“Yeah, But . . .” (Or, Fighting Back Against the Self-Doubts That Keep You from Writing)

Imagine this scenario.  You’re out at a restaurant with some friends–people you haven’t seen in a while.  You’re catching up, swapping stories, sharing the happenings of the past few weeks.  The food arrives.  Not bad.  Not bad at all.  Good conversation.  Good food.  A fine evening.

 

And that’s when it happens.  Two tables down, a young couple are eating their meal, their eyes darting to and fro from their plates to their two young kids, back to their plates, back to their kids . . .  Speaking of whom . . . the kids are antsy, hyper, fidgety, their half-eaten meals picked at but no longer being touched.  You overhear some of the chatter–the parents telling the kids to keep quiet, the kids snapping back, eager for a verbal sparring match.  The young couple appear tired, exhausted even, while the kids are endless, boundless energy.

 

It makes you wonder.  What’s the backstory?  What was their week like?  What lies ahead?  Why even bring the kids along–why not get a babysitter instead?  You observe the couple again–the color of their hair, the shape and contours of their faces; the dimple on the man’s chin–such a prominent feature, it is easily observed from two tables away.  There is a tension, too, subtle, beneath the surface, something undefinable yet as real as the food on their plates.

 

As your friends talk, your mind wanders.  You nod at the right moments, your facade of listening holding steady, for now.  But you are fully absorbed in the scene you are watching–so much so that you begin to thread a story.  Something about the man’s demeanor, his shifting, nervous eyes.

Does he have a secret?  Yes!  He’s doing something illegal at the office, where he works.  But what?  And his partner?  Does she know?  And what is her secret?  Options form in your brain, scenarios play out, possibilities, threads, plot points, character flaws, character attributes . . . until, like a switch being turned on, a novel idea has formed.  Motivation.  Secrets.  Shame.  Guilt.  Triumph.  It is all there, formed from the ether, waiting to be written.

 

You feel an urge to tell your friends you need to cut your meal–and conversation–short.  You have to go home!  Begin writing . . .

Yeah, but . . .

The words come, unasked for, unwelcome.  But they are there, like a rude interloper, ready to take down your enthusiasm.

Yeah, but . . . what do you have to go on?  Your idea is flimsy, unformed.  You don’t have one-twentieth of the plot you need to begin a novel.  Who are you kidding?

Yeah, but . . . the job you have concocted for the man is lab technician for a chemicals firm.  What do you know about technical subject matter like that?  And the woman, in your hot-off-the-mental-press story, is a lawyer.  What do you know about law or the nuances and rhythms of a lawyer’s day?

 

And the kids . . . you don’t even have any kids.  How can you write about parenthood?  Being a father?  A mother?  You’re out of your depth.

These doubts and questions and a hundred others cascade through your mind like a runaway locomotive, poking, taunting, ripping holes through your narrative, just minutes ago birthed in a wild, feverish bout of inspiration and excitement.

 

Yeah, but . . .

******************************

Every writer deals with this, at one point or another.  For some reason, our brains, our thoughts, turn insecure, throwing up roadblocks and coming up with reasons not to pursue our story.  We each have defensive mechanisms hardwired into us, seeking to protect us from harm–real or imagined.  The thoughts that bubble up are like an overbearing taskmaster hell-bent on keeping us locked in our predefined and safety-ensuring box.

 

So . . . how do you break out of it?  How do you find the inner strength, confidence, and conviction to push through the yeah, buts?

One way is to turn them around, reverse them.  So, you don’t know anything about a lawyer’s day?  So what?  Yeah, but . . . yeah, but . . . I can do some light research.  I can talk to Jennifer, who is a lawyer.  Ask her about her job.  I can read other books that feature lawyers.  I can also understand that it’s not rocket science!  I am not writing a technical manual on lawyering.  I am writing a novel where a character happens to be a lawyer.  It’s not a treatise.  It’s a story.  I don’t need to know everything.  The same goes for the lab tech.

 

As for kids and parenting . . . I was a kid once!  I had parents.  Again, I am not writing a parenting how-to.  I am writing a novel.  And, at its heart, a novel is a work of art exploring the human condition–things that are universal to us all.  Don’t get tripped up in the weeds.

And plot?  Knowing what will happen on page 207 ahead of time?  Who wants to know that?  Sure–I need some sense of direction, some sense of where I’m going.  But I don’t need everything mapped out, to the point of precision.  Again, this a novel, not a technical manual.  A large part of the writing process is exploration as you go.  Allow that room to exist.

 

So, yeah, Mr. “Yeah, But,” two can play at that game!

Full disclosure–I have been snagged by the “yeah, buts” many times.  I certainly have not conquered this beast.  And over the past couple of years, I have been in something of a creative drought, so my battle with the “yeah, buts” is especially fraught right now.  But I feel like I’m turning a corner, and good things are ahead.

No question about it–the “yeah, buts” are a difficult issue for any writer.  The best way to counter them, I have found, is to “yeah, but” right back.

After all, you have stories inside of you.  They need to be let out.

 

Thanks so much for reading!

