Storytellersunplugged

“Good dreams don’t come cheap; you have to pay for them.  If you just dream when you’re asleep there is no way for them to come alive . . . to survive,” Harry Chapin

Time to start a new book.

Create a new folder on the computer, create a Drafts folder within it, open a WORD document within that titled:

Untitled #19

By

Richard Steinberg

Set the Font:  Times New Roman

Font Size:  14

Spacing:  Double

Margins: 1.5″ all around

Open the Header:  type (left justified) in Times New Roman 10:   Untitled # 19 by Richard Steinberg then right justify tab and set the pagination to X of Y; close the Header.

Take a break.

Coalesce the vapors, entreat the Muse, read some poetry, maybe some histories, surf the obscure news websites.

Return to the work.

Space down seven lines, center text, and type:

Untitled #19

By

Richard Steinberg

Engage the graphical interface to be certain that the first line is in the exact center of the page.  Futz around with it for a time.  Space down two more lines.  Type:

Chapter One

Space down two more lines.

Tab once, then type:  Begin Here!

Stop dead because you still don’t know what you’re writing about.

Panic!

There are, essentially, three parts to writing fiction.

First comes the idea.  This is a thing of facts and figures . . . I want to write about juvenile violence and its toll on society.

Then comes the setting.  Purely physical in nature, a thing of time and tide . . . Olathe, Kansas; mid twentieth century through early Twenty-first.

Finally, there comes the theme.  Theme is the thing you want to say about juvenile violence and its toll on society as demonstrated in Olathe, Kansas.

Theme is the reason you’re writing the piece in the first place.  It is the statement you’re dedicating your time and effort and pain to achieve.  It is the thing that will power you through the bad moments when you have no idea what comes next, the juice that will keep you going when you have too much written in your head and are struggling to find the energy to get it all down before you quit for the day.

The purest gift from your soul to your brain; and the hardest to find.

With it, you can save a bad story, make great a good story, even elevate to crystalline perfection a great story.  Without it, well . . . without it your doomed.

You see, we can pick what our story is about; we can decide, intellectually, where and when that story is set and what kind of characters inhabit it.  But all that is, essentially, is a lifeless shell waiting for you to attach magical literary electrodes to the bolts at its neck, raise it into a lightning tossed sky in hopes that the progenitor of themes strikes hard . . . inspiration.

And it won’t always come when you call it.

Can you write a story without a theme . . . you can, but don’t bother.  There are enough empty husks on bookshelves already.

So how do you go about finding your theme?

To put it simply, like every other form of life in the universe, theme is the child of a mating of too mystical forces.  An idea meets a dream, they have a couple of drinks, like each other, go out a couple of more times, come together and nine nano-months later beget:

Theme.

I dream a lot - awake or asleep, at work or in the world - I dream whenever I can.  And it is from those dreams that inspiration for the work is drawn.

I am in the living room of an extraordinarily small four-room apartment in a lower middle class urban blight with no air conditioning or prospects or life.  I’m trying to start a novel about evolution, about who we are, were, will be. But the glare on this summer’s day is so bad on the computer’s monitor that I put the box that the computer came in over my head and the monitor.  The glare disappears but the heat becomes oppressive and stifling.  I cut strategic holes in the box to let some air in, but keep the bulk of the light out and try to work . . . but my mind wanders and I dream.

I find myself in a darkened cell on an Arctic Plain; cool, cold even, but totally isolated and imprisoned within my cell whose door never opens.  I’m grateful for the cold, but the dark and the isolation begin to take their toll.  Then the sound of multiple sets of footsteps barely reaches me, coming down the nearly frozen corridor.  Will they stop at my cell?  Will they open the door?  What will . . .

And I begin to type what would become my first successful novel:  The Gemini Man; an evolutionary thriller, whose theme is an allegory that questions society’s belief that isolation is punishment and release into a crowded world is reward.

Same apartment, the box is gone, the computer now under the stairs where it is both cool and dark, and it’s time to write the next book. The plan is to write a wholly commercial, highly marketable novel using UFO conspiracies at the core of a story that will lend itself to the reader’s natural voyeuristic appetites.

Nothing.

Nothing:  Day Two . . . Day Three . . . Day Nine . . .

I consider moving the computer back to the hot window and finding the box to crawl under again.  Hey, it worked once, right?  Outside, an elderly couple are complaining about the “bad element” that has moved into the neighborhood.  A little later, I hear some shots in the near distance, not an extraordinary event in that neighborhood.  The late news comes on and the first ten minutes is filled with disaster, torment, and lots of victims; but I can’t follow the details because my mind begins to wander and I dream . . .

