DANCING THE MUSE - Danial Neil

 As I enter the last section of my current novel in progress, I begin to consider the ending. All things end, or at least come to a conclusion of sorts, satisfying, hopefully. There may be the promise, or hint, that the story has not ended definitively, that it may continue as a sequel. So, this novel, The Honour in Dying Young, will be a complete and finished work.  This complex stage in story making requires the tying of loose ends, from plot to protagonist, and the conflicts along the way, while maintaining the tension and propulsive fuse of the story. One must look at the work in its entirety, something writers must deal with all the time without losing the cohesive structure of the story they want to tell. Who and what decides? In my case, I leave that to the characters. My protagonist, Grant Barrie, must decide. I simply will ask him what he wants to do. What should happen next? Even what could happen? Nothing in my novels is nailed down. Yes, I have something in mind th...

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    I do what I can, what comes naturally, out of the depths of my evolution, my karma, my willingness to be more, and to forgive when I see something that discourages me, that makes me turn away – in a kind of disillusionment I want everyone to be the best they can be, toward one another An idealist, you might say, perhaps, but I don’t the know the validity of labels, only that they may explain the world we live in Categorize. Name it. Frame it But ideology comes with a storm of things, religious, political, even claims to intimate knowledge No, I am not that, only a flawed human being, who is optimistic, hopeful, and all the while seeing the reality of life, but undeterred, reaches for the tangible, the good in every hour The Dalai Lama said, “We do not need… to believe in an ideology… The need for a sense of universal responsibility affects every aspect of modern life”  

   There are times when I awaken when I don't know what I'm going to do that day. I want to do something meaningful, something rewarding, some purpose. I am momentarily lost, without structure. And then I take a photograph, or write a good paragraph. That was my dream after all. Why such consternation in the early hours when dreams fade and another dream begins? I think we need such times to direct our attention to our blessings. I am humbled most days by all that I experience. I look around and see the suffering in the streets, the shopping-cart world that I do not know. I am grateful for what brings me joy, what moves me. Gifts perhaps - I don't know. But it is what I can do, the explorer of landscapes and mindscapes. And to share the human experience in my own way, and to be accepted and loved, is the true meaning and purpose of it all, to me at least. And the eagle in the tree, driven there by ravens, only waited for my camera lens. His/her preflight posture and the...

  Standing alone, I see the colourless, the poetic boundaries of the world. It gives me my place, my lane so to speak, where I can construct, or imagine, my stories into being. It is not detachment from felt experience, but rather a subtle felt experience where what one imagines, takes up the same memory space as real experience. What is real after all? I use this often in relating how writing fiction enriches my life. A memory of something I did last summer feels much like a chapter or scene I wrote during that time. The imagery and details are similar. To the mind, both are experienced, both have left impressions. To be honest, to experience life in real time cannot be replicated, or equaled. Still, I have both experiences and grateful for the opportunity to create characters and scenes at any time in our history. That is the gift, to create stories, to inspire and entertain, and even educate. And all the while it comes from our own minds, or does it?  It is difficult to sep...

 I have come home to the West Coast, home to the sea. I had been away, preparing for my return but never aware that I did so. The mystery of such things must remain a mystery. How could we manage our days if we knew? How would we discover meaning, our true purpose, the things we had to go through, learn, discover, uncover, forgive, forget, meet the right person out of chance, luck, or more rightly some divine intervention that saw that love burned unlived inside them, and, yes, grow, grow, grow like a flower, a tree if we knew the road ahead? That is the meaning of our lives after all, to experience this human life, this amazing, astonishing life. Existence is mindblowing. I want to be wowed by life, by love, by touch. I want to drink the long draught of it, and savor all of its offerings. I want to cry when I'm hurt, and cry when I am overwhelmed with love. I want to forgive every error, every wrong turn, and be humbled by the rightness if it all.