Storytellersunplugged

By David Niall Wilson

Deadlines. Did you ever wonder why they call them that? Dictionary.com tells me it’s the boundary beyond which a prisoner should not pass unless he wants to risk being shot. That would be an example of old-school deadlines. These days I live a life full of self-imposed, work-imposed and by various means implied deadlines that would probably drive your average prisoner to step across the boundary and take his chances with the afterlife. That is normal, and I’ve accepted it. What I’ve discovered (much to my chagrin) is that I am NOT a miracle worker, and, in point of fact, cannot fly or jump buildings very effectively.

As a writer, I’ve had a love/hate relationship with deadlines for many years. Usually, they are my friends. I don’t really require close supervision to get a project completed, but if I don’t impose goals and deadlines on the work myself, I may allow things to build up until I have to rush through in a manic, caffeine-fueled haze, and this is not conducive to achieving excellence. I try to keep a close eye on days remaining, and words remaining, applying those well-honed college algebra skills I spent the winter acquiring, so that I know about how far I should be into a project by a certain point. This allows me to guess with at least a modicum of accuracy how many new projects (and of what length) I can take on in a given period and still sleep, eat, and interact with humanity.

The point of this essay, of course, is that it doesn’t always work out that way. Sometimes deadlines are set for you and you have the choice to either cowboy-the-heck-up or fail. Sometimes, despite the best intentions, you take on too much work and implode as you keep promising to do it all and flailing madly at the keys in the hope that some miracle will turn your words into small rabbits that multiply faster than you can think. It’s not going to happen, of course, but if you are failing anyway, you might as well dream about fluffy bunnies.

There is a proverbial barrier called “the wall” that people talk about occasionally. Sometimes they are talking about physical endurance, sometimes it’s depression, other times it’s just there and you can’t really define it. I want you all to know that, whether you’ve hit it or not, that freaking wall is there. I know because I’ve brushed it a few times in the past, and this winter I hit it head on. It’s clear, you see? - or don’t, actually — it’s transparent. You know there’s the possibility it’s out there, but like smoking under a lung cancer sign, or driving with your eyes closed, you can ignore it right up to the point of impact - even to the point of not believing in its existence.

For the record, writing, full-time work, college, and a family are too many things to juggle at high speed for very long. I tried, and the writing (eventually) dribbled off to nothing. I kept myself sane with this journal - and my own Deep Blue Journal - but my creative wells were closed for repairs. Deadlines meant nothing to me because what difference does it make what or when the deadline is if you know up front you can’t possibly meet it? If you are on thin ice, you might as well dance…if you are failing; you might as well day-dream about fluffy bunnies typing. Eternal laws of the universe.

I bring this up now because I’m just reinventing my schedule. Deadlines are taking on actual meaning again, and every hare and hair is receding, which is how it should be (or at least how it has been for many years now). To get myself back in shape (and to scrape an unnamed buddy off the wall) I’ve recently tackled a nearly insane deadline. I haven’t met it yet, but it’s looking good (of course, Trish is helping). Another project (a screenplay) that has been due for two months has progressed swiftly and will be in rough draft form by this weekend. Projects are lining up and I’m knocking them down. I realized this morning that I have committed myself blithely to a novella, a novelette, and at least two short stories by the end of the summer, not to mention a non-fiction book I’ve been working on…and other projects. It feels good, but now I watch the woods with a wary eye, because I know it’s out there - lurking - the bane of deadlines…

The wall.

I’ve gained a new respect for its existence, and I’ve added it to the algorithm of my life. Others can tell you that in the past I would have tackled a year-long schedule of a novel a month if I had a reasonable idea I’d sell them all…and to a point, I’m still that way, but quality over quantity has always been important, and sometimes you just have to put on the brakes - line it all up and give it a once over before you say “sure, I can do that” to the next big project.

Believe me - as pleasant as fluffy bunnies are, you don’t want to be contemplating them for any length of time. Set deadlines that make sense, commit to nothing you can’t reasonably expect to complete - and avoid the wall at all costs.

This has been a public service message from a recently glass-scraped writer who still has bunny fuzz clogging his ears.

Onward!

DNW

(How about a big Storytellers welcome for Robert Jones - he’s agreed to do occasional fill-in essays - and to catch a few of those 31st dates that we ignore so well, and so thoroughly. Welcome aboard, Bob)

by R. C. Jones

Rewards come in many forms. One of the most commonly recognized rewards for writing is probably financial, but there are others that can be immeasurably meaningful. Some who write have received not only financial rewards but also literary awards to which they attach special importance.

