Gerard Houarner

Or…”interrupted by a person on business from Porlock” — sustaining the vision of the story you want to tell as life’s storms rage around you.

Trust me, it’ll make sense.

Quite some time ago in a LOCUS interview, Jay Lake talked about the challenges of containing the story he’s working on in his mind, or living in the “dream world” of his fictional creation.

I’ve always related to the problem, and kept the issue alive in my notes if not in my ever shrinking mind. I know I’ve mentioned the idea before, but perhaps never explored the concept. Also, over the years as life has closed in and its many challenges consumed innocence, insouciance, and energy, writing has become harder, not easier.

The topic haunts me.

One of the many romantic notions about writers is that they rattle off poems, stories and novels in a “white heat” of inspiration, working day and night, chain smoking, sitting in their dirty underwear in small rooms, their haggard faces lit only by the light of a computer screen (a single dusty bulb in the “old” days, and by candle flame in ancient times) surrounded by empty liquor bottles and piles of pristine finished manuscript, until the book is done and the royalty checks are already in the mail.

Everything real seems to stop in these writers’ lives. Children are magically fed, creditors compassionately defer their pursuit of unpaid bills. The sanctity of the torch of inspiration is respected, and the fire is allowed to burn until the fuel is spent and words are forged.

Now, it’s true there’s a least one famous thriller writer who books a hotel room for a few weeks and locks himself away to write a novel. And there are writers with significant others who “enable” their writing by taking care of the little details of life so they can concentrate on living in the imaginary world of their story until the tale is told.

The reality is that for most writers, that ain’t happening. More often, we’re like Coleridge with what we innocently and passionately believe is Kubla Khan in our heads, putting down lines from a (hopefully not opium inspired) dream vision until we’re interrupted by, as the story famously goes, a person on business from Porlock.

And if you’re a writer and never heard of anything from the above paragraph, stop reading and don’t write, but search out the poem and Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Romanticism.

So the problem (one of many) for writers is keeping what you’re working on alive in your mind. For me, what Jay Lake is talking about is more than a memory problem of recalling plot direction and character tics. And it’s not “inspiration,” that magical booster shot people who want to be writers wait for so they can produce something when, and only when, they feel like it.

I believe containing the story in your mind is about getting a state of awareness about what you’ve done, where you’re heading, and what you’re supposed to be doing with your story when you’re at your keyboard. Something like an altered state, without the opium. An understanding that certain things have happened and that, because of those things, the blank page/screen is waiting for you to set down what you already know, deep down inside beyond your conscious mind, will happen next.

Maybe it’s a meditative state, for some. Or the “zone” athletes talk about, in which years of practicing certain skill sets, along with instinct, experience, and athletic talents, combine to elevate performance out of the mud of fear, nerves and thought. A higher state is achieved in which the baseball appears bigger, moving slower, toward your gigantic bat which swings so effortlessly.

A dream state. Being “in the moment.” Focused on the thing you are doing.

This precious state of knowing and being happens all the time in life, I think, though we may not be aware of it. I think it happens in the process of raising kids, working, driving, praying. Addicts miraculously rise from their stupor to orchestrate their next score.

For writers, I think it means avoiding the struggle of finding the “next thing” to write, rekindling the fire of “inspiration,” feeling again the urgency of having to say the thing you wanted to say in those first moments you scribbled down the story idea. It means recapturing the magnificent arc of story you saw at some point early in the process, re-entering the dream of your vision of Kubla Khan, with all its shimmering details, its clever references, plot points, characters, imagery and layers of meaning, and dragging it out into the waking world whole and complete.

We want it to happen whenever we write.

But it doesn’t happen all the time. We can’t live 24/7 in the dream state of our stories. Other lives, including our own “real world” lives, also need tending and care. Duty calls. Responsibilities knock on our doors.

Obviously, opium worked, at least once for Coleridge. The “romantic” image of writers that includes empty liquor bottles documents the supposed need for alcohol and other drugs to “lubricate” the imagination.

Certainly there are plenty of literary legends fueled by this kind of inspiration. There’s also a lot of bs, folks claiming one thing but doing quite another because, well, the bon vivant is a cool “platform” from which to sell stuff. Aside from the physically, emotionally and cognitively self-destructive aspects of these habits, there’s also regret.

If you wrote that well when you were high, think how much better it would have been if you were in your right mind.

And then there’s the sad reality that 99.9% of that stuff is buried, unseen, along with the creators. Mostly, at a very young age.

So what triggers these states? What else can we use to find the dream in which we can create?

I believe the discipline tricks writers use – writing in the same place, at the same time, every day – not only helps with production, but it also gets the writer back into the “space” or “head” of writing. It’s certainly helped me at times.

Keeping a Fortress of Solitude, a Batcave, a private space decorated so that it resembles the inside of your mind, is a tried and true. But I’ve found that isolating, at times. Cut off from life. Too unreal, perhaps too comfortable. And sometimes, when illness, death, disaster, financial woes or other big life tragedies and issues knock on the door, the Fortress walls come down, or they seem just silly and irrelevant, both in terms of life and to a story you may be trying to tell.

Music, especially when writers talk about specific genres for different types of writing, also serves as an emotional and imagination gate to get back into the story. I’ve seen candles and scents would do the trick.

There are stories about writers doing it naked, as if getting back into some kind of primal state to get the work done.

But not everybody works that way, and even if these techniques work for the structure and discipline of getting back to the work of writing, there may still be problems finding the dream of the story, particularly when time has gone by or a writer is jumping from one piece to another.

I guess what I’m looking for is something tied not to the act of writing, but to the story you’re trying to tell. An anchor, or a touchstone. A key that unlocks the cabinet through which you enter the adventure.

Well, yes, music works for a lot of people in this regard. Theme songs, like a Quincy Jones arrangement for a detective show, except the show is your story and the theme song is whatever rocks your boat. Alas, most of the time this is not for me. I find music too distracting, engaging me in ways that make me want to do other things besides writing, unless I’m writing a very musical story. And even then, at some point, I have to shut it down so I can concentrate on what the characters are saying and feeling.

I guess one factor in finding the right “key” is understanding which of the five senses dominates your awareness – are you visual, auditory, etc?

I do find getting in touch with the story’s setting a good way to start things up each time I write. Working on a longish piece set in a surreal desert, on and off over the past months (more on this another time), I found pictures, documentaries, even a screen saver all pretty good starting points. I write a lot in urban settings, and I live in a city, but I’ve also done nature settings, and I like parks and country, too. I know in those times when I write in a non-urban setting, I’m always thinking of and remembering the time I’ve spent upstate, out West, by the sea, etc.

Setting to me establishes the mood of a story. Again, I can see how music would be a great tool. But I’ve used, as above, documentaries, Sunrise Earth (HD films of sunrises in different parts of the world), and touchstone movies – Blade Runner, Casablanca, David Lynch stuff, surreal cartoons – running silently in the background to guide me into my zone.

Another way is to start every writing session by editing the previous session’s writing. This is a good habit, anyway, as what seemed like gold last night can turn out to be lead in the morning. But, depending on your need, re-reading the work and starting to tinker with it can get you back into the frame of mind you were in when you were last writing. Sparks fly, connections are re-opened. You’re reminded of things you wanted to say, or why you said such and such. You recall threats, you react to dangers. Hopefully, at some point, you’ll feel the need to stop editing and move into the action.

Yes, I know, there are some writers who cannot go on before finishing the perfect page. I studied under one of those. And for that person, the story was complete in his mind. It seemed like the dream of the story was readily accessible, though I was too young and stupid at the time ask. Most of us are not like that.

The point here is to get back into the overall story, the dream, and not to get caught up in close editing. Unless, of course, you find that to be your key. In any case, reviewing old work can wake up the other part of the brain where the dream is living. Listen to it when it calls.

By the way, I recently talked here on Storytellersunplugged about using “dead time” in your life as part of the writing process. Doing a little editing – re-reading what you’ve written, doing minor edits on the fly on your portable computer, smart phone, or manuscript pages — is not only a smart use of little snippets of time while waiting for something to happen, but it also helps to keep that dream alive in your head. Maybe it’ll make you more motivated to hurry home, or dip into the dream for as much time as you may have, and carry the story a little further along with new material.

The biggest key for me getting back into the dreamtime, I’ve found, are characters. I guess it’s something like an actor waiting in the wings, ready to throw up, having no memory of the lines, dreading the cue to step on stage. And when that moment comes and the floorboards creak underfoot, the actor doesn’t so much enter the play but the character in the play, and the lines flow and the fear flies off and the game is afoot.

It’s not the easy or magical, or nauseating, when I write. But I have found that once I’m “in” the character – I have a firm grip on needs, fears, strengths and weaknesses, as well as a sense of personality like sense of humor, patterns of connecting with others, how they relate to friends or family – I can see and understand the story through that character’s eyes. I’ve done long pieces through the eyes of several characters and never had a problem switching around and getting into the story from their point of view. Their individual worlds, and the world of the overall story, was usually within my reach.

