17.1.12

The Heart of a Character

When the idea for Selkie Song first came to me, more than two decades ago, I saw the myth of the selkie as a powerful metaphor for sexual and romantic abuse:  a man met this enchanted fairy creature, a seal in the sea and a woman on dry land, and stole her seal skin, her deep feminine self from her.

This novel has undergone so many deep changes.  Early on, the main character was neither Ben, the young man who discovers the selkie, or Eloyn, the selkie herself.  A third character took center stage, and the story of Ben and Eloyn filtered through the then protagonist's consciousness.  Thanks to Louise Hawes, I realized I was protecting myself from the full impact of Ben and Eloyn's story.  The whole novel shifted.

Now it is shifting again as I revise, though in a subtler way.  (The earlier change dropped the novel from 250 pages to 90; then it grew again in the new direction.)  Now I feel like Ben's heart and soul are fully revealing his true self to me as I revise; some events later in the novel that never felt like he had earned them now flow in a more unified way.

I am grateful for the process of revision, for my experiences as a writer, and for the way both Ben and his story are coming into deeper alignment.