All The Way Back To Here by Kira Kenley

Posted on September 13, 2013 by Kira Kenley

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32 Kira Kenley shares her creative dilemmas and decisions every Friday. You can read her earlier post here

The book, the book, the book. “It is finished; the story has been told.” I firmly believe this as I hand it over to my friend and fellow Go Creative! advocator, Orna Ross.

“Are you quite sure about that?” Orna enquires. And I was, up until that point. Orna wants me to go away and think about what I have written. Yes, I had found a character called Sid Harris, who probably is, in lots of ways, Kira Kenley had she been born male, and I had told his story with a little and a lot of my own buried in there. But now there is another level, another task to be completed.

This is the deepening process, and is as much a stage of writing a novel as is the first draft and final version; this stage is the stepping-stone from one to the other. I go away and begin to move from chapter to chapter observing what is happening and ‘going deep’. The exercise takes me all the way back to the point where the story began – the book is about love. It is everywhere. Love. Love. Love.

In my enquiry, I discover that the story has an added dimension and, although I had taken the book as far as I could in stage one, now as I deepen I see that there is even more. There is a part of the story that had up until now been missing. Now as I deepen it is revealed to me and phenomenally I see that this part was in there already, just waiting to be discovered and fully developed.

Michelangelo commented that his angel was hidden in the stone and I really feel a connection to his words as I carve out the remaining part of Sid’s story. The whole picture reveals itself to me and, once again, I am in awe of this process. This creative energy is truly a mystery. Magical!

I sit with my characters and they pull the story together. They come alive on the page as I breathe life into them. This is my first book, ‘All The Way Back To Here’ and I will publish it before the end of the year, which has been 2013. As I am in the thick of considering all the edit notes, a little story comes…

In this story, Sid speaks to me and explains how he saw me one night at a party and decided that I was the person who would write his memoirs. It is as if he is real and the story suggests that we had almost met some years ago. A notion dawns upon me. I have, on and off, spent the best part of 6 years, with Sid in my ‘writing’ life so yes he feels like someone I have known and met. And when I finish the story, although I will let him go, his memory will stay with me.

As I am approaching the end of my time with Sid, another book begins to dawn. I feel the story. I have the bones and the characters begin to dance around in my head, just as Sid had done in the early days. For now, I watch them and let them get stronger all the time knowing that when the time is right they will begin to come alive on the page. Whenever they are ready to tell their story.

That is the beauty of story telling. There are billions of ‘characters’ just waiting to tell their stories. All they need is someone who will take the time to listen, someone with a  yearning to get these stories down on paper. And, for whatever reason, I just happen to be one such someone!

To connect with Kira on facebook visit: www.facebook.com/KiraKenley     www.facebook.com/TheSoundOfKira