Totems
| bereccabox |
Totems
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    0 / 50,000 Official Participant
Joined: Oct 30, 2006
Location: Fort Worth, TX
Posts: 37
Posted on:
Oct 3, 2010 – 09 04 |
In all the years that I have competed in this, I have never once had a totem. I’ve always wanted one, but have never had the money or time to search for one.
What’s your totem and how does it inspire you?
Also, what should one look for in a totem? Just inspiration, or should one look for a deeper meaning?
———- NaNo 2006: The Clearing of Lindsey (psychological thriller/drama/whatever) NaNo 2007: ZOMBUNNIE! (satirical horror) NaNo 2008: Sunny Side Up (romantic comedy drama thing) NaNo 2009: Candy Land Dandily Dies (fantasy/adventure/kind of satirical) |
I’ve never had a writing totem, uhm, I don’t think…maybe I have and wasn’t aware of it???
I do have a totem/spirit animal and it does inspire my writing a lot, so maybe that’s my writing totem? You see, everything I have ever written, no matter what it is, what genre, sci-fi, fantasy, romance, spiritual, horror, historical fiction —EVERYTHING!— ends up with eels in it. From giant eels eating people to tiny pet eels to people eating eels in sushi to people dreaming about eels…some where, some how, some place, everything I write ends up with an eel in it someplace.
And hey, did you notice my user name? yep – eels again! LOL!
My Totem/Spirit Animals are: Deep Sea Moray Eels and Bobcats, thus EelKat.
I’ll see if I can explain how this all came about…
I wrote my first book in 1978 (Vol 1 of *The Twighlight Manor* series… now out of print) the main character of the original book (only a minor character in later volumes) was a talking black bobcat from a planet in another galaxy. Her name was not pronounceable by human tongue, so humans called her Miss Citten The EelKat instead or The EelKat for short. The reason was because she raised rare breeds of eels which she had collected up from the various planets she had visited. She is the narrator of all of my stories, my books being her reports about earth that she sends back to her home planet, so technically she remained the main character throughout the series.
Anyways, that same year (1978) I started using the name EelKat, and so people just know be by that name, so once I discovered the internet (in 1997) I just started using EelKat as my id everywhere.
Being used to writing in *her voice* for my books, I found it easier to write on the internet in the same way.
The story behind my name goes back to a book I wrote years ago, but yes, the character got her own name from an obsession with eels. And so, while my name online comes from the book…
Offline, in the real world, there is a bit more to it than that, because of course EelKat in the book had to of come from somewhere. I used to have a reoccurring nightmare, about monstrous sized snakes coming after me, followed by falling into eternal blackness, than landing in the Scarborough Marsh (a local marsh, which we passed through every Sunday on the way to Church). People have always said I was an odd child, and one of the reasons was, though snakes terrified me, eels did not, in fact I was drawn to eels. None of my relatives were ever able to determine how it was that I knew what an eel was let alone what to call it. In the dream I would fall out of the black hole and land in the water in the marsh, and would suddenly be surrounded by big, huge, green eels, which would swirl around me and protect me from the giant snakes.
Because of this daily/nightly dream which haunted my mind from my earliest memories (at about 2 years old) until late into my teen years, eels eventually became a symbol of peace, love, safety, and protection. If I saw an eel I knew I was safe, loved, protected, that no harm could come to me. Eels became my Power Animal and Spirit Guides.
However, my description of eels was “off” for many years, because I was describing big, huge, 8 feet long and bigger eels with huge sharp teeth and thick lime green skin, and the power to “shoot lightening” at snakes. For many years of my early youth, adult laughed and told me there was no such animal, explaining that eels were small, only a few inches to a foot long, silver or grey, and had no teeth. As I learned years later, marsh eels, freshwater eels, were what they was describing, and I was 8 years old when me, my parents, and several other relatives would come head on face to face with exactly what I for many years had described as an eel.
