The Conundrum of Creativity (Or, Sometimes They May See You Sweat)

One fall day in my junior year of college, I met with my academic advisor, a bearded, gray-haired man in his early sixties who also happened to teach two of my Writing courses that semester.  It was late in the afternoon, his office overlooking the campus’s back parking lot.  Mellow October sunshine filtered in through the open window, the breeze ruffling the ungraded papers on his desk.

 

We were talking about career choices.  What did I want to do with my life when I graduated?  I loved writing, of course.  I knew I wanted to be a writer. I’d known that since the second grade.  Maybe I’d need to acquire a “day” job to pay the bills, but the nights, the weekends–they would belong to my flights of fancy.

 

My advisor smiled.  “If you love it,” he said.  “If you feel called to do it, then it’s right for you.  That’s the way I feel about teaching.”

I nodded, but perhaps sensing I thought he was just issuing a standard company line or that I wasn’t grasping the heart of his message, he went on: “You know, I’ve been teaching here for over thirty years.  I’ve probably forgotten more about writing and literature than most people will ever know.”  He laughed, shook his head, thumbed the thick glasses he wore up the bridge of his nose.  I sensed that, for a moment, his mind was peering back through the decades, wondering at the swiftness of it all, the transitory nature of life.

 

“But I’ll tell you this,” he said.  “Before I walk into that classroom, I still feel butterflies.  I know there are students in there, my students, and maybe some of them even want to go on to become journalists or poets or novelists–just like you.  I have to be able to teach you something worthwhile.  Others? They’re probably taking my course because it’s required.  They don’t want to be there.  But maybe I can light a spark, you see.  Maybe I can inspire them to read something great long after they’ve forgotten all about me.”

 

“You get nervous?” I asked.  Somehow the rest of his message had got lost.  After all, in class he never seemed nervous.  And why should he be?  He was one of my favorite professors–always engaging and interesting.  Teaching appeared to come so effortlessly, so naturally to him.

He smiled again.  “Just before class starts, my heart beats a little faster.  I do a quick mental checklist on the lesson.  Yeah.  I get nervous.  But that’s a good thing.”  He paused for effect. “It means I still care.  I still love what I do.  When the day comes that I don’t feel those butterflies before class, I’ll know it’s time to retire.”

 

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

On July 3, 1950, New York Yankees legend Joe DiMaggio got word that he was slated to start the next game at first base.  Upon hearing the news, he wondered if it might be some sort of practical joke.  Him play first base?  He was the center fielder, he’d been the Yankees center fielder since his rookie season, fourteen years earlier.  He hadn’t played first base since his days in the minor leagues.

 

But manager Casey Stengel was serious.

 

The team was in a funk, and Stengel wanted to inject some youth into the outfield.  Inwardly, DiMaggio seethed.  Stengel had just joined the team as manager the previous season, whereas Joltin’ Joe, the Yankee Clipper, had been the star of the franchise for a decade and a half.  But he did not openly dispute his manager.  He readied himself to play first base.

Prior to the start of the game, DiMaggio fielded practice ball after practice ball, trying to acclimate himself to this new, foreign defensive position.  Before the first pitch was even thrown, his uniform was soaked with sweat.  Feeling like the proverbial fish out of water, DiMaggio had never been so nervous.

 

During the game, he made no errors, but clearly looked out of sorts.  It was the longest game of his life.

The next day, DiMaggio was back in center field.  He never played first base again.

Later, he was asked why he felt so much pressure.  He was Joe DiMaggio, after all.  What did he have left to prove?  He had already cemented himself as one of the all-time greats, a sure first-ballot Hall-of-Famer.  Hadn’t he earned the right to relax?  Wasn’t his legacy assured?

 

“There is always some kid who may be seeing me for the first or last time,” the Yankee Clipper responded.  “I owe him my best.”

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

It is one of the tenets of writing, of any form of creative expression–we must first and foremost do what we love, express what matters to us, write about the relationships, ideas, concepts, themes, passions that resonate within, in some deep, secret chamber of the heart.  Whether we are singing opera or crafting poetry or writing blogs–it is imperative that we do what we want to do, what we are called to do.  As soon as we begin creating solely based on what others are doing or expecting, as soon as we force ourselves into a certain genre or form we don’t love, the results will suffer.

