Writer's Notebook 1: Imagination

Skills I'm sharpening while writing my second book.

Uttering a word is like striking a note on the keyboard of the imagination.

-Ludwig Wittgenstein¹

Writing my second book is a challenge. My first book, available on Amazon, is an historical look at some lesser-known stories of Los Angeles. That book required a lot of research, but I could rely on skills developed while preparing hundreds of sermons as a pastor. This second book, however, is a work of historical fiction.

Like the first book, my experience in the Echo Park and Silverlake neighborhoods of L.A. provides material for the book. But this second book gives me a new freedom, the freedom to let my imagination fly. But, as the saying goes, with freedom comes responsibility. If this subsequent book is going to be anything more than a soliloquy, I have to learn new skills. Preaching experience is not enough.

For example, the first sentence of this post, “Writing my second book is a challenge,” passes on something I feel when, pen in hand, I look at the blank page before me. But for you, my reader, it is rather mundane, certainly unimaginative, even boring. Words have the power, not just to pass on information, but to fire our imagination. I need to learn, in my newfound freedom, ways to release that power.

Metaphor is one of the proven ways to do this. It would be far more interesting for you if I wrote something like:

• Writing a book seems like a river too high to cross.

• Writing a book seems like a fence too tall to climb.

• Writing a book seems like a mountain too high to scale.

Each metaphor sparks a different image in our minds. But, it is important for me, as a writer, to choose a metaphor that sparks a memory in line with what I am going to say. Given the passage I am going to share with you below, the third metaphor is the best. So, let me begin again by writing, “Writing a book seems like a mountain to high to scale.”

But metaphor isn’t enough to illustrate the freed imagination unleashing the power of words. So, I am going to guide you through one of the most powerful examples of imaginative writing that I know.

The Princess and Curdie begins this way:

“A mountain is a strange and awful thing. In old times, without knowing so much of their strangeness and awfulness as we do, people were more afraid of the mountains. But then somehow they had not come to see how beautiful they are as well as awful, and they hated them - and what people hate they must fear. Now that we have learned to look at them with admiration, perhaps we do not feel quite awe enough of them. To me, they are beautiful terrors.”

This was written by George MacDonald, a 19th-century pastor, author, and poet credited with helping start the entire genre of fantasy. In this passage, he took on the challenge of sharing what he sees when he looks at a mountain with his imagination:

“I will try to tell you what they are. They are portions of the heart of the earth that have escaped from the dungeon down below, and rushed up and out. “

He has our attention, doesn’t he? We want to know more. We want to read further. He obliges us by continuing with the heart metaphor:

“For the heart of the earth is a great wallowing mass, not of blood, as in the hearts of men and animals, but of glowing hot, melted metals and stones. And as our heart keeps us alive, so that great lump of heat keeps the earth alive…”

Then he continues to guide the reader on a tour of the beautiful terror of a mountain by shifting to the metaphor of a boiling pot.

“…it is a huge power of buried sunlight - that is what it is. Now think: out of that cauldron, where all the bubbles would be as big as the Alps if it could get room for its boiling, certain bubbles have bubbled out and escaped - up and away, and there they stand in the cool, cold sky - mountains. Think of the change, and you will no more wonder that there should be something awful about the very look of the mountain…”

Now he is ready to pull together his descriptions together in a way that leads us into awe, wonder, and even praise:

“…from the darkness - for where the light has nothing to shine upon, it is much the same as darkness - from the heat, from the endless turmoil of boiling unrest - up, with a sudden heavenward shoot, into the wind, and the cold, and the starshine, and a cloak of ermine above the blue green mail of the glaciers (as a knight in shining armor); and the great sun, their grandfather, up there in the sky; and their little old cold aunt, the moon, that comes wandering about the house that night; and everlasting stillness, except for the wind that turns the rocks and caverns into a roaring organ for the young archangels that are studying how to let out the pent-up praises of their hearts, and the molten music of the stream, rushing ever from the bosom of the glaciers firstborn.

Wow! Yet MacDonald isn’t done yet. He continues our exploration of the mountain by digging inside and describing what we might see.

But inside, who shall tell what lies there? Caverns of awfullest solitude, their walls miles thick, sparkling with ores of gold or silver, copper or iron, tine or mercury, studded perhaps with precious stones - perhaps and brook, with eyeless fish in it, running, running ceaselessly, cold and babbling, through banks crusted with carbuncles, and golden topazes, or over gravel of which some of the stones are rubies and sapphires - who can tell? - and whoever can’t tell is free to think…

I am in awe of his imagination, of his ability with words, of the way he uses both word and imagination to resurface the imagination that adulthood buried beneath the challenges of everyday life. To write like this may be a mountain too high for me to scale, but I am going to try.

There are additional skills that need to be developed to provide readers with a joyful experience; things like I call “overhearing interesting conversation” and “doing handstands with common ideas.”

Let’s explore these together in posts to follow.

-Randy

1. Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, note number 6.