Last Friday I submitted a short story assignment for my advanced fiction class titled “The Diner.”  The story was about a couple having a meal before one of them goes for their last chemo treatment.  I haven’t gotten a grade on it yet, but I think it was a successful story. I also really don’t know where it came from. 

This week I want to talk about the somewhat mystical elements of writing, but I also want to acknowledge the pedestrian roots of most of our writing. So, yes, the wife in the story has a character trait that is right now a sticking point in my own relationship, but when I wrote the first draft I didn’t have that problem, and yes, I know a couple that went through a cancer battle, but I was not consciously thinking about them while I was writing the story.  The “idea”—and I give that word scare quotes because it wasn’t an idea as much as it was a line—came to me out of thin air.  I was walking dogs—why the muse decides to descend at the most inopportune times is a question for a better man than I—when this character popped up unbidden in my brain and said, “At the table she was a setting sun. I wondered how many more we would see together.”

WTF, dude?  Eight o’clock in the morning and I have six hours of dog walking left and you decide to start talking to me now?

Of course, I couldn’t ignore him, though.  What was he talking about? 

I have mentioned I am not a note taker. I have excellent retention skills. I am of the same opinion as Stephen King. If it doesn’t stay in your mind, it wasn’t worth writing, but this guy was actually talking. That’s why I say it wasn’t an idea. An idea is “what about a story where a couple has a ritual where they share a good meal before chemo wrecks eating for a few days?” I never had that idea. That is a summary that came after the story was written. In the moment, this was a man—in my head—looking at his wife—whom I didn’t know—and reciting all the things he adores about her.  

Obviously, I love thinking about process or this blog wouldn’t exist. When it comes to creating fiction, I feel there are several levels of inspiration.   Online Etymology Dictionary defines inspiration as “immediate influence of God or a god.” I am more spiritual than religious and perhaps more agnostic than atheist so replace the god thing with whatever you want, but I have to believe there is something outside of ourselves because that is the way it sometimes feels. When I say there are different levels, I mean there are times when a story feels like I am sculpting something or hammering nails into wood. I can see the separate elements and with a little thought I can see where the elements are coming from.  I get an idea, flesh it out, and then try to pound out a draft. This is the most common way inspiration happens. That is what I call level one. I am consciously making things up and in the back of my mind I can see the real people and events I am calling upon to inhabit this imaginary world I am creating. In a way it feels like I am manipulating marionettes and giving them things to do and to say.

Sometimes in the process of doing that I can ascend to level two, where a character starts to act partly on their own. This is always fun, but I want to speak a little caution to you about these characters. I believe that first drafts are for exploration, so let your mind and your characters and your plot wander. However, sometimes they can lead you to dead ends or places that don’t serve your purpose. This is totally okay and part of the process, but when you are off course it is time to re-orient yourself. It is best to treat these characters like toddlers. They have a will of their own and that’s cute and you are proud of them, but perhaps their mechanics are a little off. They may wobble a bit and they probably have little awareness of their surroundings or the dangers they are walking into so when you see they are wandering away, you need to take them by the hand and lead them back to the sandbox.

In level two I feel a little outside myself, like maybe I am not alone in creating the story, but I am still mostly in control. I am still consciously manipulating the story. For instance, if I know the character is going to need to defend himself at the end of the story, I might consciously make him have a habit of always carrying an umbrella in his bag because he always had jobs where he was exposed to the elements. I do this purposely and it is pure artifice. It is a means to an end.

Tim, the husband, in “The Diner,” was level three. He felt like a separate entity who was revealing a world to me and, to use the typical writer’s cliché about this feeling, I felt like I was taking dictation. As he described his wife, details emerged that, had I needed to consciously create a character, I would have never given her, and they seemingly served no purpose to the story. She owned a landscaping nursery, they met in Lake Carmel when he was buying a lawnmower, she likes orange pekoe tea and pesters him about his love of red meat.  I don’t believe I can adequately describe how much I detest lawns and lawnmowers, and in general have a complete lack of interest and no knowledge about landscaping.

Right after the first line about sunsets, Tim painted a picture of his wife for me. I swear on everything I hold dear in life that I was not thinking when I wrote this:

She pulled her glasses to the end of her slender nose and looked down to read the menu. Several strands of honey-blond hair, lately tending toward white, escaped from behind her ear and dangled across her cheek. She was wearing the crystal earrings I had given her for our fifteenth wedding anniversary, back when the world was young, and we still believed in magic.

That paragraph breathed life into this character (Linda), and I suddenly knew everything about her. I also knew the exact dynamics at that table. I admit that I did have to contemplate the ending and manipulate the characters a bit for a wrap up within the allotted word count, but I don’t think that diminishes the mystique that surrounds the experience of writing the story.  I wrote the first draft in a seeming trance and after a week of editing, and several hours of discussing it with my writing partner and friends, I still have no idea how it happened, or why it happened.

My first blog was about the reasons we write. The feeling I had writing that story, the ride it took me on, the things it taught me about the complexity of emotions and of love is the reason why I do it. I want to be at level three forever.

My final thought for now is this. Despite my waxing rhapsodic about the intoxicating experience of being possessed by the muse, most of the time writing will be hammering away and pulling bent nails. The jaded realists will say all those mysterious details can be explained away by all my experiences on earth over the last (too many) decades. I acknowledge that truth but prying too deeply into the roots of inspiration feels like I am the person at the magician’s show screaming, “the card is up his sleeve, now, it’s all fake!”

There is a condition that writers and filmmakers want to instill in their audience called “the willing suspension of disbelief.” We know that Godzilla isn’t real, but we go along with it because the story is entertaining. I want to apply that to the feeling of possession writer’s feel when they are on autopilot. I want to stay in that moment. I don’t want to analyze it.

 I want the card to really disappear. The world where it does is a better world than this one.

See you on level three my friends.

Sources

https://www.etymonline.com/word/inspiration