The field of sports has many nonfinancial rewards, often in the form of trophies for amateurs. In high school and college sports, school sweaters are also used as rewards. When in college, I earned a sweater by manning a sweep (long oar) while crewing in a coxed eight racing shell (long, skinny boat). Crewing was not easy. It required seemingly endless hours of hard rowing and miles of running just to get into acceptable physical condition for racing and to be able to row as one and as hard as we could without making mistakes. The crew on my boat included eight galley slaves and a coxswain, who steered and beat time for our strokes on the shell with rudder toggles. I think his name was Buddy Rich.

While our crew was still in a learning rut of rowing in a relatively clumsy and uncoordinated manner, chopping away at the water with our sweeps and sending splats of icy spring water in all directions, we somehow happened to time one stroke perfectly. Instead of responding with an expected jerk, the shell seemed to lift out of the water and glide through the air for a magical moment. During that moment, what began with an application of all-out brute force necessary to pull a sweep through a propelling arc ended in a soaring flight of graceful perfection. All thoughts of aches and pains in muscles and joints and of burning in throats and lungs disappeared. Replacing them was a fanatical desire to repeat that perfect pull and to experience that glorious glide again.

The sweater issued to me as my reward for all the intense work and pain while rowing arrived in a box. I opened it, looked at the contents, closed the box, and placed it upon a closet shelf, where it still rests. I can’t remember exactly what the
sweater even looks like, but I can still vividly remember that first perfect glide. I can still feel it.

The foregoing does not relate directly to rewards for writing, but I include it as an example of a meaningful and long-lasting nonfinancial reward.

Charles Ferry, an author of fine books for young adults, has been nonfinancially rewarded many times. His books include characters ranging from young flight crews facing the challenges of war, to young persons in love, and to even younger persons facing the terrors of terminal illness. Having become an authority on alcoholism the hard way, Charles has written books that reveal hazards awaiting those who drink irresponsibly. He has also developed eight-step programs that can be applied to help alcohol and drug addicts and those contemplating suicide.

Charles has received financial and literary awards for his books, and he’s justifiably proud of that. What brings a special look to his eyes, however, is when he tells me about some youngster who, after having read one of his books or having attended one of his lectures, tells him that, because of what he wrote or said, he or she will never drink or take illegal drugs. As Charles puts it, “That’s pure gold.”

I, myself, have put together quite a few words that have been published in technical manuals of a major computer company and more that have been published in newspapers that have lined the bottoms of many important birdcages. There are also reams of paper bearing my words securely tucked away in dark recesses of patent offices throughout the world. I received financial rewards for all of this, but I can’t remember all the details of what I wrote or the amount of my financial rewards.

The reward that I can remember in great detail was nonfinancial. It came from a legal secretary. I had written a newspaper column about the relationship between a horse and its master. Since she owned a horse that I knew she loved, I gave the secretary a copy of the column. She had no idea who had written it, and I thought I could get an unbiased opinion from her. A few days later, I asked if
she had read it. She said that she had been so moved by it that she had cried. I was so moved by her response that I almost did too. That was pure gold.

The road to success for a writer might be long and the financial rewards sparse, but look elsewhere for other rewards to see you through to better times. Elsewhere is where you can find supporting, nonfinancial rewards to sustain your drive and where you can sometimes find pure gold.

By Dick Hill

Written as a STORY FOR ALL AGES, presented for the congregation of the Universal Unitarian Church of Greater Lansing for children and adults alike in Joe Pesce and Brando as the don voices, just before the youth went to their religious education classes. Freely adapted, hell, ripped off, debased and screwed with, from a traditional Buddhist tale.

Same Contente and Gino Dissatisfaccione were the very best of friends, which was rather surprising, since they had such very different outlooks on life. Same Contente always seemed to appreciate each moment that life dealt him. Yesterday was a good example.

“Man oh man, I sure do like ice cream cones.” Sam said. “An’ ya’ know what? Vanilla is pretty good! Lucky thing we found dat dollar, an’ we could each get a cone for ourselves. Dis is indeed a splendid day. And da sky is really quite a magnificent blue, doncha’ think? Lookit’ dat one little flurrfy white cloud. I think it looks kinda’ like a bunny.”

On the other hand, Gino Dissatisfaccione always felt that things used to be better, or could be better, or should be better, and thinking like that made him so unhappy that he seldom took a moment to enjoy himself.

“Vanilla.” Gino complained. “Ya’ ask fer a chocolate cone, and all dey got is vanilla. What kinda’ ice cream truck is dat, I ask ya’? No chocolate, sheesh! An’ since all we had is one lousy dollar, stupid vanilla cones is all we could get. Why couldn’t we’a found FIVE dollars, den we coulda’ had jumbo hot fudge sundaes! Like Frankie Fortunata. He’s always gettin’ jumbo hot fudge sundaes. I hate dat guy! Man oh man, my life is a bummer.”