 

And yet, and yet . . .

When the time arrives, and we decide to take the plunge and share our work with someone else, be it one person, a hundred, or thousands upon thousands, we no longer are creating in a vacuum.

Our work is now “out there.”  It has become a part of a larger whole, a single grain of sand on an artistic shore that expands, shifts, and evolves every day, every moment.

 

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

Every time I publish a blog post, every time I share a story with someone, anyone, every time I see a new review of The Eye-Dancers posted on the Web, I feel those same butterflies my old English professor felt before the start of each class.

 

Sometimes I berate myself.  Why should I care so much what others think of my work?  Don’t I write for myself, first and foremost?  Isn’t that enough?

And you know, the honest answer is–no.  It’s not enough.  If it were enough, I never would have released The Eye-Dancers, never would submit a short story to a literary magazine, never would publish a single blog post.  My words would simply sit there on the page, locked inside the hard drive of my computer or the folders inside my drawer.

 

But that’s not why we create art.  We sing and dance and draw and write to share a piece of ourselves with others.  We write about a personal experience and then, when someone else, someone we don’t even know, reads it and says, “Yes!  I know what he’s saying, I’ve felt that way, too,” a special kind of magic takes place.

 

It is that magic, that sharing, that bridging of the gap between us that makes writing and creating so worthwhile.

So yes.  As I hit that Publish button right now, I do feel a little bit nervous.

I wouldn’t want it any other way.

 

Thanks so much for reading!

–Mike

Looking Out the Window . . . Or, the Cure for Writer’s Block?

It was difficult to feel motivated, and I don’t think I was the only person in the class who felt that way.  Fellow students yawned, fidgeted.  A couple of times, the professor, a tall, bespectacled brunette in her late forties, had to remind the class to focus on the discussion at hand.

 

The malaise was understandable, perhaps even unavoidable.  It was the first week of the spring semester, which in itself seemed a cruel joke.  Spring?  It was the end of January, and outside, a soft snow was falling from clouds the color of ash.  The temperature had been stuck several degrees below freezing for days, and the sun, a shy, long-lost acquaintance, seemed perpetually hidden.

Western New York State in midwinter . . .

 

“So,” the professor said, her voice high, energetic.  No doubt she sensed that she needed to inject some much-needed enthusiasm into the classroom.  “Today I want to talk about writer’s block.  We’ve all been there before, am I right?”  Nods, faint murmerings from the class.  “Well . . . when you want to write something, and you just can’t seem to, what do you do?”

 

One girl raised her hand and said she just waits it out.  Ideas come when they will come, she said.  I nodded.  I had tried to force-feed ideas in the past, but it never worked.  The creative process was a mystery.  It wasn’t something you could order around.  It was the one in charge.  Not me.

 

The professor didn’t agree.

“Look outside,” she said.  “Everyone.  Look out the window.”  Heads turned, slowly, and I overheard one student behind me whisper to herself that she needed another cup of coffee.  It was an early morning class on top of everything else.

 

“Now,” the professor continued.  “I want you all to describe what you see.”

Blank looks and an audible grunt from one guy who looked as if he’d literally stumbled out of bed two minutes before the start of class greeted her direction.

“In your notebooks, write what you see through the window,” she went on.  “Just a single paragraph.  But in that paragraph, I want you to paint a picture.  Create a mood.  Get those writer’s muscles working!  I’ll write something up, too.”

One girl asked if we’d all have to share our literary creations with the rest of the class.  The professor rolled her eyes behind the lenses of her glasses, and shook her head.  “Only if you want to.”  The girl breathed a sigh of relief.

I peered out the window, taking in the scene.  The classroom overlooked a snow-covered expanse interspersed with walkways and dotted with maple trees, stripped bare for the winter.  This section of campus was presently empty, the early hour and cold, snowy weather keeping students and faculty inside.

 

One tree in particular caught my eye.  It stood perhaps twenty feet beyond the window, its limbs reaching up into the white, wintry haze.  The trunk was large, solid–I estimated it must have been there a hundred years, if not more, an ancient guardian, a sentry of the walkways and classrooms within its watch.  A crow, cawing as it flew (or so I imagined through the closed window), landed on a branch, its black feathers bold against the whites and grays of a Rochester January.

