March Author Series #19: Inspiration by Laurel Wilczek

How imaginative were you as a child? I know I spent countless hours daydreaming and pretending, exploring the hills and hollows of my Kentucky home. I think we have to hang on to our childhood gift of imagination if we want our writing to resonate with our readers. Read this beautiful piece from author Laurel Wilczek to see how she draws inspiration from the magic of her childhood.

Inspiration

I grew up in Yardley, Pennsylvania, a town that I have carried around inside me all my life. A town full of mystical places. A black-water pond  infested with vicious snapping turtles. A mansion, with underground tunnels rumored to be haunted by the ghosts of slaves who traveled the Underground Railroad. A milky canal, home to catfish, leeches, and countless sneakers tossed from the wooden bridge.

Oh yes, and an apple orchard.

Picture this:

A leap out the back door, through air sweetened by lilac and the drone of honey bees at work. Twenty steps across the slick grass to the three-trunk oak. Forty steps to the white gate with the iron latch.  No lock. Behind it? Acres and acres of wild land. Apples. Plums. Peaches. Poison Ivy. Sand pits. Eight-foot-high thorn patches. Sand hills, fifty-feet high! Quicksand, who knows how deep? A water reservoir. A junkyard. A patch of sun-scorched ground infested by trees that no longer bloom.

Now imagine this:

Peter's Gate. You know Peter. No? Maybe you know Peter's not-so-nice stalker, the wolf?  Peter and his wolf are legendary.

Picture Peter's gate open. Standing on the brink of that undiscovered country:  One six-year-old girl with a paper lunch bag in one hand, a net in the other, a mesh sack stuffed in the waistband of her jeans, a rinsed-out milk carton tucked under her arm, new Ked's sneakers on her feet, and the thrill of an impending hunt tickling her stomach.

At the back of the orchard, south of the gate, there is a water reservoir. In the folds of shadowed current, the frogs grow into monstrous creatures with ping-pong eyes and wide-slit mouths that gape open like gutter spouts as they drift beneath the surface of the water.

Clumps of moss at first sight. Exquisite dragon babies to child sight. 

West of the reservoir, beyond a barrier of ground choked by weed and thorn, there is a gully filled with junk. A motley collection of gutted kitchen appliances, rusted car frames, bicycles without tires, mildew-stained mattresses, broken dishes, plastic toys, garbage bags bursting with ratty clothing, an abandoned trailer broken into two pieces, and an ice cream truck stripped to a hollow-eyed carcass. 

Buy it HERE!

A gully of rat-infested junk at first sight. A troll's hideout to child sight.

East of the reservoir, past the peach trees and barbed-wire fence, there is a red desert. Great mountains of sand lapped by rain and July heat into blood-colored stone. Apple trees whittled of leaf and wrapped with dead ivy. 
Naked ground gnawed by the teeth of a Styx wind.

A dumping ground for construction material at first sight. The demon underworld to child sight.

The sky above the orchard is filled with the glint of phoenix feather, the air, with the graveled song of the Jabberwocky. When the unharvested apples fall, it is the soft beat of Pan's goat hooves on earth. When the wind blows it is the rustle of the wolf stirring in his den.

An untended orchard at first sight. A realm of magic to child sight.

This is where my ideas are seeded and grown. My mindscape, guarded by the specter of a child who opened Peter's Gate and never closed it.  In my heart, romps a child muse still at large in the wild woods of an orchard long gone from this world.

In my mind,

I am child.

I am wolf.

I am writer.

We are hunter and prey.

Wanderer and guardian.

And we all live together in my orchard.

****

 Laurel Wilczek grew up in Yardley, Pennsylvania, a quaint little town that had its share of mystical black water ponds, milky canals, and magical orchards. A graduate of Moravian College in Bethlehem, Pa., Laurel writes literary fiction, fantasy and magical realism. Her short stories have appeared in T-Zero Literary Magazine, The Forward Papers, and Be a Better Writer. Writing under the pen name, Ravenne Law, Laurel enjoys exploring the dark fantasy. She is currently working on a 98,000 word Fantasy titled "Spells & Tells." Laurel lives with her husband, daughter, three nosy dogs and a cockatiel in Saylorsburg, Pennsylvania.

The Raven's Eye Blog:     www.ravenlaw.wordpress.com

The Ravenne's Pie:    www.wilczek.writeronline.com/100/