Posts by Tonia Harris

Keep a Light Burning

By Tonia Harris / July 31, 2021 /

The Writer Ghost Lights

One of my favorite fanciful notions is that of the ghost light, the light theaters leave burning center stage, a light that serves a practical purpose, yes. A way to keep the dark safely at bay until proper lights can be reached and turned on. It’s also a light said to appease the spirits in the theater, a way to give them what they most want- the stage.

As a writer, I’m learning to keep my own ghost light burning, an offering to the restless stories and luscious words too often just out of reach. I visit them, humbly, with pen and paper, and keep a record of them, of their stories. But the question I kept asking myself is this- am I truly a writer if I’m only scribbling in spiral-bound notebooks for a few minutes just before I go to bed at night?

I tried to imagine taking a wrecking ball to the entire endeavor. I think if your soul is done with a thing, it would know lightness at the thought of walking away for good. I didn’t. And there was this- those scribbles brought me joy, a little hope, especially during our current cultural, political, and environmental turmoil. That ghost light mattered.

What I realize is that writing is the lens through which I see the world. Not a thing I could cast into darkness and never step foot into again. My time writing perhaps a page a night isn’t wasted, it is time spent in practice, like meditation or long-distance running. No matter how dim the light, the ghosts were there and they never once stopped talking amongst themselves.

It Waits For You

There is what I have come to believe is a myth we tell ourselves to keep doing the work. A myth I believed, and it stunted me. This notion that if we don’t catch the idea and drag it by its tail end to our computer screen, another writer will snatch it for themselves. There is good in this, yes- we need to commit to the work, absolutely. Yet.

Yet, I politely counter that it waits for you. It’s more than an idea, a story, it’s not something floating on the ether, but a thing that you own. Your Voice. There’s enough strife in the world, we don’t need to go to war with ourselves. Taking the time to grieve, reset, heal, and find what renews you will not dim that particular light. The stories belong to all of us, and not just writers, but all artists and creators. That lens is what is particular to you, it’s your experience, passion, weirdness, and the full glory of your humanity.

It belongs to you and it’s full of the grace you likely aren’t giving yourself. Let it burn, waiting patiently center-stage.

I read once that while they closed across the globe during the pandemic, theaters kept those ghost lights lit. They meant it as a symbol of hope, the darkness and overwhelm would end and we would all have a light to help us find our way back to storytelling.

The act was a promise and a prayer.

Tending the Flame

What do the ghost light and its incumbent entities require of us?

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Confessions of an Intrepid Mermaid

By Tonia Harris / September 18, 2016 /

By chelseadaniele in the Creative Commons

We’re very happy to welcome Tonia Marie Harris as our guest today. Tonia resides in south-central Illinois with her husband, three children, and three rescue animals. In addition to writing novels, poetry and essays, she is President of WME Community Works, a non-profit organization that spearheaded the recent development of a grassroots library that serves her village and the surrounding communities. Tonia’s latest work-in-progress is a coming-of-age novel tentatively titled The Education of Sugar Girl. Her work has appeared in Twice Upon A Time, a collection of reimagined fairy tales, Hand/Eye Magazine, Mash Stories, Silver Birch Press, and various anthologies.

I’m a process junkie. When I finish a book I love—everything from Wally Lamb’s She’s Come Undone to Donna Tartt’s The Secret History—I immediately want to know the how and why behind the scenes evolution of the story. What I realized was that my own process would never come together if I didn’t simply dive into the deep end and write the darn story.

Connect with Tonia on Facebook and Twitter.

Confessions of an Intrepid Mermaid

I’m swimming. The water mutes the sound of everything but the distant beat of my heart. The water itself is an echo of that rhythm. Voices and the pounding of feet above me are the sounds of another planet. I am a transmitter for something else entirely—the urge to move forward and rise for another breath and plunge back into the water again. Here I have no need for peripheral vision.

This is the recurring dream I had over the summer. This dream of swimming. If you analyzed this dream, you would tell me I’m on a journey through the depths of my subconscious. You would be right.

I am a plotter. I survey the land, measure the depths, and calculate the constellations. I am a pantser. I leave behind the diagnostics to plunge in and discover the wavering depths of story.

Another Word for Forward

This is my first confession: I’ve spent more time in this last year trying to define what kind of writer I am than doing actual writing.

I want to be a plotter. In real life I came to intimately know the power of to-do lists and preparation. Colorful index cards and the phantasm that is Scrivener lured me like a siren song. I spent months planning a dark fairy tale only to discover it wasn’t the story I wanted to write at this moment, not yet. Not the if I had time to write one book what would it be book.

I tried to plot my current manuscript, but each time something stopped me. Depression. My father’s cancer. More depression and all the wins and losses of daily life that can enrich our writing all while draining our power supply.

I tried pantsing. Familiar territory for someone who for years self-identified this way. It was all false starts and a brooding sense of failure. I wondered if my love for writing and this story in particular was a clichéd tale of star-crossed lovers.

What kind of writer was I, and why was I compelled to label myself before I could move forward?

Confession number two: I suck at achieving […]

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