Novel in the Cards

In the process of researching and writing historical fiction, novelists imaginatively inhabit other times and other lives and may also try out other belief systems. My current novel-in-progress challenges me to see post-Civil War New Orleans from various perspectives. While a firm believer in egalitarianism, I am endeavoring to understand the viewpoints and motivations of characters who range from humanitarian and fair-minded to racist and misogynistic and from highly rational to deeply superstitious.

On a couple of research and pleasure trips to New Orleans, I have been very affected by Tarot card readings from a particular reader in Jackson Square. My emotional response happened despite my usual skepticism and has led me closer to an understanding of an important character in my manuscript. She moves through her everyday 19th century life, mindful of her duties and responsibilities, but she is also open to sensory experience and receptive to the extrasensory. Writing about her, I sometimes feel like her spirit medium, revealing her story—and that brings me back to the Tarot.

Recently, I treated myself to a deck of my own and keep it close to my writing desk. I acquired Touchstone Tarot, a boxed set of cards and book describing the cards’ meanings and the sources of the cards’ images. For each card, artist Kat Black has digitally combined elements from Renaissance and Baroque masterpieces—from paintings by Gentileschi, Tintoretto, Bosch, Rubens, and many more—into a lush and evocative collage, whose significance seems to speak for itself.

In the book that accompanies the deck, Kat Black suggests a newcomer to the Tarot try shuffling and drawing a card a day, becoming familiar with its meaning and contemplating how it may pertain to one’s life. Thus, the single card serves as something like a thought-for-the-day on which to ponder. Over the past week or so, the ritual has already brought me fresh insights, personally and professionally. The first card I drew, the Eight of Coins, reminds me that “Talent is nothing without application”—wisdom for all writers. In the Three of Swords, I see my novel’s character, who endures heartbreak and grows stronger for it. The Hermit card signifies for me the reflection and solitude I need to finish a book. A novelist, in common with a card reader or a fortune teller, reads human nature and puts it into context, into a story that leads the audience to say—“Yes, that’s me. That’s what I feel, what I fear, what I have survived, what I long for, what I love.” Now I'm a believer in Kat Black’s suggestion of using the Tarot as a meditation to free creativity and discover my novel in the cards.

Embrace the Mess

The following is not a review of Eric Abrahamson and David H. Freedman’s book A PERFECT MESS: The Hidden Benefits of Disorder—How Crammed Closets, Cluttered Offices, and On-the-Fly Planning Make the Word a Better Place. The following is a testimonial. Commuting to work, I listened to the audio version of A PERFECT MESS and, with every mile, found myself more relaxed with my own clutter and my own life.

Abrahamson and Freedman offer fascinating examples and insights into disorder—from personal to professional to political mess—and explode many clichés about the virtues of extreme organization and the vices of messiness. The authors do not advocate utter chaos, but they do speak up for creative clutter and on-the-fly flexibility. They illustrate how those obsessed with organizing tasks can actually waste time that could be use for accomplishing projects. Life is far from perfectly predictable, and people who cope with disorder and unexpected changes and are not guilt-ridden by their own mess may actually hold, in some circumstances, an advantage over the rigidly neat and tightly scheduled.

As a writer, I have long lived with a certain amount of clutter—notebooks and tablets, pens and pencils, multiple drafts of various projects, research books and magazines, index cards, sticky notes, and scraps of paper. The tactile and the visual are essential to my creative process, and technology has not reduced the mess on and around my desks, which now include computers and printers and memory devices. I am far more delighted by creating a story structure and seeing once randomly conceived plot and character elements fall into a compelling design than I am by tidying up my workspace.

After listening to A PERFECT MESS, I have resolved to put aside any remaining twinges of guilt and embarrassment over messiness and embrace the mess as part of the creative process. Of course, there are limits to how many thoughts I can juggle at once in my head, and occasionally I misplace a book or a page of notes. Still, in a search among the clutter, I have often made serendipitous discoveries that benefited the work at hand or sparked a new project. I shudder to imagine what a “professional organizer” might do to my library by imposing the appearance of neatness without regard to my clusterings of ideas and inspirations.

When someone asks how I go about writing a novel or a play, I answer that my method harkens back to ancient augury. In a cardboard box, I collect ideas scribbled on scraps of paper—notes on setting and theme, plot twists and characters, along with fragments of dialogue. The collecting process may last for months or years. Then, when the time feels right, I open the box and spill its contents across the floor, like a diviner splitting the sacrificial beast. From the entrails—all those bits of paper—I read the portents that foretell the story. I discover the pattern that would not have formed without the freedom of random associations and the energy sparked by a perfect mess.

Rosemary Poole-Carter