The Last Word - Looking for that falling in love feeling

By Susan Wilson - November 15, 2007

An investigator from CSI could figure out pretty easily by the condition of my house whether or not I'm writing. Nothing much gets done in my house when I'm writing. It's true. It's fairly obvious that my writing life is active by the dishes in the sink and the dog hair floating in the corners. We use the same towels over and over, until they stand on their own. The bed, well, let's not go there. Similarly, when I'm stumped, struggling or bored with what I'm working on, it's amazing how household tasks become compelling and almost fun. Between projects and I'm out there tackling the closets, seeking out the dust bunnies beneath the couch, rearranging the furniture, cleaning out the junk drawer(s).

However, once the creative juice gets flowing, and given that I only get a very limited amount of time to write, I don't let anything else get in the way.

I husband my time jealously, loathe to even let a necessary phone call get in the way. The dog gets shorter walks. The refrigerator is barren. It echoes when my husband looks inside and complains: 'there's nothing in here.' Here, here, here.

I get up earlier, my morning routine adjusts. I am looking forward to my writing session. I'm late to work.

I write every day. But I don't always write with excitement, with enthusiasm, with that falling-in-love feeling that getting started on a new project gives me. There is a magic to the way words pour out of my head and through my fingers to tell a story that I have only the barest plan for. This doesn't happen all the time, sometimes I just don't know where I'm going with a story, or the story just isn't going where I want it to. Not so the current attempt. This one seems to be coming from John Gardner's "dream." I am just the facilitator.

In The Fortune-Teller's Daughter, I wrote about automatic writing, where a spirit communicates through a medium whose hand seems to have a life of its own as the spirit uses it to tell its story. That's what it's been like recently. I am not creating a story so much as one is being told through me. One that is very visual in that it rolls out in front of my mind's eye effortlessly; I see the faces, the clothing, the setting as something concrete.

I also begin to dream in color. It's as though my sub-conscious really has taken control of my soul. Vivid dreams full of plot, setting and character, some of it blatantly co-opted from life, other bits completely incomprehensible, but beautifully arranged anyway. Sort of like the writing. The impressions, the textures and colors of the fictive realm are drawn into my sleeping mind and are allowed to play. I've dreamed in recent weeks of castles and barns; of being in danger and being rescued (by Israeli women, no less); of being at Fenway Park and of journeying through labyrinthine halls and rooms. Stuff of great entertainment that quickly fades away into faint suggestion of memory. And none of which has any bearing on the story also streaming out of my unconscious.

What's also true is that at any moment the stream may dry up. Sometimes the easiest seeming stories fetch up against the brick wall of no where to go, or stutter to a stop, having run out of steam. Just like a lot of good ideas that don't hold up under scrutiny, or survive further consideration, a story can begin to develop holes too deep to plot out of, or become - gasp - boring. It happens, and it's better to come to that narrative halt before too much time is invested in something that would only make a short story, or falls apart after 60 pages.

At some point in the love affair with words, like love affairs in life, reality has to take hold. Some reasonable direction has to be chosen, a protagonist has got to show some heroic qualities and the plot has got to be reined in and turned so that the narrative arc develops and the characters have somewhere to hang their metaphorical hats. If you don't do that, you ain't got a story, you've got a hodge-podge of dream-state that may not speak to any except the most existential of readers. Allowing the story to manifest itself like automatic writing is a lot of fun, but eventually the rubber hits the road and a writer has to get down to the hard work of turning the dream into a believable, compelling, or even just plain entertaining story. And that may necessitate scrapping half of the early pages.

Sometimes the best part of writing, the fun part, is really only the warm up. The real exercise is in paying close attention to the work, putting the brakes on the stream of consciousness and making something worthwhile out of whimsy.

Susan Wilson is a freelance writer and novelist who lives in Oak Bluffs. Visit her web site at susanwilsonwrites.com.