2023-02-01 Journal Entry

🍃 Season: ❄️ Winter 🔆 Weekday: Wednesday 🗓 Date: February 1, 2023 📅 Week: Jan 30 – Feb 5, 2023

Today isn’t really a “Morning Pages” kind of day, since these are happening at nearly 7pm. I also didn’t do them yesterday, so here we are. Not a point of shame, but I am pretty tired.

I’m thinking a lot about this novel, and I think I’m falling deep into this trap of “so what’s the point of all this” or trying to work backwards from the moral. I don’t really want to orient the story around what I think the narrative or moral should be. I think it’s better if it arises out of the characters and the situations that they’re in.

So let’s start somewhere new. There’s an oracle — or at least that’s what I’ll call them for now, but you get the idea, someone tasked with being the bridge between the mortals and the gods — who has lost touch with the heavens. They must continue to field questions and give prophecies, both for their personal role and livelihood and for the political stability of their village (more on that later, methinks).

What sort of fears would you have here? Well first — what’s the actual origin of all of this stuff? Why were you able to communicate with the gods in the first place? Did you fall out of favor? There’s also one’s personal safety to consider. Surely not all of your divinations are going to fall in someone’s favor, and even if they’re accurate, knowing that you essentially made it up may cause them to come after you. There’s also the personal aspect: who am I if I don’t have the support of the gods? Who am I without this power?

At some point, they must be able to tell someone. A close friend who actually believes them and can hold the whole ordeal lightly enough to believe them and not murder them but also seriously enough to know that they may be in danger.

But there also must be a slip — they have to be wrong eventually. There can be minor slips, people being suspicious. At some point, they’ll certainly gain an enemy, even if it’s a petty one. But over time the stakes will have to grow.

I think this story sounds fun, and it feels more spacious. There’s room for a lot more people — who are the folks in the village, what do they want, how do they rationalize their existence with the power of this oracle, can the oracle always be trusted, and so on. I also feel a bit less moralistic here and more curious, like I want to figure out some characters and throw them at each other like marbles to see where they bounce. And even better — I could start writing this right now. I don’t need to know what the ending is, but I know enough to start somewhere and just keep going.

Great, so now I have like 10 wikipedia pages open just starting with the one on “Oracle” and ending somewhere reading about Christian Mysticism. So there’s plenty of source materials.

I am both exhausted and not. I don’t feel like I’ve slept super well the last few nights, but that also feels a bit like an adjustment period since I’m basically rebuilding my schedule from scratch. Ah, so it goes.

Okay, so enough about that story, what else is going on. I haven’t meditated in a bit, I should do that after this. Actually, fuck that. I haven’t sat in a few days, I’m doing it right now. I’ll finish this afterwards.

Alright, 20 minutes of sitting and I’m back in action. Time to get these fucking words down on the page. I also just want to read more of this Rothfuss trilogy, it’s so damn good. In fact, since it’s already 8pm and I’m gonna be doing my morning pages actually in the morning in just a few hours, I’m gonna cut this one short and read. Good night, I love you, you’re not inferior to anyone. I’ll see you in the morning.