What I Saw

I was probably about 14 when my dad ‘planted’ a store-bought arrowhead in our giant vegetable garden, hoping I would find it while hoeing the potato mounds.

He was well aware of my obsession (and he also knew that neighboring farmers in our Pennsylvania hometown had found arrowheads over the years). Even at a young age, I yearned to hold a piece of this history in my hand – some kind of connection to people who respected the land as much as I did. I was always awed that Native American Indians might have lived in the woods behind my house, dipping their hands in the crystal clear water that gurgled from the spring-fed ponds around the area.

These petroglyphs in Tucson, Ariz. are well-preserved and a fantastic piece of history. Click to enlarge. Anyone know what they say? Additional image below.

Oh the stories I had already conjured in my young mind about the Native American Indian who would have carved the arrowhead I would find, leaving behind a clue for me, a treasure. (Only later in university literature and history classes would my interest become less narcissistic as I developed a more mature and heartfelt understanding of the Indians’ plight when settlers arrived. And even later, when I learned my paternal great-great-grandmother was herself Native American, my appreciation grew tenfold.)

Aside from the store-bought replica, I never did find the coveted arrowhead. (Thanks, Dad. I appreciate the effort. But you erred by not dusting the shiny surface of the knock-off in some of the fresh-tilled Earth. Or I just might have bought in to the lie).

After visiting a beautiful Native American petroglyph site in Tucson, Arizona, it occurred to me that my childhood fascination with arrowheads was, oddly, all about storytelling.

Just as the petroglyph tells a pictorial story – visible for many to see – so, too, does the arrowhead, though buried deep beneath its sharp edges. Even if I never held an authentically discovered arrowhead in my hand, it is still a symbol, telling the story of a culture changed forever. The storytelling continued in my family, as well, with my dad’s retelling of the “arrowhead Melissa once found in the garden.”

Long live the tradition of storytelling in all its many forms, and in all of its symbolic ways!

For Writers: How do you measure a story’s goodness? I’ve been thinking about this a great deal, as I am currently reading a book that did not gain critical acclaim, nor even positive reviews, sadly. Yet, as I read it, I’m awed by the display of literary talent – the combining of words, sounds, and combinations of words to paint vivid, breathtaking pictures and deep, emotional resonance.

Obviously, there’s more to a ‘good’ story than just good writing. In fact, sometimes a blockbuster novel isn’t necessarily a well-written novel. Sometimes the story, itself, is enough to carry the novel to fame. Sometimes the characters buoy the story. Sometimes the bending, weaving, careening plot. Sometimes the storytelling itself.

What are the attributes you look for when measuring the ‘goodness’ of a story? I had to think hard about what’s most important to me as a reader of contemporary women’s fiction, and surprisingly, I came up with only two key benchmarks by which I judge the novels I read: emotional depth of characters and literary talent (i.e. sensory description/settings). Plots are important, obviously, but I’m mostly interested in internal journeys and growth.

I admit that I’m not adept at artistic interpretation (a few trips through the Phoenix Art Museum made that fact abundantly clear, as did my undergrad interpretations of Romantic Era poetry).

But when I saw this rock in the Tucson Mountains, it reminded me of a watercolor painting. I’m not too far off, am I? I was drawn to the turquoise, rust and golden hues. Frankly, I wouldn’t mind enlarging this photo and hanging it on my wall (it’s prettier when you click and zoom below).

This iron-rich, magnetic basalt was photographed in Arizona's Tucson Mountains at the Sus Picnic Area – the site of a geologic resurgent dome. Click to enlarge.

Looking beyond the colors of this rock reveals even more meaning. What you’re seeing is solidified lava (basalt), colored by hydrothermal reactions – i.e. the trickling of water through hot rocks to create fluids rich in copper (the blue-greens) and iron and manganese (red-oranges). The final product: this beautiful patina, visible only years later, when the top rock layers of limestone and granite eroded away from the basalt.

For Writers: If you were to assign a “color” to your novel, what would you choose? Like the rock above, colors have more depth beneath their shiny surfaces. They’re much more than today’s technologically driven hex definitions, the print world’s Pantone Matching System codes, and the primary and secondary color wheels of our youth. They’re symbolic and powerful and can evoke emotion.

To help you decide the color of your novel, I’ve included, below, a few symbolic interpretations (you can see more color interpretations here). But keep in mind, colors have different meanings in different cultures, as noted on incredibleart.org.

Color Meanings & Interpretations:

• Red: anger, excitement, energy, passion, love, desire, strength, power, heat, aggression, danger, fire, violence, all things intense and passionate.
• Blue: Peace, tranquility, cold, calm, stability, harmony, unity, trust, truth, confidence, conservatism, security, cleanliness, order, loyalty, depression.
• Yellow: Joy, happiness, betrayal, optimism, idealism, imagination, hope, sunshine, summer, jealousy, covetousness, deceit, illness, hazard.
• Green: Nature, environment, healthy, good luck, renewal, youth, spring, generosity, fertility, jealousy, inexperience, envy, misfortune, vigor.

Does the overall feel of your novel shout a single color, or does it metamorphose like the basalt above, based on the changing moods and plot twists in your story? And what about the use of color as a symbol in your novel? In what ways have you applied color – to your setting, to character moods, to objects? What other ways might you incorporate color into your WIP?

For the record: My current work in progress would follow a black-red-green-blue progression … not too dissimilar to the iron-rich basalt pictured above.