CREATIVE HEADACHES

A 'ghost drum'

           I’m in the process of turning the third Ghost World book, Ghost Dance, into a kindle.

          This has involved me closely reading all three books again, some 20 years after writing them, an odd experience.  I’m relieved to find that they haven’t made me flinch with embarrassment, or want to entirely rewrite them (though I have changed the odd word.)  In fact, immodest though it may be, I think they’re good.  If you like tales of shamans in dark, frozen Czardoms, of shape-shifting, wolves, witchcraft, spirit-travelling, and barking mad czars – these are your bag.

          But the books puzzle me.  I’m an atheist (I tell myself.)  I’m hard-headed and sceptical, me.  I don’t believe in gods, or other worlds, or witches, or ghosts, or any such nonsense.

          And yet I wrote these stories, which are all about spirit-travelling and following the Ghost Road to the Ghost World.  I may have taken some of the ideas from myth and folklore, but I chose to inhabit these characters and these worlds.  I could have written a story set in the solid, hard-headed world around me. But I didn’t.

          It wasn’t just a case of ‘making up a story’ either.  I remember, quite clearly, the compulsion I felt to write these books.  ‘Ghost Drum’ took me three years, and exhausted me, but I couldn’t give it up.  And as soon as it was finished, I wrote Ghost Song, which is Ghost Drum’s mirror-image.  In ‘Drum’, on midwinter night, a female shaman demands a baby-girl from her mother, and is given her. In ‘Song’, on midsummer night, a male shaman demands a baby boy from his father, and is refused.

As soon as Song was finished, I had to write Ghost Dance, driven by a nagging feeling of unfinished business.  I had wanted the barking mad Czar to be a central character in Drum – but he was pushed aside by other characters.  I felt I still had to write his book – and, in Dance, Czar Grozni is truly mad, bad and dangerous even if you don’t know him.

          I’ve long been drawn to the theory that the two walnut-like halves of our brains operate as individual personalities.  I think the one we’re less aware of – which has more time to put its feet up and day-dream – supplies all the best and most original of our ideas.  It knows what we really want.  It’s the ‘muse’ which whispers in artists’ ears.  (I’ve written more about my ‘muse’ here.)

          Some day I must blog about what I learned from Lucy Coats about ‘creative napping’, otherwise known as ‘a guided spirit-journey.’  One half of me finds it deeply intriguing and useful.  The other half is absolutely furious that it works; and the two halves end up scrapping like cats.

          One half of me is hard-headed and sceptical, all right.  Wants a reason and an explanation for everything.  It makes a great editor.

          The other half, the one that dreams up the ideas and images – well, that half is, and has always been, drawn towards the ghostly, the strange, the fantastic, the inexplicable, the numinous.

          There’s the ‘creative dynamic’ for you.  Pass the aspirin.

BLOT

Search Amazon.com Electronics for kindle 3 
                            

Introducing Blott

          For some time now, I've been trying to think of something to make my blog a little different, especially a little different from the blogs of my SAS friends.  Others can review books better than me, and since I seldom emerge from my cave except to snarl at people in the supermarket, I’m not the one to dish the writing goss.

           I got the idea of a cartoon.  It was to be based around a writer.  I thought about introducing my computers as other characters – weeny little netbook, middle-sized laptop and great big desktop.  I liked the idea, but I didn’t think I could actually do it.

          I can draw a bit, but I’m out of practice and anyway, there’s a big difference between an ordinary drawing and a cartoon with some style.  I didn’t think I could draw a cartoon that was any good.

          And jokes.  I’m not that good at jokes.  I didn’t think I could come up with enough.

          And then there’s time.  I’m writing books, writing proposals, turning my back–list into e-books, and being an RLF fellow… I didn’t think I could produce a cartoon as well.

          Still, the idea wouldn’t go away, and in the pub one night, I mentioned it to my brother and sister-out-law.  My brother Adam was interested.  He is a cartoonist – has published cartoons, and been paid for them.  He had developed a rather stylish cat and mouse.  And despite having more than enough to be getting on with himself – holding down a job and studying with the OU – he volunteered to produce the cartoon.

          So Blott was born – and I should say no more and let Blott speak for himself.  I didn’t lay down too strict a brief – I see no point in dictating to someone else’s creativity.  Enough that it had to fit in with a writer’s blog.  I’d quite like the computers to be characters, but have no idea if they will ever be…  The sister-out-law, as is her wont, has supplied some brilliant ideas – as I’ve no doubt the other brother will (but he’s designing the covers for my e-books).  It’s a cooperative cartoon!

          First one to be posted this weekend.  All of us @priceclan hope you enjoy it.