Finding and feeling comfortable with the characters is another story, of course. Looking back, I can see the “failed” stories, particularly the ones that never sold or the ones I never bothered to finish, had problems centering on my lack of connection with the characters. The dream never came alive.

Sometimes (let’s not say often) dreams die when published. They never come alive for other people. So it goes. But at the very least, the dream should be alive for the writer.

Strong characters carry their own atmosphere, bring the mood to the story, invite certain kinds of characters to play with them. Good characters can make the work of telling a story so much easier.

Think of the Harry Potter series. Really, all that fantasy stuff is wonderful, but not particularly original. The magical schoolboy is practically an English genre all to itself. But it’s Potter and his Scooby gang that makes that dream come alive for readers. When I imagine myself writing something like that (and cashing all those checks!), I envy the way the characters come alive for readers, and how it must have been to work with them and letting the story flow from their traits, their histories, habits, needs and fears.

In my surreal desert fantasy (no, really, I’ll talk more about that next time, I really must), which was a pain to write and is still a pain in the editing/revision process, which this column is interrupting so I must hurry and finish so I can get back to that dream, I was only able to get back to it after through the many interruptions I had because the main character had a weight of her own. Sometimes she’d say or do things that completely surprised me. But I had a strong sense of her right from the beginning, and that anchor allowed me to slip back enough times (but not al the time, because no solution is perfect and writing is hard no matter how many tricks and shortcuts you use) to keep the dream of that story going.

Another thing that kept that piece, and most things I write, going and alive in my head is having an ending in mind.

For the desert piece, the reason I even started it was to write about the Caravan of Death. This was an idea and a collection of characters from one of my novels. I always loved the idea and wanted to return to it. I started the story knowing the little girl I invented would meet the Caravan of Death and somehow all hell would break loose. For that little girl to hold her own against something called the Caravan of Death, there’d have to be some special qualities to her, and finding those qualities became part of the process of telling the story, part of the dream.

But a general idea of the ending, in most cases, is part of the beginning of the story. As I’ve said before, the seeds of the end are always at the beginning. They may be invisible, implied, cast like shadows around the edges, part of the background, in the imagery and symbols, but usually it’s there, somewhere, lurking, waiting. You may not be aware of it. The secrets may only be revealed with time, the story’s development. You may re-read that beginning a hundred times before you see it. Or, you may have to go back and plant the damn seed as the ending becomes clear by telling the story. One way or another, the end usually gets there in the beginning.

And I say this not just because I have an Ouroborus tattoo on my arm.

It may not be the ending that actually happens, and in fact, it’s probably better if the ending changes as the story evolves. But having that ending, or just a general idea for how the character conflicts will resolve (where the characters are going in their individual arcs), serves not only as an anchor for the plot, but for all the different levels of the story being told. Having a direction, an ending, helps to give the dream And by general idea, I mean, do I want

Part of the reasoning behind beginnings/endings and characters as keys to keeping the story alive in your mind is another piece of advice that a lot of writers talk about: having a strong foundation.

By foundation, I don’t necessarily mean a strong beginning, though that helps. But, I’ve found to my chagrin, beginnings change. You think you’re starting in middle, like the sage writing advice tells you, but suddenly you discover you need to start the story earlier or, more often later.

And having a big finish in mind is no guarantee that it will happen, unless you’re the kind of writer who lives by the outline. No problem with that. If the outline works, and can contain the dream and make the story come alive in your mind, I envy you. Most writers I know throw out the outline at some point.

But a start and end does help to define the dream. It’s like recognizing a picture, knowing the outline on a map is not some vague blob, but Africa and all the history and pain and wonder that the name conjures.

And going back and making that beginning stronger, going back and revising and inserting and deleting material, even leaving notes here and there for yourself with what needs to be done right in the manuscript (and believe me, I’ve been startled by my own forgotten notes more than once, and slapped my head over a forgotten part of the dream that needed to poke its head out at the place I’d left a marker), is another reason to edit during “dead time” and start writing sessions by re-reading the story.

If you’ve been away from your story for a while, start at the beginning. See if the beginning awakens the dream, reminds you of the things you’ve already written about what’s going to happen, if the characters come alive and fill you with the need to go back into them, and if you sense what’s coming, good or bad, at the end, or perhaps more importantly, feel the drive to find out what happens, in the end.

If you do, then the story is still alive inside you, and the dream waits for you to join in the adventure.

In a recent BBC interview, Sir David Hare, Oscar-nominated screenwriter, playwright, and general curmudgeon, talked about writing –http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/hardtalk/9568401.stm

Brief and bitter-sweet in the clip, he talks about having to write, and writing being one of the most important things in life even as he acknowledges that he makes films not very many people see.
Now, of course, you have to take some of the negative things he says, when his work has earned him a title as well as an enviable lifestyle, with a hefty grain of salt.

But for this little, irrelevant writer, what’s really interesting is his belief that writing, as a profession, is not about self-expression. The implication, at least what I gathered from the clip, is that writing is about, in part, surviving the need to write.

He talked about a writer being at the mercy of one’s gifts and imagination. Writing is about, for some, trying to write the Great Thing, and then, dealing with the reality that one is always at the mercy of one’s gift and imagination. Writing is also about the painful process of coming to terms with the limits of one’s “gifts” and imagination, and the reality that the Great Thing can’t be done.

He also talks about dealing with being judged, which I interpret as being critiqued, misinterpreted, misunderstood or, simply, not being liked. Well, okay, I suppose, though money, awards and a title might go a long way to smoothing out any feelings about a lack of validation. After all, very few people may see his movies, but people still give him money to make them. But for the vast majority of writers, yes, dealing with rejection – from editors, yes, but also audiences — is a professional challenge that must be faced.

Finally, and perhaps most relevant for everyone, is the need for regeneration. Whether you call it being blocked, or running out of ideas or inspiration, or coming to a commercial dead-end, writing is certainly about finding the energy and creativity to start over again once a story is finished, a project is published, and the moment of publishing success, or failure, has passed.

Writing as life is no different from life as life. Denial is a beautiful thing, and seems to carry some a very long way, but as in life, I’m too much a realist to try ducking the stone walls of talent, imagination, audiences or lack thereof. And I am a fan of regeneration, feeding that thing inside that wants to make something someone else might find interesting. Writing as life means having to find a way through the disappointments and failures and keep going. Where? Well, you know how that goes, it’s the journey not the destination…

On a perhaps more inspirational note, Ray Bradbury’s birthday was August 22nd, and recognized in the LA Times: http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/jacketcopy/2011/08/happy-91st-birthday-ray-bradbury.html

Hard to come up with a better example of writing as life, integrating gifts and imagination, dealing with being judged, and finding strength through regeneration…

The world changes based on physical laws and dynamics; people change based on physiological and psychological processes.

How people perceive these changes and react to them is the stuff of, if not legend, certainly story.

A recent David Brooks Times article (http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/08/opinion/08brooks.html) on “The New Humanism” (which doesn’t look like the old or even current New Humanism stuff I’ve encountered) sparked some thinking about people and stories I hope is interesting.

The notion I cling to from the article is that the disasters we visit on ourselves are caused, at least in part, by the “distorted” and simplistic view that reason and emotion are separate spheres.  We trust in and use the (so-called) rational self to suppress our untrustworthy emotional selves.

It’s the “Western way,” I suppose.  And there’s certainly good cause to fear the emotional aspects of ourselves and others.  Lynch mobs would be one.  However, there is also good cause to be afraid of ignoring emotional realities.  Loss of empathy might fall into that category, leading to the ever-popular genocidal binge.

Suppressing emotional aspects of culture and reinforcing the rational has certainly lead to great leaps in science, technology, philosophy.  But, of course, that suppression has certainly led to some interesting choices in the use of said tech.

As usual, my reaction is probably tangential.  Basically, we’re creatures of perception, and all conflict and miracles stem from this reality, the only reality any of us really care about.  If we perceive ourselves to be rational, the world and our own actions make a certain kind of sense.  If we perceive ourselves grounded in an emotional world, we understand ourselves and the mechanics of our surroundings in a different way.  In genre terms, it’s science vs magic.  One door opens, the other closes.

At least, that’s my theory, my understanding of things as I see them today, through the lens of the article, which, by the way, calls for a more balanced and integrated view, a “new humanism,” to save us from ourselves.

Anyway, I’m struck by the power of perception, and the importance of how the individual and group perceives themselves and the world.

Yes, it is true that when someone pushes a button and nukes everyone, or the asteroid we failed to track crashes into earth, or even when the aliens show up promising harmony and technological wonders and then exterminate us from the safety of somewhere beyond the orbit of Mars, a larger reality will engulf our many-splendored individual realities and make all those precious personal perceptions irrelevant.

