If any of you read The Wheel of Time series, you'll have caught the title reference right away. If not... go to a bookstore and buy Robert Jordan's books, starting with The Eye of the World. They are really well worth it.
It's been a while since I've sat down to actually read. Weird, I know, since I'm a writer and a bookworm. But there is a fine line a writer must walk, a choice to be made: to read or to write. Now, when I start reading, I'll sit for three or four hours at a time, totally absorbed, all life coming to an abrupt caesura as my whole being is swept into a fantasy world. Maybe that's why I prefer fiction; I like escape. Similarly, when I start writing, I can slip away for days, weeks, yes even months. I sleep, but only as long as I need to think clearly enough to see the keyboard. I eat, but at the computer. Earl Grey is my companion. These two existences cannot easily coexist. Either I am in my book, or in someone else's. Too much time and energy is placed in both activities to multitask it.
When I was in high school and college, writing like this was impossible. Short stories has to suffice. Poetry was what got me through my cravings. Something I could sit down for an hour and finish, feeling fulfilled, accomplished, and yet yearning to return - one day - to that great story that has already consumed seventeen years of my life.
I am what some people consider unemployed. I like to think of it as freelancing. I work, don't get me wrong. I work long, hard hours, sitting at a desk and doing research, typing until I have to soak my fingers in hot water. This, right now, is a break from research. I've been looking up info on the M79 Grenade Launcher. Why? Because it is mentioned in the story, and I want to squeeze it into a few niches. Why again? I dunno, 'cause it's cool? As my main character says: "Do not ask why, just know that it is."
My "freelancing" is not just to sit on my rump and write, please don't think that. I have agoraphobia and rheum-arthritis, which makes employment difficult. Some days (like today) the flareups are so bad I can't do anything. My right hand is dead today. Typing one-handed is hard work. I can't walk much further than the kitchen. I hurt... everywhere! Employment in a 9-5 is impossible in this state. Here at home, I can write, or at least do research. I can try to do something. With no "other" job to distract me, I can focus on what I really want to work on, my career passion: my writing. That is my true joy, my ambrosia to drink up and fill me with sweet belletristic ecstasy.
But these flareups are hitting more frequent. The medicines just aren't helping. Thus, I chose an alternative treatment: Robert Jordan. The Wheel of Time takes me away from the pains in my body and places me in characters, be it Rand or Mat or Perrin or Egwene. So many characters to step into, explore, see their world as I try to forget my own. They have pains, yes, and mental anguishes I could never fathom, but it's easier to cope with the afflictions of the characters in my head than with my own aches and anguishes, with swollen joints and fingers that won't straighten, with panic attacks at the stupidest things that leave me embarrassed and frustrated and wanting to scream aloud. When the drugs bring no relief, it's easier to escape.
Reading takes me away from writing, of course, but right now I can't write much. I stop every other sentence to rub out wrists, feeling the bones within pop and crunch in complaint. I chide myself for trying stubbornly to use the right hand that is curled like the dying branches of some ancient oak. Writing on days like this is torture. Yet I know, if it were not for the books to read, I would press on. Why? "Do not ask why, just know that it is." Honestly why: because I'm a stubborn-ass perfectionist who is terrified I won't get to finish the story.
Not being fatalistic or anything, I've just always seen unfinished works as the ultimate tragedy, especially when critics claim the work is an artist's masterpiece. So great... and not complete. I think of Frank Herbert. Surely, Chapterhouse could not be the ending he wanted. I think of Tolkien and the Silmarilion, not to mention the plethora of notes he left behind, to be taken up by his son in hopes of finishing the complex universe his brilliant father created. I think of Kafka, Hemingway, Lord Byron, Chaucer, Spencer and the Faerie Queen, Dickens and who the heck killed Edwin Drood, Schubert and the Unfinished Symphony, Bach and The Art Of Fugue, John Lennon and Free As A Bird (ok, so the remained Beatles finished it, but who's to say if that was Lennon's vision for the song). Unfinished works are one of the ultimate tragedies for me, yet I suppose every artist, be they writer, musician, architect, or painter, eventually succumbs to Azrael's arms with something left unfinished.
Robert Jordan (aka James Rigney), I hope, does not fall victim to this fate. With one more book to go until he finishes the Wheel series, Mr. Rigney has been diagnosed with amyloidosis. Not that I know a bloody thing about the disease, but I know it is fatal. Not just for the sake of personally wanting to see the loose ends tied up, but for the sake of future projects such a creative man surely must have planned in his boundless mind, and for his family and friends, and for the man himself, from one aspiring author to one well established and esteemed, I hope he beats this disease. Write if it makes you happy, Mr. Rigney, but rest up and get well!
Ah, but the Wheel weaves as the Wheel wills. My own story reflects such concepts of fate, a theory I personally am not certain about. Fate, many believe, will deal what cards are meant. Robati, the Road of Time (that's what I call it in Shadowstrider, and I'm tickled pink that Jordan calls it the Wheel of Time, so similar)... the Road of Time takes us on our path, and we walk its route. Can we defy fate? Fate, or the disease at least, states that this author, who I have just discovered and yet instantly feel an affinity toward, is destined for a lifespan of 4 years. Perhaps Mr. Rigney is ta'veren and will pull his string in the weave the way he wants.
Oh, I could quote phrases from his books, from my books, from a hundred other stories out there that deal with such topics. I won't. Only because Robati has set me on a path meeting a bottle of Motrin and some pain killers. I'll return to reading Jordan's books... and I will enjoy the escape.
