Trope-a-Dope
Killing with the Edge of the
Moon is my twentieth novel. Prime Books released it November 2006 at the
World Fantasy convention. It took seven years to write, because I worked
on it only during twilight. Here in the tropics, that's about a half hour
twice a day. I even completed all the rewrites exclusively at dawn or dusk,
which required a lot of forbearance on my editor's part. This is my shortest
novel, yet it took longer to create than any of my other books.
There is madness to this method.
It's a stupendous way to release the irrationality of creative power. I
call this yinsane technique trope-a-dope. By leaning heavily on the tropes
(the rhetorical devices) of a genre, a writer can tire out the ego, the
dope, and open the writing experience to the unexpected.
Any ego who objects to being
called a dope (ignorant person) should Google the neuroscientist Benjamin
Libet. He demonstrates that the mind is a side-effect of the brain. (Electronic
monitors detect the impulse to act in the brain a fraction of a second before
the mind experiences the volition to act.) Libet's research questions the
nature of free will and suggests the reality of an authentic self that is
unconscious. (Sounds similar to the original self, the Zen tradition of
intrinsic awareness deeper than ego, doesn't it?)
Yinsanity is a process of relating
to the sources of creativity in our unconscious. Trope-a-dope involves physically
positioning oneself among the figures of speech that inform the story one
intends to write.
Killing with the Edge of the
Moon, a novel based on Celtic myth, went nowhere at first, because I had
too much material, notebooks of ancient lore collected while writing Arthurian
fantasies. I decided to let the inner writer organize the story and, to
encourage that, I had to get yinsane in a Celtic way.
The Irish poet W. B. Yeats
firmly established in our modern minds the trope of "Celtic Twilight"
with his story collection of that name based on Irish legend. The gloaming
as portal to supernatural realms is famous in Gaelic fables. Fixing myself
firmly in that trope, I brought out my Arthurian notebooks only at twilight
and yinsanely invited the incandescent spirits (or "qualia" if
you're following these memoranda) to work with me.
Seven years later ... well,
you can decide for yourself about the merit of what those twilight spirits
had to say if you get a chance to read the novel. As for my contribution,
the 30 minute work frames influenced my writing style, compressing character,
plot and image so much that I subtitled the work "A Graphic Novel [Without
Illustrations]."
Of course, there are many other
ways to trope-a-dope that don't take so long. Costumes. Music. Aromatherapy.
(The scent of kokio keokeo, a fragrant Hawaiian hibiscus, inspired Wyvern,
a novel set in the midst of the 17th century spice trade.) The idea is to
get beyond one's ordinary self, and sometimes there is help available from
the clichés of the genre.
Art is done with blood - and
the poltergeist of meaning. Blood is our own uniqueness. Some writers go
to great extremes to get away from clichés and hear the voice of
their blood: Anthony Trollope purchased the farms surrounding his land and
had the animals, including all birds, destroyed. Marcel Proust wrote in
a cork-lined room. Any wonder Chaucer calls our art the "dredful joye?"
But don't forget the poltergeist.
Meaning pops up of its own volition, with unexpected and often intrusive
creative mischief. Sometimes that mischief leads us astray as writers. Other
times it's not there at all and everything we create is predictable and
boring. These futile experiences can be so disheartening they result in
what the Bard calls "speechless death."
My native English, now I must
forgo,
And now my tongue's use is to me no more
Than an unstringed viol or a harp...;
What is thy sentence then but speechless death?
(Richard II)
Yet, with diligence and a little
hominid cunning, we can use metaphoric behavior to send the dope out for
coffee while the inner writer strings the Harp. It just takes a little yinsanity.
Art is worth losing your heart
to - if you don't lose heart. |