Writerly passage: Crafting stories within a story

I often struggle with a structured approach to writing, better liking creative impetus that roams free. My natural instinct turns away from graphing, orderliness: drawing board, mind-mapping, butcher paper, storyboarding, cue cards, the works...and opts for fleshing things out blind. Uncertain where I am going, I polish as I go. Carving this artefact, a fantasy novel that comprises stories-within-a-story, I find myself thinking excessively, forcing myself into action, charting down orderliness. The artefact is a personal experiment evolving through reflection, knowledge, experimentation. In Outbreeds, this 70,000-word literary fantasy novel about a new strain of females in the town of East Point, I find myself at home with made-up characters, places, even language: MYRA LISTENS to the fading notes of Amber’s song along the boulevard, not understanding a word of it: ‘Mah ran en at qu flate vene mondu…’ (Bacon 2013) Before my personal experiment goes public, I begin to invent myself, approaching exegesis. This appraisal of methodology, challenges, assumptions and critical reflection brings trepidation and a yen to be free. I harbour a deep-seated longing that my process, the coming to know, will remain raw and unjudged.