–Mike

 

 

 

 

Yeah, but . . . (more objections, then segue to general yeah buts then my own writing slump then how to overcome them end

A New Year . . . and a Writing Resolution

Admittedly, I have never been one to make New Year’s resolutions.  Generally, for me, the first day of a new year comes and goes, with little–if any–fanfare.  But this year’s a little different.  My creative output has been quite small the past couple of years.  After The Eye-Dancers and its sequel, The Singularity Wheel, I simply wasn’t struck with many ideas that jumped out in front of me, demanding my attention.  On the rare occasions when they did happen, they had only temporary appeal before fading away, like background music you slowly walk away from.

Until this past week.

It was the way it often happens–sudden, like a bolt of lightning in a cornflower-blue sky.  Unasked for.  Unexpected. As I was taking a walk (something, by the way, that I’ve often found to unlock a helping of creativity), I had an odd memory come to me.  Ninth grade, years ago.  A different century.  One day in science class, we had a substitute teacher.  I still remember his name–Disraeli.  And that’s exactly how he referred to himself–not “Mr. Disraeli.”  Just “Disraeli.”

 

He eschewed the regular lesson plan that day, and instead quizzed us on riddles and mind-teasers.  He offered puzzles, multiple-choice philosophical questions.  He even read from his own books–passages that he believed to be enlightening.  And they were.  He didn’t seem to care about the syllabus or what we’d been learning about in the weeks prior.  He just took his day and taught what he wanted.  I never saw him again.

But he left an impression.

From that memory, a story idea emerged–at once related and unrelated.  The idea also revolved around a high school substitute teacher–but this one is an English teacher.  Call him Mr. Robbins.  He, too, ignores the lesson plan on his one day teaching a particular class.  It’s ninth grade, a snowy day in upstate New York.  The students are feeling lazy, unmotivated . . . until Mr. Robbins asks them a probing question.

 

“Are you alive?”

Some of the students pause, briefly, then shrug.  Others laugh, thinking it’s a joke.  But one student–call him James–sits there, rapt, listening to the substitute teacher’s lesson.  It’s not a question James has ever asked himself.  But he’s a cerebral introvert, enjoys reading, thinking.  He’s all ears.

Mr. Robbins carries on.  He explains that our lives–if we are lucky and not stricken by poverty and oppression or war and famine–are generally spent on mundane things–getting up in the morning, brushing our teeth, eating breakfast, doing homework (which elicits an understanding groan from the class), finishing chores, going shopping, riding the bus, getting stuck in traffic.  On and on.

 

But there are moments–graduations, weddings, reunions, deaths, first loves, a game-winning home run–that stay with us, where the stakes rise, the importance magnifies, and our brains tell us, even at a subconscious level–to remember.

Do we, though?  Yes, we remember bits and pieces.  But, even with life’s monumental moments, there is much we forget.  And the mundane things?  They come and go like the wind, like breath on a cold morning, here one minute; gone the next.  So much of our existence is forgotten–almost as though it were never lived at all.

 

And so, Mr. Robbins asks again, “Are you alive?  Really alive?  If you forget your life away?  If nothing lasts in your memory aside from a few cloudy details here and there?  Is anything real?”

He really has James’s attention now.  The ninth grader hangs on Mr. Robbins’s every word.

The substitute teacher then explains a method he’s devised–a way of capturing memories, moments, as they happen–recording them on paper in such a way that, ten years hence, twenty years, thirty years, forty–you can reread what you wrote and the experience will come crashing back to you like Niagara Falls.  By this juncture, the majority of the class is fully tuned out, openly talking amongst themselves, not worried about what a zany substitute might do to them.

 

But James listens.

Mr. Robbins carries on, making eye contact with James several times, as if understanding he has a serious acolyte, someone in the sea of freshmen before him who might learn and practice and realize.  He explains that, as soon as possible, within minutes of the moment you want to memorialize, write it down.  Capture it while it’s fresh.  But don’t write like a standard journal entry.  No.  Write in a structured way, detailing what happened, factually and specifically.  The time frame–how long it took.  Who was involved–what were they wearing?  What did they say?  Facial expressions?  What perfume or cologne were they wearing?  Where were you?  In a public place?  Describe it!  As many details as you can.  In your house?  What room?  What time was it, exactly?  Were there dishes in the sink?  Was the TV on in the background?  What was it playing?  Essentially, a detailed record of events, capturing everything–every detail.  No matter how minute, how seemingly insignificant.  Leave nothing out.  Anything can be a trigger later on for the brain, for the subconscious to remember the event you are chronicling.  One detail can serve as the lead domino that, when knocked over, slams into all the rest, allowing the memory to come alive decades later when the entry is read.  In this way, you can capture moments of your life–they can be big or small, singular or mundane.  If you want to memorialize what you had for breakfast and how you feel on a given day, do this same process.  It will stick.  It will work.

 

And then, after you record every detail you can possibly think of, then, at that point, write how you feel.  What is it about this moment you are capturing that sticks with you?  What effect does it have on you?  Write that down.  And then–you have it.  As much as you can remember something years later . . . you will remember this.  Your vivid writing of events and your immediate reflections afterward, etched on the page, will preserve as much as is humanly possible.  Like an heirloom, an organism preserved in amber, it will remain, able to be called to the surface of your conscious mind whenever you read it.  Do this with enough life events and you will leave a preserved record–not so much for others (though they would certainly be able to ascertain much from your detailed accounts), but for yourself.  For your ability to remember and recall.

