I like watching crows whenever they’re around. They’ll stroll up my driveway, dark head bopping cheerfully with every step, or creep through the trees branch by branch to click curiously at each other over my neighbor’s garden. They line up on the fences, cawing and cackling at jokes only their friendly little murder understands.

Whenever I see a crow, I see a sign to make time to work on my manuscript. It’s more habit than divination. In a much earlier draft, crows featured prominently in the story. So to keep myself writing and making progress, I’d tell myself if I saw or heard crows, I had to write for an hour or two that night.

Back then, I had a part-time job at a movie theater. Trash and spilled popcorn littered the parking lot. Of course I saw crows. But that’s how I kept my writing momentum going in the 2012-2016 era.

Birds on the Page

Crows don’t have much to do with the story now. Not since I saw pull quotes from Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo in my Twitter feed in 2016, noted enough similarities that made me think oh my god did we somehow write almost the same book, and read her book. No, our stories were not almost the same. Not even close. Hers was amazing. Mine was a mess.

But we had watched the same documentary on crow behavior. It inspired us both to write about a gang with the crow as a sigil and crow-like rituals. Once you learn how they hold “funerals” for deceased members of their flocks and hold grudges against humans who get on their bad side, it’s hard not to find the parallel perfect for a heist novel.

I got so into my crow research, they became one of my favorite animals. I’ve got crow stuff all over. Figures, feathers, art.

Taking a New Direction

So I spent the last nine years making heavy revisions. No more crows. Change the characters. Change the setting. Change the world.

I’d get 60% through the plot, find myself caught in a big ol’ plot hole in act three, and have to start revising again. I was stuck on the last one for two years before the key occurred to me.

No, literally. I put a key in one scene and the whole plot is fixed. It took me two years to come up with that.

I’d love to say that means the end of this draft is in sight. If I was able to write at my old pace, maybe it would be. But things are very different now. I have a very fast baby with a keen interest in power cords who turns one next month, not to mention aging pets who require more care. There’s also trying to run a business (ha…), my garden of Carolina Reaper peppers, a whole house to maintain…

You get it.

Still, when a crow perched in the woods behind my house a few weeks back and cawed to its unseen friends, I felt the familiar call to return to my manuscript. The longing to get back to the world I created and the characters I’ve poured so much into.

Out of curiosity—and definitely not because it was easier than sitting down and writing—I looked up crows in a book on animal symbolism a friend gifted me. I expected to see references to wisdom, secrets, and probably death. (By the way, my favorite crow joke came from a single-panel comic of some crows struggling to get their friends together. The caption: “An attempted murder.”) That stuff was in there, alright. Many cultures have differing interpretations on what mail from the Universe a crow brings.

“The Secret Magic of Creativity is Calling”

At the end of just over two pages of the physical characteristics, nesting habits, communication style, mating procedures, and various mythological connections (Greek/Roman, Chinese, Athapaskan Indians of Alaska, Celts, Biblical lore, and Norse), there is a single paragraph that sticks with me.

Wherever crows are, there is magic. They are symbols of creation and spiritual strength. They remind us to look for opportunities to create and manifest the magic of life. They are messengers calling to us about the creation and magic that is alive within our world everyday and available to us.

Ted Andrews, Animal Speak: The Spiritual and Magical Powers of Creatures Great & Small, p. 132

So strange that I already associated crows with making time to write fiction. Strange I still feel that connection even though they’re not part of my manuscript anymore.

For all we associate being a creative with being different, unusual, weird, a crow is a very ordinary bird to carry the same association. It’s a comforting, familiar, trusty symbol that shows up in the everyday as a gentle reminder to spend a little time tapping into our creative energy.

What curiosity has been haunting you lately? Leave a trace in the comments.

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