Storytellersunplugged

Gerard Houarner

Who Are You?

Yeah, yeah, classic rock. I really want to know.

Do you, really?

It’s a theme I keep coming back to, re-approaching hopefully from different directions, because I find in it an interesting key to a number of different locks - people, characters, relationships, situations, culture and society. And writing.

Maybe “what are you” would be a more appropriate question. But I don’t want to get personal, and I’m not even sure I want to know that about myself.

The point is, who we are may or may not change, over time and in different situations. Consistency is sometimes offered by fine, upstanding citizen folks as a positive value, but a consistent “who” or “what” needs to be added for me to get enthusiastic about the concept.
This train of thought was inspired in part by an interview with Peter S. Beagle in Brutarian 48/49, in which he’s asked by the interviewer, Jayme Lynn Blaschke, what can he do now he couldn’t at 19 when writing his first novel.

In his enthusiastic response, he points out technical skills he’s developed, as well a willingness to handle scenes he couldn’t when he was younger. In short, his approach to writing has evolved, to the point where he says he finds himself less clever now than when he was 19.

He also talks about a writing internship he had at age 22 with Larry McMurty and Ken Kesey, in which he felt out of his depth. What particularly struck me there was his reaction to writers who were “very much from somewhere and could tap that, where I have the perspective of an immigrant’s child. I could never be from the Bronx…”

He goes on to say that he didn’t think he’d been delivered to the wrong parents, but dropped on the wrong planet. I particularly appreciated his saying that he almost had to invent a world to be from, leading to his involvement with fantasy.

I’m an immigrant’s child, and I feel exactly the same way. I’m so alienated I don’t recognize myself in the mirror.

Ba dump dump.

Anyway. The kind of fiction I write, the actual need to create fiction, certainly stems from the same kind of issues. The worlds I invent are the worlds I come from. They’re who I am. My personal “Dreaming.” They are at least in part my reaction to the “other” world I interact with, the waking world.

Never mind my issues with the species.

Which are, of course, very different from other writers – some of which are explored by other contributors in their storyteller postings as we all talk about our influences and what drives us to write.

But the point is, there is a part of the creative self that identifies so closely to a past, place, style, subject, feeling, and which really doesn’t change. That’s part of what I’m talking about – knowing your strengths, passions, foundation. Pay attention to what you react to, what you notice, what you find easiest to do and most satisfying. Because once you get a feel for what’s important to you, what’s meaningful, not only can your tale begin to “pop” but I’m betting you’ll want to get back to the keyboard to write. ‘Cause you’re gettin’ to the good “stuff.”

And who you are – long-term and through all those pesky developmental stages of life – shapes what you do. Including writing. Tastes can change. Style. Subject matter. If you leave yourself open, new voices, technology, media can also shape your creative choices. Life’s ass-kicking will also most certainly give you the opportunity to write from different points of view. So will life’s joys and victories, which are often just as difficult to see coming, or even if you see them coming, to understand emotionally what they mean.

I’m just saying there’s a core “who” or “what” you are, and tapping into that person rather than chasing the image of what you should be, the ideal of a favorite writer, the goal of best-sellerdom, whatever other external goal you might hold as important, just trips you up.
Unless, of course, you’re one of those genius types who gets to magically match talent and ambition. Maybe you get lucky and you don’t have to struggle or think too hard to become a hit. One thing’s for certain, if you’re not that lucky, and you don’t find a way to dig your way to who you are as a creative entity, you’re not going to go very far.

But I’d argue that, except for some of the formula best-seller writers who write the same thing over and over because their audiences won’t buy their off-brand product, all writers will change. Even, perhaps especially the geniuses. They have to.

First off, for the non-geniuses, what initially brings us to writing is usually just not good enough. Whether we’re doing Lovecraft pastiches or break-neck wanna-be big-budget potboilers, there’s something missing in our game. Like, maybe, characters. Or a point. A plot. Whatever it is, there are changes that need to be made to our “game.”

In this same issue of Brutarian, Michael McCarty and Mark McLaughlin interview Ramsey Campbell and, in talking about his phenomenal success at a young age, he talks about learning his craft by imitating others while “homing in on what I had to say for myself.” He talks about “denying” his Lovecraftian influences in order to discover his own themes and then eventually rediscovering Lovecraft. In rereading Lovecraft, he still finds different qualities to appreciate.
The point here for me is that Ramsey Campbell took the time to discover who he was as a writer, his relationship with his environment, what he enjoyed reading and experiencing of the world, in order to focus on a unique voice and approach to the work. He became not just another writer, but one of THE writers.

And in Peter Beagle’s comments about his early years, I caught that there was an essential quality to the writers he studied with that he couldn’t use because it was alien to him, and perhaps the need to learn from these masters blinded him initially to the truth that there was essential quality, a perspective, in him that was also valuable. It just took him a while to get in touch with that part of himself.

So mastery of the craft, adjustments to editorial guidance and markets, and most importantly, a better understanding of who/what we are, brings on a change in what we write.

Secondly, and this goes for everybody, I think, life won’t let us stay the same even if we’re determined to be consistent. The simple fact is that things change – from our bodies to the world around us. We raise families, we watch and feel friends and family pass away, we succeed and we fail. These events transform our perspective, our priorities.

Okay, maybe not always for the better. Maybe not successfully (I am haunted by the writer at a SFWA gathering who told me that, as his sentences got longer, his sales went down until he couldn’t sell anymore, and he wasn’t interested in writing short sentences, anymore – I’ve never seen him again). Call it a maturation process.

So who you are will shift, if not by situation or circumstances, certainly by time and experience.
Paying attention to those shifts adds to the material you have available to write about. Ignoring those shifts gets you drifting further away from who you are, and maybe gets you in trouble. You get to a point where you’re not doing what you really want to do, anymore. There’s no joy in the work. You get blocked.

You get lost.

For the new writers who presumably come to this blog, my message is to embrace what you are at the moment, don’t fight to hang on to the past or imagine something other than what you are. Don’t try to be who you aren’t, just because you think what you want to be is cool. The process of being creative includes fighting to become who you are.

Doesn’t mean you won’t have to make compromises. If you want to make a living at the game, who you are may not be enough. Or it may be too much for readers to handle. But when I talk to my buds, or listen to writers talking about their craft, I can’t tell you how many times I hear them say they stuck in this bit or that because that’s what made the story worthwhile for them. They may be writing a media tie-in, or a piece for a theme-anthology they can’t quite connect with, but what makes them successful and what lets them get some satisfaction out of the writing is drawing on who they are and getting some piece of that self into the story.

I don’t think you get anywhere without a firm grasp of who you are, what tools you possess, what point of view you present. It doesn’t mean you have to get all analytical about it. Lots of writers don’t ever think about this stuff, they just do it. They may not think about it, but as Harlan Ellison always says, they pay attention. They know what’s going on around them, and inside, and when something doesn’t feel right, they bail.

Now, of course, what goes for the writer also goes for the character, so if you’re new and haven’t pulled anything out of this babbling yet (if you’re an oldtimer, you’re probably not here, anymore), pay attention to your characters. Who are they? You better know on some level, or you’re not going to have much of a story. Even if you’re not the type to write biographies and take extensive notes and research and such, even if you’re a by-the-gut type writer, pay attention to that gut. Even if you don’t know who the character is as the story evolves (or even if you think you do), your gut knows better.

Who are you? If you haven’t pulled a thing out of all of this even down to this last line, then put that question up around where you write, and I’ll bet asking it of yourself or your characters (perhaps even your editor, agent, publisher, spouse or child) will lead to some useful answers sooner rather than later.