 

To live and not to forget.

Such is the story idea I have.  Essentially a journey into what makes a life a life.  What does living mean?  Why do we remember what we remember, and are we more fully alive if we find a way to vividly remember more moments of our lives.

I surely won’t finish this novel in 2024.  But I’ll start it.  And make a memory.

 

Thanks so much for reading!

Mike

Lemonade, Back Porches, and Lazy Days (Or, What’s the Rush?)

What’s your to-do list look like today?  This week?  This month?  If you’re like most people, it reads like a Victorian novel, with never-ending lists, sentences that carry on for an entire page, and a heft and a volume that is downright intimidating.

 

Given all of this, do you often find it hard to relax, slow down, decompress?  Most of us do.  And maybe the season of summer is here to remind us–it is okay to take the foot off the gas, every now and then, to drink that iced tea or tall glass of pink lemonade.

 

Where I live, in the rural hills of east-central Vermont, there are, at this time of the year, hundreds of fireflies that appear on my property, as if by magic, when night falls.  They swoop and soar above the meadow out back, they zoom forward just outside the window, flickers in the dark.  Sometimes I just stand at the window for several minutes and watch.  Think.  Take it all in.  Slow down.

 

Summer is a time for long. lazy days, back-porch conversations, slow walks along a country road.  (Or through a city or suburban neighborhood.)   The sun is high in the sky, the air is hot, the nights warm, like velvet.  Nature itself is inviting us to take a long, deep breath.

Indeed, when it comes to stories–novels or movies, stories I read or write myself–oftentimes my favorite scenes are the interludes, the quiet moments when the action slows down, when the conflict subsides, and when the characters can take a moment and share a laid-back give-and-take, enjoy a meal, or just hang out, unhurried.  Scenes like this, which some find boring, strike me as relaxing, the narrative inviting me to join the characters and put my feet up.  To stop always being in a hurry all the time.

 

So, maybe we should take the hint.  Listen to the rhythms of the season, the warm nights, the long days, the long, languorous humming of the cicadas overhead.

Pour that lemonade, open a good book, and relax.  What’s the rush?

 

Thanks so much for reading!

–Mike

The Myth of a Moment (And How the Written Word Can Make It Real)

You hear it all the time.  Behavioral experts, motivational speakers, philosophers, life coaches . . . “Live in the moment.  Stay in the now.  The moment we’re in is all we have.”  Fair enough . . . on the surface of it.  But when you take a step back and really look at it . . . what does this mean?  And what, in fact, is a moment, anyway?

 

Is a moment the single second we are living in, the instant in time that is “now”?  If so, it is over and done so quickly, before we can “live it,” it is gone.  For example, if you and I were standing in line, waiting for an ice cream cone, and I said to you, “How’s your day?”  What is the “moment”?  By the time you hear those words, the “moment” is over.  Maybe your response–“Great, how’s yours?”–is the moment?  But that, too, is finished before I have time to think about it or even respond to it.

 

Is the “moment” the entirety of the conversation?  Maybe.  And if the exchange is limited to a few passing pleasantries, perhaps this is as valid a definition as any.  But what if the conversation lingers and persists for five minutes?  Ten?  A half hour?  An hour?  (It’s a LONG line!)  Then what?  Is the “moment” the full hour?  Or is it broken into individual seconds, each too swift to grasp?  Individual minutes, maybe?  What chunk of time do we label “a moment”?

Additionally, do we remember our moments?  If they come and go with the blink of an eye, if we can’t even fully experience them when they happen (by the time our brain processes them, they are already in the past), how on earth do we remember them after the fact?  Obviously, we remember big things, certain memories and events that stand above the fray, things we carry in our hearts like buried treasure for the entirety of our lives.

 

But think about it.  Over 99 percent of our “moments” are gone from our conscious minds, erased, as if they never happened.  Now, I believe they are still inside us–at a deep, subconscious level.  But, short of dreams or perhaps hypnosis, they are inaccessible, tantalizing but unable to be grasped.  Trying to recall the vast majority of moments even from yesterday, let alone last year or ten years ago, is like attempting to hug the wind or encase an aroma in your hands.  It cannot be done.

So, where does that leave us?  Can we really “experience the moment,” after all?  We compensate in a holistic way.  I can’t remember what I did yesterday at precisely 9:04 a.m.  But I can remember what I did, in general, yesterday morning.  I can’t remember what my brother did on December 1, 2007.  But I have a collection of memories of my brother, culled and collected over time, that define my experiences with him.  In short, our memories, our moments, even the people we love, become composites, a vast collection of individual experiences brought together, coalescing in a formed and layered collage, like a building continually being added onto, story by story, row by row.

December 2007 calendar

 

It is often frustrating–this inability to step back within the eye blink of a moment, the limitations of our conscious memory, which forget the vast majority of the moments of our lives.  We do the best we can with what we have.

But there is something that fleshes out moments, that pours concrete under the foundation of events and experiences.  And that is the written word.

