February Newsletter: The Crossing of the Return Threshold
The Crossing of the Return Threshold
The hero makes a successful return to the ordinary world.
Happy February!
What a journey it’s been, am I write (see what I did there?). Parent Joke aside, I have felt like the hero going through all the steps.
“There are years that ask questions and years that answer.” ― Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God
I’m honestly not sure which years are doing what, especially since I started writing these sixteen months ago. Sometimes it feels like I’m living multiple years in a month and sometimes I feel like I’ve been so many people in less than the years that have passed. Things are the same yet different and my soul is as much.
After a holiday hiatus, the novel has called me back. Until now, I’ve been only writing poetry and short stories. This project evolved from a dream of me standing outside a banquet hall. I woke up and when I was doing my morning journaling (which I want to get back to), I wrote It’s like I’m outside a banquet in my honor. I hear it being prepared but it’s not yet for me to enter the hall. Which at the time, in 2020, I felt was a sign of my personal evolution. I was dreaming a lot in those days and actually remembering. That line then became a short story about a betrothal banquet which was about the marriage of my masculine and feminine energy merging. I shared the short story at Read Out in 2021 and the responses were incredibly encouraging. I mean, who doesn’t love lesbian princesses with magical powers toppling colonizers and manifesting long entombed goddesses?
After that, Sheree told me “You know you’re writing a novel right?” to which I scoffed and tried to ignore. Then, last year, I finally accepted what this narrative wants to be and I hit the ground running. I’ve completed three chapters and started the fourth. I thought I had to write the chapters in order but it was suggested that I considered writing the scenes that come to me and organize the chapters later which is some of the best advice because I love non linear storytelling best anyways. I don’t know if it’s capitalism or masking my AuDHD but life took me away from my ordinary and I’ve returned.
What is your ordinary? In these unprecedented times, how can you return to yourself?
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