Tea For Tue: Tea With Whimsy--Who is Telling the Story?

In Tea With Whimsy, the story takes place through a narrator.  But who is this person?

When I first began writing this as a blog, it started out as the fictional ramblings of an insomniac.  But the story took on a life of its own, and I had to start writing it more seriously, editing and developing characters and so on, which is why I stopped blogging it.

The narrator of the story introduced herself to me as Annwyl.  She pronounces her name like the words,  Anewil to rhyme with A-jewel.  I looked up the name and found out it was of Welsh origin, and that it meant beloved one.

Annwyl eventually told me that she and Seren are Whimsy's sisters, which wasn't clear in the early blog posts, but the more I wrote, the more the characters told me about their personal lives, just as it is when you meet someone.  They don't tell you everything all at once.  The longer you know someone, the more personal details that someone shares with you.  And so it is with this story as well.

So Annwyl began telling me things about her life, and a funny thing has happened.  Even though Annwyl is not me and I am not her, she and I have similar things that we do in life.  After all I have to have some point of reference from which to present the story.

While I do have three cats and I am a book binder by trade, I don't have 3 sisters, and I don't know anyone who can communicate the way Annwyl and Whimsy do, although I believe anything is possible.

Whimsy's lifestyle fascinates me, and I've had people tell me they want to be Whimsy and live like she does.  Whimsy's lack of modern conveniences stems from my disillusionment as a householder caused by my own plumbing and electrical problems.  I'd rather just do without all those built in "conveniences" that become so inconvenient when you have to tear out a wall or replace a floor.  Whimsy's cottage is small and simple.  She is a minimalist.  She lives off her land.  She is mostly self sufficient.

She's really old school.

She lives the way my parents did when they were kids, and the way I would like to live.  That life is hard work.  But I think it's even harder work to go to a job you have little or no feeling for everyday, working for someone else just to make money to buy your food.  Why not just grow it?  Work is work.  There are 24 hours in each day whether you spend it working for yourself or someone else.  There are ways.  People all over the planet are finding ways to live life on their own terms.  With a little creative thinking, it can be done.

That is something Whimsy and I agree on wholeheartedly.

(This post originally appeared in Tea With Whimsy as a blog post on January 12, 2015)