The way a story evolves is never quite the same from novel to novel — my first novel arrived after five years of thinking about it, scribbling bits of it on old envelopes and on notepads that then went on to vanish in my travels. When I finally sat down to write my first novel, called Goat Dance, it took about six weeks for the first draft, and I was finished with the second two weeks later.
But, again, I had five years of tossing that novel around in my head — and those weren’t pleasant years, because it was as if I had a headache that no aspirin could clear up.
I finished up a novel a year ago called The Priest of Blood that I’d first thought about when I was in my early 20s — about twenty-four years before I wrote “the end.”
I’d been traveling in Europe as one of those “got no money, no job, but made a few dimes” Americans and living out of a one-room flat in Paris, skating by with very little cash in my pocket, no prospects beyond the scrounges of the next month or so, and just enough to pay rent, saved from a low paying job I’d had the year previous. I’d been traveling with a friend, and when he suggested we rent a car for a few weeks on our little bit of pooled money, I said, “Where do we sleep?” He said, “Well, in the car.”
Remember the Renault Le Car? That’s pretty much what we slept in on the road. We could rent the car for a couple of hundred dollars for a few weeks. The seats tilted back into 90% flat beds (10% rose up a bit), and when it got chilly at night, we covered ourselves with the clothes in our rucksacks (so I woke up one morning with my socks on my face and was not sure how that had happened.)
We found that if we went to a grocery store at noon, we could buy a French bread loaf, some mustard, some lettuce, and some roast beef or turkey and a 1 liter bottle of Coke and not have spent much at all. We’d make a huge sandwich and then split it, eat it, and yes, that’s all we’d eat for the day. The pot of mustard would last several days. The Coke often lasted until midnight. We were at a young enough age that others often bought us drinks, and sleeping in the car wasn’t as awful as it sounds. We stayed along the shore most nights because they had free showers and toilets and we could even get a swim in. But one day, tired of the beaches, we decided to drive inland a bit.
So, we drove into Brittany, mainly figuring we’d eventually find the coast again at some point if we kept driving in a certain direction — and then we got lost.
And in getting lost, we found a forest that has, at this point, inspired two series of novels for me.
It was in an area called Paimpont, and its groves and copses and marshy meadows were origin places for Arthurian legend. The trees were enormous and thick and the fern-bed on the ground was like its own forest.
It was a forest like none I’d seen before, and none I’ve seen since. It was the last of a legendary wood that had covered much of Brittany many centuries before — sometimes called Broceliande. We saw the Val sans Retour, where Morgan la Fey lured youths to their deaths; the tomb of Merlin; the Barenton fountain that was sacred to ancient gods and a special place of Lancelot. It was an emerald wood, and it was as dark as it was deep, and I got lost in it for days and did not want to travel anywhere else after that. I’d spent months in Paris, and now I felt I had come to a place that was even more dazzling.
And what I thought of, when I realized the area’s history, was that this forest might be the “forest” of all legend — the ancient woods of Druids, of gods, of the mystery of the pre-Roman world of the area. Sure, these were flights of my imagination, but whenever I get that kind of flight, I take it.
I didn’t write the first words of The Priest of Blood until 1992 or 1993 — about ten years later. Suddenly, I saw the forest again, and I felt myself there. And then, for some reason, I saw vampires that had more in common with harpies and gorgons than with Transylvanian nobility. So I wrote a hundred and fifty pages of the story, sent it off to a couple of editors, and got back to work on a novel I had become interested in called The Children’s Hour.
The Priest of Blood received a few rejections, although each was accompanied with a note or a phone call from an editor saying, “I love it, but we’re not publishing this kind of book — a vampire novel set in the medieval era.” One publisher said, “If you write it in our trademarked world, we’ll buy it.” Being the willful writer I was, I couldn’t do that, because, hey, my vision, my world.
So I put those 150 pages aside and got back to other novels. Why’d I do this? I needed to research the medieval era more. The novel hadn’t come alive for me, and so I spent the next ten years reading every medieval history I could find, digging up hard-to-find books of Brittany and the Crusades and scouring mythologies for the hierarchy of gods and monsters to see where mine fit in. And then, finally, I was ready to complete the book because I was there in my mind in a way I could not have been even in my 20s when I stood in that forest.
I began writing the new draft in 2003, and by the time I’d finished the novel in early 2004, I’d thrown out all but about 20 pages of that initial 150 pages, and the novel was very different from the original I had begun so long ago. I had an entire epic plotted out beyond the one novel. But within the novel, I was able to return to the forest — that forest of Brittany that has been inside me since those autumn days when I stayed inside it.
I think this is what gets me writing at all — I get to return to past loves in the act of writing, be it a place, a person, or even an idea that I once had and thought I had lost.
I remember sitting out at twilight with my friend on a September twilight, at the edge of the mist that poured from the forest, with a bottle of very cheap Muscadet, and thinking: this is love. I am in love with this forest.
And so, I returned to that past love to draw this novel — and another — from it. They say you always return to your first love, and I think this is true with one addition — you always return to all your loves. I think this is where I get my inspiration every time I write a novel or story — I draw from a memory of love.
And then, it goes very, very dark.
8 Comments, Comment or Ping
David Niall Wilson
That was very cool, Doug. I think you’ve hit on something, as well. I’ve returned to many of the stories I loved early in my career and found that they were more like seed pods, POD novels, if you will, that needed to be finished…not that the stories weren’t complete, just that there were larger stories behind them…
You made me want to visit that forest.
DNW
Jun 16th, 2005
ShaneThayer
I am still waiting for the day to return to my first love, that first vision that got me started. Once I have done that I will feel I have achieved my dreams.
Jun 16th, 2005
James Goodman
Great post, Doug. Not only did it make me want to visit that forest, but it also makes me want to read the stories to see how it comes into play. If it inspired the story, it clearly has to be more than just a setting.
-JamesG
Jun 16th, 2005
Steve Vernon
Ah yes, revisiting old loves, rewriting old work. It’s the main reason why w-r-i-t-e-r is just p-a-c-k-r-a-t mispelled.
Jun 16th, 2005
Michelle Pendergrass
Interesting. I’d have to say that I thought I knew what love was and revisiting those “first loves” only solidifies the true love I now know.
The path of the past was very dark and very misinformed. Even what I thought was love then, was disfigured in the shadows. Those first loves are hideous when seen in the light of today.
Jun 17th, 2005
Jdamen
Lovely recollections, Doug.
Jun 17th, 2005
Justine Musk
Gorgeous column, Doug.
After I wrote a literary novel that found an agent but went nowhere, I thought long and hard about what I wanted to write, as opposed to what I thought I ought to write. I reached back for my first loves — the images and influences I’d been carrying around since high school. The book that resulted was the first book that felt truly mine, and also the first book (I wrote five before it) that actually sold. I doubt that’s a coincidence.
Now I know I’ll spend the next several years writing about things that entered the eye of my imagination years ago. I also know to pay attention to the things that intrigue me now, to plant them in my undermind, so that years from now I’ll have them to harvest.
Your column underscores the importance not just of connecting but staying connected to what we need to write, and to how the story needs to be told. It’s way too easy to lose both those connections.
I look forward to your vampyrs.
Jun 17th, 2005
jeff resnick
Wow, great post! Very true about returning to first loves…I just added The Priest of Blood to my Amazon wish list
Jun 18th, 2005
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