Designing a World

I have been gifted with this lovely picture drawn by The Artist, who does the manga-style art for my other blog Honor and Truth.  I begged The Artist for this picture…for weeks.  The final deal was that I could have this picture if I promised to weave a fantasy story around her, something that I have little if no experience doing.  The picture, as you can see, is of a regal and serious looking young woman with a long willowy neck and a lovely face set into stone.  She has honey brown skin and thick blond hair.  I find her beauty consuming, her stare breathtaking in its intensity. 

I’ve named her Amana, which in Arabic, means trust.

I have set this picture as the background on my computer, my Ipod, my computer at work.  I look at her every day.  She talks to me all of the time and has managed with her persistence to give me insights into her world.  Led, as if by an invisible hand (is this how it is with all writers?) I have drawn a map of her country and today I will draw the lighthouse she tends.  Every waking moment, I am designing her world including the culture in which she functions, her total way of life.  Even her language.

What an exhilarating experience it is to design an entire world form the bottom up with no point of reference.  From scratch, from nothing.  Scary too.