Diana Wynne Jones’s book Reflections: On the Magic of Writing contains two more examples of this phenomenon.
The first ‘coincidence’ happened at a time when she was working on her book Fire and Hemlock, for which the plot was, she thought, her own invention. An acquaintance railroaded her into a visiting a place where people started discussing a local legend - which strongly resembled her plot.
The second incident happened while she was working on Archer’s Goon. One of the characters discovers a newborn baby in the snow. The same acquaintance went out for a walk and found an abandoned baby!
The two incidents in Diana Wynne Jones’s own words:
The Fire and Hemlock incident
“Sometimes, however, the book comes true while I am actually writing it, and this can be quite upsetting.
Fire and Hemlock was one of those. One of the many things that happened while I was writing it was that an eccentric bachelor friend from Sussex University, who stayed with us while he was lecturing in Bristol, insisted on my driving him to some stone circles in our neighborhood. There, he began having mystic experiences, while I kept getting hung up astride the electric fences that crisscrossed the site. My outcries, he said, were disturbing the vibes, so he sent me to the local pub to wait for him.
As soon as I got there, the landlady and the other customers began talking about these same stone circles and related the local story about their origins. This story is called “The Wicked Wedding”: the bride, who is an evil woman, chooses a young man to marry, but at the wedding, the devil comes, kills the young bridegroom, and marries the lady himself.
This is the story behind Fire and Hemlock and, believe it or not, I had never heard it before - I thought I'd made it up. Well, after various other strange experiences, my eccentric friend went back to Sussex and I finished the book.”
The Archer’s Goon incident
This extract follows straight on from the above paragraph:
“I then started, immediately, to write Archer's Goon. Just picked up a fresh block of paper and began. Now those of you who have read this book will know that it hinges on a man called Quentin Sykes discovering a newborn baby in the snow. I had just started the second draft of this book when my eccentric Sussex friend went for a walk in the middle of a winter's night and discovered a baby.“
What happened here?
It is often possible to find a logical explanation for some uncanny incidents. For example, Diana Wynne Jones could have read and forgotten the story but later been subconsciously influenced by it while writing the book.
However, this does not explain why her friend insisted on going to the site of the origin of the legend at a time when she was writing about it and sent her to a place where people just happened to start talking about it when she arrived.
It is easy to dismiss some incidents as mere chance, as just an interesting but meaningless coincidence. The finding of a baby in real life just as she was writing a fantasy book featuring the finding of one can be brushed aside in this way.
There is also the possibility that Diana Wynne Jones invented or perhaps embellished these incidents.
My own experiences of thoughts that manifest in real life, many of which have been described on here, tell me otherwise. There is a zone where some people transmit and some receive. For some people such incidents are the norm; unseen influences are at work in their lives.
The friend is described as an eccentric who senses vibes and seeks mystical experiences. This suggests to me that he was open and picked up and acted out Diana Wynne Jones’s ideas.
What Diana Wynne Jones said about the incidents
This extract comes immediately after the finding of the baby by her friend:
“He found it a very moving experience - but I felt acutely responsible. It is all very well my books coming true on me - it is a risk I take - but when this starts rubbing off on other people it is no joke. The trouble is, a book demands that certain incidents are present in it, and to deny this is to spoil the book.
So I thought deeply about the matter. And though I realized I could do nothing about parts of my books coming true - that really is beyond my control - there are things very much in my control over which I feel a very strong sense of responsibility indeed.“
There are some good points here.
Sometimes what we think about even casually does manifest in our lives. Sometimes we do have to dwell on something even when it is controversial or dangerous, and this can affect other people’s lives.
Taking responsibility where appropriate while accepting that there are some things that are out of our control is a very good approach.
We can’t think of nothing and life must go on.
