Over the years (he said, settling back into his worn chair by the fire and picking a stray strand of greasy mutton from his voluminous beard) I've been using the phrase "It's all material" as a kind of mantra, especially when life presents me with one sort of drama or another. It's true. Anything decent I've managed to write, no matter how weird, always has some kernel of reality in it somewhere. That kernel might not be the heart of the story, but it's there. In Sumerian Pot, it was the bit about the martinis.
Other stories, like the one I woke up with in my head a couple of weeks ago and managed to write down before it got away, are firmly grounded in real experience. In that case, it was September 11th. That's a big one.
But it all goes into the meat-grinder. Being in downtown Manhattan during a terrorist attack. Drinking too much on New Year's Eve. Jacaranda blooming outside my window. Every last little bit gets filed away somewhere.
Some people carry notepads around to write these sorts of things down. I'm of the opinion that if I have to write it down to remember it, it's not worthy of remembrance. I have a somewhat freakish memory for that sort of thing, though, so that might not work for everyone.
The trouble is, if something's too close to reality, the story breaks. At least, my stories break; I know there are plenty of folks out there who can put a skim coat of fiction over their lives and don't get yelled at by Oprah for lying. I was all impressed with the story I wrote a couple of weeks ago: it had emotional impact, weird punch, all of that. But the impact and the punch were there because I was too close to the experience I was using as the basis for the story. What seemed to me to be a dense, meaningful conk on the head in 1,400 words fell flat when I asked a writer friend to read it. In fact, she missed the central point of the piece entirely, and it wasn't because she "didn't get it." That which seemed crystalline to me was clear only because I knew it was there. To someone outside my bubble it was obscure to the point of absence.
That's not always a bad thing. If you throw something out there thinking it's about The Meaning Of Eucalyptus and everyone says "This is a fantastic piece, it's like Watership Down for koalas," then maybe take a few steps back and see if you can discover something unintentionally fabulous and work with that. In my case, I was trying to do a specific thing, and failed. So, I need to find out whether I still want to accomplish what I thought I was going to do when I started out, or if what I actually did might turn out to be better than what I intended to do.
We all clear on that? Good.
No, this isn't the third Exciting Thing.
Other stories, like the one I woke up with in my head a couple of weeks ago and managed to write down before it got away, are firmly grounded in real experience. In that case, it was September 11th. That's a big one.
But it all goes into the meat-grinder. Being in downtown Manhattan during a terrorist attack. Drinking too much on New Year's Eve. Jacaranda blooming outside my window. Every last little bit gets filed away somewhere.
Some people carry notepads around to write these sorts of things down. I'm of the opinion that if I have to write it down to remember it, it's not worthy of remembrance. I have a somewhat freakish memory for that sort of thing, though, so that might not work for everyone.
The trouble is, if something's too close to reality, the story breaks. At least, my stories break; I know there are plenty of folks out there who can put a skim coat of fiction over their lives and don't get yelled at by Oprah for lying. I was all impressed with the story I wrote a couple of weeks ago: it had emotional impact, weird punch, all of that. But the impact and the punch were there because I was too close to the experience I was using as the basis for the story. What seemed to me to be a dense, meaningful conk on the head in 1,400 words fell flat when I asked a writer friend to read it. In fact, she missed the central point of the piece entirely, and it wasn't because she "didn't get it." That which seemed crystalline to me was clear only because I knew it was there. To someone outside my bubble it was obscure to the point of absence.
That's not always a bad thing. If you throw something out there thinking it's about The Meaning Of Eucalyptus and everyone says "This is a fantastic piece, it's like Watership Down for koalas," then maybe take a few steps back and see if you can discover something unintentionally fabulous and work with that. In my case, I was trying to do a specific thing, and failed. So, I need to find out whether I still want to accomplish what I thought I was going to do when I started out, or if what I actually did might turn out to be better than what I intended to do.
We all clear on that? Good.
No, this isn't the third Exciting Thing.
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