Thinking of New Projects
Daniel’s Story
In November of 2021, just last year I participated in the month-long writing event called NaNoWriMo. I’d picked a character named Daniel Johnson who was a young man in South Dakota to write about. Because I am a channel my mind might work a little differently than it did before. It’s because I talk to dead people. I say I talk to Spirit, but this also involves dead people. I also talk to characters, evidently.
So, I’d had a few conversations with Daniel about life and what his story was about.
I began to write. And logical Virgo that I am, I started at the beginning which was the day Daniel was born. It happened just as his mother and father were making their way to a new home. They were by themselves in a covered wagon and his mother gave birth by herself in that cramped wagon. In the most generous sense there just wasn’t much room to move around or, as my uncle used to say, swing a cat. Why anybody would want to swing a cat I don’t know. My own cats would not tolerate such behavior and I would have to be on the alert for several days past the cat swinging incident for vengeful cats hiding under the bed just waiting for me to pass by. Whereupon they would snake out a perfectly formed paw and lash me with their perfectly formed claws.
I sort of zoned out there.
So, I wrote 13,000 words that November. It took Daniel from the day of his birth to a young man, late teens, I think. It was the story of how the family developed their homestead, building their house and arranging shelter for the animals, the planting of crops and gardens, the husbanding of animals,etc, etc, etc.
I never went back to read it.
I created a document that had all the references I wanted to consult. I bought a huge collection of books to use as references too. So far, I’ve read a couple of Louis L’Amour’s books. Not nearly enough to get a better handle on what was going on with the times and people of those days.
I find now that the middle of June is fast approaching. I have prepared articles to publish on Medium during July when I plan on immersing myself again in Daniel’s Story, which is his working title for now.
I guess I am afraid of messing this up. This is a combination of my writing with input from Daniel. Now, supposedly Daniel is a fictional character, but the way I can hear him and talk to him says to me he is real. For a channel do you say the voices in your head are made up? No. They are real. I wouldn’t rely on them for investment advice, but those voices are real. I accord them that status because they are important to me.
These voices represent people who have experience of the world. They remember what it was like to live through a plague. They remember the firestorms of volcanos erupting. They remember being washed overboard in tempestuous seas. It is my choice whether I plunge so deep into their visions that I feel my lungs filling with water to experience that moment where I say, “I’m coming God. Let Alice not wait for me for I’ll never be home again.”
I can’t work in an office anymore. I have to allow the people who speak to me in my head a way out.
Daniel has claimed that place.
I decided just a moment ago that all I wrote last November be considered some sort of personal musing that will have no place in what will eventually be written. It was plodding. It was pedantic. It was boring as hell. It is a part of the iceberg that is under the water.
Plunge right into the action. Destroy those first 3 chapters you wrote and just get right into it. I think that’s what I should do. What do you think?
Are you asking me? (note from author: This is Daniel)
Well, yes. It’s your story.
I am the subject. You are the artist. If you see my hair slightly longer than it is at present, then that’s how it is.
Well, I don’t want you to be disappointed.
Hey, I’m ready for adventures. I’ve always wanted to ride in an airplane.
I haven’t had breakfast yet and you’re talking about airplanes?
There is no need that all we speak of has to do with the story. You’ve written me to be adventurous. What is more adventurous than for a man from the late 1800s to ride in an airplane?
Yes, I guess you’re right. I just looked it up on the internet and Orville and Wilbur Wright flew for the first time in 1903. They were born about the time you were, so I guess you were contemporaries.
Yes, information like that helps to place me where you can actually see me in history. For you to be able to see more clearly is going to allow whoever reads the story to believe it too.
Maybe I should write some more stories to fill up the last couple of weeks of June.
This is not a root canal, Pauline. There is not one specific day where you are going to turn loose the literary flood of “story”.
Right. I think it’s more like me picking up a needle and thread and doing something about it. It is difficult for me to pick up the pen and write.
That is merely your fear. You know how to write. Write then. It doesn’t matter. Just write it.
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Sometimes, I talk to invisible spirit guides, dead people, and animals. I’m just learning how to talk to animals. I don’t believe it is all that different from talking to Spirit. I think it is more along the lines of painting with watercolor and painting with oil. Just slightly different.