Breathe in, breathe out.

[mrissa]

One of the editors who bought a story of mine has asked for a blurb about its inspiration and difficulties in writing it. And I'm sitting here going, "uhhh...it came from my head...and then I wrote it down on the page...and now you're publishing it. Good story, huh?"

Look, this is what my brain does, all right? Pattern recognition, pattern creation. There was a guy wearing a funny hat on BART once, and that's why I wrote the story in question. The series of stories in question, actually. It wasn't a really ultimately strange hat with cuckoo-clock mechanisms and solar power. It was just a hat that was shaped slightly strangely and cast a slightly pointy shadow, and this is the third story in that series I've sold, and I've written a fourth, and I can promise there will be more. Because of a hat. Does this make sense? No, of course it doesn't make sense. You can't ask writers to go around making sense all the time. Inspiration is breathing. You learn to see story things the way you breathe. It's not the only way, but it's certainly one way, and then you come back and say, "Well...I read this book about Russian art...and two of the Fabergés' assistants were Swedish Finns...and now I have two books and three short stories and more on the way." Do you think I've skipped a step there? Because that's roughly how the brain worked, with "and then a miracle occurs" right smack in the middle there. And I think that's always how the writerbrain works. A big leap happens somewhere, or you never get to secret planets of predictive mathematicians in the kinda-Roman Empire or to Trollopian dragons or to aliens whose gender isn't the same for very long. Sometimes you can say something like, "Oh, I thought that it was a scorpion on the back of CJ's bathroom door, but actually it was a lobster. It was the hanging hook that made me think it was a scorpion, you see?" And then you smile as though you've said something helpful, and everyone else smiles as if you might get loose at any minute, and you try, with a wrench, to restart the conversation with no one understanding the essential step any better than they did before.

And the difficulties in writing it? This question really baffles me. I had to think of the right words and put them in the right order. Like you do. That is as hard and as easy as it ever gets.

Perhaps I am just obtuse. This is a possibility never to be neglected.

Comments

[redbird]

"Forgetting Dostoevsky and reading road signs backwards, of course."

[dolphin--girl.livejournal.com]

I've never really thought about that before. There are some stories that wouldn't give me an answer to that question, but there are other stories that will. "Cultured Pearls" never would have come to be if I hadn't spent one afternoon wandering alone through the Pearls exhibition at the ROM and actually read all of the text (at which point the story fairly clobbered me over the head -- I'm surprised I'm the only one who's written it). And some stories are more difficult than others (ksumnersmith could attest to some of the problems "Savage Beast" gave me, for example). Some stories are easy for me to write, some are next-to-impossible, some spring up fully formed when given some external trigger, and some I have to drag kicking and screaming from the depths of my subconsious ("oh, come ON! I know you have a plot in there somewhere!"). It's entirely unpredictable, which is, I suspect, why my story output is so stop-and-go.

[cakmpls.livejournal.com]

There was a guy wearing a funny hat on BART once, and that's why I wrote the story in question.

Well, isn't that an answer to the inspiration part?

I don't write fiction, but it seems to me that some difficulties might be the need to solve point A without destroying point B, to create a believable--and more so, a sympathetic--character with a viewpoint or values totally contrary to the author's, to write about a topic fraught with emotional significance for the author (for example, if I wrote fiction, I doubt that I could ever write about bad things happening to the children of a character--just some anonymous children, perhaps, but not to the children of an identified parent in the story).

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I do enough self-exposure in my fiction. I certainly don't feel like spelling out for people what revelations about my psyche I have made. Sure, it can be hard to write a character with opposite beliefs than mine (although it can also be hard to write a character with the same beliefs as mine -- worries of MarySuedom, among other things), and it can be hard to write about personally significant emotional issues. But if I wrote a scene after having an argument with a family member, I'm certainly not telling the world that. If they can't tell, they don't need to know.

[cakmpls.livejournal.com]

I wasn't suggesting that you do it, only suggesting some possibilities because you said the questioned baffled you.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

It's not so much that I can't imagine anything difficult as that I can't imagine anything difficult that one would be willing to share about that specific an example with that general an audience.

