35. "The Solitaire Experiment"

I’ve been ill for awhile since my last post here -- and just didn’t have the extra “oomph” to do regular posting. But even though I’ve been under the weather, I have still been getting plenty of writing ideas, so I have lots of catching up to do!

First off, NaNoWriMo’05 started November 1st! This is my second year participating in NaNo -- writing 50K words in 30 days! -- an experience I wouldn’t miss and recommend to everyone. Even if you don’t reach the goal of writing 59 K, the experience of taking part in a common goal with thousands of writers spread around the world is indescribable. I can’t say enough about the positive energy created by 55,000+ human beings intent on sharing their goal(s). Even if you don’t think you want to take on that sort of goal for yourself, I recommend everyone with the slightest interest in reading/writing visit the NaNoWriMo.org website. It’s truly a positive learning experience -- a successful experiment in global cooperation and creativity.

Originally, I’d planned to write a further episode in the series of writings that I call Autobiography of a Dragon. But about a week before NaNo started, I realized that I wanted to do something completely different from what I'd been writing the last couple of years. It's an idea that's been percolating on my back burner for several months -- using a game of Solitaire, played with a Tarot deck, to plot/write a book.

I call it The Solitaire Experiment. So far it's turned out quite interesting -- a murder mystery that takes place during the time of Charlemagne (740 - 814). At this point it's as much a mystery to me as I hope it will be to future readers. If it's as interesting to read as it is to write, it just might make it to a publisher! Hey, it could happen! ;-)

Other writers have asked me what Tarot deck(s) I use for writing my book ...

I have a few Tarot decks that I use regularly -- Hudes, Haindl, Crowley-Thoth, Celtic Dragon, and a couple of others that I don’t use as much. But for writing The Solitaire Experiment I picked up a little deck (2”x 3”) of Hanson-Roberts Tarot, which Borders had on sale for about $7, including the book. It met my needs perfectly for a “writing tool deck”: small (so I could have bunches of cards on the table and still have room to work), relatively inconspicuous (if I took it out to a bookstore cafe or coffee shop, I didn’t want to attract a bunch of attention that would distract me from my writing/plotting), and easy to replace if anything happened to it when I was out and about (i.e. - not a lot of money involved). That doesn’t mean that I don’t use any of my other decks as writing tools; I just don’t take them out-and-about. For other kinds of readings I use the deck that seems to be most appropriate for the situation or energy at hand. The last couple of years that usually ends up being the Thoth or Dragon decks.

I got the idea about using the Solitaire game for plotting a book, while playing Solitaire over and over in quick succession on my pda. It’s so easy and almost mindless that I find it helps me go into almost a trance-type flow of consciousness -- a sort of meditation. As I relax and just let the game flow, the thoughts that are usually on my back burner start coming to the foreground and I come up with all sorts of surprising things, including cognitive leaps.

One of my natural strengths is to recognize patterns -- especially in three dimensions (it’s just the way I think/see things) -- so that’s going on in the back of my mind as my “back burner” thoughts come to the foreground. (Did that make sense? Hmmm...) Last March, during NaNoEdMo, I suddenly realized that I had been following the patterns of the last several Solitaire games as though they were someone’s lifetime(s). I thought that was kind of neat and continued doing it as an interesting aspect of the games -- until I noticed this idle observation, flitting through my head, that if Solitaire could show the patterns of someone’s life, it should be able to show the patterns of a story/book. Not long after that I decided that the Tarot would be able to add the interesting extra aspects that are missing from the regular deck of cards that we traditionally use to play Solitaire. Since then I’ve worked off and on -- mostly on my back burner -- figuring out how to incorporate the Major Arcana into the game, as well as how to track everything -- let alone what the patterns would symbolize in a person’s life/story. It’s not completely figured out, but enough of it is to allow me to start using it to write my NaNo project.

So, it is truly an experiment in progress -- and you know what they say about experiments ...

“There is no such thing as a failed experiment,
only experiments with unexpected outcomes!"
~ Richard Buckminster Fuller

... and of course ...

"Every first draft is perfect,
because all the first draft has to do is exist!
It's perfect in its existence.
The only way it could be imperfect
would be not to exist."
~ Jane Smiley

I love that!

Write On, Y’all!
~ Nanette

© Nanette Y. Francis, 2005. All Rights Reserved.