25: Succumbing to Fantasy
12/12/2011
My hiatus from writing has extended overlong. At first, I struggled with how to open the first scene of Chapter Five: The Kulu. Knowing full well the action to be enacted int this first scene, I was nonetheless at a loss for a hook upon which I might enter into it in an interesting way.
That took me up to around 12/6 and came up with a two-page dialogue between Diallo and Bakar on the side of Overlook Hill, which was satisfactory. But that is how it has remained for five days or so.
It seems clear that this is not writer’s block but sheer laziness. In the interim, however, I have come to a somewhat important decision to extend the fantasy elements of the story a step further by creating a spiral staircase of path, carved within the trunk of the jola tree that leads from the forest floor to the village proper.
Although there are trees in the African rainforest as wide as a house that could server for such a structure, the time and effort to carve a spiral staircase in it with stone-age tools renders the idea highly fantastical. The labor involved seems to far surpass its practicality. Not to mention that it would no doubt kill the tree, probably causing it to rot from the inside-out until within a generation or two it would collapse under its own weight. Though I’m just guessing. I haven’t been able to research it. But whether it is possible or not it will remain an idea that taxes credulity, pushing it into fantasy.
I’m doing it anyway. I love the imagery it invokes, and it solves all the logistical problems of coming and going from the village proper. I began leaving reality when I put them in the canopy in the first place, but with this I am making a radical decision declaring that imagination and romantic imagery will supersede any desire to remain faithful to what is likely, or even possible. I’ve succumbed to fantasy.
The idea came to me when I saw in a magazine how a man built a treehouse with a circular staircase of iron wrapping up around a tree only a foot in diameter. That image percolated for a week until last night it boiled over into a necessity.
At any rate, my vacation from writing has at least bore this element that I really love. And now I’m determined to finish the first scene of “The Kulu” today, which was already well begun last week.
Present-Day Reflection
6/19/2026
I had forgotten how far along I’d gotten in my narrative when I finally crossed the line into fantasy by forsaking anthropological accuracy. Indeed, The Kulu chapter is the beginning of what is now the second book. This single creative decision has probably had more influence over the tone and character of the entire saga than any other decision I’ll ever make.
I didn’t make it lightly. Even back in 2011, I knew very well how big a step it would be. Just as I knew how important it was for me to make it. It wasn’t merely another feature of my story’s milieu, it was a profound declaration that I was writing this for me, and let the critics be damned. Whatever self-inhibiting golems I had on my shoulder judging every decision I made – all the experts on the traditional lifestyles of ancient African cultures, or even the artists and writers of fiction I most admire – I was telling them all that I was writing this for me, not for them. This was what I wanted to write and read, whether anyone else would or not.
It was always about me and what I wanted, not about what the rest of the world might have wanted. So, it was important for me to make a bold symbolic gesture in order to get out from under whatever influence my internal critics might have been imposing on me. For the most part.
