Thomas Sullivan

Think back.  Way back.  Lying-in-your-bassinet back.  What kind of formula were you raised on?  No-no…I don’t mean breast milk/formula.  I mean how was your life orchestrated?  Dr. Spock baby?  Schedules/organization/chaos/mommy-was-on-Valium?  Meat and potatoes lifestyle?  (Dunno…I’ve repressed all that)?  The answer is very important to your imagination and creativity.  No question, creativity can either be given wings or pushed off a cliff while we are still in the cradle – creatle.

True, hardwiring is major.  By nature a few of us will never find our way out of the box, and a few others will never find their way into the box; but there’s enough spark of imagination in most of us to escape becoming a zombie spectator to life, if that spark gets kindled early-on.  Whether or not that nurturing takes place in a meaningful way may be largely circumstantial.  Example:

You are six again…your older sister has taken you to the Roxy theater for a double feature, and you come in two-thirds of the way through the first flick where the plot (and character relationships) has already thickened, as they say.  If this isn’t the way you usually see movies, you will probably be overwhelmed, frustrated or bored by an inscrutable story.  But if that’s just the way you go to shows – spectator interruptus – then over time you may simply learn to fill in the blanks and connect dots in order to make sense of the films.  During that process you’ll need to recognize probabilities in the twists, and patterns in the relationships, and how to reach beyond into possibilities.  Some of that will just be predicting things and events, but understanding character relationships and motivations will play large.  Did the couple date/mate/hate?  Is Lucille trying to marry/bury Hugo?  You get good at it after a while.  And whenever you’re surprised by a new character revelation or a plot twist, you learn, you grow.

A generation ago that kind of fragmented assimilating was early training for recognizing and understanding patterns and possibilities.  You seldom got to hear complete radio shows or saw movies starting from the beginning, owing to the fact that the former were usually heard in short car trips and the latter was the way kids went to theaters – just dropping in, not waiting for a starting time.  The result was learning to make inferences, exploiting all the possibilities gleaned from experience, and going beyond into the realm of creativity.  It was the beginning of playing “What if…?”  But radio as a story medium is largely gone now, and visual media is so comprehensive that there are fewer dots to connect.  Imagination, alas, has been spoon fed into dormancy in the average person.

As a writer –and former teacher – I think I’m describing a pretty major generational change here.  In short order we’ve evolved from think-on-demand lifestyles through prefabbed consumerism into a world of intense media that seductively offers to relieve us of our last outpost of independent thinking if not individualism itself.  Even the process of producing that media has become digitally packaged to play out variables with less need for organic imagination.  Need a plot, a character, a story arc?  Plenty of apps out there to help you along in whatever medium you are working.  Or in almost every other phase of life and labor, for that matter.  It’s number painting for the mind.  You see the problem here?  We need some imagination about our imaginations.

Of course, you don’t have to sign onto passiveness and there will always be mavericks who do not.  Is surrendering evermore to the alluring orchestrations of life a moral question?  What’s wrong with enjoying the ride, a life of ease and input from outside sources?  Well, nothing in an instant gratification and emotive culture; but being dumbed out of the management of existence other than to feel in a world that increasingly offers to take care of you from cradle to crypt has its price.  Hello, Big Brother.  And if you don’t particularly want to have another sib, big or otherwise, if you bristle at the idea of being kept, if you want to preserve and enhance your native skills and self-reliance, there are ways of doing that.  Because the good news is that if you can’t teach creativity, you can still train it.  Anyone who enjoys thinking can use the kind of sampling approach I described above to strengthen their grasp of the world around them.  But it is always easier to feel than to think.  Easier still to make them mutually exclusive and just go with instant gratification and an emotive reflex to the life around us.  So, at first, it may require a conscious effort to look for the dots in life that need connecting in a purely analytical way.  They’re still there, however.  In nature.  In prima facie life.  Peek through a keyhole, put a cup to the wall, follow some footprints in the snow, or just go stand in nature until “you get it.”  Practice extrapolating and interpreting full scenes from scraps and vignettes.  It may be as much a matter of NOT joining the masses in the grandstands of life as it is finding your own way.  At least that’s a start.

Yeah, I know, sounds silly.  Sounds Orwellian or Huxleyistic or some other dire apocalyptic warning done in flashing crimson neon about society going to hell in a basket.  But really, evolutionary changes are not revolutionary.  They are slow, sometimes insidious.  If something restless inside you sparks with recognition as you read this, then maybe you’re a candidate for escaping group-think, for living more freely and independently, for resisting the wave of media-driven usurpation.  Maybe you’re an – oh, I don’t know – A WRITER!  Leave the crowd behind and you’ll be on your way to something.  I don’t have a clue as to what.  I mean, this isn’t a formula, is it?  That would be going back to breast and bottle.  You’re on your own now.  IMAGINE that…

Thomas “Sully” Sullivan

http://www.thomassullivanauthor.com

http://www.facebook.com/#!/profile.php?id=1219261326

http://twitter.com/thomassullivan

Well, actually the Motel 6 was a Best Western War Bonnet Inn, but that makes the title of this essay too long.  In any case, that’s where I was the night a pet theory of mine was severely wounded if not shot through the heart.  See, it was my belief that listening to radio as opposed to watching TV helped me develop as a writer.  No steady diet of pictures for me, I thought, thank you very much.  I mostly supply my own because a visual media demands too much attention and seriously distracts from the on-board entertainment center that came with my brain at birth.  For me, TV is largely radio with a visual proxy for one’s imagination thrown in.  Oh, I turn TVs on – turn ‘em on all over the house – only, I keep doing stuff while I half listen and fill in the visuals from my own paper thin skull.  But being on the road one night brought me face-to-face with a motel bed and a TV and nothing else between Minnesota and Idaho.  So there was American Idol, a show you don’t necessarily have to watch.  I mean, it’s about music and talking, right?  (Like, “Now and then there’s a fool such as I”… Sully!)  Turns out there’s lotsa drama, sex, violence, and subtle sabotage going on that you can’t always infer from a sound track.  Take this particular night in Montana.  There’s Joshua, who Ryan Seacrest tells us is sick with something like bubonic plague, fresh in from ER where he threw up 63 times…

Ryan: “How are you feeling, Joshua?”

Joshua (zombie voice): “Like I’m gonna fall off a ladder…”

Ryan (standing in platform shoes): “I know the feeling.”

Camera pans across tres cool trio: Randy Jackson nods amiably behind glittering dark glasses and flashes his piano-key smile.  Jennifer Lopez in a tight mini crosses her left leg over her right, causing a small earth tremor along the Continental Divide as millions of America’s males in the TV audience tilt their heads left.  Steven Tyler sits ramrod straight but swaying as if searching for gravity, his dark glasses glittering like miniature versions of Randy’s.  Oh, wait.  He’s not wearing glasses.

Joshua of the bubonic plague snuggles down the bench where all the finalists sit, driving contestant Jessica in the other direction with a series of gluteal contractions not unlike an inch-worm trying to sprint.  She is momentarily saved from catching whatever Joshua has when Ryan calls him forward to account in the voting.  But, alas, now Ryan calls her name as well, and Joshua offers her his hand.  As they come forward, he drags her into his embrace.  Ryan relates more details about the virulent flu that has brought Joshua to death’s door, then tells him he is “safe.”  Joshua exhales with huge relief over Jessica, who begins to sway like Steven.  When Ryan tells Jessica she is also saved, Joshua smothers her with hugs and kisses.

Camera pans to Randy, still nodding, flashing ivory smile.  Jennifer uncrosses left leg, crosses right.  Earth tremor along New Madrid fault line as millions of America’s males now tilt heads right.  Suddenly Steven is the only person in the studio not swaying and this causes him to open his eyes all the way to a squint.  Tremor subsides.  Audience steadies.  Steven resumes swaying, closes gumdrop eyes.

Ryan announces sneak preview of Jennifer’s new music video.  Lights dim.  And there she is, legs completely uncrossed, undulating out of skimpy clothes.  It appears she will run out of clothes before running out of music, but male dancers surround her with ballet moves sort of like Swan Lake on Viagra.  Video ends with Jennifer still dressed.  Music wins — no FCC fines.  Cut to commercial for Coke.

Live return focuses on benches, where Jessica has now turned into Typhoid Mary.  Bubonic plague Joshua is puckering up to spread more good will.  Other contestants perform a never-before-seen version of “the wave” to avoid them both.  Ryan stands 10 feet away as Jessica drops dead.  Cut to tasteless Charmin commercial of bears with toilet paper stuck to mangy fur butts.

