HE RAN OUT AND RAN IN

 

"...the two events must be connected.

He ran out and ran in, smoked incessantly, played snatches on his violin, sank into reveries, devoured sandwiches at irregular hours, and hardly answered the casual questions which I put to him. — Dr. Watson about Sherlock Holmes, "The Adventure of the Second Stain"

In "The Adventure of the Second Stain," Dr. Watson tells us about Holmes's mood and activities when the case was not working out, when he couldn't connect the death in Godolphin Street with the missing diplomatic letter.  I've always smiled at this description, picturing Holmes coming in and out and in and out and not accomplishing what he wanted. (We know the work was not going well because he was eating.)  He was stymied because he couldn't make the connections. I understand the feeling.

I've ran out and ran in from this working desk entirely too often of late. I understand the need to sit at the appointed writing place and just do it but sometimes the connections just will not come. Sometimes. Like now.

I am writing a piece that is inspired by Doyle's "The Beetle-Hunter," a cracker of a good story, and while I know where I want my story to go, I can't seem to get the parts to connect. My lead character (a young, seemingly broke doctor, of course) does not seem to have a good attitude for a Victorian gothic tale.  He is thinking and acting more like a man of the 20th century. I really like him (although he doesn't have a name yet) and I don't want to stop him but this is supposed to be a Victorian gothic tale.

The book I'm writing is comprised of Doyle-inspired Gothic pieces so I know some Gothic genre elements must find their way into this piece of writing—not only find their way there but hopefully move in tandem with some originality in the story telling. I want a light hand with the gothic bits but not so light that the connections aren't evident.  I want it to be something like the one stanza from Longfellow's Haunted Houses:

A sense of something moving to and fro.
There are more guests at table than the hosts
invited; the illuminated hall
is thronged with quiet, inoffensive ghosts

Longfellow knows how to set the tone. I had the good fortune recently to read some slides Nancy Holder had prepared for a talk. One of those slides outlined the most common elements of the Gothic. I liked it so much I printed it out and tacked it up beside my desk. She identified:

*Atmosphere: eerie, dank, shadowy, mysterious

*Hauntable places: ruins, ancestral homes, abbeys, trap doors, hidden passages

*Hauntable people: those with secrets, rituals, curses, hidden crimes

*Women in distress: locked-up or murdered heiresses, forced marriages, live burials

*Isolation, Confinement    *Powerlessness    *Melodrama-Heightened Emotion

*The Macabre    *The Bizarre

An excellent and thorough list, yes? But Mr. No-Name Doctor keeps running around talking about Kodak photography and how that old house is not really one of the great houses of Britain. He drops intimations that he doesn't really need this bizarre job in that house with that woman in distress and her hauntable brother. I've tried putting him there three times now and he still hasn't darkened the door.

Therefore, I've ran in and ran out of the work. It has been good in other ways. I worked on "The Terror of Blue John Gap" project for the Arthur Conan Doyle Society. I wrote two pieces for the Beacon Society for next year's Gazettes. I wrote some practice job interview pieces for a friend. I set up a new computer for a friend who isn't computer literate. I made a few Christmas lists.

Good stuff, all that, but I'm supposed to be writing the story. It is time to start connecting the fellow to the elements. 

Maybe I'll have a sandwich first, even at this irregular hour.