Names

Why The Story Weaver, and why the Weaving Maid?

On a surface level, it seems fairly rudimentary; weaving is a great metaphor for the process of writing a story; weaving is a painstaking and slow process, and in a tapestry, there are many different threads of various colors working together to form a cohesive pattern. There no room for error if you want to weave something worth wearing and/or showing off, as even one thread out of place becomes glaringly obvious. And so it is with writing as well.

But that's not why I chose to give my new writing blog this name.

It actually has to do with an old Korean folktale known as Weaving Maid and the Celestial Herdboy that has stayed with me ever since I first read it as an elementary schooler in my favorite book from Scholastic's wonderful Royal Diaries series, Sondok: Princess of the Moon and Stars. The story itself was used as a metaphor for the relationship between Sondok and her best friend, who end up separated from each other due to a sequence of political events I'm going to purposely keep vague in case any of you want to read it. (You should, by the way, it's one of my favorite children's novels).

For whatever reason, not only the novel, but this story, stuck in my mind, and inspired me to think of myself as a story weaver. It's not easy, and often, it's very hard to stay focused because of the people in your life. But for a writer, the call of the pen is inevitable, and sometimes, sacrifices are a necessary consequence of that calling. And so, this blog is meant to chronicle my struggles to maintain a balance between the responsibilities of everyday life and the wonderfully distracting world of the written arts! Hopefully at some point the two will converge (i.e., I'll get published). But until then, it's just the blogging life for me!