Twin Souls Trilogy
When I began writing Defying Gravity on
New Year’s Day 2008, I didn’t have much of a vision in mind for the story. Not
surprisingly, the very first version of the story never went anywhere – something
that wasn’t helped by my old laptop crashing that March. This changed six
months after I began writing, when after being plagued by writer’s block since
May I elected to start over. I retained only the title, the characters and the
plot, deciding that a clean slate was best in this case. What mostly sparked
the rewrite was that I had been digging through my iTunes library in search of
songs to use lyrics from as chapter titles. The lyrics I selected ended up
giving the story a whole new lease on life, for as soon as I chose my titles I
knew instinctively what would happen during each chapter. It made the story far
easier to write, and I was able to fully complete Defying Gravity six
months after commencing the rewrite.
In late October 2008, I encountered the notion
of a twin soul through my reading of the works of the Ancient Greek philosopher
Plato. In Symposium, the playwright Aristophanes describes what happens
when twin souls encounter one another:
And when one of them meets with his other
half, the actual half of himself … the pair are lost in an amazement of love
and friendship and intimacy, and would not be out of the other's sight, as I
may say, even for a moment: these are the people who pass their whole lives
together…
Upon reading the above paraphrased passage, I
realised that it describes Isobel and Taylor perfectly – they are twin souls,
destined to reunite at some point in time. This also made it far easier to
decide how the trilogy will end. Only I and a friend of mine know how the second
and third stories, and ultimately the trilogy itself, will turn out, and the
ending will remain a closely guarded secret between the two of us until such a
time as I have finished writing. The rest of you will just have to keep reading
to find out how Isobel and Taylor’s story ends.
The Stories
(Written 2008-2009)
(Started 2009)
You Found Me
(Coming 2010)
Chasing Cars
by Snow Patrol
(Lightbody/Connolly/Simpson/Quinn/Wilson)
Released in 2006 on Eyes Open
We’ll do it all
Everything
On our own
We don’t need
Anything
Or anyone
If I lay here
If I just lay here
Would you lie with me and
Just forget the world
I don’t quite know
How to say
How I feel
Those three words
Are said too much
They’re not enough
If I lay here
If I just lay here
Would you lie with me and
Just forget the world
Forget what we’re told
Before we get too old
Show me a garden that’s
Bursting into life
Let’s waste time
Chasing cars
Around our heads
I need your grace
To remind me
To find my own
If I lay here
If I just lay here
Would you lie with me and
Just forget the world
Forget what we’re told
Before we get too old
Show me a garden that’s
Bursting into life
All that I am
All that I ever was
Is here in your perfect eyes
They’re all I can see
I don't know where
Confused about how as well
Just know that these things will never
Change for us at all
If I lay here
If I just lay here
Would you lie with me and
Just forget the world