I changed the beginning of The Myth of Merula. I realized that it was not a strong beginning at all. In fact, it was nothing but writing that circled around the beginning, sneaking up on it and then backing away. I did not like it at all anymore, even though it’s not the final version, and it’s “just a blog”. I hesitated before changing it. Something in the nature of a blog makes me think I should preserve everything with no edits and no deletions. From now on, I believe I will attempt to follow a no-edit, no-deletion practice, for the sake of maintaining the feel of a real blog. Nonetheless, the beginning had to go. The story starts out much better now.

One of the problems was that I had jumped into the story impulsively one night, without thinking it through. At that time, I didn’t know much about the Dogon people. Deciding to set the story among the Dogon was a decision I made late in the game. Most of the story will not in fact be about the Dogon. I had therefore given a lot more thought to other aspects of the story, while neglecting the setting. It took some time to do some research, and after I did, I realized I needed to make my descriptions more detailed. I needed to know Dogon names for people. I needed to know what kinds of animals would be found in and about a Dogon village. I needed to be able to imagine more vividly what it would be like for my narrator, Alice Mountolive, to live among them.

As soon as I started to do research, though, I was faced with the task of deciding which details to include and which to leave out. Did I need to say how Alice accessed the Internet to update her blog? Did I need to say what she ate and whether she got sick from the food and/or water? Finally, I ended up being able to imagine how Alice would go about it, without needing to fully describe every logistical and mundane detail of her daily life in and around Dogon country. I imagine Alice living in a hotel in Bamako, where she has access to a high-speed Internet connection. She has no car, so when she goes to nearby Dogon country, she rides her bicycle. If describing her getting sick of the food doesn’t advance the story plot, it doesn’t need to be in the story at all. Now I’ve gotten her up to the point where Blackbird can start telling her story, without logistics getting in the way! If I were actually there in Mali, it would be difficult both to get to Dogon country and to live there, but heck, I’m telling a fiction story!

UPDATE 2/11/07: Mopti, not Bamako, is where Alice will live and work while in Mali. It’s across the Niger River from the Sangha region where Blackbird lives. Bamako is at least 7 hours away from Sangha, so it’s not really practical to have Alice ride her bike from Bamako to Sangha every time she wants to see Blackbird! Importantly, Mopti has two Internet cafes.