Mythurgy

"This is magnificent - and it is true! It never happened; yet it is still true. What magic art is this?"

Elizabeth Allegheny

The Author

The Story

One day, the Author woke up and said to herself “This story I'm in, how do I write it?”

Inspiration

“Obviously first I’ll need inspiration. That’s really the starting point. To write a story without being inspired is like living a life without being born.”

She paced up and down. “But that must have already happened, because the story has already begun. Did I do it at the start, and not notice? Of course I couldn’t notice, because it hadn’t started yet. But how did I do it before it had started? When was the start? Was it when I spoke to myself? Was it before then? That wasn’t the start of this monologue, this came after the pacing. And it wasn’t the start of the pacing either. Or this sentence. There’s always a start if you look for it, and inspiration is always there, beginning everything, all the time.”

So the Author went looking for inspiration, and found it everywhere she went. Inspiration made objects, it sustained people, it flowed out of icons into the Author’s hands so she could shape it into her story. Her unique story, which nobody else could write.

Idea

And all this left her to wonder, “Why can I do this?”

“Because you have me,” said her Muse.

“That’s all very well to say,” said the Author. “But how can you do it?”

“I can’t do it either. I’m just an idea, an idea that’s been had before, and an idea that’ll be had again. But an author with an idea, that’s where the magic happens,” mused the Muse.

“Don’t beat yourself up. Just because you’re an idea, doesn’t mean you’re not real.” The author smiled. “Ideas can do anything. They’re figments of the imagination, can do anything it can imagine. A good author can find them anywhere, bring them to life and make them hers. And if this story is going to go somewhere, I’ll need some.” So she grasped her Muse and her inspiration and stepped into the imagination.

Ideas swirled around her. Some were bad ideas, and she got rid of them, but others were vibrant and interesting. She gathered those, fed them inspiration and prepared to take them back to help her write her story.

“But wait,” the figments said. “We're from other stories, not yours. We can’t be in two at once.”

The Author smiled. “Of course you can. There’s any number of stories an idea can be in, and and number of ideas a story can have. There’s no end to imagination, so all of them are found here somewhere. You just need to find them, and give them a path into your work.”

Plot

“This is an awful lot of ideas you have,” said the Muse. “At this rate your story will be very confused.”

“You’re right,” said the Author, and she sorted through what she had gathered, picking out the important things and seeing which plot they lent themselves to. Then she made sure to pick the best ones when she needed them, out of all the ones that might have fit, to keep the story in the shape she needed it.

"The important thing to remember," she said, "is that anything could happen in a story, but you should make sure the right thing will."

Message

The Author looked upon her works and smiled. She had inspiration and had made ideas, she had composed a plot with characters, actions and props, set in a setting and forming an arc. Nevertheless, one question remained.

"Is this real?" For the first time she felt trepidation. "I've made it, but is it real?"

"I don't know," said the Muse. "Why don't you find out?" And she pushed the Author forward into her story, where she cried at each tragedy and cheered at each victory, feeling the experience inside her own heart.

"It is real," she gasped. "It's real to me."

"And nobody can take that away," the Muse smiled. "You can feel the hearts of your creations and express your own on the page. That is what makes you an author."

The Writing

Her World

Fully prepared, the Author stepped from her allegory and into the unwritten. She floated in darkness, without a world or a body or a mind, or space or time or anything at all, and yet she knew that surrounding and encompassing her were the infinite possibilities of Imagination. It only needed to be illuminated. She reached into her heart and held aloft a light of inspiration, and the infinite possibilities were revealed as real. They danced in excitement at this discovery, and formed space and time, and clothed her in a mind and a body and a world once more.

The Author stood among all the things she had ever dreamed of. They moved with her thoughts, and leapt at every whim and wish, and the Author was overjoyed to have such a perfect place to write in. So intoxicated she spent an era there, amid succulent fruits and sycophantic servants, and she wrote and wrote and wrote until every corner and cranny was part of some grand epic. And yet, she was dissatisfied. She willed wonder into being, and surprise and fascination, but they vanished into smoke even as she reached for them. In despair, she wrote a Sage, and put her lament to him.

"Why can't I have wonder, and surprise and fascination," she lamented. "Without them, all my stories are incomplete."

"Because you yourself destroy them," was the Sage's answer. "They are founded on ignorance and weakness, but you create all and know all."

This struck the Author, who spent a long time thinking. Then she stood up, wrote an exit, and stepped once more between the worlds.

Other Worlds

She fell through a silver sky filled with golden clouds. Wind whipped past her and she laughed at the sight before her. There was a vast expanse below the sky, filled with all the things she had dreamed and an infinity of things she hadn't. A myriad tales played out within her vision, intertwined and changing, each promising a different adventure.

A forest cloaking mystery and excitement appeared, and she drifted towards it. Cloying mist filled her lungs, then tangled branches loomed to arrest her fall and send her rolling across damp grass to stop before a pair of booted feet. She looked up, and a handsome squire looked down, and smiled.

"I'm lost in the forest, milady. But don't worry, I'll see us both out." He lifted her to her feet and they walked off down a path, trees passing by on each side. All was quiet for a time, until