When we return, the least physically endowed female — who sings exactly 2.9 times better than nearest rival — is being voted off.  Inversely, male cutesy hunk whose chainsaw voice achieves almost a full octave on a good night is revealed to have garnered the most votes.  Piercing screams from 10-year-old females fill studio, causing Randy to cringe, his eyes exploding into spotlights while his smile fades as though he is connected to a rationed power grid.  Jennifer tries to cross both legs at same time, causing major neck dislocations across America.  In Wyoming Yellowstone dome blows.  Steven unperturbed.  Appears to be humming Gregorian chant.  Over on benches, Joshua goes for group hug.  Three more contestants drop dead –

…CUT!

OK.  Maybe I’m exaggerating just a tad.  You see how my subconscious works.  The techs of my imagination in charge of visuals aren’t used to this much stimulation.  They’re used to winging it.  Which is the whole point.  I don’t want to dumb them down, smother their creativity, or put them out of work with TVs prepackaged orchestrations.  But that’s not what just happened.  On this particular night and at this particular dosage of canned visual media my circuits are working the same way they work in real life from prima fascia evidence.  This is a useful discovery for a writer.  It turns out the ON-OFF switch isn’t just on the Idiot Tube remote, it’s in my mind.  I don’t have to watch like a spoon-fed infant or Igor the Zombie lying on a coffin couch with a six-pack of beer and half the refrigerator.  I can interact satirically or with nuanced perceptions to play out all the “What if’s” of what I’m seeing, same as I do in everyday reality.  Thank you, Motel 6.  Thank you Ryan, Randy, Jennifer and Steven (…cool guy, Steven).  Dunno if I’ll be back with full attention – I still like to move around the house multitasking when TVs are on – but I am nothing if not adaptable.  So I’m fine-tuning the concept of being a spectator.  I am an interactive spectator.  Hey, maybe I should tape THAT – the running commentary on whatever I’m “watching.”  Wouldn’t have to be just sarcasm, could add a touch of poignancy here, a little poetry there, and meaningful social/historical context…and let’s not forget romantic idealism, and – are you getting this?  This could blossom into a new reality TV show.  Imagine GUEST interactive spectators in my living room!  Like, like…hey, Steven, what are you doing next — uh-oh.  Got to shut down those rogue neurons in my papier-mâché brain before they go viral.  Shakespeare Sully’s imagination has left the building.

Thomas “Sully” Sullivan

http://www.thomassullivanauthor.com

http://www.facebook.com/#!/profile.php?id=1219261326

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http://www.amazon.com/The-Martyring-ebook/dp/B0069CIFL4/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1321818520&sr=1-1

Wazzup, World?  Goin’ for the jugular here.  This month’s column is gonna lay out the case for:  What You Should Spend Your Hard-Earned Moolah and Precious Time Reading.  Too glib?  Okay…rephrase. This month’s column is:  A Discussion of the Best and Worst Genres.  Too blunt?  No problem…upgrade to:  A Polemic on the “A Priori” Attributes of Meritworthy Prose.  Blah.  All right…the essay this month is:  Good Writing vs. Bad.  Except for one thing…

No matter how I style the title, I can’t tell one from the other, even as an example in kind of good or bad writing.

Haven’t a clue.  On the other hand, I’m reasonably sure no one else can make a universally agreed-upon distinction between good writing and bad either.  This is not a face-saving position for a writer to take.  Still, readers know what’s good or bad, don’t they?  The reader in each of us has no doubt whatever.  Consider the following:

Hannibal Gacy Geronimo from East Mungleopolis requires three copiously bleeding murders per chapter in order to avoid snoring.  Arty Pharty hates stories in which something actually happens.  Brandy Bonbon reads three books a week about women made beautiful by buff men with x-ray vision who see only their souls.  A. B. Cee prefers one-syllable words and anything past two gives him lip cramps as he sounds them out.  Howie Bangs reads from the waist down and pictures are a plus.  Gramma R. Wooden gets heartburn whenever she sees a dangling participle and will read a sentence fragment over and over until it completes itself or she gets a migraine, whichever comes first.  Al L. Gore zones out and does a face plant across any page with less than a graphic description of a pint of bile and two cups of other bodily fluids.  Dewey Gettit goes catatonic whenever he reads a metaphor — you know, things like Snow White or Sleeping Beauty or Rip van Winkle or…  And while Hugh G. Warfann loves a book about a man who stabs a blood-lust herd of saber-toothed tree shrews to death before taking out six laser-guided missile sites and saving the Universe from the do-deca-nano-mega bomb planted in a baby pacifier, Bambi Hart only wants to know how said hero FEELS about his wife and children while his life is passing before his eyes.

Bambi may have it right, if there is a right.  At least in so far as all stories need to get us on board emotionally.  Reader identification.  People Stories.  But is there a Golden Mean that reaches all those readers, a one-size-fits-all approach for the writer trying to communicate universally?  Can a writer appeal across content lines in a preference neutral style?

Short answer, no.  Oh, you can try to get it all in, but that’s like feeding each animal on Noah’s Ark every other species food.  Call that forced diet dim sum dumb, because you’ll wind up with all partakers who have an opposable thumb shoving it down their throats.  Still, across categories there is common ground in the use or omission of certain content and stylistic elements.  These have mostly to do with emphasis and proportion, I believe – in other words, how you serve up what you serve up.  But before you can decide the “how” you have to consider carefully what the choices are.  If you simply go with your artistic reflexes, you won’t have that choice (which is fine so long as you understand your narrowed focus).  Here are just a few balance elements that even in the most tightly strictured genre can help a writer adjust their aim to either narrow (fine tune) or broaden their range of readers.  I’ll present them as opposing couplets that represent reader preferences:

ACTION (spell it out, for crying out loud) VS. INFERENCE (oh, please, let me figure it out a little and don’t bore me with tired sensory bombardments – even adrenaline can become a cliché)

CHARACTERS DRIVEN BY FEAR (jangle me with cheap thrills and confirm my cynicisms about life) VS. CHARACTERS DRIVEN BY DESIRE (give me hope and fulfill my fantasies)

NARRATION (take me for a tightrope walk between show & tell) VS. DIALOG (let me overhear life just like it really happens)

THINGS & EVENTS (I know who I am, just put me some place and do something) VS. IDEAS & PEOPLE (been there, done that, so show me the impact and skip the meaningless action – if a tree falls and there’s no one around to hear it, does it make a…?)

PHYSICAL DETAIL (describe, describe, please) VS. EMOTIONAL/PSYCHOLOGICAL DETAIL (…yes, but what’s going on below the surface?)

ENHANCED LANGUAGE (metaphors, images, adjectives etc) VS. LITERAL LANGUAGE (grunt level nouns and verbs, please!)

ASSOCIATIVE FLOW OF TIME AND MEMORY (let me move freely through all aspects of people and their stories) VS. SEQUENTIAL WRITING (and then and then and then…)

There are many more juxtapositions, of course; but these are the potential imbalances I see that so often deny category writers a general readership and lock them into the most dogmatic corner within a genre.  Of course, you can do it all wonderfully right and you are still at the mercy of market perceptions and how you are promoted even after you are published.  Lots of luck on that one…

And I’ll close with deepest thanks for the astonishing volume of response from last month’s Q&A column [ http://storytellersunplugged.com/thomassullivan/2012/02/15/thomas-sullivan-of-silver-souls-and-carousels/  ].  Clearly many readers identified with me or my soulmate.  Advice, opinions and questions crossed all borders, and I very much appreciate the feelings and frustrations you shared.  Still weighing how to respond in some future Sullygram.  Meanwhile, being of Irish persuasion, I offer you this St. Paddy’s Day wisdom:  The trouble with a bore is that he lacks the power of conversation but not the power of speech.

