Mythic Writers Blog

Bigfoot is on my brain this week.  I don’t even have a reason for it.  That’s just the way it is.  For some reason, Bigfoot and his cousin the Yeti keep popping up in conversation.  So I am caving in and writing about it.

The most recent mention comes from this Telegraph article.  (I love the Telegraph, really!  They do some of the best weird stories!)  I am not sure I believe that Japanese adventurers found Yeti footprints.  They say the footprints were about eight inches (although it looks longer than the human print they show next to it in the article).  Eight inches?!  My feet are nearly nine inches long, and I only wear a size 7.5 (38 European).  So really, an eight inch footprint would be someone with rather small feet, considering my foot size is the average.  The article doesn’t actually say anything about why they think this is a Yeti print.  I merely mention it as the latest incarnation of Bigfoot/Yeti showing up this week.

The other thing that brought Bigfoot to my attention this week was a question posted on LiveJournal about cryptozoology.  I answered that Bigfoot is my favorite cryptozoological creature.  It’s mostly because I can actually, in my mind at least, build an argument for such creatures.  What argument, you ask?  (You did ask, didn’t you?)

I used to think that Bigfoot and Yeti could be the infamous missing link, but that idea won’t fly any longer.  Recent archaeological evidence shows that Neanderthals were not ancestors of Homo Sapiens.  So, no missing links there.  But what about distant cousins?  Couldn’t Neanderthals and Homo Sapiens have branched off from the same distant ancestor?  And if they could, why not a third branch?  The Bigfoot/Sasquatch/Yeti branch.

Why can’t we find them?  For one thing, the world is bigger and easier to hide in than we tend to realize.  There are plenty of stories of large, new animals or animals believed to be extinct being discovered.  And based on experiments (I think it was on the show Monster Quest), the remains of even a large animal left outside will disappear very quickly.  Add in intelligence, which a creature that came from the same branch we did *will* possess, and it doesn’t seem that it would be too hard for these creatures to stay hidden.

Anyhow, that’s what’s on my mind this week, at least the bare-bones version.  Bigfoot, real?  I still think maybe yes.

Today, I am devouring poems and quotes that stir my mind.  Here’s a snippet from my blog correspondent gig on Eric Maisel’s Creativity Central blog:

I am thinking about this today mostly because this is the anniversary of the publication of my favorite Edgar Allan Poe poem, “Annabel Lee.” (The poem was published in 1849, two days after his death.) My favorite lines in the poem: “And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side/Of my darling -my darling -my life and my bride.” I don’t know why, but those lines have given me a thrill ever since I was a child, and whenever I read the poem, I itch to write something spooky and atmospheric in response.

Some other lines that stir my muse:

From “Lost” by David Wagoner: “Wherever you are is called Here,/And you must treat it as a powerful stranger.”

From “Tapu’at House” by Charles de Lint: “In the Fairy House,/Coyote sleeps.”

And this line from Terri Windling, and I don’t remember where it’s from I think maybe from The Wood Wife: “rustlings in the midnight wood.” (The full quote I have in my notebook for this is: “Rain and sun shall feed me now, and roots, and nuts, and wild things, and rustlings in the midnight wood, half-mad, like Myrddin, wandering.”)

These lines are purely mythic, even when they don’t speak of any one particular myth.  It’s an odd thing.  I feel them in my heart, I feel their connection to that mysterious web of myth that holds the world together.  I don’t know how to pinpoint it, but the connection is there.

I am getting ready for November and NaNoWriMo.  I already have a story idea–ghosts and some demons, so well within my beloved mythic fiction genre.  Yet that line from CdL keeps haunting me.  “In the Fairy House,/Coyote sleeps.”  We’ll see what I decide to do.  Meanwhile, I hope you enjoy the poems.

This week, my blog tour interview with Maureen McQuerry went online.  You can read it on my writing blog.  One thing in the interview really stood out for me, though, so I wanted to share it here.  When asked about mythology and her work, the author wrote, “Because myth involves archetypes, it has universal appeal across time and cultures and it speaks to longings that are deep within all of us.”

