Richard Steinberg

RETURN TO THE STORYTELLERS HOMEPAGE

(ADMIN NOTE: – This post was published years ago by best-selling author Richard Steinberg.  Since we are waiting for details on filling the slots on the 2nd and 3rd of the month, I’m choosing some old classics to fill the void.  Enjoy!)

By
Richard Steinberg

“Eddie was truth. He more preferred living without rules than living with them, liked women, enjoyed (but was not particularly skilled at) physical sex, was frightened of emotional sex, wanted to be in control while seldom accomplishing the feat, and blindly attacked anything he feared. Henry was the lie, the façade adopted so that society might never glimpse the truth beneath. Why then is Eddie, for eternity, viewed as the monster? It was nothing personal, I’m certain. Mirrors are often called “monster,” Robert Louis Stevenson on his novel: The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

I was at East Los Angeles College many years back, and while wandering through the art gallery there (a spectacular collection for a school of any size) I saw a familiar face . . . Vincent Price. I had met Vincent a couple of times while working security at Hollywood studios – I was still fighting to become a writer back then – and of course knew him from his films. He was standing in front of a painting (I’m not sure, but I think it was The Cat by Rafael Coronel, but I have been back so many times the paintings and the memories sort of swim together) studying it intensely.

I reintroduced myself and was pleasantly surprised when he not only remembered me, but recalled the last time we’d met.

“Are you a student here now,” he asked as he turned back to his review of the painting.

“No,” I answered. “I just come here for my soul.”

“Then you’ll enjoy our hall of mirrors,” he said with just a touch of a smile that was somewhere between mischievous and demonic.

Vincent believed that the essence of great art – and trust me on this, he knew great art – and perhaps of all art (great or not) was in that art work’s ability to serve as a mirror held up to the world to reflect back some horror, some beauty, some disfigurement, some perfection, some element of the world around us. And he believed that all art failed when, regardless of how it might succeed in other ways, it failed in its role as a mirror.

This is especially true in horror, speculative fiction, and dark fantasy.

To work in fiction is to be a juggler; trying desperately to keep all but one of the balls in the air, while grasping and concentrating on the one in your hand. There is storytelling, characterization, tonal color, setting, judgment, reader comfort, and a myriad of other critical things which must reach a careful mix for the piece to be a success.

And I am not saying that if you exclude “Vincent’s Mirror” as one of your elements that your story can not be a success.

But if your goal – as it is mine – is to not only write a commercially successful story but also one that does something to impact the quality of the world around you, then you can not exclude that world from that mix. It isn’t easy, but it is vital.

A friend of mine can’t start one of their books until they know the favorite ice cream of their lead character. Another writes elaborate character sketches involving how the character dresses, walks, talks, eats etc. A third has to decide on the amount of hair the lead character has before beginning. And since these are three very successful writers, their techniques certainly have validity. But that kind of forethought – while sometimes important – is not what I’m talking about now.

I’m talking abut the world of your story, of your lead characters; the world whose influence for good or evil is seminal in the reactions of that character.

Most modern horror writers – amateur and professional – are white, middle to upper middle class, suburban dwellers. And as such, most modern horror reflects this sensibility.

Zombies in shopping malls.

Knife wielders in bedroom communities.

Converted New England Carriage Houses haunted by demonic creatures.

Fine . . . as far is it goes.

But that’s landscape, not reflection.

Reflection is how your characters came to those suburbs or middle class idylls. Reflection is painting (with words) that “how” in such a way as to subliminally lead your reader to their first judgments. And first judgments, like first impressions, tend to last the longest.

So seriously consider your story’s reflective point – which will color everything else – before starting out.

Mary Shelly didn’t write about physical reanimation or monsters on a rampage, but reflected her world where – in the mirror of her eyes – she saw technological advancements outstripping man’s ability to understand the consequences of them

This was the mirror of Frankenstein.

Curt Siodmak didn’t write about throat tearing beasts or gypsy curses, but reflected his world where – in the mirror of his heart – he saw racism being accepted and not opposed, so long as the discriminated against could be properly demonized.

This was the mirror of The Wolf Man.

Robert Louis Stevenson didn’t write about good versus evil or man’s need to improve himself (these themes were added by commentarians years later) but reflected his world where – in the mirror of his soul – he saw Victorian and post Victorian societies ignoring the ugly (and what caused that ugliness) in hopes that it would just go away.

It didn’t go away – either in literature or London – and in fact brutally fought back against that judgmental beauty . . . much as Edward Hyde did in the mirror of The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

Set your mirror, and take a good look at the world around you. And when you see something that you think is wrong, is right, needs attention, make that your canvas for your piece. The canvas – the background, the thing subliminally there, if possibly never directly stated – which colors everything else laid on top of it.

This has nothing to do with your technical ability as a writer, even less to do with your professional or other experiences as a writer. On the contrary, this is the thing we ALL have the ability and the experience for. If you have lived, you can reflect.

And if you reflect what you see in the mirror of your eyes, heart, or soul, you have:

John Steinbeck’s: Cannery Row

Vladimir Nabakov’s: Lolita

Harlan Ellison’s: “Repent Harlequin,” said the Tick Tock Man

Isaac Asimov’s: Foundation

Stephen King’s: Carrie

Rod Serling’s: Night Gallery

But there’s an interesting thing about mirror reflections, all mirrors’ reflections. They don’t actually reflect the images that are in front of them.

They only reflect light.

And the more highly polished, the more carefully engineered and constructed they are, the less light that is lost in that reflection, and therefore the more true the reflection. But, invariably – in the most sophisticated mirrors in the most advanced spy satellites – some light is lost.

And some alteration in reality occurs.

So as I ask you to seriously consider standing up and being mirrors for (and perhaps of) your readers, I ask you to be imperfect mirrors. Reflect those aspects of the real world (in your unreal fiction) that you think deserve attention; deserve the light to be shined upon. And as you reflect that glory or hideousness, feel free to play with the light.

Playing with light is at the heart of all true mirrors.

At the heart of all true writers.

There’s a line in Norman Steinberg & Dennis Palumbo’s film, My Favorite Year, which I think best describes this. It happens near the end of the film, when Alan Swan – the Errol Flynnesqe character (played by Peter O’Toole) confronts a young man who idolizes the film persona that Swan projects. In desperate pain, Swan calls out to the young man: “This is me, life sized, no larger!”

To which the young man replies simply and from the heart: “I can’t use you life sized. I need Alan Swan’s as big as I can get them!”

Be a mirror, but be an imperfect mirror; one that reflects reality, but colors or exaggerates or minimizes that reality to better make your point. Be a mirror on which the monster or beasties or regular people or sprites live and play and die and prosper in the light reflected there. Let the reality of that imperfect light tinge everything in your story so that instead of writing another dead teenager story, you write one where we understand why the teenagers die.

Look into the mirror yourself – as painful and horrific as that can often be – and share with us what you see there.

Which brings me back to Vincent.

“How does the painting make you feel,” he asked me after a time.

“Uncomfortable,” I replied honestly, having been unable to come up with a convincing sounding erudite lie.

“Good,” he replied. “That’s what mirrors are supposed to do.”

That’s what we all are supposed to do.

“Vampires are not cursed; they are blessed in that they cannot see themselves in mirrors. Humanity is not so blessed, but cursed in that if we leave our eyes open, we are compelled to see ourselves,” Vincent Price

Reflect on this for a bit.

Believe!

Welcome to Storytellers Unplugged. This is your first post. Edit or delete it, then start blogging!

“The writer’s genetic inheritance and her or his experiences shape the writer into a unique individual, and it is this uniqueness that is the writer’s only stuff for sale,” James Gunn

Many publishers consider me a thriller writer.

Many readers consider me a suspense writer.

Many critics consider me a speculative fiction writer.

Many on-line readers consider me an essayist.

Many magazines consider me a fantasy writer.

Many others consider me a horror writer.

I’ve also written – for hire – term papers, love letters, lawyerly treatises, book reviews, profiles, interviews, articles, and a series of op-ed pieces on professional boxing for a Japanese audience.

