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The Story

Lord and Lady Macbeth are being stung, not by scorpions, but by imagery, the medium by which human beings think at the deepest levels. And the kingdom which they seek to conquer and to control is not just Scotland, but the kingdom of the mind. Imagery enlightens, but it also obscures; imagery is loyal, but it also betrays; imagery is visible on the surface, but manifests itself at hidden depths. Their mutual struggle – to live in prose while thinking in imagery – affects the two Macbeths in different ways. Prose is the level of action, but it is often the level of sloganeering, polemic and placard; poetry is the level of complexity of thought, and, while it is often puzzling, it is the language in which we attempt to understand the ultimate meaning of our lives. The desire to both live and think in prose is the desire of every human brute; the struggle to both live and think poetically is the struggle of every thinking person. The attempt of the Macbeths to live in prose while thinking in poetry makes the story of the Macbeths a fascinating image-quarry by which to explore the phenomenon of what it is to be human. This novel is a creative response to a reading of the play, Macbeth.

The Making of Full of Scorpions is My Mind

This journal records my reflections on the process of the crafting of the novel as it evolved through the stages of planning, writing, editing and polishing. It constitutes an effort to be as conscious as possible of the process whereby the single idea that suggested the topic of the novel was expanded into a complex work of art. Topics range from the nuts and bolts of novel-building to the nature of the novel as an art-form.

Planning Full of Scorpions is My Mind

During the writing of the novel, I kept a hand-written notebook which records the day-by-day development of the novel as it found its shape and style. The notebook – now in print form – reveals how a vast cluster of thoughts was sifted, selected, structured and polished into novel-form.

The Project

Together, this novel, journal and notebook comprise the sixteenth installment in an on-going novel-writing project in which I am exploring the concept of form and meaning in the novel, and of the novel as a form of expression in the 21st Century. All of the published journals and notebooks are available for free download.