Books are made to be sold, in that they are produced as consumable items and marketed as leisure activities for the masses. But the great books, the ones that linger beyond trends and fads are not necessarily deep, penetrating works of philosophy or sophistry; they are unique because they have that something, that extra polish which grabs hold and won’t let go, long after you’ve put the book down. They have a voice, all their own. This above all is the thing we have beaten out of many students and aspiring authors. In our zeal to accomplish homogeneity of language and culture, we have expressed an unwillingness to allow exploration that might step outside these carefully approved areas. Whether we find fault or simply cause, it is the industry itself which contributes to the synchronization of ideas and elements, so that movie writers are so starved for ideas that they must turn outside of themselves completely, looking to things like comics; a place where unique vision and telling is prized above blockbuster aspirations.
This isn’t some polemic about the loss of anything in particular. Actually, I just want to express some basic ideas I’ve found helpful in working toward some measure of individuality in what I do. Think the tipping point came when I read the fourth or fifth article in a row that practically forbade me to write unless I had read hundreds of books in my genre. This is of course not unlike the literature review for the dissertation I never started. It’s hazing. Yes, it has some measure of validity, but it is still hazing. Pay homage and tremble at all who came before you. In academics, I see the point of making language and ideas work readily together. Kuhn should be consulted, as he expresses my own view of the nature of scientific progress, but not in this small setting. In literature, it is so dangerous to assume that you cannot begin to write lest you have read everything.
The secret I learned for myself is that it’s all been done before. It’s all been told and retold in so many ways, sometimes much more creatively than I could imagine myself. So yes, I have read, and continue to read in the areas that interest me, but I gave up the idea of truly being unique in plot or story, and instead set myself on a different path, one that really starts and ends inside of me. What I learned from reading in my genre were some basic ideas of the language that teen readers have come to expect in what they read. But I did not see this as a barrier, more an opening. And rather than looking at how one author does or does not offer didactic platitudes to uninterested adolescents; I just started looking at myself, at what was happening within me as I read.
It felt fake. Most of all of this felt just a little less than stick figures. Now there are exceptional instances where I was tied to the characters as though I knew them myself. And it was this, more than subject matter, or reading level that caught me. I stumbled across a book called Breathing Life Into Your Characters, and found it helpful for refocusing myself. Of course it bandies about that you shouldn’t make the characters a projection of yourself; and I find this to be only helpful to a point. When I write, I have to feel as the characters do, and if I’m intuned, then they do become alive, and often lead me along as we go. But if I didn’t have a piece of me in every one of them, there would be no connection, no element for me to focus on. When the character is dirty or injured, I have to feel that too. And when I’m writing the angst, the turmoil, I have to feel the pressure in my own chest, my anxiety peaking as the situation hangs unresolved. The joy, sorrow, pain, and ecstasy all have to grounded somewhere inside of me first.
There is no formula, no method. I’ve looked, and tried. I enjoyed The Writer’s Journey, because it confirmed that since man began telling each other of exploits, there has been a formula to it. Even in biography, we expect some arc of development, and those able to find it make truly wonderful historians. But it has, most definitely, been done before. Forget the desire to create something unique; lose it to the mists of unfulfilled desires and then rest. Beside, you don’t really desire this, you desire a connection with people, one that you think will be brought on by that flare of new and different. This is not what makes that. It is you, you creeping around the pages of what you wrote that does this. If you are true and able, the soul of your creation will speak to those people, and they will love you. It will seem new and different because no one looks at the story in simple terms unless you force them too. A bad movie is easily summarized as a pale imitation of something greater because there is nothing to interrupt the comparisons. No character to stand up for you and shout at those detractors to take head and listen.
What is different, is you. Abraham has sacrificed his son countless times, and Cain has been slaying Able for millenia. Yet when you tell it, you put a piece of your own soul in there; that is why it is different. How then do you do this? First look long and hard at you. Find the messy bits and poke them, play with them until they ooze and swirl; possibly in pain, but sometimes in joy. That’s what everyone else ignores in themselves, and pretends doesn’t exist. And it’s also what they love to see in everyone else. Be your own gossip rag, and find the juicy bits dangling out the side of your baggage. Know thyself, artist; then shall you know everyone.
I began Forgotten in the third person, imitative of Rowling. It’s called a limited omnipotent narrator. It’s not the main character, but it’s someone just behind them. They can’t travel far, but often see things a little less gilded than whom they speak of. It’s a really great tool, and it absolutely destroyed my voice. My angel, my editor asked me why I was writing a first person narrative in the third person. My feeble defense of market research and expected genre fell upon the table and gasped for a final breath before dying in rotted stink over another round of beer. Painfully, I rewrote thirteen chapters into the first person, and found that what had been a good story became alive with a spark that seemed impossible, even to me. More than that, it freed the story to grow around the cave which had for so long terrified my dreams.
