My Desert Spirit Guide Part Two

Another of those strange things I found on the desert

I followed the lightly worn trail that the animal had taken. As it was a single track trail I needed to turn more often in order to avoid the sage brush. The small scrub plant gave excellent concealment for all of the roaming desert animals. But I never lost sight of my guide.

He would trot ahead for some distance and then stop and turn back as if to make sure I was still following him.

After several hundred yards on the light trail he took a quick left under a large sage brush. I stopped the four-wheeler and scanned the area trying to see where he had gone.

A worry crept through my mind that I had lost him.

I drove slowly forward searching close than far out; letting my eyes do zigzag patterns across the desert. And just as fast as I had lost him I saw him again. He was much farther away, almost 100 yards. He was silhouetted on a nearby rise. He had to have moved with incredible speed to appear that far away so quickly.

My spirit guide waiting for me to follow

I drove the four-wheeler toward him and he stayed almost motionless.

I had no idea where I was going or why he was leading me but I knew that he was leading me. As I neared the crest of the rise where he stood he padded off again this time to the right.

He was climbing a hill that gently rose above the desert floor and formed a plateau. He had made it up easily but my going was slightly slower. I eased the four-wheeler forward, climbing over basketball sized rocks that jetted from the earth. I had to move slowly or risk puncturing a tire.

When I reached the top of the small plateau I was alone. I sat there, my music still playing in my ears, wondering why he had brought me here to this place at this time. I looked in every direction but there was no sign of my guide. There was however, a large pile of rocks.

As I have said before seeing a pile of rocks on this desert was nothing new, but I couldn’t help wonder why anyone would hike rocks up on top of a hill to pile them. And then a sudden thought occurred to me:

“What if there was something hidden under the rocks?”

I felt very strongly that this was why my guide had brought me here. I swung my left leg over the seat of the four-wheeler and stepped on the ground. I took three steps toward the pile of rocks and stopped. Two children and a tour in Iraq have made me a cautious man.

The summer sun was beating down and the pile of rocks could be the perfect shady place for a bull snake or even a rattle snake. Being bit by the former would hurt but give me a good story to share, but a bite from the latter would earn me a trip to the emergency room if I was lucky or earn me a spot as the main dish at a coyote family reunion if I wasn’t.

I pulled the headphones from my ears and turned off the four-wheeler so I would hear any movement or rattles. On the front of the four-wheeler was a metal basket that carried a fire extinguisher, emergency eye wash, and a machete for cutting the heads off of weeds. I picked up the machete, if it worked on the head of weeds it might work of the head of a snake.

I approached the rock pile slowly. The rocks were stacked over three feet high, which ruled out any natural occurrence unless it was the scat of some yet undiscovered rock monster.

I reached carefully with my left hand and picked up the first rock while my right hand was ready to strike with the machete at any slithering creature that might be hiding under it. There was nothing under it but more rock.

Even with the porous nature of the rock it was lighter than I had expected. I tossed it to the side and picked up another in the same manner. It didn’t take long to clear the pile down toward the plateau’s floor.

I noticed something peculiar. There was a relatively flat rock resting on the top of several rocks that were sunk into the ground. I looked to the left and the right and it appeared that the rocks were butted up against each other like a box built out of rocks.

I took a moment as my mind ran through the possibilities of what could be inside.

“Treasure?”

“Artifacts?”

“Forgotten truths and mystic ways written for me to find?”

I reached my left hand out and grasped the rock. I could feel the porous holes on my fingers as I lifted it up to reveal what had been hidden.

I could hardly believe my eyes. My guide, my spirit guide, had led me to this. Not treasure or artifacts or even forgotten wisdom rested in the rock strong box. No he had led me here to find a great pile of mouse doo doo.

“Just kidding Harry you’re not really a wizard.”

“Sorry Luke you but screw your feelings and use that computer.”

“Actually, Bilbo I think you should sit this one out.”

To be fair there might have been ancient records there at one time, as I could see the mice had made a nice nest out of bits of paper.

I gained a lot this summer on the desert: new experiences, a love of mixing and eating peanut butter with Nutella straight from the jar, but mostly that moment like these are in place to remind me that deep down the universe thinks I’m an idiot.

Delicious

The Twist I Didn't See

This has been such a fantastic week for me. I got the website out there with some wonderful response to the video, I passed the 50,000 word mark in my book, and I surprised myself by writing two chapters I had no plans of putting into the book.

I've read that there are two types of authors, the first likes to let the book unfold as they write. This type of author does not want to be confined to outlines and wants to just dive in and allow the current of the story to push them out to the finish. The second type of author spends time planning out the details of the story, what will happen and when it will happen. There are no surprises for this author, they know where it is they are going and have a clear road map on how to get there.

I have always believed that I fall squarely in the ranks of the second type of authors. With my short stories I know all the details before I begin, and certainly the screenplays I have written are clearly planned out down to the angle of the camera in each shot.

So you can imagine my surprise, even utter shock to discover that I had not properly planned out every part of my book. I have been laboring to finish this chapter that would place my antagonist firmly on the path of hunting down my protagonist and I couldn't do it. It was like pulling teeth. I was slogging through this chapter having to pull each word from the grimy depths. In short it wasn't working at all. And so I sat thinking about the characters, the nature of their backgrounds and the impossibility of the chapter I was writing. I could not suspend my own belief in the situation that I had planned that would allow these events to conspire. To make it work I had to do something different.  I suppose that the article I was reading may have neglected to mention that in fact a third type of author exists, a hybrid between the two. So instead of writing up new scene cards and redrafting a new outline I just began to write.

I took my two FBI agents, Steven Howards and Doug Martin and dropped them into the building of the character that was the weak link in connecting them to their prey and let them run wild. They unfortunately didn't have much luck breaking Joe Suthers (the security contractor who's business deals in intelligence and the occasional assassination) so they took another approach which lead them out into the slums of Los Angeles. Here Howards introduced Doug to a real scum bag that had the ability to give them the key to get the dirt on Joe Suthers and lead them on to their target.

These chapters simply fell from my pen. The flow was fantastic the character development was amazing. I was discovering possibilities that I had never imagined and it felt fantastic.

This trip into the unknown was very rewarding but it doesn't mean that I threw out my outline. In fact I've gone back to it included these two new chapters and made some adjustments to some future chapters as well. I think if you've always only written using one of these methods you ought to try out the other; you may find like I did that it can be a real treat.
In the end what matters most is that you are writing, sharing your ideas, creating on paper what has always been trapped in your mind.



So here are two exercises to try out:

• If you are a classic planning style author ask what if? Take your characters and place them in a one line what if scenario and just write. No other planning allowed.
• If you are a classic free writing author sit down and write an outline. If you can't write it out chapter by chapter at least write down a synopsis of all the major events that happen from the beginning to the end.

Drop me an email or post a response here sharing how it went for you.

This next week I'll be pushing my characters onto the same road where they'll be running and dodging each other while trying to find out the answers to the secrets. I'll also be posting a new video and sharing what's going on Write Now with me. So I hope to see you back here soon!