I've been reading a memoir by my cousin Moyra Caldecott, Her book Multi-Dimensional Life is a fascinating account of how a great many unexplained phenomena have helped and inspired her writing and given her a deeper spiritual awareness. In particular when she was writing about the Egyptians, such as Akhenaten, all sorts of weird events occurred - not least her trip to Egypt with Tina Turner - others of a rather more terrifying nature.
I veer and struggle between a fairly rational approach to things, and a belief in the psychic/spiritual which some people would laugh at. I take most accounts of irrational phenomena with a big spadeful of salt - but I am always open to hear personal experiences which don't rely too much on coincidence and credulity.
As I re-read the book, I recognised a lot of things I had in common with her (well, I knew this anyway), telepathy, a sense of the eerie, occasionally a sense of evil presences and I have also experienced those sequences of significant events occurring in a short time (Jung's Synchronicity) which seemed to have a meaning (although I am wary of attaching meaning to something which may just be coincidental).
The sort of event's Moyra described are also familiar to Christians who "live by faith": phone calls from strangers who have to give you important news, a cheque arriving for exactly the right money at the right time, healing, finding exactly the right book you need for your research, a book falling open at a significant passage. All these were things that occurred to progress her writing, deepen it.
Since I've been writing The Malice of Fairies I have had one or two experiences - one friend has brought me magically relevant books, and I have had moments of wild inspiration - common to most writers I think - when the book just writes itself. Two of these moments came while I was in Cardiff visiting my mother in law (I write better when I'm angry). Since May I've been wondering what the hell has happened to what I wrote then - two scenes from the last third of the novel. I have been looking in all my notebooks but none of them contained the pages I'd written. A lost notebook that I'd pinned my hopes on, proved not to have them when I found it. These few hundred words began to seem crucial to the successful completion of TMOF . I was really annoyed as I had invented a whole group of new characters and felt re-constructing them would be stiff and stilted. Also I have now reached the point in the novel where I needed to incorporate them.
Last night, sitting at my desk I saw a small ring-bound A6 notebook to the right of my laptop. It wasn't there before - I don't know how it got there. It was folded open and I flipped through it to see what was in it. There were the scribbled pages I'd written on a Welsh bridge on Easter Sunday, and in the Cardiff Museum the following day. There is probably a rational explanation for its sudden appearance, but the fact that it was sitting next to my laptop, just where it was needed, the night before it was needed, does seem like a miracle. The fact that I'd been feeling such a connection with Moyra through re-reading her book (available on Kindle) encouraged me feel (as she might have) that I was getting help from some greater power - perhaps via Thoth, Hermes or one of the Muses, or maybe Moyra's already found a new role in the Life Beyond.
 |
| Cover by Olly Caldecott |
As I re-read the book, I recognised a lot of things I had in common with her (well, I knew this anyway), telepathy, a sense of the eerie, occasionally a sense of evil presences and I have also experienced those sequences of significant events occurring in a short time (Jung's Synchronicity) which seemed to have a meaning (although I am wary of attaching meaning to something which may just be coincidental).
The sort of event's Moyra described are also familiar to Christians who "live by faith": phone calls from strangers who have to give you important news, a cheque arriving for exactly the right money at the right time, healing, finding exactly the right book you need for your research, a book falling open at a significant passage. All these were things that occurred to progress her writing, deepen it.
Since I've been writing The Malice of Fairies I have had one or two experiences - one friend has brought me magically relevant books, and I have had moments of wild inspiration - common to most writers I think - when the book just writes itself. Two of these moments came while I was in Cardiff visiting my mother in law (I write better when I'm angry). Since May I've been wondering what the hell has happened to what I wrote then - two scenes from the last third of the novel. I have been looking in all my notebooks but none of them contained the pages I'd written. A lost notebook that I'd pinned my hopes on, proved not to have them when I found it. These few hundred words began to seem crucial to the successful completion of TMOF . I was really annoyed as I had invented a whole group of new characters and felt re-constructing them would be stiff and stilted. Also I have now reached the point in the novel where I needed to incorporate them.
Last night, sitting at my desk I saw a small ring-bound A6 notebook to the right of my laptop. It wasn't there before - I don't know how it got there. It was folded open and I flipped through it to see what was in it. There were the scribbled pages I'd written on a Welsh bridge on Easter Sunday, and in the Cardiff Museum the following day. There is probably a rational explanation for its sudden appearance, but the fact that it was sitting next to my laptop, just where it was needed, the night before it was needed, does seem like a miracle. The fact that I'd been feeling such a connection with Moyra through re-reading her book (available on Kindle) encouraged me feel (as she might have) that I was getting help from some greater power - perhaps via Thoth, Hermes or one of the Muses, or maybe Moyra's already found a new role in the Life Beyond.
No comments:
Post a Comment