book relating to others like a fractal of stories and retellings and love letters to genres — fantasy, horror, nature writing, etc. The way book one relates to book two is different than the way book one relates to book five. I shave written here about The Box, which holds all the worldbuilding for five books waiting to continue to be fleshed out. When I completed the first story, Canis Major, I put everything I had into a query letter and a synopsis.
But querying has been decidedly less successful than I would have hoped. It’s had a one hundred percent rejection rate. Somehow, I hoped it would have some agent who would find it just right, that the proverbial door that Joseph Campbell mentioned would swing open at some point. Dejected, I was about to take the book out of the querying scene and put it back in its box to sit there — I really do feel sometimes like it is dead in the water. However, as I made to write a letter to my elk, pen poised above the paper, I heard a voice: “You can’t give up on this story.”
I looked around. Sometimes this happens. I thought of the lyrics to “Only if for a Night” by Florence and the Machine: “It was all so strange, and so surreal, that a [voice] should be so practical.”
The big picture here is that Fable’s story is that sandbox. I don’t know why I put it aside to work on Project Guernica, could not articulate the sandy taste in my mouth as I chewed on the cardboard edges of each word in each chapter. It has been dragging across my skin, sandpaper. I want to write Fable’s story. In every mound of dirt, I find intrigue. In every corner emblazoned with crusts of moist soil, I find a new character. I love my journals that cover the wars, the angels and gods of this world, and the many myths from our own worlds that feed them. It is a source, a fountain, a stream, a thumbprint of a greater purpose.
Should I focus less on Project Guernica and instead devote more time to Fable’s second book, Project Platelet? Should I put on my favorite show, Arcane (One of my comp titles, incidentally), and get to spinning my steampunk and cyberpunk tales? Or is that wasting time when I can be working on Project Guernica to see if, someday, an agent might like that instead? If writing is about enjoyment, I must prioritize mine as the author. Here is the deal: Canis Major can be brushed aside by every agent in America. Fable may never see the light of day. But I will be soothed in my soul. I will be boundless air.
I will be a soundtrack of Gregorian chant, Irish limericks, spare feathers of pigeons. I will be as feverish as the words of these characters, twirling and blading through the severe clouds? Will I go back to listening to Ursine Vulpine and Marina and Sigur Ros as I write? The setting of Fable’s world, like Piranesi (another comp title), shifts and turns and gleams like a quarter in the hot sun.
Is it time to brush off The Box? Even if it never gets published? Big deal. I am realizing, talking all of this over with my elk, that this is the story I want to write. This is the rain I wish to be washed in, the blessed breath I wish to transfer to my lungs. That’s all.
