{"id":3073,"date":"2021-02-04T10:29:37","date_gmt":"2021-02-04T18:29:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kimneville.com\/?p=3073"},"modified":"2021-02-04T10:29:37","modified_gmt":"2021-02-04T18:29:37","slug":"bright-things-16-magpies-dragon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.kimneville.com\/?p=3073","title":{"rendered":"Bright Things #16: Magpie&#8217;s Dragon"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em><strong data-rich-text-format-boundary=\"true\">One of the themes of\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.simonandschuster.com\/books\/The-Memory-Collectors\/Kim-Neville\/9781982157586\">The Memory Collectors<\/a> is our relationship to physical objects \u2014 the memories, emotions, and power they hold for us. <\/strong><\/em><em><strong>Every week leading up to the book\u2019s release, I\u2019ll share the story of an object that\u2019s special to me.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<p><img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-3074 alignright\" src=\"http:\/\/www.kimneville.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/22D88FEA-973F-46D9-9165-6306BCC9710C-300x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"455\" height=\"455\" srcset=\"http:\/\/www.kimneville.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/22D88FEA-973F-46D9-9165-6306BCC9710C-300x300.jpg 300w, http:\/\/www.kimneville.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/22D88FEA-973F-46D9-9165-6306BCC9710C-150x150.jpg 150w, http:\/\/www.kimneville.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/22D88FEA-973F-46D9-9165-6306BCC9710C-768x768.jpg 768w, http:\/\/www.kimneville.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/22D88FEA-973F-46D9-9165-6306BCC9710C-75x75.jpg 75w, http:\/\/www.kimneville.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/22D88FEA-973F-46D9-9165-6306BCC9710C.jpg 998w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 455px) 100vw, 455px\" \/><\/p>\n<div>I&#8217;ve mentioned before that the spark for my debut novel came from a short story I wrote at the Clarion West Writers Workshop.\u00a0That story was much more fantastical than The Memory Collectors. In it, Harriet is a witch who hoards actually magical objects, and she runs into trouble when she steals a neighbour\u2019s dragon. The story was called &#8220;Magpie&#8217;s Dragon,&#8221; and after it was workshopped, one of my classmates gave me this magnet (thank you, Blythe).<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>I took the dragon home with me and later, I brought it to work and stuck it on the white board next to my desk. Besides reminding me of one of my all-time favourite humans, and one of my best-ever life experiences, it helped to keep me connected to\u00a0a part of me that I was afraid might get lost. This was at a time when other responsibilities and pressures made finding time to write challenging. Some days I needed a visual reminder of my other self, the Kim\u00a0who created things more interesting and alive than spreadsheets (although to be fair, I do get a thrill from an especially functional spreadsheet).<\/div>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<div>Eventually I found ways to balance the various parts of my life. My novel got written and I grew to appreciate the ways that the security and flexibility of my day job enabled my creative side to flourish. The\u00a0dragon is still stuck on my white board, along with last year&#8217;s calendar displaying March 2020, waiting for my eventual\u00a0return to the office. I will be happy to see it again.<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>One of the themes of\u00a0The Memory Collectors is our relationship to physical objects \u2014 the memories, emotions, and power they hold for us. Every week leading up to the book\u2019s release, I\u2019ll share the story of an object that\u2019s special [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[263],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3073","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bright-things","clearfix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.kimneville.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3073","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.kimneville.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.kimneville.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.kimneville.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.kimneville.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3073"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.kimneville.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3073\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3075,"href":"http:\/\/www.kimneville.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3073\/revisions\/3075"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.kimneville.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3073"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.kimneville.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3073"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.kimneville.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3073"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}