Storytellersunplugged

By Richard Steinberg

“Oh is this a blessing or is it a curse? Does it get any better? Can it get any worse? Will it go on forever or is it over tonight? Does it come with the darkness? Does it bring out the light? Is it richer than diamonds, or just a little cheaper than spit? I don’t know what it is, but it just won’t quit,” Jim Steinman/Meat Loaf

Yes.

Like it or not, I’m back. I apologize or nod “you’re welcome” – depending on your view of my absence – for the two month hiatus I have inflicted upon you or gifted you with. The best part of the non-living time was its absence of critics. The worst the absence of writing. It’s the longest I have gone in decades: 67 days from my last work to the moment I started this month’s column.

Sixty-seven days.

Too long. To damned long.

Still, the neurons fire, the electrons stimulate, and the demon demands, so I break this maleficent life pause . . . at least long enough to revisit what it is that most drives me this day. And as I can not say it now better than I said it then, I re-give to you:

Possession: Demons I Have Known

“Fitzgerald never got rid of anything; the ghosts of his adolescence, the failures of his youth, the doubts of his maturity plagued him to the end. He was supremely a part of the world he described, so much a part that he made himself its king and then, when he saw it begin to crumble, he crumbled with it and led it to death,” John Aldridge

Not uniquely, my life has been, well . . . an interesting ride. I have been wealthy and poor, lived others’ expectations too often, my own too seldom, achieved great success and staggered under great failure. It took me thirty-seven years to commit to the only thing I was really good at . . . losing that commitment about three years later, only regaining it in the last year or so.

And like Fitzgerald, I have let go of none of it. Quite the contrary, I’ve actually preserved it.

In my books.

As writers, we can only guess at other people’s truths; maybe attempt to stumble across the shadows of some GREAT truths of the Universe in our journeys. But the only truths we really know – if we have the guts to face them – are our own. And knowing those truths does not, necessarily, make us stronger. Often, it destroys resolve, weakens faith, saps our courage, gives us upset stomachs and sleepless nights.

But there is at least one thing knowing those truths about ourselves can do for us:

Put blood into the veins of our writing.

A werewolf – in the minutes before an involuntary transformation – considers the pain and grief, damage and torment that may be caused by its beast . . . and so considers locking itself away in a storage facility for the night. Then, the werewolf thinks about the pure electric spiritual delight that flows through it at the first scent of its prey, the erection of its spirit as it begins the pursuit, the orgasmic release as its teeth pierce the unmarred flesh of its victim.

A moment of decision – of truth – that we have all faced.

Do we cross the room and approach the stranger we can’t take our eyes off of, ask a friend for an introduction, or just sadly fantasize as we slowly turn away? In our beds at night – next to our lover/companion/acquaintance or stranger-of-the moment – do we release ourselves spiritually and completely into the love-making, disconnect ourselves from the emotional and plunge into the physical, or penetrate/receive while thinking about how our hair looks, is our skin tight and clear, what to say after?

Does the werewolf hunt or lock itself away?

Truth.

Demonic truth.

Our demonic truths are, in the end, the things that elevate our writing far more than talent, dedication, technique, or inspiration. Our ability to tap into them, expose them to the world, to transfuse them into characters and stories is the secret ingredient that transforms the okay into the “WOW!”

It’s hard to do, and it can hurt.

That’s how I got lost as a writer. Like most people, I don’t like to hurt.

I discovered, shortly after my second book came out – while working on my third novel, that I had strong technique, a fertile imagination, and the ability to sit down and produce ten to fifteen decent first draft pages per day. And I could do it up to and a bit beyond the normal publishing submissions standards WITHOUT confronting my personal demons. Without facing that self-inflicted pain

COOL!

And dumb.

The work was good, but flat, story-telling. Like a sit-com rerun you’ve see six times; that you can watch out of the corner of your eye while talking to someone. It in no way engages, in no way involves, and in no way affects you. So you’re really not terribly likely to watch it again. It’s a familiar story, adequately told, but your friend’s recent trip to Scotland is more your center of attention.

And strictly from a writer’s viewpoint, and from a commercial angle, there are – surprisingly, actually – a great many decent story-tellers out there that you have to compete with in that third and fourth tier of novels that no one ever notices. So good story-telling, by itself, doesn’t do you a helluva lot of good. Maybe, and it’s a long shot, it’ll get you published. But if it does, it’ll leave you hanging on by a thread buried on a back shelf somewhere; and the mulch machine will be your final resting place.