“I dunno’, Frankie’s alright. He let us come to his party, an’ it was real nice.”

“Nice? Waddya’, nuts? He’s just a showoff. Him an his party. An his jumbo hot fudge sundaes, three times a day I bet! ‘Cept he don’t hafta’ find five dollars, his old man just gives it to him. Whenever he asks. Hey dad, can I have five dollars for ice cream? Sure son, why doncha’ take ten, jes in case.”

“Actually, I’m pretty sure Frankie is lactose intolerant, so he NEVER gets ice cream.”

“Don’t let him fool ya’. Guys like him they get all the ice cream they want. Hey, look up dere at dat cloud. Betcha’ dollars ta donuts dat clouds gonna’ turn dark and nex’ thing ya’ know it’s gonna’ start rainin’. Sheesh.”

“That’d be okay. It’s a hot day, an’ it’d be fun to be out in da’ rain….(burp) Dat was really good”

“Fun to be in da’ rain? Yeah, right, waddya’, nuts? Aw, geez, lookit dat? Darn ice cream all melted! Lousy vanilla! Now all I got is dis soggy stupid cone.”
And he threw it down in disgust.

“Maybe next time you should complain less and lick more.” Sam said.

“The two friends continued walking until they came to a small stream, and who do you suppose was standing there? Frankie Fortunata.

“Hi Frankie” said Sam.
“Hello-o-o Frankie” said Gino, in what was frankly a very very snotty voice.

“Hi guys,” said Frankie. “Looks like the bridge is closed for repairs, and I don’t know how to get across.”

“It’s not very deep,” said Sam. He and Gino were wearing old shorts. “We can just wade across.”

But Frankie was in his very best clothes, since he was going to his grandma’s birthday party. So Sam offered to carry him across the stream, piggyback. And he did just that. Frankie thanked Sam and went on his way, and Sam and Gino continued their walk. Sam was enjoying the lovely day, but Gino was very unhappy. Finally he turned to Same and said, “I can’t believe you carried Frankie across the stream. That guy’s so stuck up, and you know I don’t like him, but you did it anyway, and it really makes me angry. Dat Frankie is like a big heavy ball of anger in my gut, and frankly, I’m gettin’ tired of carryin’ it around!”

“Gee,” said Sam “then maybe you should put him down. I put him down two hours ago back at the stream.”

“Aw, you’re nuts. You just ruined my day completely. I’m outta’ here.”

So Gino stomped off angrily, while Sam continued his walk, enjoying the sun, and the little white cloud, and a few minutes later, he found a five dollar bill.

P.S. Gino caught up with Frankie later that day and knocked him down and got his good clothes all muddy and took the ten dollar bill Frankie’s father had given him that morning and used it buy a jumbo hot fudge sundae and a bag of gummy bears AND a kite, and for the rest of that day he was very very happy indeed. But we all know it wasn’t TRUE happiness, the kind you get from doing the right thing. Or I dunno’, maybe it was. Sometimes it’s hard to know what really the right thing. Guess we all have to figure it out for ourselves.

–Dick Hill

(This is a post from our past, a golden oldie to fill a gap. Starting next month we have three new Storyteller Members to introduce, and we’re excited about it. I hope you enjoy this, and accept our apology for the weekend…Wayne and I had some technical back-and-forth glitches and the holiday ate his post. Tomorrow you’ll get the marvelous Dick Hill…today you have to settle for me…)

David Niall Wilson

My current project, which started out as a biography, has gotten me thinking about history again. The recent hoopla over a million little half-truths and made up facts pushed me deeper into the same thoughts. Any of you who have known me for a long time will remember my going off on this subject a time or two. I won’t call it a pet peeve, because that phrase is a pet peeve of mine…but what is history, really?

I don’t remember how old I was when it first occurred to me that a thing being written in a history book did not make it so; that the news didn’t necessarily happen just as it was reported, and that baseball radio announcers might not even be calling games the way they actually saw them. That’s an eye-opening factoid for a young man, let me tell you, and formative in ways that other life-lessons can never be.

Maybe it was the year in high school I accidentally signed up for both Ancient History and Western Civilization. Ancient History was the college preparatory class, and Western Civilization, as it turned out, was for those with less aptitude and concentration to spare. They covered the same period in history, as it turns out, and they covered them differently. One class taught that Babylon was the first great civilization, while the other talked about ancient Sumer, the Zoroastrians, and drilled down into the deeper facts. Fool that I was, I pointed this out to the Western Civilization teacher, thinking that maybe he was just ill-educated, and didn’t know about ancient Sumer. Maybe he really thought the Babylonians were first, and it was my duty to set him straight.

