True to fashion we have brought you another intellectual installment of our treatise in the works! Please enjoy…
Dear Dreamland’s Insurgents,
You are quite right, burning questions at the heart of writing. Oh, I suppose that may not have been what you meant. Your questions raise up some valid points of thought though. But I would argue, does one ever choose to embark on the journey? Is it not just set forth in front of you, and you step on it by happenstance? But then indeed, that would make it a calling, mayhap…
I beseech you then, what of the idea I stumbled upon while perusing on Bottledworder’s blog. The thought that jumped out at me of how after the telling of your tale, coming back to one’s own life. One’s own tale. Having recently disembarked from our Camp NaNoWriMo journey’s there is a certain truth in having to re-find, or maybe redefine oneself after the undertaking of a story of another. Losing oneself to the story, it is as if we are rudely awakened once more to reality, when we find ourselves once more on it’s shores. What think you? Does a writer let go to be lost to the words in the page only to come back at a later time to see what it was they laid forth? Or maybe it is to find themselves once more? Maybe even redefine, based on what is laid out before them?
Lost in the pages, or maybe redefining,
Random
Here is his response:
Dear Random,
You should get some ointment for those burning questions! Alas and alack and malarkey, I’ve got mostly questions in return. Call it obstinate or just plain obfuscation. Doesn’t a calling imply some caller? And all conditioned reactions to ringtones aside, isn’t it ultimately our choice to pick up the phone? Maybe I’m mixing my metaphors but on the other hand, we’ve got a reason to get meta for – without the appearance – illusion or reality – of our own agency, which is to say the agency of our characters, wither this impulse to change, and whyforeth the reluctance, yea verily?
Seriously, though, and this is why I also liked Bottledworder’s post on “Why Writers Must Listen,” it’s the choice of the characters or the author to give some stories voice or to hide them entirely. For me, I’m always redefining myself, and my characters show that I think. They’re struggles are often my struggles, as are the struggles of the people around me! (Partly because I steal shamelessly from the people around me!) No one is an island, though the wind and seas may take their effect on our internal geography. It IS about empathy, but it’s also about boundaries, and negotiating them. Why give one character the main narrative? Maybe because he/she/they/it are more comfortable with it than the other characters? How about you, do YOU get lost, and once immersed in another character, are you forever changed? How do you find your way back?May there be no birds on your breadcrumbs,
Dreamland’s Insurgents
Please feel free to jump in and share your ideas!
Random Acts of Writing 
I also read that post at Bottleworder! I totally agree with this: “Losing oneself to the story, it is as if we are rudely awakened once more to reality, when we find ourselves once more on it’s shores.”
That post was really great! I really connected with it, **grins** and of course it left great thoughts for our wonderful treatise!
Sadly reality too often drags us back to it’s shores… leaving us stranded on some island or another, when all we really want to be is out on the high seas of our stories!
I find it really difficult to come back to reality. Characters and stories and new ideas are constantly going around in my head. It’s no longer a place of quiet it once could be before I decided to give my urge to write, a try.
Oh I totally feel your pain there!!! It is like… they never quite!!! **grins** on the bright side there is always something to mull over, and idea to pursue!