The Oracle

I’m always surprised to relearn that the process of writing a novel’s first draft, for me, is more like channeling than anything else. I can’t describe it save in supernatural terms—it’s like speaking in tongues, or acting as medium for a seance. I sit down for a couple of hours at a time and begin typing, slowly and painfully at first. Gradually my conscious mind recedes, and I fall into a trance-like state in which I’m typing away. Then I realize my self-appointed time has elapsed, and that the manuscript has somehow accumulated another five or ten pages.

The Buccaneer’s Apprentice is my fifteenth published book. You’d think by now I’d know my own process.

But no. Yesterday I was reviewing in my head one of the last few scenes left to write. I paused a moment to consider how well one of the plot’s conceits turned out—that its hero assumes the identity and mannerisms of a minor character who disappears early in the book. Oh yes, agreed part of my brain. The editorial part, perhaps. That was my contribution. It seemed a shame to have that character vanish and be disconnected from the rest of the story, so I suggested he return in this way. Didn’t it work out well? Oh, and you know what also really worked, that I contributed? said my brain. That thing with the origami boats. You know the bit.

I did know the bit. It did fit nicely, and it hadn’t been part of the book’s original conception. I settled down, quite happy to realize I’d contributed two little things to what I am thinking is a very good novel.

Then I realized, hey, wait a minute. I wrote the two hundred and eighty-odd pages. I made a lot more contributions to it than just those two elements!

It’s amazing how big the disconnect is between the editor-writer in me and the mystical oracle who drafts the pages. The former is alert and conscious and sees the book’s structure from a more clinical aspect. The latter communes with the ether and produces page after page of automatic writing of which my consciousness has no memory.

Apparently the oracle’s tendency to ban the editor from the room when he’s communing with the muses has created quite the schism between them. Maybe when I give the editor free reign next week and send the oracle back to whatever hippie commune he lives in, they’ll gain a little parity.