I was removed from the class and enrolled in “Individual Research in Social Studies,” where I had to write a fifty page research paper, and history continued down its two separate roads without a hitch in its giddy-up over my concerns. In any case, that was the start of it. I don’t think I gave it much more thought back then because I had a week to catch up on researching my paper “The Opium Trade Between China and Great Britain in the 1840s,” and I didn’t have much time on my hands.

It hit me again standing in a news stand one day and reading headlines about what appeared to be the same events, but with entirely skewed “facts”. I started wondering which attitude was written into the history books, and where one could find a true accounting of anything if everything ever recorded was subject to bias. The annals of history crumbled in my mind, and I began to think more for myself. It was a good thing, I’m convinced, but one that had to be kept in check and watched constantly. If you worry over it too much you start to think that if enough people say it long enough the textbooks will report the second gunman on the grassy knoll as fact, and that H. G. Wells was the first reporter with a bird’s eye view of the Martian invasion. It’s funny, and it’s not, because repeated over and over enough times, words become history.

Words that are not repeated enough times slip through the cracks, as well, leaving people with the impression that some things never happened, when they did. It’s an impossible conundrum. You don’t know who or what to trust, so you become a historian, of sorts, in your own right, hoping to patch together a sequence of historical events that is comfortable to you, and that you can live with. It’s best if you can find a good, solid support group of like-minded pseudo-historians to back up your theories.

How does this apply to writing? In the case of the biography I’m writing, which is the story of a psychedelic band from the 1960s, it’s crucial. Running through the stories and memories of the band members, I find threads of things they all remember, and believe. I find stories only one of them remembers, or that some fan told them about, but that none of them remember. Dates are jumbled, names and places run together, then apart, and my determination, after long thought, is that it doesn’t matter. If I capture the spirit of the days when the band was working its way to fame, then I’ve done my job. If the events, dates, relationships, and hair-colors don’t match up to exact history, what difference does it make? If the four guys involved don’t’ remember the details, who does? Do they even exist, at this point in time? I’m not sure. I am sure that there is an amazing story waiting to be told, and that if I get mired in the detailed history of it, it will bog down and never get written, but if I go with the flow and apply myself to getting “in character,” I can produce something that will give the reader the “feel” of that time, and that band. The experience is what is important, and what remains of those now are the strongest parts – the parts that time couldn’t kill. Those are what matter most. What happened in the 60s – for all intents and purposes – appears to have stayed there in large degree, but we can visit it, recreate it, and find the magic that gave four college boys with dreams, an RCA recording contract and a chance to stand on stage with Iron Butterfly and Dick Clark. And we can experience what it was like to have that, and just walk away.

Years from now readers may study this book, “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way To Woodstock,” and spread it as gospel. It may become a definitive history of the band, or it may sink into oblivion as so many other books have done, unnoticed. If any of you run across such a reader, and they start babbling to you about the exact events of a night in 1967, or a concert in 1969, just smile and nod, and say, “Yeah, that Dave Wilson sure knew his stuff.” History is full of little secrets like that.

DNW

There was almost no essay today. (Stop with the cheering, you lot. You get another thirty days without me now.)

That’s because tomorrow, the calendar starts getting interesting. Come one o’clock, my wife is putting me on a plane for a two week stint at one of our sister studios, there to work with various and sundry fine folks on a project that looks to be challenging and enjoyable. (No, I can’t tell you which one. I mean, I could I’d have to shoot all of you, and I just don’t have that many bullets. Besides, my trigger finger would get tired.)

Friday, she takes off for her summer writing wanderjahr. First it’s two weeks in Prague for a session on magical realism, then six more in Seattle for Clarion West. Do the math and you come up with roughly nine weeks apart, though rumor has it that Clarion West does allow supervised visits from spouses and legal representation. Today would seem to be a day for making big puppy dog eyes at my wife, uttering endearments, and generally acting like I’m not going to see her for a good long while. Instead, I’m sitting in front of the computer, typing out this.

Why?

I have friends who tell me that it’s about time I put the fiction writing on the back burner and really concentrated on the game design work, because I’ve been giving the writing too much play for the last couple of years. I have friends who tell me that I need to make sure that I clear more of my time for my writing, and that work has devoured too much of my writing time with late-night dialogue fixes over the years. And I have friends who think I should be focusing on writing about game writing, and really carving out a niche in a field where I’m, if perhaps not a leading expert – I’ll leave that for others to decide – then at least in possession of what Moe Green would no doubt refer to as my bones.

