A story floats on the edges of my subconscious and I listen. As a writer of historical fiction and a memoir, I’m experiencing a way of writing that is taking me down the creative path of the unknown.
When most vibrant and vulnerable, we live as a tuning fork, releasing the one conversation that never ends — the conversation of listening, expressing and creating.
— Mark Nepo
There was a moment not long ago when I began to listen to a woman named Emmaline, an imaginary being who entered my life asking me to tell her story.
At first, I believed she was a new character who’d arrived, and I, in turn, needed to create a story around her. Instead, as I sat with her, I felt she wanted me to create a space for her where I could listen. Rather than write a plot outline or a character sketch, as I have done before, I sat and I listened to my deeper self. Thus began the unfolding of “The Venturesome Life of Emmaline Cartwright.”
How did I move from noticing her presence and beginning to write her story?
I wrote with pen and paper, to see where she might take me. I created a conversation with Emmaline, and as I scribbled on the page, she began to unravel what I consider a remarkable story. What happened next, I could not have predicted — our conversation on the page gave a lead into the story, not directly, but with inklings and traces, like impressionistic colours on a canvas.
Emmaline told me about herself. When I asked direct questions, I learned that she’s a professor emeritus in Canadian history, has two grown daughters, and is on the verge of retiring.
However, the impressionistic traces are more about experiences she’s had and is having in a paranormal world, rather than what her life entails. (As the author, I’ll have the luxury of returning to who she is).
Emmaline has found a portal in time, a corridor that takes her back to meet a woman in 1784 – a woman who comes to me as though through a fog. I know who she is, but not her story as yet.
All I know thus far has come intuitively from a deeper place in me. The subconscious other-world place I hold.
There is a truth in what I describe, one lit by a trust in myself as a storyteller — just as trust grows in a relationship, so my bond with the creative spirit in me grows, as does the bond with Emmaline.
Emmaline entered my life. She kindled my curiosity and offered a connection to me where together we’ll tell her story. The story she has come to tell.
A Story or Poem may reveal truths to me as I write it.
I don’t put them there. I find them in the story as I work.
— Ursula K. Le Guin
Milree Latimer has a new novel coming out in the Spring of 2023.