I plot and plan neurotically. I never start a book without having worked out its trajectory in some detail. I start with a few images or scenes, then thread them together, and ultimately, after a fair bit of planning, down to a chapter level, if possible, I start writing. That said, while I would never make a book unmediatedly ‘about’ a particular theme/idea/nugget/whatever, I do very often have a sudden moment of revelation about a particular heuristic, and realize that, possibly unconsciously, I may have been chewing it over in a particular book. This certainly doesn’t work for everyone, but for me, that can then be a way of unlocking the book – I can deliberately use that particular thematic to push it forward – even if the them or idea’s ridiculous. This is in no way an ‘answer’ for the reader to ‘decode’, but a paradigm for me to think with, kind of a game. So – yes, as you say, ink features a lot in Kraken, and having become conscious that it would do and was doing so, I was able to structure certain scenes deliberately riffing off that fact.
This tends to occur during planning. I don’t like the idea of writing and just seeing what happens.
This tends to occur during planning. I don’t like the idea of writing and just seeing what happens.