Dear Friend, Fantasy Songwriting with The Friz in LA

11/4/2023
Los Angeles

Dear Friend,

Tori is tearing apart of piece of sourdough toast. She’d dipping it into potato soup. My tongue can still taste the yellow pepper and hummus I just ate. We’re taking our snack break. We’re on day two of producing a new song. I’m only in LA for the weekend, four days, but by the time I get back on that airplane to Seattle, there will be a brand new song in the world!

We began the creative process by lounging in Tori’s living room. Candles flickering, her meditation frequencies were playing on the speakers, the baby kittens were jumping all over us. “What should we write about?” We asked each other. How about sisterhood? How about we make a song that’s a celebration of how creative women support each other’s artwork? We see each other’s dreams and visions. Let’s sing about this journey we’re on together. We completely understand what the other is feeling and attempting to bring to life.

We dimmed the lights and brought out our journals. I heard her pen scratching on the paper. My own page filled up with images of mermaids and fairies. She’s a forest creature. Mushrooms decorate her home. She asks me questions about the ocean. Have you swam with the sharks? YES. What did you write on your paper?

I’m seeing a crystal cave. I imagine a mermaid swimming to the cave. Waves splash up. The forest fairy comes to meet her. Ouuuu yess….. I see it. There’s moonlight! The fairy could have twigs in her hair and she pulls them out like drumsticks and starts beating on the crystals. They could be on separate journeys and they come to the cave to recharge! Once upon a time these two mystical creatures met up in a crystal cave to share their stories with each other.

We spent all night writing lyrics.
Love & Rainbows,
Cha Wilde

Dear Friend, I Can’t Write Past the First Page

11/2/2023 | Miro Tea, Seattle

Dear Friend,

Super Phoenix green tea is buttery inside my mouth and I’m victorious! I’ve transformed another page of reality into fantasy. I realized I was stuck on the first scene of the story. I was writing and rewriting the same scene over and and over until madness overcame me. I felt cursed by this project, doomed to dwell on the opening scene forever. Then a miraculous idea bonked me in the head yesterday. I’m not surprised I had a simple breakthrough. I spent the entire day lounging on the floor with cozy blankets and reading someone else’s fiction. A day off is the best solution for most problems. I was tempted multiple times to write but I resisted and trusted my brain to do its processing behind the scenes. Without fail, rest serves me. I awoke this morning with energy to write and a brand new idea that is painfully obvious now that its before me.

I decided to jump forward to the next scene. I was getting hung up on a desire to write from the beginning to end without skipping around. I was so stuck on doing it this one way that my tires started spinning and time was flying out the back like mud, wasted. By jumping forward one scene, I got to work on a fresh part of the project that I hadn’t touched in a long time. Suddenly, the heavy muddy slog was gone! I actually had fun writing this morning because I felt light and playful.

In this scene, my main character is in a classroom and the other main character is distracting her through the window. In reality this classroom was a yoga studio. In the fantasy realm I created a witch’s tower. I transformed a square orange painted drywall yoga studio in the city of Seattle into a circular stone tower up in the clouds in some mystical far away never land realm. It didn’t take much. I just change a few adjectives and the imagination runs with it.

I am continually amazed by the power of my imagination. I change one word and it creates a completely new picture. The new picture leads me to completely new emotions and the characters start to behave in new ways. Where do the ideas come from? Where do the songs come from? Wherever they come from, the way they get here is through a portal that is opened when I enter flow state.

Enough writing for today (or at least this morning). I’m going to go back to Elizabeth’s house for lunch and then soon I’ll skip to the airport and hop down to Los Angeles with my music making parts at the ready!

Love & Rainbows,
Cha Wilde

Dear Friend, Let the Story Run It's Own Way to the Finish Line

10/31/2023
Seattle

Dear Friend,

Soon the trick or treaters will bang on the door. I’m in Queen Anne, one of the fancier neighborhoods in Seattle. I’m snuggling in a pile of fuzzy blankets that belong to one of my best friends. I’m here for a week to laugh and cowork. My friend has gone out on a run around the block to fill her lungs with fresh autumn air and I take this opportunity to video call my husband.

“Hey love, what’s up.” He says.
“Hey my love, I’m feeling frustrated this morning. I went to Fremont Coffee Company and drank a match latte with oak milk and spent two hours feeling gross inside as I wrote a new scene in the novel. I had the characters riding dragons in space and kissing each other and then I doubted if I should be focusing on this scene at all. I feel like I just spent hours on pages I’m going to end up deleting.”

And then I nod as he coaches me for ten minutes, reminding me that I’ve already written the first part of my story, the first book in my series, the first 200 pages.

