This is the second time I've taken two weeks for a rune, falling out of my schedule. Well, who can say how these things are going to go. And if I'm going to get hung up on a rune, the torch of creativity isn't a bad one to spend extra time with.
Creative Impulse
Creativity is a huge issue for me. I question whether my ideas are interesting enough or whether they have any weight. I read these long "short" stories in the New Yorker that go on and on, and they feel very deep, but they don't have any real endings, so I assume I've missed something important. I assume I'm just not intelligent enough to appreciate the current narrative state, that the art form has evolved beyond my grasp and I should stick to Jack Reacher novels. Not that those are dumb, far from it, but they're more easily digestible.
And I struggle with motivation, like, what's the point of writing fetish fiction when maybe three or four people will read it and fewer will have anything to say about it. It's certainly not marketable, far from it: Amazon shadow-banned me and Barnes & Noble deleted my account. I question why I have this creative impulse when I'm just basically writing for myself, like Henry Darger but without the wild outsider-art cachet or the relentless motivation to keep creating, unmindful and regardless of any potential audience. Likewise, I've studied the concepts of the muse, the daemon, and the genius, trying to figure out where they come from and how they might be summoned, I guess so that I could begin writing despite myself. I don't know what else I'd be, if not a writer, and yet I'm dead-set on plying my skills and hours into a narrow and thankless channel. I can't take two steps without questioning what I'm doing and why I'm doing it.
That's why it's funny I took extra time with Kenaz. Two weeks with Raidho as I struggled along my journey, two weeks with Kenaz as I found a burst of energy and wrote a new chapter to a new series, every night for over a week. I had my muse: a young giantess who likes my work, raised herself on my bibliography, and I wanted to create something new that would be suited to her tastes. So many authors instruct the writer to pick one person and focus on them for your work: one person who loves what you do, one person you'll try to make laugh, hold enraptured, and provoke to tears. Don't try to please everyone, because you won't please anyone, and then you really will burn yourself out with directionless and ingratitude. In these two weeks with Kenaz I was creative like I haven't been in a long time, and I completed the eight-story series to my satisfaction. I think I petered out toward the end, like the last flames guttering out on a torch, but I followed that path to its end.
Can creativity be flipped on like a switch? I don't know. I shared my inner light with one giantess who I knew—or I hoped, anyway— would appreciate this work, and she did. She let me know it hit her buttons, it was right for her, and it lit her up like a Xmas tree. Will this provoke more creativity? Can I go through the roster of giantesses I know and write for each of them? Should I take a break? Will I ever just write for me, fully secure in this, without the urge to share it with the world? who's not paying attention anyway? And all this, in an increasingly hostile and conservative environment of censorship and oppression. I mean, given that, one has to create and express oneself simply as an act of rebellion.
Consuming Passion
What does it mean to give too much, though? Kenaz is both your inner fire and the infectious ulcer burning within. You can let that fire catch your clothes and consume you in a conflagration. You can let the ulcer run unchecked, feeding on your skin and laying waste to your corpore, leaving nothing good behind.
The most I ever wrote was for a commission. I was contacted by someone who liked my work and liked my style, and paid me most generously to create a series to his specific tastes, adjacent to mine at best. Some days I was manic and could plunge into it, and I had a lot of fun remaining true to the request while stamping my fingerprints (humor, social commentary, trivia) all over it. Other days … it was kind of a stretch. I couldn't get into it, some things bothered me, or I was just tired of going on for too long about something that sat just outside my realm of interest. I could put in the word count, and it wasn't just fluff, but sometimes it was a real marathon where I pushed and pushed myself to hit the goal, and it cost me too much.
Kenaz is the small sample of a much larger flame. It's the controlled source of light and heat we use for our purposes, but it represents a sweeping, all-consuming destructive force. You can destroy yourself, as a creator, with this little flame, either succumbing to your passion and letting it consume your mentality, your social spheres, your professional bearing, etc., or letting it burn for too long without any fuel or oxygen, until it finally gutters out and leaves you ashen and cold.
This writing stint was nothing like that. I felt the flame dancing in my chest, and I liked to see its vitality and clarity. It pleased me to focus my light upon someone else and follow this path, excitedly hurring along not just to get somewhere but to fully explore and experience the entire journey. Kenaz calls you to question how you're feeding your own flame and with whom you share it. You can't share it with everyone, it's not that bright or far-reaching, but you can bring someone else into its tender glow and then it's more than enough for the both of you. For me, at the end of this, I have to meditate upon how my flame needs to be fed, what's going to keep it burning steadily, at least when I need it.