What I am is a writer; a writer uncomfortable with sitting still, repeating himself, staying put, and not challenging the status quo.

What kind of writer are you?  What kind would you like to be?  Well, here’s a little test, which I’ll take right along with you; and while not fool proof, it is frighteningly accurate.

1)      Go to your bookshelf and list five books sitting next to each other.

For me, this isn’t as easy as it sounds.  You see since I was a child, I’ve loved books, even when there was nothing else in the world I viewed with anything less than pure hatred.  Books were my salvation, my sanity, the reason to keep on keeping on.  Books were my friends who never judged me, my teachers who were always patient, my auxiliary fantasies when reality had beaten down my native ones.

When writers are doing it right, their writing connects with you in a far deeper than just entertainment sense, and you just NEED to keep them around.  What they write, what you gravitate to, connects with some mortal dread or immortal longing deep within you.  What they say speaks to you in a language of your own, one that is uniquely yours and which only you can translate.

They call this transitive storytelling in fancy writing courses.

Writers call it: “magic.”

And you conjure this magic by knowing who you are as a writer, or exploring who you might be as a writer.  You touch this ectoplasmic charm by hearing the voices in your soul, listening closely, then knowing which ones to listen to and which to ignore.

It took me three full novels, about 100 short stories, and a lot more before I could reach that hallowed point, and once there, well . . .

But I’m with you on this, so let me pick my books:

The Voyage Of The Space Beagle by A.E. van Vogt

I’m OK – You’re OK by Dr. Thomas Harris

The Sound And The Fury by William Faulkner

The Oppermanns by Lion Feuchtwanger

Out Of My Mind by John Brunner

Examine the titles you selected; they can be more insightful for clues to your inner writer than years of psycho-analysis might be.  What do they have in common in terms of genre, lead characters, story telling style, settings, emotions?  As writers – particularly in the beginning – we need to write from the familiar.  Not necessarily from our life experience, but from those story paradigms that we know well.  It is NOT plagiarism to begin by emulating those we admire.  So let your bookshelves speak to you, and listen to what they have to say.

For me?

The Voyage Of The Space Beagle is a sci fi on its face, that the more I read – and I’ve read it maybe forty or more times over the years – the more I suspect is not really a work of sci fi as much as it is a story about people under stress revealing their real selves.

I’m OK – You’re OK was the first big self help book about transactional analysis.  It is a sometimes dry, often compelling book about why we do the things we do, and what those actions mean.  But it’s also, to me, a broad comedy about the silliness of most deep introspection and interpretation.

The Sound And The Fury is, to me, Faulkner’s best.  Written in 1929, it is the story of a slowly but completely decaying Southern family, told from four different viewpoints.  And while it oozes facades of Southern charm and sensibility, it is simultaneously a story that could overlay onto my own family . . . onto many families I suspect.

The Oppermanns is the story of the rise of Hitler’s Nazis.  And while it’s not Feuchtwanger’s best, it was good enough to cause the German government to ban all of the work generated before or after.  It also almost cost Feuchtwanger’s life.  It is the power of writing incarnate.

Out Of My Mind is a collection of short stories – ranging from sci fi to horror to satire to warm and fuzzy from the happily warped mind of John Brunner.  In many ways it was this book that first suggested to me that a writer didn’t have to be just one thing or another.

What do the titles you picked mean to you?  Were they influential in who you are or did they just fill the time?  Do you remember them well or were you surprised you still had them around?  Have you read them more than once or barely that and forgot about them?

These answers cut right to the heart of what kind of writer you ought to begin as.

Next step:

2)      Do you have DVDs or videos?  Go to them and repeat the process.

Again, for me this creates a bit of a problem.  I have A LOT of DVDs and videos.  And while the writing – technically – is different from my primary format as a novelist, they’re still about storytelling, about engaging the audience, about transporting that audience – once engaged – away from themselves so that you can take them deep within themselves.

Now when you’re evaluating the five films you found next to each other, forget – for the moment – the visuals, the actors, the direction, production values . . . everything but the stories.  Look deep within them and what do you see . . . let me go get mine!

Junior Bonner written by Jeb Rosebrook

As Good As It Gets written by Mark Andrus and James Brooks

Don Juan DeMarco written by Jeremy Leven

Jumanji written by Jonathon Hensley and Greg Taylor & Jim Strain

The Limey written by Lem Dobbs

Junior Bonner is a drama; the tale of a modern day cowboy working the rodeo circuit while dealing with the decay of his family and his lifestyle.

As Good As It Gets is purportedly a comedy, but I have my doubts; the story of a man suffering from a horrible psychological disfigurement discovering that he might not be any more deformed than anyone else in the so called “Normal World.”

Don Juan DeMarco is a romance, but – to me – it is far less a romance about two men and the women in their lives than it is a story about the lost romance in our lives and how hard we try to deny we need it.

Jumanji is a flow of consciousness comedy about what happens when fantasy overflows into one’s reality.  The story of most exhausted writers’ lives.

The Limey is a thriller about an oft absent father seeking revenge for his daughter’s murder.  But even more, it’s the story of decisions made in moments that should have been considered for decades.  It’s about life’s wages and their real costs.

Are we picking up a trend here – either about me or you?

Elsewhere, I’ve talked about “defining ourselves.”  Well, this is why we write, to a large extent; to define ourselves.  But when we’re starting off, we need to at least have a hint where that “self” lies.  Our books, our videos or DVDs, the shows we watch on television, the movies we pay $7.50 and up to see in theaters, plays, newspapers, the whole smash gives us clues to where our self is hiding, waiting for its chance to burst out of its dark gooey home and into an ennobling (or accusing) light.

So look around – I promise you the hints are there in bright orange neon blinking letters all around you – and start at that easiest of all starting lines.

Write what you like.

Write what you like again.

Write what you like until you reach that point where you become comfortable in your technique.  Until you know, natively, what makes a sentence, a paragraph, a sequence, a chapter, a book.

Write what you like, because if you can not entertain yourself, move yourself, affect yourself as a writer, you can’t entertain, move, or affect any readers.

Write what you like until that point that you know you know how to write what you like.

Then go to Plan B:  write something different.

It doesn’t have to be something you hate.  Again, look to your bookshelves, your videos and DVDs, the movies you go to and find the next commonality; maybe not as prevalent as where you started.  Look for that next thing that you like – if not as much as the first – and start writing that.

And then the next thing . . .

And the next . . .

Why?

Why not just find something you’re good at and stick with it?  A lot of writers – many of them bestsellers – do exactly that.  And I’ll admit it isn’t exactly a crime to get good at something and then stay with it forever.

But it might be a sin.

I believe that if you’re a writer, you write.  And if you’re a good writer, you work to get better.  And it’s hard to get better at something you’ve grown comfortable with.  Hard to improve that which is already right.

But in the belief system I cherish, there is something called a sin of omission.  A passive offense to God; or in this case, the Gods (or Demons) of Writing.

Comfort turns good writers into Xerox machines.  Comfort transforms talent into faded clones.  Comfort is the second greatest enemy any writer can possibly face.

The first being a blank page.

Work, slowly at first and then with greater deliberate speed to challenge yourself.  Not only your skills, but your beliefs and your values as a writer.

The moment after you type: Once Upon A Time you are changed as a writer.  Continue to press that change, to force yourself into deeper waters, until you get right up against that precipice – that topic or style that you know you can not beat, can not conquer, can not ever master.

Then take a step back, survey the path that got you to that point, and find another way to the edge, over the edge, around the edge and across the void into a new world you’ve created for yourself.

So that when you get there -write that piece that you knew you couldn’t – you’ll know the real truth of being a writer:

That it’s time to start again, and stretch your definition of yourself as a writer.

“If we didn’t live venturously, plucking the wild goat by the beard, and trembling over precipices, we should never be depressed, I’ve no doubt; but already should be faded, fatalistic and aged,” Virginia Woolf

What kind of writer are you?

May you never truly be satisfied with any answer.

Believe!

