Storytellersunplugged

(This essay is standing in for the talented Janet Berliner, who will return to her new shared spot with our own Richard Steinberg next month)

Recently I was reading a short story by an author I admire.  I don’t think I’m going to get into which story, or which author, because it’s not germane to the topic at hand.  What matters is the epiphany gained through the reading.

One trait that authors seem to share is the ability to write just beyond their own experience.  You stand on a street corner, and you write about what you think might be happening on the other side of that street.  Beyond that street there are alleys and clubs and worlds that are too far out to infect your fringes - it’s always like that.  There is always an outer edge beyond the outer edge.  I think this might be another defining moment for me as a writer.

The world is a cultural morass.  Walking down the same street on any given day you can find sex queens, virgins, blue-collar workers and silver-spoon, trust fund society favorites.  I’ve spoken a number of times on my theory of tiny worlds - that we each inhabit our own, and that these worlds can collide, mesh, and run parallel, but that they never truly become one.  Now I’m going to add the fiction valence coefficient to the mix.

If we perceive ourselves as atoms in a huge molecule, we see that the  electrons crashing about and orbiting our little worlds are mixing it up with the electrons of others.  If I’m a policeman, and a writer, I KNOW the world of police work, the streets that are my territory, the people I help, and those I put away.  I can see a world just beyond that, as well.  I can write about an underworld that it just seems possible might exist from my perspective.  I can make that place and that vision real for my readers in ways others may fail to.  Someone without my experience might try to write about that same world, but they will fall short, because it’s an outer edge beyond their outer edge, if that makes any sense.  My world is not their world; my edge is not their edge.

This applies in many, many areas of writing.  Dark, erotic stories written by someone who’s never been nearer to a sex partner than a romance novel might get that edge of fantasy, but there are others out there who live on that edge.  There are people who already know enough to judge this first group of inexperienced dreamers against reality. They can remain safely in that world and impress the first group — or they can reach beyond, with a solid grounding on the first edge; they can reach for another, farther edge, and make it work.  I guess what I’m saying is the farther out on any particular edge you walk, work, and live, the more distant the edges you can perceive and create through your fiction.

As a reader, I have often wondered what sets apart truly disturbing works of speculative fiction, or truly powerful stories, from the rest.  Given similar levels of writing ability, and similar subject matter, you can achieve extremely diverse results.  If I write a story, for instance, where something very odd happens to a guy in the US Navy, I have an authority and level of experience to draw on for the concrete foundation of the story, and can concentrate on the outer edges of that reality.  If someone who spent their life in advertising attempts that same story, they have to worry about crossing the first edge to get to anything beyond, like being fired out of a cannon without a net. If they’ve never seen a real US Navy ship, or served in the military, they can only research, watch movies and television, talk to others, and hope to create something that works.

I guess what I’m saying is that the truly visionary writers I’ve known have all lived in very odd, very personal little worlds.  The more personal and the more divergent from the realities around them, the stronger their ability to make the truly strange in fiction stand up and slap me in the mind.  It also seems that, perversely, these very private people draw a crowd every time, and become the edge that others aspire to.  People try to “be” these edge-dwellers because - I think - they perceive the advantage writing on the edge can grant, and they admire the characters these writers create beyond that edge.

I want to be a far voyager.  There are areas where I’ve been and lived and gone that are — unique.  The truly memorable work I have to offer, then, probably lies on an edge farther out from center.  I hope I never quit reaching for it, and I wonder what I’ll find if I reach it, and get the rare chance to stand and look, again, for an outer edge…

This surreal and possibly flawed essay will now return you to your own thoughts, your own little world, but will possibly linger on the edge of your thoughts for a while.  I’d love to hear comments…

-DNW