I Slay Dragons

“I slay dragons.”

I imagine Medea saying this to Jason after he approached her with his ludicrous plan to steal the Golden Fleece. She would have looked him in the eye with her hands cupped into trembling fists as she shouted: I slay dragons! BEWARE!

She would have said this, that is, if she was free from the curse of Eros’ arrow and had the liberty to break from the plot of the goddesses Hera, Athena, and Aphrodite. If she had been able to take a stand and turn from pawn to heroine, I imagine Apollonius of Rhodes’ The Argonautica would have told a completely different story.

Yet, this fantasy of mine is not how the myth set in 1300 BC goes. Instead, in The Argonautica, Medea, daughter of King Aeëtes, is struck by Eros’s arrow and forced to fall in love with Jason. Jason then requests Medea’s assistance to steal her father’s Golden Fleece, and by divine intervention, she can not deny him; thus, she charms the Colchian Dragon, so Jason can kill it and steal the fleece. Therefore, in mythos Medea is preserved as a traitor, consort of Jason, and—in Euripides’ Medea—murderer of her children. She is a tool. She lacks a voice.

In the face of despair, I have often found myself wondering whether or not I possess a voice, or if my words even matter. It is a battle I face when I look back at the shelved manuscripts on my computer. At times, I still wonder if I am writing without a voice or editing without a point—feelings, I believe, Medea would have felt—if she were facing the blinding computer screen and holding her breath as one after another responses to her work besieged the inbox.

I remember the despair I felt acutely in 2022. I remember losing sight of my love for storytelling, freezing whenever I would turn on my computer as a voice whispered in my head: Failure. Still, I had tried to force myself to tell new stories, turning my back to the computer screen to stab at a notebook with a pencil. Still, I had failed. Story after story. I continued to fail. 

I remember flipping to a random page in my notebook to trace the sketches, take note of the preserved fragments of eraser bits, notice the slight smear of a fingerprint, and reread the scattered notes; I remember taking a moment to take it all in before I prepared to strike down every word until there was nothing left but the remains of a bloody eraser. I had been prepared to slay my work, my dragon, like Medea with her potions before her Colchian Dragon. I felt that I had to erase the unspoken word “failure” from my notes, to purge it from existence, but I did not know how, only that there must have been a fault within me, within my words. Thus, I prepared to destroy the words; and in destroying the words, I prepared to destroy a part of myself.

The part in the myth when Medea faces the Colchian dragon and lulls it to sleep with her potions is the scene in which I pity her the most. She had no say in the matter. The gods gave her no choice. In rereading the moment in which Jason is about to seize the fleece, I mourn Medea’s silence, and I feel inside myself the unspoken questions I imagine were racing through her mind.

My Medea stands as still as a tree in the sacred grove of Ares. She cannot quiet the loud thumping of her heart. She does not see Jason behind her, but feels his presence. His very existence consumes her. Her heartbeat is now a part of him. She is his. His Medea.

She knows this and despises it. She loathes Jason for how he has besieged her heart with the possibility of another life—one of adventure and freedom—and conquered her. He promised that she would be his queen. His Medea. Soon he will take her away from her home for the service she is performing. Her service, however, is unwilling. Yet, she cannot say so. She can only make exclamations of love. She can only say “yes” when she means to scream “no!” She cannot find her words. She cannot force her face, her eyes, her very look to convey that she does not want to be his, that she does not want to be owned. My Medea wants to be free.

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Objectively, it can be said that while there are a ton of books published each year, it is not easy to break into the market for adult fantasy in traditional publication. It is a crowded market. It can take an author years in the querying trenches before their manuscript catches the eye of an agent and then an editor. It is a process of learning from mistakes, moving past rejections, and writing for the sake of one’s passion for storytelling.

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My Medea has no words of her own. It is as if there is an invisible arrow impaled through her heart. It impedes her thoughts and dismisses logic. It poisons her with false promises. It tells her that Jason loves her, though she has not heard him say so. However, she can think nothing of it since the pressure of the wound the gods inflicted weighs upon her mind and heart. It makes her feel weak. It strips her of any choice, any say in the matter. She has been abandoned by the gods to be Jason’s tool. She no longer owns herself. She belongs to Jason.

