Creative people always start with an idea/concept. Whether it comes to fruition or not is never known at the onset. It’s always a leap of faith to move forward with it. We hope. We conceptualize. We gather. We amass. We execute. But until we’re finished, we never know if it’s something we will finish.
Or, at least this is my own personal experience. I have many failed manuscripts to offer as exhibits to this theory, too. Believe you, me. We don’t always make it. We don’t always cross the finish line. Concepts are flawless, kind of like Michelangelo’s David. But sometimes the end result is more in line with stick figures. I wonder how happy Michelangelo was with his end result. If he’s anything like other creatives, he was probably pretty hard on himself.
What we see in our heads when we’re starting out is often quite beautiful. What we manage to get down on paper, or carved in stone, or on the canvas, or on the film, or down in notes…is often far removed from the crystallized idea. Sometimes we shoot for David, and the final result is closer to the stick figure.
When we do mark a project complete, we’re almost never close to what we imagined we would have at the end. In the world outside the creative brain there is not as much to work with as we have on the inside. It’s hard to make that transfer from imagined to real. Ideas are like new cars, as soon as they leave the lot they’ve already depreciated. The creative idea hits the air and it’s immediately weakened. The creative person’s job is to get as close to their original idea as possible whenever they set out to recreate it for others.
Easier said than done.
But sometimes the things we create come so close to what we imagined they would be. It’s like we can almost feel the way they should be when we look at them and we allow ourselves to be happy with the way they are. We can almost taste it, we came so close.
All this to say that I had the kernel of an idea six years ago as I walked the Camino de Santiago pilgrimage route in Spain. The further I walked, the more that kernel began to explode, to expand. Characters came into my thoughts, fought to be heard. I walked across a country, so I gave them space in my head…I allowed them to ruminate. I recognized what was happening as the creative process that ignites whenever I have a new story idea, so I walked. I put one foot in front of the other.
I didn’t take notes. I simply allowed the shadows of characters to take hold of my imagination. I listened. I allowed.
Today, I sent in the first round of edits on the story in question. It will become the novel, THE CAMINO CLUB, in about 132 days. I’m feeling a bit like maybe I captured most of what I set out to do. If the David is the idea I was shooting for, I mean…maybe I delivered something close to David. It’s a little blurry. It’s not perfectly defined. But, I mean…it looks comparable to David. It’s not a stick figure. One would look at it and think, “Oh! Michelangelo’s David!” I’m certain of it.
I’ve never been more proud of something I’ve created. It’s the closest one of my concepts have come to what I wanted the final result to be, let’s just put it that way. I have an extremely hard time being supportive of my own creative endeavors. I still feel like I’m unworthy of aspiring to creative endeavors, if truth be told. But I tried to silence the voices in my head, really I did. When I finally gave up and allowed creativity to flow, it felt good.
Now, I can almost say I’m proud of something I’ve created. This novel? THE CAMINO CLUB? It might actually be my David. That’s not to say it’s stunningly beautiful. That’s not for me to judge. But it’s the result of my ephemeral thoughts melding almost perfectly with the tools of my trade (keyboard, laptop, notebook, pen). I communicated a thought-scape almost exactly how I wanted to communicate it into existence.
I can’t wait to share the finished product. Yes, I’m nervous. Yes, I’m scared. Yes, I feel like come October 6th, 2020 I will be standing before you naked…hoping you like what you see…even if only a little bit. This one, it’s the book of my heart. It traveled a long way to get to this world. I hope you enjoy taking in the story as much as I enjoyed breathing it out.
While you’re here, here’s a few pics to show you what Facebook tells me I was doing on this day six years ago…I was ruminating with a certain story while walking my way to Santiago de Compostela…
While I still have your attention, you can preorder THE CAMINO CLUB now from wherever books are sold!
THE CAMINO CLUB:
After getting in trouble with the law, six wayward teens are given an ultimatum: serve time in juvenile detention for their crimes, or walk the Camino de Santiago pilgrimage route across Spain over the summer holidays with a pair of court-appointed counselor guides. When it becomes clear the long walk isn’t really all that much of an option, they set out on a journey that will either make or break who they are and who they are to become.
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For my story, I physically moved these statues about 1/2 a kilometre or so, so that they were standing directly behind the monument to the Pope. The scene required all the people at the monument to be at the statues at the same time. So I simply re-jigged the geography again. Presto-Magico, the statues appear beside the monument. I know if pilgrims read my book they are going to be all aflutter about the inaccuracies. But in their hearts, I’m betting they think it’s a great idea to move those statues. When you’re racing to get that last hour in before lining up for your compostella, etc, those statues are a good deal out of the way.
KEVIN CRAIG 