Indeed.  What’s your favorite novel?  To Kill a Mockingbird?  Wuthering Heights?  The Shining?  Maybe you’ve read it a dozen times.  You know the story well, inside and out.  But can you, from memory, quote the fifth sentence on page 138?  Of course not.  Like a “moment,” it is gone–experienced once (or several times), but no longer a part of your conscious memory.  With a novel, though, with anything written and preserved on the page, you can check.  You can go back.  You can turn to page 138, and you can relive that moment, and you can reread that sentence!  You don’t have to combine disparate words and chapters into a blended whole.  You can go granular, and experience individual sentences again, and again, and again, if you so choose.

 

That is the magic of the written word.  It makes things permanent.  It takes a fleeting moment, a scene, a paragraph, a sentence, and it tattoos it to the page, forever accessible, forever able to be read, and experienced, again.

Magic, indeed.

So . . . you want to live in the moment?  Remember moments from the past, with crystal clarity?  Then grab a book . . . and read.

 

Thanks so much for reading!

–Mike

No Actors to Bail You Out (Or, You’re on Your Own)

There is a scene in the 1954 classic movie On the Waterfront that, one can argue, introduced the world to the art of modern, naturalistic acting.  Terry Malloy (played by Marlon Brando) is talking with Edie Doyle (Eva Marie Saint) in a park in the city.  He clearly enjoys her company–they only recently met.  But she isn’t sure about him, especially because they met in part due to the death of her brother.  Not exactly an auspicious way to start a relationship.

 

And Edie, at this point in the film, has no intention of starting a relationship with Terry.  But as they walk together, he talks a mile a minute, engaging her, trying to break the ice.  At one point, fiddling with a fashionable pair of white gloves, Edie drops one on the ground.  Terry quickly picks it up . . . but doesn’t give it back to her.  Instead, he caresses it, explores it, and then puts it on his own hand, all the while continuing with the conversation.  Edie doesn’t acknowledge it, though she shows through her glances and body language that she is very aware he now wears her glove.

 

Terry continues to fiddle with the glove as they talk, even as it’s wrapped around his hand.  The message is clear–Edie is not prepared yet to hold his hand.  But Terry simulates that action by wearing her glove.  It is a subtle, romantic gesture.  Eventually, Edie says she has to go, and she reaches for the glove and pulls it off his hand, reclaiming it.  They go on talking, as if nothing has happened.  It is a remarkably natural scene.

 

But what makes it more remarkable is . . . none of it was scripted!  Sure, the dialogue was.  But not the glove.  The actress, Eva Marie Saint, did not drop one of her gloves on purpose.  It was an accident.  Undoubtedly, she thought the director, Elia Kazan, would yell, “Cut!”  And they would need to reshoot the scene.

But Brando reacted with lightning-quickness.  Without missing a beat, he, completely on his own, picked up the glove and proceeded to do everything just described above.  Nowhere in the script did it say, “Edie drops her glove, and Terry places it on his own hand to simulate holding her hand.”  That was 100 percent Brando ad-libbing in the moment, so invested in his role that he simply responded naturally and had the instincts to understand his character, his motivations, and the dynamics of the scene.

 

Eva Marie Saint responded with aplomb as well.  She had no idea Brando was going to do that–neither did he, until it happened!  But she played off of him, without a script, perfectly.  And then when she reached to retrieve her glove from him–all in one fluid motion, without mentioning it–just 100 percent natural–that, too, was obviously unscripted.  Just pure instinct.

 

For his part, screenwriter Budd Schulberg wrote a first-rate script.  But he can’t take credit for this scene.  It was all the actors ad-libbing and playing off each other.

Of course, even beyond a scene like this one, where the actors, literally, create something out of thin air, a screenwriter is dependent on the cast delivering their lines well.  A movie script is words on a page.  It is designed to come alive on the silver screen (or on your TV, or on your smartphone).  It requires the actors to do their part.  The best script can fall flat in the hands of untalented actors.  And a so-so script can resonate and move an audience to tears if the performers on-screen bring it to life and make the words sing.

 

Either way, a screenwriter is dependent.  Their words are not enough.  In the hands of a Marlon Brando or an Eva Marie Saint, a scriptwriter can appear to be a genius.  And Schulberg deserves plenty of credit for his script.  But let’s not kid ourselves.  On the Waterfront is one of America’s all-time great movies because of the actors.

************************************

For a novelist (or short story writer, or any writer who relies exclusively on the written word), there are no Brandos or Saints to weave their alchemy and turn the words on the page to gold.  If you intend for a character’s dialogue to be funny, the words need to convey the humor on their own.  There are no gifted actors to deliver the lines and make them their own.  It is all on you–the author.

 

Creating mood, character, subtleties, innuendoes; depicting sarcasm, tone of voice, disbelief.  These are things an author needs to do through the crafting of a scene on the page, through the dialogue itself, the setting, the narrative, and a few well-placed and strategic descriptions–as much by showing as possible, keeping the telling firmly in check.