Thomas “Sully” Sullivan

http://www.thomassullivanauthor.com

http://www.facebook.com/#!/profile.php?id=1219261326

http://twitter.com/thomassullivan

http://www.amazon.com/The-Martyring-ebook/dp/B0069CIFL4/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1321818520&sr=1-1

Like some infamous interrogation room, the designation “Q&A” is starting to take on the ring of doom for me.  I know I’ve been weaseling away from my prior commitment to use that format, but please do not doubt that I am exceedingly grateful for your questions and your interest.  No one could have more sensitive or astute readers than I have – love you all – and I take it as some kind of affirmation that I must be dealing with meaningful issues whenever I read your penetrating questions.  November’s column in particular brought in several dozen questions, most of them emotionally daunting for me, and something over half asking for details about what I meant by, “…almost found that single star to steer my ship.”  Jeani of Ventura, CA, may have expressed the gist of responses best:

“…You are wrong to think that ‘[no] one could relate to the rather emotionally spartan specifics of my life anyway.’ I’m sure others would be just as intrigued as I to hear tales of little Tommy Sullivan! You did not hatch, shaved head and all, in the middle of Elm Creek on skis. Actually, I might believe that, if I did not possess a little knowledge of you prior to that version.”

Well, as I commented back in November, I asked for it, didn’t I?  Thought I was going to be very candid and cleverly manage this, but now I’m thinking this is an onion, and I need to go one layer at a time.  Hmmm.  Not even convincing myself yet.  Sorta like saying I’ll tell the truth any day except the ones that end in “y.”  Okay, lemme ease in with a couple of softball questions first…

Q [Chicago, IL]: How cold do you like the MN whether before you shake your fist at it?  Bonus question: do you write with more clarity during the cold weather?

A: By the time it’s that cold, my fist is embalmed in double-insert gloves with heat packs.  And only a writer who has penned by candlelight in a cold garret could ask your bonus question.  Your inference is true, methinks, cold does seem to sharpen perceptions, as if each thought has the crystal clarity of an icicle.  But clarity of thought isn’t necessarily compelling in scenes that need emotion.  E.g. they say Hitler’s optimum working temp was 62°F when he wrote Mein Kampf – so maybe cold isn’t conducive to writing warm, fuzzy stuff.  Ever try writing in snow (no, not the way you’re thinking)?   “S’s” done with a ski pole look like backward “Z’s.”  In fact, any letters with curves done with a ski pole suck – I mean zuck.  Lots of luck writing SOS.

Q [from Bonny, USA – judging from the question]:  Do you ever watch American Idol? I love Stephen Tyler. His humor reminds me a bit of yours! When a person sang especially well the other night on Idol, he said Oh, I just had an eargasm ! I thought, that is something Sully would dream up!

A: Used to think I knew who I was, Bonny, but I get enough “you-remind-me-of’s” so that I now have an identity crisis and talk to myself in 7 languages.  I’m flattered at your choice though, as I’ve been compared with Boris Karloff, Dracula, Hugh Laurie, the kid who played Harry Potter’s enemy at Hogwarts, and others I care not to remember.  Only comparison I ever liked was Christopher Walken, and the only way I can see that is that Walken reminds me of my father.  Can’t say I actually sit down to watch American Idol, though I often have TVs on all over the house while I’m doing other stuff, so I’ve seen/heard Steven Tyler – and like him (and Aerosmith) – thank you very much.

Q [Johannesburg, Gauteng, South Africa]: Is any of your work in talking books?

A: SOON!  One of the very top audio readers in the world – Bob Walter – is doing THE MARTYRING as I write this.  Details forthcoming in an upcoming Sullygram.  BORN BURNING will follow thereafter, with four other novels on deck.

Q [mucho locales]: OK, gonna try to bundle the mega-faceted questions alluded to at the start of this column into a one-shot answer.  And I’ll use these two questions to summarize the batch: [Englewood, FL] “…I am most interested in more details about that ‘almost found that single star to steer my (your) ship’ you described ?” and [Hampstead, MD] “…you speak in mysteries and wonderments that leave me wondering now what did he mean and what happened that he and changed his mind and wonder wonder wonder. What single star did you find to steer your ship? Or what happened to cause you to say when irony has the upper hand the less likely you will be to find a true companion for the journey.”

A: When it comes to love, I’ve gone to waste all my life.  At least that’s what I thought.  The waste was sorta voluntary, because I never expected to meet my fantasy soulmate (ha ha ha ha).  Srsly.  It was even more unlikely because I never went looking.  Formally.  Ms. Soulmate would have to turn up in my environment somehow.  The thing of it is, when you rule out flesh and blood fulfillment of your dreams, it becomes safe to think free and live true to the highest romantic ideals of your heart, mind and soul.  You can fantasize a relationship that is virtual romantic perfection.  Which is what I did.  Only I should have known better than to tempt the gods of irony.  Because that’s when they dropped the biggest improbability of all into my improbable life.  Blindsided doesn’t cover it.  She wasn’t anywhere where it should’ve happened, and we were impossible, and I wasn’t going to do anything about it anyway.  But she walked into my blueprint for romantic perfection as if she had a script and had been practicing all her life for the role.  Not just fantasy perfection for all the senses – anyone’s senses – but of the heart, mind, soul in a rare way that made us a matched set…and I might have resisted even that, except that her values were totally contrary to what her looks and charms could’ve gotten her.  She was as counterintuitive as I am.  She defied all the rules of procedure, which was my final gatekeeper.  No games.  No gender dynamics.  She had the courage and the depth of love to tell me and make it happen.  How could I not love her for that alone?  Not that it was rushed.  She had known for years she told me, and yet she waited patiently while our minds met before our souls touched before our hearts melted before our bodies merged.  And all of this was like lightning igniting words and deeds out of every part of me I’d held back in life just so that I could give it to one transcendent person – to her.  I was like a little boy opening his hot little hand for the first time to offer up a shiny treasure he has hoarded because it is the essence of what he feels to the core.  And she took it.  Trembling.  We were both trembling.  Thereafter, inspiration, motivation and imagination went into overdrive far beyond the sweet sting of passion between us.  … Yeah, yeah, I know, it’s an old story.  But it’s not like I don’t know the drill of successfully evading heart/mind/soul commitment.  Given the improbabilities of my life, I use the word “unique” advisedly.  This was unique.  And tangled.  Hollywood pales.  And the gods of irony are still having their fun in a most unbelievable way.  Like I said previously, it only takes one star to steer a ship, if it’s the right star.  But even our galaxies collided – one of the first gifts she gave me was a picture of colliding galaxies along with the CD of Howie Day’s “You and I Collide” – only, like most galaxies, hers had a black hole in the center that gobbles up stars. … So that was probably the last chance for me to be domesticated.  Somewhere along the line the balance tips between avoiding loneliness and preserving romantic ideals.  The perfect equilibrium between being tamed and my unconventional life is likely gone.  Still, never say never.  Because if you do, those same gods of irony will take that as a challenge.  So, place your bets, kind readers – all you who have penetrated my abstractions from golden fields to white feathers – before we spin the wheel that spins the galaxy and sends the silver ball — silver soul — soaring round its cosmic carousel.  Yes?  No?  Permit me the arrogance to weigh in with an opinion, though I’ve never won a single dream.  It will be neither Yes nor No.  Place all your chips on the one sure bet.  That whatever happens to me next will be…unique.

Your thoughts are welcome, your attention valued.  I’m truly grateful for your interest and feedback.  And for those who have asked, my latest release is a low-priced e-book edition of my World Fantasy finalist for Best Novel available here:  http://www.amazon.com/The-Martyring-ebook/dp/B0069CIFL4/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1321818520&sr=1-1

Thomas “Sully” Sullivan

http://www.thomassullivanauthor.com

http://www.facebook.com/#!/profile.php?id=1219261326

http://twitter.com/thomassullivan

If something has to be kept secret, it must be true.  Secrets are self-proving.  Lies are loud and wear red hats, e.g. Santa Claus.  Okay, I’m being a tad glib here.  I do not mean that only secrets are true or that all red hats – i.e. loud proclamations — are lies (your red hat is still true blue, Santa).  But secrets tend to be true, else they wouldn’t need hiding.  I think that most people believe this at some level.  In fact some OVER-believe it, glomming onto every “exposed” secret as innately true because life after all is run by conspiracies and manipulative forces.  Consider the power that this reflex gives to persuasion.  Want someone to believe something outlandish?  Present it as a secret.

