GD Deckard has stopped by to give us this fantastic quick read, and I think it's a marvelous idea! I'm choosing an overall writing charm (pictured at the bottom of this post): a wonderful, handmade talisman a friend gave me. She said it's a good luck charm to keep in my pocket, and I think the mantra on the back will help me push myself to actually submit my stories to be published! So thanks, GD!
GD is also the Final Editor of A Celebration of Storytelling with a story of his own included in the anthology, coming December 1 from Dark Owl. Check out his Writers Co-op blog as well!
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Writing Charms
Using one thing to remind you of something else is symbolizing. We've been doing that since we sat in the Hohle Fels caverns in Germany 40,000 years ago, carving pornographic figures from mammoth ivory. I wore a 40,000-year-old fossilized walrus tooth, recently carved into a face, on a chain around my neck while writing about the first human children to use language. It helped me to feel something 40,000 years old. When my short story shifted to early Mesopotamia, I wore a golden bull's head pendant, copied from one found in the royal tombs at Ur, dating to around 2500 BC. It helped me to imagine what kind of people would make such a thing. That's what writing charms do. They help us to feel connected with the story and to imagine details.
Whenever you find yourself looking at what may be called charms, talismans, tokens, fetishes, figurines, or whatnots, think writing charms! A good one can be anything that relates to what you are writing. My Lady and I drove up to watch the last shuttle launch. She had us standing in line in the NASA gift shop so she could have a photo autographed by an astronaut. As the line wound past the obliging spaceman, I spied a dark blob the size of a smaller marble displayed on white cotton in a glass case. It looked precious, and at thirty-five dollars, I looked closer. It was a fragment of the Sikhote-Alin meteorite that landed in Russia in 1947. Subsequent research has show it to be from the Asteroid Belt, formed within the solar system, 4.5 billion years ago. Writing charm! I had it mounted for a neck chain. Imagining outer space becomes real when you wear something from there.
Other charms in the drawer include a 1940s Alice Caviness gold typewriter pendant for when I just need to be reminded to write, a nineteenth century Half-Eagle coin for thinking about life before electricity, and a new Charles Albert deaths-head pendant which does nothing for me now, but I saw it and had to have it. Maybe wearing it the next time I kill off a character will help me make the scene a bit more meaningful.
Writing charms are plentiful and inexpensive to acquire. They can appear in unexpected places and about in second-hand markets, including estate sales, antique shops, consignment shops, pawn shops, flea markets, and garage sales. As symbols, they don't have to be the real thing. They only have to focus your thoughts on your story. I could not afford an authentic prehistoric carving, but a fossilized walrus tooth carved by a Renaissance Faire artist served the same purpose. And--serendipity--question for a writing charm is a rewarding form of procrastination.
~ GD Deckard
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