So where does the time go? Who gets the hours of fingers to keyboard? Or, to open the question wider, when do the fingers hit the keyboard at all? Was the hour I spent today lugging mulch out to the garden in preparation for a multiple week absence a betrayal of my writing time? How about taking twenty minutes to run over and do a friend a favor, returning a lost cell phone?

There’s only so many minutes. Who – or what – gets them, and in what order, is the real conundrum of trying to write while maintaining any other existence or existences. The writing books and magazines and websites (even this one) are full of the stern admonitions about how much you should be writing and when you should be writing and when you should be writing about writing and, well, you get the idea. But generalization is impossible. Circumstances change, rise up, and mutate. The muse is demanding and so is the deadline, but so is the rest of your life. A balance has to be struck, if you want to continue writing, if you want to continue being a writer. But what that balance is, and whom you strike the bargain with, is entirely a function of each individual’s circumstances, will, and desire.

For my part, I haven’t found my balance yet. I’m not sure I ever will, though I’m always going to keep trying. I certainly don’t feel like I’m not a real writer because there are occasional days that other things take precedence and I haven’t chained myself to the chair for a requisite number of hours. There’s a whole other essay in that, something I like to call “geek macho”, but that’s for another time. Right now, the balance is shifting, and no doubt it will shift again tomorrow, and the day after that. The trick is to keep it from sliding too far in one direction or another. Tricky, yes, but worthwhile…if I can pull it off.

And if I ever do, you’ll be the first to know.

by Janet Berliner

Last month in my column Bradbury And I, I left you dangling, wondering where Ray Bradbury would say he wanted to play next.

“The world knows you best as the author of Fahrenheit 451 and The Martian Chronicles, and of innumerable short stories and film scripts,” I said. “You’re in love with France, in love with life, in love with Chambord, a spired castle that grew out of the imaginations of kings. You’ve slept among tapestries and danced in the halls of monarchs. Where would you like to play next?”

I don’t know what I expected to hear, but Ray’s answer took me by surprise.

“Mary Poppins. I’d love to camp out on the roof among all those wonderful chimneys and spend all night there. I’d love to shoot a film up there. We’d have a ball and invite people and have all the foods among all the chimneys. I’m going to have to live forever to explore everything that fascinates me. Earth’s past, for example. It sparks my creative imagination every bit as much as the untapped future. It’s like you begin to suffer from the Thomas Wolfe syndrome once you hit any country. You find out a little bit, then find out how dumb you really are in every other area. Then you run over there and discover how stupid you are about over there, so you start reading about Francis I. Then you discover you don’t know a damn thing about the Hundred Years War, then you discover that you don’t know enough about England because they’re going back and forth all the time.”

It is Bradbury the writer speaking now, effortlessly integrating research and experience. Mentioning England reminds him of Blenheim Palace, which he visited during a lightning and thunder storm. “Boy, what a way to visit that place! Because the Battle of Blenheim is going on around you outside while you’re inside looking at history. Wonderful!”

The word “history” wrenched him back to France.

“I started reading books on Francis I, which got me hooked on Lafayette. I discovered how important the French were in the American Revolution and became involved with Lafayette as a fantastic character. He arrived here when he was twenty, about the same age as Thomas Jefferson–you forget how young these people were–and this vital young man helped our revolution and then went home and started the French revolution. I hadn’t realized how intimately he was connected to both.”

Clearly, wherever Bradbury went, he remained fascinated by the concept of time, how the past and future affect the present.

“I went leaping all around through time,” he said, “reading about Ben Franklin…that whole history about Franklin is amazing, makes you wish we had a man like that alive today. We’ve never had a president as smart as Franklin. He was a real Renaissance man.”

Asked how he felt about socialistic attitudes in France, Bradbury answered emphatically. “You can’t tax people and have a society, that’s all. As I said, I’m a liberal democrat, but I admire ideas, not parties. Otherwise, we’ll have another depression.”

Bradbury’s trips to France have become trysts in a continuing love affair with that country. “Most of all, I just like to travel around,” he said. “I hire a car and driver so we can enjoy ourselves. We don’t look at the bills, we just pay.”

I asked Ray whether, like Heinlein, he might find the Monterey coast an inspiring place to live and write. His imagination immediately flew to the Cote d’Azur, of which the Monterey coastline reminds him. It is not the brilliant blue of France’s coastline that captures his imagination, he said, but the creative environment, which has existed there since the early sixteenth century. “Francis I brought da Vinci to his court from Italy in his last years and gave him security and allowed him to create there. That, to me, is a fabulous king.”

