Friday, March 2, 2018

Starting a Novel

2nd March 2018

When I was a philosophy undergraduate, we were assigned essays such as Discuss the use of irony in the Platonic Dialogues.  Topics so egg-headed, it had you reaching for the oxygen tank. So, what I would do was to chip away around the topic until I got a spark, something that would stir my blood a little. It didn't even really have to do with the topic in hand - it could be only slightly related. For instance I threaded the notion of Logus versus mythos from the book "Zen Buddhism and the Art of Motor Cycle Maintenance" into a discussion of Greek philosophy, earning my lecturer's ire, but making it possible for me to write it at all. I should have seen the writing on the wall then, and switched my major over to English Literature. My lecturer scrawled in red ink the judgement that I was determined to remain an amateur.

Anyway, amateur or not, I still use this method when I am thinking about starting a novel, though that is a much more exciting prospect from the outset. It's a moment when I am already motivated, but I'm still looking  for that little flame, the thing that transports me whenever I touch it. For this next novel, I was walking along the shores of a lake in the Middle East, trying to pick up a vibe, when unexpectedly the first line of Yeats' poem "The Lake Isle of Innisfree," (which I have cited multiple times in this blog) kept running through my head. I resisted at first, because it invokes an Irish setting, and far from what I was looking for. "I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree." It completely changed the feel of the character I was thinking of placing here, because I was seeing it through his very un-Irish filter.


Now that I am back in the USA and embarking on the writing of a new novel, that line is a glowing touchstone that transports me into the creative space. I have heard actors describe a little emotional spot in themselves that they rub raw before going on stage or in front of a camera. It's a sort of talisman to take them out of the ordinary and into the ineffable.
So, as I embark on a new novel, here I am at the water's edge with a lake before me and my character and WB Yeats beside me. A very good place to start!

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