I think this is why I enjoyed her books so much–she really understands that longing that myth raises in us, and she does an excellent job of infusing her work with that nearly indescribably feeling.  Take some time to read the interview, and buy her books, too.  If you’re reading my blog, I’m pretty sure you’ll enjoy Ms. McQuerry’s writings as much as I do.

Not much out of me this week.  I am leaving tomorrow for a weekend trip to Chicago for my cousin’s wedding, and the shoes I ordered didn’t arrive.  So I’m about to head out on an emergency shoe shopping excursion.

So…I just finished reading Maureen Doyle McQuerry’s Wolfproof.  (Finally managed to get a copy.)  It was so much fun!  It went so fast–I was completely pulled into this story.  I am looking forward to Travelers Market very much.  I will be interviewing Ms. McQuerry for her blog tour later this month.  I’ll post a link to it here.  I hope you’ll all read the interview and pick up her books if you haven’t already.

On that note, I am off to quest for shoes.  And then pack.  See you next week!

Part of a poem came to me last week, the way they do, almost there but not completed.  And I wrote down the beginning, the part that was born whole.  And now I’m struggling to get the ending, to get it right, to finish the thing.  But it’s not coming.  So here’s what I have so far:

Detour

I remember when I was a poet.
Words flowed like water from a Grecian urn.
Father Sky sent dreams and rhymes and visions,
And I captured them, with Calliope and Clio guiding my hand.

But I have strayed from the words like a pilgrim strays from his path.
I hear the Coyote call of other idylls,
And I chase after the mirage like Atalanta after golden apples
While my dreams languish and my words run dry

Then yesterday a crow called out with a message from beyond.
I turned to look behind me then and saw a story there.
Coyote’s voice no longer pulled, and I returned to my scribbled lines,
And now memory merges with today, and I am back at the page.

Copyright Kim Switzer 2008

Every once in a while, crop circles catch my attention. I guess I’m in a crop circle phase again right now, because I keep finding myself looking at pictures of them, reading articles…Maybe I need to write a crop circle story.

I was thinking that crop circles are rather a modern phenomenon and not particularly mythic. But they have so much speculation swirling around them (my favorite, mentioned on the Crop Circle Secrets website: “sex-mad hedgehogs”). I think that, even though we know at least some circles are manmade, they still fall into the “myth” category. Yes, there have been confessions from hoaxsters admitting to making some circles (this Wiki article has good info and links). But some of the circles I’ve looked at are mind blowing, and it’s hard to imagine how any people could create them in just one night.

Of course, lots of people have put forth explanations and many have even tried to replicate crop circles. Some students from M.I.T. did a really interesting experiment a few years ago complete with trying to duplicate some of the supposed mysterious phenomena associated with “real” crop circles. The video is worth watching; it was shown on the Discovery Channel so shouldn’t be too hard to find. It’s also interesting how different people, including the students themselves after the fact, seem to see different results from the experiment. The students seemed to feel in the video that they had found some interesting results, but in the article I just linked to, they seem to think of the whole thing as a joke, nothing more than a “hack.” On the other end of things this writer seems to feel that, based on the same video, that hoaxers couldn’t be making all the crop circles being discovered around the globe.

Anyhow…are crop circles mysterious and supernatural? Maybe. Are they manmade? Some are. Why are they fascinating? For the same reason any myth captures our attention—there’s no absolute way to tell truth from fantasy, speculation, and embellished reality.

One of the most intriguing things I’ve discovered as I’ve been researching crop circles for this post is that they aren’t actually just a modern phenomenon like I thought they were. If you start digging, you’ll find that there have been references as far back as 815 AD from Lyon (you can find a quote here, near the bottom of the page, from the original source). And there’s a famous woodcut from around 1647 in England that shows the “mowing devil.” I have to conclude that the late 20^th century self-confessed pranksters did not create these early circles. So what did?