And in this way my premise statement moves from being a truism about content to a truism about style.  Because if you pretend something is secret only to make it seem valid when you expose it, you’ve given it the style of truth but not necessarily the substance.  And that can be a literary device to disarm the reader.  An effective literary device.  In fact, take it a step further.  Let the secret be some discovery you make contrary to what the writer is saying.  No truth is more acceptable than underlying truth you think you perceive by yourself, after all.  Better yet if you have to pry it out, testifying to your astuteness.  In this model the falseness is the literal statement, parading itself as truth.  The truth is the secret you discern hiding behind the falseness, and it is its opposite.  Thus we have Mark Twain giving us his truth about all humans being of equal worth by having Huck Finn believe he is going to hell for helping the runaway slave Jim escape.  The world has it backwards, Twain is showing us.  Social morality is the real falseness and Huck Finn in the simple purity and honesty of his soul has it right though he believes he will go to hell for his choice.  Edgar Allen Poe gives us an even more direct stylistic example in the beginning of “The Tell-Tale Heart.”  “True!” his first person narrator tells us too loudly in the very first word, “nervous, very dreadfully nervous I was and am, but why will you say I am mad?”  Already you know the character is mad.  (“Methinks he doth protest too much.”)  He is in your face, asserting his “truth” so loudly that you immediately know it’s a lie.

Life is full of opposites, isn’t it?  It is tempting – particularly in an improbable life like mine – to put more faith in the counterintuitive then into the face value of things.  But that would be another grave error.  Nevertheless, it is counterintuitiveness that seems to yield the most insight into truth when it comes to understanding people and presenting characters.  We are devious, after all, you and I; yet relatively transparent as well to the observer who has developed objectivity.  So, in human behavior, it is often enlightening to look for opposites, contrasts, and apparent contradictions lurking beneath the surface.

These show up most clearly under stress, but with some people the occurrence is pathological.  I find these pathological types to be the most predictable because they always try to be unpredictable, and I often use them for catalyst characters.  They are people who have discovered a game, a posture, an attitude, or a tone that works for them.  They are usually one-trick types who continually use the single gimmick of reverse psychology.  Over time they tend to lose credibility, and so they wear their audiences down to the gullible, the susceptible, or the impaired.  You might see them holding forth where education is scarce, or playing the victim, or sounding witty under neon lights just before “last call.”  Drunk or sober, “in the country of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.”  Their conflicts are seldom internal but instead come from trying to manipulate the external world.  That’s why they make good catalyst characters.

More fascinating to me are people who are internally conflicted, because they are not neatly consistent or as predictable.  Especially if their emotions are strong.  This happens more with women than men.  And, no, I’m not saying that women are less rational than men.  But I am saying that they tend to be influenced by a more complex range of emotions than men usually are.  In evolutionary terms, anger and aggressiveness work strongest for archetypal men, while a fuller range of emotions has more survival value for archetypal women.  The former (male) tends to solve immediate tactical problems and be direct; the latter (female) may address long-term strategic goals and be indirect.  Which is probably why women get hung with the tag of being unpredictable.  In any event, if this makes sense to you, you can easily see why marketing biases favor physical action books for men (external conflicts) and emotional tension books for women (internal conflicts).  Of course, just as in reality these stereotypes of men and women exist as a mix within individuals of either sex, fully developed writing reflects a mix of simple action and character complexity no matter what the genre or gender.  The nod, though, goes toward internal conflicts with its focus on substantial characterization, if only because most readers are women.  I like that.  It takes me right back to the deliciously counterintuitive wildcard that emotions introduce.

Think of how many things can go wrong with internal conflicts as opposed to external.  In external you have things and events; in internal you have things and events plus all the interpretations and psychological/emotional consequences of external happenings.  Internal is where external crosses into human experience, the nerve center, the point of impact – if a tree falls, does it make a sound?  (Does it matter to you, if you don’t hear it – if you don’t internalize it?)  If you want to experience and communicate life fully, free your characters to be human.  Let them become contradictory, confused, emotional, unstable and changeable – then let them find their way back (or not).  And while you’re at it, free yourself from being that writer/person who has a one-trick pathology and writes/sees with one eye open in the country of the blind.  With two eyes open in life, you have twice the chance of seeing the magic.

Your thoughts are welcome, your attention valued.

Thomas “Sully” Sullivan

http://www.thomassullivanauthor.com

http://www.facebook.com/#!/profile.php?id=1219261326

http://twitter.com/thomassullivan

Happy to be able to offer a job – well, half a job – to any readers who are receptive to same.  Here ‘tis.  Q&A.  You write the questions, I write the answers.  Pay is just the same for both of us.  Srsly.  I am amazed at your feedback, touched by your sharing, daunted by your killer questions, and grateful for your support.  Last month’s vignette of my Avatar moment at Elm Creek in particular brought in lots of e-mail world-wide with stories of magic, fate, and romantic destiny.  So, as promised, here is Bride of Q&A – Q&A 3.  I picked the questions this time based on one of three qualities: either they were things I’m asked repeatedly, are of general interest to writers, or are just plain fascinating and challenging to answer…

Q [Gatlinburg, TN]: When you write a novel how do you prove it’s not slander?  

A: First, understand that slander is verbal; libel is print.  In either case, the best defense is whether or not what you state is true.  Since you are writing fiction, you have another level of protection because you are not claiming it’s true.  In nonfiction your purpose in reporting facts must not be to harm someone with malicious intent, whether or not that becomes an unintended consequence of the truth.  

Q [Zhirkov, Russian Federation & others]: Why do you shave your head?   …      [Fontana, California]: Why do you shave your head in the rain?

A: To take a load off my mind.  Besides, I am in no danger of being mistaken for a Chia pet, and all-or-none is more my style, so I’d rather prune than preen.  As for the rain, you must be referring to the photo some team members took while we were building a church school in the Dominican Republic.  When you are in a part of a country where running water is infrequent, keeping an eye to the sky for purposeful plumbing makes sense.  However, I do not recommend it for flushing toilets.

Q [Roodepoort, S. Africa]: You wrote about your favorite fiction authors a few months back, do you read nonfiction and who are your favorite nonfiction authors?

A: Again, don’t want to rank order writers who include friends, so I’ll just say that I’m currently reading one fav I’ve never met – Mark Steyn, a political commentator whose savoir-faire, genteel manner, wit and intelligence are every bit in the class of Alastair Cook.  Love to read historical, social, political observations from people who come from multiple cultures on either side of the socialism/capitalism divide and can see America objectively. … And, yes, I’m a closet geek who daily combs the Internet for info, including world headlines in translation, the Drudge report for links to news that gets ignored or doesn’t fit the so-called mainstream media’s template/agenda, and especially science sources of every stripe.  I read far more nonfiction than fiction and have all my life.  And if you ask me to weigh into conversation with social commentary, history, or the oceans of science and philosophy percolating in my thin paper skull, I’ll deny everything I just wrote, unless you want to listen to me for the rest of your life or eternity, whichever comes first.  So far, no one has taken me up on the offer, though now and then I get asked why I play dumb.  Who’s playing? 

Q [Oak Grove, MN]: Is the waterfall you’ve photographed situated next to a bike path in Maple Grove?

A: Yes.  Runs parallel to Elm Creek south of Elm Creek Park.  The waterfall isn’t dangerous except for a couple of months a year, but the boulders that appear when t’s drying up can be treacherous.  I know a young man who had to be choppered out of there with a head injury.

Q [Oak Grove, MN]: What has caused you the greatest pain in your life?

A: Spectacular.  Too intriguing to ignore, too probing to answer without flinching.  Should everyone ask themselves this?  Well, it’s a question no one would ask unless they had asked it of themselves, so you deserve some kind of candor.  Okay.  What would be the most painful thing to a romantic idealist who has created multiple paths – paradoxical paths – to follow through life, always keeping the central one as perfect as ideals allow, which of course means it would be impossible in the real world?  Would it be first to discover that the central path was – astonishingly – not only possible but that it had become seemingly inevitable (ah, be careful what you wish for) . . . and then to have it founder pointlessly, tragically, in a way that stumbled over surreal perceptions?  Kind of like successfully walking barefoot the length of a high wire across the Grand Canyon in pitch black night, then tripping over imaginary shoelaces at sunrise as you stroll blissfully unsuspecting over terra firma on the other side.  …  Forgive the generalization for an answer, but I don’t think anyone could relate to the rather emotionally spartan specifics of my life anyway.  The idea of irony, however, is more likely to match the experiences of others, whether it involves something ideal, extreme commitment, blindsiding perceptions, or all of the above. 

Q [Tranca, Philippines]: Why aren’t you writing new books?   …   [Hampstad, Maryland & many others]: When is your next book coming out?

