Storytelling

I am in awe of storytellers. I call myself a storyteller instead of an author because I don't give a flying fig about the market or sales or the publishing industry - I just like to make up stories and it's amazing when someone else (or many someones) likes those stories or is moved by them. But the storytellers I'm in awe of are the *real* storytellers - the ones from the oral tradition who can and will make up a

story on the spot that will rivet you to the sound of their voice; or they have a story they've told over and over that grows and deepens as they tell it each time. Their skill and artistry with that kind of immediate real-time storytelling not only awes me, I also respect it more than I can say, because I know how bone-wrenching hard it can be to make up a good story. That they do it, just like that, right in front of you, is astounding, and way beyond my capacity.

I work hard at my stories - I dig for the truth of the characters that present themselves to me, and I'm always looking in the story for relevance to the themes that drive me - the abuse of power and the resilience of the oppressed in the face of it; the reality of working class lives as opposed to the way their lives are much maligned in popular cultural mythology; how the strength of women is different from that of men - deeper and more potent than our culture would have us believe; and how, in the best words ever used for this "there are more things in heaven and earth....than are dreamt of in your philosophy."

It's a struggle. It's a struggle I love, and to see it come bursting from storytellers with such joy and power gives hope to one who stumbles with each step.

Advice from a "Pantser"

I don’t write a story chronologically. I also don’t outline. That makes me, according to some - a “Pantser” - a writer who develops a story “by the seat of [my} pants” instead of from a carefully-developed plan. Rather than outlining, I begin writing a story after a character or a scene becomes so vivid, so demanding, that it *must* go on paper. Though, in truth, by the time this happens, there are usually several scenes running through my head like scenes from a favorite movie - so clear, so insistent, so essential that they no longer introduce me to the character - the character simply lives there, and by this time, I know her/him. Also, by this time, there are pages and pages of brainstorming, snatches of dialogue, descriptions of setting and events - all captured as they rush, pounding, into my brain. I don’t write even these things in any chronological order, but instead whichever rises to the top on any given day that I sit down to work.

Lots of things have to happen just right for this to go as smoothly as that sounds, and they seldom do. (And it really doesn’t sound that smooth, does it?) Recently, at lunch with a friend, I was discussing a day I was trying to find the right working title for my current piece - brainstorming for

hours, researching the setting, the time, the place, mythology, culture, making lists, cursing, until I’m driven out of my writing room to slam kitchen cupboard doors, throw recipes on the counter, and curse a lot more, planning to do some frustration-baking. Until…. a chance memory of a scene written weeks before gives me the right four words. My new working title. {And no, I’m not telling you until I’ve lived with that new title for a while} No baking got done, but a lot more pages got written that day.

Why was a working title (which seldom survives to become the actual title) so important? Because, as I explained to her - the first ‘working title’ I’d begun with was not putting me in the frame of mind that seemed *right* for the story, right for the characters. That’s a
“Pantser” attitude, I’m pretty sure. If it doesn’t feel right, the work won’t be right. Follow your gut with a story, and see where it takes you.

I respect people who outline meticulously. I admire them, I’m awed by them…..and I don’t understand it at all. To me, the magic of story writing is discovery. While I sometimes know - more accurately, suspect - what the final scene of a story will be; that often changes, and even when it doesn’t, how I’m getting the character from her page one to that final page is a mystery that unfolds day by day.

This makes sense to me, and could easily be predicted from every personality test I’ve ever taken - I like uncertainty, I like change, and thrive on them both. They create a sense of almost magical mystery that keeps me driving forward. So, being a “pantser” fits. I don’t know where my characters are taking me until they open their mouths, or climb out a window, or run onto a stage - and I love that surprise.

What this says to me is that every writer needs to take a close look at themselves and how they live, what resonates, what doesn’t, and then reflect on the process they’ve been using to write. As a writing teacher, I have frequently had to encourage students to unlearn a process they were taught was the only right one (as if any one thing could be the “only right” for all humans) and begin to find their personal process by exploring how they live when they are truly themselves, fully comfortable in the world they’re in, and then explore this question: how can you make your writing process like that?

I was lucky in my early years to have teachers who taught this intuitively. All the way from high school through graduate school I was gifted with writing teachers who knew how to see each writer individually, or at least to see me that way, and to give me the words I needed to trust my own way forward.