One month after another, the word “no” laid waste to my inbox. I, like Medea, was unable to say “no” back. Instead, my resolve to do better with the next manuscript bolstered me. I got over my writer’s block, because I wrote for myself, because storytelling is my love. Yet, as time wore on—years went by and other manuscripts failed—the poisonous hiss of doubt still whispered in my mind. It told me to murder my new manuscript, my Colchian Dragon, that I raised for over one hundred thousand words. The thoughts bombarded me with words plucked from the emails sent by the gods over the years until I found myself returning to the very treacherous thoughts that had nearly made me give in to writer’s block years ago.

My Medea stands before her Colchian dragon, and charms it to sleep. Jason steps forward. She steps back. She lowers her head as the scraping hiss of a sword breaks the silence.

The year is 2022 and I dread checking my Gmail. My phone has alerted me that the final response to my query has arrived.

My Medea’s cheeks flush, her head pounds, and her stomach turns; yet, she remains still.

My cheeks burn, my head aches, and my stomach has butterflies; I run to my room.

Medea’s heart is screaming, Hope is dead! A fire burns inside of her.

My mind is shouting, There is hope! A fire burns inside of me.

The computer light turns on and fades to black. I close my manuscript and shelve it. The year is 2022, the final rejection arrived.

Thwack!

The head of my Medea’s Colchian Dragon rolls to a stop before her feet. Its eyes ask, Who are you? Who are you to let others slay your own dragon? And Medea is silent.

Who are you? Who are you to let yourself slay your own dreams?

Who am I? Who am I to let the voice in my head, terrible doubt, tell me that I can amount to nothing?

Are my stories nothing? I cannot help but ponder that question when I come face to face with the blinking cursor of the final draft of my latest manuscript. Who am I? Who am I to dare to write, to think that my stories will interest a larger audience?

2022. Writer’s block. 

Still clutching an eraser, like a dagger, in my hand, I paused. I drew in a shuddering breath and released it in choking gasps. I turned on my computer and faced my draft and inbox yet again. Yet, I stood still and silent. My computer timed out and the screen that had shown me the bright pages of an edited, rewritten, revised, and final draft faded to nothing. I stared at the screen. I saw my reflection behind fingerprints and dust. Who are you? I began to bear the weight of the dragon’s question and know its burden, but like Medea I could not comprehend how to form an answer.

Who are you to let others slay your own dragon?

The poison of doubt wanted me to destroy my Colchian Dragon and give away my Golden Fleece, my imagination. It told me to do something reasonable. How about you become a lawyer? Rocket scientist? President of the United States? Reasonable.

All it takes is one yes.

I realized then that I wanted to be a writer. Storytelling is in my blood. It is what I love to do. It is what I need to do. Still, doubt whispered.

I write, but am I a writer?

Year after year, manuscript after manuscript, I will not quit. I may receive rejection after rejection, but I will become stronger because of them. And I will write, because I cannot imagine a life in which I stop telling stories. So, who am I?

Who are you? Who are you to let others slay your own dragon?

Early 2025. A new manuscript written in a notebook:

I stood over it with eraser in hand to murder the words, like Medea and her dragon. However, there was no arrow piercing my heart. There was only my love for writing. My Colchian Dragon, my story, asked me, Who are you?

Who am I?

Who are you to let others slay your own dragon?

Who am I to give up on storytelling? Who am I to destroy my manuscript because of doubt, because of fear?

I dropped my eraser and set aside my notebook. I touched my computer screen. The darkness cleared. There was light as I faced my doubt. There were words to be written, a story to tell.

“One more word. Sentence. Paragraph.”

“One more page. Chapter. Draft.”

“One more query. Revision. Try.”

Now, my cursor blinks at me like an eye opening, my computer hums invitingly, and my email is silent. Yet another revised and completed manuscript has been brought to life by my own hand. However, though I may receive one ‘no’ after another, I know now that I will not give away the Golden Fleece of my imagination. I will protect and cherish my Colchian Dragon even if I have to slay it in the end, shelving the manuscript to move on to another.

For I have slayed my dragons before. I am prepared to take control of my story. BEWARE!

“I am a writer.”