Tag Archives: wellspring of inspiration

Ken Kesey’s Cuckoo’s Nest

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The magic of Ken Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest is in the point of view, Chief Bromden sharing his thoughts on the insanity of life.

The Big Nurse is able to set the wall clock at whatever speed she wants by just turning one of those dials in the steel door; she take a notion to hurry things up, she turns the speed up, and those hands whip around that disk like spokes in a wheel. The scene in the picture-screen windows goes through rapid changes of light to show morning, noon and night – throb off and on furiously with day and dark, and everyone is driven like mad to keep with the passing of that fake time.

But generally it’s the other way, the slow way. She’ll turn the dial to a dead stop and freeze the sun there on the screen so it don’t move a scant hair for weeks, so not a leaf on a tree or a blade of grass in the pasture shimmers. The clock hands hang at two minutes to three and she’s liable to hang them there till we rust. (71-2)

Writing Process: The Cat Inside

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A spark is needed to start writing. And the trick is to allow that thing to turn into something substantial before getting at it. This can’t be forced or ignored. It’s like a cat. She pretends she doesn’t want to interact, but she does.

Popo watching

You just have to wait, even when she is sitting there. She needs to be coddled. Oh, no, not coddled! My mistake. That can’t be said, even thought. Appreciated. That’s the word. Appreciated.

Popo watching still

Play with her. Stroke her face and sides. She will go with that. And then it’s great fun and games, moving ahead like it was nothing at all. Why weren’t we always here? Simple as that? And then she is gone, quick as it started, and it’s a matter of waiting for another round

Writing Process: Tapping the Id

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I am not one for dream scenes with the character lost in their heads; this is the part of the story where I lose complete interest. That’s not to say that these images aren’t a wellspring of inspiration, the pure of the id as it were, that can be woven into the narrative, like John Savage fear-grunting in The Deerhunter or Tanner Mayes clinging to her necklace.

What makes a story isn’t the arc, conflict and resolution but how it accesses what it means to be conscious. The western world seems bent on burying all of that fine stuff just to fill our pockets with more things and regret.

I didn’t dream of beer but of eating Checkerboard ice cream, spilling it all over, and I was jealous of that person and dreamed myself back to my old university where I was living on my own, shitting in the sink, not even closing the door.

I love the mania of getting into this, slopping through these base things, finding what might be next, making clouds so that I might escape into a tiny convoluted body and fly again. None of this has happened, but I think that it might. It’s about knowing that unknowable thing within.