Thomas Sullivan

Take off your clothes. It’s okay, this is a vocational test. Well, if you’re reading this on a laptop while sitting in Ethics class, or you are Internet surfing in the back row of a PTA meeting, you might want to postpone the disrobing (at the very least, after you are buck naked, keep the laptop in the position for which it was named). Assuming you have achieved privacy outside of the PTA or Ethics class, now take a look at yourself au natural in a mirror. Do you see:

A) Several reasons to put your clothes back on.

B) A six-pack or curves, an attitude, and the conviction that you want to share yourself with the world.

C) A burning moment of honesty and empirical curiosity in a world of façades and appearances?

If your answer was B, forget writing, though you might consider penning porn or thinly veiled chronicles of the fantasies that keep you awake at night. Because in order to qualify for really meaningful lit you need to be riddled with neuroses, paranoia, guilt, shame and fear. The writing will be your attempts to get rid of all that. Writing is therapy, right? Nothing healthier than a working writer (snicker).

If you answered C to the question above, you are really the goods. You probably value truth and knowledge above all else. You will live an exciting life (sometimes too exciting), always interesting, always growing, dynamic, leaving nothing in the tank. If you can spell “pneu…namon…pnamo…panamonia” — that word for a really bad cold — you will transcend all editors, critics and the marketplace itself. Accidentally get something published and promoted while you are still living, and you will no doubt soar briefly to the top of the pantheon where you will be respected to death before your shelf life expires in the trendy marketplace. Then you can embrace gravity for a few decades until you die neglected and anonymously of alcoholism or a cocaine overdose while living in a shelter in Lower Sausalito. Ultimately, even your handwritten mash notes to your Sunday school teacher will be studied at Stanford and Berkeley. Mental exhibitionism is the high end of writing. Posthumously.

And now we arrive at answer A. The great cattle call for the rest of us — We Who Want To Keep Our Clothes On, While Writing Keeps Demanding That We Take Them Off. All writing is autobiography, says the pundit. Do we dare display ourselves artlessly with no protection, or do we use the verbal equivalents of the feather boas and flicking fans of the striptease artist?

For the fiction writer who answered A, utter candor is probably a bad idea and likely to be boring. You just looked in the mirror and were uninspired, remember? At the very least it wastes an opportunity. Because without romanticizing life you cannot have the broadest appeal to readers. Uh-oh. I just wrote “romanticizing,” didn’t I? Note to self: explain romanticizing.

See, I see romantic possibilities in all of life. That’s who I am, and I only vaguely recognize that almost everyone else regards romanticism as unreal and unsustainable, if not uncool. They are wrong. But then, most people are chameleons who take on the color of their surroundings. A few actually generate that color. Writers have the opportunity to be generators. I don’t know if they become writers because they are generators, or if they can be generators because they are writers, but in any case they are supposed to be flexible with reality. True, that can include being cynical and viewing the world through a nightmarish lens, but even that is a kind of romanticism by inversion. It is a wish denied. People want to be positive. They are negative out of fear of disappointment or rejection.

So, if your fiction merely reinforces that experience of disappointment, if it simply exposes the lies about life, about human corruption and frailty, if the camera you aim strips away all dignity and respect in search of warts and warps, you will find all that and more. You will find your own anger, ugliness and lack of courage. You will be naked. But you will miss the underlying premise of who you are — or were — when you dared to hope and dream, as others did and secretly still do. You will take your reader on a trip to nowhere and hand them a map that must be read looking back over their shoulder instead of ahead at the horizon. On the other hand, if you dare to look for the color in life, the intriguing patterns, the endless potential for magnificence, the heroic, the stunning grandeur, the burgeoning energy that conquers impossibilities, the miracles, the beauty, the simple truths that transcend façades — well, there’s just a helluva lot to work with out there. Complete fiction writing not only strips away veneers and hypocrisies, it puts something back that expands life and inspires. Without that, you are writing tantrums for midgets.

I don’t know why people seem to get stuck in one hue of a rainbow or, worse, live in black-and-white. Rainbows were made for five senses. Full spectrum five. Live that. It’s there. So when I say “romanticizing life,” I simply mean help your readers get out of the box, free them from jail, show them the cosmos by implication even as you destroy it, but don’t lose sight of your power to lead them directly to their misplaced dreams and broken hopes. A couple paragraphs up I wrote that almost everyone regards romanticism as unreal, unsustainable and uncool. That is why most people need fiction in order to access it.

So how about putting on clothes? Instead of baring it all and searching for truth in your own warps and weaknesses, why not become the hero of your life? It might be as simple as putting on the right uniform or costume. Lots of ‘em. A new one every day, every story, every character. Walk a mile in someone else’s shoes. Think of it as an extension of yourself, rather than a disguise. In a way, you really will be exposing yourself, fully realized in all your incarnations. Who was it that said writers use lies to tell truths?

Now, I realize there is a serious chance that I’m coming off here as a Pollyanna, misconstrued as attacking realism. Nothing could be further from the truth. Mine is a vote for balance or maybe completeness. Too often I see beginning or entry level writers in the same pattern of trying to out-gas each other with cyanide, as if inspiring fear and loathing are aspirins for their anger. That’s okay as far as it goes — a lot of readers relate to that. I’m just saying that it can turn into a one-note concert for a career. Indulging in flagellation for fun and profit has a limited range. King and Koontz are successful because they can create normalcy — they can set the table convincingly before they sweep the dishes off. There is more in the mirror than just visceral biology. When you get down to your spleen and your anus, there isn’t a lot more naked you can be. Could be that good writing needs to get in touch with the writer’s extended anatomy and related dimensions of heart, mind and soul.

I’ve called that romanticism, but speaking personally, it’s a special kind of romanticism. It’s not what serial romantics do when they graft the same trite emotions onto scene after scene. It’s romantic idealism, wherein the ideal is truly a part of reality. Serial romantics vs. romantic idealists. Serial romantics want to ignore reality. Romantic idealists want reality to actually be romantic. A truly uncompromising romantic idealistic will only tolerate things that are absolutely real. That’s the secret. You have to believe in romantic idealism before you can find it. It’s there. But if your fears always trump your dreams, you’ll never see it. Again speaking for myself, I have to dare my dreams every day in order to be worthy of them. Sometimes it’s a tough sell. But I’m never me until the world comes to life with adventure and potential each day. If there are no diamonds in the rough, no undiscovered nuggets of gold, no rainbows hiding in the shade, no Holy Grails waiting to be worshiped — I don’t want to know. Don Quixote didn’t want to know, and I don’t want to know either. Let the world be better than it is and let me be better than I am. When I take off my clothes, the mirror won’t know the difference…

Your thoughts are welcome, your attention valued. If you’d like to see more of my writing, please check out a free sample chapter from THE WATER WOLF on my website. My free monthly newsletter is separate from this column and the mailing list is growing by leaps and bounds. I’ll be happy to add you if you email me at: mn333mn@earthlink.net Past newsletters are being archived at the website below, and the photos are now included.

Thomas “Sully” Sullivan

http://www.thomassullivanauthor.com/