My fiction writing has been slow the last few weeks. There's a plot decision that I need to make and I've been avoiding it. In part, I don't know exactly what to write. But I also enjoy the space of possibilities that an unfinished story occupies. The possibility space of imaginary worlds is a beautiful thing. I like the sense that anything could happen.
As I've sat with this sense, the inspiration for a whole new book has been slowly taking shape. The Brockton Exodus isn't published yet and its untitled sequel is only half finished, but I'm comfortable setting these projects aside to create space for something new, if that's where the energy is. And that's where the energy seems to be.
I didn't fully realize what was going on until this afternoon at the coffee shop, when I found myself first putting the idea into words while conversing with a fellow writer. I told my friend that I wanted to write the story of a peaceful American revolution, and as I said it, I realized that this was a story that I really did want to write.
True, my novel Psychic Avalanche considered a revolution driven by a drug that imbued users with psychic powers, but that book was much more technology-focused than what I have in mind for the new story. And it barely touched on a particular manner of magic that I'd like to spend a whole book exploring.
This is the magic of the collective unconscious; of instincts and synchronicities and otherworldly connections. In plot terms, the big idea is that more and more people begin tuning into this magic, which ultimately leads to the abandonment of our control regime and the creation of better systems. Actually writing this plot may prove beyond my capabilities, but I feel up to the challenge.
Part of that challenge may involve revising my stance on revolution in general. Having studied history, my current understanding is that revolutions are almost always terrible. Regime change typically means replacing one set of tyrants for another, in much the same way as voting typically means legitimizing one tyrant over others. So I'm against conventional revolution, but I won't know how I feel about consciousness-driven revolution until after writing it up.
One of the first questions I'll have to answer is when the story should take place. My initial thought is to start it nowish and have it span five years. If everybody woke up tomorrow and agreed to fix the world, I feel like five years is the shortest span of time that would be necessary to accomplish this. Maybe I'm overly optimistic.
Of course the very first questions I have to answer is who is involved and what they are like. The revolution I'm envisioning would have to be decentralized, so it would have no center, meaning that no character could possibly be in the center of the whole thing. But my main characters will have to be in the center of some great drama to keep the story interesting. Who are they?
Overall, I feel good about creating space for this new story. And I like the idea of escaping into a fantasy of a better world. Spending so much of my time on news about corruption and cover-ups can sometimes be heavy. Considering the prospect of positive total system change in some detail might be lighter.
(Feature image from Pixabay.)
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