Saturday, July 14, 2012
Communication
from Beyond
Before you get uppity and think I am an
adherent of spiritualism, I am not! But since this is a meandering set of blogs
about the process of writing, I thought I’d take a look at inspiration. Even for the hardened writer, never mind someone
suffering from the dreaded block, there may be a brief period when he or she
casts around for some catalyst or other to propel the pen across the virgin
page. In earlier blogs there has been much discussion on the gathering of data
for the novel but where does the author find a state of mind that might
precipitate looking for a launch pad?
It is easy to make a list of possible
sources of inspiration; autobiographical events, news stories, criminal cases,
anecdotes, books you have loved, people you have met. Yet these represent the
mechanical beginnings, explicit sources that you can link to your tale. What
about prime movers that are non-explicit but somehow make it possible for you
to cast around for one of the above stimuli? For example, some writers submerge
themselves in music. The nuances of emotion that stem from such experiences are
not literal but nevertheless causal – or at least contingent. Then again,
writers have always been known to isolate themselves in landscapes, whether
they be the lake poets of the British C19th or present day hideaways in
Provence. There is a growing band who immerse themselves in other cultures,
imbibing the mores, the sights and sounds to give their novels an exotic
ambience. The need to research is these days a precondition for a large group
of authors, a troubling fact for me. I spent a great deal of my professional
life as an academic researcher (look elsewhere on this blog site) and have come
to fiction largely because I want to exercise the imagination rather than fit
stories into real, well-realised settings. Though I enjoy this house in the
French Pyrenees with its stupendous setting, the people here and their customs
have never entered one line of prose in my books. The mountains may have, but
incidentally, not as a result of copious note taking. The mountain that frames
the final book in Azimuth is more like a Japanese Fuji than Canigou, the sacred
Catalan/French mountain upon which my house perches.
But, as an amusing post script to the
above, a stimulation I have felt on a few occasions has been the visiting of the
graves of writers. It’s certainly not a religious experience. It’s not spiritualist. Maybe it’s a bit
Buddhist or Hindu if you follow the line that when we die we disaggregate into
individual atoms and become part of the future aggregation of another
individual. Oh, and another aside, I don’t make trips to graves as a central
thrust of travelling. But If I’m there and one turns out to be nearby…! Thus,
Robert Graves in Majorca, T. E. Lawrence in some country churchyard in the west
country, Robert Frost in New England, Poet’s Corner in Westminster Abbey and,
by far the greatest experience Novodevichy Cemetery in St Petersburg. Here, in a really small area in the middle of
the city are truly majestic poets, writers, composers and artists. Phenomenal.
If ever you want to write but can’t get the pen out of your desk drawer, try
communing by the grave of one of our own, a writer now deceased. People tell me that I am the least
sentimental person they have met – so what I say is not sentimental. It’s more
like a private ritual in a belief system of one! This very motif is played out
in Azimuth. How much of what we seek
and believe ‘out there’ in the world, is really ‘in here’?
www.chronometerpublications.me
www.azimuthtrilogy.com
<< Home