This month we're blogging on locations, favorite ones. How can anything be more favored than what seeps out of my own imagination for it is everything I dream it to be?
In the Proving Zone, I can languish under trees as sun dapples my face. A playful breeze teases my ears. My nose is beguiled by scents that cannot be described by words on paper. The sweetness of my gaze lingers on...never mind, that is for my viewing only.
The Proving Zone is a place where my imagination runs free, my body unfettered by achy joints, my gaze clear, the details as tiny or as large as I wish. It is the place where all people of the planet who wish to have children must pass a test. A test of survival. One must walk a thousand miles from the entry gate to the last step in Randar. Then, and only then may they have their sterilization implants removed without blowing up.
No known modern machine works there. Even time pieces go odd when taken into the zone. There are savannas, mountains, and desert areas to avoid, endure, or delight. There is the weather and the wild animals to contend with, but the most frightening of all are....
There are people who live in the Proving Zone. People who want to avoid the outside world for different reasons--some are crazy.
The thrill of adventure beckons as well as the world where everything works as I think it should. I have the joy of being all of my characters for just a bit, feeling the anguish of fear, the triumphant moment of success, the tedium of distance, the loneliness, the sure knowledge of what a lack of toilet paper means, another rip in your precious clothing, and even wishing you could smell wet pavement instead of more mud.
Is that smoke I smell? Dang! Supper burns while the Proving Zone lingers in my head.
8 comments:
Great viewpoint, Nina. You are so very imaginative with your words. Awesome imagery!
Great viewpoint, Nina. You are so very imaginative with your words. Awesome imagery!
Isn't it wonderful when our imagination has no boundaries? Talk about world building! We writers are lucky people. Do all your books take place in the same setting?
Nina,
Your Proving Zone is a wonderful place to visit. Thanks for sharing a peek into it with us.
Pat
I enjoyed the variety of terrain and climate in the Proving Zone when I read it. It makes it especially interesting (and challenging for the inhabitants)when no modern machine works there.
Great post, Nina. I fear I wouldn't fare well in the proving zone. I'm too spoiled by a/c and central heat and refrigerators and freezers and washing machines and indoor plumbing and curling irons and computers and .... :D You have such a phenomenal imagination.
Thanks for all of your kind comments about the description of the Proving Zone. The first story I ever thought about writing happened with the Zone in it. Two people were supposed to have enough love for each other that they would survive anything to be together. She showed up in the bar in Randar. He didn't. She waited there a few days. She was crushed but finally decided something must have happened to him, so she determined to go back in the Zone to look for him. Another man, a man who had watched her for those days in the bar, offered to guide/help provision her to go back into the Zone. Then her story really begins. I had wanted to meet a writer and have them write the story so I could read it. Are you all laughing? I never met a writer after 30 or so years of waiting.
I turns out that Zone stories fly from my fingers. The current work in progress is a jaw-grinder that is taking FOREVER to get anywhere--The Ship's Bastard. Obviously, it happens on a ship. It is not a Zone story and I'm not sure I'll ever write/complete another novel that is NOT a Zone story. So far I've finished two heavy weight (400 plus pages) Zone novels.
I understand the Zone as I have been in little bits of all of it. In the Proving Zone: Tory's Story, I lived the scene with the rising flash flood waters. My sister and I did it in a moonlit night while looking for cattle to bring in.
Is there anyone who doesn't like modern conveniences? One of the things about the Proving Zone world is that you don't have to go. No one makes you go through the Zone. It is strictly voluntary. The only thing it does is allow you to have as many children as you can bear if you want to. No Zone, no children.
I admire (and sometimes envy) writers who can create new and different worlds. Not sure I could do it, but I'd like to give it a try someday.
Thanks for sharing, Nina! I always learn a lot from what you have to say.
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