And it is true we are often smart enough to evade that larger reality, because we built our earthquake-proof reactors close to the sea to make cooling more efficient, or we tested our brand new and exciting vehicles beyond industry standard to make sure they wouldn’t go off careening down highways on their own.

We built community developments on mountainsides knowing they would never slide off during a hard rain, while laughing at primitive people who built stone towns and cities in sub-tropical regions which have yet to show any inclination toward falling off.  Or, we built monumental apartment buildings to house the poor because that was efficient and cost-effective.

Or, we believed certain kinds of people, like, say, bankers, are fiscally responsible and motivated to preserve capital and wouldn’t dream of lowering themselves to speculation.

A priest, after all, is a priest.  A scientist, the same.  From an emotional or a rational point of view, neither should have any reason to act irresponsibly or stupidly in their role.

They’ve got those emotions locked down because they went to Harvard or MIT, and they’re adults, and they’re rich and responsible.  And stuff.

Indeed, until that larger reality actually manifests itself, we stumble along immersed in our stews of thought and emotion, cooking whatever the hell is going on around us into the gumbo of reality.

We reach conclusions, take actions, reap rewards and punishments based on the most tenuous beliefs: we are reasonable creatures, predictable, with motivations and intentions based on the certainties of evidence.  Or, if you prefer non-rational faith, a Higher Power is on our side.

We are certain of what we know, what we think.  And the best part of that is we have evidence to support our certainty.  There are studies.  Sometimes, experts gather and through consensus, select a “best practice” based solely on the scientific data and without any influence from manufacturers, insurance companies, or other entities with dubious motivations.  Sometimes, God just talks to us.

Often, it all works out.

A disappointing percentage of the time, however, the asteroid hits.

We’re driving along merrily drinking our home-brewed or pundit-bought brew, faithfully and quite rationally following our internal GPS right off the cliff.

Back to my clinging to the notion of a “distorted” and simplistic view of separate rational and emotional selves.

What I take from this idea is that, though the percentage of “right” from the rational approach to things may be impressive, may even be much better than some of the emotional viewpoints past and present, what we consider “rational” is not all that it’s cracked up to be.

The same, of course, can be said to those who navigate principally by an emotional compass.

After all, when the asteroid hits, it doesn’t matter if you made human sacrifices or launched nuclear bombs.  Despite your deepest convictions, what you tried failed.

Just because we elected our shamans, or made them go to college for degrees and licenses and other non-shamanistic accoutrements of non-shamanistic knowledge, insight and wisdom, doesn’t mean what they know or believe is right.

Sometimes, I think we’re all just ants blundering around, putting our heads down and doing our individual thing to the best of whatever our brain circuitry and personal chemistry can do, following one another, picking up scents left by trailblazers who survived and came back with the sugar.  Somehow, our combined chaotic efforts result through trial and error in what we call civilization.  Culture.  Flat screen TV’s filled with sports and digital effects.

I think that’s the latest in ant theory, anyway – there’s no Borg-esque Queen directing the hive, just a bunch of organic machines doing their jobs, stupidly making mistakes, and making up for those mistakes by trying again and again until, eventually, an efficient and practical solution for whatever is challenging the little buggers is found.  Or they die trying.

I also like the word “distorted.”   To me, I means there may well be something there in our funhouse image of what is true and real, but what we have not considered, what may be beyond our grasp or ability to perceive, is what distorts the image.  We believe the image to be true.  But it’s not.  And we are led astray, even to our doom, thinking we are doing the right thing.

I do sympathize with the article’s point that the rational and irrational are enmeshed, inseparable, and to think otherwise may not only be foolish, but dangerous.  Reminds me of the “old” humanism, like a ying yang tattoo staring you in the face.

I also appreciated the research on other measure of intelligence – lord knows we need other forms of intelligence.  The research may be a bit dense, but things like the Cambridge Handbook of Intelligence might lead to some creative perspectives on how your particular demon, fairy, Elder God or alien might perceive and understand the human world.  But go to a library for the thing – even the Kindle price is a heart attack.

There are other ways thinking about the rational and emotional aspects of humanity in terms of story and character.

Yes, there are the obvious and massive dramatic and comedic situations to be mined by playing the rational against the emotional, from I Love Lucy to The Big Bang Theory. Possibly, there’s art in their fusion.

And, an awareness of the varying definitions of humanity, intelligence and talents can help in establishing concrete needs and behaviors of the “new” or alternative human and the alien, and the conflicts and possible resolutions that come out of that.  Could be the new X-Men, could be the transformation of Remembrances of Things Past to the Perceptions of Things Now.

How much trust, and distrust, characters have in their rational/emotional selves is a fundamental anchor for their perception of the world.  And from that anchor, as I’ve been saying, all hell can break loose.  From the best of intentions, horrors can come, and from the worst, miracles.  Or maybe something a little less melodramatic.

Certainly at the root of genres like thriller, mystery, crime, suspense, there is tension between the rational and emotional in individuals and opposing groups.  Character perceptions are skewed, “distorted,” by their perspectives, by the information they allow themselves to process and what they do not take into account.

Decisions are made based on incomplete information.  The rational, or perhaps the emotional mind, blocked relevant information and observations.  Perhaps something was missed in the conflict between the two.  Actions are taken, horribly flawed, and if perceptions don’t change and characters don’t adapt, tragedy results.

I can’t even imagine how many papers have been written on the rational versus the emotional in Shakespeare.  The heart of horror is emotion, but getting to that heart may take raging tooth and claw, or the clean, precise rationality of a surgical blade.  What’s a love story without the heart and mind at war?

In fact, if you look at literature – from love stories to war stories, perhaps even post modern lit – you’d be hard-pressed not to find the conflict between the rational and the emotional at the heart of most stories.

Yes, sides may be taken, which may run counter to this “New Humanism” or its plain old Taoist philosophical roots.  True love wins out, or emotional horror, or the logic of the master detective or the science of the future.

The audience, immersed in their cultural perspectives, craves the comfort of the reality it perceives.

Sometimes, however, a certain balance can be achieved.  The audience may get what it needs rather than what it wants and be satisfied – a richer, more complex resolution than the triumph of the rational, the demise of the emotional, or vice versa.

I know, looking at the news, its hard to believe.  Unrealistic.  Certainly not mimetic.

A hard sell.

Whatever story you choose to tell, a long, hard look at the conflict between the emotional and the rational in characters, in the forces aligned against each other in the grand plot, might not be a total waste of time.  At least, that’s today’s theory.

It seemed to work for Shakespeare.

Inspired in part by Brian Hodge’s post last month on predictability, and in part by a quick exchange of emails with a writing buddy about readers’ reactions to story endings, I had already been thinking about this month’s topic over the past few weeks.

Then current events added a new dimension to what passes for my thinking.  The question I’ve been struggling with is, what constitutes a story’s ending, exactly?

First impression:

It depends on reader expectations, based on taste, need, author reputation, cover, blurbs, description.

For context, it’s been less than 24 hours, as I write this, since America’s #1 target has been killed and buried at sea.  I’ve seen about 20 reaction interviews, from generals to soldiers, 9/11 survivors, first responders, family members of victims and soldiers who’ve died in the two wars, and just general citizens.  As a national story, 9/11 and its consequences certainly ranks high on the consciousness scale.  Of course, the story is “real” and we’re all characters in that story, not readers.  The story, being real, is not clean and packaged.  It’s not edited, other than through our own interior and highly subjective review panel.  Still, as a barometer, this particular villain’s story fate offers an interesting take on endings.

For some, the end of this particular story thread provided a degree of closure.  To paraphrase one guy’s reaction, “He won’t even be able to orchestrate another trip to the bathroom.”   For others, there’s the satisfaction of justice, of revenge, of a debt fulfilled.  Occasionally, there is the keen and biting awareness that payment is no substitute for what was taken.  In short, the story hasn’t really ended.  Like life, consequences continue to unfold.  Not everyone, particularly those who have actually suffered directly from 9/11 and its consequences, has gained that warm and fuzzy sensation of closure and completion.

For many, there’s no “happily,” and no “ever.”  There’s only “after.”

Of course, stories are not reality.  We are in the entertainment business, supposedly.  But at the same time, there is also the business of art, perhaps an ambition to have an effect on another person with nothing more than words on paper (or computer screen).   There may even be a responsibility to culture and society, perhaps something like “do no harm,” or even, “make a difference.”  Perhaps, there is only an artistic stance – to be true to one’s vision, or to reflect nature and reality, or to be provocative.  If nothing else, there a foundation to storytelling that supposes that, though stories may not be “real,” they’d sure better reflect what readers feel and know about reality.  Whether set in World War II or your mother’s backyard or a magical kingdom, there is a general sense of logic and order to be followed.