A: I’ve decided to write to the world one person at a time.    Srsly, I know I’ve parlayed carp ‘n’ tuna syndrome ops into an excuse for not working book length, and if procrastination is the thief of time, I’m guilty of grand larceny.  But what with the Sullygram newsletters, this column, blogs, blurbs & forewords for other authors, and mucho correspondence, it seems like I’m writing more than ever.  And somewhere in that procrastination of novels I decided this was also a great time to reincarnate myself yet again, back into my original literary mainstream.  All options are still on the table for me.  Like a train moving through freight yards, I just keep getting longer and longer.  That said, I’m answering this particular question in order to announce that I’ve come to terms with two different companies this month (on the same day!) to begin bringing out my work, old and new, in e-book, audio and print formats.  The first two releases will come out as e-books.  And – ta da! – here’s a flash: the first release is – wait for it, wait for it –TODAY!  Just hours ago Crossroad Press released my Best Novel Finalist from WorldFantasy Con, THE MARTYRING, in E-book form in time for Christmas.  And Tell-Tale Publishing Group will similarly be bringing out BORN BURNING, whose popularity has now pushed it to a 4^th English language edition in two decades.  At $3.99 the E-publishing debut – which can be downloaded and read in any reader, including on a computer – makes a good stocking stuffer, so count on it, I’ll be most appreciative of anyone putting one or both on their holiday list.  Here’s the link where you can get THE MARTYRING now – http://store.crossroadpress.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=101_22_28&products_id=488  – and it will also be available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Smashwords in a few days.  My webmaster will be updating our website shortly to include all info: www.thomassullivanauthor.com .

And here’s a special offer I think I can keep up with if I prepare ahead of time.  If you give THE MARTYRING to someone, let me know and I’ll send them an author’s greeting to go with the e-book on Christmas Day or on whatever holiday you may celebrate.  Just email me at mn333mn@earthlink.net and include their name and the email address where you want me to send the greeting. 

Finally, if it walks like a chicken, and talks like a chicken, at my house we call it turkey on Thanksgiving Day, but there are no substitutions for my warmest wishes to you every day of the year!  My genuine best to you all!  Your thoughts are welcome, your attention valued.

Thomas “Sully” Sullivan

http://www.thomassullivanauthor.com

http://www.facebook.com/#!/profile.php?id=1219261326     

http://twitter.com/thomassullivan  

As one control freak to another…  Uh-oh, way to go, Sully.  You’ve alienated your entire readership already.  But the essential thing about being human – about being anything with a pulse and choices – is trying to control one’s living conditions to make them beneficial to one’s self, isn’t it?  AKA survival.  Like I was saying, as one control freak to another, what might you notice about all those items in the title above?

Did you say they are all things beyond one’s personal control?   Or maybe you just thought, I hate friggin’ questions that try to force me to someone else’s answer, because that’s REALLY controlling!  Either way you reach the central point here: CONTROL IS THE SELECTIVE WAY WE ACCUMULATE PERSONAL BENEFITS AND ELIMINATE THREATS TO OUR WELL-BEING.  (Unless maybe you are an ant or a bee or a communist, in which case you derive your identity only as part of the collective.)

But what if the choices you make in establishing control end up controlling you, limiting you, ceasing to be a benefit?  We grow, after all, and as our needs change, the controls we opted for as security and fulfillment may confine us.  In fact, this is what happens to all of us to one degree or another, I believe.  If you feel like you are trapped by routine and dying inch by inch in the circumstances of your life, the point may not need emphasis.  And if you are a writer – or anyone creative – control may be that faceless enemy you call “writers block,” or maybe you call it boredom or stagnancy or something slightly more accurate that reflects your frustration like…fallow, sedentary, freedom-crushing, soul-rotting premature death.

In such a frame of mind you may regard that list in the title of this essay as the cause of your plight.  Bad joss, you sigh and knuckle under to life’s myriad social mechanisms, myths and pressures that keep you in line (now that’s CONTROLLING).  But those phantom concepts in the title are your escape route, and you should invite them into your daily life with urgent fervor.  Privately…if it must be (you are already living a secret life – shhh.)  You can call those title items anything you wish, but what they really represent is breaking with routine, abandoning the rut, making a right turn when familiar stresses demand you turn left.  Trust your gut – unless it’s filled with fear and guilt.  Fear and guilt bestow false virtue and lock one into a charade of honesty.  Trust your gut if your dreams are still nourishing you there.  Cultivate those terms I’ve used in the title as if they are your universal visa, your all-border pass to all things and all places.  Because that’s what they are.

You wanna take a test drive?  OK.  Escape with me.  Let me switch to my Cannibal Essay format, and give you an example.  How did I shake up my day today?  When did the magic get invited in?  Pick a time.  9:30 AM?…9 ½ is good.  We’re biking up the street on the way to anywhere/everywhere, specific destination unknown, and we stop in at Norby Nation – a family of seven who have sort of adopted me.  In my pocket are five Werther’s butterscotch candies, which I pass out to the kids, who are all clearing weeds from the backyard garden under their father’s (my buddy Bruce’s)direction.  I tell them that the candies are seeds and that if they plant them, a Werther’s tree will grow.  Annaliese – who from age 8 has appointed herself as my personal critic and social advisor – puts me to the test.  She plants one as a challenge to my credibility.  An uh-oh moment for me?  Nay.  This is kismet, serendipity – all those good terms in the title of this essay.  See, this is where you escape the pattern, the rut, and invite the magic in.  I mean, take note, you are hearing from one of the guardians of magic, a child!  You do not chuckle adult-like and blow it off.  Instead, you hie yourself to Walmart’s and buy a 1-foot tall tree (plastic is OK), and then you cram the branches full of Werthers and plant it in NN’s backyard.  Congratulations, you have just broken the Law of Living Tediously – jailbreak, jailbreak! – and your imagination is on the loose, because even if that plastic tree doesn’t take root, something else has.  Read the title again.  You have to nudge that stuff.  It’s there.  And when you do – when you let motivation spark imagination – you kick down the door to inspiration and things just start to HAPPEN.  Trust me, magic is looking for us.  Read on…

So, we’ve opened the door, left the beaten path of the ordinary just by doing a silly little thing, an eccentric thing, crazy and free.  And now we are taking a hike to Elm Creek, a 5600 acre park preserve, thundering along, enlivened by what just happened, keenly in tune with the open-endedness all around us, the sense of prerogative and the existential nature of nature.  The outré forces have stopped being coy with us, because we are true believers…so here it comes, here it comes…the magic!

Only, remember, this really happened and you’re borrowing my life, so you have to understand a little personal histoire first.  The exact spot where I’m standing is sacred ground to me, a place where on March 27, years ago now, I spent the most miraculous afternoon of my life.  So I’ve never stopped revisiting it or celebrating its magic.  It was very much like the romantic idealism of the forest scene in the movie Avatar where Neytiri discovers that Jake Sully (…hey, you know I didn’t write the script!) is the Chosen One because the floating seeds of the Sacred Tree suddenly waft to his arms and shoulders.  And that’s exactly what happens now. I am standing there in this galvanizing place and a half dozen diaphanous seeds floating from whatever mundane source suddenly catch a puff of something’s breath and settle gently on my arms and chest.  Have you ever had that happen with more than one dogwood or dandelion or milkweed “Santa Claus” at the same time?  I don’t know what the seeds were, but at that moment…in that place…parodying that movie right down to my name and romantic history/destiny…?  Wishful thinking, you say. OK.  But life takes place between the ears, and this essay is all about awareness.  Magic follows the path of least resistance, and like I said, when you put yourself in the way of fate, destiny, serendipity, karma, kismet and star-crossed ironies and coincidences, you allow internal realities to trump life’s external appearances.

So, yeah, I’m still a control freak (but one who knows where and when and how to be just the opposite).  I like to analyze (but not judge) and to notice patterns – especially the non-pattern pattern that refutes all other patterns.  Transcendent living begins where you drop logic, relinquish control, and embrace the intuition that arises from some nameless repository of the soul that harbors perfection, quantum leaps of imagination, insight without anchors, and – by any name you choose – magic!

Now, you take control – because even though I enjoy your company, you’re not going to be original if you’re following anyone.  I have no idea where your path goes.  I’m just suggesting that you have to DO something.  Something that refutes what you normally do.  Permit the meaningful and the imaginative to penetrate the predictable and the dull in your life.  It doesn’t have to be dramatic, but it can’t be automatic – i.e. routine.  Drive a different route, shop a different store, walk backward, whistle, splash in puddles as you hike in the rain, confront a lie, pursue a hidden truth, get out in nature away from four walls, talk to yourself when you’re alone and say all the things you don’t dare say in anyone’s presence, sleep on the floor, climb a tree, shout, laugh, revisit the best memory in your life in any way you can (and the worst), phone someone who inspires you, stay up all night, whisper your dreams to a star, whisper your FORBIDDEN dreams to a star.  OR…you can just skip all that and get through life with as little creativity and adventure as possible.  But as the saying goes, if you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you’ve always got.

