CREATING THE WORLD OF 0W1 (PART ONE)

“Each of us has his own way of emerging from the underworld, mine is by writing. That's why the only way I can keep going, if at all, is by writing, not through rest and sleep. I am far more likely to achieve peace of mind through writing than the capacity to write through peace.” Franz Kafka

“Now I will tell you the answer to my question. It is this. The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power, pure power. What pure power means you will understand presently.” 1984

Yes, George Orwell was an influence for the word-building of 0w1.

But how was the World of 0w1 conceived and then brought into being? How did I emerge from my underworld, of isolation?

no suburban writer

As a writer, I began noticing patterns to what I had written. The projects, whether for books or films, always had this sense of creating worlds; not sheltered cul-de-sacs somewhere in suburbia. I came to the conclusion that I was never meant to be a suburban writer, but that whenever a seed of inspiration came, it was usually with a main character, not an action sequence or a cunning plot twist and this character was to have a role in a constellation-full universe.

And so, yes, I don’t write the usual: boy meets girl, boy loses girl, girl finds a new boy, old boy commits suicide...everybody’s happy!...small world stories. There is something that compels me to create a universe, that ‘their’ world is part of something much bigger and much more daunting.

LUCID DREAMS

With regards to “0w1:believe” it all started from a lucid dream – yes, of the Jungian type – that had me seated on a rocky escarpment looking down into a desert and watching, as a man died in giving birth to a woman. The rest is recorded in the novel, in a chapter entitled ‘Red Desert, Red Man, Red Woman’. it was quite a haunting dream that has stayed with me since 2012.

The man and the woman were to become the main characters in this unrelenting story of courage and terror. I gave the first draft to a very good friend of mine; someone I trust implicitly. I think it was a bit of a surprise for him to finally see what goes on inside my head, but my memory of the conversation hangs on this one phrase.

“You don’t seem to have a problem writing really gory stuff.” Tony Perrett

VISUAL NOT GRAPHIC…

Now here’s the thing. He was excited that the book was so visual; he could see the landscapes I was painting. Visual please note, without the usual connotation of ‘graphic’, in that gratuitous way that people judge content with. In writing this kind of supernatural world, I didn’t want to create something for the sake of shock. I think if that’s all you have, there is a possibility of you bouncing off the surface of the water, rather than plummeting the depths of any world.

 Now, it’s true, I always wanted to shock people, in that sense of being awakened from the torpor of a controlled society, or a repressive church, temple or mosque. Wherever people feel the world they live in, was predictable to the point of boredom, or has been made in some inviolable way by a higher power. That they crave liberation, but feel they don’t have the wherewithal to bring it about.

 It is that feeling, right there, that I wanted to capture, which Strix and Falco, Calvin and Kristina, Zip, T_m and D_m, Izzy and Jess have about their world. How do you change the seemingly unalterable and immovable world, a reality as impregnable as a mountain?

STRIX THE ORPHAN

Strix is an orphan, a child whose parents were both murdered by the Security Services. He has no roots and no bearings in his life. He is lonely to the point of screaming till his throat bleeds. How on earth could Strix, or any of his friends, be a catalyst for change?

 Which brought me back to the question...

Why had this man given birth to a woman, in a desert? Geoff Hall

It is by asking this question that a universe exploded in my imagination, firing a thousand star-like synapses in my brain and creating constellations where previously there was a black hole. It was my big bang moment.

As a writer, you shouldn’t be afraid of creating an expansive universe. Don’t think that you have to graduate from suburban microcosm, to a universal macrocosm, because you can get stuck in that out-of-town genre and never escape. There’s a reason that it’s called a cul-de-sac! Write about your passions. If you want to be distinctive, distinguished as a writer, be yourself, walk in your own shoes, use your own pens, not someone else’s. Live in your own neighbourhood and not someone else’s cookie-cutter, suburban reality.

I am drawn to reading dystopian stories, like Orwell’s “1984”, but wanted to put my spin on it. And so, this novel became “1984” with bestial demons and vampire priests.

 FOOD FOR MY IMAGINATION

Food for my imagination, comes from reading widely. I read books about the quantum universe, history books about the German Resistance in World War Two, I love the novels and short stories of Philip K Dick and the philosophical tomes of Kierkegaard, van Prinsterer, Rumi’s poetry or the mystical writings of Jean-Yves Leloup or Thomas Merton.

 I may not understand all that the philosophers have to share, especially if they have done so with cunning equations, (Polanyi comes to mind!) but I may find a priceless metaphor to hang a plot thread on. ‘Read widely, write wider’. That is perhaps a good motto for an author. Let’s call it - Expansive intensity.

 And one last word for ‘part one’. Nothing in this World of 0w1 is as it seems. For beneath this temporal layer of control, there is something we call the ‘vision space’. This domain shows our dissident group of friends, the spiritual forces that give the State and Church its power. It is a place of many disturbing visceral visions. This was the final layer to my world-building, for if I can expand a metaphor; this universe doesn’t just have ‘width’ but also ‘depth’ and many more dimensions to boot.

MORE TO FOLLOW>>>>>

Geoff Hall