The Spirit World in Stories
As a child, one of my jobs was to read to my two younger brothers in the evening to quiet down the two giggling wigglers before bedtime. I read them many stories but the one I can still recite is James Whitcomb Riley’s poem, “Little Orphant Annie.” I loved it because it had a heroine, a little boy got sucked up the chimney, and because the rhyme scheme made it easy to memorize. It also entranced me because of its connection to the spirit world—“An’ the Gobble-uns ‘at gits you /Ef you/Don’t/Watch/Out!” My mother seemed attracted to the spirits as well. If she heard a strange noise at night, she always whispered, “From Ghoulies and Ghoosties, and long-leggety Beasties, and Things that go Bump in the Night, Good Lord, deliver us!” Looking back I can clearly see that my attraction to literature began early and involved rhythm, imagination, and spirits. As an adult, I have always loved novels that introduce the unknown or some form of magical realism.
Inspiration and the Spirit World
In my mid-thirties, I had a lucid dream that appeared in technicolor accompanied by a rhyming song. I woke up laughing with glee. The song told me that I would be a writer. The dream even gave me my pen name for which I have purchased a URL. Whenever I sing that song to myself it makes me happy. Thus, when I read a quote in which Luis Alberto Urrea repeated something he had heard, it reflected my personal experience: “I was in a small house in Cuernavaca with old healer women…. One of them told me: ‘When you write, you light a bonfire in the spirit world. It is dark there. Lost souls wander alone. Your inner flame flares up. And the lost souls gather near your light and heat. And they see the next artist at work and go there. And they follow the fires until they find their ways home.” It made me happy to think that my desire to write had awakened a soul in the spirit world who had sung to me. Now I finally have the time to write. Every day when I sit down at my desk, I hum my spirit song.
So What Does Spirit Mean?
As I was writing this blog, I realized that I was using the term “spirit” to mean essentially “ghost” and also to mean spirit in the sense of body, mind, and spirit. So I looked up the derivation and history of the word. The root word means “to breathe” which I found fascinating because of the term “prana” in yoga which refers to the breath. I also realized that it is difficult to talk about breathing without using words that use the root of “spirit” which comes from the Latin “spirare” meaning to breathe and from “spiritus” which means the breath. This family of words includes aspire, conspire, inspire, perspire, respire, and transpire. Growing up in a very cold clime, making ghosts with my breath inspired me, especially on a dark night. Perhaps a frozen breath cloud is the origin of the human concept of a ghost. Then, again perhaps the dream world we all experience has had an impact on the appearance of spirits in literature.
What Do Spirits Have to Do with the Spiritual?
Reading Siddhartha by Herman Hesse when I was in college opened my mind to the possibility of spiritual illumination. One image I have retained from the novel was of the mirror that broke into a thousand pieces, each one reflecting a part of him. I wrestled with the meaning of the broken mirror for many years. Now I think it reflects a view of our lifetimes in which at moments we truly exist as fragments of ourselves but each one is indeed an authentic and necessary bit. Perhaps our own breath, which begins when we first cry as newborns and which ceases when we exit this world, is the foundation of spiritual practices (and visions of ghosts) that have existed for generations throughout many cultures and kinds of literature in the world.
Writing Goals for 2019
This year my goals are to:
1. Edit my first novel into a coherent manuscript by December 7, 2019:
During the month of September, I drafted another chapter of my first novel. I like how it is taking shape. December 7th is approaching!
2. Complete a draft of my second novel by December 7, 2019:
This past month, I edited one chapter of my second novel.
3. Document my progress through a blog to be posted on the seventh day of each month, writing 12 blogs in 2019:
Today is October 7, 2019. This is my tenth blog of 2019 and my 22nd blog since I started setting goals for my writing process. Writing this blog with a set publication date—the seventh of each month—helps to keep me on my toes. In order to have something to write about, I do indeed have to do something—that is, I have to sit down at my desk and compose, revise, or edit. I also have to force myself away from my desk into the company of other writers as I document in my fourth goal below.
4. Continue to develop a network of kindred spirits in the world of writing and publishing:
In the first week of September, I attended the Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers’ Gold Conference in Denver, Colorado. Nationally known writers, Anne Hillerman, Marie Force, and John Gilstrap presented keynotes as well as workshops. Every session I attended was useful to me. I audited an excellent critique session led by Abby Saul, an agent from the Lark Group. I also reconnected with Kate Jonuska whose book on critique sessions I had read recently. Kate subsequently presented a superb workshop for BWA on how to provide feedback in a critique session.
Also at the beginning of September, Gary Alan McBride began his 2019–2020 series of his Book Club for Writers under the auspices of the Boulder Writers Alliance. In September, we discussed a Japanese cozy—Newcomer by Keigo Higashina and the translation of his work into English. Gary charted in a helpful visual detailing how Higashina used point of view.
During the third weekend of September, I attended the Jaipur Literary Festival in Boulder. Fortuitously, I was invited to the author’s dinner and met a group of inspirational writers. While I would have loved to own a book by each author, I purchased only one—Good Talk, a graphic memoir by Mira Jacobs. I highly recommend it—particularly to those teaching a class in diversity, inclusion, or multiculturalism or to any family of mixed heritage.
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