By David Niall Wilson
I’m currently reading one of the most recent novels by Stephen King, Lisey’s Story, which is a twist on the old writer writing a story about a writer plot. The story is about the widow of a writer, and is full of insights from an odd perspective. The perspective, in this case, is that of an author, Stephen King, writing through the mind and eyes of a woman who was married to a horror writer. In other words, it’s a way of writing about the writer without doing it in first person, and with the more objective mindset of someone on the outside looking in. I don’t know, of course, if this is an autobiographical piece, but I have to believe it’s likely. How does one resist an opportunity like that? I mean, we all know deep inside what our failings, shortcomings, bad habits and foibles are, and we believe we know our strengths. Given a chance to present our case before the jury, why not take a stab at it?
Simple answer, of course. It’s terrifying. If you could just write such a thing and walk away from it, that might be therapeutic, but not if the world is going to read it, dissect it, and half of them are going to believe it’s all about you — maybe including the woman you’ve been married to for decades. I mean, the characters and situations might be wholly removed from your own world reality, but that doesn’t mean an insightful reader - one close to your heart - wouldn’t see through the smoke screens and know when it was real.
Anyway, none of this is the point of what I sat down to write. What caught my eye (the first of many things) in this novel was a passing mention that the protagonist, Lisey, makes to “the myth pool.” In the opinion of her late husband, novelist Scott Landon, all readers and writers go to the same place to “drink”. Writers bring a buckets full of themselves, I believe, and readers bring dippers, mugs, jugs and barrels to cart the stuff away in, but that central connection is the same on either side of the fence. Sometimes I feel like I’ve set up a lemonade stand by the pool and everyone has come looking for beer, but that’s beside the point — I think King nailed the experience with his metaphoric pool. Maybe he created it by writing about it. Maybe it called out to him for some cheap advertising - and then to me to get a banner up on the web.
When I’m writing well, and the world slips away, the sensation is one of slippage. The things in the story take on substance and importance that made-up things don’t possess in regular day-to-day life. It’s the same when I’m reading. If the words I’m reading catch my attention, the world shuts down while I’m visiting whatever place, time or dimension the author has presented to me. When I have reached the end of a long writing binge, it sometimes takes days for my brain to really disengage from the story. I worry over details and replay scenes in my mind. When I finish reading an amazing book, it’s the same. I don’t want to come back. I want more information. I want to wake up with the characters one last time. It’s a very strange, very pleasant sensation. It isn’t called escapism for nothing…there is a place you actually go. Since Steve named it first, and I think it’s a fine name that will stick, I’m tacking a sign on the tree next to the stream were I serve my words to the world that reads MYTH POOL in big bold letters so people will see it and stop by more often.
And speaking of words, that brings me back to the other half of my entry. Perspective. A long time ago I wrote the first chapter of what I thought would become a novel. The title is “The Not Quite Right Reverend Cletus J (Jehosephat) Diggs and the Currently Accepted Habits of Nature.” That isn’t important. What is important is that I wrote the first chapter of this, and I loved it. I then got derailed, distracted, etc. - life took me down another road. Now I’m working on that project again. I wrote a short outline. I started to write chapter two. I hated it. It was like pulling teeth. I ground through it, and finished it, and was absolutely dissatisfied with the outcome. The worst of it was I was absolutely unable to figure out why.
Then I let it go for a day. Yesterday I was driving home, and I started to run through the plot in my head again to figure out what was wrong. I didn’t get any further than the title in my mind before it hit me so hard I nearly pulled off the road. I had started chapter two as if it were a completely new book. The POV shifted, and since this is — at its heart - a mystery, I was giving away things that I should have been keeping in my notes…things I know, but that neither the reader (Nor Cletus) should know in the second chapter. I cheerfully saved it as a spare chapter and started over last night, writing back in the POV of my protagonist, and all is right with the novella. The title was the key. It’s Cletus’ story I’m telling, and it has to be in his own time, and his own way.
The lesson in this case is that no matter how many times I tell people something about their writing, or writing in general, I still have to remind myself. I have to watch tense and POV and keep the timeline straight for all groups of characters involved and make sure that I don’t write about a character’s reactions to things they couldn’t possibly know…
I was told once a long time ago that you can’t write a story in multiple POV. That was, of course, silly. What IS true is that you can’t do it without extreme care, and if you can avoid shifting POV, you almost always should. The characters Cletus will encounter are a hell of a lot creepier revealed in tiny bits and pieces than they ever could have been if I told their story in the beginning. I may make it to chapter three yet. All I have to do is drag them out of that pool, pour them into pewter mugs, bowls, and goblets, and wait for someone to drink…
I wonder if the pool is filled with ink?
Onward!
12 Comments, Comment or Ping
Wayne Allen Sallee
Looking forward to hearing more on the progress, Dave. Myself, I don’t have a myth pool. I have a box of phrases on scraps of paper. Being able to write in multiple POVs, you lucky dog, you.
Aug 1st, 2007
Sully
Hmmm. A little fun here. WARNING: THE FOLLOWING MAY BE PURELY SEMANTICAL. Strikes me the Myth Pool is a function of genre to some degree. I.e. genres that play around with reality (science fiction, horror, fantasy, speculative, adventure) are especially prone to create myths. It might be argued that by contrast contemporary novels that are essentially character-driven depend more on a Reality Pool, and that they often expose the myths of daily living — hypocrisy in society and relationships. So maybe, in that case, the writer is sort of a lifeguard at the pool, washing away the myths of modernity with their honesty and insight. Thus, the common bath where that writer and readers meet is the aforementioned Reality Pool.
