Direction

Cygnet, Leamington Spa, June 2006

Yeah, I’ve been writing, but I haven’t been able to shake the feeling that it doesn’t count, ’cause just about everything I’ve written since my initial chapter or two has been drivel. Well, let me qualify that: I’ve written some more of the stories that go inside the story, and those, I think, are pretty much drivel-free. But when I attempt to write the narrative, to describe what’s in front of me when I’m flying low over my fictional world, I don’t much like what emerges lately. I feel like some huge part of my talent has flown south for the winter. Mexico is nice this time of year. The rest of me is pretty much drifting, and I’m not sure where to look for it.

 I know brave and wonderful writers who, upon realizing they’ve written 25,000 words or so of less-than-deathless prose, shrug their shoulders and bin it, then write 25,000 good words to replace it. Of course some of these folks can turn out that kind of wordage in a weekend, but I suspect the truth is it’s more a matter of superior temperament on their part, and the fact that I don’t write fast. Yet. I’m working on a lot of changes this century, and I think some improvements in the speed department would not go amiss.

I’ll tell you something I love about being up to my eyeballs in a project: that feeling you sometimes get that the Cosmos is conspiring to make you trip over exactly the things you need to make it happen. I’m willing to grant that at least half of that comes from being on the alert for anything and everything that might possibly be made into fictional grist, but whatever’s left over seems to be some spooky partnership between your subconscious mind and the quantum field. Or maybe space aliens with big buggy eyes.

Case in point: a few weeks ago I thought of an architecture book I’d seen 20 year ago or so: A Pattern Language, by Christopher Alexander, et al. I had no idea why I was thinking of it other than that I’m interested in architecture (I’d only glanced through it very cursorily once, and couldn’t have told you what it was about, but I remembered the title), and for a couple of weeks I looked for it wherever I went, without success. Finally I reserved it at the library, and when I got it home I realized this was the next book I needed to read to understand some of the places this novel is going, and where it came from, for that matter.  A Pattern Language is about designing a world — not a fictional world per se, but one to live in — from the décor of rooms, through design of houses, gardens, streets, parks, villages, towns, cities, metropoli, and political regions. As it happens, the world in Eden — working title, but you know about working titles, don’t you? — is a deliberately-designed one. The inhabitants live in regions, towns, villages, streets, and houses that were bestowed upon them by mysterious benefactors, and they build new ones with the help of a similarly-bestowed book: The Book of Towns. Well, I just found the book, and I hadn’t consciously realized it existed. This sort of thing fills me with gratitude and glee. So as I give thanks this year for my 100% soy-based turkey surrogate and all the trimmings, my wonderful family, dear friends, a roof overhead in Seattle’s rainiest November ever, and novels written and otherwise, I’m going to throw in a very special thank-you for my wacky subconscious and its fabulous filing system. Keep the surprises coming.