In the sense of connecting to an audience, stories are real. They’re real when they’re happening inside our heads.  We feel them.  We live in them, as readers.  They linger, like memories.  When they go over the edge, we go over with them.  That’s scary, yes.  But in going over the edge, they can also be truthful.  Often, at least for me, stories can leave threads that continue past the word “end” on the last page.  They can even be open-ended, a story road that goes beyond the book’s pages, in the reader’s imagination.

Sometimes this upsets people.

This is when the writer runs into trouble by creating an ending that’s too dark, or open-ended.  When the wrong characters get together, die, survive.  When things get too damned “existential” or, well, okay, too happy.  Predictable, or surprising in a way that doesn’t satisfy the reader.

No one ever said catharsis, for characters or audience, was supposed to be pretty.  But try explaining that to the paying public at the foot of the stage, down in the “pit,” rotten produce in hand.

An individual’s reaction depends on the contract with the signed.  Expectations.  There are bound to be problems, and lousy Amazon reviews, and possibly worse sales, if someone picks up a book anticipating fuzzy and getting razors.

And I can sympathize.  I don’t want “chef’s surprise, “unless I’m a fan of the chef.  And even then, that chef shouldn’t stray too far from the “Italian” I’m familiar with.  No liquid nitrogen cuisine, thanks.  But then again, maybe I’m due for a change.  Maybe I really need to experience flash frozen protein froth.  Who am I to sue over an imaginary contract?  Unfortunately, not many readers are that laid back.  Some get ornery when they think they wasted their beer money.

All artists struggle with the slippery slope of artistic integrity and commercial viability.  Endings are when writers say goodbye to their story, too, and that can be tough.  A world, a bunch of folks who’ve been living in the imagination for months, perhaps years, annihilated in the seconds it takes to type “the end.”  How to say goodbye, how to wrap it up, move on?  Oh, and bank that check, and maybe get back in with a sequel, maybe a series, a cable or movie option.

For readers, the struggle is simpler – the ending is where it all needs to come together.  And if frozen froth is the ending the storyteller finds necessary, how to convince a reader that the froth does indeed have a higher calorie count, and far more texture, flavor and complexity, than that meaty lasagna?

Is an ending okay if it ticks people off, not because it’s predictable, but because it’s unpredictable in the “wrong” way?

I’ve been told that people don’t always know what they want.  My buddy pointed out that, though the reader wanted a more definitive conclusion rather than an open ending, that reader still really wanted to read his work.

This made me think about one of Brian’s observations about characters and knowing them fully.  Oh, yeah, and novel use of language.  I can’t really speak to that one.  But I think characters, a cast of characters, and what happens to them, big and small, not only at the end but over the course of the story, can satisfy the reader enough so they don’t ask for their beer money back.  I think it can be important to reach, or at least offer, different conclusions at an ending, depending on each character’s point of view.

I know, in my reading for Space and Time, I like the main character achieving something, but a secondary character (or “entity” or other force because, let’s face it, it is Space and Time) accomplishing something else, and perhaps even the antagonist comes out with a piece of the pie.  Somehow, that sounds realistic.   Downright mimetic.

In Brian’s words, transformation, not death.  For all.

When I’ve been asked to go back and rethink an ending, it’s generally because the ending is too bleak, dark, hopeless and destitute.  Sort of The Road without the kid.  “What happened?” I’ve been asked, meaning why I did I destroy everything and everyone so completely?  Why did choices and circumstances have to be so dark?  There is, as far as I understand the reaction, a certain lack of meaning.  To me, the situation may reflect s view of reality but, I understand the feedback that, no, I don’t have to beat my readers over the head with that point of view.  And, really, the bleakness doesn’t reflect the totality of my viewpoint.

I do not wear black nail polish or velour on the inside and the out.

Incidents of random joy or humor aside, I still believe the dark path is a legitimate one to take.  I’m a fan of noir, after all.  Horror, dark fantasy, that kind of thing.  But, there is the market to consider.  The editor.  And the choices you leave yourself as a writer.   Meaning, and in the context of commercial fiction, hope, is a legitimate goal.  Those kinds of things do make a difference, they belong in a legitimate artistic vision of the world.  I think readers search for meaning.  I also think meaning can be found in wonder and terror, so you don’t have to be literal about providing “meaning.”

In shorter works, I try to introduce at least one character who is just “passing through” whenever I can.  Spear-carriers, perhaps, but that doesn’t mean they can’t serve the story.  Their tiny one scene arc not only puts the main character in context, in a living world that is going on around the protagonist as he, um, agonizes, but of course they also (Ihope) propel the plot, and, they offer a different point of view on what is going, a lingering presence that will probably survive the main character’s arc and perhaps make the story more real, more vivid, for the reader.   A mom or dad, a best friend, a husband or wife on the phone, a seer or a homeless person, a dog or a cat.  Whatever.  But their little walk through, in my mind, serves a host of purposes, including, I hope, a tiny beginning, middle and end in the scene in which they appear.

In a  longer story, I think there can be as many endings as there are character arcs.  Of course, there’s the main one.  But usually, you have a cast and, for the story to work, they should be of some variety (otherwise there’s no conflict).  A character’s story may be short – perhaps only a scene in a short story, perhaps a few scenes throughout a novel.  There’s usually a cluster of characters and their changes that need to be orchestrated at the end of a longer, more complex work.  An early novel of mine was episodic, so the arcs for the secondary characters were short, but the more recent stuff – with characters dying, or “moving on” (quite literally, in the supernatural sense) or just moving on – required a bit more coordination.

At each of those moments when a character is about to leave the story, either in the middle or the end of the work, here’s a chance to make that character really stand out for a reader.  Every character should be on their own journey, and those little endings and transformations can linger in a reader’s mind if it hits the particular mental or emotional target he or she carries inside them.

You hit them high, you hit them low.  You point in all kinds of directions, hopefully with some pattern or cohesion.

Darkness.  Light.  Humor.  Cruelty.  Love.  Despair.

Well, that’s being overdramatic, of course.  But I hope I’m making sense, if not an actual case, by treasuring the characters you’ve invented, and looking how their individual endings in the story can accent and spice up the overall narrative.  When everybody dies, or falls in love and lives happily ever after, it may taste like burnt chicken.

Another way to look at ends is the technique of revisiting fairy tales by looking at the story from different points of view –  Wolf instead of Red.  Same ending, different meaning.  Put the arcs together, and you have a third story.  Throw in the woodsman, grandma, and you have a richer ending.  Yes, a much longer story, I know, but richer.

Or, as always, you can look to Shakespeare and his major and minor character arcs for those juxtapositions of individual endings.  Well, maybe not Titus Andronicus, but you get the idea.  And, oh yeah, that elevated language thing Brian was talking about.

Going back to the beginning (which is one of my favorite ways to end a story – full circle, very different place), killing Osama puts a meaning to 9/11 – not necessarily the definitive one, just the one we have today, knowing what we know, still in the unfolding story.  Do this, and you die.  That’s a good enough meaning for many.

The more complex meanings are in the reaction interviews – he’s dead, and we are #1.  Or, he’s dead, but I’m still not happy.

In longer works, you can have multiple “endings” from a variety of character arcs, so that individual major, minor, diminished, augmented and what have you characters and secondary story lines can stick in a reader’s mind.  You have two good endings?  Use them both, hell, end on a power chord of endings.

Or, yes, trickle away at the very end, or fade away on the chorus.  Whatever.  I think if you’ve provided memorable characters – and by that, I mean not just colorful or interesting personalities, but vivid and contrasting journeys for those characters to fulfill in the story – you won’t make readers demand their beer money back.  I think that’s why my buddy’s fan wants to continue reading his books – she may not have liked the structural end, the long view of the road vanishing into the horizon with some characters on it, but I’m pretty sure she dug the characters and where most of them wound up.

I bet she liked the language, too.

“I suppose it is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail.”

I haven’t the foggiest idea if Abraham Maslow had much experience with the arts, but certainly his observation works for more than therapists and their menu of interventions.  (Maslow being a psychologist of the “humanist” tradition famous for, among other things, a view of personality based on a hierarchy of needs, which some might find useful tool as a way to look at characters and  conflict – check out http://webspace.ship.edu/cgboer/maslow.html as a start if you’re interested.)

The hammer and nail observation certainly relates to a lot of situations.  No matter what the profession, it’s never a good thing when a co-worker’s options for appropriate responses is severely limited.  As a matter of fact, the hammer and nail approach often serves as comic relief in storytelling.  And, as a predictor of a character’s early demise.

And, from the viewpoint of the “other side of the coin,” the hammer and nail can also flip from humor to horror, and become the sole motivating factor and/or technique for a predator.