I don’t know. And none of the arguments I’ve heard, either for or against crop circles being hoaxes, has been completely convincing. Any show I’ve watched or article I’ve read has been heavy with the biases of the authors or participants. I’m not sure there is one answer on this subject, but isn’t that the best part about myths? The impossibility of either proving them or completely discounting them? That’s what makes crop circles worth returning to, mulling over, perhaps even mythologizing. And definitely worth writing about.

Over the weekend, I went to the Willamette Writers’ Conference. It was wonderful! I had a glorious time and can hardly wait for next year! But I won’t go on about that here—I already wrote about it in my writing blog.

What I will go on about is one of the workshops I was in. It was “Fantasy, Myth and the Reluctant Hero” taught by Maureen Doyle McQuerry, and as you can probably tell by the title, it was about my favorite genre.

This workshop was in my top three favorites, I think, and not just because it’s my favorite subject. Ms. McQuerry is joyfully enthusiastic about mythic fiction; how could I not enjoy 90 minutes with someone so obviously enamored of her subject? She covered the patterns and elements found in mythic fiction, the hero’s journey, the quest, talked about the role of shapeshifters as storytellers, and quoted mythic authors. And she mentioned some books I haven’t read that I now absolutely must read. (Tuck Everlasting for one, which I don’t think I realized was a book.  I knew it was a movie, but I haven’t watched it yet; maybe I would have seen a reference to the book if I had!.  And Maureen McQuerry’s books as well which I’ve referenced below.) If you get the chance to take this workshop, do it. It was so enjoyable and left me feeling so immersed in and in touch with myth and legend and my own writing.

One of the quotes shared with us in the workshop was from the author herself. She has done a much better job than I have yet managed of describing what I usually refer to as homesickness for someplace I’ve never been: “What the best stories awaken in us is yearning and recognition, yearning for something longer ago, further away or yet about to be. Recognition of something we have never met but have always known.” Isn’t it perfect? I feel as if this quote is helping me see the direction I want my writing to go in, and I can’t wait to get on the path! I just hope I can manage to stir that same yearning and recognition in myself and my readers.

So, aside from being newly excited and motivated in my writing, I am also in the beginning stages of making a list of 100 mythic fiction books to read or reread while I’m revamping and rewriting my story (I got the idea from Chapter After Chapter by Heather Sellers, and yes, I will post the list when it’s finished). I am definitely putting McQuerry’s books on this list. I got a chance to look through her newest, Traveler’s Market, before the workshop. It has gorgeous illustrations, and the few paragraphs I read as I flipped through were engaging and well done. I’m really looking forward to reading this, right after I read the first book in the series, Wolfproof.  (These stories include green men and the Wild Hunt and all sorts of wonderful mythic elements–I think they’re going to be fabulous!)

That’s what’s new in my mythic world this week. I’ve also been toying with a crop circle story, so look for a post on crop circles next week. Unless something else sweeps me away before then…

First, I wanted to mention that my blog correspondent gig with Eric Maisel kicked off this week. To see my first post for Muse Quest PDX, and all the others great posts from correspondents, (there’s an excellent one from yesterday called “The Forbidden Myth”), go to Creativity Central.

Now, on to today’s blogging. Today’s post is maybe a little more about writing than about myths, but it does tie in, so I’m putting it here.

I’m currently thinking about how close a story has to stay to the original myth that inspired it. Does it have to have all of the parts of the original story? For example, does a Cinderella based story always have to have a wicked stepmother and two ugly stepsisters? Does there always have to be a prince? Or could she possibly rescue herself in the end? I think that a story can still be mythic and still be considered a story about X myth (a Cinderella story, a Snow White story, etc.) even if some of the original story points are changed or left out.

