Reflections of Undertakers of Rain
I love small
tableaux. I love the notion of a snapshot too. Small constructions
of scene, whether or not they are embedded into a larger work of
theater or film are wonderful things to me. For instance, and this
stretches back some time, in the film Barton Fink
the Barton Fink character and the Charlie character are sitting in
Barton's hotel room. The scene is a very quick conversation between
the two characters and then they're off in different directions. But
in that one instant, the composition is stunning. It's at least very
stunning to me. The tableau is two men so close to one another that
they could probably smell one another's breath, but they cannot
communicate. If this example is too esoteric, forgive me.
I
was mired in the yet to be named novel, Sand
and Asbestos when one
night I had a strange dream. It was the summer of 2009, I think.
Already, and this post is yet to come, I had developed a method of
novel writing that was in full swing by the time I began Undertakers
of Rain. I had
completed three manuscripts that spring and summer. The story that
would become Sand and
Asbestos was a strange
thing I worked on between other projects. But the morning of the
strange dream, I put down everything else to write one single image.
The
dream, as with most dreams, made very little sense. It will make even
less sense should I try to explain it now. The important piece of
the dream was this: it was wartime, I was in a small town where
everyone was a spy and I hid under a stairwell with a woman.
The image was this: she
had a pile of jewels (probably stolen) and she had to protect them
until the end of the war. In the dream, I vowed to help her. The
two of us were cramped under a stairwell, a space smaller than a
closet and we were to be there indefinitely.
How the hell do you write a scene like that? Two strangers, wartime, stolen jewels? I struggled with the image. I kept trying to
write a vignette using these two characters and this situation.
Believe it or not, it got stupider and stupider as I continued with
it.
Finally, I came up with something. I thought it was good.
Ultimately, the scene did not make it into the novel. Rather, the
image, and all the hassle of trying to make it work became nothing
more than the springboard for the project.
Undertakers
of Rain
is the product of a disjointed dream and a poorly conceived idea of
an image. But, perhaps that's what it's all about, this game of
writing is the process between the initial spark and the final,
readable product.
I
think all writers have the initial spark that leads them to
something. But like the image I've shared with you, that initial
spark is just what it is, a spark. It takes more than an interesting
image, or an interesting tableau to get a reader into a story. Next
time you watch Barton
Fink
I wonder if you'll even notice the scene that is so etched into my
mind.
Next time: The process of construction
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