A strange process. Voices pop up – in my case, it’s always voices. They reel off a few words or a few sentences and leave. Most of the time, the words belong to this or that character, so I add them to the stream or the rivulet already provided by the character. What the story is about, I don’t know. Why this character and not that other, I don’t know. To the writer, the whole thing feels like the tale of the blind men exploring an elephant with their hands, and attempting to describe the beast to one another.

The literary agents who wished to send words of rejection about the previous novel  seem to have done so. I assume the others won’t bother telling me they’re not interested. I’m not one to attempt the blanketing approach to querying. I may attempt a few more, or I may simply add the previous novel to my pile of unpublished writings.

Right now, I’m busy with the voices that pop up. Whether they all belong to a story in which their lives will meet up somehow, I don’t know. I jot down what shows up, like a person in a café, jotting down overhead bits of other people’s lives. Poised on the brink of something that may collapse and dissolve. Or may evolve, then get stuck somewhere. Or may become a full-grown story an agent may or may not care to take on.

Christmas break almost over. This morning, a character by the name of Kate recalled a poem by Dylan Thomas . This is what felt most meaningful to her today, so, on Kate’s behalf, here it is:

 

Do not go gentle into that good night,

Old age should burn and rave at close of day ;

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

 

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,

Because their words had forked no lightning they

Do not go gentle into that good night.

 

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright

Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

 

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,

And learn, too late, they grieve it on its way,

Do not go gentle into that good night.

 

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight

Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

 

And you, my father, there on the sad height,

Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.

Do not go gentle into that good night.

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

 

Dylan Thomas

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Illustration to this post: close-up on a sumptuous gift from sculptor Anna Mano – one in the series she calls Larmes. Tears. They come in all flavors, as revealed by photographer Rose-Lynn Fisher. All of them essential.