But as a writer, it pays to have a bag of tricks, a few tools in the box to get your character from one place to another, another way to rescue characters besides blood and bullets.  Yes, writers and artists in general have their passions, obsessions, visions and all of that.  Lovecraft overcame his hammer and nail by making it a mighty special hammer, but too many would-be imitators/followers have tried using that same combination and found themselves on the unintentionally humorous side of the coin.  Writers have stock characters they lean on again and again, settings they wear thin, descriptive phrases that appear in story after story, set ups and pay offs that make their tales predictable, a reflection of the genre to which they belong.

It pays to experiment, to read and learn (never steal, writes never steal, they only learn from their betters, trust me), to try and fail (I know, the economic consequences can be dire, but calculated risks are part of every profession).

It pays to pay attention to how many times you describe a street, or a character, or a room, in exactly the same way.  It pays to pay attention to the plots you pick, the characters you rely on, the phrasings like, well, it pays to pay attention…

Zombies.  There’s a tempting target for hammer and nail.  And yet, as an example of how a writer might work different angles with the same very limited subject, you might try Scott Edelman’s collection, What Will Come After.

I think part of the struggle for artists in general is balancing passion and vision, which sometimes tends toward using the hammer of their particular talent and viewpoint to on every project, with the work of trying out new tools to shape different takes on the material.

By this, I mean doing obvious stuff like switching character viewpoints from male to female to “other,” experimenting with language and style and voice, stepping out of the comfort zone of habit, telling a “straight” story if you’re an experimental type and playing with structure if you’re already a straight-shooter.

Do something you don’t want to do.

Pick up a new tool, do something other than hit what you think is a nail.

I had a great conversation recently with a supervisor of a substance abuse clinic, talking about staff issues  and the learning process.  One of the things he talked about was dealing with counselors who used confrontation, a traditional substance abuse counseling tool, for every patient and situation.  And there he was, talking about hammer and nail.

To be applied to so many things in life, of course, from taking a different route to work to, well, you can figure it out…and to writing stories.

Writers are certainly familiar with the concept of failure.  Some of us have stacks of rejections to remind us, just in case we forget.  But this go-around, I’d like to approach this all-too-familiar concept from a different, larger point of view.

A couple of years (or more) ago, J.K. Rowling delivered a commencement speech to the Harvard Alumni Association called, amusingly enough considering the audience, The Fringe Benefits of Failure, and the Importance of Imagination.

What strikes me, as someone who has walked away from certain kinds of “success” and who has been ambushed by unthinkable “failure,” in her approach is the valuable lesson regarding embracing failure.

I know, it’s practically un-American.  Un-anything, for that matter.

Anti-human.  Perhaps even monstrous.

Her angle on failure was freedom.  So maybe the hanging party can pause of while to reconsider, the torch-bearing mob stop at the gates before setting fire to the castle.  Because there’s nothing more American than freedom.

What I most identify with in her speech was the idea of “stripping away of the inessential.”  Now if there’s anything the last few years, hell, the last few decades has taught us is that some parts of the world’s various societies have created a whole hell of a lot of inessential stuff.  With it has come some pretty cool things, incredible feats of engineering and breakthrough science.  But still, a lot wound up being glamour.  Fairy dust in the eyes.  A mirage.  Ultimately, failure.

Individually, maybe we thought we belonged.  We wanted to, tried real hard, did everything we had to be one of the gang.  To beat the Joneses.  Whatever the gang was that we hoped would make us feel okay, protect us from the Big Bad, guarantee us success.  Whatever the Joneses meant to us that they had to be “beaten” in the race to accumulate the latest “things.”

We had to be just that little bit extra special.  So maybe people would notice us.  To feel good about ourselves.  To fill the emptiness inside with someone’s applause, or envy.

I’m sure many of us can look back on our lives and see periods where, well, things didn’t quite work out the way we thought they would.  Things were done as they were supposed to be done.  Certificates, degrees, social circle spokes were all accumulated and nurtured with due diligence and practiced charm.  Money and family and house and hobbies all neatly established to meet the standards of whatever club we wanted to belong to.

Then, if we’re lucky, we found out the club we wanted to be a part of didn’t turn out to be what we thought it would be.

Or, the club simply wouldn’t have us.

Failure.

Rowling  points out that if she had really ever succeeded at anything other than writing, she would never have “found the determination to succeed in the one arena I believed I truly belonged.”

Now here’s a key, I thought – the definition of failure, and the discovery of freedom, for her came as the realization of her greatest fear, which in this case was failure.

We protect ourselves from what we fear with the armor of what our culture values – the perfect spouse, the high-velocity career, car, degrees, property.  Perhaps we believe we have a pipeline to God, or the Spiritual Master of Your Choice.  Certainly, we also protect ourselves from what we fear with the trappings of failure – addiction, ignorance, obsession.

This is what people do, have always done, will always do.

Let’s be blunt.  Failure is hardwired into living.

Systems break down.  Errors occur.  Death looms.

Everybody loves a winner, but to be a winner, everybody else must lose.  That’s the price of competition.  And even today’s winner is tomorrow’s loser.

I’ll stop short of saying there’s “no winning.”  I won’t even go into the aspect of game theory that says the point is not to win or lose, but to keep playing.

I don’t want to bring anyone down, here.  But there is, actually, a point or two to be made…

Half of what I’m saying here relates, of course, to writing.  Creating and building characters.

Nobody wants to read a story in which the character succeeds at every turn.  The point of a plot is to pile one failure on top of another, to “up the ante” and repay the first Act’s successful handling of an initial crisis with a double dose of plot twists – more failures.

Overcoming failures by adapting and changing priorities, changing directions, stripping away the inessential, is bascially what story, and life, is about.

Experimenting, trying things out, accepting and even embracing failure for the lessons it can teach us is actually the way everything from evolution (um, if you happen to believe in that) to growing up to science actually works.

So in thinking of characters, it is sometimes more rewarding to think less in terms of the “heroic” aspects of a personality, and focus more on weaknesses, faults, blind spots.  Or perhaps, to consider “heroic” not in terms of power and bluster, but as flawed and fragile, with the true heroism expressing itself as self-sacrifice for others when clearly there are few resources for self.

It is more revealing and certainly entertaining to consider how people and organizations cope with failure – out of this good and well fertilized earth grows horror and comedy.

We identify, to a certain extent, with those who fail, mostly because we want to see them win, at least once in a while.

And think about those Secret Masters of the Universe graduating from Harvard, listening to one of the most financially successful authors in modern times, who made her fortune writing, of all things, fantasy, talk to them about failure and how it might not be such a bad thing.

Think about what failure might look like for them, and what failure looks like to someone whose life was blown away by 9/11 or Katrina, or who landed here from someplace else (like, maybe, your ancestors) with nothing, hoping to find a way to survive.

That’s the stuff of story…

The other point I want to make is about the business in general.

It’s not a good beginning if, by Sturgeon’s Law, 90% of everything is crap.  One could be generous and say the stuff you write and get published doesn’t contribute too much to that percentage.  But the odds, you have to admit, are not golden, or even sterling.

Failure is built into the system.

So in terms of business, and of creativity and art, don’t be afraid.

I know, easier said than done.  But, really, the only way to succeed in any business, including a creative one, is to take risks.  If you are constantly copying the cutting edge of your field, instead of contributing to that edge, how soon are you going to be replaced by someone faster, cheaper, better at doing the same thing?  Successful artists and businesses – those who stay in business and make money – find a way to innovate, to create niches for themselves and their customers.

So.  Risk leads to growth and success.

Sometimes.

It also leads to failure, very often.  Our personal visions are not shared by others.  Our art wanders from the public’s center of interest.

Risk leads to failure.  But so does standing pat, refusing to change and grow and adapt to the transforming world around us.

Failure.  You really can’t escape it.

So.  For those contemplating the writing life, I am certainly not arguing for a deliberate leap into the unknown without a parachute to discover one’s writing groove.  Besides, the issue of struggling with failure as opposed to hiding behind success is a completely different one, often times requiring professional help of one kind or another.

I am really talking to those who are on some level comfortable in their life.  Perhaps even complacent.  Ill at ease, at times.  Maybe a touch miserable, deep inside.  Remember, this was a commencement address for the future masters of the universe.

Pursue what you must.  There are developmental needs, stages of life we must all go through.  The path to success is as relative and twisty as its meaning.  Take risks.  Or don’t.  Play it safe.

When the “Katrina” of your life hits – and it will – when what you’ve feared comes to pass and you’ve failed, when you’ve lost the thing or things that protected you, made you feel lost your job, your house, someone you love, or whatever else that has psychologically and emotionally protected you from the terrible certainties you most fear from reality, take stock.

What was essential.

Let us not forget, as well, the importance of finding a place to belong.  Belonging to what is essential is not a bad place to be in…

A while ago (maybe a long while, depending on when I put this one up), NPR’s What’s the Word broadcast a piece called Literature on Foot.  Basically, it was about a few poets and their habit of walking as part of their creative process.

