I write a series of books about a very special landscape – Dungeness in Kent. Hopefully it’s always there in the books. Hopefully, too, when people read them, they get sense of what it’s like there, even if they’ve never been.
The weird thing is, halfway through writing the series, in which the look of that place is so important, I learned that I had something called Aphantasia. Aphantasia is a condition where someone has little or no mental imagery. What’s astonishing is that it’s only really been recognised as a condition in the last few years – and only really widely discussed in the media since 2020.
When I learned that other people can actually form images in their heads I was flabbergasted – which is I think what most aphantasics feel. I always assumed the phrase ‘mind’s eye’ was an odd metaphor. I guess it’s a bit like a colourblind person realising that other people see vast differences between green and red.
Let me explain what it’s like for me. I know what things look like but I can’t close my eyes and ‘see’ them. I recognise my wife, for example, and can describe her, but I have no picture of her in my head. It’s quite weird, thinking about it.
But I didn’t feel short-changed by discovering I’m aphantasic. The opposite in fact. It helped me understand something. In my head I know what Dungeness is in terms of the sound of its shingle, the colour of the laundry that hangs from the lines outside some of the cabins, the way the clouds move over its huge horizon. I keep it there, I realise, as words. And I think that leaves me able to describe a place with a kind of economy others might struggle with.
We’re pretty early on the curve of realising how some types of neurodiversity relate to creativity. An extraordinarily high proportion of designers and architects, people who problem-solve in three dimensions, seem to be dyslexic. Since I discovered my Aphantasia, I’ve also discovered a few other writers with it. Maybe it’s why we have a facility with putting things into other people’s heads.
Don’t miss William Shaw discussing, on 29 June at 11.30am, his new novel The Wild Swimmers, the fifth in his highly acclaimed Dungeness-set crime series, featuring DS Alexandra Cupidi.