Choices:

A beautiful thought came to me today about inserting some new material for Aislin. In this scene, she is exuding peace and forgiveness at the end of the book. Then I was like, “No, the book is titled The Disconsolate. They are the disconsolate.”

But the way I pictured it was so beautiful and peaceful, it brought a lot of light into my body.

This could go a few ways:

A). I could add the scene I imagined. Beautiful scene with forgiveness, the way I pictured it today, full of light. And this addition could go a few ways:

  1. I could change the name of the book, to reflect the themes more honestly
  2. or I could make this a scene of how peace comes to her and how she ultimately rejects the idea, thus demonstating her inconsolability and staying with the initial ideas I had for this book: “write the saddest book ever”. This book has an emotional impact on me, thus I wanted to know what my beta readers thought. I wanted to prepare you, it’s so sad I say. Feedback concurred it is not the saddest book ever, but rather “just how life is sometimes”. I accept this assessment. So the second option is that during its existence the book will demonstrate we are flawed, we are sometimes slaves to our emotions, that we have chemical and hormonal imbalances, that we are real and not perfect. That we struggle. Our environments have trauma. And there are often difficult consequences for our actions. And of course, love never dies.

B). I could add an alternate ending! Yay, two endings. One that is a path of what? Peaceful surrender? How the fuck do you surrender after that shit? lol

Okay, okay…. 🙂 Settle down there 😉 There are still at least two choices. They exist regardless of the indignity I feel on behalf of my MC, correct?

The case of Forgiveness: We all make mistakes, and that’s a lot of what this book is about. Without really intending it, all my characters are more flawed than not.

What does it matter if they are perfect or flawed? I guess I am not sure how it applies here just yet. I got caught up on a friend recently expressing their disdain for Mary Sues. Go down a hole with me!

Back to the case of forgiveness and what that demonstrates: Allowing for a second ending of this book stands for accepting change and shows that the characters are generating from a peaceful place. I think adding another ending would be a way to spout philosophy about a world I want to live in… honestly. That’s what it will fulfill. I could bend every detail into one about kindness.

So I ask my body… What do you want? Do you want to get the feels of this light and beautiful place? Do you understand the power of rewriting Aislin in the place of forgiveness, and imagine this as a completely different ending? We don’t undo the death of the ghost, we don’t undo the struggle of grief. We just let it go… and it fades out to the universe in a wonderful exhale of color.

But then, this just happened. I remembered the addition of a letter at the end of the book. And of course there’s James doing his thing that he does at the end. So… I have these add ons from sometime in the last two years. They are slightly hopeful. I actually generated this “new” scene in my writing group. I notice that they already contain some light. Not saturated, but dusted. And dusted enough that their existence undermines the entire other premise of the book and the book for which it is named and the book I tried so desperately to hatch: saddest book ever. Lol, it wasn’t that difficult, emotional, yes, but sadness runs in my blood.

Can The Disconsolate be a collision of two worlds?

And maybe that is why I want to have this light. Diving for the light becomes a theme here, the light has come to me before and I wove it in haphazardly to a place it didn’t belong. Perhaps, it belongs in its own story, entirely. Perhaps it’s time to move on and just let them go in peace… And through this post I discovered that is the issue. They are not at peace and it makes me uneasy. Unrestful… searching for light. Searching to have a lighter identity for my undefined G Center, which Aislin is a part of.

There will be criticism from another voice now:

Enter new voice into side aisle 2: “Brandy, writing a critique of your own book now, are we? Do you think people should read this before they even read the book? You can’t do it that way! But the bigger hole in your theory is that you’re limiting the people in the book to one existence rather than a possible third or fourth one.

Opposing argument: “When you thought of fan fiction, you were also excited of multiple experiences for these characters. Those beyond your wildest dreams… Why is that okay and why can’t you write your own fan fiction?

I totally have to now!

It reminds me of a Buffy episode (#117) Normal Again: the one where Buffy is undergoing in-patient care in a facility as a very real illusion caused by a poisonous needle. Both lives, the one with the Scooby gang and the illusion, were appealing and scary in different ways. This would change Aislin in the same way it changed Buffy.

But basically, none of these worlds are real, so I can write as many variations as I wish.

I have a lot of work ahead of me because, here is C and I am going to leave it as is, I wrote it during the first draft of this post and that was many sidetracks ago…

C). I have also been thinking about a horror version of this book, but I might have to see if some fan fiction developes first 😉 (how cool would that be? Oh also, wow. Fan fiction goes way beyond the horror genre! All those new adventures for James and Aislin? Oh boy!)

I can’t remember if I started thinking of parallel universes before or after the desire to add a more hopeful premise to this book was born. It’s definitely a chicken and egg scenario.