Darkness Within Darkness (a guest post)
In Today's Journal
* Quote of the Day
* Darkness Within Darkness
* The Writing
* The Numbers
Quote of the Day
"Your utter and complete faith in writing into the dark and your daily blogging about it have helped me find my own way into it and have made fiction writing fun for me again." Anitha Krishnan
Darkness Within Darkness
a guest post by Anitha Krishnan (thedreampedlar.com)
I first came across the Tao Te Ching, an ancient Chinese classic text, half a decade ago, when the world was in the chokehold of a pandemic.
At the time, my rational brain was looking for a way to make sense of the uncertainty that had suddenly befallen us.
It took me a while to understand that uncertainty had always been a way of life. I had been too caught up in the false assurances of daily routines, laws of the land, and well-crafted plans for the future to even acknowledge this simple truth.
Then daily routines were upended, laws were changed, and a bright future ceased to exist except as a forgotten memory. The only thing that remained was a vast, unfathomable unknown.
Coming across the Tao Te Ching, the popular English translation by Stephen Mitchell, in those times was a fortunate stroke of serendipity.
I didn’t even have to read the entire text, which comprises 81 sections in all, to grasp the heart of the matter. The first verse said it all:
The tao that can be told
is not the eternal Tao.
The name that can be named
is not the eternal Name.
Several interpretations of these lines abound. I’m no expert on philosophy, let alone the Tao Te Ching, but I certainly know my own mind, thoughts and spirit better than anyone else does.
I interpret these lines to mean that the instant we label something, we limit it by our definition, and by that very act we fail to explain its true essence. Which, ironically, is also something that cannot be fully explained in the first place.
So how does this pertain to writing, especially writing into the dark?
Writing into the dark is a journey into the unnamable. We cannot tell where a story will lead, or what a character will say or do next.
If we attempt to identify, define and specify any of these aspects of storytelling beforehand, we move away from the story that had been waiting, all agog, to reveal itself to us in its entirety.
The instant we try to shoehorn a story into a predetermined outline, it is not the same story anymore. The moment we try to cast a character within the boundaries of a particular trope or archetype, the character’s real essence, or at least some of it, the unnamable, indescribable kernel of it, is lost.
Sure, there will still be a story and a character at the end of it. It simply won’t be the story that had wished to be told or the character who had merely wanted to share with you what transpired and trust you with the innermost secrets of their heart.
The unnamable is the eternally real.
Naming is the origin
of all particular things.Free from desire, you realize the mystery.
Caught in desire, you see only the manifestations.
In order to tell an existing story with its existing characters who keep recounting their adventures in our ears in loud, animated whispers, we have to tell it as it is.
The instant we start naming a story as falling within the confines of a 3-act structure or defining it as neatly fitting into a 15-beat blueprint, in the hope of slotting this mysterious, amorphous, indefinable thing we call story within the confines of a more solid formula, something with which we can finally grasp this thing that defies all logical explanation, we fail to see it in its entirety.
We only witness the shadow of a spirit, not the sparkling, shimmering force of life itself.
We only see the afterglow, having missed the journey of the glorious sun beyond the edges, both of this physical world and our limited worldview.
We can only behold the mystery when we’re not trying to solve it. Once a solution is found, the mystery ceases to exist.
If we can let go of our attempts to define and label, to rationalize and explain, to control and predict, the Universe reveals her secrets to us generously.
Enlightenment comes of its own accord when we’re not actively seeking it.
Our unconditional acceptance and understanding of the story that already exists then allows its beauty to unfold in ways we wouldn’t have known were even possible.
Yet mystery and manifestations
arise from the same source.
This source is called darkness.Darkness within darkness.
The gateway to all understanding.
How does one define life?
Is it breath? Is it heartbeat? Is it consciousness?
While all these are manifestations of life, none of them, either by themselves or collectively, come close to explaining what life actually is. We have to live it to know it.
Plotters, pantsers, plantsers … whatever disguises we seek to cloak ourselves in, or whether we’ve long shed these limiting labels, we all write because of our love for writing and telling stories.
Our willingness to trust what emerges and replay it word for word, as well as our fear-driven urges to confine and shape and determine what we can allow to exist in the form of the written word, both come from a desire to touch the wellspring of creative expression.
We then have to ask ourselves a few questions.
Do we really wish to discover what lies deep within that source? Are we brave enough? Are we humble enough to follow where it leads us? What will the darkness reveal?
Or do we only wish to see what we’ve always seen? Through the lenses of worldview that we’ve always worn? Will we permit ourselves to seek only the comfort of that which feels familiar and certain?
Only one path leads to the truth. The gateway to all understanding. The other is merely an illusion.
Thanks, Anitha.
The Writing
A rare day here at the Hovel. I added 496 words to BO-43 after I got it back from my first reader, but I didn't write on the current novel at all.
The Numbers
The Journal…………………………… 1050
Writing of Blackwell Ops 44: Sam Granger | Following the Ghost Trail
Day 1…… 3613 words. To date…… 3613
Day 2…… 2893 words. To date…… 6506
Fiction for May………………………... 30991
Fiction for 2025………………………. 409404
Nonfiction for May………………........ 7790
Nonfiction for 2025…………………… 108880
2025 consumable words…………….. 511774
Average Fiction WPD (May)……...... 3443
2025 Novels to Date…………………….. 10
2025 Novellas to Date…………………… 0
2025 Short Stories to Date……………… 26
Novels (since Oct 19, 2014)…………..... 114
Novellas (since Nov 1, 2015)…………… 10
Short stories (since Apr 15, 2014)……… 296
Short story collections……………………. 29
Whatever you believe, unreasoning fear and the myths that outlining, revising, and rewriting will make your work better are lies. They will always slow your progress as a writer or stop you cold. I will never teach the myths on this blog.
Writing fiction should never be something that stresses you out. It should be fun. On this blog I teach Writing Into the Dark and adherence to Heinlein’s Rules. Because of WITD and because I endeavor to follow those Rules I am a prolific professional fiction writer. You can be too.
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Questions are always welcome at harveystanbrough@gmail.com. But please limit yourself to the topics of writing and publishing.
this was an awesome post.
Harvey, thank you so much for giving me this space for my piece. Thank you for being a true mentor from afar! 🙏🏽