Talent? Process? Outplaying of Workaholic Addiction?
I posted on Facebook after a friend sent me an article about the finding that some American natives came from China. That’s where my Winds of Change novel series on the western hemisphere population origin paradigm originated. It focused on the time of the eruption of Mt. Toba, a supervolcano in Sumatra, Indonesia roughly 75,000 years ago. It was a surprise to me to read in the article that China was a source, since that was what I concluded after exhaustive study but without concrete “proof.” The article places the origin closer to us in time, but when you write prehistoric fiction, time is somewhat relative. But this is not the first time that my speculation from research has later been scientifically backed up.
The image here is what I attached to accompany my post text.
After reading the post, a Facebook friend mentioned that I was talented.
I responded with:
Thank you so much, but I have to admit, I think it’s more my workaholic addiction. I grab onto a subject, shake the heck out of it, and look at it from every angle I can. Then I completely relax my brain and let it freely flow over the hundreds of thousands of pieces of the subject I just tore apart, watching for the re-formation that takes place effortlessly in my head. I start to see it come together and begin to write, never seeing all the way to the end clearly, but trusting it’ll form. It does and I write fiendishly until the end arrives, sometimes in complete surprise. Then I smooth it out, polishing, shaping. I ask others to help polish. And when I feel it’s ready, I turn loose of it and start shaking the heck out of a new subject. This work and the depth and breadth of it keeps me out of trouble. I love every part of the writing process and the marketing of it once the writing’s done. The re-forming of subject, the writing, selling, and discussing the product with others brings me constant joy, keeping me one of the happiest people I know.
That’s my writing process. I wasn’t taught how to write fiction. When writers talk about story arcs, my mind goes to geometry and physics, not writing. It wasn’t something I ever dreamed of doing. I simply sought to share my five years of research trying to find out who were the first Americans in both North and South America. I had traced them as far back as 250,000 years ago in the Americas, Mexico specifically, only to conclude that the past may be too distant for high definition clarity. We can conclude that some came from Asia (specifically China), Aboriginal Australia and Pacific Islands, Africa, France/Spain. Some of the anthropology leaders would teach fiction as fact. That would disturb me as my research focused on study by others in different countries from my own as well as from the USA. I’ve seen some of those fictional boundaries crumble. DNA analysis is opening our eyes to details never dreamed of, but that science remains still in its infancy. It rivets my attention to the prehistoric story and leaves a smile on my face. More will come to light in the future.