This is Madness

As I’ve said before, the dividing line between genius and insanity is nonexistent.

In real life, the boundary between normal and insane is marked by “norms.” Norms are socially agreed rules for acceptable behavior. In America, they include driving on the right side of the road and not picking your nose in public. The British, Irish, Indians, Japanese and Australians have different driving rules. I don’t know if it is good manners anywhere to pick your nose.

These norms also include our beliefs. We believe in gravity. Most of us believe in God. Many people believe it is okay to kill someone else if you’re both wearing different uniforms.

At one time, people believed that earth was the center of the universe. Many people believed that the world was created in six days, five thousand years ago.

Some people still believe both those things.

Really creative people (my definition of genius) ask, “What if that wasn’t true?”

Ptolemy had really tables to explain the movement of planets (Greek for wanderers) assuming that everything else revolved around the earth. Copernicus radically simplified the math by asking, “What if the sun was the center, and not the earth?”

He nearly got burned at the stake for his audacity. Some regarded him as a lunatic. But he was more or less right.

Creative writing requires the same kind of audacity. “What if a child is fully aware at birth, but too inarticulate to express what she experiences? What if a child had perfect recall and could recover those earliest memories for later analysis?”

“Hah,” you say, “no way.”

Way.

When we ask readers to follow us on that journey of discovery, it is called “Suspension of disbelief.” We KNOW what the author says CAN’T be true, but we’ll follow along for the sake of argument.

This can be very hard, both for the author and the reader. I suppose that is what makes literary fiction so challenging. My friend John says you have to work to understand great music. If he was a literature reader, he might say the same thing about that.

I am willing to suspend my disbelief about his claims long enough to write my story, but aside from accepting my premise, my readers should find my words more like Bach than Prokofiev.