Your voice will change, it must. It will find the character where she waits, and if you stay out of the way, it will follow and develop her through all the familiar pieces of heroic quests; except no one has ever seen it like she has. A cave is not just a cave when it plays upon the fearful, troubled by years of confined dwelling in the face of near death and suffering. The dragon looks not like a beast, but a tender soul trapped by language and bigotry. Unless you try to force it. Then you will have something that might be timely, and popular; but it has cost you something in return. Some unexpressed bit of you that now withers in the cold.
It will be messy, and scary, and you will feel like they all see you naked and scared, scampering from recto to verso in a mad tirade of suppressed glee. And it’s all true. It is you, in all your scary glory laid bare. They stare and poke and tease. They call you names, and look down their noses, comparing size and color. You are humiliated and broken; but then a laugh. A single joyous note that breaks the spectacle and you see them not looking at you, but enjoying the lives you breathed your soul into. In the end, you are saved, whisked away by your hero and your villain, while the supporting cast distracts them all. Then from the side stage, hidden by the curtain you watch it all unfold. And share in the joy and tears, until the curtain falls and they call “Author”.
Look inside and breath. Take what you find and then start to sketch. Draw if you have to, but I just write out little bits and pieces of scenes and dialog that come to my mind. At one point, I was so stuck I had to write the same scene from all three characters perspectives, until I could understand each of their dynamics. Then when I wrote again, it was they who acted, and I just recorded their dialog, and did my best to observe their faces for signs of hidden meaning or suppressed emotion. It won’t be good, not yet. Because what you’re really doing is expressing all that you desire for them, getting it all out and then letting yourself be empty. An expectant author is like an overprotective father who fails to teach his child to ride for fear that she will fall. Your characters need to fail horribly, to be miserable and to commit murder. They need to disappoint and anger you. You need to chuck the pages into the wall in a rage at the incompetence they offer you. But you must love them anyway. You must hold them and coo softly in their ears until the moment is passed.
I refused to keep writing Forgotten once Xanatos got to his point of departure from what I knew he could be. As he fell in on himself, I couldn’t do it any longer. It was six or seven weeks before I was able to make my way back. I worked on other books in the series, even created an entirely new set of characters for later exploration. I hated the things he was doing, and the state he was in. I knew he was better, grander. I saw him at his peak, his strongest and most illustrious. But I hadn’t the patience to walk him through the wasteland. It sucked. And then we met, and though we could not stand each other, we got down to it. And he surprised me. He created the most tender and visceral moment possible in the midst of what I had intended to be only death. And he looked at me, and nodded. You will know the part when you read it. He is my son, my prodigal, my bane, and my love.
Love yourself. Do not seek to write because you want to; do it because you must. I didn’t understand this, and it was why I could not write until recent years. Because if I don’t, I die. I crumble and fall into agony. Let it be your compulsion, but be honest in it. If nothing is coming, walk away. I don’t believe you must write everyday simply to write. Read Zen in the Art of Writing. You will not see a formula but a sickness that drive Bradbury to create a new story every week. For me to do the same would only sicken me. I circle my prey like a vulture, waiting for the stink to rise into the heavens. And then I slowly consume the rotten flesh until it fills me with vile, putrid disgust. Then, I wait.
They told me I couldn’t write. I believed them. Don’t do the same. When I watch my friend play her violin, I see the pressure in her chest that must escape lest she burst and spill her guts upon the floor. When I write, I feel sick and wretched, and then I feel complete and whole. The blank page used to scare the fuck out of me. It was clean and pristine, and too easily sullied by my ineptitudes. Like a goddess she shamed me and my inexpert technique. And like a shaved Labrador I spit and huffed upon her golden flesh; not even sure this was enjoyable. Certain that she would merely laugh at the lack of stamina and marvel at my blind groping. And then I would collapse in spasms and writhe about in my own bile. She is not a goddess. She is a whore. Tender and careful. When I moved beyond the illusion I found a muse; someone to guide my movements, to whisper slow instruction as I tried to burst forth.
You are the most interesting person in the world when you put pen to paper. That was how I did it. I took up a pen and let it splutter and spurt upon the page until was gross and disgusting. Then I could see it for what it was. Cheap makeup and plastic heals. The allure, the grandeur was gone. But in that filth, I found myself. A voice arose, and I let it speak. I could always tell when I had gone astray, because that voice, that charm was gone. It was a chore to work, and the paper seemed flat. I don’t know what will incite you; I just know it won’t be found on the shelves in a bookstore. Go there and find interesting trinkets. Carry them if you must; every witch doctor does what he must. Eventually you have to take off your clothes and start grubbing in the muck. Nothing compares to the sensual ecstasy of being filthy in the light of day.
Love yourself, be yourself. Lose yourself and let yourself go. Fall, die, turn over in your grave. But hold your characters, the pieces of your soul so tightly that all you have left is them. They are your breathe, your organ, your heart. Bend them over the earth and drink in their bitter taste. Then write, and never forget what they feel like on the inside, as they run across your skin and plunge themselves back into you. Then write.