“I would very much like to tell you what [the new book] is about, but until I write the blasted thing how on Earth would I know, myself,” Thomas Wolfe

My dear friend – Ilario the Magnificent – and I were at a dinner party of sorts when he decided to step away for a cigarette . . . a habit he has blessedly exorcised.  I went with him; more to continue our conversation than anything else.  We sat in the restaurant’s bar talking books and friends and generally solving the world’s problems, when the question I’d deftly avoided all night suddenly reared its ugly head.

“So, what are you working on now?”

It’s not that I wasn’t working – I’m always working – it was more a case of not knowing how to answer the question.

I never knew how to answer that question.

I looked around the empty bar, back to the crowded restaurant where a lock of Sartorial Splendor’s hair was slowly rising like a needle that accurately measured his intoxication.  I smiled becomingly and replied with all sincerity:  “You going down to Florida this month or next?”

“Next.  What are you working on?”

“I thought it was this month.”

“Next,” he repeated and drew closer, his eyes glistening.  “What ARE you working on?” Expectation filled his eyes, as two more attempts to change the subject failed.

“It doesn’t have a name yet.”

“Tell me about it.”

“I’ve only written a little, actually.  It’s mostly in my head.”

“You don’t write from your head.  Tell me about it.”

“Really?  Where do I write from?”

“Your soul.  Tell me about the new book.”

And he stood there with placid insistence until I did.

Thinking about it now, it is truly amazing to me how much the planned execution of the story I laid out that night changed as the writing continued.  It picked up speed toward its conclusion; through its rewrites, reshapings, edits, and gently imposed contortions.  A story originally set in Spain and Central Asia somehow ended up in Mexico, Virginia, and Northern Italy.  A critical character who was the motivation for almost all of the hero’s actions somehow disappeared over time and rewrites.  Even the major chord of the piece fell away as the work and rework continued.

But what the story was about never changed.

This was one of the hardest lessons for me to learn as a writer: the truth that what you are telling is more important than how you are telling it.  That substance is required to keep the roof from collapsing on fallen walls.  An execution without an executed is meaningless, and therefore a waste of everyone’s time/

A man leaves home, gets a job, the company he works for fails, and the man moves on.

A corporate trouble shooter investigates the lack of production from a previously conscientious field representative, and chooses to replace him.

An older Eastern European expatriate settles in the West, doesn’t fit in, and returns home to die.

Yawn.

All are storylines that could be complexly executed in detail and with substantial facets.  But without the kiss of life that provides the thing that compels the reader forward, they might as well be an exercise in grammar and structure.

Instead of Moby Dick . . . Heart of Darkness . . . or Dracula/

Hemingway wrote about the depths of the human heart, not adventure travel logs!  Why in Hell would we – as his children – hold ourselves to any lesser standard?  Lovecraft spoke of the complexities of the human soul, not slamming action sequences filled with improfound nonstatements about nothing in particular!  The Manyoshu of Japan captivated its readers because the about of them was so intertwined with their technical beauty that the readers had no choice but to read on.

I don’t care how many car crashes you have in your work; sexual gymnastics and daring buckles masterfully swashed bore me beyond tears.  If you must erect the frame before filling it with substance, so beit.  We all have our process, but deeply expressed substance without framing is equally pointless.

But one without the other is, well . . . nothing much, really.

Art today is dying.

Dying not of a disease, but of abject laziness.  It’s easier to build a frame than to paint a picture; easier to blow up than flesh out.  And we all want easier; especially today; especially in this world of indefinable abject terrors that rant and gibber at us from every shadow of our lives.

While we cater to the lowest common denominator, while we seek the broadest possible audience for growing insubstantialities, in a world that is growingly frightened of depth.  Because depth – even in the lightest of fairs – might bring more complexity we don’t want in our lives – color begins to drain from our world.

Restoring that color, fighting to preserve depth and real emotional content (in place of simplistic grotesqueries) is the calling of the writer.  More, it’s our responsibility.  Because it is the writer, throughout history, that is the guardian of the people’s souls.  And if you do not believe in soul, I suspect you still believe in beauty.  And there is no beauty without substance.

Pretty isn’t Beautiful.

Interesting isn’t compelling.

And words skillfully strung together without real emotional content and soul/beauty (even when that beauty or soul is horrid and misshapen) is worse than a waste of our time.

It diminishes us all in a time we can scarce afford it.

“The very essence of literature is the war between emotion and intellect, between life and death. When literature becomes too intellectual – when it begins to ignore the passions, the emotions – it becomes sterile, silly, and actually without substance,” Isaac Bashevis Singer

When I became serious enough about writing that I actually admitted to others I was doing it, I routinely faced the same question.  In various forms and with varying sincerity people would ask me what my book was about.  I always had trouble explaining it, because – instinctively – I always cared more about the soul or anima of my work than I did the story.  Such an explanation requires a few minutes not a glib few seconds.

Now, I can combine the telling of my substance and my story fairly easily.

To some.

But there are always others; individuals who I recognize by a look in the eyes, a cant of the shoulder, or a tone in the voice.  The contagion of insubstantiality has already taken then their spirits.  So, to those poor, stricken bipedal hominids who have lost the intrinsic right to be called:  “human,” I smile and tell them clearly and with a ready enthusiasm:

“Think the Crimean War on Crack,” and walk away before my tears come.

Believe!

“Good dreams don’t come cheap; you have to pay for them.  If you just dream when you’re asleep there is no way for them to come alive . . . to survive,” Harry Chapin

Time to start a new book.

Create a new folder on the computer, create a Drafts folder within it, open a WORD document within that titled:

Untitled #19

By

Richard Steinberg

Set the Font:  Times New Roman

Font Size:  14

Spacing:  Double

Margins: 1.5″ all around

Open the Header:  type (left justified) in Times New Roman 10:   Untitled # 19 by Richard Steinberg then right justify tab and set the pagination to X of Y; close the Header.

Take a break.

Coalesce the vapors, entreat the Muse, read some poetry, maybe some histories, surf the obscure news websites.

Return to the work.

Space down seven lines, center text, and type:

Untitled #19

By

Richard Steinberg

Engage the graphical interface to be certain that the first line is in the exact center of the page.  Futz around with it for a time.  Space down two more lines.  Type:

Chapter One

Space down two more lines.

Tab once, then type:  Begin Here!

Stop dead because you still don’t know what you’re writing about.

Panic!

There are, essentially, three parts to writing fiction.

First comes the idea.  This is a thing of facts and figures . . . I want to write about juvenile violence and its toll on society.

Then comes the setting.  Purely physical in nature, a thing of time and tide . . . Olathe, Kansas; mid twentieth century through early Twenty-first.

Finally, there comes the theme.  Theme is the thing you want to say about juvenile violence and its toll on society as demonstrated in Olathe, Kansas.

Theme is the reason you’re writing the piece in the first place.  It is the statement you’re dedicating your time and effort and pain to achieve.  It is the thing that will power you through the bad moments when you have no idea what comes next, the juice that will keep you going when you have too much written in your head and are struggling to find the energy to get it all down before you quit for the day.

The purest gift from your soul to your brain; and the hardest to find.

With it, you can save a bad story, make great a good story, even elevate to crystalline perfection a great story.  Without it, well . . . without it your doomed.

You see, we can pick what our story is about; we can decide, intellectually, where and when that story is set and what kind of characters inhabit it.  But all that is, essentially, is a lifeless shell waiting for you to attach magical literary electrodes to the bolts at its neck, raise it into a lightning tossed sky in hopes that the progenitor of themes strikes hard . . . inspiration.

And it won’t always come when you call it.

Can you write a story without a theme . . . you can, but don’t bother.  There are enough empty husks on bookshelves already.

So how do you go about finding your theme?

To put it simply, like every other form of life in the universe, theme is the child of a mating of too mystical forces.  An idea meets a dream, they have a couple of drinks, like each other, go out a couple of more times, come together and nine nano-months later beget:

Theme.

I dream a lot – awake or asleep, at work or in the world – I dream whenever I can.  And it is from those dreams that inspiration for the work is drawn.