As an example, let’s look at the gwargedd annwn story I’m toying with. In the original, the humans were always welcome in the realm of the water faeries, welcome to dance and eat and enjoy the lovely lands, as long as they didn’t take anything back with them. Then, a human took a flower back to the human lands, and the door to the faerie realm was closed to them forever. Great. It’s a good story, interesting. But what if I want modern humans to go to the realm of the water faeries? If the door is really closed forever, my story can never happen. So I need a loophole. But there isn’t a loophole in the original story. So I have to create one. I have to invent a way to get my characters into the realm of the water faeries even though the myth inspiring my story says the way is closed forever.

I think quite a lot of mythic fiction that deals with specific myths and faerie tales is probably born this way. “What if, instead of that happening in the story, this other thing happens instead?” And a new story, inspired by the old, is born.

I don’t think the inspiration for mythic stories that don’t follow specific myths is quite as easy to pin down. For that matter, I think my musings about myths as inspiration here is probably overly simplistic in regards to some mythic tales. But this is the way the inspiration for my water faerie story was born, and it seems like it’s probably the way a lot of myth-inspired stories are born, so I wanted to mention it. Maybe thinking about it will inspire someone else to look at a favorite fairy tale and create a new story. And then I’ll have more fun things to read!

Going off on a tangent from something I wrote about in a post in my writing blog, I’ve been thinking about the differences between myths and mythic fiction.

I think one of the biggest differences is in the characters, in how they are portrayed. In myths and fairy tales, characters seem rather simplistic. We don’t get a lot of the whys behind their actions. We know that Jack decided to sell the cow for magic beans. We know that the stepmother in “Hansel and Gretel” thinks that “bairns are a burden” and wants to get rid of the children. But we have no idea what has brought these characters to these decisions.

In mythic fiction, on the other hand, as in any good story, we see characters with deeper motivations and full inner lives. We get to not only follow them through the world on their adventures, we get to see how they are feeling, what they are thinking, why they are doing what they do.

I want to do a bit of research to back up my idea. Right off the top of my head I can’t think of any fairy tales and myths that give us a lot of insight into the characters’ motivation, but I want to look around to make sure I’m right.

If you can think of any myth or fairy tale where there’s some real character development, inner conflict, etc., please leave a comment so I can start compiling a list. I may decide to take this topic further depending on what I turn up. For now, though, this is it.

I am cross posting this from my writing blog.  I am getting ready to go away for the weekend tomorrow, and time has just gotten away from me.  I was intending to write a post about ghosts in the machine, but it isn’t finished.  Still, you’ll have something to look forward to next week now.  And those of you who don’t read both of my blogs will get to hear about a magnificent story you really should read.  With apologies for the redundancy…

Last week, my copy of Charles de Lint’s latest chapbook, “Yellow Dog,” arrived. Glorious! I did something I almost never do—I sat down on the couch as soon as I was in the door and had fed the cat, and I read the whole thing. No dinner preparations, no checking e-mail, nothing until the story was finished. When I was done, I almost didn’t need dinner, I was that satisfied.

This is one of CdL’s desert stories. They are just as powerful and entrancing and moving as his stories of greener places, and whenever I read one, I find myself wanting to visit the desert. Arizona. New Mexico. Dry, bright, harsh places, beautiful in an entirely different way from the mountains and trees here in Portland or the lakeside woods and fields back home in Chicago. I read these desert stories, the stories of canyons and cliffs and hawks and coyotes, and I can almost smell it. I can nearly feel the sand gritting underfoot, see the endless blue sky, smell the baked earth. And I want to go.

Even more importantly I think, at least in the grand scheme of my life, is that I want to write like that. I not only want people to be able to see and smell and feel my settings, I want them to long for those places the way you long for home when you’ve been gone too long.

That’s the best storytelling to me. The kind that leaves you satisfied, filled with words and images, and yet still longing for more. The kind that is so beautiful it leaves an ache inside you that is half joy and half hunger for something you can’t name.

I don’t know if I will reach that pinnacle. I do know that I’ll try. And I do know that I’m lucky that I at least know what it is I’m aiming for.Y