In 1982, Saco, Maine for a brief period of time had an Aquarium. My family, and several relatives went in on the opening day. We say sharks and seals and squid and fish of every possible shape and size, and than smack dab in the center of the building was the pride of the water zoo: a giant tank, which on first appearances, seemed to be totally empty and filled only with huge rocks full of wholes. We was a large crowd of people, 30 or more standing and waiting, as we were told to do, by our guide who assured us, if we waited just a few more minutes we would see the star of the zoo come out of his cave. We waited, and waited, some people wandered off, and than suddenly with out warning, a huge lime green face, with giant sharp teeth long as my fingers, came zipping out of the cave with lightening speed and dashed his head against the glass, barring his teeth, snapping and snarling and trying fiercely to grab hold of anyone and every one looking through the glass at him. He made the sharks look tame, small, and friendly…he made JAWS look like a sweet happy fairy tale. This creature was angry, mean, and ready to kill. If there had been no glass between him and the crowd he probably would have made an attempt to eat every one there.
Our guide than told us what we were looking at: a rare Green Deep Sea Moray Eel. Not that he was a rare creature, just that he was a rarely seen in captivity, creature, and even less common in the shear size of him. He was 8 feet long and could unhinge his jaws to expand and swallow pretty much anything whole. He looked like he could easily gulp down a few harbor seals in a single bite. But this…this, magnificent mesmerizing creature, this I pointed out and told my relatives, this was the eel I had seen so many times in my dreams, not their tiny freshwater eels, but this giant green eel with a mouth full of teeth. This what what I meant when I said the word “eel”.
Seeing this eel face to face was like a pivotal point in my life. It was as if I had come face to face with God himself or something, you know what I mean? It was just one of those moments in life when you can step back and say: “I can relax now, it doesn’t matter what happens, because everything is going to be okay.” It was just a moment of such, peace and serenity. I was mesmerized by this beautiful giant dragon-like fish. He was just so amazingly breath taking. I spent the rest of the day glued to the tank with me and him staring at each other eye to eye – and his eye was like bigger than my first…it was just completely indescribable, the sense of peace I felt standing there beside this beautiful creature. I think that was probably the most exhilarating moment of my entire life. I wish I could have brought him home with me. And ever since that day, I made it my goal, to some day, some how, some where, have a giant deep sea moray eel of my own. Granted I would need a tank as big as a house, but still, that is my “ultimate goal” so to speak.
No one was ever able to explain, how or why my dreams were filled with an animal I had no knowledge of, let along how or why I knew what to call it. It was just one of those things that adults pointed out was “creepy” about me. I have been told in more recent years that what happened was a “Spirit Quest” or my having entered into “Dream-time”, thus making me a natural born shaman. That I have a natural connection to these giant deep sea morays, that they are my spirit guides. Am I a natural born shaman? I have really have no idea and haven’t really put much thought into it. Maybe it’s something to think about in the future. Are the deep sea moray eels my Spirit Guides? I believe they are, yes, for throughout my life, time and time again, images and pictures of deep sea morays have shown up in my life at the strangest times and in the oddest places. I have come to learn that this is a sign from the spirit world, that when I see an eel, I am meant to pay close attention to the events which follow, for they are very important and very significant.
Oh, yeah, and in case you was wonder, yes, I am a Native American Indian, I am from the Kickapoo tribe. EelKat is also my “Indian Name”, you know, like Running Bear or Sitting Bull…mine is EelKat. Eels are my protectors and I am the protector of cats, feral cat rescue takes first place in my life pushing all else into the side lines, when ever there is a cat in need of my help. I will skip work and put seemingly “more important” things aside, when it comes to standing up for, protecting, defending, and rescuing feral cats. It is the very center of my existence. And therefore the two words combine into one to create my “True” or “Indian” name: EelKat aka Guided by Eels and The Protector of Cats
Oh yeah, and I once had a big 2 foot long wild eel named Eli.
But yeah, in a way, you could say that eels are like my writing totem, because, like I said, everything I write ends up with eels in it, and well, everything in my life ends up with eels in it some how.
Need help with NaNoWriMo?
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Want to network with me?
http://twitter.com/EelKat
http://www.facebook.com/EelKat
http://eknano.blogspot.com
http://eelkat.wordpress.com
http://www.nanowrimo.org/eng/user/132659
http://www.scriptfrenzy.org/user/132659
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