93: Everything & More
9/7/2015
I just got done with Chapter 13: The Search for Bakar. This one was not only the longest chapter in Part One (13 pages), but it took me three days of trial-and-error trying to get a hook on it. Took me a whole day to figure out that this would be a search for Bakar after he’d been beaten by his father.
Originally, I thought it would be four pages or so of Tamal getting to know his adoptive parents – maybe with him spying on a shamanistic ritual to determine the nature of the four-tailed comet, which would be a mirror of sorts to Siona’s tambiko-hori ritual later. But I had no teeth in that idea. Nothing I wanted to do would work within the framework of the surrounding chapters.
Then when I hit upon a search for Bakar, and how I could use that to unify The Children of Batu (except for Diallo), I knew I had to use that idea. And I’m going to write the follow-up for that (Chapter 18: Friends) tomorrow.
But even after I got the search for Bakar idea, it took me two more days to get a handle on it. I even wrote 2 ½ pages that I ended up throwing away as useless and starting over – the first time that’s ever happened to me. Usually, I don’t start until I get my hook, my milieu, the POV, and I’m excited and certain about where it’s going. So, even with crappy first attempts, I’m still able to mold and reshape things until I get them right. Not this time. It was all crap beyond redemption through rewrites.
That took the juice right out of my mojo.
So, I jumped ahead out of desperation and rewrote all of Siona’s tambiko-hori scenes. But when I came back to The Search for Bakar, it still wasn’t clicking for me. I don’t ever remember having so much trouble figuring out an interesting angle to enter into a chapter before. I blamed it on the fact that I was too limited from having to squeeze it into a pre-existing framework, severely inhibiting my creative options. Which was true.
But as soon as I dropped Tamal as the POV and gave it to Joyul, everything fell into place. I wanted to give it to Tamal because he only had one brief POV in Chapter 7: The Boy in the Tree. He was in serious need of fleshing out, so I was determined to give the POV to him. But when I looked at Chapter 8: Guardian of the Gate and saw how well Bakar came alive even when it was Dougga’s POV, I realized I might be able to do Tamal better from the outside than the inside.
The Search for Bakar was a tough chapter for Tamal, what with his mother just dying and this sixth sense thing now kicking in. It’s too much drama and morose moodiness inside his head, making me want to slit my own wrists. But do you know whose head is never depressing? Joyul’s. Not because she’s a Pollyanna or because she’s Joyful, but because she’s tough and funny. And when mixed with Dougga for contrast, she shines.
So, Joyul was the only thing that made this chapter possible for me.
I’m not sure why it turned out so long though, maybe because of the logistics of transitioning them through five different backdrops: the village skywalks, Bakar’s hutment, the hub, the stairway tree, and the storage huts at the base of the tree. I didn’t want to just breeze through all those backdrops without creating a sense of place. Plus, there was a lot of dialogue (thank god), which eats up the pages. But I still had no idea it would be that long.
Once I got my hook of Joyul as the POV (and thought it would only be seven pages or so), with every segment of the chapter I finished I kept thinking it would only be a couple more pages before it would be done. At seven pages there were only going to be a couple pages left to do. Same thing at nine and ten pages. It wasn’t until page eleven that I was right about there only being two pages left.
It wore me out, even though the body of it wasn’t that hard to write. It was only hard to get started… and then to stop. I’ve had much harder chapters that fought me from beginning to end, but none were as hard to get a grip on as this one. It was driving me bonkers. Hours of pacing and writing notes and chapter outlines. Nothing was helping.
But it’s done now, and having just reread it in its final first-draft form, I’m proud and pleased with it. It did everything I wanted, and more. That’s all I need from my children to satisfy me as a parent. Everything I want, plus more.
Present-Day Reflection
8/26/2026
This may be the secret of how I’m able to keep going with this work of writing the Batu Saga, no matter how hard it gets or what sacrifices it might require. It’s the only thing in my life that keeps giving back more than I ask from it. The world I began to build back in 2009 has taken on a life of its own, growing into something much larger than myself – surpassing all expectations.
It also serves as an anchor, keeping me tethered to my values regardless of the shifting weather; providing me a sense of purpose and meaning – a reason to get out of bed in the morning. What began as a creative path has become a calling that never ceases to enrich and surprise me. It gives me everything I really need to be happy, and more.
