Just a few posts ago I spoke of odd coincidences. Today, another: Shortly after receiving an e-mail from a fellow Narrativer asking my horoscope sign, I picked up the mail and thumbed through the Writer’s Digest after happily seeing Margaret Atwood on the cover and an interview inside. More on Atwood in a second, but this was her closing statement: “You have to understand my Western horoscope sign is the scorpion, and we’re happiest in the toes of shoes where it’s very dark. Nobody knows we’re there.” I have great admiration for Atwood’s writing, but I too, am a daughter of Scorpio.
The interview was filled with insightful information as to how one author works, and two things in particular stand out:
Q. So how does a … novel come to be? Do you start with a plot concept? The characters?
A. I usually start with some voices, Or an image or a place…
Q. So you start with an image–
A. Yes, It’s like overhearing someone talking in the next room. It’s like seeing a village a long way off and thinking you have to go there. It’s like seeing an object fraught with significance. You wonder why it’s there. What is that bloodstained cleaver doing in the middle of the living room floor? I think we’d better look into this! I’m compelled by something to go and find out more about it. And I’ve been wrong.
And this, on Writing and Immortality:
“All writing of the narrative kind, and perhaps all writing, is motivated, deep down, by a fear of and a fascination with mortality–by a desire to make the risky trip to the Underworld and to bring something or someone back from the dead.” (Excerpt from her book, Negotiating With the Dead: A Writer on Writing.)
More on the interview can be found at Writer’s Digest, and I’ve already added her book, “A Writer on Writing” to my list of wannas.
The Lost Children: A Charity Anthology
“All writing of the narrative kind, and perhaps all writing, is motivated, deep down, by a fear of and a fascination with mortality–by a desire to make the risky trip to the Underworld and to bring something or someone back from the dead.”
My gods, it sounds like she has an affinity for dead people too.
***Twilight Zone theme playing in the background***
Coincidence is a funny thing.
You know, people have chided Dickens’ for the “unrealistic” coincidences in his tales…but I gotta tell ya, for people who pay attention, it’s not all that far-fetched…on Sunday, I’ll have walked thirty-four years on this earth and…life has taught me thus far to believe almost anything. The more I live, the more nothing surprises me. I’m tellin ya.
Happy Birthday in advance, and may you keep your eyes open as well as your mind, because I “gotta tell ‘ya”, there will be even more amazing things in the next 20 years ahead.
I will look for this book tonight at Borders. I usually love Atwood. Hope you are having a rest, or some fun, or at least doing nothing!