Kirsten Arcadio

Pause for thought…

Somebody said that to me this week and I was indignant. Me? Charge headlong into something, make snap judgements, rush ahead, push for action over procrastination? Never. And then I thought, hmm, well, maybe. I won’t divulge the particular context of this comment but I can say that reflection helped. In the end I didn’t form a different opinion but I handled the issue differently, and got better results.

Later on in the week, it happened again. An issue came up and I wanted to jump in and handle it straight away. This time my friend wasn’t there to tell me to pause. My finger was ready on the trigger of my smartphone to fire and I had to count to ten…slowly, thinking of the words of my wiser contemporary as I did so.

Writing is a constant fight against this instinct. One the one hand, I go with the flow, write as it comes and get it all down on the page. But really, long form is on the front line against this instinct, and in writing longer pieces I am forced to deliberate, turn things over in my mind, develop my ideas and handle things differently.

I was reminded again of the appeal of the long form when a friend and fellow Faber Academy alumna’s blogpost appeared in my inbox recently. Her post was a story about a palm reader who had told her how many children she and her husband would have and it reminded me of a similar experience of my own. The post was so appealing and the storytelling so engaging I thought again of my original reason for writing novels: to communicate in 3D. In my view, novels provide a multidimensional form of conversation, where interpretation is not only possible but necessary.

Despite my urge to write really long form material – i.e. books, I’ve become attached to quick posts on social media in recent years, something that eats my time and chips away at my quality of life, my friendships and my integrity. I’ve noticed that others are similarly addicted. Connections have become just that, mere connections, lines between dots in a virtual world, and the deeper, soul-satisfying feeling of true friendship and personal connection has been lost.

Time to stop.

Time, instead, to get writing again, posting long form content, crafting new stories, a new novel that will be years in the making but something I’ll find worthwhile. Time to jot shorter thoughts down as poems, not posts, and to look others in the eye and talk into the small hours, face to face.

As my third novel, WorldCult demonstrates, we are hurtling towards a world where an cavernous online void could swallow us all up. Take one influential, smart individual who knows how to manipulate his image and ideas across the internet, add to that the intense and desperate loneliness of the modern, virtual age, and….boom!

By the way, the irony isn’t lost on me that WorldCult sells better as an online product than a paperback, but if you’re interested in more of my thoughts on the subject, delivered in a way that allows pause for thought, interpretation and deliberation, why don’t you read it?

A friend asked: ‘I loved it, but what does the end mean?’ to which I gave the inevitable answer. I know what I think it means but I am not going to tell you, as this is our 3D communication at work – you decide what you think and we can discuss. We can discuss it until the sun goes down and into the early hours. Face to face.

This year I wrote a book, my third and last for now. It was fast, and it was furious. An easy write: 1,000 words an hour, several hours a day, mostly during the months of April-August.

An ugly climax, some might say. Short, sharp, brutal. Like life, maybe. But it was also exploratory, questioning of so much that is close to my heart, but especially:

Faith
Reality
Death

In many ways, this was the book I had been waiting a long time to write.

The themes had been bothering my protagonist, Elena, and therefore me, too, for a long while. What is death and where do we go when we die? Yes, yes, I know. We go to heaven. Or…we are reborn as either lesser or more superior beings. Or maybe nothing happens at all. Being brought up with the first theory and being rather partial to the second, the third disturbs me greatly. And of course, all three are linked the the first and third themes of faith and reality. It boils down to one question.

Who are we really and why does it matter?

I expound no personal beliefs in my books, only ideas that have crossed my mind. It is possible, but not probable, that we live on in some form after we die. It is possible, but not probable, that the form in which we live is recognisable in some way to our former selves: maybe there are ghosts among us, either in the form of the reincarnated or the actual past. And the belief in all of this helps us get through the day, aids us in our plight to be better human beings; to love better, to remember to be loyal, to strengthen our bonds. To continue searching long after the lights appear to have gone out.

For some say that love is the answer. Maybe so. But what of faith?

My protagonist, Elena, finds herself in dire straights precisely because these answers elude me. Poor Elena – who’d be a character in a book, destined to be pulled this way and that by the hand of a higher power (me, the author)? What kind of a reality is that? Although, to give her her dues, I did live a great deal of it with her. Such are the highs and lows of novel writing. The conclusions are ambiguous. Sorry about that, but I prefer to let you, the reader, decide on your own interpretation.

And what of the central idea of the book, that a global cult driven by a leader with questionable values could one day take hold in our super interconnected world? Of course this could never happen, could it? Of course this isn’t something we have come across before. Is it? I was concerned with something unique to our time but the more I wrote, the more I wondered. Surely a charismatic cult leader with a truck load of money and corresponding power would never try to change the course of the world’s spiritual compass? Because this never almost happened on several occasions before, did it? And the human race has never just followed a leader into death and destruction…just because that leader inspired them to have faith.

So, faith. What of it? And our collective will to put all our faith in one person, or entity, in the hope that one day we – collectively – will be better off, even if it means hardship right now. Even…if it means death and destruction.

This time science also plays a part, as science and religion get closer together and our existence on earth reaches the vanishing point. What lies beyond it?

In 2014 my third book, WorldCult, was born. A modern take on an age-old problem.

getbook.at/worldcult