Being a novelist means that you believe in magic. If that sounds too grandiose, feel free to puke on the floor. If you’re still with me, let me tell you about some cosmic wonder that might make you a magic believer too.
I’ve been writing a trilogy of novels, which are all being published within a year. Three books, one year. Yeah, I’m that crazy. In one scene there’s a character who lives in a house where the only working light is in the refrigerator. She uses its bleak glow to read, sitting against its propped-open door.
I was legit putting the finishing touches on that chapter when I got an e-mail asking me to write about the light of the refrigerator as a source of inspiration. Seriously! I mean, isn’t that the proof we’ve been waiting for that God loves books?
All I knew about the scene before I started scribbling was that I wanted it to be about peculiar illuminations. I don’t outline, so at the jump I had no idea that she’d read in such a way. I only knew the novel needed a moment that was soulful and achy, like a blues song. Then an image slithered into my mind’s eye: a woman in a winter jacket, leaning into an open fridge, traveling through space-time in a paperback.
When I write, there is nothing more important to me than intimacy. I never think about multiple readers for any of my books. I think about only one reader, and I want the work to feel like I’m whispering the book inches from their ear, as though we are the only two people alive.
So when I say this character sits on the floor in front of the fridge, and when I say that her face is streaked with madness, and when I say she has already read this novel nine times but being in that book is her getaway from too much thinking, too many memories that smash like cars in a demolition derby, now the reader wiggles into the character’s confused heart. Suddenly there is an eruption of empathy.
Even though the fridge is cold, that heat of intimacy warms us. The audience of one feels viscerally active, slammed in the guts of the scene. This character isn’t alone in the kitchen because the reader is with her, and the author is there too. We all meet here and become friends.
I know this all sounds very Healing Crystals, California, but, hey, this whole shebang started with magic, and anything goes after that. I wrote this trilogy of novels from the perspective of a modern-day Viking who answers the question: What happens if Johnny Rotten has a baby with the Rock?
If I’ve done my job right, that big ol’ brute will let you listen to every secret from his baffled heart, his shame cave. You’ll be best friends, even as he’s leaving quite a body count behind him. The two of you can build intimacy. You can be his refrigerator light. And that’s what we’re all trying to do as writers. We want to be conduits for intimacy. I can’t wait to travel into the mess of your characters’ hearts. That’s when it’s my turn to be your refrigerator light.
Joshua Mohr is the author of nine books. He sings in the “fictional” band Slummy, writing music on behalf of the hero of his Viking trilogy. Their debut EP, The Wrong Side, is available now.
