When the Time Is Right

For a space in time, I’ve been unable to proceed with any story writing. Ideas for The Oxborough Series were floating and gathering together in a sort of wispy netting in my mind over the past Fall, Winter, and Spring, and now it’s Summer. Other ideas sparked up too, but I had no drive to take them anywhere.

One of the stories I want to write is a memoir. I already have the abridged version more or less down. Later I want to compile a book of poetry that is the larger story of the memoir. However, that memoir is painful. A couple months ago I read Rare Bird by Anna Whiston-Donaldson. I liked the cover, and wanted to read her book after she spoke at my college the beginning of my sophomore year. How did she write on such a painful subject as the death of her son? How do you write a memoir without living in the past?

As much as I’d like tell you my story and be far more open and vulnerable than is wise, I can’t bring myself to talk about it now. I shall start the continuation of that story from summertime, and will show you how I’ve come to be almost ready to start writing.

I had recently broken my friendship with someone, or at least broken communication with them . . . for who knows how long. Years? The rest of my life? The loss of my friendship was the deepest thing in my heart at the time, and while The Oxborough Series is full of delightful, intriguing people and adventures, they didn’t matter as much as what was in my heart. Perhaps professional writers don’t let life get in their way and keep at their older, ongoing projects despite any negative event, or perhaps they take the reins and use it to their advantage in writing.

One weekend my friends and I planned to go to the beach. Just as we were on the last stretch of road and entering the park, one of Rachel’s (yes, the same Rachel who is my co-creator) songs finally played from her playlist.

Yeah, I don’t get the video and how it goes with the song, but it’s cool, so I gave y’all this version lol. I listened to that song again when I came back home. I looked up the lyrics cause I can’t hear lyrics very well. I looked up what the song means.

It was as if this song, the expression of what I couldn’t express, floated from behind me and swept me up from the muck and landed me on dry ground. The need to get going on my series started to stir in me. The time was approaching to start again. I decided that the second book in The Oxborough Series would be a book on friendship, on love that true friends have, on the brokenness of romantic and platonic relationships, on koinonia and eudaimonia (Greek for fellowship and well-being/personal thriving).

The next day I started to plan and write down a series outline. I’m going to treat the already published book, Fish Out of Water, like the Hobbit, and Lord-of-the-Rings the next three. So while there’s technically four books in the series, it’s going to be altogether an introduction book and a set of three. The preliminary titles are as follows: The Magical Fair, The Grand Tour, and The Sacred Halls. Now that I’ve heard Melancholy Hill, and what could not be expressed has been expressed, I can give one of my main characters the freedom to have some happiness that she would not otherwise have. (That might sound kind of vague and depressing, but it’s true.)

The time to write is coming upon us.