Earlier today I was questioning myself on how I was going to handle this chapter because I knew it would require me to think like a man, and have the restraint and maturity of a philosopher to describe what takes place within the body of a young lad when he comes across his first naked or semi-naked woman whom he has been crushing on secretly. That is what happens in Chapter 9 and to say I had been putting it off for a while for fear that I may not be as sensitive as perhaps I needed to be, would be more or less accurate. Today was the day! I managed. I just reread the chapter and to be honest I did a great job. (She laughs because that sounded really arrogant for about a second until I realized that I'm the only one who can decide if I did or didn't give it my utmost! I'm the writer)
Chapter 9 is done. The characters of Aria Cambell MacFarlane and Ewan Williams Hastings are now formally acquainted. They will soon become fast and vast friends; this will lead to the completely obsessive behavior of one of the characters; this behavior involving what we would clearly observe today as being stalking behavior. We will see that the two are inseparable when the world, time, space, and society have only their separation in mind. We will find in time, in future chapters, that the two bodies will find reasons to unite. We will learn that the word "love" means more to some than it does to others.
The writing for Chapter 9 was a bit interesting on its own. I read through the 200+-year-old books written about the Borders of Scotland, and the people of course, and I came across a tale, a story, about a man finding his son after many years of being apart from one another. The son had raced off from his homestead with a few shillings in his pocket and had not been seen for several years. No one was able to comfort his family as to what may have become of the man until some years later and quite without ceremony, the father runs into a doctor who thinks out loud that the man before him resembles the man he has just attended upon his deathbed. This was the case, and the father saw his son only minutes before he expired and on his way to eternal bliss. The moments that they shared were good ones, and the father was so blessed to have refrained himself from bringing up the past and the questions he may have had in order to use the sparse time between the two for a better cause. I loved that story. I used a piece of it on my own.
They say there are only about 110 story plots out there, and we all (writers) mix and match until we come up with what we think is original. It's probably true for the most part. This is a good thing, and we are challenged to at least (as writers) mix and match to the point that the 110 become millions of possibilities. The words we choose, the way we use the words we have chosen, and the purpose we choose to use those particular words should matter. I hope I've done that for each of my chapters and in this one in particular as the boy in my story has a special meaning to me. I will raise him from a beaten boy to a strong and mighty protector. He will be the man he was told he could never be. He will overcome and he will project what others said was impossible; this is Ewan William Hastings, and he will not soon be forgotten. He will be loved, and relatable, and he will be engraved on the hearts of millions forever.
Photo Credit: fineartamerica.com Portrait: Scottish Boy With Wolfhounds in the Highlands by James Hardy
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