(If you have yet to pick up on the reference, my surname is Liddle.)
Blog Overview: Novel Rewrite // Patience // Longing // Controlling the Curriculum
Riddle Liddle is the name, and jeez does it suit me well?!
I once told a friend that my purpose is to challenge my last name. By no means do I play it small. My dreams are vast and yet in order to accomplish them I have to literally break down each minute step to arrive at my destination.
Ultimately, I’ve been given a Vision. Time and time again, I’ve been shown (by my guides, Higher Self, ancestors, what have you) where my path is leading.
It’s like “The Alchemist” by Paulo Coelho. You get a whiff, an inkling of a thought. This distant memory, like the fading of timelines, reveals what’s to come (and thus what is here and now). You get this sensation, an overload of energy washing through you allowing the vibration to match the rate of the manifestation. And then it passes, you blink, and you’re sitting back at your desk facing a journal, writing your New Moon revelations.
(Or maybe this is just me….)
This sensation can feel quite confusing. Because we still live in a world that is confined by a hours and minutes in a linear fashion, revolving around the clock’s central point, ticking away the seconds until we go mad within the holographic interface. I yearn and reach for that Vision’s fulfillment, knowing it is mine and yet, here I sit. Elsewhere. Not yet with the dream…come…true.
The dream is here. And so, I lean into patience, remembering that in order to get “there” I must revolve through the spiral, unwinding artificial patterns that bind me to an identity that is still too burdened and conditioned to yet receive the dream.
I used to think this was all bullshit. Impatience was my nemesis.
“If it’s meant for me, why isn’t here NOW?!?”
Then the voice in my head reminds me: “Liddle by Liddle.”
One small step in that direction. And guess what, it’s totally beyond my control. I have all these ideas on how I’ll get there. I plan and strategize, fixated on controlling the curriculum (i.e. what your soul is destined to learn/heal/reprogram). With lofty goals and an eager mindset aimed at accomplishing a laundry list of tasks meant to extend far longer into the future than what I have in mind, I pursue and push.
Push. Again, jeeez. This is such a debacle. Forcing the uncontrollable is our ego’s concept of will.
“I am infinite! I am powerful! Of course, I can will it my way!” speaks the ego.
Unfortunately, that is not the case. Actually, fortunately….
We do not actually want to control this story we are creating. Alan Watts says it best:
(“Let's suppose that you were able every night to dream any dream that you wanted to dream. And that you could, for example, have the power within one night to dream 75 years of time. Or any length of time you wanted to have. And you would, naturally as you began on this adventure of dreams, you would fulfill all your wishes. You would have every kind of pleasure you could conceive. And after several nights of 75 years of total pleasure each, you would say "Well, that was pretty great." But now let's have a surprise. Let's have a dream which isn't under control. Where something is gonna happen to me that I don't know what it's going to be. And you would dig that and come out of that and say "Wow, that was a close shave, wasn't it?" And then you would get more and more adventurous, and you would make further and further out gambles as to what you would dream. And finally, you would dream ... where you are now. You would dream the dream of living the life that you are actually living today.”)
I have this Vision of a trilogy about dragons sitting on my bookshelf. The author: Riddle Liddle.
So far, all I’ve managed in two years since receiving the Vision is 200+ pages of a very rough draft and the beginning of the rewrite. But that is far more than nothing! I often have to remind myself that I could've never written a word. I could've just let that idea drift away with the wind. Instead, I have a lofty challenge ahead of me and life purpose.
It's like a fruiting tree. Plant the seed and tend to it with diligence, and eventually you'll reap the rewards. It may take years...sometimes even 15-20 years. But one day, you'll know you planted that seed.
Everything worthwhile arrives with intent and an investment of some sort.
Sometimes it rains coconuts, and you harvest the rewards. Other times, you trade paper bills that you earned (or simply have) for the heavenly coco water.. Perhaps you climb the tree? Or your friends just gives you one! But can you imagine being the person who tended to that coconut sprout until it rooted into the Earth. Imagine being the caregiver who fed the tree compost and removed dying fronds. Then, one day you crack that green nut open and drink the electrolyte-charged mana (Hawaiian word for power, to put it entirely too simply). Wouldn't that be such an amazing experience? You watched that coconut grow! In many ways, it's a collaboration.
That's how I feel about writing this book. One most days, at least. Sometime I forget about the long game.
In a recent rewrite session, I deleted the first line of the book. It went: “A pristine, oil-painted flow of ripples guides leaves to infinity, like a captain sailing to vast horizons.”
Poof, gone! The whole book changed because of it, for the better, of that, I’m sure. (The book has nothing to do with a captain anyway….)
I bawled my eyes out seeing that line deleted. Why? Well, simply because this was energy I invested in the project. But so much has changed since then. Letting go of those words felt like saying good-bye to an old me.
Create, destroy, process, integrate. Repeat.
On and on and on. But that's life.
Parts of my ego want to be done with the project. Call it quits….call it a “good enough” story.
But no, the Vision tells me it’s far beyond me. This book is meant to help people fantasize, romanticize, criticize, reorganize, and see with new eyes.
So, Liddle by Liddle, I trudge away. Some days I have break throughs, while others I sit facing my screen and scream, begging the book to write itself.
When I reach the point of completion, I’ll thank my past self for her determination. I’ll thank the younger version of Riddle for doing what it takes to write a novel series…the long hours sitting in blue-light radiating off my Mac, pecking at keys, reading books about structuring a novel, taking courses on character development, etc.
However, more than likely, completing this project is not going to give me what I long for. Yes, there will be tears and gratitudes and integration, but life goes on. I’m sure I’ll feel proud, but I’ll still be breathing, ready for my next mission.
In truth, I’ve experienced this on many occasions. I work toward what I want, get it, and it all passes. The next day, the feeling might linger, but it’s gone.
What I most long for is longing itself.
So away with control and bypassing the moment!
Gone are the days of demanding more progress!
Au revoir! (Meaning: Until we meet again.)
One day, I’ll marvel at a trilogy series sitting on my bookshelf, and hopefully on many bookshelves all around the world. But for now, I relish in the process. I indulge in what is presenting itself, for in order to get “there” I must accept that I am “here” facing a story that has a loose hook, a weak inciting event, and unclear motive.
The real healing involved with this project is in all the choices I make to stay in alignment with the project, my purpose. They say, “it’s the journey, not the destination.”
I can only imagine all the lessons I’ll learn along the way.
To my readers: Mahalo for all you are. You're integral to this collective quilt we co-create. There's only one patch like you! So thank you for being authentically yourself and celebrating the myriad designs and shapes of other patches, trusting we are part all of the same fabric.
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