It is an enormous challenge.  If you don’t come right out and tell a reader, “Character X is sad” (and you shouldn’t), you have to show the reader–and, again, you need to do it exclusively through your words.  There are no shortcuts, no actors to bail you out.  No director whose unique camera angles and visual storytelling technique lift your words to the stratosphere.  It is all, and only, your words.

 

That is both the blessing and the curse of writing for the written page.  You have 100 percent ownership of the material and the characters.  It is your creation; no one else’s.

And, when you think about it . . . that’s pretty exciting.  Much more a blessing than a curse.  The opportunities are as endless as your imagination.

 

Thanks so much for reading!

–Mike

 

 

 

 

 

Terry Malloy

Edie Doyle

For the Love of It

Imagine this scenario, if you will . . .

You are out taking a walk, a leisurely stroll through the neighborhood on a sunny, mellow evening in spring.  The flowers are in full bloom, and the whine of the occasional lawn mower can be heard as some of the residents finish their yard work ahead of the sunset.  You pass by a couple of fellow pedestrians:  a young couple walking their poodle; a middle-aged, silver-haired guy speed-walking with a purpose; a teenager with her face plastered in her smartphone, not paying attention to her surroundings.

 

As you walk, you relax.  Your mind rests.  You take in the scents and sounds and scene.  The smell of spring, of freshness, of new growth, is a balm to the soul.  You are at peace.

And then it happens.  An idea strikes!  Out of nowhere, supercharged, as if tethered to a bolt of lightning.  A scene visualizes, characters emerge, and, remarkably, the genesis of a new novel is there–just like that.  Gift-wrapped from the muse.  You quicken your pace, eager to get home and jot down the essentials of the story lest you forget them.  An idea like this–fully formed, riveting, interesting–doesn’t strike every day.  You don’t want to lose it.

 

Once home, you do indeed write out the details of your idea.  Old school, you use pencil and paper, the ideas coming so fast and furious, it is difficult for your hand and the pencil to keep pace with your whirling mind.  But finally, after several minutes of speed-writing, you have it all down on paper.  Reading through it, you are amazed at the level of detail, the depth, the three-dimensional characters.  Where an hour ago there was nothing, there is now the makings of a novel.

 

Emotionally spent from this unexpected burst of creation, you head to bed early, content to sleep on it.  You will see how you feel about it in the morning.

And, to no one’s surprise, you feel good about it the next day!  And the day after that.  But when, a few days later, you sit down to write chapter one, something feels off, missing, like a widget with a missing screw.  The piece is there . . . but it’s not fully alive.  It is not vibrant.  Like a department store mannequin, it looks back at you, unblinking, an emptiness to the eyes.  This surprises you.  When the idea struck, it felt like a winner.  What’s happened?

 

You take a breath, step back (literally!), and examine the story anew.  Interesting idea.  Solid characters.  Multi-layered themes.  You are puzzled.  What’s the problem?

Then you see it.  While, technically, everything is in place–it is all there, made to order, as it were–you don’t love it.  Sure, you like it.  The characters have depth.  The plot twists and turns like a mountain highway at dusk.  The drama and intrigue are knife’s-edge sharp.  But . . . you don’t love the idea.  Maybe it’s the genre.  Maybe it’s too dark.  Maybe something about just doesn’t quite hit the spot.  Maybe the chemistry is missing, like a blind date that your friend assures you will go well but that falls flatter than day-old soda.  It’s not the tangible aspects of the story that are the issue.  It’s the intangible.  When it’s all said and done, you cannot imagine spending weeks, months, perhaps years writing this novel.

 

So, what do you do?  Good ideas don’t exactly litter the roadside, awaiting anyone and everyone to gather them up.  Do you still write the novel, even if you don’t love it?

I wouldn’t.  In fact, I couldn’t.  Even if I wanted to, the lack of love, the lack of emotional investment, would make the task impossible.  If it were a short story idea, it wouldn’t be a problem.  While it’s always better to love your stories, even the short ones . . . the fact is, a short story is, well, short.  Even if you don’t love the characters or the genre, if the idea is complete and solid and powerful, the story can still work.  (Though, even then, it likely will not be your best.)  After all, you’ll only be investing three or four thousand words–you might be able to pump it out in a single afternoon.  But a novel?  A hundred thousand words?  Not a chance.

“Love,” Ray Bradbury once wrote.  “Fall in love and stay in love.  Write only what you love, and love what you write.  The key word is love.”

 

Thanks so much for reading!

–Mike

 

Through the Wisps of Time (the Past and the Present Merge)

Just the other day, I stumbled upon something I hadn’t seen in years.  I was cleaning out an old dresser drawer, and at the very bottom, like a treasure hiding beneath mounds of stuff, shyly avoiding discovery, was an old cassette tape.  Yes, a cassette!  A relic.  An artifact from a distant age, from a previous century.

Scribbled on the tape’s label, the words “Dave the Great” greeted my gaze, in my older brother’s neat, distinctive handwriting.  Dave the Great.  He used to take on that persona as a kid and perform interviews–often with himself.  He’d pretend to be Howard Cosell and he’d interview, well, himself, as a professional baseball player, offering a running commentary of his latest triumphs.  Or he’d simply introduce himself as Dave the Great and interview anyone who happened to be with him when he clicked “record” on the tape player.