How’s that for a perspective (snicker)?
And, Wayne, hope I didn’t bug you too much over the last 5 days of you and I posting on these blogs. Thank you for answering my question about Gacy’s final reckoning in the article on your web site. And what are we doing up at 4 o’clock in the morning?
– Sully (Thomas Sullivan)
Aug 1st, 2007
David Niall Wilson
Hmmm
Well, Sully ol’ Bean, Scott Landon, the protag of King’s novel, is actually NOT specifically a horror writer, but an acclaimed novelist who happened to write a horror novel early on.
I think you’re right, the pool is different, or has different shores? The thing is, when you rip open reality and show it in a novel you are still creating a mythological escape into the problems of the characters…you can still create what is basically a caricature of reality with some colors brighter, some messages clearer, or with some aspect or element more pronounced than is likely “out here” . . . isn’t that myth? If there is no made-up part to the story - if it’s all real - it’s non-fiction, and then it’s still skewed by the perspective of a single author and his merry band of characters.
Good insight, though…very different things. It’s both the curse and gift of genre. It gives you magic to play with that doesn’t exist in the real world, but if you read the fine print - you see you are tasked with making it SEEM real…
DNW
Aug 1st, 2007
rjones
David,
I highly fancy the closing paragraph of your comment, but I would have put the word SEEM in 84-point type.
RC
Aug 1st, 2007
Sully
Isn’t that a myth? you ask. It is. Which is why I added the warning about semantics… Did wonder, though, if Stevey chose “myth” as more or less a synonym for “fiction.” Fiction, used as I have described in the classical mainstream sense, is often ultra-truth or hyper-reality. It is the “what if…” of life’s most meaningful possibilities. Myth, to me, carries too fanciful a note for that.
And what am I doing up already at 7 a.m. (Central Time), when my last post was just before 4…
– Sully (Thomas Sullivan)
Aug 1st, 2007
Cathy VanPatten
The “myth pool” IS very real, although it’s more often referred to as the collective unconscious. (Oh, the stuff you pick up when you’re an aspiring medievalist researching hero lore… and how much of it actually stays with you years down the road….)
And–it is amazing what a slight shift in perspective can reveal. Nice essay, Dave.
Aug 1st, 2007
Janet Berliner
Different seas bring out different sees.
Good essay. I’m just about to start reading
Lisey.
–J.
Aug 1st, 2007
Liz Coleman
I agree that the first thing I thought when I heard “myth pool” was the collective unconscious. But in that case, I think the metaphor would be more like the writer is scooping out the water and divvying it out to the readers in the container he chooses. Their personal history helps determine the shape of the container. Like, you get this batch in a cup with rockets on it that looks just like the sippy cup I had when I was two. Okay, maybe that’s getting a bit weird. But in the end, all the cups and contents get dumped back into the pool. Or, to be really graphic, we could say that both readers and writers vomit everything back for others to scoop up later. Yum.
Aug 1st, 2007
David Niall Wilson
Well, heck, this IS getting interesting.
If we go with the “Collective Unconscious” as the Myth Pool, then what we are talking about is words as connection points. Of course, as Liz pointed out, the author shapes and molds the containers or “transfers” but isn’t that sort of like if you poured black ink into clear water? Near the point where the bottle is tipped, the water is most influenced by the ink. Further out, it dilutes. Eventually, it is absorbed, and though the entirety is changed somewhat, there is no point of concentration.
Shared conduits?
I don’t know, but it’s fun to think about it.
Sully - I knew what you meant man…and you know I agree. Hypereality is a very intriguing construct. The Bible makes use of it…absolutes in place of reality - which never is.
Onward.
DNW
Aug 1st, 2007
Sully
Spot on about hyper-reality, as I guess just you and I have styled it. Writers functioning by gathering the waters of innner truth together to be recognized and drunk by thirsty readers. Cut my teeth on those 19th C. novels that came out of England, France, Italy, Russia (even a couple in America), rebelling against the pretensions of society. Suffocated women and smarting idealists were the order of the day. Still a few of those around, but maybe for different reasons. People who should have been born in a different time or a different place. Guess we’ve moved away from that societally, but not the phoniness and hypocrisy or the way it manifests. Conformity still smothers individuals, but that’s slipped on the trendiness chart. Much more is pointed toward that there “collective unconscious” but perhaps in a new and insidious way. If I may take license. The focus on socialism has filtered down to the personal level, leaving a lot of very intense individuals lost or hurting. He said. Do-dah.
– Sully (Thomas Sullivan)
Aug 1st, 2007
Frank Wydra
All this stuff about pool leaves the eight ball on the table, the eight ball being your intriguing comment, “Then I let it go for a day.”
Man, that’s when the creatures in that pool who feast on Liz’s vomit do their work. They slosh around trying to figure out why a guy who is selling lemonade doesn’t get it that snarks drink beer. So, they start doing crazy things with his head while he’s napping, eyes wide. Takes a while, then comes the epiphany. And he says, “It hit me so hard, I nearly…”
For most of us, the old pool isn’t worth much until we “put it aside for a…” That’s when it happens, when that old unconscious collects all the detritus and makes us see the coherence. You can have the old myth pool. Me, I’ll take the putting it aside.
Frank
Aug 1st, 2007
John B. Rosenman
Dave, I’m glad you figured out what went wrong with Chapter two, and even happier that you didn’t drive off the road. Good luck with it, and happy wading in the myth pool.
Aug 1st, 2007
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