 

I stared at the crow, thinking, imagining, and began to write . . .

“In the maple that has been here so long, no one alive can remember its absence, a crow perches.  Midnight black on slate gray.  What secrets does the tree know?  What hushed conversations has it overheard?  What conspiracies has it been privy to?  It stands and watches.  And listens, listens . . .  Not eternal, perhaps.  But enduring.  The bird flies away.  Perhaps, just perhaps, it had sensed something in the tree.  A knowledge, maybe.  A probing . . . as if its innermost being, its secrets tucked away in a quiet corner of its black heart were being exposed, one by wintry one . . .”

I never did share that paragraph with my classmates.  And, truth be told, I’m not sure it should see the light of day now!  But it illustrates the point the professor was trying to make that day.  If you observe the simplest thing and decide to write a paragraph, or a page, about it, you can escape the creative logjam you might be in and ride with the river’s current.  Sometimes the current is slow, winding, hesitant.  Sometimes it rushes headlong toward some unknown destination, full of promise and optimism.  Either way, however, you are moving, not stuck in the mire and muck of writer’s block.

 

While the scene you describe may not find its way into a short story or chapter (though it might!), it very well may kindle the flame of an idea, kick-start a story line, or help you to navigate the maze of the novel you’re working on.

 

There were times while writing The Eye-Dancers that I did indeed feel stuck.  What should happen next?  Sometimes your characters act in the most unpredictable ways!  That’s generally a good thing, except for when they act so unpredictably they cause you, the author, to question the next scene, or peer ahead, bleary-eyed and overwhelmed, not sure where the story should journey next, or if it should even be completed at all.

 

And for me, these creative crisis points are the moments when I need to remind myself to step back, take a breath–and write.  Create something fresh and new, completely unrelated to the work-in-progress that has me bogged down and frustrated.

Because whether you live in upstate New York as I once did, or northern New England as I do now, where the January landscape is a black-and-white photograph, the snowdrifts deep, the wind a serrated knife, the growth and renewal of spring seemingly a lifetime away; whether you live by the sea in a sunny, mild climate, the sound of the waves an echo from some long-ago century; or whether you live on a farm or in a bustling downtown, or on the outskirts of a Norman Rockwell-esque village, there is always something to watch, to hear, to contemplate.

 

All you have to do is look out the window . . .

 

Thanks so much for reading!

–Mike

More Than Meets the Eye (Or, What Lies Behind the Horn-Rimmed Glasses . . .)

She was quiet, so quiet, in fact, that sometimes it seemed she wasn’t even there.  It was as if she blended in with the beige walls, the gray metallic chairs, the very molecules and atoms in the air.  The other students would criticize and argue and critique–but she barely said a word.  The professor, a bald man originally from London and since moved to western New York State. would sometimes single her out.  “To prime your pump,” he would explain.  It was a creative writing workshop, after all.  Students were expected to participate, not just sit there, looking down at the small wooden desk attached to the right arm of the chair.

 

Her name was Renee.  Her wardrobe was as subdued as her manner–plain, dark clothes, sweaters, usually, and a pair of retro, black, horn-rimmed glasses that gave her the look and feel of someone from a generation three decades earlier.  She would spend much of the class period adjusting those glasses as they continually slid down the bridge of her nose.

 

The chairs were arranged in a semicircle, encouraging face-to-face interaction as we discussed and dissected each other’s short stories.  Renee would always sit at the back corner of the semicircle, as far away from the professor as she could arrange herself.  Every class period, four students would turn in a new story, distributing a copy to the teacher and each student in the class.  The following week, the four stories handed out in the previous class would be critiqued.  Additionally, each member of the class would write comments on the hard copy of the story, and return them to the author once the oral critique was finished.  For those students who did not participate so much verbally, this offered a way to express their opinions in a more comfortable manner.

