The First Dragon of Creative Writing- Part One of Two

Calcination by Fire is Coming

*****

Jason slapped his hands together and clapped thunder.

“Like that,” he said. “Gone. Right down the hole.”

“Get out of here,” whispered Trisha.

“No way,” said Marty. “No way. That dog’s mean.”

“I saw it,” said Jason.

“It's just lost,” said Jimmy.

“I’m telling you,” said Jason, and he clapped his hands together again, “that dog is gone. Right down the hole. I saw it happen. Two little clawed hands reached up, grabbed his tail, and pulled him right down.”

“Gone,” repeated Marty. “Right down the hole. Like a pop-up killer.”

“You saying I made this up? I seen it twice already.”

“Twice?” asked Jimmy, and his mouth stayed open as though he had forgotten to close it, which he had. He rubbed the bridge of his nose where his glasses usually rested, which the others knew meant he was thinking. Jimmy was the only one of the four that wore glasses. They were the flexible kind that could bend back and forth and not break, but he had lost two pairs already that summer.

“Oh, my God,” said Trisha. “Another dog?”

“Rabbit,” said Jason. “It was a rabbit. It was sitting on the lawn. My lawn. My mom made me take the trash out. I don’t like to take it out when it’s dark. I’m not scared or anything, but I might trip, you know? It’s a long way to the shed. But she made me take it out anyway. She said the moon was out. That’s how I saw the rabbit sitting right there in the middle of our lawn.”

“And?” asked Trisha, and there was a hint of the breathlessness in her voice that would in later years send men into a mild trance.

Jason looked down at his shoes.

“Come on, what happened?” asked Jimmy.

“I don’t want to know,” said Marty. “This is spooky.”

“Why don’t you want to know?” asked Trisha.

“I don’t sleep good when I’m scared. I got apnea.”

“What?” asked Jason.

“Never mind,” said Jimmy. “What happened to the rabbit? Come on, give.”

Jason pushed his chair back, and it made a noise on the concrete like bad brakes.

“Same thing,” he said without looking up.

“Oh, my God,” said Trisha. “That’s sick.”

“I quit walking as soon as I saw the rabbit. You know, so it wouldn’t take off. I had two bags, and I put them down real quiet like, so I wouldn’t scare it.”

“And then?” asked Jimmy.

“I was going to sneak up on it and try to catch it.”

“With what?” asked Marty.

“I don’t know. I hadn’t figured that out. But before I could do anything, the grass came up. A chunk just flipped over and this weird thing popped up and grabbed it before the rabbit could take off. It pulled it right down the hole and the grass flipped back over. Honest to God.”

“Like a pop-up killer,” repeated Marty.

excerpted from "Pop-up Killers," by Ferrel D. Moore

*****

Are you ready to face the Dragon Blackened Fire?

Those of us brave enough to do so are committed to improving our creativity not by re-working our stories, but by re-working ourselves. What we discussed earlier was the need to deal with the source of our stories. There are too many books on the market that tell us how to write. We start down a different path tonight, at the end of which is an unforgiving and fierce Dragon who will challenge not our stories, but we ourselves.

We leave the comfort of our mental homes, to begin a journey to discover the Philosopher's Stone of Writing. What is this stone? It is a state of mind and being that allows our creativity the freedom to give forth compelling, vibrant tales of depth, scope and passion. To discover this Stone, we will journey a great distance along a winding, dangerous road that will before long lead through the uncivilized, wild and dangerous landscape of our minds. It is a region where wild, uninhibited imagery soars and swoops with grace and ferocity through the aethyr of our consciousness. But there is a locked gate we must pass through to enter, and this gate is guarded by the Dragon of Calcination, known also as the Dragon of Blackened Fire.

Each of the seven alchemical dragons has a purpose. You see, in the esoteric art of transformational alchemy, dragons are known as teachers. But they are most fearsome teachers. Their lessons are not for the faint of heart. The roaring flames exploding from the jaws and throat of the Dragon of Blackened Fire will burn away your attachments to the mundane and the artificial, to the trite facade of your everyday life. It is its raison d'etre, or reason for being. It lives to scorch your mental skin. If our minds survive, the Dragon will allow us to pass. If not, we will return as the village idiot.

The Dragon of Blackened Fire guards the first gate to your truly creative self. This first gate is held shut by a massive and intricate lock. What is the nature of this lock that makes it strong enough to protect this first gate from the trivial explorations of fools and gawkers? It is a lock that we ourselves have forged. It is made from one of the strongest forces in the universe- ego.

