The Ancient Mariner Defence

‘But still the fates will leave me my voice
& by my voice I shall be known’ Ovid

While trying to appear like I was actually doing something at work yesterday, Alex asked me how I wrote. After responding in my usual asinine way and saying “With a paper and pen” she repeated the question & said she didn’t know how someone made themselves sit down and write, why they would or what they’d write about. She put me on the spot & made me answer the question properly.

I plead The Ancient Mariner Defence: Because the story took hold of me and wouldn’t let me go.

I didn’t think that one up all by myself. In keeping with my love of everything Margaret Atwood I’ve been poring over Negotiating with the Dead, her work on writing. So many books I’ve read on getting yourself ready for agents/publishers and the like are almost mercenary and force you to think of your book as a product. Atwood reminds us why we write & redefined my whole belief in myself as a writer. I adore her to bits and would staple myself to her if this were not both disturbing and illegal. Dear Margaret Atwood’s lawyer; of course I’ll stay 100 yards at all times. She used the above quote as an explanation for why we write.

For those of us who did not have Coleridge shoved down our throats in high school (a fact for which I am eternally grateful. CJ Cherryh however is another matter) The Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner is an epic poem focusing on a mariner doomed to tell the same tale over and over. It involves Fate, an albatross, lots of dead sailors reanimating themselves but mostly, is about how the mariner is taken over by the story. It compels him and won’t let him go until he’s told it.

So I answered Alex the same thing. Because the story took hold of me and wouldn’t let me go. My two main characters both have voices (naturally. It’s not a book on mutes) but they’re voices implanted in either ear that whisper. Santangelo’s is loudest. I tried to explain to Alex what it was like; that I have a Mob Boss in my ear whose voice I can hear like he was slouched against the wall next to me, cigar in hand and boots clicked together. That I don’t really get any say in what he wants to do or say. His voice is his own, he talks and I write. Ronnie’s the same. I don’t sit down and think right...here’s what I’m doing. I should have a beginning, middle and the end. Somewhere there should be conflict etc. I don’t get that. I get scenes that make me reach and scribble no matter what I’m doing, I hear Saint talking and I go to write. My muse is a lovely, mussed up, sociopathic Mob Boss with dark eyes and grizzly whiskers that I wouldn’t change for the world. My muse is an ice cold woman with golden eyes that I love like I love myself. And I do.

That’s why I answered with Margaret Atwood’s line and why Atwood’s right. I know why I write – because the story takes hold of me and won’t let me go.

Alex replied, “Spoken like a true writer.”