[cakmpls.livejournal.com]

I can see that for my third example (to write about a topic fraught with emotional significance for the author). I can see it in some cases for the second (to create a believable--and more so, a sympathetic--character with a viewpoint or values totally contrary to the author's), but not so much for something like political views when the author has been fairly public about his or her own. But what about the first example (the need to solve point A without destroying point B) or some other difficulty in construction? That seems like something readers would be very interested in.

I'm sure that the willingness to self-reveal varies greatly with the author. For myself (I tend to be pretty far down on the self-revealing end of the scale), I find it hard to imagine anything that I would write, about which I wouldn't be willing to discuss its origins in or relevance to my own experience. Not that anyone would be likely to be interested ...

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

The problem is, many of my (fairly rare) difficulties in construction are exceptionally boring: "I didn't know how to do this bit! And then you see I figured it out!" Also it tempts the reader to say, "No, you didn't dude. Point B looks pretty trashed from here."

[songwind.livejournal.com]

I think the "guy in a funny hat" story is golden.

Alternately, Stephen King says he makes stuff up when people ask him these questions.

[scottjames.livejournal.com]

I absolutely think you should make stuff up. I'd start with the guy in the funny hat, though, because that's cool. Extra points for flashbacks, flash-forwards, and the finding of five bucks.

[kythiaranos.livejournal.com]

*dies laughing*

I say, blame it on the scorpions. Scorpions are always good for a little blame.

[zalena.livejournal.com]

You could make something up. I was constantly inventing crap for teachers who were never satisfied with my JUST writing a journal/story/paper.

[ellameena.livejournal.com]

Here's a quote from Samuel Delaney, from Those Who Can, edited by Robin Wilson. This comes at the end of a wonderful essay on the writing process in general.

"...I turn to the next thing we have been asked to cover in these essays: "Discuss in terms of the subject assigned, your own story in the collection.

"I have never read any writer seriously discussing the creation of his own work, be in Mann or Borges, Yeats or Valery, who did not, at least for the duration of the discussion, seem a slightly smaller person; and the work under discussion, at least momentariy, a slightly smaller work. Looking at my own modest entry here, I am simply afraid that, with any diminution at all, it might vanish. On these grounds, then, I ask to be excused."

[pameladean]

I hate writing those little squibs. The last time I had to do one I tried to say that I had written the story because I needed the money, but I wasn't allowed to get away with that.

What I eventually wrote was so mind-bogglingly stupid that I don't even want to think about it.

Essentially, however, I just blamed the main character. Perhaps you can blame the hat and have done with it. Also, if you don't talk about the difficulties of writing the story, it's possible that nobody will notice. Then again, I hoped that about my assertion that I did it for the money.

It can help to remind yourself that you really cannot tell the truth of those questions in the format provided, and just approximate; unfortunately, people who want to write and people who want to pronounce about writing will pore over such little end-of-story editor-commissioned paragraphs and concoct fantastic theoris about the Psyche of the Writer that nobody will be able to disabuse them of ever again.

This isn't helping, is it?

P.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I think my philosophy from here out is "blame the hat and have done with it."

[lexiphanic.livejournal.com]

Non-artistic people (i.e., editors) always was art to be difficult, otherwise they would be able to do it themselves. They will never believe you if you say it just comes. I'm not disagreeing with you in the slightest, as I have had this experience myself. I vote with the several others here who say to make stuff up. You could even have some fun with it and deepen the writer mystique, since people seem to eat that up. Or just talk generally about your process, rather than confining yourself to this story. Lay on enough BS, and most people will assume it's profound. (Hey, it worked to get me through my English degree...)

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I am not at all convinced that editors are non-artistic people. Some are, but good editing isn't like that, in my opinion and also in my experience. A good editor ought to be able to get into what makes a piece work and make it better. Obviously there's some point to working with editors even if they don't have that kind of vision. But the best ones do; certainly I've workedwith editors who do.

[blythe025.livejournal.com]

Hey, I found you through Yoon Ha Lee.

I just love this post, because it explains exactly how I get my ideas (and even better than I might have explained it). It just happens, all of a sudden something familiar becomes strange, and pow, idea. Or two things just suddenly click together. I don't know, it's all very weird.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Welcome! Any friend of Yoon's is...probably a little disturbed, but we don't mind that around here.

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

Consider the blurb to be fiction as well; it might be easier that way.

B