“Perhaps truth depends on a walk around the lake.”

That kind of thing.

One of the ideas that struck home was about needing to walk to gain mental freedom and access one’s true self.

It made me think of other ways writers use to gain that mental freedom, to access true self, the creative core.

Sitting in store front windows while pounding out a piece, yes.  Writing under pressure of a deadline, or with the “right” kind of music blasting, or television babbling on in the background.  In the subway, on crowded trains.  In noisy coffee houses.

After exercising.  Before doing something else they really want to do, holding that thing off as a reward.

Butt naked (I’m betting no one else uses your chair…).

In a tent.  In the kitchen, with the family flowing by.

In stone silence.

By the clacking of a mechanical typewriter’s keys.

The point is, finding those moments to write also means discovering how you write, what you need environmentally to free your mind from the everyday concerns of the world (unless that’s what you need, of course – a stack of bills and the baby crying, and you’re ready to knock out a thousands words Shakespeare would be proud of).

What do you need to free your mind to be able to work at a story?

Yeah, writing is a tricky art.  You just sit there, staring at the screen, or the paper, straining as you reach for the next word, the next line.

You’re stretching for that clarity of mind that allows you to fill the story with ideas, bon mots, sharp lines, fascinating characters, and other unexpected things.

Do you need to take a break every fifteen minutes and move around, paint another couple of feet of wall, check on dinner, whatever?  Or do you need a solid 2-3 hours of time to concentrate and cycle through all the little details humming round in your head?

I wouldn’t recommend drugs or alcohol – yes, they free your mind.  They strip it naked, in fact, and trip your thoughts, trick perception into a wobbly altered-state of consciousness logic that could never be replicated in the mind of a sober or even high reader.

It’s not a pretty look.

So free your mind means, yes, letting go of many rules and inhibitions.

But by freeing your mind, don’t get yourself arrested.  Unless, of course, you’re very certain you need to be in a jail cell to write.

And even then, I can get a whole lot of people to testify that that particular idea is a very, very bad one.  And they will speak from experience.  They will also charge a speaker’s fee.

I’d pay it if I were you.

The holidays are coming.  We’re arriving at an intersection of worlds – the real and the imagined, outer and inner, concrete and symbolic, the past and the now.

What must be done, what needs to be done.

Kids dressed up as monsters expect candy offerings.  Blood-bonded friends and enemies gather for the ritual slaughter and consumption of a flightless bird.  Parents plot the delivery of gifts under the guise of a night-time visit by a big man in a red suit.

Rev up the planner.  Break out the color markers.  There are responsibilities and commitments to be met.  Shopping to be done, money spent, joy and love packaged and mailed or hidden away from loved ones until the fateful day of deliverance.

Who’s going where, what’s for dinner, which metallic red foil wrapped box is  for who, again?

There is fun in playing dress-up, celebrating friends and family, offering gifts, re-connecting with ongoing traditions.

There is also pain in the feeling once more the loss of what once was, empty chairs around the dinner table, phone calls that will never be made, again, doors that can never open to the same smiling faces.

Blood seeps from old wounds.  Empty spaces push out from within.  Darkness closes in.

These days, broken finances haunt the empty windows of mall stores, office buildings and condos.  Work, if you’re lucky enough to have any, is probably insane.  The house, well, let’s hope you still have one, never mind the money to keep it up.  Writers are living the freelancer’s nightmare of changing and diminishing markets, cranky editors who are themselves crumbling under corporate pressures, vanishing secondary jobs to get through the time between contracts and checks.

Writers belong to the class or workers who don’t get paid personal or sick days, holidays, or vacations.  There is very little in the way of a safety net or escape route for writers who don’t have a partner with a job, benefits, and the capacity to step in to take a little pressure off.

Even without the holiday pressure, responsibilities accumulate, along with scars, routines, stuff, and things to do.  We’re busy folk, for the most part, with big open pipes full of more things to do flowing fast at us.  Health.  The job.  The kids.  The parents.

Change happens, faster and more violently.  Even the damn weather is kicking butt.  Hang on as the rollercoaster dips and flips.  What happened to the safety belts?

The real world is happening, baby.

And if somehow the big stressors have passed you by, and the usual ones are not so tough, there are still the people close by who are hurting, and that still hurts.  Distracts.

How do you get anything done?  More to the point of SU, how do you keep the imagination alive and kicking when the real world is bearing down from every direction?  Can you really afford to trip and fall, in these times, lost in your own private dream world as you try to survive in the real one?

I’m always impressed by the multi-taskers.  Envious, really.  Efficient, compartmentalized, energetic, eating and exercising right while handling home and business.  Great packagers of reality.  But so often, there are holes in the product line of that kind of life.  Some go missing as priorities take them elsewhere/elsewhen.  Things get done in order of importance, in the order of the choices one makes based on the value assigned to them.  Their importance, all too often, in the real world.

Sometimes the multitaskers forget you.  Or someone/thing else.   There’s always a price.  Always damage.  Maybe to the dreaming.

I may be envious, but I’m not entirely sold on the multi-tasking product pitch.

I suppose I’m nostalgic for the summer days when I could lay down in parents’ backyard and lose myself in some Jack Vance or Ray Bradbury.  Or, more recently, just spend a Sunday morning with the Times on the front porch.

I find it harder every day to escape the real world.  Forgetting about it too often hurts more than keeping a very close eye on it.  Life is not quite what it was when I first started taking on the dream quests.

Sometimes there’s no fun in waking up to an inner or outer Katrina after slipping into that same childhood state of mind that made the world in your head the world’s reality, even if only in the privacy of room or basement or lonely stretches of country road.

That real world pounds on walls of discipline, drains the strength to keep the dream alive day to day so you have something to go back to when the time comes to sit before the keyboard.

If you can dream, no matter what, and deliver that dream to the world every day, then more power to you.  If you can handle the price life collects for that focus, go for it.

But if its the dreaming that’s a struggle, and the dream is more than just about being a “writer,” whatever that may mean, but about the heart in the work of stories and characters, then what do you do when the world’s closing in?

Finding space in the day to dream can be part of the problem.  Life’s dead zones, like waiting rooms, commuting trips, lunch hours, are vital.  Bev Vincent and others create their space by getting up early.  Stay-at-home parents mine nap times and school hours.  Of course, the lists of other things to be done have to be put away.  That’s why being trapped, with no other options for real world engagement, are so valuable.

Here’s a result to read and weep over:

http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/brooklyn/2009/04/22/2009-04-22_train_of_thought_bklyn_writer_found_muse__wrote_first_novel_while_commuting_on_t.html

400 words at 8Am and 5PM on the F train, between Manhattan and Brooklyn.  On a smartphone.  With his thumbs.  For two years.

Elizabeth Massie’s entry a while back  about doing the things you need to do to be published struck me, because everything she listed required spending time on the quest.

And people don’t want to spend time.

They don’t have enough, or they’d rather do other things.  That’s the way it is.  But if you’ve managed so far and produced work even with life’s everyday distractions, the message is, there’s still always time.  Somewhere.  Even the storm.  Not necessarily long periods of it.  Maybe not for the kind of writing you’re used to doing, or prefer.  Perhaps the material needs to change (more on that later).  But there’s time to tap the art.  To perform.  To create.

I personally appreciate early morning writing, especially coming after some sleepy, sloppy late night work.   Letting sleep handle some of the work of making connections and opening up the imagination makes slipping back into the writing “dream” easier.

As for popping into a “dream state” in those dead zones, I find the task frankly challenging.  Noise, distractions, frustrations over real world issues do seep into the rhythm of coming up with lines, situations, conflict.   However, in talking to other writers, it seems a bit of preparation goes a long way – I understand it as making writing one of the “problems” you have to handle during the course of the day.  So there’s an outline for a scene, or revision work to be done – in short, a bit of preparatory dreaming has already occurred.

Another strategy is to pour that real world right into the work.  If the real world has overwhelmed your dreaming, don’t work so hard at making stuff up.  If you’re one of those people who can use writing to escape the real world, or transform the real world into a fantasy world on the fly, then, as with the multi-taskers, more power to you.

For the rest of us, writing often balances personal obsessions, themes, fantasies, types of stories we want or need to tell, with a healthy draw from personal experience.  If you’re stuck, if the creative juices just aren’t flowing and the dreaming side of you is walled up, make the wall, the problems, people, issues you’re dealing with more of the story.

There are risks of exposure, of course, mostly to people “in the know” about your life.  Normally, you’d have to edit, mix and match personalities, switch up settings, play with atmosphere.  Camouflage.  But if the world gives you nails and broken glass, and that’s all that fills your imagination, use that raw material.    Let it rip.  There’s plenty of time later for editing.  Censoring.  Digging deeper into the personal hell of the life you’re going through and reining in the pain.  Building bridges of empathy and compassion to a wider audience than yourself.