I am in the living room of an extraordinarily small four-room apartment in a lower middle class urban blight with no air conditioning or prospects or life.  I’m trying to start a novel about evolution, about who we are, were, will be. But the glare on this summer’s day is so bad on the computer’s monitor that I put the box that the computer came in over my head and the monitor.  The glare disappears but the heat becomes oppressive and stifling.  I cut strategic holes in the box to let some air in, but keep the bulk of the light out and try to work . . . but my mind wanders and I dream.

I find myself in a darkened cell on an Arctic Plain; cool, cold even, but totally isolated and imprisoned within my cell whose door never opens.  I’m grateful for the cold, but the dark and the isolation begin to take their toll.  Then the sound of multiple sets of footsteps barely reaches me, coming down the nearly frozen corridor.  Will they stop at my cell?  Will they open the door?  What will . . .

And I begin to type what would become my first successful novel:  The Gemini Man; an evolutionary thriller, whose theme is an allegory that questions society’s belief that isolation is punishment and release into a crowded world is reward.

Same apartment, the box is gone, the computer now under the stairs where it is both cool and dark, and it’s time to write the next book. The plan is to write a wholly commercial, highly marketable novel using UFO conspiracies at the core of a story that will lend itself to the reader’s natural voyeuristic appetites.

Nothing.

Nothing:  Day Two . . . Day Three . . . Day Nine . . .

I consider moving the computer back to the hot window and finding the box to crawl under again.  Hey, it worked once, right?  Outside, an elderly couple are complaining about the “bad element” that has moved into the neighborhood.  A little later, I hear some shots in the near distance, not an extraordinary event in that neighborhood.  The late news comes on and the first ten minutes is filled with disaster, torment, and lots of victims; but I can’t follow the details because my mind begins to wander and I dream . . .

I am a child lost and alone and defenseless in a world of fanged shadows and predators.  A world where no one is ever out of harm’s way.  As I grow so does my sense of fear, and being out of control of the world around me.  I am alone and abandoned and just a child.  I shiver as the dream envelopes me.  They’re coming for me – the state home, the perverts, the poverty pimps, the do-gooders who don’t – and it’s either do something or become, finally, a victim for life . . .

And I find myself at the keyboard beneath the stairs typing the words – Nobody’s Safe – that become the title for my second successful novel; a suspense UFO conspiracy thriller, whose central story is an allegory for accepted and radical definitions of personal control/safety.

Seventeen novels later, the process is certainly no less complicated.  But it is effortless, well . . . somewhat so.  Only because now I understand that to sit down and decide to write a book – a spy story with horror overtones set in nineteenth century India – is going to leave you with only a spy story with horror overtones set in nineteenth century India.  Otherwise, it will be about nothing that matters, nothing that connects to the readers, nothing that transcends the almost unimaginable distance between that part of the brain that reads the words, and that part of the soul that makes the reader embrace them.

Uninspired.

Fail to bridge that gap and there’s a chance, a small one, that you’ll be successful (in a purely commercial sense) in a very minor way.

Attach inspiration (a dream, a nightmare, or a visitation) to that same idea – bridge that distance so that the instant the word is read it is transmitted and devoured by your reader’s soul . . . and you’ll be a writer.  Maybe successful commercially, maybe not.  But you’ll connect with your reader, with your audience, and they will always be there for you.

Because you were there for them.

At the heart of what we do is that task.  Be there for your reader.  Inspire them, move them, affect them; let them know that what you’ve written has been zapped in the electrodes by the aforementioned lightning.

There is no higher praise for any writer than the recognition that they’ve accomplished that.

How do you do it?  How do you dream constantly and with sufficient variety, log them away properly indexed ready to be culled in an instant to be married to an idea when an empty page demands?  And how do you do this without walking into walls, being labeled: “weird,” or being institutionalized?

1:       Have a life outside of your writing.

The more successful you become, the harder this is to do; but as a rule, it can be accomplished with a minimum of pain.  When you’re out in the world with non-writers, don’t talk about your writing; however much you may want to.  Talk about the world or whatever the group you’re with wants to.  Go out and do things, see things, taste and sample things.  Try things that scare you, repeat things you like but haven’t done in a long time.  Notice – without enquiring – what pleases and scares those around you.

Don’t take notes on a pad; don’t phone your cell and leave yourself a message that’s a verbatim account.  Don’t contact someone later and ask them about it.  In fact, don’t act on it at all.

Not then.

Three, maybe four days later, sit down and write your impressions of the moments you recall.  Details aren’t important, facts and figure are insignificant.  Remember emotions, expressions, sounds, physicalizations.  Write it all down, then pick the one thing in there that you find most striking, most odd or different that you observed from the others (or yourself) in the experience and let that moment just sink into you until it stains the creative part of your soul . . .

. . . and begin to write the “why” of that moment.

I was at lunch with my friends the Empress and the Squire recently at an outdoor café.  From where I was sitting, I could see the front doors of the bar next door.  And throughout our meal, the most singularly sexy women I’ve seen in a very long time kept walking into that bar.  And every once in a while, very plain looking women would emerge.  It happened throughout the afternoon – centerfold-types walking in, nothing-types walking out.

And my mind began to wander, and I began to dream . . .

Now I suspect if I checked back with the Squire or the Empress, or if I’d made notes at the time, I’d discover that some sexy women came out and some plain women walked in.  Probably some men of varying descriptions as well.  But I don’t need the reality anywhere near as much as I crave the dream.  Because it is the dream, and its recall in the form that fits this later moment, that will transform that lunch into the centerpiece of a novel or short story or film.

I want to write something about terrorism in the 21^st Century with horror overtones, and I marry that idea to my dream of that afternoon (not its realty) and come up with something truly alive and unique.

2.       Set aside your own perspective, and channel that of other people’s.

I was at a convenience store once and I noticed a woman in her fifties holding an empty, untouched ice cream cone.  She was still and she was quiet and there was no trace of the ice cream that should’ve been in the cone.  Interesting, mildly curious, but not much more.  Days later, when I thought about it, I began to see that cone through her eyes.  I let go of all of the reasons I might’ve been staring at that cone and instead tried to channel hers.

I began to see a little girl whose greatest moment of freedom was when her mother would give her a nickel for an ice cream cone, and what had happened to her so long ago she could only remember the emotion and not the act that had left her with just an empty cone.  How standing there holding an empty cone in middle age (for the first time in decades) her life was about to change.

I want to write something about corporate greed in New England, and I marry that idea to my dream of that moment (not its realty) and come up with a character of flaws and traumas and deep seeded issues that powers and deepens my idea to the point that it begins to come alive

3.       Stretch and distort the memories until they fit your purpose

I was with The Rapscallion when he won a hundred bucks or so on a video poker machine.  He was happy, but not particularly excited because at that moment in his life he needed several hundred dollars and a single hundred – while nice – didn’t solve much.

The Entrepreneurial Schoolteacher and I were at a Coffee Shop in the middle of nowhere at four in the morning when he noticed an ad in the local paper for the hotel we were headed to; and the rate offered was less than we were paying.  He spent ten minutes on the phone trying to talk the hotel into changing our rate (which was already a pretty decent one) into the lower one.

Later, while in the middle of projects unrelated to inspiration from either moment, my mind begins to wander and I dream . . .

. . . and the Rapscallion’s moment is transferred to a Supernatural Paladin who has been gifted with the world, but sighs and physicalizes just like my friend when he realizes that the prize of the world means he won’t win the universe.  And I mate that with an idea about societal definitions of right and wrong, and their child becomes a novel of depth and being

. . . and the Entrepreneurial Schoolteacher’s tenacity and thrifty spirit are welded to that of a General who has defeated his enemy as thoroughly as can be, but can’t call off the attack because somewhere out there some of the enemy still exist, and as long as there is the barest possibility of their survival he can not stop.  Bring on the idea about international arms dealers and their situational ethics, give the idea and the dream a bottle of Johnny Walker Blue and a comfortable hotel room, and a story of obsession and redemption emerges.

4.       Be willing to rip huge, bloody chunks of flesh from your own guts.

Inspiration/dreams are everywhere, they surround you; are part of you and your world as long as you remain open to them.  Open and willing to pay for them.

