Working with Resistance

I'm feeling grim today: sore throat, headache, cold coming.  It would be the easiest thing in the world to crawl back under the duvet (and I wouldn't rule that out), but I'm going to stay sitting at my desk trying to write.  Not just because I've got a deadline, in fact that hardly figures at all in my thinking, but because I know from past experience that for some weird reason I write better when I'm run down and tired.

Perhaps it's because when your resistance is low you have quicker and more direct access to that vulnerable space where your creativity lies: the unprotected part that still aches with old hurts,  where your neuroses flourish unchecked; the twilight place where emotional memory meets imagination and becomes something close to inspiration.

Because of this, I'm going to wrap up warm, and grab a box of tissues, and sit tight, typing away in the hope that something a little more raw and unprocessed might slip out from under the wire...

In the Beginning...

 

Dawn, up early and no one else about, so time to look and think, both critical occupations for a writer, though to the outside observer it might seem as if you're simply idling. But stood idling long enough to see the day  lose its first intensity as the sun diluted.

The moment was full of private magic, like the best writing.  You need time to feed your imagination, and often that means being on your own, and daring to do nothing.

Taking the Fifth Amendment

If somebody asks you what you are writing about, don't answer.  It's a question I go into contortions to avoid.  Change the subject, take the fifth, do what ever is necessary in order to keep schtum.  Even close the door in your questioner's face...

The reason for this is that the first telling of your story will always be the best, so you should put it down on paper before squandering it elsewhere.  Something is lost in the retelling.  Perhaps it's because you're trying to recapture the freshness and immediacy of your original vision. I take this to the nth degree and try not to even think about a key scene before I'm ready to write it, because I know that some of the energy will be dissipated, or I will get diverted by trying to remember that defining phrase which came to me a few days earlier.

Keeping your work private and secret conjures some illicit magic - it's a bit like having an affair, where the object of your obsession and desire is your own imagination.  Narcissistic, I know, but in its own mysterious way it seems to work...

Memory and Imagination

 I've just got back from Burgundy -- time travelling through ancient villages - where I've been checking a few details for the novel that I'm writing the moment, which is set on the Nivernais canal. There were doors to die for on every corner; here's one I saw in Noyers sur Serein, its faded yellow paint a bit like a sunset scorched into the wood...

I spent some time in Chatillon en Bazois, a little town in the Morvan where the denouement of my story takes place.  I'd been there five years ago and looked at pictures of it since, but visiting it again having written about it for my book, I was  struck by the interplay between memory (how I thought it was) and imagination (how I wanted it to be) and how fiction begins at this intersection.  Revisiting Chatillon was almost like seeing the alchemy taking place: the town was less beautiful than I remembered and I could see at once how  my imagination had been at work.  All the details were there, but the reality was like looking at a landscape that is overcast compared to one in broad sunlight.  It made me think that that is what imagination -- creativity, if you like - does: it sheds light.  

So keep writing, and shine brightly....