 

And for this particular cassette, hiding in my dresser for years, I was the person he interviewed.  The catch?  I was five years old!  Indeed.  The cassette bridged the gap between centuries, taking me back, back, back, forty-plus years, to a January morning long before email existed for just anyone . . . or blogs, or the internet as a household medium, or smartphones, or social media, or self-driving cars.  It was a world full of landline telephones, handwritten letters, a world where, when you needed to discover something, you called up the reference librarian at your local library or maybe looked it up in a hard-backed encyclopedia.  Years ago, a chasm of time between then and now.

 

Curious to see if the old cassette still worked, I discovered a dusty tape player and inserted the cassette into it. And sure enough.  The old analog technology was working, a warrior of the decades, grainy and not as clear as it might be, but good enough.  It was my brother’s voice, at thirteen.  Clear as day.  Penetrating as the frost on that day four decades ago when he made the tape.

 

A few minutes in, he introduced . . . me.  And then I spoke . . . or who I was spoke, when I was five.  As I listened, I laughed out loud.  My voice was so high, a little kid’s voice, as if infused with helium.  The give-and-take with my brother echoed across the deep recesses of my mind, traveling through the years like a time-traveling space ship.  So long ago.  And yet, there we were.  Having a conversation in the very same house I’ll visit again sometime this spring, where my father still lives.  Past and present merging into one.

 

Many details are forgotten.  Most, sadly.  Forget four decades.  What did I do last week?  It’s a struggle to remember the day-to-day events of our lives.  They happen in an instant, replaced, inevitably, by the next moment, and the next, and the next, and the next, in an ongoing catalogue of movement and motion.  Nothing stays still.  Nothing stays frozen.  We are always stepping forward, second by second.  Individual moments, those pixels that make up our lives, dissolve into invisibility before we know it.  What did I have for breakfast last Monday?  Who knows?

 

But as I listened to the old cassette, from so many years ago, there were actually snippets of the conversation I recalled.  I could see us there in my brother’s bedroom, the snow falling outside the window, the slight hum of the heat through the vent.  Some of the things we said on that cassette–they brought me back to that moment, to being a little kid again.

 

And maybe, as much as I might wish I could remember everything . . . maybe that is enough.  Though details fade away into oblivion, the main story line lives on.  What the brain forgets, the heart remembers, and if we take a moment to be still (even though that moment will instantly melt into the next one), we can access the emotional memories of our heart, and we can capture them with our words, or our pictures, or our dance steps.  We can represent.  We can share with the world–or whoever is listening–something about our truth.

For now, I will just play that old cassette again, and I will listen to my brother at thirteen and myself at five.  Will something creative come out of it?  Maybe.  Or . . . maybe it already has.  I just need to find it.

 

Thanks so much for reading!

–Mike

One Step at a Time (Or, the Link Between “Drop Foot” and Creativity)

Until this past October, in the shadows of Halloween, I had never undergone surgery.  I’ve been lucky.  But this fall, that changed.  I had a fairly straightforward and noninvasive surgery done on my lower back called a microdiscectomy–where the surgeon makes a small incision and then goes in and removes the extruded matter from a herniated disc, freeing up the lumbar nerve root that had been severely compressed by the herniation.

 

In my case, this disc herniation in the low back resulted not so much in sharp pain, but in a condition known as “drop foot.”  Drop foot results in an inability to dorsiflex–or lift your foot up at the ankle, making it very difficult to walk with anything resembling a normal gait.  All the research I did (and the fact that my own brother had the same thing in 2018!) made me realize that surgery was needed, and quickly, to minimize the the chance of the nerve damage being permanent.  Some of the nerve damage to the L5 lumbar nerve root in my lower back likely *would* be permanent.  But a prompt surgery would, with hope, bring back at least some of the functionality of my affected (right) foot.

 

The surgery went well.  I had never been “put out” before, and it was an interesting sensation.  There was no sense of time having passed.  I closed my eyes, and–it felt like one second later, I opened them.  I soon realized I had been out for close to three hours.

 

The weeks directly after the surgery were challenging.  At first, you’re feeling worse, not better.  But slowly, as the days bled into weeks, and as I tried acupuncture for the first time in my life, I began to regain a little bit of strength in my right foot.  First, the ankle was offering more support, then I was able to raise my toes a bit more, then flex the foot up a bit more.  By the time the holiday season was in full swing, I was able to walk without a foot brace, and had regained perhaps two-thirds of my natural gait.

 

And that’s about where I still am today.  I can move around quite normally and don’t feel all that restricted.  As the long Vermont winter eventually recedes, I will again take the mile-long round-trip walks to the mailbox every day, and mowing the lawn is actually something I am looking forward to, come May!  I look forward to putting the foot to the test.

Throughout this process, it’s been important not to rush things.  The damaged lumbar nerve root needs to time to heal.  The weakened muscles that raise the foot need time to regenerate and strengthen.  It is a process, a step-by-step approach, literally!  And it made me realize–recovering from drop foot and writing a novel (or any long creative work) are very similar!

