Lake Roads

When I was a little girl, I spent my summers with my grandparents at their lake cottage. It was a tiny little bungalow, and we gardened and fished and I caught tadpoles. In all my life, it is the happiest place I have ever been, the only place I long for now as a grown woman. I've gone back to find it (it was sold after my grandfather died) and the people chopped down my oak tree, so it's not the same. But still, it calls to me. When I was in labor with all four of my kids, that was my "happy place" during Lamaze. I brought a picture and tried to relax and go there in my mind.

But what I remember, among many things, were the roads. The lake was in the middle of this little township, and so all things, necessarily, were built in circular fashion around it. Therefore, pretty much ANY road you were on . . . was somewhat circular, or ran perpendicular to the circle roads. So anywhere you drove, unless you knew where you were going . . . you didn't know what was around the next bend. Ever.

Such it is with writing. I was emailing my pal JVZ yesterday about those unexpected surprises in writing. I am turning in the first Magickeepers book this week or early next (I am working through some Russian translations with a wonderful linguist that will change a few word choices--importantly so). And I had no idea the book would go as dark as it has in spots. By page 100, poor Koyla has almost been murdered. But even more so, the leader of the magicians, Damian, was envisioned by me as a hero. I loved him as I imagined him. But as the book took shape, it is his brother Theo that I now realize is the TRUE leader. He is smarter, a better magician--but he chooses to teach because that is more important to him than leading in some flashy way. And the more I wrote, the more I saw how narcissitic Damian is, that he never doubts himself, that he doesn't really CARE with a compassionate heart. I saw that really the fact that he is gifted has blinded him--because being the "best" anything--best athlete, prettiest woman, smartest scholar, or in his case most talented magician--can mean that your entire life everything you ever tried came easy, so much so that you came to expect it. So much so that adversity never toughened you. What's perceived as toughness is really just lack of compassion and sheer arrogance.

I see Damian, now, as a tragic figure for his own lack of insight. I see him as a character who represents the type of political figure who is dangerous. I see him much darker, much less positively than I thought I was writing him.

Sometimes writing is like that. It's the lake road. The road you can't see clearly until you are already around the bend. And then there's always another bend, another turn. You know what road you're on. You just aren't exactly sure what you'll find.

That's the fun of it, of course. But sometimes the lake road is so unexpected--in a darker way. Around one bend at my grandparents' was the "haunted house"--a house that had burned down and was never rebuilt, overrun with field mice and, I was convinced, a witch. Damian is like the haunted house.

So tell me, have you ever traveled down a lake road in your writing? Or has a book you've read turned 'round a bend you never could have imagined?