Yeah; if you look at the quote that opened this piece, you’ll see that I skipped completely over the payment part.  For good reason.

All of the things I’ve talked about, described or gave you tips on are the relatively easy, painless part of finding that inspiration, of allowing that dream.  They are also, at best, ten percent of the possible inspirations available to you.

The other ninety come from deep within yourself, and those things which you come to terms with (or don’t) never accomplishing.

I see a beautiful woman in the movies, the kind of woman that fantasies were designed for, and as much as I know that it is beyond unlikely that she and I will ever share a weekend in Vegas – let alone a life – I construct from the dream of her beauty and unattainability an alternate life for myself where I can win her and have her, with little effort and profound satisfaction.

And that personal ascension becomes the opening for my 18^th novel whose central character is a man who knows he will never have such a woman; but sooths himself by the occasional fantasy where he is loved and cared for by beautiful people with no agendas.

I watch a politician and just know that I could do better than he could, but also know that for reasons of integrity and background and mistakes made in moments that have haunted me for years, I could never get elected. And I conjure a dream that becomes the lead character of my 17^th novel, a man who has made terminal mistakes in his life but finds a way to overcome them to become a near Universal Leader in a world that he is dedicated to making right.

I see a man effortlessly pickup a woman in a bar and so attach an idea for a suspense thriller set in the Greek Islands and their child becomes the charming love ‘em and leave ‘em rogue in The Four Phase Man, the character whose actions and existence bring life and light to an otherwise stolid story.

I look out at a perfect night spreading across the Neon High Desert that is my home, see the way that the clouds drift, taste the slightly acrid scent of the city on my lips as my tongue caresses them, feel the slightest but enervating cool breeze from my office window, my mind wanders, I begin to dream . . .

And in that dream, I step to my balcony – relaxed and erect (sexually, mentally, and emotionally) and step off to begin my nightly flight through the darkening skies in search of the dragons, nightmares, dreams, and other night fliers that will inhabit novel number whatever to come.

You can write a perfectly adequate piece without dreams and inspirations and visions as one of the parents of your creation.  And like the children of siblings, there is a chance your offspring will be okay.  But there’s a far greater likelihood that it will be a twisted, deformed, nothing that no one will ever care about.

If you want to be a writer – rather than a hobbyist or creative typist – you’re going to need to find those dreams, that inspiration which will translate from your language of choice to the hearts of your readers.  That ethereal mist which will not be the story of your project, but will serve as its fundamental nature.  That most delicate moment of truth – unadorned and pure – that your reader will recognize, and want to share.

When you do that, no matter how high the literary balcony you step off, you will always soar to the heavens.

“So if you care to find me, look to the western sky!  As someone told me lately: Ev’ryone deserves the chance to fly! And if I’m flying solo, at least I’m flying free. To those who’d ground me, take a message back from me. Tell them how I am defying gravity,” Stephen Schwartz

I promise you, open yourself to the inspiration and dreams in the air around you, and you won’t be flying alone.

Believe!

Our own Richard Steinberg is swapping in for Janet Berliner this month with the following essay – DNW

“Many of us spend our whole lives running from feeling with the mistaken belief that you cannot bear the pain. But you have already borne the pain. What you have not done is feel all you are beyond the pain,” Saint Bartholomew

That’s my job.

Making you feel all you are beyond the pain.

But you can not move beyond the pain, until you’ve felt it.

I know damned well that you don’t want to feel it.  I know it and I don’t care.  If what I am as a writer is to have any meaning in a “cosmic sense” (beyond contributing to our communal act of self delusion) then I must make you see the pain and then beyond that pain for the meaning.    This doesn’t mean that I must write in universally dark and horrid tones that wither the soul, causing endless despair.  Neither does it mean that I should write froth and escapism in the hope that it will ease the pain, for a time, and thereby heal.

No.  It means that if I am to be worthy of being a writer, as opposed to a creative typist, I must present pain as it is: an element of even the most blessed lives.  To ignore that pain is not to write fiction, it is to write denial.

“Ah, happy, happy boughs! that cannot shed
Your leaves, nor ever bid the Spring adieu;
And, happy melodist, unwearièd,
For ever piping songs for ever new;
More happy love! more happy, happy love!
For ever warm and still to be enjoy’d,
For ever panting, and for ever young;
All breathing human passion far above,
That leaves a heart high-sorrowful and cloy’d,
A burning forehead, and a parching tongue,”
John Keats

One of the most important issues facing contemporary writing is an unwillingness by writers to place pain in perspective; as opposed to dwelling on it, or ignoring it completely.  Like the need for the character of a waitress or an executioner, pain is part of the tableau of life.  Even, perhaps particularly, in fantasy life.

Imagine The Wizard of Oz without Dorothy’s pain of loss and abandonment; the “Wicked” Witch’s sense of grief at the untimely and quite horrible death of her sister.

How about Horton Hears A Who if an entire world isn’t facing horrible and inevitable destruction, as their would be savior faces incredible pain and ridicule for his heroic and selfless stance.

Our job as writers – if we’re to be serious about this thing as something other than a way to fill time in empty lives and/or make ourselves feel more intelligent than others around us – is to communicate truths.  If we entertain, how much more effectively those truths connect with our readers?

And if you would communicate truth, you must communicate pain.

“I have no desire to sing only in darkening tones of loathing and horror.  But to exclude those tones for an illusory feeling of betterment is to create a picture of a rose standing by itself with no background or other subjects (even minor things within our memories) in the picture.  How are we to realize that flower’s brilliance without holding it up to lesser floral tableaus; if only in our mind’s eye?  The essence of beauty is a thing of comparison,” Eliza Keary

Now before you run out and hack off your left little finger, that you might write happier, more rounded pap of roses and puppies and pastoral settings, let me add a warning:

The dark, the smoldering, the pained fanged shadows of our souls can likewise not be fully expressed with meaning and pith without the more positive, upbeat, and redemptive sides of the argument.  Does Hannibal Lector make any sense without the knowledge of a world that is horrified by his sanguine taste?  Of course not.  Without that addition of perspective, The Silence of the Lambs is just a cooking review.

Dark requires light.

Light demands the dark.

The contrast between the two provides definition, detail, and meaning.

Too often, I have read adequately written pieces that so lacked this definition that I couldn’t make it to the end of the work.  Light seasoned with dark, dark sprinkled with light not only provides the so necessary contrast that leads to readability, it gives clues to the reader on what it is you want them to take away from your piece.  I’ve seen so many works of horror in the last ten years that are truly brilliant, but quite unreadable because of this deficiency.

With no sense of the good, how are we to judge the evil?  Remember, your reader brings to your piece everything that they are.  Always.  But without your stage directions how are they to apply their own experiences to your message.  And if they can not apply their own reality, how in Hell (or Heaven) are they to connect to the work?!

And before I go any further, let me address the elitists out there who cry at the top of their lungs:  IT’S MY WORK! IT’S EVERYBODY ELSE’S JOB TO “GET” ME; NOT MINE, TO REACH THEM!

You’re right.

Masturbation feels good, can be emotionally rewarding, and leaves a sense of accomplishment of sorts.

But it does not create life.

Life has colors and depths, textures and tones.  So too, writing.  Writing with life meets these same tests.  Life is not about surviving, but living.  Living is not existing, but participating.  Participating is not about continuing, but exploration.

“Creative people who can’t help but explore other mental territories are at greater risk, just as someone who climbs a mountain is more at risk than someone who just walks along a village lane,”  R. D. Laing

It is the exploration of the light within the dark, the dark within the light, the native in contrast to the alien that brings depth to writing.  It is depth which gives our readers a reason to read on, to care what happens; whether or not a character triumphs or is plunged to its ruin.

There’s been enough masturbation in the world.

It’s time to create life.

BELIEVE!

By Richard Steinberg

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

Yes.

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

Sixty-seven days.

Too long. To damned long.

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

Possession: Demons I Have Known

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

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

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

In my books.

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

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

Put blood into the veins of our writing.

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

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

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

Does the werewolf hunt or lock itself away?

Truth.

