I’m reading The Hero of a Thousand Faces right now.
It’s a book I was first exposed to in High School. I took an elective English class called Mythology, and my teacher talked a lot about the book, the collective unconscious, the “monomyth,” and the Hero’s Journey.
But I never actually read it.
Well, I’m reading it now, and I can see why it was such a firestorm. Not in a bad way, or controversial, but in how it took the storytelling community by storm. That way. It’s goooood shit. Like, the BEST shit if you’re a storyteller.
It’s very, VERY applicable stuff to what I’m writing right now, which is an epic, a quest, a myth…and this book I’m about to finish (tomorrow. Tomorrow!) has a tooooon to do with dreams. And that’s really what Jung was getting at with the “collective unconscious:” the world of dreams that we all share deep inside of us. Our anxieties, our wants, desires, and fears…and how those have manifested themselves in our stories since humans became humans.
It’s really clarifying for me where so many of these story elements are coming from in this book that I’m writing, how they’ve been represented before, and how I should represent them here. Because that’s the thing, right? These representations of dreams have worked for us for literally thousands of years. The Hero’s Journey has been with us since the dawn of time. It works. It always works. So use it. It’s a tool.
I’m excited to dive into this rewrite…to finally FIX this book. To FINISH this book. I’m excited, and I’m daunted, and I’m nervous. But…I’m in the right place. It’s all slooooowwwllyyyy making sense. Parts of the story that can be pruned and simplified are starting to come into focus. I’m getting closer to knowing fully what I want to say with this story, and where the core of this story lies, where the fun is, the excitement, the thrills, and the scares. And that all felt so, soooo far away for so long.
I still have so far to go, but damnit, I am fucking GETTING there.
Just now, Thousand Faces made me think about Inception, so I was just reading through quotes from that movie. As I read the quotes in black and white, I can actually see how that story would have made a much, muuuuuch better book than a movie…and that’s quite a statement because I really enjoyed the movie. But damn if the characters that Nolan was creating weren’t far, faaaarrr more interesting than we got to see on the screen…particularly Cobb.
But even just that thought is a major lesson for me to learn: the movie still worked. And man, WORK is all that matters when it comes to a story. Just. Make. It. Work. It doesn’t have to be the best thing ever. Just make it work. That’s my goal with this book. Not perfect. Just good enough to work.
Anywho, I’m freaking exhausted. We got to hang out tonight with Savannah and her boyfriend Matt. We went and had dinner over the The Local Peasant, which is basically our little local hangout. We hardly ever go there…but it’s where we take friends for a drink and some decent food. It was so, so nice to see her, and wonderful to meet Matt, who I really liked.
I also got my hair cut…and I wrote. That was my day. This book is right on the edge of finished. I want to dive over the edge tomorrow.
Wish. Me. Luck.