Your thoughts are welcome, your attention valued.

Thomas “Sully” Sullivan

http://www.thomassullivanauthor.com

http://www.facebook.com/#!/profile.php?id=1219261326

http://twitter.com/thomassullivan

The Grand Inquisitor of the Spanish Inquisition hisself – Torquemada – has nothin’ on you guys!  What a bonanza of questions and comments came in from around the globe last month in response to the Q. & A. format.  Probing, intelligent, deep and even beastly stuff – and damn near Truth or Dare.  You’re having altogether too much fun with this.  Do I get to cross-examine?  O.K.  Let’s go with it a-just-a-one-more-time (who sang that?).  And keep sending your questions in, so that I can revisit the format (won’t use your name).  Send any questions, specific or broad ranging.  It only takes one star to guide a ship – if it’s the right star – and each question I get is like a new supernova charting an interesting course.

Q. [Tamil Nadu, India] Did you shoot that mosquito in the bathroom?  [Refers to last month’s column: http://storytellersunplugged.com/thomassullivan/2011/08/15/thomas-sullivan-panning-gold-freedom-the-great-shopping-cart-fiasco/  ] 

A. She’s still waiting me out.  No more baths in the dark for me until this is over.

Q. [Quincy, MA] I published exactly one story, and that was for free.  What should I expect to get for a short story?  What’s the least to the most you get? 

A. Well, FREE might be just a little on the lean side – I mean, how easy do you wanna look – but virtually no one makes a living from short pieces, so if you got a little exposure and a decent credential out of it, consider it a worthy entry point.  There are a lot of literary and pulp pubs struggling to survive out there, and they may pay as little as 1/8 cent a word or two free copies or a bottle of scotch.  That said, I don’t remember selling anything for less than 10 cents a word.  My best payday for a short story began way back in 1979 with Omni Magazine paying me 28 cents a word for “The Mickey Mouse Olympics”– a story that continued to sell reprints until it netted me thousands of dollars.  But that’s rare.  I suggest you recognize that short stories prime the pump, if you are trying to establish your name for novels.  If that’s the case, the money isn’t all that important.  Once you’ve achieved recognition, short stories may simply be a way to keep in contact with readers, or you may opt for putting all your time into longer works.  For me short pieces are often the afterbirth of novels – leftover creative energy – and I seldom write them now except by commission from an editor.  The exception for me would be to do a collection of just my work, which to this date I’ve never attempted.  Finally, there is always the possibility of a movie even from a short story.  Francis Ford Coppola picked up the rights to one of mine, and it has been brought to my attention that another seems to have been the basis for a successful film, though it was never credited – which is the problem, because you can’t copyright ideas, only the expression thereof, and short stories generally require expansive scripts which can get around that.

Q. [San Diego, CA] What bores you? 

A. NOTHING.  Except maybe sophomoric people who can’t stop talking about beer.  I skipped that whole college beer-worshiping thing, so drinking just seems like a giant sleepfest to me.  I guess you could say I’m bored by anything that reduces maximum awareness and feeling. 

Q. [Toronto, Canada] Do you have any rules about writing sex scenes?

A. ROTFL.  Ah, sex…glad to see it made it through customs to Canada!  Sorry, sorry.  Rules, rules about sex — well, that’s a buzz-kill for openers, eh?  Kidding.  Not entirely, though.  Rules for sex are as unique as the desires of two consenting adults.  And so the rules problem for the writer is: Who are you writing for?  Because everyone who willfully reads your sex scene is sorta your consenting adult.  You will almost certainly offend or disappoint one extreme of reading tastes or another, while maybe satisfying everyone in between to varying degrees.  Different strokes for different folks, so to speak.  What is your purpose in the sex scene; i.e., shock? gratuitous pandering to grunt graphics? plot twist? character development (seriously)? emotional tour de force? the ultimate act of romantic love? the defining discovery of two soulmates? pure (or impure) titillation?  It would be easier if you were writing to one person, as in a love letter.  So when you’ve decided who you’re writing to, maybe that’s the way to think of it.  An audience of one.  I think most writers write sex scenes to themselves.  Which is kinda narcissistic.  If you’re writing to someone else, it should be altruistic.  Think I explained it better in a comment on my Facebook wall recently.  Let me be clear, art is an imitation of nature, and if I’m interested in writing about a guy and a German Shepherd for 300 pages, I’ll write that.  But I’m not really focused on gratuitous sex.  Okay, with those as givens, let me borrow from a comment I made on someone else’s column a while back.  To wit: There are a couple of other checkpoints for me in writing a sex scene.  One is the degree of exxx-plicitness vs. implicitness.  Sort of deciding where to point the camera.  Ditto the microphone.  And do you include the diary of what’s going on in either character’s/animal’s/group’s thoughts and emotions?  If you ECU with the camera locked on a tripod with full lighting, you end up with dessert but no nutrition.  Catch the shadows and silhouettes, the breathing, glistening flashes and the hiss of fingers through the sheets and it becomes sexuality and sensuousity.  Another decision for me as a writer is whether or not the scene is really about some other words, like “love,” “passion” or “romance” — which incline (recline?) toward “sexuality” (the aura and meaning of sex) as opposed to “sex” (flailing body parts).  And finally, the framing has major importance to me.  Call it foreplay and aftermath.  The latter tends to get more internal, maybe even stream-of-consciousness.  But it tells a lot about the degree of emotion in the characters.  All of these representations in a sex scene can be just as significant by their absence as their presence, though sometimes you have to point to that a little, i.e. show it in some overt way as opposed to just leaving a void.

Q.  Is the white feather still out in that field?

A.  Yes…if you know what it looks like, lo, these several years and counting.

Your thoughts are welcome, your attention valued.  (Thanks for the questions – keep ‘em comin’!)

Thomas “Sully” Sullivan

http://www.thomassullivanauthor.com

http://www.facebook.com/#!/profile.php?id=1219261326     

http://twitter.com/thomassullivan

Help…I have locked myself in the bathroom with a loaded pistol and I don’t know how much time I have left before I pull the trigger.  I know this is where I have to be now.  It’s a desperate move, but I am desperate.  I saw the mosquito fly in here, and if I don’t get it, it will get me…sometime in the early dawn…just when I’ve entered REM sleep mode.  So I’ll wait.  Sooner or later I’ll hear the little sucker hum, and that’s when I blast away.  But what to do in the meantime?  I have my wireless, so I guess I’ll write my column now.  No notes but I have all my e-mail.  Good time to write that column I’ve been thinking about for a long time, using some of the many interesting questions I get from around the world.  Maybe I’ll make it into a format to use now and again.  Maybe you’d like to ask me something for a future column.  So, ask me something.  Anything at all.  About writing, not about writing, something personal, something general.  Just send your questions to mn333mn@earthlink.net .  I won’t use your name.  You guys are so fascinating.  You should see the questions…well, you will, you will.  I’ll try to use ones that are relative to a lot of readers, but also a zinger or two.  Here are four…

 Q. [Victoria, Australia] How do you handle rejection?

 A.  Mine it.  It’s like panning for gold.  You examine the slosh for any bright nuggets that might enhance your fortunes.  Most of the time it will be just generic sand and gravel – editor comments that simply indicate your material isn’t really a fit for their narrow window of the moment.  It doesn’t mean that YOU and your children have been rejected.  Funny marks you put on paper have been rejected.  I’ve never heard of anyone who was told, Hey, give it up.  You are worthless, and so is your crapola writing!  But now and then there may be a glint of possibility in the sand and gravel you dredge up from a market to which you have submitted – mention of a specific element that you could change to fit their needs, or a critical reason they believe you should consider, or simply enthusiasm for your work in the hope that you will write something that is a fit for them.  On the latter score, one of my earliest rejections called my work, perfect, flawless, brilliant . . . and went on to say, in essence, we don’t want it.  Business is always subjective and rarely if ever is there such a thing as objective excellence in publishing.  So you mine the rejections for future possibilities.  If you’re going to take it personally, I suggest you separate anger and frustration from proactive marketing.  Have the envelope (or computer file) and logistics all mapped out for your next submission BEFORE a ms can be bounced.  If you then receive a rejection, immediately go through the process of turning that ms around and getting it back into the marketplace prior to throwing a hissy fit that ends in a blue funk of paralyzing depression.  Giving up requires only fear and a lack of courage and leads nowhere.  Not giving up is an end in itself, granting you a journey, and is the only way to reach Oz.  That doesn’t mean you have to be stupid about which direction you set off for or stay on.  Dead ends are all too common.  But it does require that as you discover the best road for you, you take it.

