In The Flow of Time – July 16, 2024
Maybe.
I was up early this morning. Puzzles done, coffee overcoming sleepiness, I was getting some details on the aftermath of the slave rebellion in 1811. As I’ve read the history, it seemed like this might be a good starting place for the story, I’ve had that moment kicking around in my head for something like a month, but I’m still just poking around.
As I’m reading this very dry history, the muse whispers. Marie comes to life, standing with her grandmother on their way to market on a bright, hazy, January morning. It’s all there! I can see her, the colors of her grandmother’s dress (it’s blue), her grandmother is carrying a large wicker basket. Marie is a tall, lissome girl, lighter-skinned than her grandmother, her beauty incipient. Her grandmother is filled out, drop-dead gorgeous, very tall, very black. I feel the breeze coming from the east, the sound of the crowds on a busy market morning… gulls…
The challenge, what to put on the page, because you can’t do everything everywhere all at once. Words are serial.
In an instant I’m thinking about the ending of this story. I’ve sorta had that idea floating for a week or so, amorphous. I’m not actually sure, perhaps… and the circle closes. I see the parallels between this moment in 1811, and what she’s going to do years later, decades and a civil war later, as she visits a black man on death row. I can feel her quiet, unassuming truth as she lives the lessons she has learned. She cannot change the world, but she knows how to save this innocent man’s life.
I think to myself, no, I need to research, I need details, I need names, I need a plot!
No. I need to write. Not much, just a few paragraphs, to capture this reflection of the muse. It’s hazy bright on the waterfront this morning. To see clearly Marie must shade her eyes. I didn’t know she was left handed until that moment.
——
I do need a plot. Writers categorize themselves at plotters and pantsers. The latter just start writing, and the story develops by the seat of their pants. I can’t do that. I could do that, I’ve done that. But it doesn’t work for me. So, pretty soon I’ll be spending my time plotting. I have my beginning. I may have my ending, I think I do. I need to know what happens in the decades between. But not yet.
For now, Marie’s conversation with her grandmother dropped me into a massive, gaping hole; one that I knew was there, but I hadn’t gone exploring yet. In 1811 New Orleans, what does a young, free woman of color call her grandmother?
Scene captured, novel begun. And he’s off exploring Louisiana Creole.