Later is the time for making sure you’ve displayed the strength of those who helped you get through tough times and giving them their proper due, and for lingering over the sweet vengeance of using carefully chosen characteristics from the people who made your miserable in your villains or victims.

What I’m trying to say is if the usual routines and tricks don’t seem to work, try to be in the moment.

Being “in the moment” and free associating to whatever is happening around you may not be highly productive to a specific project.   But concentrating on the present may help to filter the burden of real world problems.  Putting down the experience, letting it roll out of the mind, playing with whatever is happening at the moment may feel almost like dreaming.  No past, no future, no lists and shedules, just the problem happening right now.  You might come up with some interesting character sketches, dialogue (love overheard conversations), or descriptions to use later.

If you can get a little more focused, rely on whatever strengths you have as a writer (dialogue, atmosphere, etc) and your “dead zone” environment to sketch scenes or notes for a scene.  Basically, it’s about trying to stay balanced between real world pressures and skill strengths to be productive on a project.

Or, if you can hold on to an overall vision of a longer work in the middle of the madness, get specific by maneuvering a character from a to b, filling out a description, doing whatever’s needed in a small piece of a story.   Like paying a bill, or picking something up from the grocery store, setting up a task for a piece while in one of your stolen moments helps get the imagination focused, even if the task is editing what’s already down.

But if the chaos is just too all-consuming, changing the the kind of writing you’re used to doing may help keep you in the writing game.  Pulling back from a novel to work short stories or even flash fiction, poetry, flat out character or setting sketches, journal writing, non-fiction, blogging, tweets, or other outlets can be productive from a marketing perspective, or even produce usable material for later projects.

Finally, if you’re able, a burst of physical activity, from a brisk walk to cleaning the bathroom to dusting those bookshelves, can temporarily clear the mind and leave room for dreaming.

The world is tough on dreaming.  Responsibilities bear down hard on our creative lives.  These are just some of my thoughts as I struggle my own choices and commitments.   I hope some of you out there  have your own ideas, techniques, routines to keep working you can offer to the rest of us – I’m sure everyone from working writers to single mothers have a lot of experience in managing stress, crises, and creativity and might have some tips.   I know I’m eager to hear them.

by Gerard Houarner

Alex Grey, advising artists:

Keep going. Never give up. Your life is a labyrinth, not a maze. Dedicate your work to something higher than yourself…

One of the many struggles creative types face is the problem of labeling. Being dropped into a bucket and cast as a certain “type” eliminates options and choices for both audience and artist.  While not without rewards, it’s also a trap, as when a market dries up, a fashion fades, new media and avenues of distribution pop up. The bucket gets kicked, and nobody cares about who or what is spilled.

Publishers, critics, editors, writers, fans like to drop stuff we write into buckets called genre. It’s a convenient habit. Like a good sofrito, genres contain a number of specific, predictable elements, with an occasional surprise, that satisfies an audience’s “taste” and hunger for a particular kind of story.

This assumes people know what they want to read, and what they don’t. Many do, of course, or at least gravitate to the comfortably familiar. But lots of folks are looking for something “interesting,” without really knowing what they’re “interested” in. It’s easy to turn off those people with labels and all the cliches associated with them – few want something identified as literary talking head novel on the beach, or a book that seems to promise a grue fest during a family crisis.

Every now and then, perhaps even seasonally, like hurricanes, a debate arises about the needs the few – publishers, critics, editors, writers, etc – and the needs of the many – that segment of the population looking for something interesting to read. Not fans, specifically, but that elusive and highly prized grail for anyone seeking wealth, fame, critical acceptance into the various canons of literary tradition, or just the next mortgage payment: readers.

Sharper thinkers and more experienced hands have dealt with the topic here and elsewhere, lately, and I find myself in agreement with the direction taken by those who want to be known simply as writers. Yes, pin us down and at any given time we may be writing horror, fantasy, post-modern slipstream, mystery, romance, science fiction, suspense, thrillers, media tie-ins, but even in that moment we are in fact much more than any of those things. We contain multitudes, we cannot be labeled.

And I agree that there’s nothing to be gained by being dubbed the “king/queen of whatever” because we are in fact cutting off a healthy segment of that general readership who may not look at us if we’re trapped in a market niche that does not, on it’s face, attract them. I agree that, unless you’re trying to start a cult, it’s better to be inclusive than exclusive when looking for an audience.

And yet, I struggle with being just a “writer.” Maybe I can afford to struggle because I don’t write for a living.

In the profession I’ve pursued for a living, I’ve chosen the population I work with, and how far to rise up the education and career ladder (determining how much money I make and how much time I have left to do other things, like write), and where I work, and through research and opportunities, even how. I do all kinds of crazy stuff that has absolutely nothing to do with a job dealing with people (like, drive a truck and pick up/deliver supplies; work a loading dock; perform light maintenance on machinery; housekeeping – my old clinic director in the Fordham section of the Bronx regularly cleaned out the toilets), but I’ve also specialized to give myself the kind of experiences that make the day job rewarding in ways beyond making money. What I’m saying here is that it’s one thing to lay down bricks, pump out articles or novels, or shepherd the ill back to some form of health. People also bring something to their work, if they have any passion about it. They do something special that sets them apart(okay, sometimes they’re incompetent, and that also sets them apart, but I’m trying to be positive here!). Writers zone in on specialties, too.

As creative types, we’re drawn to particular subjects. We’re compelled to explore them through our art. This stuff comes through no matter what we write. This “vision” may be the reason why our work is sometimes sought out by an editor. This vision is what drives us to create, it’s what makes us crazy – we pick at wounds, stare at accidents, peer into mysteries rather than put our feet up on the coffee table to watch whatever’s on television while tipping back a few brews.

Considering passion, specialties and subjects, I can’t help thinking many of us are more than just “writers.”

We’re also encouraged by modern marketing to “brand” ourselves, to become known through our “platforms” to a wider audience eager to consume our “product.” Though this kind of stuff goes beyond the writing of books, it is just another kind of labeling. It’s a way of busting out of a genre or type of writing, of becoming sui generis.

So maybe that’s the secret to the whole genre problem – writers need to become their own “genre.” For example, is modern commercial fantasy really fantasy, or is it a genre called Tolkien? Is commercial horror just horror, or is it King?

Instead of shunning labels, or embracing a single one, maybe we should cut them up and fashion a patchwork quilt coat for ourselves. Readers might not like all the colors, but could still find their interest tweaked by finding favorites mixed in with the rest.

Ridiculous, I know. Critics will never sign on. Neither will publishers. How would you even describe the mash-up? Inspirational romantic speculation? Dark literary tragedy? If it bleeds, it’s horror. If it’s about language, it’s literary. If there’s magic, it’s fantasy. If someone’s trying to solve a crime, it’s a mystery. Obvious. Simple. These are the rules. This is what makes sense to most readers.

But, of course, stories are about all of these things. And more. In different degrees and proportions, according to the writer’s passions and tastes.

Here’s another problem with being a “writer” – how do you explain to people what you do? I bring up the fact that I’m a writer pretty frequently in conversations with people I meet – obnoxious, I know, but there it is. And the next question is, what do you write? (As opposed to the first statement, which is, I have a great story you could write down and we’d split the money.)  It’s the first question asked at the very occasional literary functions I might attend, having steeled myself against vacant looks from editors and agents and perhaps actually caught someone’s attention.

Science fiction, horror, thriller, romance – these are the standard answers. Everything. Yeah, cookie-cutter. What are you working on now? Why, I’m blending romance and science fiction war genres in a cutting edge, far-future, cyberpunk adventure featuring a strong-female lead – interested?

The eyes glaze.

Well, yes, people is an answer. Characters. Troubled, magical, even disturbed and positively deranged individuals. I must say it wrong, because even to me I sound like a smartass.

If you mention a genre that’s out of favor with the people you’re talking to, the conversation withers. If you spin a clever web of short and sweet plot summaries, or whip out log lines and high concepts, or recount a few vivid anecdotes about your imaginary character, and people listen, you’re doing a hell of a lot better than a lot of writers I know.

What else is there?

Adventure. Family. The past. Hope. Darkness. The future. Faith.

There’s a zillion of them, of course. They point to something larger, a personal subject that transcends the mechanics of any particular form or commercial genre, that might help a writer, or any creator, bring passion to whatever they might try their hand at. Of course, we all write about all of these things – I understand, I’m treading lightly on the “alternative to genre” ground I’m laying down, here.

But I am searching for a way to engage readers, or curious bystanders (even innocent ones).

People want labels. They’ll put them on you if you don’t define yourself (oh, you write that Star Trek stuff, or, do you know Stephen King? or even, I used to love Murder, She Wrote).

So maybe a way to go is to define yourself by the subjects that fascinate you, that drives you no matter what part of the field you’re tilling. Maybe it’s a step in creating your “brand,” your own personal genre.