 Q. [Ranchi, India] You seem so free and full of energy in your Sullygrams.  How does one achieve that?  Were you always like that or did success just give you the luxury? 

 A.  Mmmm, how to make the complex answer as simple as possible?  Lemme take on the energy part first.  Because, aside from the genetics (all my family enjoy very active longevity), I believe that energy is a direct consequence of freedom.  You can’t reach your maximum output if you aren’t enthused, and you can’t be enthused if you’re living repressed, compromised, hypocritically or under some other kind of falseness.  Writers especially need to be free.  I’m not talking about the clichéd image of a bohemian artist, but a certain amount of nonconformity is obviously a part of creativity, and that means escaping the soul-crushing falseness I just described.  And, yes, as far back as I can remember I’ve always rebelled against that kind of pressure.  As I grew up, it became more of a conscious thing, I suppose, because many people yearn for that freedom but end up trapped in very unsatisfying lives.  They try to fake their own fulfillment, taking to heart the expectations of friends, relatives, relationships, careers and society as they attempt to will themselves into roles that smother their most basic freedoms to think, feel, dream and just generally interact with the emotional, intellectual and psychological fullness of who they really are.  For me, living a life of quiet desperation out of the misguided belief that it serves a greater good is (and was for a major chunk of my life) just tragically absurd.  It never serves the greater good to let your life be wasted, and it isn’t noble.  At best, it patronizes those you are fooling and is an affront to whatever created you.  That said, I don’t condemn anyone for living under any kind of yoke if that’s how they spell S-E-C-U-R-I-T-Y.  In fact, anyone who thinks they’re not living a lie at least some of the time is living at least that much of a lie all of the time.  Do I ever find myself trapped in a situation where I don’t want to crash someone else’s expectations at the same time that I need to carve out freedom for myself?  Sure.  But I will not let myself be bullied by fear and guilt.  It’s so easy to get the guilt backwards – letting others shrink-wrap us, stunting that intellectual and emotional fullness I mentioned above.  Isn’t it strange that so many of us feel guilty when we refuse to live DISHONESTLY?  How wrong is that?  But even that kind of usurpation can’t keep you from at least visiting freedom every day.  It can be a place, a relationship, an outlet, a private communication, or – ideally – all of the above.  My parents had exactly that – all of the above – so I know freedom can be shared.  But if I had not grown up with that model, I’d probably tell you it’s impossible to be so mutually focused with someone else.  I do not have that in my life, though I know that I was bred to it.  Like a one-owner dog, my loyalties are single-minded and never-ending.  A few years ago someone made me understand that about myself – that I need a substitute for what my parents had that I do not have, i.e. the all of the above.  That, it seems to me, is the spark I must nurture daily, even if by myself or in pieces with others.  Call it romantic idealism, really.  If I lose the inspiration of something perfect and magical in my life, I lose my freedom. 

 Q. [Manchester, UK] Who are your favorite authors?

 A.  Oh, I could be in a lot of trouble with this one, so I’m just going to mention a few authors I don’t know personally.  Vladimir Nabokov qualifies, as a side effect of being dead.  Obscure, pedantic, plotless and full of self-told jokes, Nabokov nevertheless captures the afterghosts of light, shadows and echoes, and understands how to use time and memory better than any other writer I know.  John Cheever could escape sequence in much the same way on occasion.  And among the living, I love E. Annie Proulx’s work, and – my current favorite – anything by Mark Helprin.  This is the Helprin who wrote WINTER’S TALE, not the Mark Helprin of the news media.  I also wish I could read Carlos Ruiz Zafon in Spanish better than I do, though even the translations are passably good.

 Q. [Catskill, NY…from a former swimmer of mine] Can you tell me the story about the time you pushed the shopping cart off the 10 meter platform…I am recalling stories from my youth to tell my daughter, she just turned 19 last week.

 A.  Ah, the Great Shopping Cart Fiasco.  I’m so ashamed.  Don’t know what came over me.  But there it was, on the deck – a supermarket cart that kickboards were sometimes stored in.  So when I saw it that fateful morning next to the 18-foot deep diving well in the 55-yard long pool, it just struck me that it would be magnificent to watch it descend from the 10-meter platform and break that crystal surface in the well.  A 33-foot soar in the silence of the dawn and then a slow settling to the bottom like the Titanic.  Hope to tell you, it was hell hauling it up there.  Narrow, zigzag staircase ascending through all three platforms.  But, hey, I was the 97-pound version of Superman in those days, right?  (…hot damn, still am ).  Anyway, it must’ve taken 20 min. to drag it up those cocoa-matted stairs, clinging to the rungs with one hand, hanging onto the dead weight of the cart with the other while trying to thump it up one more step and another and another, all without committing sudden-death by pitching off the sprawling divers gestalt of platforms and boards (I am terrified of heights).  So, when at last the cart was up there, I went through a little ritual of running it the full length of the platform and pushing it off the end, savoring the freefall and smiling with satisfaction – though it did not waft to the bottom like the Titanic but rather sank like a stone (duh).  Then I turned to descend the stairs, and that’s when the Detroit police car pulled out of the bushes up to the iron fence next to the diving platform.  Both officers got out of the car to regard me on high, and the ensuing conversation was brief but earnest.  “Why did you do that, son?” floated up to me as in a dream.  Realizing that I had been ambushed by a bush, and that they had been parked behind it through the whole preliminary of bloody cart being dragged up three stories, I allowed as to how I had brought the thing up there for the divers towels and that it had slipped.  In retrospect, I can see that that was a tad lame…a ton lame actually.  I probably should’ve said something like I had a seizure, or better yet, that Birdman [my swimmer] made me do it.  But there it was, the treacherous absurdity “slipped.”  The nice officers just kept smiling and staring.  And then they told me to “get it out of there.”  There?  They couldn’t possibly mean out of the 18-foot deep well, right?  The well whose steep sides sloped abruptly up to the 9-foot deep level?  Yes, alas, they could mean that.  And they stayed there for the next hour or so while Seaweed Sully set world records for frustration, for holding his breath, and for futile attempts to raise the Titanic.  Each effort was the same: push the diabolical cart up the sloping sides of the well by kicking breaststroke like a banshee; and if it finally made it to the 9-foot level where it teetered on the slightly lesser slope of the 55-yard pool, hook one foot through the handle and frantically bob for air.  I was like the Coyote and the cart was like the Roadrunner.  Inevitably, air and gravity would win.  Which is to say the cart would slide back into the depths, and I would gasp and gurgle for a while in plain view of two stony-faced cops.  But then there came that one superb effort, which cost me several million brain cells (though I could not have had many more than that when I hatched the idea, could I), when I managed to get the cart not only out of the well, but a few feet further up the length of the 55-yard pool to where it was perhaps 8 feet deep.  This worked well for the oxygen, though I was now developing Charlie horses.  The idea here was that I had to get the cart out of the deep-well end of the pool and all the way to the other end, which was about 5 feet deep, so that I could somehow hoist it onto the deck.  You may recall, Birdman, that the curb edge of the pool all the way around was probably a good 2 feet high as well, since it doubled as starting blocks.  So, when I finally managed to breaststroke kick the cart the whole length of the pool as if it were a kickboard, it was another tactical feat to drag it out by hanging onto the poles of the ladder with one arm.  The kicker – so to speak – was that when Detroit’s finest left the scene, another swimmer – can’t remember if it was BN or maybe KK (you remember when I trapped him in the sewer and also got Big John to serve the phony extradition papers on him after he broke out of jail in the Bahamas?) – came blithely onto the deck.  Immediately I suggested that he haul the supermarket cart up to the 10-meter and push it off.  Which that swimmer did.  Alas, I scrutinized the bushes in vain, because no Keystone cops showed to make the pinch.  Some days are just like that.  [Photo at top is from the 10-meter, but you can only just see the start of the well at the very bottom of the pix]

Don’t forget to send me your own questions.  Your thoughts are welcome, your attention valued.

