This week I saw multiple unintended synchronicities in my social media posts and creative life. That’s when I saw creation as a spiraling movement as opposed to linear.
Monday’s topic was honoring the International Day of Remembrance for Victims of Slavery. That struck me immediately. My second Sophia book is heavily involved with the Atlantic Triangle slave trade. Part of Mission 2: Unexpected Visitors, takes place in the Great Dismal Swamp in North Carolina and Virginia of 1832 before time traveling to New York City.
Next, in this week’s newsletter, I posted a chapter from a future book I hope to publish. I had previously tried to use the written material as a libretto for an opera, and then later as a play with incidental music. Neither worked, but I didn’t want to scrap it. I found it worked great as a time travel historical saga.
Tuesday’s literacy podcast concerned “Storytelling vs. Reading Aloud for Literacy Development.” The main character of the new book, entitled The Storyteller, is the host of a medieval podcast called “Tales of Olde.” First, the character’s original name turned out to be the same as a person I later met, so I changed it. When I wrote it, I didn’t listen to podcasts, nor even think of doing one. Now, I have a podcast.
Wednesday, March 27, was National Theater Day and also Holy Wednesday. In medieval times, Holy Week was a time for liturgical dramas, which just happened (??) to be my specialty when I was getting a Master’s degree in musicology. In the post, I concentrated on British dramas, but the ones I studied then were French. I remember the professor criticizing my paper because I used secondary rather than primary sources. With no internet, it was impossible to see books in a foreign library digitally. These, being rare books, would have been too fragile to travel through inter-library loan. That would mean a month or more in that country. Perhaps he could afford a two or three-month trip to France, but it was beyond my student budget. I took the lower grade without questioning it. I'm not sure I would be so timid anymore. However, this professor also believed women should not be musicologists! By that point, I was already planning to go in a different direction.
Yet, here I am, writing about liturgical dramas!
#writerslife, #coincidence, #synchronicity, #liturgicaldrama, #musicology, #historicalfantasybooks, #amwriting