Magical Muse

I picked up a book that had been sitting around in C's "unread" pile. After a few pages, I realized this might be a good one. After a few more pages, I realized it might provide some deep background for the book I am writing. I grabbed my "main" reference book to follow along and am happily back into the creative process.

My Muse...she leads, I follow.

It's Tuesday...Where Are You?

I am in Ireland and New Orleans/Washington D.C.

It's a bit of a writing exercise, actually. I thought it would be valuable to read through a few popular paperbacks to see what popular fiction is up to these days. I usually read "literary" novels and nonfiction so this is a departure from the usual for me. A sort of survey. I am looking for characterization, setting, dialogue, pace, how the book is structured.

One book has been made into a movie. I have read the book before and seen the movie several times. I picked this one because I wanted to understand how a "thriller" is put together. The other book is a "romance". I have never read it and doubt it has ever been made into a movie. Same deal here, how is a "romance" put together? My book has aspects of both genres, so like I said, this is a survey.

That said, I picked the wrong "romance" book. The opening chapter gives an overview of a small Irish village and introduces the main characters, most of whom are children at this point in the story. OK so far. Then, the following chapters (I am up to Chapter 6) are focused vignettes concentrating on one character. I can see where it is going...the life of the village is told through these vignettes. It is a fun read, but not really what I was looking for.

The "thriller" has been in the back of my mind since I started this project. At one point (while waiting for my first granddaughter to be born), I tried to deconstruct this book, line by line. It grew tedious and I put it away (M is 18 months old now). Now I am focusing on chapter by chapter, much more productive. This is not to say I will not come back and do the deconstruction later.

OK, here are the books.

Me Too

I am just beginning John Fowles "The Magus". Fowles is on the "must read" list in my writing notebook. No idea where I got the idea that he is a "must read" but wherever it was, all I can do now is throw out a "thank you" into the ether.

His foreword to the May 1985 Bantam Doubleday Dell paperback, on the very first page echoes something I have felt for a long time:

"A more objective side of me did not then believe I should ever become a publishable writer; a subjective one could not abandon the myth it was trying, clumsily and laboriously, to bring into the world; and my strongest memory is of constantly having to abandon drafts because of an inability to describe what I wanted. Both technique and that bizarre face of the imagination that seems to be more like a failure to remember the already existent than what it really is -- a failure to evoke the non-existent -- kept me miserably aground."

I am still not sure if "the already existent" does not really exist. Often, in that dreamlike state, just before actually being "awake" in the morning, words stream through my mind like water. When I wake up, the memory of the words is there, but not the substance. Is there, in my mind, a place where the words flow unaided? Is this the place I "go" when I sit down and write two thousand words so effortlessly it feels like floating? Am I transcribing, or creating? Is this the "muse"? If it is, why can't I access it at will?

John Fowles started The Magus in the 1950s. It was published in 1965.