A friend asked me to tell more about My DY, a story I am now in the process of editing and illustrating.
With an early manuscript behind me, appropriately lodged between a Lotus shop manual and a vest atop another Lotus manual I described it.
About this story, it’s been a long time coming. That can be said of many paintings too.
Decades ago I decided I’d attempt a book length story. I started with a one page tale. Then I wrote multi page concoctions. They worked well but my story telling style didn’t allow anything any more than twenty pages and still be worth reading. I bought some books about how to go about it and shelved the attempt. I wasn’t going to do it the way I read that it must be done.
Enter my youngest daughter who insisted that I write my life story, something I also had no intention of doing. Still, the idea appealed to me only because I was convinced that only one person could be trusted to do it right if it were ever done. Instead, I started a blog. That would preserve some of the actual thoughts and stories and all the kids could have access. After several hundred posts, I detected a zero interest in it on the part of the kids, who I predict will enjoy those posts when they can’t get those thoughts from me any other way.
The problem with life-stories is, and this is especially true with me, there is too much one would rather not rehash or even reveal in the first place. I do not shine as a first timer, as you may have detected in my history with the Europa where I specialize in doing it wrong every way I can before figuring out the solution. I’ve done that with just about everything and it’s frankly not good story material. It’s embarrassing.
But then my first born went vegan. She started by having real successes with soaps and other products were she went from buying off the shelf products to researching obscure brands whose qualities yielded good results with less side effects. My grand daughters red dry hands went to soft and perfect when they changed laundry soap.
My daughter decided that earth friendly products would be the only ones she’s buy and use.
Then she experimented and discovered that with diet changes she lost some ailments. She determined that animals are mistreated in the meat packing business and stopped enjoying meat, milk, or anything derived from critters.
So now she drinks almond milk.
That brought to mind a peculiar thing to me. Almonds are not a food that one just plucks from it’s source and munches down. Neither are olives. I tried it. If you’ve never found black olives on a tree and popped one in your mouth I recommend putting off the experience. Same for the source of tapioca and other foods.
So I thought it no crime to meet my youngest daughters challenge another way. Like those foods, I could extract something good out of my mostly embarrassing history of non-stellar life choices (nothing criminal or perverse, just unfortunate things like buying the red Europa because it was done – bah ha haha! done! Not.) <<side note – I remedied this at the cost of a year and a half of work>>
I decided I’d write a big story that would allow me to pass on my thoughts without wading through a rehearsal of the trials that brought them to be. Then the kids could benefit from the value of their dad’s life without confusing the lessons with the trials. Sometimes the trials are tragic.
If anyone elects to tell me to ‘go to hell’ I can honestly respond with, “been there.” on some level. But I’m not interested in writing about the mechanics of that excursion.
Like my writing system that I’ve been enjoying and developing for 48 years, the original objectives had to be modified. Now I realize that one book length story won’t fill the bill.
This tale begins with a lad who is just out of school and thinks he has a life mission but has no idea what it is and it bugs him enough that he determines to figure it out. He sets aside a year just for that purpose and gives it his best shot.
So the story is called “My DY” , which as the story explains is a reference to his Discovery Year. None of it is real but in some ways all of it is.
Happily, he succeeds and has reason to be glad he left home to sort it out. He wouldn’t have found his answer by pondering it. He had to go looking.
What I did differently with this story was to go at it with a mentors mentality. I didn’t know how I would end it because in this one case, that wasn’t necessary. In large measure, I just stayed out of the way and let the story tell itself. That worked for me. That was something I’ve long done with art where I favor inspiration over other design influences. I still have to follow basic creative rules, but one of them is to stand aside when inspiration rolls through then get behind it like I do when an ambulance pulls up behind me with lights and siren. Then I stay with it and get where I need to faster.
So the write was not only fun, it was real. I actually went to those places that I wrote of and did what I wrote about.
The result was a first hand account and a better writing experience all around. In my opinion that made for a good read.
Truth, it’s a bubble. It makes sense in it’s own context. Outside it’s context, it seems silly. But that’s like the gestation of a mammal or the development of a bird inside it’s egg. Neither of those miracles make a lick of sense, but they work. We trust them to work but the details are too strange.
It’s a fictional tale, but while I wrote it was very real.
I hope it leads to financial gain, in part because I need that and also because the system I used to write worked for me and I have plenty of untold stories that could see the light of page. or day.
The story satisfied my objectives. I was able to weigh in on concepts I hope my children and their children will think about in positive ways and avoid some of the troubles and stalls of life.
It does not follow the rules that I was advised to employ in those ‘how to write a novel’ books. There’s no bad guy. It’s evil free. There is passion but no indulgent peeping-tom-ery.
I’m sure there can be howls from agenda driven people because it also doesn’t focus on the holy issues of the day. I didn’t care about anything but the virtues of the story. I don’t carry anyone’s water and don’t intend to. It’s my bucket and it’s my water.
Now I’m editing. I left a lot of the descriptions of persons and places to be developed last in part because I couldn’t juggle that many details and keep the pace that it took to write with needed energy level. I told the core story. Now I’m planning the illustrations and that process will help me solidify the imagery with consistency. How some of the characters look will follow who I use for my models.
I still don’t know the flavor of illustration, but I’m influenced by N.C. Wyeth and Dean Cornwell. That will affect things too.
Even if the story finds no following and I make nothing off it, I will do more like it. Then the children will have the extracted goodness of my life in story form and it will be much like almonds, tapioca, olives and others – they will have the part that matters and never have to suffer the process that created it.
I think I’ll make tapioca today!
