Back in the saddle again

Be forewarned: this post has very little to offer to anyone who has no idea what the hell I'm talking about.


I'm writing a novel (really, who isn't these days?), and one thing that I haven't done yet is write down exactly what my novel is about. I often think that I have a good reason for that: after all, isn't that what Cliff's notes are for? Why should I be writing a "theme", shouldn't the theme simply present itself based on what the story is at it's heart, which is to say, a subconscious part of my spirit as a writer that I cannot control or define by myself, thus is must be understood by someone outside of my own head?

Alright, fine. What if I just give a brief plot outline and then talk about the themes that the story explores? I'll do that.

Clockwork Mouse: Plot Summary

Set in the midst of the Roaring 20s, Clockwork Mouse is the story of Bridget Ford, a young runaway who becomes a stage assistant to Alexander Gimbal, a stage magician and illusionist. After Gimbal moves his show to Atlantic City, he disappears and leaves Bridget in charge, and she finds incredible success, but after a crisis of conscious, decides to leave the show as well. She stays in Atlantic City and forges a relationship with a former beauty queen named May Stowell, who, after a time, convinces Bridget to return to the stage. The show that Bridget perfoms nearly kills May, and plagued with guilt, Bridget runs away from Atlantic City, setting off on a trip across the country. She visits her family, who she has abandoned for three years. In Reno, she finds Gimbal, who is despondent and drunk, and though she helps nurse him through pneumonia, he eventually dies, after telling Bridget the reason why she is so successful at stage magic. In short, Bridget's belief in the reality of the magic makes it real and not an illusion, a fact that she was not aware of, but that made the tricks all the more authentic. Now understanding her capabilites, Bridget tries to master her power and moves to LA, where May has become a film actress. They both find success in the movies, May as a star and Bridget in the new experiments with sound and color. Bridget, still afraid of her abilities and afraid of hurting or killing someone again, decides to once again run away, but May stops her, and Bridget agrees to try and live with her problems and not be alone.

There, that was about 400 words of plot. But what about theme?

There are two main themes in the story that I can identify now. The first is the theme of responsibility. Much like so much of fiction revolves around secrets that are not revealed, Clockwork Mouse is a story that is built by irresponsibility, and the consequences of such. Bridget is afraid of taking real responsibility for her actions, which is why she is so apt to run. She, and Gimbal as well, are more than willing to accept anything bad as an insurmountable crisis, and unwittingly refuse to change or fix the circumstances.

The second is the theme of magic. In Clockwork Mouse, magic takes two definitions: one is simply a phenomenon that you observe, the other is a phenomenon that you believe in. Gimbal explains to Bridget that her gift is simply her ability to believe in real magic, and that things work more by willpower and belief than by any sort of logical reasoning. It is this ability that makes Bridget's magic tricks legitimate, and helps her to make more impossible things: color print on film, a tree, a rainstorm. In this case, magic is not a power that involves incantation or skill, only the power of imagination and the trust that it will work. Bridget's imagination seems to be the most capable of such creation, though when she is afraid or cynical she loses her ability and things can go haywire. Magic is also tied into the power of love and emotion; the idea here being that knowing your feelings to be true makes them stronger than evaluating them.

The motif, as I can see it so far in the story, is abandonment. Bridget abandons her family twice, she abandons her work, abandons May and Atlantic City, and tries to abandon LA. Gimbal also abandons Bridget in Atlantic City, and later abandons her in a sort of way with his death. Abandonment in Clockwork Mouse always has to do with self-discovery as well as irresponsibility, as the abandoner often forgets that they always abandon loose ends, and almost always they have to reconcile with these sooner or later.


That's all I can think of for now. Will there be more? Eh, who knows. Right now I'm just focused on writing, but it's hard to do when I just started watching True Blood, and it's such an awful show that I can't stop. Really, it is just trashtarded.