Aneurysmi

It's been over a month that my friend Jan suffered from a ruptured brain aneurysm and was hospitalized. The first few days, after I heard the news, were shocking and fearful because no one knew what to expect and because the odds of survival seemed grim.

Well, she did survive and continues to recover. She remains hospitalized, but for the last two weeks has been making new progress in her recovery every day. Every day there have been updates in a blog kept for her by her husband and by her brother, and every day there have been postings that tell of each step of her progress, and every day her blog receives comments from her friends near and afar, offering their encouragement and prayers. Her survival and recovery appear miraculous, and I have been feeling so grateful for the prayers that have been answered.

This week I received an email from my church mailing list. It was a prayer request for another family that just recently and suddenly lost a member to an aneurysm. This news has left me with mixed feelings. On the one hand I feel so grateful that Jan has survived and recovers, and that our many prayers have been heard. How lucky she is! On the other hand, I am shocked to hear of the loss to the other family caused by the same condition that almost took Jan.

It seems so arbitrary. Does God answer prayers on a democratic basis? Were there more of us praying for Jan, harder and louder, than for the other woman such that Jan survived and the other did not? Or is there some principle of conservation involved, such that when one person was saved, another had to be taken instead?

These are rhetorical questions; yet I invite thoughtful comments from anyone reading this.

Inspiration in a flame

There was one time, back in the late eighties or early nineties, that I went to a dinner event with my parents. I think the occasion was around the Ukrainian Christmas season. I sat at a table with my parents and with various people, and there was a candle on the table - I just became so mesmerized by it. I stared into the little flame and watched it flicker around and just totally tuned out everything that was going on around me. I didn't realize in the moment that I was totally tuned out, but I suddenly became aware when my mom tried to get my attention because someone had asked me a question and I had completely ignored them.

My memory of this experience of being mesmerized by a candle was part of my inspiration for the Mission: Dawn scene I wrote called Heart in the Fire. In this scene, Dreamer is mesmerized by the flames of a bonfire. Writing this scene has given me a chance to get into Dreamer's head and explore the inner workings of his mind.

Creating a whole world

I'm back to chapter 2. My latest scene, Heart in the fire, is an introspective scene that focuses on the character named Dreamer. I've been layering chapter 2 so that the scenes alternate between the ship-side story and the village-side story.

I must admit, I've been finding the village-side story much harder to write, much harder to imagine. Likely that is because I am creating everything from scratch. I am creating a whole new race of people, a whole new culture and customs and characters, and I am trying to make them seem foreign and interesting and credible.

In comparison, telling the ship-side story is much easier, because it's all about humans, and I've watched tons of Star Trek episodes so I have much more familiarity with creating stories about starship crews.

Refactoring chapters

Chapter 2 is getting bigger than I expected it would be and I'm thinking I may split or refactor the chapters. However, I've decided against doing it now, in the first draft. I think it makes more sense to do that in the revision - when I do the second draft.

It will be a lot easier for me to do it then and make a lot more sense, because by then I'll know everything that happens in the story - right now I'm still making stuff up.

Mission: Dawn - working on chapters 2 and 3

I "officially" started work on chapter 3 in January. Writing for chapter 3 gives me a psychological boost; I feel like I've made more progress. I still have some work to do on chapter 2 mind you, so I'm dividing my writing time between both chapters.

I've revised the ending for the scene called Celebrations - Part 2. The previous ending forced me to get into certain plot points that seemed to soon for me; I didn't know the characters well enough yet to make them do the things I was going to have them do. The revised ending gives me more space to explore the characters before I start testing them.

I had initially intended to have Dawn arrive at Planet 542 at the end of chapter 2 but have decided to postpone that until the end of chapter 3. The reason for this is that I want to include the story of Dawn's encounter with a gaseous phenomenon while en route; this encounter is a setup for something important that will happen much later in the story. However, it would be too much to tell the story that is unfolding in the village on Planet 542 and Dawn's story and pack it all into one chapter.