I am a child lost and alone and defenseless in a world of fanged shadows and predators.  A world where no one is ever out of harm’s way.  As I grow so does my sense of fear, and being out of control of the world around me.  I am alone and abandoned and just a child.  I shiver as the dream envelopes me.  They’re coming for me - the state home, the perverts, the poverty pimps, the do-gooders who don’t - and it’s either do something or become, finally, a victim for life . . .

And I find myself at the keyboard beneath the stairs typing the words - Nobody’s Safe - that become the title for my second successful novel; a suspense UFO conspiracy thriller, whose central story is an allegory for accepted and radical definitions of personal control/safety.

Seventeen novels later, the process is certainly no less complicated.  But it is effortless, well . . . somewhat so.  Only because now I understand that to sit down and decide to write a book - a spy story with horror overtones set in nineteenth century India - is going to leave you with only a spy story with horror overtones set in nineteenth century India.  Otherwise, it will be about nothing that matters, nothing that connects to the readers, nothing that transcends the almost unimaginable distance between that part of the brain that reads the words, and that part of the soul that makes the reader embrace them.

Uninspired.

Fail to bridge that gap and there’s a chance, a small one, that you’ll be successful (in a purely commercial sense) in a very minor way.

Attach inspiration (a dream, a nightmare, or a visitation) to that same idea - bridge that distance so that the instant the word is read it is transmitted and devoured by your reader’s soul . . . and you’ll be a writer.  Maybe successful commercially, maybe not.  But you’ll connect with your reader, with your audience, and they will always be there for you.

Because you were there for them.

At the heart of what we do is that task.  Be there for your reader.  Inspire them, move them, affect them; let them know that what you’ve written has been zapped in the electrodes by the aforementioned lightning.

There is no higher praise for any writer than the recognition that they’ve accomplished that.

How do you do it?  How do you dream constantly and with sufficient variety, log them away properly indexed ready to be culled in an instant to be married to an idea when an empty page demands?  And how do you do this without walking into walls, being labeled: “weird,” or being institutionalized?

1:       Have a life outside of your writing.

The more successful you become, the harder this is to do; but as a rule, it can be accomplished with a minimum of pain.  When you’re out in the world with non-writers, don’t talk about your writing; however much you may want to.  Talk about the world or whatever the group you’re with wants to.  Go out and do things, see things, taste and sample things.  Try things that scare you, repeat things you like but haven’t done in a long time.  Notice - without enquiring - what pleases and scares those around you.

Don’t take notes on a pad; don’t phone your cell and leave yourself a message that’s a verbatim account.  Don’t contact someone later and ask them about it.  In fact, don’t act on it at all.

Not then.

Three, maybe four days later, sit down and write your impressions of the moments you recall.  Details aren’t important, facts and figure are insignificant.  Remember emotions, expressions, sounds, physicalizations.  Write it all down, then pick the one thing in there that you find most striking, most odd or different that you observed from the others (or yourself) in the experience and let that moment just sink into you until it stains the creative part of your soul . . .

. . . and begin to write the “why” of that moment.

I was at lunch with my friends the Empress and the Squire recently at an outdoor café.  From where I was sitting, I could see the front doors of the bar next door.  And throughout our meal, the most singularly sexy women I’ve seen in a very long time kept walking into that bar.  And every once in a while, very plain looking women would emerge.  It happened throughout the afternoon - centerfold-types walking in, nothing-types walking out.

And my mind began to wander, and I began to dream . . .

Now I suspect if I checked back with the Squire or the Empress, or if I’d made notes at the time, I’d discover that some sexy women came out and some plain women walked in.  Probably some men of varying descriptions as well.  But I don’t need the reality anywhere near as much as I crave the dream.  Because it is the dream, and its recall in the form that fits this later moment, that will transform that lunch into the centerpiece of a novel or short story or film.

I want to write something about terrorism in the 21^st Century with horror overtones, and I marry that idea to my dream of that afternoon (not its realty) and come up with something truly alive and unique.

2.       Set aside your own perspective, and channel that of other people’s.

I was at a convenience store once and I noticed a woman in her fifties holding an empty, untouched ice cream cone.  She was still and she was quiet and there was no trace of the ice cream that should’ve been in the cone.  Interesting, mildly curious, but not much more.  Days later, when I thought about it, I began to see that cone through her eyes.  I let go of all of the reasons I might’ve been staring at that cone and instead tried to channel hers.

I began to see a little girl whose greatest moment of freedom was when her mother would give her a nickel for an ice cream cone, and what had happened to her so long ago she could only remember the emotion and not the act that had left her with just an empty cone.  How standing there holding an empty cone in middle age (for the first time in decades) her life was about to change.

