The power of ritual

What you do and how you do it feeds what you write and how you write it.

THE INSPIRATION: The truth in the lie

“A ritual is the enactment of a myth. And, by participating in the ritual, you are participating in the myth. And since myth is a projection of the depth wisdom of the psyche, by participating in a ritual, participating in the myth, you are being, as it were, put in accord with that wisdom, which is the wisdom that is inherent within you anyhow. Your consciousness is being re-minded of the wisdom of your own life.”

― Joseph Campbell, The Power of Myth

Your consciousness is being re-minded of the wisdom of your own life.

I’m not sure if that’s a typo where I found this quote transcribed (where it was attributed to Joseph Campbell from episode 3 of Bill Moyers’ The Power of Myth series) but I like it. Re-minded, with a dash, gives the sense that our mind doesn’t just remember under the influence of ritual, it actually gets refreshed. A spiritual clearing of the cache so that you can connect with the very real things we can neither see nor prove, but which we know are there, because we just know.

Re-minding. That’s what ritual does. We stop our increasingly automated and unconscious lives and do something specific with intent, utilizing a particular method, and that ritual connects us to some kind of unseen power. It re-minds us; gives our minds a new way to work.

I’m a person who believes in evidence, and when it comes to ritual, I have to say… I believe the evidence is in.

THE FAT ORANGE CAT: An extra sense

We work in this reality with three basic dimensions. Five basic senses. But what if there are more? Imagine a world in which no one has a sense of smell… but you do. How would you get anyone to believe that your sense is real? How would you explain what smell is?

Imagine now that there is a sense, like smell, that your character could have, but not be able to explain? And yet, it was as reliable as smell, and it led to reliable knowledge, the way smell can tell us that clothes are moldy or that a flower is in bloom.

What’s your character’s extra sense? And how do they use it?

The “Get Your Stuff” link will bring you to an item I selected specifically to accompany this post, but you do not have to buy that thing in order to support me. Just keep popping through Amazon and buy the stuff you were going to buy anyway.

THE TROPE: Invisibility

Whether it’s treated as a power or a curse, becoming invisible at will or by accident is a trope well we go to in our stories. From the Buffy episodes “Gone” and “Out of Mind, Out of Sight” to “The Ghost and Mrs. Muir” the experience of being both seen and unseen is something we return to in our stories, over and over again. Recently in popular discourse, when someone talks about something specific to one’s experience, that person can talk about “feeling seen.” Parts of ourselves and our identities always remain cloaked from others, whether we deliberately hold back, or others are just so wrapped up in their own lived experience that they can’t comprehend what it’s like to be anything other than what they are. Being “otherized” is tantamount to being unseen, unacknowledged, disrespected, dismissed.

Visibility is a powerful trope because despite the fact that we think seeing is believing, most of the time what we see is only a fraction of the whole story. Sight is about so much more than what our physical eyes can perceive, and playing with invisibility tropes allows us to talk about in metaphor what we often don’t think about in our daily lives; that just because we don’t see something doesn’t mean it isn’t real and present anyway.

THE QUESTION: Fan Fiction

“I would love to have your opinions on fan fictions... Fan Fics, yay, nay, if yay which are your fav??”

—Stéphanie

Dear Stéphanie,

I’m not sure if you’re here on Dear Writer, but I’m borrowing this from where you asked on Patreon, where I’m answering patrons’ questions with quick, off-the-cuff videos. I’m bringing my answer here (and will also have a video of this answer forthcoming to post on Patreon) because it’s SUCH a great question. So spoiler for the coming video… I actually feel very strongly about fan fiction.

I think it’s great.

Fan fiction is treated like it’s some kind of lesser version of “regular” or “original” fiction when the reality is that the most celebrated writer in the Western Canon (yes, the W.C. deserves a severe side eye, but we are where we are) wrote almost entirely nothing but fanfic.

Yes. I’m talking about Shakespeare.

Back In The Day, all writers took the old stories and re-told them because that was how those stories traveled; everyone was constantly re-creating the stories they had been told and reinventing them and re-imagining them. I just did this the other day in a Twitter thread about the Star Trek: TNG episode “Sub Rosa,” where I revised the whole episode to make it… you know… good.

Now, the argument against fan fiction is that it steals intellectual property, and I get the argument. If an author creates a world and the characters in it, I can see that author feeling a bit miffed that someone else is playing in their sandbox. I can see it being especially galling if someone else is making money from that fan fiction (although my understanding is that monetizing fan fiction is generally not done for this reason.)

So… those arguments honored and acknowledged, fan fiction is where we all start. Every writer starts out as a mimic, taking some piece of work they loved and creating new stories in that world because they love it so much. Fan fiction is how new writers honor the ones who came before them, and how established writers know that their work has had an impact and created meaning for newer writers.

Fan fiction feels to me like a ritual among writers, a rite of passage, a sacred apprenticeship. I think stories are sacred and while yes, I get it, we live in a capitalist society and your intellectual property is yours… there’s a space where within bounds, fan fiction is a beautiful, powerful thing, and an honor to the original writer.

That said, although some of the first writing I ever did was X-Files fanfic, I don’t really read it anymore, so I can’t recommend faves… except for the Buffy fanfic “Here is Gone” by Terri Botta, which I only know because Ian read it at the end of his podcast episodes. Here’s his performance of the first 27 chapters.

Bottom line; fanfic is a time-honored writing tradition and I’m all for it. No one should feel squeamish for reading it. Anyone who tries to make money off it should stop. And if you feel squeamish about it as a fanfic writer, just file off the serial numbers and make the story your own, which is also a time-honored tradition.

THE PRACTICAL: Mythology

I’ve been listening to Stephen Fry’s “Mythos” lately and really loving it. Mythology has been passed down through the ages and is the absolute definition of the first fanfic. These stories were told and retold and retold and within them are hidden the very essence of what it is to be human.

I talked about charging sigils in last week’s newsletter, and our stories get similarly charged as we retell them. It’s like the people who told these stories at the dawn of time left pieces of themselves in them, and as we access those stories, we access ourselves, the things that make us truly human.

While I’m enjoying the Greek myths, and finding interesting etymological gems along the way, I’ve also just bought audiobooks about Norse, African, Asian and Native American Myths. I want to hear all the stories and allow my mind to be globalized in a way that I have been, raised in Western culture, actively discouraged from doing. My perspective on stories and storytelling is born and bred of Western thinking, and the idea of broadening my How Story Works theory to understand and honor storytelling from other cultures is kind of exciting.

There is always more to learn… :)