In preparing this weekly series about things that were behind my novels, I wasn’t expecting to see how much of what was happening in my own life during a revision could also impact a manuscript based on much earlier events. It’s not something I’ve seen mentioned in author interviews.
One of the writing adages I’ve kept at hand is this: “Steer into the pain.” I’m not sure where I found it or perhaps adapted it, but it has been helpful in reminding me not to take the emotionally easier way out when facing a situation, whether personal history or fictional abstraction. The pain is where the higher-level energy is as well as the revelation.
So add to the advices, “Write about what you’re discovering.”
In a way, it’s a reminder to write about what you don’t want to know but with the added kicker, “What you don’t want to admit.”
For those of you doing the NaNoWriMo challenge this month, may you add that insight to your energizers.
More recently, I would add to that something else that motivates me: The magic!
Or, in my case, pure wonder. Again, what do I know? And celebrate?
I’m finding they’re both essential currents in my life’s work.
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Let me say I rather miss Cassia from my novel What’s Left. After prodding me to that round of big revisions of my previously published fiction, she’s gone off on her own. She was even remote when it came to my nonfiction volume that more recently demanded my fullest attention. Well, she did earn her own category here at the Barn – Cassia’s World, based on the research and many outtakes from her novel’s drafting.
As for the real-life inspiration for many of my characters, let me repeat: Where are they all now? Or more accurately, where did they go? I don’t mean the aging rockers. I can think of social activists who kept the faith and marched on, largely out of the spotlight, though they’re aging, without replacements in line. But as for the others? I’m unsure of most of their names. And let’s forget the boilerplate disclaimer regarding all persons living or dead, even for futuristic space journeys or fantasies deep into the past.
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As I look back on the history underpinning my novels, I have to insist the potential was there. I must also ask, what if we had a more solid social structure and tradition, with something akin to elders? The dorm I lived in, the core of the opening half of the revised Daffodil novel, has today become something of the center I envisioned, without the radical political edge.
I suppose I could have told these stories time after time after work in a bar, but to me they seem to address a different collective experience. Besides, journalists have their own “war stories” to compare.
Just where were we gathering now, anyway? And where have we gone to get here?
A few have found a progressive faith community – church, synagogue, sangha, or perhaps a masonic order or fraternal lodge. But for the others?
Should I point back to the posts on the breakdown of community?
And here we had thought we were creating tribe.
As an extra point of emphasis, I’ll add: I’ve never returned to many of the locations where I’ve lived.
Jnana's Red Barn 