Day 138 Gentleness

It is important to remember that at first flush, going sane feels just like going crazy. Growth is erratic forward movement: two steps forward, one step back. Remember that and be very gentle with yourself. A creative recovery is a healing process. Julia Cameron, The Artist's Way

Several years back, I lost the ability to create ... anything.  Deep in my heart I knew that I was destined to be a creative creature, and had been in the past. Once upon a time, I wrote five novels in a year. Five. Minimum word count of 50,000.

That's a lot of writing.

One year I wrote a book in a single month, again, 50,000 plus words.  Creativity poured through my word processor.  


What I didn't realize then was that my creativity was fragile. A traumatic event shut down my ability to imagine other worlds in my mind and take my readers there.  It was as if someone had taken a plant just blooming and ran it over with a lawn mower.

I'm still trying to recover that.

This blog has been a part of the process. Just sitting down on a regular basis and making any sort of writing a habit tells my mind that I still have the ability to pen words to "paper" even if those words aren't fictionalized tales.

For the past seven years my creativity has been trying to break the bonds that have kept it moored to the dock.  

Sometimes, it squeezes out in the form of acrylic painting, painting that is guided by a marvelous mentor.

Unfortunately, it is not something I can do on a regular basis, but I am always so encouraged by the results.

I believe the creative writing will return at some point, I just don't know when. The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron has been of tremendous help.  She, too, has had to undergo recovery of her art and has written words of wisdom for those who have had their creativity stunted.

So, yesterday, I took some advice from my scripture reading and remembered one of my first loves - King Arthur and the tales surrounding Camelot.

I loved the soundtrack, and I'm pretty sure my kids know all the songs that were included on the album.  There was just something magical about a tragic love story and the quests, and the knights of yore.

This was partially fueled by the failure of the Transformers, The Last Knight to make any real use of the story of the Round Table and its knights. Used as a literary device, kind of, the story missed the wealth and depth of Arthurian lore.

A fair number of people are acquainted with King Arthur and recently Guy Richie put his own spin on the tale of the young man who pulled a magical sword out of a stone that make him king. Those familiar with the musical, Camelot, may be familiar with the tragic love triangle of Arthur, Guinevere, and Lancelot. Others may be familiar with the Mary Steward trilogy centered on Merlin, who was as much an engineer as a magician. Others have perhaps watched the Merlin television program. 

Most mythologies put the number of knights at the round table, including Arthur at twelve. Some of these names you may recognize: King Arthur, Lancelot, Gawain, Percival, Lamorak, Kay, Giraint, Bors the Younger, Bedivere, Gaheris, Galahad and Tristan.

The Winchester Round Table supports a theory of twenty-five knights, and if you go deep into the lore, you can potentially come up with thirty-four knights of Arthur's Round Table. These knights included King Bagdemagus, King Leodegrance, King Uriens, and King Arthur. Of the thirty-four knights, there are just a scant few whose names might tickle your ears: Mordred, Sagremoire and Pellieance.

That leaves a lot of fodder for me to play around with. So, I am researching some of these lesser known knights, and the stories of the better well known knights such as Gawain, who went up against the Green Knight who was known for beheading folks with his giant ax.

I'm thinking research may help spring forth sprouts of ideas. Even now, I'm percolating something something regarding these four kings being at the Round Table together.  I imagine it would create some interesting politics and discussion.

So, percolate I will. Maybe I can just pull some of these guys names out of a hat and go at it that way. I am hoping that if I find out enough about them, I'll get a read on their personality and that may lead to some types of conflict, and conflict iw what drives story