I've begun to write Book Two of "The Imagination Warriors" and yet again the process is the "gift".
What do I mean? I started writing about a Japanese grandfather named Soichiro (I've taken the name of the esteemed founder of the Honda Motor Company, now deceased). In Book Two, he and his granddaughter Ayami are traveling a winding and foggy mountain road outside of Hiroshima, Japan.
I felt that I needed an element...some kind of entity that would move the story in strange and unexpected ways right there on that foggy damp mountain road I'd envisioned them driving on. I stayed open and receptive to my immediate surroundings and eventually the answer came. I know this sounds rather pseudo spiritual and maybe disingenuous, but seriously, two beautiful, elegant and ghostly deer wandered quietly into our large gravel parking lot at sunrise. I had my element. I stayed open to the world as it gifted me with an elegant solution. Sometimes I feel that there are "talismans" everywhere pointing the way for us and we are just to damn dense to see them and then acknowledge them for what they really are. Let's call it, "Receptive Creativity." I know it sounds a little precious, but that's really what it is: an ability to be receptive creatively to your world and what enters it. If indeed we are all organic hard drives of the highest order, with the quantum ability to move beyond predictable 1's and 0's, why can't we assimilate non-linear data...or as I like to call it, simply "Imagination."
The ghostly deer stood statue still in the middle of the fog bound mountain road and did not move at all as Ayami approached it. It seemed to disappear in and out of the fog. The deer speaks to the young Japanese girl about what is to come on their journey into the Bamboo Forest. The arrival of the deer propelled my story, which is still being formed, in magical ways.
Here's to Receptive Creativity.