With that, Ray Bradbury stood up and made his exit speech, leaving us with his leftover dumpling and with the task of analyzing the answer to the question we had originally posed: What kind of inner world does a man like that inhabit?

We had interviewed a Perseus with vertigo, a man compelled to fly on the wings of words, yet afraid to fly any other way. The interview had taken us from the Monterey coast to the Cote d’Azur, from Heinlein to Ellison, from the virtues of Chinese cooking to the vicissitudes of politics.

The answer eluded us until weeks later, when I ran away from the world of grown-ups to take a ride on a boardwalk carousel. The timpani of the merry-go-round connected with the child in me, as it inevitably does, and I found myself circling into the never-never land of childhood promise, where everything is possible.

That’s where Ray Bradbury lives.

Many years after that interview, I had the pleasure of getting a story from Ray for the first of two anthologies I edited with David Copperfield. “Quicker Than The Eye” was a marvelous story of a man who sees his doppleganger at a magician’s performance, but I thought there were some points where it could have been better. I called Ray (in those days, I could still hear a little bit on telephones) and said, “It’s a good first draft, Ray.”

“That’s a fourth draft, Berliner,” he replied, the chuckle evident in his voice.

“Well, it could use another.”

He laughed heartily then. “Only you, Berliner. Go ahead, bloody it up and send it back to me.”

That story, of course, became the title piece of one of his collections a couple of years later, and Ray made one of his rare appearances at a group signing in Los Angeles with me, David, Ray Feist, and S.P. Somtow.

By Justine Musk

(**Note from the “management**) This column was supposed to appear last month. It never made it from the overseas Kiosk to US e-mail, but we bring it to you now as Stan has company this weekend…flexibility is good. Justine wanted me to leave in the happy birthday to Skipp, but notes it’s over man…better late than never…
…..DNW)

(Happy Birthday John Skipp! Seems like just yesterday I was an impressionable young slip of a thing first discovering Splatterpunk….)

In the last few years I’ve often heard myself referring to “the writer’s personality” and so decided to sit down and take a look at some of the traits I think this ‘personality’ consists of.

Fascination

Persistence is important, but it’s not enough on its own. You can persist at a thing for twenty years and not get anywhere if what you’re actually doing amounts to the same thing in the same way over and over. Behind persistence is, I think, the engine that drives the whole process: a fascination with story, with narrative, with the process itself, and not just the vision of the book in the front window with your name in huge letters on the cover.

It’s that fascination that makes you choose reading over other activities and pastimes. It’s that fascination that propels you down the necessary road of writing, revision, rejection, more writing, more revision and more rejection; and which makes you pull apart other works of fiction to try to understand how and why they work in ways you haven’t quite managed yet.

Above all, it’s fascination that keeps you writing for the sheer sake of writing. Those who write for money, fame, publication, or just for the pose of being a writer — people who don’t find an inherent reward in the process itself — soon drift on to other things.

Curiosity

Margaret Atwood once observed that young poets focus inward, exploring the self; as they grow and mature their vision extends outwards, as they realize there’s a whole world out there that goes above and beyond them.

If you’re not curious about the world, other people, ideas, relationships, history, etc….then where the hell are you going to find stuff to write about?

The standard maxim delivered to aspiring writers — “write what you know” — was crippling to me for a long time. It helps to turn the phrase around — “know what you write”. Be curious, follow your obsessions, research the heart and soul and guts out of them. Give yourself interesting stuff to write about to go along with your developing craft.

Playful

I was struck by something bestselling YA author Holly Black (IRONSIDE) said at the start of her book tour with (also bestselling) YA author Cassandra Clare (CITY OF BONES). They were discussing fan fiction and the online communities that have risen up around it. Holly commented that when she discovered these communities, she was already very deep into her own original fiction and had forgotten that writing could be….fun, like it seemed to be with these fanfic writers who were telling stories for no other reason than their own pleasure.

Writers love to bitch about how hard writing is. And it is. This cannot be denied. But on the other hand, it’s not like we’re shoveling coal or digging ditches under a brutal summer sun. In my own progress as a writer I find it necessary to keep returning myself to the sense of writing, of storytelling, as play: messing around with what-if scenarios, with ideas and settings and characters, with language, with ways of dividing or chunking up the narration to get different kinds of effects. If it works, it works. If it doesn’t, that’s what revision is for, and you’re wiser for the trial and error.

