I say here frequently that ideas for characters, plot resolutions, dialog, and images tend to just “pop” into my head at times. I had one of those moments the other day, and with a little reflection I was able to trace the genesis of the idea.
I was waiting for an elevator and heard the tone it made to announce its arrival. It sounds twice when the elevator is upward bound and once for the other direction. I heard the tone and thought for a moment how I would classify the sound. It wasn’t a chime. It was more of a melodic horn. It wasn’t an unpleasant sound, but it wasn’t all that pleasant either.
It reminded me of a faux antique school clock that hangs on the wall in my home. It’s a nice enough clock, but when it rings the hour, it’s horrible. It doesn’t chime. It clangs. It’s an annoying sound, so annoying that I don’t run the clock at all. I’ve stopped the pendulum so the clock won’t run and clang against my ears every quarter hour.
I’ve sometimes wondered if I should have selected a certain hour to have the hands stopped at. Surely there is some momentous instant in my life or in the history of the world that I could use, but nothing has come to mind, so there it sits.
And then I thought about the plot of a future Finnegans novel. The bed and breakfast where they will stay is supposedly haunted, and I thought that the proprietor could have a similar wall clock that made a similar unpleasant sound. She would have stopped the clock for the same annoying reason, and I thought she could tell her guests that the clock had stopped at the very hour that the man who now haunts the house had died. She would be making that part up, but it would be a way for her to create a little atmosphere for her guests, and the falseness of fact would play into the plot I have in mind.
And so a little feature of the story arrived unbidden, and I was able to trace its origin. There is a bit of professional satisfaction in knowing this, but as I’ve said before, I really don’t want to understand how my creativity works lest I kill it with rational analysis.