Demonic truth.

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

It’s hard to do, and it can hurt.

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

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

COOL!

And dumb.

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

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

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

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

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

A reader for life.

Simple stuff, right?

Maybe not.

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

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

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

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

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

ZAP! Soul reaped and jarred for later possible use.

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

Zap! Soul reaped and jarred for later possible use.

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

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

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

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

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

ZAP!

Souls reaped and jarred.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Believe!

“I believe that the moment is near when by a procedure of active paranoiac thought, it will be possible to systematize confusion and contribute to the total discrediting of the world of reality,” Salvadore Dali

To follow Storyteller Thomas Sullivan’s moving tribute to Storyteller Frank Wydra is a daunting task.  And one I don’t relish.  There’s been a little too much reality in the last days for my taste; and it leaves a sour taste in my mouth.  I so desperately wish for the days of no decisions necessary, and no bad news in the mail.

But the job description doesn’t say I can only be brilliant when there is good, and peace, and harmony in my life.  In fact it is the measure of our work when we don’t feel like working that is the measure of our professionalism.

And so, on we journey.

And as this particular journey deals – this year – with the guts of writing, today let me approach an aspect of the gig that is seldom discussed, but is integral to any writer’s eventual success.

Snack food.

Err . . . sorry.  I had an early lunch and skipped dinner.  Not that snack food doesn’t have its place in a writer’s tool box.  Foods that you can eat at the computer without getting crumbs in the keyboard or making your hard drive sticky is a critical subject.  In my case, particularly so since I often am at the computer for seven to ten hours at a time and forget to eat.

The Cool Autumn Breeze is working to break me of the habit.  She gently and elegantly suggested that I set up a timer and every ninety minutes – no matter where I am in the work, I take a break.  Later on, when Breeze noticed that I was following her advice (but remaining at the computer) she suggested – gently and with genuine caring, the only way she ever suggests anything – that I actually lift my butt out of the chair during each break.

So, I tried it.  I set up a digital timer right on my desktop – top center of the monitor – turn it on when I start work and had an alarm go off at the ninety minute mark.  Like a Spartan soldier seeking to impress his cadre commander, when the hour and a half struck, I stopped what I was doing; saved my work, and left the office.

It hurt.

I mean real psychic pain at first.  I could picture my words sitting there within the computer waiting to be launched onto their cybernetic pages.  I could actually hear them calling to me:

“Rick!  Please come back; were sorry if we offended you.  Honest!  We’ll be better, more interesting, and more cogent.  Don’t leave us out here, please.  Not waiting in the birth canal, just barely able to see the light in the distance.”

Eventually, I couldn’t take it any more.  In keeping with the spirit (if not the letter) of Cool’s dictum, I decided to take my breaks – still more frequently than I had been – every 1,500 words or so.  It’s not precise, but somewhere around that level of output (always at the end of a sequence) I step away . . . usually outside (since if I don’t I can still here my keyboard whimpering at my absence) often getting something to eat, or at least to taste while I’m out.

No, I am not a candidate for a rubber room or heavy doses of lithium – although all offers generously and honestly made will be fully considered.

Anyway, back to the real thing, the important thing I want to write about today.  It’s the thing you most need to know to be a successful novelist, playwright, poet, essayist or other professional writer:  the music mix.

Damn.

Don’t get me wrong, but this column is about the most unspoken of things that you really need to know to be a successful writer.  I mean it really is truly important.  It’s just that if I don’t have the right music playing in the background (or on headphones) I can’t write.  Or at least I can’t create.

I spend a lot of time finding the right music mix to work to; and I have them all carefully cataloged on the computer.  There’s individual mixes for each novel, play, short story, even for my Storytellers column each month.  It isn’t so much that there is a direct, obvious connection between that particular grouping of songs and the subject matter.  It doesn’t work like that for me.

I wrote my first major release – The Gemini Man – to Meat Loaf.  Nobody’s Safe was largely created to the songs of Bob Seger.  The Four Phase Man to Betty Buckley.  There’s no direct connection between the style of the music or the performer, and the subject matter.  The psychic connection between the music I work to has more to do with the emotional content of the music and the performance rather than the specifics of the lyrics or the melody lines.

I wrote The Believer (probably my next hardcover and film release) originally to the recordings of a dear friend, Susannah McCorkle.  There was a sweet pain to her voice, and her life, her interpretations of both music and lyrics somehow brought out in me the emotions and places I needed to be for that novel. And through the first five drafts – yes, although a wonderful novel, it was a pained and prolonged birth – it was Zan’s emotions so clearly worn on her tongue that drove me.

Then, long after we had parted – two years, maybe three – I was listening to the news one morning and they mentioned that she had killed herself.  Laid out food for the cats, left detailed notes on the disposition of her things, and then stepped off her upper flight balcony.

And although I needed to, I just couldn’t work on The Believer with any style or talent, or even professionalism, I set the computer on random play and still couldn’t work.  Then a song came on, and the work began to come again.  It was replaced with something else . . . and nothing.  It happened a few more times (slow learner that I am) before I caught on.  I did the remainder of the extraordinarily complex and involved rewrite to the music of that singer, then a stranger but now my friend:  Amanda McBroom.

In the final rewrites, to bring it ready for the publisher, I wrote it to a mix of Susannah and Amanda.

These mixes change and evolve over time, as I change and evolve; but I cannot write without them.  As I work on this column for Storytellers Unplugged my headphones are filled with Linda Eder, Meat Loaf, Amanda McBroom, Gene Krupa, Bonnie Raitt, Margie Gibson, and Raul Esparza.  Some interior tonal colors on the particularly selected numbers put me in the place I need to be to write for Storytellers.

Although I should probably change the mix since I keep getting drawn off topic, which was . . . uh . . . give me a second . . .

Right! 

The thing you most need to know to be a successful writer.  Okay, no more distractions.  I just had some pizza with The Cool Autumn Breeze and The Reformed Sexual Rapscallion (who suggested that if I can’t hold my concentration for longer than I have been, I should just give you the letters and let you, gently readers, write this one for yourselves.

Not to worry, I’m on the job now and completely focused on the task at hand.  Here’s what you need to know to make it as a professional writer, as opposed to merely the creative typist that I’ve been so far.  Here it goes:  the secret is, drum roll please . . . 

. . . Watching old movies to relax before every session. 

NO! 

Wait, the secret is talking out your story problems to yourself while playing Spider Solitaire on your computer. 

AARGH!!! 

The secret is reading The Voyage Of The Space Beagle whenever you need to remember what good writing is.

UHHH!!! 

The secret is chocolate and vanilla soft ice cream served together, but not mixed, in the same bowl, the touch of a good woman stroking your cheek softly while your working, living in libraries until you become your topic, the touch of a bad woman at two in the morning when the work refuses to come . . .watching perfect children at play, being struck mute by a sunset, having a dog curl up on your foot while you type!!!!!

Oh hell.

A B C D E
F G H I J
K L M N O
P Q R S T
U V W X Y Z

“A great French Marshall once asked his gardener to plant a tree. The gardener objected that the tree was slow growing and would not reach maturity for 100 years.  The Marshall replied, In that case, there is no time to lose, plant it this afternoon,” John F. Kennedy

There’s no great secret to becoming good as a writer.  It just takes time; and hard, often unappreciated, usually overlooked, work.  It takes talent and commitment and belief in yourself.  Belief in your gifts.  Belief that there is a reason God – or whatever works for you on your dark nights of the soul – put the need to express your heart in words within you.

Belief that the work, by itself, is enough, regardless of however successful or beaten down you become.

In that end, that pretty much covers it all. 

When in doubt, when you don’t know what to do next, where to turn, when the characters stop talking to you and the story won’t make sense, just close your eyes, take deep, relaxing breaths, go to a place in your heart, in your soul that is completely safe and warm and loving and remind yourself to:

Believe!