One of my favorite quotes is from an interview with eternal rock god David Bowie, who said something like, “Art is the one place where you can crash your plane and still walk away from it.” There are no lives or limbs at stake. We should take advantage of that knowledge and feel liberated to reach high, take risks, mess around — to play — maybe even embrace failure as part of the process of play. Children arrive at valuable life skills, awareness and knowledge through spontaneous, open-ended play. Sometimes we should maybe take our cues from them and just lighten up a bit, allow ourselves to slip out from beneath that sense of writing-as-burden.

Solitary

Writing is a freakishly solitary profession. This is a job where you turn your back on friends, family and the world in general and go into a little room and shut the door in order to spend hours in the company of people who do not exist outside your own rather questionable head. Of course, you can also take your laptop to the nearest Starbucks, but the fact remains that writing is an inward-looking, inward-dwelling activity.

So I would imagine that an unusual capacity for solitude is characteristic of a writing personality. Maybe some of us numbered among the popular kids in high school, our lives abuzz with constant social activity, but I myself sure as hell wasn’t one of them. It’s more likely that we were — as I was — the misfit who read too much and used too many odd words and couldn’t quite click with the peer group until you were old enough and free enough to go out and hunt down other members of your tribe.

And maybe it’s our drive to be alone — not all the time, certainly, but enough to read and dream and reset our mental energies in order to deal with People again — that at least partly impels the drive to write. Reading and writing become the bridge crossing us from our carefully guarded alone-zone into the world, into the human condition itself. We contain multitudes, and those multitudes contain us.

Tough

It takes a real mental toughness — even if it’s the kind that comes and goes — to put your ego aside in the way that’s necessary to develop as a writer, and I’m not just talking about the rejections.

You have to be willing to write a bad first draft. “All first drafts are shit,” declared Ernest Hemingway, and although this is more true in some cases than others, there’s a soul-releasing freedom in embracing the crappiness of first-draft writing. All you have to do is get it on the page. It’s allowed to suck: that’s what revision is for.

Which means you also need the strength to seek out the kind of tough love criticism from genuinely helpful individuals who will kindly but ruthlessly (and perhaps not even kindly) let you know just why and how that first draft is crap. When you finally pinpoint what is wrong, you can figure out ways to fix it, and the final shape and weave of your novel will begin to form in your mind.

You also need to understand just what a hard long haul it is to become a published writer (and the exceptions — the twenty year olds who get huge deals — only prove the rule). Two years of reading and writing seriously won’t do it. The general wisdom is that a writing apprenticeship takes ten years, sometimes fifteen. So you need to find pleasure in the process and take a long-range view.

—Justine Musk

By
Richard Steinberg

“The rainbow never made it to Piatigorsk. Three colors only were in evidence: the white of the snow, the gray of the sky, the black of the souls and the hearts.”– from The Gemini Man

It was the spring of 1995, I wasn’t living in poverty; but poverty was just down the street, two buildings over, smiling expectantly whenever I walked by. I was recovering from a heart attack and two strokes three years before that.

And I so wanted to be a writer.

I’d written two books in ’94 – the first quite awful, the second only slightly less so – and had rather naively dedicated myself to writing five more (hopefully better) in ’95. The apartment didn’t have air conditioning, I didn’t have a computer or an idea. But everyday for hour upon hour I sat in a folding chair in front of a card table on which was an already antique word processor. To my left was an in-wall space heater which – although I knew the pilot was out – always seemed to generate heat. To my right the backside of a six foot tall and long bookcase which cut off the air and the light from the living room beyond.

Life is but an empty dream!
For the soul is dead that slumbers,
And things are not what they seem.

“Life is real! Life is earnest!
And the grave is not its goal;
Dust thou art, to dust returnest,
Was not spoken of the soul.

“Not enjoyment, and not sorrow,
Is our destined end or way;
But to act, that each tomorrow
Find us farther than today,”
– Longfellow

Me?

Gentle readers, I pray to a God that I alternately praise, condemn, or disbelieve, that none of you ever intentionally or accidentally make this worst separation of all. It is my wish that when you find your Writer’s Soul you cling to it with all your might; with all that you are or can be. It’s waiting for you, begging for you, yearning for you and it to join, become one and rearrange the heavens.

Next month, if you care to spend some time, we’ll talk a bit about how to find it, and how to care for it. Until then . . .

Believe!

By Jeff Mariotte

You don’t have to have read many of my posts here at Storytellers Unplugged to know that I don’t believe writers should wait around for inspiration to strike. Regular keyboard time, daily if possible, exercises the writing muscles, and employing those muscles, through hard work, replaces inspiration. The daily “inspirations”—how should the plot proceed from this point? What will the characters say to each other? What am I really writing about?—reveal themselves through this effort.

