C.G. Jones
I have been asked more than once about where the idea for Project: Sleepless Dream came from. It is a good question, and it is a question I used to wonder from authors I respected.
But I have learned something.
It is virtually impossible to say where any ideas come from. For me, I just knew that I wanted Project: Sleepless Dream (PSD) to be a sufficiently complex novel that would have the density and force to pull readers to the very end.
The major influences for PSD that I can readily call to mind were Infinite Jest, House of Leaves, and George Saunders' early stuff. The process of gathering the tools necessary to write something complex and absurd took a lot of time. It took a lot of learning, endless frustration, and several times of telling myself that I was going to give up on the whole writing thing.
The pessimistic philosophers (ie Cioran, Zapffe, Schopenhauer, and Ligotti) turned out to be a steady sounding board for my discontent. And they still are. But I eventually learned that quality art is, a lot of the time, borne out of a mind that has descended into Nietzsche’s abyss. I learned that I had to be pulled down low in order to understand what was essential in finishing a novel. To use a Biblical word, I needed to learn the value of longsuffering.
To suffer long.
I had started what I thought would be my debut novel countless times over the years. None of them worked out because I had not yet been introduced to that intellectual, emotional, and existential abyss that all the pessimists allude to. Perhaps it is not required for everyone, but I can confidently say that it was required for me. And it is only now that I am less than a year away of having fleshed out draft of my second novel.
It is for these reasons that ideas do not have any one root. They have many.
Ideas, for me, are infinitely dense seeds planted by our innate affinities in the soil of our natural disposition, and watered and nurtured by our experiences as conscious creatures in the world.
Everything takes time. So let it.
But I have learned something.
It is virtually impossible to say where any ideas come from. For me, I just knew that I wanted Project: Sleepless Dream (PSD) to be a sufficiently complex novel that would have the density and force to pull readers to the very end.
The major influences for PSD that I can readily call to mind were Infinite Jest, House of Leaves, and George Saunders' early stuff. The process of gathering the tools necessary to write something complex and absurd took a lot of time. It took a lot of learning, endless frustration, and several times of telling myself that I was going to give up on the whole writing thing.
The pessimistic philosophers (ie Cioran, Zapffe, Schopenhauer, and Ligotti) turned out to be a steady sounding board for my discontent. And they still are. But I eventually learned that quality art is, a lot of the time, borne out of a mind that has descended into Nietzsche’s abyss. I learned that I had to be pulled down low in order to understand what was essential in finishing a novel. To use a Biblical word, I needed to learn the value of longsuffering.
To suffer long.
I had started what I thought would be my debut novel countless times over the years. None of them worked out because I had not yet been introduced to that intellectual, emotional, and existential abyss that all the pessimists allude to. Perhaps it is not required for everyone, but I can confidently say that it was required for me. And it is only now that I am less than a year away of having fleshed out draft of my second novel.
It is for these reasons that ideas do not have any one root. They have many.
Ideas, for me, are infinitely dense seeds planted by our innate affinities in the soil of our natural disposition, and watered and nurtured by our experiences as conscious creatures in the world.
Everything takes time. So let it.
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