Rick Steinberg

Richard Steinberg

The View From The XY Set

“The misogyny that shapes every aspect of our civilization is the institutionalized form of male fear and hatred of what they have denied and therefore cannot know, cannot share: that wild country, the being of women,” Ursula LeGuin

Let me begin with one clear and unrelenting statement of truth: 

I like my penis, and the two companions that it’s so attached to.  We’ve known each other for over fifty years now, and while they have sometimes led me to places I shouldn’t have gone, it was certainly no more often than I led them astray.  And I would no more sever my relationship with them, than they would wish to be severed from me.

But, this having been said, why should our mutual respect and deep personal attachment prevent me from creating vivid, three-dimensional, compelling, interesting and very cool characters dominated by the XX chromosomal configuration? 

Or, to put it another way:  Ms. LeGuin is wrong.

If I can know, share, and appreciate the wild country of prehistoric creatures, slavering monsters, and/or ancient civilizations founded by societies from the distant future, I can write women; with fairness and conscience.

And write them well . . . even if my three friends might handicap my understanding in the eyes of some poly-X zealots.

One of the most interesting aspects about writing is, to me, the gift of discovery.  The ability to take time – our most precious commodity after life itself – and delve into things we are not, places we have never been, a consciousness or two that we might never become or have considered before.  It’s the ultimate E-ticket ride.  Even more, it’s a thing we must do if we are to call ourselves writers as opposed to creative typists.

This need to know, however, is not limited to which side of the city the river is on, or what is the quickest way from the Pinakothek of Modern Art to the Deutsche Museum using the MVV in Munich.  It also includes who the people are that you’ll encounter in that train station or along the river.

Then, to write them fairly; as they are. Not as you are.

I think my biggest pet peeve among most writing is exactly that:  a lack of differentiation between the characters of a story; both from each other and from my most common reality.

And how much greater that difference must be between male and female characters’ realities?

My mother became a writer near the end.  But even before she began that truly insane journey so many of us are on, she was very conscious of this problem.  She would read a book – and reading books was one of her most favorite things in the universe – and comment that:  “this writer doesn’t like women.”  Or that:  “the writer didn’t spend much time on the women in the book.”   Or her ultimate indictment:  “Do you suppose this writer has actually met a woman?”

A woman, as opposed to a little girl.

Maybe at its heart, that’s the problem.  Male writers drawing distinctions (often quite subtle ones) between their male characters’ levels of maturity and development, and the reasons for them; but forcing their female characters into one size fits all cookie-cutter molds.  And it’s not always sexism that causes it.  Sometimes it is as simple as writing complexly about the things the writer knows and thinks they understand and giving short shrift to those things they don’t.  No sexism intended.

Laziness rules.

There’s another factor at work here as well; a thing that has nothing to do with gender bias.  Some creative typists believe that understanding their non-lead characters and their motivations is just not necessary.  If your story is about a college professor who stumbles across a plot to assassinate Marianne Faithfull, it’s light years easier to give depth and pith only to the Professor & Marianne then it is to spend the time necessary to develop and understand all the other castaways in and around your story.

Easier, but not right.

People are people and do have great commonalities among them.  Much that can be said of one gender applies to another.  We live on the same planet, breathe the same air, aspire to life and happiness, hurt for ourselves and our loved ones, rejoice in subjective beauties, ponder great truths, and seek important answers to almost incalculable mysteries.

But does a man getting out of a car on an isolated level of a darkened parking structure do so the same way a woman does?  Does a boy in his twenties step out of a public pool the same way as a corresponding girl?  When a man in his fifties considers his place in the body politic of his steam-fitting plant does he consider whether or not he is still viewed as attractive (and thereby vital) by his coworkers?

Obviously, in many of these examples and many others, the answer is that there might be no difference between the male and the female perception.  But the harsh truth is also that in most, gender plays a role.  Gender that we need to write honestly and in an informed manner if our works are to live up to our responsibility as writers as opposed to creative typists.

So how do we pull of this alchemy: men writing real women?

“Sometimes they lie. Sometimes they cheat.
They can give you cause to doubt ‘em.
It may be safer crossing the street;
But the world would be so boring without ‘em.
If it’s piece of mind or them, well . . .

“I love men!”  Amanda McBroom

Honesty is critical

I am a fifty year old, white, Jewish, heterosexual, single male.  I need to remember this as I start to write any character I have never been.  I’ve spent my life standing on the less discriminated against side of most arguments.  My knowledge of what it means to be the only woman executive in a corporate environment is therefore rather limited.  But no more than my knowledge of what it means to be a Hesperian Death Merchant in a Soul Bazaar.  But unlike a character created from whole cloth and thereby without any restrictions on its creation, women are readily available for research.

So, with a deep and all abiding commitment to my craft, I throw myself into women.

 The Ethereal Sledgehammer and I have known each other for decades.  Working in a heavily male dominated industry, Sledge has carved out a pretty good career; rising to a Senior Executive position in her company.  But it’s only in the last few years that she’s had some female associates around her.  What was that like, I asked her?  What were the challenges?

She smiled sadly and shrugged.  “After a while, you understand that there are not challenges, plural.  There’s one challenge:  knowing that every day in every way (from your job performance to what you’re wearing) you’re being judged.  And usually judged by men who think I’m after what they’ve got.”

I was engaged to The Patient Narcissist for a time, and while the marriage never happened the friendship continues.  We were getting ready to go to a gathering of friends; an informal, thrown together thing because none of us had plans or wanted to cook.  Pizza and music in the background kind of thing.  The evening was nice and comfortable and laid back and went very well.  On the way home, I expressed as much to Narcissist, who nodded her agreement.

“It did,” she began, “but why do you think Julia was in a dress?”

Thinking about it, Julia – not her real name – was in a casual sun dress while the other women were in slacks or jeans.

“I guess she wanted to wear a dress,” I suggested.

“Yeah, right,” my fiancée laughed as if I was a slow child.  “And that’s why she never took her eyes off her husband whenever he talked to one of the other women.”

Women’s perceptions differ not only within the social/professional contract, but also within the casual world.

Blue Jean was not only one of my most favorite people in the universe, but was one of the most insightful I’ve ever known.  We once were at a social/business party together when she pointed out a publishing executive across the rather massive party floor.  “She’s not happy,” she announced after observing her for maybe thirty seconds.  “No one’s recognized her yet.”  The woman looked happy enough to me, but at Jean’s urging I kept watching until a midlist author walked over and asked the Executive where the bathroom was.  The Executive beamed as if she’d been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize as she gave directions.

Jean knew people.

We were walking down 7th Ave one evening when she pointed out a mega-celebrity coming out of a local restaurant.  He wore a heavy coat, a hat pulled low, walked unassumingly and unnoticeably.  I suggested that the man didn’t want to be noticed, and Jean agreed.

Sort of.

“He just split up with his girlfriend,” she said.  “And the reviews of his new film aren’t out yet.”  Interesting gossip, but not much more.  Later that evening, coming back from the restaurant, we saw him again.  Only this time the hat and coat were gone as he walked by . . . not signing autographs but acknowledging his fans as they recognized him.   “Must have been a good review,” Jean suggested.  The night was warmer then it had been, and the rumors were that the new film was awful, so I bet her a dollar and went and got the New York Times which had just come out.

And ended up a dollar poorer for my trouble.

I’m not suggesting that women are more perceptive than men, or that they are more driven by cosmetic discriminatory practices then men.  Far from it.  I know male executives with the CIA who had hair transplants at their crotch so that they would look more viral in the shower, and others like His Sartorial Splendor who can look at a person from a distance and recite to you their life story with great accuracy.  But there are difference reflected here that do delineate male/female diversions.  That we – as writers – need to be conscious of.

Getting out of a car and walking across a darkened parking lot.

Going into a job interview.

Running down the street.

Working a source for information.

How a seat is selected at a coffee shop.

These and many others are issues that are often approached differently by men and women.  Sexual politics, gender based discrimination, perceptions of vitality or competence all differ as they are filtered through the eyes and hearts of the viewer. And while writing all your characters the same regardless of gender differences both cheats the character and your reader.

And yourself.