I practice what I preach. My daily work schedule finds me at the keyboard from about 8:00-5:00, unless something (usually ranch chores) interferes. There’s always something to be written, even when, as right now, I don’t have any immediate novel deadlines looming. I’m committed to a short story, an original graphic novel, a long-deadline tie-in novel (the rarest kind), and I have a couple of original novel proposals in the works.

But that phrase at the top of the page, “Time to Write,” has a different meaning, and it’s more akin to inspiration than I usually accept. Anyone who’s written fiction knows that sitting down at the keyboard and typing is only part of the process. Before you get to that (even if you’re writing other things more or less simultaneously), you churn the story over and over in your head. You see scenes play out like movies in your brain. You hear snatches of dialogue, visualize the characters, learn about their lives. You feel the theme of the work, the deeper meaning, reach out toward you with tendrils of mist that dissipate when you grasp at them.

At some point—at least for me—all these images and smells and sounds coalesce into words, and it doesn’t matter if it isn’t working hours, or if I’ve been at the keyboard all day and want nothing less than to be away from it for a few hours, those words want to come out.

That’s when I know it’s time to begin a book…when I know that the time spent thinking about it in the car or the shower or the back pasture is paying off, and the thing is ready for me to be writing it instead of just dwelling on it.

After a couple of weeks working on an outline, that happened for me on Friday night, around 7:00. I was reading upstairs, and the words flowed into my brain, blocking out the ones on the page, and forced me down to the computer. When I’m really going on a project, I sometimes have to leave the computer on all night because I never know when I’ll be drawn to it, if only to delete a phrase and insert a better one, to add a few words, or to write an entire page or two. I’ve learned that it’s better to give in to these impulses than to try to remember the phrasing that inserted itself into my head the next morning. If it stinks, it can always be changed or erased, but if it slips away before it’s written down, it might not return.

Here’s what I wrote Friday night, edited a little on Saturday. It may or may not end up in the final book—if I even sell the book and write it. But it wanted to come out, and that means I’m ready to begin the process.

The alarm gave off a faint, high-pitched beeping noise, spaced a second or two apart, like something you might hear in a hospital. It was accompanied by a blinking red light, its flashes in counterpoint to the beeps. I had been dreaming of the war—Chancellorsville, to be precise, smoke and flames obliterating the sky and the woods and the enemy except for the dull crack of their rifles and ours and the whining of minie balls bursting through the haze and the wretched screams of those who got hit—and although the digital clock blazed 1:32, for a few moments I didn’t know what year it was, or even what decade. Oscar Peterson played softly in the background, his fingers racing across the keyboard like he had six hands, which could have put it anywhere in the 1950s or early 60s. But the tune came from my TV—I slept with classic jazz on, mature music, music that speaks to adults even if they’ve died and come back and then done it again—and satellite radio on television is a modern invention. Twenty-first century, then. That narrowed it down.

Sometimes giving into this process, this compulsion to put something down, tells me things I didn’t know about the book I was about to write. When I wrote Missing White Girl (on sale now, but look for it under the name Jeffrey J. Mariotte), this first page became the first chapter.

The back of a van or truck, she guesses, but hard, anyway, and ridged. She rolls on the turns, slams into solid steel when the vehicle brakes suddenly. A hump that keeps ramming into her spine might be a wheel well. Head pounding, blindfolded. Duct tape holds an awful rag stuffed in her mouth and straps down her hair, bites her flesh.
No idea how long she’s been riding, or who took her.
Or why.
No idea….

Most of the rest of the book is in past tense, not present. Only the scenes about Lulu Lavender (who has been abducted, but who is not the missing white girl of the title [either of them, in fact]) are in the present tense, which serves, I hope, to heighten the tension and terror of her situation.

That was not a conscious decision, though—it came in one of those early bursts of write-this-down-now that I couldn’t ignore. Then I had to look at it later and make the decision whether or not to keep that tense and tone in the book. If it works, it’s because I was ready to write it.

Speaking of being ready to write, and of being overcommitted, this will be my final post on Storytellers Unplugged. I’ve enjoyed my time here—I’ve been part of it from the beginning—and appreciate the sense of community we’ve developed here. But my own blog has suffered (some might say benefited) from my lack of time to devote to everything I need to do, and I have to cut back in some areas. Anyway, it’s good to give new voices room to sound off, too, and I’m as anxious as anyone to find out who’ll be taking the 21st of the month in my stead.

If you’re interested in continuing to see what I’m up to and joining in conversation about my life and work, drop on by Dispatches From the Flying M. I hope to see you there, and I’ll certainly still be around here, as a reader if not an essayist. Thanks for your attention and participation here.

Jeff