 

With a novel, you often get an inspiration.  An idea flashes.  Scenarios merge.  Characters form out of the creative ether, ready to come to life and populate the story.  But the novel isn’t written in a single day.  It takes time, multiple drafts, edits, starts and stops, and to see it through, you must persevere through the doubts that inevitable arise, the nagging insecurities that at times scream like a howling wind racing down the mountain passes.

 

“Will the story come together?”  “Will the characters pop?”  “Will readers like it?”  “Will anyone even read it?”  “Will I even finish it?”  Or . . . “Will I be able to walk again?”  “Will I be able to mow the lawn, get around without a brace?”  “Play sports again?”

The questions nag and persist, trying to trip you up, sometimes seductively subtle, weakening you piece by piece; other times, they are loud and obnoxious, in your face like a schoolyard bully.  The only thing that matters is how you respond.

Keep going.  Don’t stop.  Don’t give in to the doubts.  Just keep grinding through.

Step by step.

 

Thanks so much for reading!

–Mike

“Suddenly Seymour” Moments (Or, On Epiphanies)

Before the start of fifth-grade, I was afraid.  Granted, I never wanted summer vacation to end, but that year, I was filled with an unusual dread.  My teacher that year would be Mr. Bansbach.  He’d been teaching the fifth grade since the time of Confucius, or so it seemed to my ten-year-old sensibilities.  He was old-school, even when old-school was still in vogue–this was the 1980s.  He was tough.  He was no-nonsense.  But, more than anything, he was strict.

 

Not that I was a troublemaker.  Shy to the core, I said little at school and was a good student.  But I still worried.  Stories about Mr. Bansbach circulated through the school.  He was as feared as any teacher I ever had.  I dreaded that first day.

When it arrived, Mr. Bansbach introduced himself and, standing at the front of the class in his suit and tie, his thick glasses reflecting the fluorescent overhead lights, his thinning, dyed-black hair combed back on his head, he called us “preteens.”  “You’re not ‘kids,'” he said.  “A ‘kid’ is a baby goat.  You are preadolescents, you are growing up, and you will take responsibility in my class.”  Great, i thought.  The rumors were true.  This guy was going to be a nightmare.

 

One day, about a week into the new school year, I finished an in-class assignment early.  Not sure what to do, I just sat there, hands folded, waiting for the other students to finish.

Mr. Bansbach was not impressed.

“Class,” he said.  “I want to direct your attention to this young man.” He pointed at me.  “He finished his assignment early.”  That was good, wasn’t it?  I was on the ball!  Evidently not.  “Don’t do what he just did.  Ever.  When he finished, he sat there, blankly, wasting time.  Next time, young man”–he stared right at me–“take out a book and read.  Make use of your time.  Understand?”

 

I did.

And I didn’t like Mr. Bansbach.

A few weeks later, before class, Mr. Bansbach pulled me aside in the hallway, just outside his classroom.  I stiffened.  What had I done now?  Finished my homework too early the night before?  Did he have some way to monitor me at home?

“That was an impressive victory last night,” he said.  “Maybe your Steelers will win a fifth Super Bowl this season.”

And he patted me on the shoulder and winked.  Then he went into the classroom and I followed.

What had just happened?  And how did he know I was a Pittsburgh Steelers fan?  And why did he care?  Was he a sports fan, too?

 

He was.  Throughout that fall, he would talk to me about the Steelers games.  Win or lose, he always took a few minutes early in the week to go over their previous game with me.  I didn’t say much.  I was still nervous around him.  But it impressed me that he was so in tune with his students.

As the year rolled on, I genuinely learned to like Mr. Bansbach.  And he seemed to like me.  He congratulated me on several homework assignments, when I went above and beyond the parameters of the assignment.  The following year, when I entered sixth grade and had a new teacher, Mr. Bansbach would still seek me out in the hallways on Monday mornings and talk about the most recent Steelers game.

And while I learned to like him more and more as my fifth-grade year progressed, it was that first kind gesture, that initial time he talked to me about my favorite football team, that stuck with me.  I can still remember it–the way he stood there, outside his classroom, waiting for me.  His way of letting me know we were okay.  That I was okay.

 

You might call it a moment of epiphany, a realization, that the rumors were false, and that Mr. Bansbach was different from his reputation.  Oh, he was strict.  You definitely did not want to slack off in his class.  That part was true.  But no one ever said he was nice, that he cared.  That he would take the time to learn about his students and show them he was on their side.  I had to learn that for myself.

There are moments like that throughout literature and film–moments of awakening, when a character learns something about him- or herself, or someone else.  Indeed, The Eye-Dancers and The Singularity Wheel are chock-full of such moments–Joe Marma learning that he doesn’t even like football, a sport he pursues with reckless abandon, but only plays it to best his brother; Mitchell Brant finding out that his long-distance (a multiverse away!) relationship with Heather doesn’t mean what he’s thought the past five years; or Marc Kuslanski coming to grips with his guilt over the accident he feels responsible for with his little brother.  The characters realize these things in a moment of revelation, a tipping point in the symphony of their lives.  Epiphanies are real.  But they are also hard to pull off in literature or on film.

 

You want to say so much without, well, saying so much.  You want the scene to speak for itself.  You want the reader or the viewer to feel it right along with the character.