“If a woman has to choose between catching a fly ball and saving an infant’s life, she will choose to save the infant’s life without even considering if there are men on base,” Dave Barry

The Angry Pacifist disagrees with me.  She believes that the perpetuation of stereotypical sexual images must end, and that the only way for that to happen is to force the issue.  She writes all her characters from the same sexual nexus, regardless of gender; believing that only through this homogenization can equality be found.

But reality flies in the face of that idea.

Men and women are different.  And we, as writers, need to acknowledge the fact and move forward.  All should not be written the same.  A male perspective should not be forced onto a female character anymore than a particularly effeminate one should be.  But that being said, it is incumbent upon me to admit that – having never been a woman – writing them with dimension and breadth (as opposed to dementia and breasts) is a tough gig.

But if I pull it of, well . . .

Women of the world will rise as one too proclaim my greatness, sexual liberation . . .

. . . desirability, and sexual magnificence!

Sorry.

I let my three friends write that part. 

I am a liberated writer, not just a male writer; and I strive on every page to write real women and real men in all their glory, silliness, and intriguing depths.  This is my task as a writer: to write with depth and honesty all my characters.  And I relish that challenge, that often difficult test.

Of course part of my three friends’ statement is quite true.

I am sexually magnificent!

Believe . . . please?

by Richard Steinberg

“Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn’t,” Mark Twain

The Duke Of Oy is not only the best writer I’ve ever read (no exaggeration) but is also great looking, charming, intelligent, funny, profound, and oft times the only friend I’ve had that always stuck around.  All women want him, all men want to be him; cute little birdies and magnificent rainbows escorted him in pacific glory along a path of ease and comfort and plenty; while flights of angels sing him to his rest.

A few years ago, he showed me something he’d recently written and asked me for my opinion.  It was poetry in prose; magnificent, evocative, stunningly transcending.  And wholly not a part of the overall project it belonged to. 

It was a jarring moment. What should I say to him?  He was a New York Times and international best-selling novelist.  He was published in 19 languages and 32 countries around the world.  A very recognizable, internationally famous actress once had sex with him because she’d liked one of his books so much! 

Maybe I was wrong; it was brilliantly executed, if wholly not germane to anything that came before or afterwards.  The prose and technique were first rate, even if there was no connection between this piece and the rest of the novel.  And everyone else who’d seen it had praised its glory to the Gods . . . even if they were uniformly hard pressed to say what it was about or how it made the overall book (which had struggled to maintain pace and pith to that point) better.  So, gritting my soul, I did that only thing I could do.

I killed him.

It wasn’t an easy thing to do.  Right up until he breathed his last, Duke proclaimed the quality of his words/work, that the world was wrong for its gradual abandonment of him and his gift.  That the literary universe which still proclaimed his greatness was jealous of him and therefore out to stop him.

As he struggled valiantly against his inevitable end – still writing the best, the finest lines in the land that fewer and fewer would ever see – I cradled his soul in my arms and drew him close.  A light kiss, a gentle brush of the clouds away from his eyes one last time, and then I choked the last of his life away.

A mercy, not a murder.

When R.C. Jones and I decided to tag-team on the subject of putting fact in your fiction, and why you must, on occasion, paint with colors of fiction your too stark facts, that killing came flooding back to me for the first time in years.  For, in his way, The Duke Of Oy is the perfect example of what we’re talking about.

A man as consumed by his talent as so many others are by their technique.

We hear the too common refrain all the time:  “If they don’t understand what I’m saying, that’s their problem, not mine!  My book, my vision, your fault!”

And the people who not only say this – loud and long – but breathe and believe it with all their heart, are absolutely right.  It’s the reader’s responsibility to understand the creative typist or amateur fictioneer.

But if that pithy quote-meister – as fellow Storyteller Stan Ridgley once referred to them in an ugly Georgetown restaurant with incredible food – has ambitions to be published as a Professional Writer (capitalized out of respect) then they are absolutely wrong.

As R.C. wrote on the 19th:  “Readers learn much from literature. It provides answers to many questions most readers might not even think to wonder about until it is brought to their attention by a story.”

It is the job of the professional writer to accurately communicate – with meaning and emotion – the message they have for their readers.  Some times, that message is simply: “have a good time while you read this.”  Sometimes it’s deeper and can be life affecting: “this is why I believe the theft of a child’s innocence and sense of personal well being is the greatest crime in the universe.”

But is the professional writer required to communicate that message only in a three dimensional universe well ordered by the rules we know so well?

No.

Two of the greatest stories I’ve ever read, go to great lengths to make this point.  The Voyage Of The Space Beagle by A. E. van Vogt and a substantially different piece:  Shall The Dust Praise Thee by Damon Knight stand as clarion calls to the professional writer.  They, as fine representatives of fantasy, horror, science fiction, and alternative reality stories, proclaim loudly and proudly:

“Let your mind run wild!  Free yourself from conventionalities!  Create worlds only you can fathom . . . then bring your readers inside and share that understanding with them.”

Rules.

Few of us like them, many of us rebel against them, but we all must concede one thing about them.  In all worlds at all times, there are rules.  While gravity might be the dominant rule of the world we live in, it might not even exist in the worlds we would create.

But unless your characters are simply floating aimlessly there must be rules, be order – even if that order makes no initial sense – so that your readers are able to put their feet down and observe/absorb your new world.

In The Voyage of the Space Beagle, van Vogt crafts a universe contained within a single ship of scientists out exploring the furthest reaches of the universe.  And every life they encounter – no matter how incomprehensible, threatening, or mystifying – has its own set of rules. 

Perhaps the creature that can easily move through walls, pass their “hand” through or into human bodies best represents this.  It is a being of pure creative fantasy, whose horror comes from our coming to understand its universe; the rules that govern its behavior and actions with the same dark dispassion that gravity does so much of ours.

It is in that created fantasy of an alternative reality within which van Vogt suspends our rules, then adheres to his new rule-set carefully and fully.

“To suspend all rules is not liberation but imprisonment.  Where there are no rules, how can one be free,” Algernon Blackwood

Which brings us to Shall the Dust Praise Thee?

Obviously, when you make God the central physical and emotional character of a story, all rules and bets are off.  There is nothing the Deity can not do (by generally accepted agreement) and therefore it would appear at first blush that you can do, say, or depict anything you want in any way you want.

But, again, this is the dividing line between the creative typist/amateur writer and the professional.  For it lies with the professional to know that their readers MUST be able to understand the actions of their lead and propelling character.  

Even when that character is a being well removed from true understanding.

Perhaps especially then.

In the story, after considering the problem for millennia, God has reached the conclusion – and who can blame him/her/it – that mankind cannot be saved.  It’s reap-the-whirlwind time boys and girls!  Apocalypse Now without the benefit of retakes.

But when God arrives on the planet to carry out this urban renewal program, he discovers a desolate, destroyed world.  God didn’t do it, but someone did.  Who?  How?  Why?

Eventually God finds these answers and is stunned.  But what stuns the Divinity even more is a sign, a figurative message in a bottle addressed directly to God.

“We were here. Where were You?”

I neither endorse nor reject Damon Knight’s vision, nor do I ask you to . . . without reading and considering it.  I present it only for the significantly less than cosmic purpose of illustrating a point.

In fiction, even God has to play by the rules.  The author’s rules.  Rules that must make sense, however nonsensically they are applied or however ridiculous they might seem.

“Repent, Harlequin!” Said the Ticktockman was as dystopian and fantastical as its creator, Harlan Ellison.  But the message of this remarkable novella – that I am never sure whether or not I like – is one that is crafted around a set of rules.

Even if rebellion against those rules is the point.

Which brings us back to the killing – my killing, to be honest – of The Duke of Oy.

When he was me, those qualities that made him/us a notable writer were talent and imagination.  They were also the qualities that led to his/our professional downfall.  Because talent combined with imagination is nothing more than limitless nothingness.  A thing you might sense or remember having once sensed, but can’t recall the specifics or the reason you’re even recalling it now.

But talent combined with imagination – strengthened by purpose and structure – can topple, then rebuild, universes.

As for Duke, well . . . he’s gone but with me always.  Which I suppose means that he had some structure and purpose after all.

Hmm . . .

Imagine that?

Believe!