I can’t help being drawn to “dark.” What do you write? Oh, I like to write about people dealing with darkness, you know, struggling against what’s inside them, or something going on around them. Sometimes it’s horror, or science fiction. Fantasy. Funny stuff, too. Hell, even this blog I write for called Storytellersunplugged gets dark. But I throw in a few jokes, here and there.

Or, I like to write about things like what’s behind that door marked “Do Not Enter” at the back of your store.

Yeah, I know, it needs a lot of work. I’ve got to mine the “subject” to find all the different ways it can represent my work to really own it, to sell it in casual conversation. And yes, I know labeling myself as a writer of “Dark Fiction” will turn off all the people looking for hope and inspiration in the first line. But, you know, I don’t usually give hope or inspiration in the first line, and if I do, you’re in for a world of hurt. Oh, I’ll get to hope and inspiration, and it might even make it to the last line. But if the “happily ever after” gets added at the end, then I’m afraid there’s not going to be a lot of passion attached to those words.

It all seems silly, doesn’t it, fighting for attention while at the same time resisting the human need to categorize. A writer of dark fiction. It sounds too much like the “speculative” writer trying to escape the sci-fi trap. I don’t see the sui generis thing working itself out through it, either. It’s better than horror writer, or dark fantasy author. Maybe. But it does feel just a tiny bit better than just “writer.” At least for me. Because life is short, time shorter, and people’s attention span can be measured in micro seconds.

Whether we like it or not, we might need to use just a tiny bit of that time collaborating with the “forces of darkness” within and around us to define the label that’s coming down on our heads.

by Gerard Houarner

I recently picked up another book of fairy tales – the Annotated Classic Fairy Tales, edited by Maria Tatar, from Norton. I have sizeable library of this kind of stuff and really don’t need any more material, but you know how it is – I still have my Bullfinch’s from the 60′s but I also picked up the latest edition, too, because it was….fresher.

The first section of the book features illustrations – Scenes of Storytelling – dating back to the late 17^th century. Most depict groups gathered around a storyteller in various home settings, some with spinning wheels in the background. The more modern illustrations focused the sense of intimacy by showing a mother and child bonding over a story

I was reminded of Native American storyteller figures, which in turn had me thinking of petroglyphs and cave paintings and Mayan and Aztec temple decorations and glyphs, some of which anthropologists believe were meant to be shared by fire light after taking hallucinogens.

And, of course, there are the campfire tales and songs, the legends recounted by bards for courtly audiences, the parables and lessons repeated in sacred spaces by priests for their followers and students.

Just as all this was percolating in my feeble brain, Linda and I were invited along for a Ghost Tour of lower Manhattan, conducted by Gordon Linzner, and sponsored by the Garden State Horror Writers Association. Gordon, besides being the former publisher of Space and Time magazine as well as a licensed NYC tour guide (yes, there are licenses for these things, and tests, as well – accept no substitutes or amateurs!), greatly enjoys the performance aspects of storytelling. So we wandered about the East and West Village for three hours as the sun set and night closed around us, hearing various tales of murder and mayhem by a guy in a cape and top hat, sporting a wolfshead cane, while hordes of young folks partied on around us, oblivious to the bloody ground on which they staggered. We had fun.

The associations eventually led me to the idea of intimacy, and how stories have always been a way for people to bond, both with the storyteller and each other, while receiving warnings and promises about life, and other cultural information, in the form of characters and their adventures.

I was reminded of how intimate not only hearing stories can and should be, but of the kind of focus humans sink into when engaged in the performance of a play, or watching a movie in a big, old-fashioned theater, or gathered in circle listening to music while surrounded by darkness. There is an intensity of emotion and connectivity (between story and audience, and among audience members) that transcends the kind of entertainment meant to simply pass the time. There’s a connection with the moment that creates a deeply satisfying experience, a memory that lingers past the normal expiration date of everyday life. Maybe, a bit of meaning spontaneously combusts in our fleshy shells, creating the belief that there’s a purpose to our lives.

Well, whatever.

There’s no getting away from how intoxicating communing with the arc of a story can be. Competitive sports is nothing if not a story, each contest a conflict complete with characters and a resolution, the stakes rising over the course of a game, a season or a set of trials until a champion emerges. Sadly, shopping and the consumer economy can also be looked at as a story, the hackneyed remains of primal hunting cave paintings.

Definitely, whatever.

I also remembered the rush I once enjoyed while reading Vance and Dostoevsky and Tolkien at various stages of my life, experienced only infrequently these days because there’s so little time to read and so much of it irritates me. There’s a powerful sense of intimacy, not so much with the writer but with the story, that roots the reader in his or her own imagination, transported there by someone else’s words.

What’s involved in this intimacy? Interaction. In the case of traditional, oral storytelling, there’s the sense of community, of being in a physical place and specific time, sharing an experience that is only partially rooted in the physical world. The real “magic” (and how I’ve struggled to avoid using that word – but I don’t want to google human neural activity and start talking about the chemicals we create in our bodies to transmit pleasure, either) happens in the head. Something happens, through the power of words or music or imagery, that elevates a bunch of people sitting around into a community sharing a common experience.

So one point I can drag out of this reverie that might be relevant to this blog would be the importance of treating public readings as more than an opportunity to mumble one’s way through one’s own story. There’s some “game” involved, theatrics, showmanship. A little training, perhaps. It’s worth the trouble to practice, to read aloud, to spend some time with a teacher, because a reading is an opportunity to widen an audience, if only by one or two folks. Maybe people might actually show up for conventions readings if a certain kind of reputation was built up. Call it a throwback to the old days of campfire tales. Not every story is going to work in such a situation. But a darkened bar, or even a painfully bright hotel meeting room, can still play host to a great experience for listeners who will want to know more about your work.

That’s an obvious point. More useful, perhaps, might be a question along the lines of what some others have talked about here and other places: where are the places people are going to for their stories? Where else is that sense of intimacy being created? Where are the new camp fires? Temples?

Okay, outside of professional wrestling. And maybe politics. Oh, yeah, and sports.

Heartening to me are the numbers being pulled down by young adult authors, beyond Potter. Yes, there seems to be a lot of dark romance involved, but there’s also a love of traditional story being nurtured, with characters and emotional throughlines and a use of the fantastic as metaphor for bigger, deeper concerns. Younger readers may have a lot more of themselves to give to what they read than adults, who are less distracted by hormonal changes and more involved with day-to-day survival. Whatever’s happening, there seems to me to be a very deep, intimate connection with the stories they’re reading. They’re immersed in their own “golden age” of writing. Future readers in training. Or, if not specifically readers, future seekers of stories beyond the stuff you get off the digital channels, the stuff that doesn’t involve too much interaction.

Games. They seem distant to me, locked into a certain kind of mode, stuck in the shallows or back currents of story, with a pulp a focus on action and setting, maybe not so much on character beyond a role necessary for the action of occur. Maybe I’m wrong, I’m just watching and listening to others play from the outside. I certainly haven’t been drawn to game play, which tells me something. I get bored. I can never get away from the fact that I’m playing in someone else’s backyard, and the options are very limited, and the visuals still look like cheap SciFi Channel movie CGI, and there’s nothing interesting for me to do. People tried to get me involved in Second Life, but seriously, I have enough with my First Life. There’s no real point for me in that kind of interaction, in that form of intimacy. I can’t even get into message boards. Obviously, I’m too old.

But there’s a hell of a lot of interaction in game play. Friends and family lose themselves in these things (when they could be reading my stories, or yours!). There’s intimacy, with others and with what’s happening in the gameplayers’ heads. And story.

I don’t know how to tell stories for this medium. I need a Photoshop program for reality and for what goes on in my head. A super typewriter. Bigger words. I’m thinking games which force players to change roles depending on choices made, which throw in plot changes from larger forces going on in the game’s background (higher levels), would be interesting. Of course, there’s commercial hell to play if the player is forced into unwanted roles. Not my problem. But there’s a hell of a lot of interaction.

Back to more traditional storytelling.

Podcasting is a blast back to storytelling roots – a human voice, telling a story, using a device that whispers the words right into your head. James Patrick Kelly won a Nebula for story “published” this way, and has an interesting deal with audible.com for podcasts of his stories. So in this multi-tasking world, you can have music coming through your ear buds, or stories.

There’s something called a cell phone novel in Japan, and they’re turning into best sellers.

So, the point? Hmm.

Rekindling the magic of storytelling through emerging technology. Saving the power of words and language in the face of non-verbal imagery. Renewing the bonds of community, humanity (hotlink to your favorite anthem here), and storytelling by collaborating with readers while still retaining personal creative vision (okay, yes, I’m going sci fi). Looking for the audience. Saving books. Telling stories.

Filling a spot on the blog with….whatever.