“Just go back to the beginning and continue translating the first section into fantasy. It’s good right? Maybe it’s not the story you expected or wanted to tell but it’s still a story. The most important thing is that you finish this project. Your deadline to complete a book is March 17. You have to have something to publish or you’re going to be floating around in unfinished project land for eternity. Once you publish something then you’ll feel great. You’ll feel so much freedom and you can reassess at that point if you want to write more books in the series, write something else entirely, or just go back to writing music. You can do whatever you want after you publish a book but first you just have to complete a book. It’s not going to be perfect and it might not be what you set out to create but the most important thing is to have something to publish when that deadline arrives. You have to ship.”

We hang up the call and I make some tea, eat some salty chocolate, pet my cat and open up the iPad again. The morning writing session was uncomfortable because I doubted if I was focusing on the right story. The afternoon writing session was just as uncomfortable but for different reasons. I still feel I need to spend more time crafting the story structure rather than just writing by flowing wild intuition. I feel so much resistance to structure though and writing has always been a free flowing form of expression for me. This project is forcing me, inviting me, coxing me into a balance of the two. We need structure for healthy flow. The stronger my structure, the more fun it is to flow through it.

Oh, how tempted I am to keep adding new pages to this novel AND how much discipline it takes to focus on the rewriting process. I’ve decided to trust my wonderful husband who is so full of encouragement for me. Instead of writing forward into the land of dragons and mermaids and pirates, I’m going to go back to the beginning of the story on human land and transform it, convert it, magically turn everything from reality into fantasy. We’re about to head off the beaten path and let my life get twisted into something unexpected.

I have two hundred pages of autobiographical fiction to tap on the head with a magic wand and watch it transfigure into something completely unrecognizable. When I’m done, I’ll have a fantasy novel which might be the first book in a series or perhaps the first and final book of my life. I have a desire to write a saga, an epic journey, with all the details I can possibly remember from the realms of imagination AND I have a desire to finish this blessed project and move on with my life.

When I began this project I listed my reasons for embarking on such a creative quest. Why write a novel? My intention was to take on an extremely challenging project to build self-respect as I crossed the finish line, proving to myself I could do it. I wanted to write a story that would give me a safe space to creatively process the traumatic memories I’d been hauling around for a couple years with CPTSD. I wanted to write my way through healing and find clarity in my relationships with my husband and my music. I also wanted to become a better writer in general and specially for my songs. I’ve also dreamed of writing a book since I was a child. I’ve held a fantasy story in my head, loosely in random chunks, for years and I thought it a beautiful idea to actually jot it down into a novel. Now I’m so deep in this writing project — I’m wading through an organized chaos on my devices — and I’m just grateful to have accomplished most of my goals already. The big one now is to reach the finish line and just complete a book. So maybe I won’t tell the story I’d been dreaming of but my god, we’re going to tell a story and see it through to the final page…whatever it may be. It is an act of surrender to let the creative process have its way with me. I must release the reins and let it run away with the current.

Love & Rainbows,
Cha Wilde

Dear Friend, What Really Happened and Where are the Mermaids?

4 Oct 202 In the Backseat of the van going to the Denpasar Airport

Dear Friend,

I’m embarrassed to say I’ve barely written about mermaids. My book doula aka writing couch told me people often need to write a book they didn’t expect to write before they can actually get to writing the book they have a vision for. The vision of mermaids keeps getting pushed to the small pile on the side of my desk while pages and pages of my past are towering above me. I didn’t realize I needed to write all of this. It seemed off topic but I can’t seem to avoid writing it. It’s what comes out when I pick up the blank page. It doesn’t feel as fun as the mermaids and I’m praying I’ll get through this and swim on towards fun adventure. Maybe my perception is skewed. Perhaps you’ll love reading my pre-mermaid past. Maybe it’s the origin story I had to write first but man, I’d love to just slip into the future sometimes to create something brand new.

I’m wondering though…. If I can change my story and my entire life changes, the way I feel inside changes .. the power of which story I tell and how is in my hands. Why do I feel so compelled to focus on this one in this old way? I’m attached to it being this way. It’s scarier to invent something new even if it feels better. I want to be honest but I’m being told that my memories aren’t being honest with me anyway. So at the end of the day…what feels fun to create? Do I have the guts to just go with that?

Today I fly to America. Let’s go get my journals out of my parents loft and see what “really” happened all those years ago…or did it? Even my journals will be full of “what I thought happened”. Haha blame all this on education about human perception… I’m reading books about the human brain and storytelling.

Love & Rainbows, Cha Wilde