I am busy on a project at the moment, one the details of which are quite complicated. In short, after 73 pieces ranging from 936 words to 21,807, two of which are Sonnets Redoubles (sonnet sequences), I was searching through my list of ideas to see what to do next. I had just finished a piece based upon a very real location titled "The Sad and Lonely Grave of Annie May White" and, as I always do unless a project has introduced itself to me, I began looking at the List.
There was one on that list that had a standing title (so I would remember the focus) of "Darkness"... this was always to change 'cause, well, a one-word like that is just not a good idea. Not memorable, that's for sure. The idea stems from that first burst of notes in between the writing of "Where Lies Hope" in February and March of 2014 and that summer when my world changed. In the original idea, I had five hobos in the late 1930s breaking into an old mine and ultimately getting trapped within. Nice idea, lots of fun, candy and hugs for all... except it had been long sitting with no idea how to tap something like that in a concise form.
Starting January 2016, I had dedicated myself to specific number of output per year and starting January 2017, began focusing all my work at 5.000 words or less. I will go into this but the reasons for these structures I began adding are varied and divers. As for this story idea, others found themselves always at the fore as the Tales of the Bajazid rose from just one poor, doomed family to the history it has become. "Darkness" never saw the light in that time though I would roll it around at the back of my mind of regular course.
This past June I revisited another old idea, one formed actually before the seeds of this and that from which my third story, "I'll Always Be With You, Boys", was culled. Again, there was no way in which to tell this story which revolved around a dinner amongst the last six members of the company which founded the mine and the town that focuses the bulk of these Tales. The problem being that of wanting to speak from the view of each of these men, Sultans as they called themselves (for reasons...), of that dinner while being very aware that head-hopping is not a good idea in a short story, especially with so many heads. I had basically been at, er, logger-heads for years over this idea.
I once wrote a lot of poetry. Not having much of a social life nor desire for one, I used to play with verse to deal with the overflow. So that I wasn't just putting forth simple verse, I undertook a self-study of divers poetic forms and tried my hand at them over the years. There were some successes, but I think what might be the greatest use of twenty plus years of scribbling whatever came into my head in structured forms is that now I see many of these stories laid out before me in specific structures even before I begin writing at times. I have, and these I will discuss over time, incorporated elements of verse or song structure into the narrative structure of certain pieces, including breaking a delightful little song by RUSH ("La Villa Strangiato") down into time blocks related in word count and theme change. (btw, this has just been released in "A Celebration of Storytelling" by Dark Owl Publishing) This is all background here and I'll get into that nonsense down the road.
The reason I just mentioned these two different things is that in June of 2020, they collided somewhere near my cerebral cortex and my madness center. For reasons that I'm still not sure how to explain, I realized that by considering a quote I read once by I think E. Pound (I don't have my decades of notebooks at hand... I would copy it notebook to notebook along with the rules for various forms) describing the form Sestina as "six cameras looking around a room" (that's the jist, not the quote and I had two quotes on my Sestina page so I'm not sure the attribution. I'm scribllin' on the fly here), I could do this.
See, I had six characters so that gave me my six stanzas and a structured format which would inform the reader that it was, by the nature of it, designed for six head hopping, six looks at a singular thing. Now I know this is not new... the best example in my humble opinion being Akutagawa's "In A Grove", a story which I have hopefully honored appropriately elsewhere. Here though, with the repeated word structure which defines the Sestina, this creates six individual perspectives with the forced press of that word rotation. Another quote flew to mind here at this point, one which described this form, the Sestina, as being intentionally aggressive or forceful in tone. That was good 'cause that worked to progress action and stimulate rotational conflict.
Here's how it broke down. I knew would need to go over my 5,000 word limit so I found a good space for each "stanza", that being 1,200 words. That gave me 6 flash-fiction pieces passing rotating conflicts throughout. Then, considering the tornada (or envoi), that would be a sixth stanza (flash section) that covered all six End Words found throughout each stanza rotated within that section. Being focused, I was able to close each character's experience in their allotted 100 words. The end result was a 7,800 word Sestina that is a short story or a short story that is a Sestina. Either way, I do believe the end result far exceeded even my original musings on the idea and, well, I think this story, "Sestina of the Sultans", might be unique in this world.
Sorry, that is wrong. It no longer is 'cause see, after I finished with poor Annie May White's grave and was looking at my notes and thought of those five men in the mine, I realized I had what I needed for in Annie May White's story, those five hobos passed through at a critical moment and Ms. White's father, well, he climbed on their truck and I had six hobos all of a sudden. Still, this was not for 7,800 words. I knew three of those hobos already and I had developed a deep love of each of them. They deserved more than 1,200 words each for their deaths. I mean, these are good characters. After what they've been through already, they deserve to get as much attention to their... They deserve a moment of glory.
What to do? Oh, I know! I'll just put another zero up there and go with it! Yup, that's what I'll do! Should be no problem...
Tonight I am 49,333 words into what started in early August 2020 and has grown with increasing confidence. In this time since I began this, I have also completed five flash pieces, the only pieces which I have done in this length category, one of them using this same Sestina formula with a word limit of 936 ("The Sestina of the Witch"). I am now 1,333 words into Stanza (Chapter) 4 of 7. Each of these chapters is 12,000 words long exactly with the tornada at 6,000 words. I have also broken each "line" of 2,0000 words into separate "sestina" rotations as well giving me 39 small rotations within the primary structure. Every 2,000 words, I rotate character POV allowing each chapter to experience each character. The mini-sestinas mean that every 333 words, I encounter one of the six End Words specific to this work which, for humor's sake, I've chosen six words that begin with an A, then a B, a C, a D, an E and an F just 'cause it made for easy organization and the words I chose have worked to force the action.
All will be made clear eventually on this. I expect to be done by the end of this month. Mark me on that. "A Sestina Writ in Darkness", a 78,000 word Sestina, is my goal to finish this first month of 2021. I've got less than 29,000 words to go so what can go wrong?
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