Thomas “Sully” Sullivan

http://www.thomassullivanauthor.com

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Hey, you want to bug out with me?  You know, ditch this horrible, awful agony of trying to create characters, plots and settings?  I’ll tell you a secret.  When your imagination goes stale, you don’t have to put it to bed until it recovers.  In fact, that may be the worst – and certainly the longest – way to refill the well.  I call that the AMNESIA METHOD.  You simply stop working until the ruts you were in fade away and your words stop echoing in your head and the plot quits running the same maze into the same dead ends.  Amnesia.  Yeah, it works about as effectively as a dried out eraser on printing with a grease pencil.  Leaves a smear that you still see when you come back to the task. 

The AMNESIA METHOD is sorta like waiting for an inflammation to die down, after which everything has atrophied.  Better you should rehab.  Better to keep using your imagination, keep the Muse employed.  I call this the DISTRACTION METHOD.  The idea is that you are not so much worn out as you are simply bored.  So what you need is an escape, a distraction, a whole new set of stimuli and the more overwhelming the better.  Those ruts you were in came from the inventory of words and ideas you had on tap at the time, so the quicker you change out that inventory, the sooner you are back in action.  No waiting for amnesia to make the stagnant words/ideas look fresh again.

So, I repeat my invitation – come along with me while I practice what I preach.  Today is Famous Dave’s Bluesfest down at Peavey Plaza in Minneapolis.  10 hours, 10 bands.  I hate crowds, but today I will co-mingle with the masses in order to shift the gears of my imagination.  As long as you keep moving, you can hide in plain sight.  More importantly, you will not be distracted while you’re busy distracting yourself.  Nothing will tie you down.  You will be able to think, observe, and move back and forth between two concert stages, multi-tiered fountains, steaming barbecue pits of succulent ribs, spontaneous dancers carving out their funky space, and the frosty vapors exuding from Ben & Jerry’s cavernous coolers.  Hang with me here; this isn’t as arbitrary as it may seem.  You are a drive-by observer, interacting with everyone and no one.  Intrude wherever you wish, like a bee in a garden, but keep it brief.  Music will insulate you, draw you, free you to move on.  Why don’t you talk to the musicians between sets, and maybe help that old black lady over there with a cane trying to cross the paving stones in the fountains?  And why is that six-year-old in the sailor hat crying?  Ask him.  Put some style into it and see if your mojo works on him. (You’re a wordsmith, after all – a poet!)

Okay.  I can see you are physically here, but you aren’t HERE yet, are you?  When you are truly here, you will disappear into whatever here is but without actually joining it.  You will empathize with all of it in a way that would seem alien to you when you have your walls up.  You will do this with insight, sincerity, and a kind of respect.  Remember the thing you are supposed to be expert on – you are a writer, a creator of worlds.  Get out of yourself, open up your senses, your mind.  You don’t have to judge what’s around you, but do feel it, analyze it, because it is utterly real!  What a mix.  Lookee, lookee – there’s an elderly couple from affluent Minnetonka with their seat cushions and umbrellas, dressed meticulously to the nines, but sitting on the same concrete step as the desperate-looking goth teen to their left and the grizzled Hispanic dude on their right who might be a night watchman in one of the buildings down here, judging by the ring of keys on his belt.  If you watch carefully, you’ll see the transitional characters too – people who come to this annual event in their every day guises and then step out of (or maybe into) character.  Like that Madison Avenue woman over there who has taken off her light jacket, revealing that she has more tattoos than a sailor.  Besides transitional characters, there are those who never change but come out year after year as if this is the only place they bloom, like annuals popping up for their moment in the sun:

There is the lady who invariably wears a bonnet and Easter fashions (all purple this year).  She seems caught up in some sort of delusion, like the Norma Desmond character from the movie Sunset Boulevard as she dances slowly to the pounding music.  And there’s the outerspace, staggering Tin Man, who cocks his head toward the sky and makes peculiar lunges, always out of sync.

This year we have a rebel wearing a Civil War hat and a black shoulder-drape duster, and a little girl in shorts and a ballet tutu, and a dapper black man with a New Orleans strut, and a scarecrow in a crimson coat.

There are always sidebars.  Over there, for instance.  Two young girls just reached out from opposing paving stones in the fountain, each thinking the other was going to help her cross, and when they crossed at the same time, they both wound up in the drink.

The music itself is therapy for writer’s block.  Especially if you have true poetry in your style – i.e. rhythm, meter, alliteration, repetition of patterns, onomatopoeia – because music does all those things just like words do, as I explored a couple years back when writing about Eagle Glenn Frey in one of my Crosslake, Minnesota, columns, I think.  Norwegian publisher Jan Fredrik-Lockert has also written about the Eagles’ poetry, and I believe from my own experience that about half the world gets it when it comes to the music/poetry of everyday communication.  Strange to say, the tone deaf half that doesn’t get it occasionally includes an editor or two.  But that’s why there are dull shop manuals from Taiwan as well as enduring reads in fiction that jangle with language.  If you write the latter, you will benefit from finding music by any name – poetry, wit, sense, sensibility and sensuousness – in every moment of your life.  If you do this, it will be like moving from a silence to a symphony, from grunting artless notes to resonating full chords, from seeing only film noir to awakening in Technicolor.  You will be stepping out of Kansas into Oz.  While it may seem obvious that this is a life quality issue for any person, it is especially crucial for a writer.  Because before you can express worlds in depth, you have to grasp words in depth, you have to be able to live them both, see them both, think them both.  WOR(L)DS.

And if you are a writer, you get another bonus.  The similarities between silent wordsmythery and audible music may be extended to the visual and performing arts.  Again, rhythm, meter, repetition, and sensory patterns are included in the links between these expressions.  And that means – get this, now, if you are suffering vapor lock of the imagination – you can CROSS-TRAIN by switching Muses.  Not just by visiting someone else’s Muse at Famous Dave’s Bluesfest, but by courting a different Muse of your own.  So add the CROSS-TRAIN METHOD to ways of resuscitating your imagination.  Any visual or performing art will do – painting, sculpture, crafts, acting, dance – whatever shapes your imagination into expression.  It works like synesthesia, where evoking one kind of sensory impression stimulates another (e.g. words take on color, as they did for the author Nabokov).  In the spring and summertime I spend a couple hours every day playing tenor sax at Elm Creek and Weaver Lake parks near my house, which somehow stirs a whole new lexicon of language out of my brain.

I just used the word resuscitating, but what if you’re in need of a séance?  What if your imagination is basically at room temperature?  Happens.  Like everyone else, writers become jaded, disillusioned, or hopelessly stagnant.  They may give up for years, even for life.  Maybe it’s the day job that saps you, or the interactions of the people in your world.  Cheer up, Pilgrim, there may still be a way.  Because the problem is you need a transfusion.  Doesn’t have to be massive, but it does need to be fairly regular.  I’ve seen marriages where a vibrant partner goes fallow in order to accommodate the other partner’s unenergized personality.  What a waste of life.  Terribly tragic.  And unnecessary.  If your lifestyle just doesn’t fit who you are or the fact that you are a writer, take a look at that toe tag you put on your circumstantial self and see if it doesn’t read “Lazarus.”  And if it does, find yourself a galvanizing guru of inspiration whose energy and optimism you can feed off of in order to rise from the dead.  Because there are natural generators out there, albeit rare, whose imaginations are contagious.  Let that generator’s originality infect you.  To some extent, inspiring yourself is an acquired skill, and if you can increase your capacity to experience life at all times in all places by rubbing up against a natural generator, you will greatly enhance the quality of your creativity.  Think of it as putting your Muse on steroids.  I call this the UPGRADE METHOD. 

So what did you just do at Famous Dave’s Bluesfest?  You got out of yourself.  I purposely picked a bombastic “happening” to make it obvious, but you need to be able to do this in small ways every day – ideally all the time.  In order to escape the tedium and façades that swallow the meek and the weak, you need to be more like that natural generator.  Thanks for coming with me to Bluesfest.  There are four videos of what you saw and heard in my Sullygram newsletter this month.  They are available for free to friends & fans if you email mn333mn@earthlink.net   

Now, go back to whatever you were creating out of yourself a few pages ago.  See?  The dull clinks and thuds of those sterile words and stagnant characters are gone.  Lots more inventory in your imagination to inspire you.  All you had to do was open the door.  Stand back or be trampled by the ideas rushing past…write on!

Your thoughts are welcome, your attention valued.

Thomas “Sully” Sullivan

http://www.thomassullivanauthor.com

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