Reinvigorating the Drive
Inspiration can come from unexpected places.
The Harry Ransom Center at the UT Austin, a humanities research center and museum celebrating the creative process of writers and artists, finally opened to the public after being closed for over a year.
Its collections include the earliest known photograph made with the camera obscura; a copy of the Gutenberg Bible; and Jack Kerouac's notes from On the Road.
Gabriel García Márquez's manuscripts, correspondence, and notebooks are also on exhibit right now.
My mom is visiting for Thanksgiving this week. A proud Colombian, my mother was thrilled to learn there was an exhibit by her celebrated compatriot. Coincidentally, she started reading Vivir para contarla (Live to Tell the Tale) while staying with us. So the visit was well-timed.
I had also been planning a trip to The Center since it features in my current WIP, and I wanted to do a little reconnaissance. I have been researching The Center via its virtual exhibits all year trying to get a feel for the library and the space.
This week, all the stars aligned.
I got to spend some time with Gabriel García Márquez. Or at least with his manuscripts, his notes, and his thought processes.
Growing up, I was drawn to the newsroom. The buzz of a busy news night. The sexy thrill of working against deadline. I spent a few years in the Boston Globe newsroom in the 1990s. It was everything I dreamed reporting news could be.
García Márquez was a reporter before he wrote fiction. That period in the 1960s, especially in the thriving art mecca of Mexico City must have been an artistically and intellectually stimulating place to occupy.
Strolling along the original pages of the Cien Años de Soledad manuscript with handwritten notes shouldn’t have been as awe inspiring as it was. After all, they are inert. Just pages.
But I admit, I was inspired.
When I am stuck in my writing or revision, I print my pages and hand-write my notes. It’s what I did before I could lay all my pages out on multiple screens. When I’m having trouble getting ideas to flow smoothly, I still write out my first drafts by hand.
Seeing GGM’s handwritten notes reaffirmed that primitive method for me. It excited me.
Writing is a physical experience. The range of tactile sensation extends beyond finger tips striking keys. It is a symphony of sensory exploration. The feel of the page. Writers can be picky about what their pages feel like when they grip a notebook or slide their fingers across a page. The stroke of the ink or led on the page. The furious scratching of pencil tip on paper.
I myself prefer sharp pencils on smooth paper, usually graph paper. I like to line up my ideas in an outline, organize complex segments on a grid, or quickly sketch an illustration. I like my lines clean, vertically as well as horizontally.
When a writer is lost in the flow, they feel it in the cogs of their mind, the yearning in their heart, and the passion in their belly. Writing is very much a physical experience.
““Fiction writing is a hypnotic act. One tries to hypnotize the reader so that he thinks only in the story your are telling him and this requires an enormous quantity of nails and screws and hinges so that he does not wake up.””
I was struck by his quote that tied in the idea of captivating the reader with the carpentry of the composition. For me, learning the craft of writing, especially fiction, has been an exercise in building structure. García Márquez eloquently brings these two aspects of writing together.
I was also excited to see the space to get a feel for its atmosphere. One of the bad guys in my WIP is a curator of ancient magical texts at the HRC, and there are a few scenes set at the library. So I tasked my little one to scope out places where someone might skulk around secretly watching my protagonists.
The only problem was that it was a brightly lit space. Aside from numerous, strategically arranged modular walls where a villain could easily observe their victims, it doesn’t really set an ominous tone.
The brightness of Texas landscape is something I’ve blogged about before. It is not easy to write dark settings and develop characters consumed by angst in central Texas. The same can be said of trying to create a dark and mysterious atmosphere when the space I’m working with is bright and welcoming.
With a little creativity, I’ll make it work though.
I wasn’t expecting to be inspired and reinvigorated by the visit today. It started out as a curiosity, something interesting to do with my family, and as a research jaunt. Yet I left feeling exited about my current WIP in new ways.