Like the performance of “Suddenly Seymour” in the 1986 remake of the musical Little Shop of Horrors.  Throughout the film, Seymour (Rick Moranis) and Audrey (Ellen Greene) work together at a florist shop.  Seymour is shy and awkward, but clearly carries a torch for his coworker.  She, however, is in a relationship with someone she, herself, describes as a “semi-sadist” (an outrageous dentist played by Steve Martin).  Audrey thinks lowly of herself, and she gets involved with abusive men like the dentist.  Throughout the movie, she speaks in a squeaky, mousy voice, almost as if she doesn’t even feel she is worthy to say anything.

 

But then this scene happens.  Seymour encourages her, praises her, and expresses his true feelings for her.  He stands, and sings “Suddenly Seymour.”

Audrey is touched, listening to him.  Then she joins in the song.  At first, her singing voice matches her speaking voice–timid, lacking in confidence, unsure.  But then, when she hits her own “Suddenly Seymour” note, there is a transformation, an awakening.  An epiphany.  Audrey finds her voice, literally, and she belts out the rest of the song in an astonishingly strong, beautiful, and full-throated rendition.  Before our eyes, without any speeches, without any blaring announcement, she and Seymour have changed.  They have awakened.  It is a cinematic performance for the ages.

 

And that’s how epiphanies work–in life, and in story.  They hit you with the force of a tidal wave, but, counterintuitively, they also do so quickly, quietly, in a moment, without any narrator making a bold, big proclamation.  There is no need to tell or exclaim or pontificate.  There is only a moment, the moment, when everything becomes clear.

Even just a moment in a song, or a moment when your fifth-grade teacher shows you–rather than tells you–that he’s had your back all along.

 

Thanks so much for reading!

–Mike

People You Know, Characters You Create

Have you ever wanted to write–or actually written–a piece of fiction that featured characters based on actual people you know?  Now, granted–even when we create our characters “out of thin air,” there are elements of people we know in them.  Or, sometimes, a composite of several people’s characteristics rolled into one.  This may be on a subconscious level–you’re not necessarily trying to base your characters on anyone.  But it’s inevitable that traits from some people you know (or you. yourself, as the author) will find their way into some of your characters.

However, that’s not what we’re talking about here.  What we’re talking about is . . . you know Jane from across the hall in your apartment complex, and you want to create a character “based” on her.  Or perhaps someone from school–a bully, your best friend, a teacher, a nerd–whoever it is.  You want to feature them in your next novel (with a different name, of course).  Can you literally have at it, and re-create the real-life person in your fictional story?  Or do you need to add several layers of a literary buffer, effectively “disguising” them, perhaps even from themselves should they read your work?

 

The interesting thing about that is–whatever your intention, it likely doesn’t matter because as you write, as you go forward with your literary endeavor, creative elements will take over.

As I’ve posted about in the past, the main characters in The Eye-Dancers were based on friends I had growing up.  Specifically, Mitchell Brant was inspired by Matt B.; Ryan Swinton by Rick S.; Joe Marma by, well, Joe M.; and Marc Kuslanski by MattK.  The supporting character of Matt “Grronk” Giselmo was also inspired by a Matt–Matt G.  A lot of Matts!  As for last names, of course I changed them, though I matched the first letter of the fictional characters’ last names with their real-life inspirations.

 

And, honestly, when I set out to write the novel, my intent was to keep the characters relatively close to my real-life friends.  I wasn’t aiming to incorporate much “separation” at all.  Sure, I’d change details and respect their privacy.  Of course.  But as for their personalities, quirks, inside jokes, nicknames, and even physical tendencies, I was drawing form the real thing.

But then, as I continued to move forward with the story, a funny thing happened.  I began seeing the protagonists solely as who they were, and wasn’t even thinking of the real-life Matts or Rick or Joe.  Ryan Swinton was only Ryan Swinton.  Marc Kuslanski was only Marc Kuslanski.  At a certain point during the writing process, it was as if the characters weren’t inspired by anyone.  They had matured, grown, morphed, and become exclusively who they were.  Obviously, even with this development, the characters retained elements of their real-life inspirations.  How could they not?  That’s how they were “born.”  But they had fully and completely become their own entities.  As I wrote their scenes, I no longer even glimpsed the actual people they were based on.  I saw only the protagonists themselves.

 

It was a revelatory experience, one I honestly did not expect.  At the outset, I was “seeing” them so much as offshoots of the people I knew; I assumed it would remain that way throughout the process.  But as so often happens with creative endeavors, the process, the experience, the flow, the wonder takes on a life of its own and leads you where it will.  The writing is in charge.  Not the author.

So, if you are in a similar circumstance–about to begin a novel or a fictionalized work of some sort and are basing your characters on people you know (or knew), and you’re wondering how “close” to cut it . . . you probably have nothing to worry about.

Because as you begin, as you wade through the literary waters, as the bones of the story fill out with muscle and sinew and soul and emotion . . . the characters will become who they decide to become, and the initial inspirations will fade into the background.

So write.  Let your characters lead on.  It promises to be a journey as exciting as it is unpredictable.

 

Thanks so much for reading!

–Mike