The Unconscious Journey From Story to Novel

I decided to write a story called "Soda Lake" based on what happened when I made an impromptu visit to Soda Lake, a white salt "lake" inside the Carrizo Plain, a National Land Monument in Central California. I was actually on my way to Painted Rock, a numinous sandstone outcropping with 3,000-year-old pictographs by the Chumash Indians. Some women friends had talked about it, churning out light laughter over the fact that Painted Rock, numinous or not, was in the shape of a large vagina. How prescient, I thought, for the Chumash to make their drawings inside of that... having no idea that 3,000 years later their drawings would still remain. But believing, nevertheless, that the vagina was the center of the universe.

(How I Hacked My Way to Writing a Novella.)

As Soda Lake stretched out in front of me like a white mirage, I saw a right turn to a lookout point... went up the hill and parked. After a short walk, I gazed down upon the expanse of Soda Lake shimmering beneath the afternoon sun. A minute later, a car pulled over next to the lake and a man wearing dark clothes got out. He began running across the lake until he disappeared into the haze and sunlight. The car took off...

The man in dark clothes disappearing into a white salt lake would be the central image of the story "Soda Lake." But I had no idea it would later be the key mystery of Soda Lake, a novel, or that the book would become an archetypal detective quest complete with stories of the uncanny, including various characters experiencing confusion and threat as their being dissolves at the margin of the self. Or that various tropes would link one character to the others—false identity, hallucinations, intimations of a god, imprisonment, eroticism, philosophic journeying...

After writing a couple more chapters, my NYC agent said, "You told me you were writing a novel. These are stories." And when the "Helena" chapter was published as a stand-alone story in the Antioch Review, I thought my agent was right—I am writing a collection of stories.

But my unconscious mind knew differently, and hadn't yet let me in...

The unconscious mind, which may be the greatest muse of all, cannot be summoned. It works for no one.

Instead, we must find ways to be open to its noumenal information coming our conscious way. The challenge that follows is how to intuit the difference between unconscious whim, which may seem fascinating for a while but ultimately leads to a creative dead-end, and an unconscious path to a truth that, hitherto, had been hidden. And even when the unconscious path seems to appear, the way forward isn't certain. Trusting the unconscious is like trusting a blind person to find beautiful statues in the dark.

And since the unconscious journey can rarely be controlled by the objective powers of the conscious mind, salient creative moments often feel like they are being uncovered, rather than written. As was the case with much of Soda Lake.

Which is why I will attest—I never made up the Garage Wall Man; he just appeared from a pile of wood, clean-shaven, fingernails glistening in the dark. And I never wrote his words, but only heard them. And I never knew of the ancient trickster god—McCuade—until the Garage Wall Man first mentioned his name, and "out of the shocking Empyrean, He appeared."

And when he told me McCuade had returned to Donegal, "the kidneys of Ireland," I told the Garage Wall Man I would find McCuade for him. McCuade... who may or may not be real.

My search for McCuade unfolded in real time, because I really did go to Donegal to look for him, which became the story of Chapter Five—"McCuade." And whatever happened to me on the journey through Donegal, all the way to the northern most point of Ireland—Malin Head—would be that which was uncovered. And that which I would write.

And even farther—to Inishtrahull Island, Ireland's northernmost island, made of a three-billion-year-old rock, perhaps the oldest on the planet.

A dangerous going across at 6am in a fishing boat, and a dangerous return... so dangerous that I didn't make it back and had to spend the night on Inishtrahull with no food or water or bedding, which was all right because McCuade was also on the uninhabited island. So through the long cold rainy night, it would just be McCuade and I.

Five years later, I found myself on Achill Island, the westernmost point of Ireland, living in my white cottage by the sea, but only for a little while, because my solo writer's residency at the cottage was only for a month.

My conscious mind said this will be the end of it for McCuade and me. Whatever comes to pass will be the final chapter—"Achill Island."

Moiling through days of solitude and angst, constant rain and near madness... waiting for my unconscious mind to guide me... to feel McCuade's presence. But I couldn't get out of the way of myself.

After two weeks, I had written one sentence—Passed right by her, sitting in a wheelchair outside the front door of her stone row-house, staring up into the damp oak leaves, purple shawl around her neck, dogs in her eyes, so weary...

Even after talking aloud to myself, which I had never done before, and cursing McCuade for bringing me to Achill... and recording my rants on a machine the size of my hand, which the handyman, John, a fine Irishman, had loaned to me... Nothing.

Stop trying to manufacture a McCuade story out of the Achill void, I thought.

Let McCuade speak.

Not my voice, but His.

And I, the trickster god, until it is impossible to know the difference.

But what will his voice sound like? What diction, tropes of language... might this suigeneris god use? ... McCuade—out of the unchastened and unconscious mind... telling his story about me—

...Took a swim today. Thought it would be my last. Ah, but I always think that. Was saying such to Sean last night. He was smoking a fag on the front steps of the Achill Head. Talking again about proper weather. Only Achill has proper weather, he says. Sean... looking a bit like I used to. But never mind that...

Walked past the old Cyril Gray house in the early evening. Edifice clotted with moss and mold. Thought I could hear his wife’s thin voice from inside the crumbling plaster. But then I passed right by her, sitting in a wheelchair outside the front door of her stone row-house, staring up into the damp oak leaves, purple shawl around her neck. Dogs in her eyes. So weary… I kept on walking. Don’t think she noticed me...

Could barely see the Silver Strand in the consuming twilight. Lovely to bathe there. Be careful about the rips, everyone likes to say. But I've never been caught in one. Not a boley Irishman like myself!

Good to be out... not having to bother with his cloying presence inside the cottage. His white cottage by the sea, he likes to say. But only for a little while.

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