Forming your writing process to reflect how you fit in the world has other advantages outside of writing. You become less susceptible to what other people think you should be or how you should

do things. Difficult times (while still, obviously, difficult) are softened by a clear knowledge that it is simply a part of your piece of the world, and how to best handle these times for your life (as opposed to how others think you should handle them) becomes clear to you. You don’t think of your goals in terms of anyone’s expectations but your own. You accept and adapt more easily than many you know who have the same struggles.

Two things helped me to discover what was mine in my process (both in life and in writing) and what others had imposed. First was the clear, pointed, and loving advice of a great mentor in my writing, who guided me through my graduate program and stays in my heart. She knows who she is. The other one is a book (not a writing book) called “Callings” by Gregg Levoy. The subtitle to this book is “Finding and Following an Authentic Life” and I don’t think I’ve ever read a nonfiction book more appropriately named. I devoured my own copy and actually wrote to the author to thank him. I’ve given several gift copies to friends. No writing text ever helped me in my creative process as much as this book did.

I wouldn’t say that you need such an adviser or need to read this book to find the way to your own authentic process of writing. I would say that finding your way to that place is probably the most important thing you can do as a writer. I was on my way there before I encountered this adviser (turning down law school admission to go to the creative writing program where I she was my

teacher) and was also well on my way before I read this book. But they helped. They strengthened me, they blew away any dust from the clarity I was developing about who (and what kind of writer) I wanted to be. Some people (and, as a teacher, I believe, a lot of the younger generation) get there more easily than those of us who’ve been around a little longer, and their authenticity and passion makes me love them perhaps more even than my characters.

Find your own route there, and be sure the way you choose is *your* way. For me, one of the best

expressions of the goal comes in a scene from a movie called “Living Out Loud.” The main character (played by Holly Hunter) is walking along with a friend of hers (Danny DeVito) and says to him, “I want to stop agreeing to do things I don’t want to do.” Devito stops, turns to her and says: “Then Stop!”

Stop agreeing to a process that isn’t yours. Stop agreeing to do things (as a writer or a person) that you don’t want to do. Stop writing for the reasons others have given you and find your own reasons. Listen to the advice of teachers, and do what you need to do for their classes, but when you sit down to write, not as a student but as a writer, make your first step finding the authenticity that is unique to you.

On The Pier

  

Some moments in life weld themselves in your memory, so stark and vivid that each time you think of them, it feels as though you are living those moments again. For me, one of those happened at around 2 a.m. on the Santa Monica pier, decades ago.  When our children were little my late husband and I would go night-fishing there. We would hire the teenager who lived next door to sleep on our couch, and off we would go. My husband loved fishing, and knew everything about it - I used to tie a string to a stick to “fish” with my Dad. Both of us relished these late night outings, though - it was time for just the two of us at a point in life where such things are rare. As entry to the pier was free it was something we could afford.

An odd assortment of people would be there, on that pier, every time we went. People with old plastic lawn chairs and coolers of beer, people with impressive tackle-boxes filled with every magic

fishing gadget, old men alone, a few old women alone, hardly ever any other couples. We would walk out along the pier, choosing our spot, and I would settle in, leaning on the rail, a few feet from my husband, my line in the water, feeling the salt spray and enjoying the quiet of our time together, the city lights a backdrop and the sounds of the city at night our soundtrack.

At that time,  the pier was most decidedly not in its heyday - there were rumblings in the City about dismantling it.  Those who came, especially those who came late night, were not coming for the iconic rides or shops - they were there to fish under the stars while they still could.

Lots of fish were caught there, some worth keeping, some released back amid grumbles, and some “real catches.” You’d be leaning over, listening to the surf, watching the lights glow against the waves, when suddenly the low murmur of voices along the pier would change in tenor, there’d be a rustle as people moved closer to whoever had hooked a good one, and people would wait to watch the fish reeled in, then either admire or sneer.

  I saw more than one fish flopping on the pier boards, gasping, dying. It was the part of those evenings I hated. Some few were more merciful, putting the fish they caught in buckets of water, at least until they got them home. But everyone wanted to watch the catch itself.