We are taught as writers that our experiences, our culture, our social network and our family history are the very wellspring of our stories. They are not. Although we draw from them, they are hardly the creative mind. In many ways, they are the devil at whose feet we are shackled. This may be a shocking image to some, but consider, only please consider the idea that the very things we are taught are the source of our creations, are in fact the shackles that restrict our creative flights. By creative flights I mean those literary visions that allow us to see beyond ourselves to greater social issues, to the conflicts, hopes and dreams, tragedies of triumphs of the human condition. So, we are not discussing social mores or morals. We are not discussing good thoughts versus bad thoughts. We are discussing the freedom to imagine without boundaries but with good and meaningful intent.

We are told to write what we know. For most writers, this means that the scope of their writing is limited by the fact of themselves. But what do we know of our true selves? "We" cannot differentiate our personal identity from our true self. Because of this, our true selves are suppressed in the course of our writing. Whatever creative gifts our True Selves offer up are scarcely noticed through the filter of our personal history and identity.

It is the life's purpose of the Dragon of Blackened Fire to burn away the personal pretentions that blind us to our own creativity.

Beneath the accreted layers of personal pretention and social identity lies a creative powerhouse- our own true story teller. Remember, the first gate is locked with our own ego. Our goal is to survive the flames and break free from the charred black crust, because when our personal identity is scorched black brittleness and drops free of its own weight from the gate, the Dragon of Blackened Fire will allow us to pass through.

There is a story that goes like this: "How do you find a diamond in a lump of coal? You chisel away everything that is not a diamond." In the end, by removing the dark and brittle, the searcher will find the jewel inside.

The metaphor is simple, we find our true selves, our creative wellsprings, by breaking free from our pretentions and rigid acculturalive identities. What is to be our method? Only three things- story and symbol and focused consciousness are all we will need to survive our encounter with the Dragon of Blackened Fire. If we do not use them well, we will come back the worse for the encounter.

Enough of theory, let us go to find the dragon.

*****

We pack our bags, put on our walking boots, say good bye to our family, and square our shoulders as we ready for our journey to face the Dragon of Blackened Fire. We each nervously take the only sword we own; they are much battered and blunt blade given to us by a mutual friend. Each of us too have borrowed a cracked wooden shield from the innkeeper's wall.

Our friends and family shake their heads in disbelief. To them, we are fools. Who are we to believe that we can find our creative true selves? Who do we think we are to make this journey? So many others have settled for discussions of theme and character arc- is this not enough for us? Do we think that we are more special than others?

The answer is that we are all more special than society believes us to be. But we more than other, because we are writers. We would be the Storytellers that weave the stories so powerful they mold the realities of those who lend us their ears or take the time to enter the worlds we create.

We have been forewarned that we must face this first dragon and learn his teachings in a trial by fire that will leave us scorched and blackened. But as we were leaving our village, a wise woman whispers in our ear. "The Dragon of Blackened Fire will not burn away your flesh and bones but who you are. . ," Her voice is thick and veined as the back of her hands, and she presses a note in your belt before you escape. We know that the wise are often mad, and we pull away from her. Yet as we rush away from the old woman and comforts of our homes and friends, we fret and worry over why a great and powerful dragon would want to burn away our very identity. We are poor villagers, you and I, and our identity- our name and place in the community- are really all that we have.

The gathering night is dark and heavy, and even the towering trees that line our way seem to lean toward each other for comfort. The moist exhalations of the dragon are billowing wispy fog, torn diaphanous fabric tossed through the cloying air like unformed dreams. We grasp the hilt of our sword and pull tight to us our battered wooden shields. The path has twisted and turned over soil lightly packed as a beggar's pouch, and we move more by intuition that sight. From up ahead the road turns right around the twisted, upright corpse of an gnarled, arthritic oak.

A blast of flames shoots an arm's length past the oak and the blackened, leafless trees and burned stumps are revealed in an angry red light midst the roar of the dragon's inner furnace. We are gripped by the knowledge that around the bend we will face a creature risen from Hell itself.

We dare not move.

Any hope we nurtured in our breasts has deserted us. Our courage has scurried into the forest to hide behind huge rocks cracked and blackened as those from a fire pit. The ground shudders and the air shakes with a roaring anger as the dragon stamps back and forth through the gate that we can see through the blistered tree trunks. His spade tipped tail glistens with interlocked oily plates as it snaps through the night like a bull whip. You look at your puny sword and I look at mine. In the flame lit night, we see our shields for what they really are- broken memories of might days past. We look at each other and drop them both. Better to run than to fight. Better to live than to die.

In your belt, I see the note from the old woman. You follow my eyes and see it, too.

Our swords and shields lay on the ground where we have thrown them. Before us the Dragon thrashes back and forth as though it knows we are approaching. The Dragon of Blackened Fire is certain death. Behind us lies our village and certain rejection, ridicule and humiliation if we return as failures.

You reach for the note. She may have written a protective spell on it, or drawn a map that will show us a way past the Dragon. But we both know there is no way past the Dragon. Death or Dishonor.

You open the note and read it.

The Dragon of Dissolution