I want to write something about corporate greed in New England, and I marry that idea to my dream of that moment (not its realty) and come up with a character of flaws and traumas and deep seeded issues that powers and deepens my idea to the point that it begins to come alive

3.       Stretch and distort the memories until they fit your purpose

I was with The Rapscallion when he won a hundred bucks or so on a video poker machine.  He was happy, but not particularly excited because at that moment in his life he needed several hundred dollars and a single hundred - while nice - didn’t solve much.

The Entrepreneurial Schoolteacher and I were at a Coffee Shop in the middle of nowhere at four in the morning when he noticed an ad in the local paper for the hotel we were headed to; and the rate offered was less than we were paying.  He spent ten minutes on the phone trying to talk the hotel into changing our rate (which was already a pretty decent one) into the lower one.

Later, while in the middle of projects unrelated to inspiration from either moment, my mind begins to wander and I dream . . .

. . . and the Rapscallion’s moment is transferred to a Supernatural Paladin who has been gifted with the world, but sighs and physicalizes just like my friend when he realizes that the prize of the world means he won’t win the universe.  And I mate that with an idea about societal definitions of right and wrong, and their child becomes a novel of depth and being

. . . and the Entrepreneurial Schoolteacher’s tenacity and thrifty spirit are welded to that of a General who has defeated his enemy as thoroughly as can be, but can’t call off the attack because somewhere out there some of the enemy still exist, and as long as there is the barest possibility of their survival he can not stop.  Bring on the idea about international arms dealers and their situational ethics, give the idea and the dream a bottle of Johnny Walker Blue and a comfortable hotel room, and a story of obsession and redemption emerges.

4.       Be willing to rip huge, bloody chunks of flesh from your own guts.

Inspiration/dreams are everywhere, they surround you; are part of you and your world as long as you remain open to them.  Open and willing to pay for them.

Yeah; if you look at the quote that opened this piece, you’ll see that I skipped completely over the payment part.  For good reason.

All of the things I’ve talked about, described or gave you tips on are the relatively easy, painless part of finding that inspiration, of allowing that dream.  They are also, at best, ten percent of the possible inspirations available to you.

The other ninety come from deep within yourself, and those things which you come to terms with (or don’t) never accomplishing.

I see a beautiful woman in the movies, the kind of woman that fantasies were designed for, and as much as I know that it is beyond unlikely that she and I will ever share a weekend in Vegas - let alone a life - I construct from the dream of her beauty and unattainability an alternate life for myself where I can win her and have her, with little effort and profound satisfaction.

And that personal ascension becomes the opening for my 18^th novel whose central character is a man who knows he will never have such a woman; but sooths himself by the occasional fantasy where he is loved and cared for by beautiful people with no agendas.

I watch a politician and just know that I could do better than he could, but also know that for reasons of integrity and background and mistakes made in moments that have haunted me for years, I could never get elected. And I conjure a dream that becomes the lead character of my 17^th novel, a man who has made terminal mistakes in his life but finds a way to overcome them to become a near Universal Leader in a world that he is dedicated to making right.

I see a man effortlessly pickup a woman in a bar and so attach an idea for a suspense thriller set in the Greek Islands and their child becomes the charming love ‘em and leave ‘em rogue in The Four Phase Man, the character whose actions and existence bring life and light to an otherwise stolid story.

I look out at a perfect night spreading across the Neon High Desert that is my home, see the way that the clouds drift, taste the slightly acrid scent of the city on my lips as my tongue caresses them, feel the slightest but enervating cool breeze from my office window, my mind wanders, I begin to dream . . .

And in that dream, I step to my balcony - relaxed and erect (sexually, mentally, and emotionally) and step off to begin my nightly flight through the darkening skies in search of the dragons, nightmares, dreams, and other night fliers that will inhabit novel number whatever to come.

You can write a perfectly adequate piece without dreams and inspirations and visions as one of the parents of your creation.  And like the children of siblings, there is a chance your offspring will be okay.  But there’s a far greater likelihood that it will be a twisted, deformed, nothing that no one will ever care about.

If you want to be a writer - rather than a hobbyist or creative typist - you’re going to need to find those dreams, that inspiration which will translate from your language of choice to the hearts of your readers.  That ethereal mist which will not be the story of your project, but will serve as its fundamental nature.  That most delicate moment of truth - unadorned and pure - that your reader will recognize, and want to share.

When you do that, no matter how high the literary balcony you step off, you will always soar to the heavens.

“So if you care to find me, look to the western sky!  As someone told me lately: Ev’ryone deserves the chance to fly! And if I’m flying solo, at least I’m flying free. To those who’d ground me, take a message back from me. Tell them how I am defying gravity,” Stephen Schwartz

I promise you, open yourself to the inspiration and dreams in the air around you, and you won’t be flying alone.

Believe!