The Strange Universal Synchronicity of Writing

Synchronicity is the experience of two or more events that are apparently causally unrelated or unlikely to occur together by chance, yet are experienced as occurring together in a meaningful manner. The concept of synchronicity was first described in this terminology by Carl Gustav Jung, a Swiss psychologist, in the 1920s.[1]



The concept does not question, or compete with, the notion of causality. Instead, it maintains that just as events may be grouped by cause, they may also be grouped by meaning. A grouping of events by meaning need not have an explanation in terms of cause and effect.

When I wrote "Courier," I noticed a repeating pattern: I would write in something (a phrase, a place, an idiosyncrasy)  more or less at random - I just needed things that would differentiate and fill out a character.  Sometimes, they were things that I needed as plot points (where would my protagonist escape to, what kind of woman would he meet and fall in love with, etc.)  They were meant to be small, realistic details but as I researched and continued to write, they kept growing in importance to the plot and the characters.



Several ended up as central pivot points to the plot.



Clearly, I'm trying not to give away too much of the story prior to release but I'll go into one example: the woman that my courier, Rick, falls in love with.  Here's how the character of Eve Buffalo Calf came together.



--I was trying to work out a way to get my guy out of town at the end of the book--figuring that by that time, a certain significant part of the Nixon Administration would be...umm...irritated at him.



--When I researched the time period--the last few days of 1972 when the B-52s were hammering North Vietnam and Kissinger's "peace is at hand' statement had been smashed into little pieces, I read that just a few weeks before, the American Indian Movement had occupied the Bureau of Indian Affairs--an incredible story in itself. So I invented an Indian girl. 



--Now, she couldn't actually be a protestor because she'd have been run out of town by then so I made her a law student doing legal defense for AIM. (didn't hurt that I'd known some people who had done exactly that back in the 70s).



--A friend, and fellow author, told me that Indians never refer to themselves as 'Indians' but as 'Cherokee' or 'Crow' or whatever.  So on a whim, I made my generic Indian into a Cheyenne and that morphed into a Northern Cheyenne of the Montana Reservation. A bit more research (not a lot because I don't read modern books on my subjects to avoid unintentional plagiarism) and she gained the name Eve Buffalo Calf after a famous Cheyenne woman named White Buffalo Calf.



--Now, there are historians who say that Custer's Last Stand was not really part of a war against the Sioux (as I always thought) but against the much-more dangerous Cheyenne and - as it turned out - the unit Custer was leading was the US Seventh Cavalry. That worked well because I'd already decided that my protagonist would have served in a particular battle in Vietnam which - when I looked it up - turned out to be the Seventh Cavalry.  For a number of reasons, the guy who is trying to kill him served with the Seventh Cavalry in Korea.



I swear, none of this was a product of my genius for planning and plotting my manuscript--it just kept happening. 



OK, there are other great links in Courier that worked out in just the same way but you have to read the damn book to get those.



When it came time to begin "Warrior", the sequel to Courier, I knew where Rick and Eve were (Out West--read the book) and approximately when. So I looked in the papers from early 1973 and there was the Occupation of Wounded Knee by AIM. 



So that's where "Warrior" begins.



In the process of researching Wounded Knee and the Cheyenne people, I kept finding new information--including a local newspaper article about big meeting in the mid-1990s where the Cheyenne broke a self-imposed 100 year oath of silence and revealed exactly how General George Custer had died.



Yeah, it involves the woman White Buffalo Calf.



In addition, reading newspapers and magazines from 1973, I stumbled across a story about how the largest coal seam in the United States--well, basically it IS the entire Montana Cheyenne reservation and thousands of miles more--drag lines continue to rip apart Montana, North and South Dakota today as millions and millions of tons of coal goes out every day.



EXCEPT from the land of the Northern Cheyenne because, in 1973, they unilaterally abrogated all the coal leases negotiated for them by the BIA (at unbelievably bad rates). 



"in 1973." You get the pattern here?



Just last week, I read that the Cheyenne --when they left their pestilent and hunted-out lands in Oklahoma - fought their way through FOUR major US Army battle groups in what some call the biggest, bloodiest, and most insanely courageous of the "Indian Wars". (Those of you old enough might remember John Ford's "Cheyenne Autumn" where, apparently, Ford said he killed enough Indians--it was time to tell their side of the story. ) Although Dull Knife and most of the warriors did not make it home, they crossed a thousands miles under winter conditions and constant battle.

Eventually, it was public opinion in the rest of the US that forced the government to declare  the Montana Reservation of the Northern Cheyenne. 



So all these apparently random choices are becoming 'synchronistic'- which, if you didn't read the quotes at the beginning--are events that occur close together and seem connected but aren't necessarily.



I would just call them sorta spooky.



Finally, today I had lunch with another out-of-work tv producer and--as we were leaving, I was telling him of all these puzzle pieces (and a lot more - read the book!). I ended up with how Eve Buffalo Calf got her name.  



We said, "Goodbye" and got into our cars. I started the engine and the local NPR station came on and the FIRST WORDS I HEARD were "White Buffalo Calf Woman". and the discussion was over the Transcanada oil pipeline, energy reserves and the increasing resistance of Native Americans (US) and First Nations (Canadian) to having their lands despoiled



At the end of the day, I don't see this as a sign that Someone wants me to write my thriller novels for some mysterious Reason.  I just see it as evidence of a benevolent universe that has clearly spent hundreds of years arranging history to provide me with cool plot lines and details.



Ok, part of it could be my writing method.  I smash out something really fast--inventing stuff as I go and only doing enough research to keep from falling off a cliff. Then I go back and re-write to about triple the length and changing just about everything.  But then, I can weave in the cool material that's fallen into my hands.



Synchronicity, hell.



Serendipity is more like it.








Terry Irving Author of "Courier"