Unless you allow – to whatever extent you’re emotionally capable of – your demonic truths to possess you while you work; to emerge ugly and rancid and beautiful and sparkling out of your soul and onto the page.

Now I’m not suggesting that everything you write needs to be a confessional; far from it. I can think of nothing more boring. But allow the demons to emerge – momentarily ending their possession of you (the writer) floating free into the ether and possessing your characters (on the page.) Let your characters express real moral quandaries; in your storytelling, let even your most bizarre and unrealistic creation-characters be driven not only by what your story requires but also by the everyday truths that drive your readers.

Because in that moment your reader sees themselves in an aspect of one of your characters, you will have made a friend for life.

A reader for life.

Simple stuff, right?

Maybe not.

I’m a white, Jewish, heterosexual, fifty year old, middle class male who has never been married, has no children; loves dogs, Saloon Singers, college football, women of strength and complexity, and Chinese food. So, not surprisingly, I am regularly confronted by the challenge of bringing demonic truths to characters that in no way resemble me.

Gender truths, ethnic truths, class, age and geographic based truths are among the steepest challenges facing any writer. And since more characters in your work will not resemble you than do, it becomes your most important hurdle. Not all your characters need have three dimensions. But all your characters of significance must. Whether there are parts of you within them or not.

Again, I urge you to turn to demonic possession . . . or its first cousin: soul reaping.

Living in Las Vegas, it’s easy for me to go somewhere, mix quietly and unnoticed in a crowd, and reaps souls. But wherever you are, there’s always a shopping mall, college campus, coffee shop, business district sidewalk, or somewhere that strangers gather to be alone together that can be fertile ground for your hunt. And don’t forget your friends – your closest, most intimate friends – who may have actually communicated to you some of their demonic truths without being prompted. And, of course, family are always great souls to harvest and pack away for a literary rainy day.

Notice the old woman who wipes drool from the mouth of her physically fragile husband; how she looks at him . . . is it pride of ownership or disgust at being trapped? Does she see a too slow desiccating near-corpse, or the man who used to fill her body and spirit with life just by leaving a flower on her pillow at an unexpected moment?

ZAP! Soul reaped and jarred for later possible use.

See the attractive older woman – once beautiful but no longer – fixing her makeup in a small, handheld mirror. Does she appreciate the survivor she sees there, or despise the diminution of what she hoped to see there? Or does she only see who she once was, or thought she once was? Is there the trace of a smile or a sad sigh in that moment that she hesitates before turning away?

Zap! Soul reaped and jarred for later possible use.

The teenage boy looking at CD covers in the store, confused but compelled by the sexual imagery he sees . . .

The middle-aged man holding his wife’s purse and shepherding his children while not watching the game on a nearby bar TV, but watching the younger men watching the game and freely admiring the passing women . . .

The couple whose hands find each other despite both of them looking elsewhere, concentrating on different things . . .

The Islamic student trying not to notice appraising glances as they stand in line at the airport, pretending no one sees them differently from anyone else; the restaurant server lingering in the kitchen doorway, struggling to find the strength to don the mask that will guarantee the tips before going back out on the floor . . .

The performer on the stage – bold, strong, flirty, alive – in the instant a note cracks and they hope no one notices them overlaying tonight’s performance against the one they can’t get out of their head from twenty years ago when everything was new and thereby terrifyingly real and more thrilling than sex.

ZAP!

Souls reaped and jarred.

Ready and waiting in that jar for you, the writer – what John Huston called the “swell God of creation” – to unscrew the top, pinch closed one nostril, then inhale deeply . . . and allow that soul to possess you for a time with their own, unique demonic truth.

They’re all out there for you. They wander the streets, sit next to you on the bus, come into your house or you go into theirs. They lay waiting, almost begging to be exposed to air and literate prose by a writer in need.

They’re deep within you and on your surface; the thing you felt when you saw the woman or man you knew you would never meet . . . but could construct a lifetime’s history with in less than a moment. They’re in the pains you’ve never expressed, even to yourself, and the joys you’ve shouted from the rooftops or kept behind a somehow private half smile.

They’re in the air, beneath the skin, in the blood, and walking down the street.

Demonic truths, waiting for the opportunity – for the honor – of possessing you . . . if only for a moment. So that what you write ceases to be narrative and becomes instead a snapshot of real life.

“Everything that doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. And later on you can use it in some story,” Tapani Bagge

And all you have to do is say: “Welcome.”

Believe!