One night, voices rose higher than usual, and the a larger crowd than usual gathered around the man whose pole pent hard over into the water.  At one point, the voices became a collective gasp, and the crowd around him visibly moved back and away among murmurs of “shark! shark!.....” I was standing just a few feet down the rail from this fisherman, and the crowd around him had pulled back well away as the shark was pulled over, flying over the head of the husky fisherman, and landing on the boards, it’s long form (three feet?  four?) thrashed and mouth worked for air, teeth showing.

I watched as the fisherman in question reached down, cut his line, and then, quickly, without

any hesitation, grabbed the thrashing shark by the tail, pulled it up, swung it over his head, and, backlit by the city lights, swinging in a large arc, bashed the entire creature, hard, into the boards to stun it, then spun and threw it over the rail and back into the ocean. Everyone rushed to the rail to watch the creature as it hit the water.  We heard the smack, saw the spray rise, and then the shark begin to move again, at first just small movements, and then it thrashed once, hard, and swam away. It lived.

Few images have stayed in my head as that one has over the years - the dark form of the big man, arm swinging in an arc with the still-thrashing shark in the air above him, swinging around - up, over, and down, all the city lights behind him, all the people huddling back in a dark mass.

It happened so fast, and it was so long ago, that I don’t remember what I was feeling at the time, but I do remember the silence in which my husband and I leaned over the rail, watching, waiting to see this creature begin to move again, and the breath that escaped me as he did.  It was a moment that crystallized for me all those times I had seen a salmon or a trout or any other fish, mouth working and gasping, thrashing on the ground or against the pier as it died, and the dark tension that would grip my chest each time I saw it.

Those were moments that sent me to a place we all fear but don’t think about - the day coming when all of us gasp for life, trapped in a battle we know we can’t win, against an enemy no one can defeat.  And all those moments became one that night on the pier.

Years later I was faced with a challenge - twice.  First from a teacher in a delightful and fun write-sci-fi workshop, and later by the wonderful women in my writing group - write a scifi story.  I’d been a sci fi fan all my life, but thought I couldn’t write such a story worth reading. But, the Irish in me wouldn’t let me back away from a dare. The workshop leader wanted us to write something about a creature that was the last of his/her kind.  The writing group wanted me to just shut up and do it. Not one to follow directions exactly (ever), I began a story in the workshop that day about a creature the first of its kind - a man who could actually live in the minds of other living things - not reading their minds, but experiencing their life with them, directly, from behind their eyes. He couldn’t, at first, control these strange excursions into another life, and people thought he was insane - until it started happening to others.

A few months later, when the writing group issued their challenge to me, I thought of that unfinished story, and began again  - a group of three people, who all find themselves behind the eyes of a cougar just as it’s being shot by a farmer, and go on to become the first members of a new group of humans, a new evolution of humankind, able to (almost) completely connect with other living creatures - and the “almost” is the thing that complicates the story.  It became the best-selling thing I’ve ever written: my sci-fi novel Somewhere Never Traveled.

What does this novel have to do with that long-ago stunned and released shark?  It was that moment on the pier, and all the other moments it brought into focus for me, that allowed me to think what it would be like, to feel it fully, to be one of those creatures at that moment of capture, of terror, of fighting for life.  That moment, and what it implied for me, was the essence of the desperation to connect we as humans cannot escape. Writers, much like actors, must connect to characters, to the world, to people around the, so moments that push you towards that are essential to a writer’s development.  You can’t choose them, they choose you, and you need to be ready. How critical this is reminds me of words written by Peter Shaffer in his play Equus:

"A child is born into a world of phenomena all equal in their power.... Moments snap together like magnets….. Why?

….I can trace them. I can even, with time, pull them apart again. But why at the start they were ever magnetized at all--just those particular moments of experience and no others--I don't know."

Those moments - the shark sailing and flailing through the night air above the pier, all forged together with all the moments I’d watched a fish gasp and struggle for air, or a puppy sigh out its last and then go still, or any living creature sigh and struggle and surrender - they became one collective moment in my mind, the forge that let me connect and empathize, and that let me imagine a time when we all could connect in this way.

If anything, the lesson here goes back to what so many writers and writing teachers have said - pay attention, and let go of what you’re supposed to think, expected to think, or urged to think - find the moments that forge together like magnets for you, follow them, and see where they take you.