Synchronicity [sing-kruh-nis-i-tee] is a concept developed by psychiatrist Carl Jung, who felt that it was possible for seemingly unrelated events to come together in “meaningful coincidences.” In his book by the same title, he told of a patient who seemed to reach an impasse and was making no further progress in treatment. During a session, she told him she’d had a dream about someone giving her a golden scarab, an expensive piece of jewelry. While she was talking, Jung heard a tapping on his window behind him, opened it and a large green-gold scarab beetle flew in. Jung caught it and handed it to the woman, saying, “Here is your scarab,” and from that point on, she made great progress in her treatment.
The novel I’ve been working on concerns a young woman who inadvertently ends up being the primary caretaker of her elderly aunt who has Alzheimer’s. After the death of the aunt, the woman uncovers family secrets that change her perception of most of what she thought she knew. I’m to the point in the book where I’m about ready to kill off the aunt. No, I won’t murder her; she dies of natural causes, but I was struggling with whether or not the timing was right. I felt like I wanted to provide a bit more substance before the aunt’s death, but I wasn’t sure what that substance would be. My writing stalled. Continue reading “Synchronicity: Finding Meaning in Writing”