Written Whispers

This post (and a couple of others) have been transferred to The Tao of Me my private blog. I want to use some of these in a book someday. :)

If you do not have access to this blog but would like it just leave me a comment saying as much and I’ll get around to it. I’ll be transferring a couple of other posts over there soon.

Thankies and peace.

You know what? Sometimes I very much dislike how my brain absorbs things. I mean this in a fluffy and not ‘entirely’ serious way though at the moment I am truly annoyed.

I was toying with an idea and a new character for a project that is only half hearted right now. It’s just kind of drifting around my head trying desperately to latch onto something and hasn’t yet. It’s one of those ideas I expect to sock me in the face a week from now and demand to be written once it’s caught enough mental debris to become something.

I’ve was thinking about the character, putting him in different situations and such. It’s no surprise he turned out to have some Tao related philosophies. That’s just my main focus right now so the fact that it’s bleeding through into my writing is no shock whatsoever. What is a shock is that there was no way I could make this character work in my usual fantasy type writing because of it. He just ‘flowed’ through every conflict and became uninteresting. I mean he was still a cool character but I couldn’t get him down. He was just too happy even when things were bad and thus didn’t seem plausible enough to me.

On another hand, that I sometimes wish I had as an extra hand is always handy (yeah, bad pun, too much caffeine), the Taoist philosophies are also bleeding through into a lot of my other works in a very, very awesome way. Giving my characters beliefs, and for some of them a motivation that I had never used before. It’s very interesting.

Still, I’m just annoyed because this character became a lot more Tao involved than myself. They didn’t let anything get them down and fully lived how they chose to live no matter what was going on around them. They stayed positive inside. I’m not there yet. Could I be jealous of my imagination? Is this my internal writer’s way of telling me it’s starting to take the advice of the Tao Te Ching, Just1More (), my Hunny, and every other person, place, and thing that’s been telling me to be more positive?! Even my horoscope is against my darker nature. Not that I put much stalk in those but serious this is was mine said a couple of days ago…

Your subconscious imagination is negative — counter it by hanging with fun friends.

 

I mean- what the heck?! Not that this is a bad thing it’s just I must really be dense to need all these signs and then some to tell me to lighten up. Been talking to my spirits more lately and as far as I can tell even they agree. This is all a good thing though and there is a lot more light coming through me, inwards and outwards. :)

Last night while I was waiting for my Hunny to finish his shift so we could go home I was skimming through ‘Tao 365′ by Deng Ming-Dao for more verses that apply to my characters when I came across something truly awesome.

This one is under the title Writer:

She withdrew into herself,
First just writing for one,
Then touching thousands.
She incarnated ghosts, hurt, and joy
Into paper-and-ink stories of wonder.

Deng Ming-Dao

This just makes me smile. He goes on to talk about writers need to write and how we hear voices that others do not. That we go to that special place inside our heads (hearts/souls?) and must express whatever we find there. We have to ride the flow out and how that special place inside us is just like the Tao.

I just have to smile over this so much. I also have another book called ‘The Tao of Writing’ by Ralph L. Wahlstrom. When I bought that book I was still in the stages of glancing at ‘Taoism for Dummies’ because I had trouble putting it in a direct light, a way I could understand. Not an uncommon problem since in essence the Tao is undefinable but that’s what I like about it.

When I apply it to writing, that feeling comes over me just before and while I’m letting the words- no, not just the words, the stories and images pour out of me… it’s just so amazing. To just be and flow, to know that this feeling is what drives me, that I can gain such peace and contentment out of creating… it’s all so wow.

I’m really starting to think this path or philosophy is right for me. Not only because most of my base beliefs already flow along these lines but this is what I need in life. I’ve had the first half of things down all along but for my own well being the rest would do me good.

Do what you must when you must do it. Don’t fall into the deeply carved ruts of others that make you do things that are needless and cause equally needless problems. Don’t try, just do. Relax and flow. Be and if you are not happy with what you are change it and be that. Do what makes you happy. Bend to change but never break. Overcome adversity with the power of flow. I really do love it.

By the way, for those of you who read my Tao based character sketch, remember the joke I made about how my characters might be Taoists and I don’t even know it? Well, it turns out one of them is. How funny is that?

This might not make sense to some but sometimes you can’t control the choices your characters make. Girls turn into boys, friends become lovers, someone kills someone or has a motive you never thought about till your fingers brought it to the attention of your eyes. It’s almost like channeling sometimes. You never know what you’ll be told.