 

But Renee didn’ t even do that.  Not only didn’t she participate in class, but her written comments were, to put it mildly, brief.  After I had turned in my first story of the semester, she had written, “Cool,” on the top of the first page, emphasizing it with a loopily-drawn smiley face.  That was it.  She hadn’t jotted one word in the margins, and nothing at the end.  I asked others in the class if she had offered anything more on their stories.  She hadn’t.  She just continued to blend in to the background, gray on gray.  Even the instructor seemed to give up.  By the semester’s second month, he no longer called on her.  She just sat there, period after period, saying nothing.  A locked, featureless door.

 

Then the day came when she was scheduled to share one of her own stories with the class.  I overheard a student, who sat close to me, whispering to another, “I bet it’s probably like two pages or something.”

But it was not two pages.  And it was not what anyone had expected . . .

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

Throughout the opening chapters of The Eye-Dancers, Mitchell Brant, Joe Marma, and Ryan Swinton each dream of the girl with the blue, swirling eyes.   The “ghost girl,” they call her.  After all, in their dreams (or are they more than dreams?), she appears less like a flesh-and-blood creature of this earth and more like a wisp, a breath, a denizen of the spirit world.  They fear she is a ghost who is haunting their dreams.

 

But is she?  Is their first impression the right one?  Or is she less than she seems?  Or, perhaps, more than she seems?

And once they are transported through the void and find themselves in the variant town of Colbyville, they encounter many other things that cause them to question their surroundings, their perceptions, at times even their own sanity.  Science wiz Marc Kuslanski is there, too, and he offers (or tries to offer) a sensible, rational, scientific reason for everything.  But as he learns over the course of the novel, not everything can be explained away.  Not everything can be pigeon-holed and classified and packed neatly into its own box.

Not everything is what it appears to be at first glance.

 

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

When I took Renee’s story home that day, I honestly did not have high expectations.  I guessed reading her story would be a chore, just something to get through.  And her title, “Dead Man Walking,” struck me as cliched.  I did not give her the benefit of the doubt.

Then I read the first paragraph.  It drew me right in to a brutal world, where a dead man walks among the living, works with them, looks like them, loves them, hates them, and, every now and again, eats them.  He isn’t a vampire.  He isn’t quite a zombie.  He’s just . . . dead.  But not dead.  It was a graphically violent story, merciless in its portrayal of the lead character and the people he comes across in his experiences.  From our perspective today, in the second decade of the twenty-first century, a story like this may sound derivative, or least inspired by, the zombie and “undead” mania caused by hit shows such as The Walking Dead.

 

But this was back in the mid-1990s.  Renee’s story was, without question, her own, and she had a very distinct and original voice.  Her prose was edgy, yet literary, vulgar, yet elegant.  In a word, it was riveting.

When the following week’s workshop met again, there was a buzz among the students.  Even the professor, an unflappable sort, seemed off his game.

He cleared his throat, his way of signaling it was time to begin.  The whisperings and murmerings among the students came to a stop.  We all looked at the instructor, waiting.

“Our first story to look at today is ‘Dead Man Walking.'”  He cleared his throat again, glanced at Renee.  “And as we always do, we’ll let the author have the first word.  Renee?”

The class looked at her, and she looked up, meeting our eyes for what seemed like the first time all term.

“Well,” she said, with a smile, “as you probably know by now, my stories tend to be a little bit crazy.  And loud.  Very, very loud.”

For a moment, you could have heard the proverbial pin drop.  But then someone laughed, and then another, and then another.  Renee joined them.

And here we’d all thought she was just the quiet girl with the horn-rimmed glasses who sat at the back of the room. . . .

 

Thanks so much for reading!

–Mike

The Silent Scream

It was just another in a long, monotonous line of bleak, nondescript November days in western New York, the clouds gray and low, like bruises in the sky.  The last sunny day had been well over a week ago. I was driving to my Creative Writing class, the twenty-mile commute to the college taking me through small towns and country farms and fields.  The bare trees, with their twisted, skeletal  limbs, appeared as if they were trying to reach up and puncture holes in the clouds, perhaps, like the rest of us, desperate to reveal the blue that lay beyond.

 

I had been in a bit of a funk.  November in the Northeast can be a depressing time.  The days continue to grow shorter, as evening falls by 5:00 p.m.  The air has a bite to it, reminding you, every time you step out the door, that a long, snowy wintry season is just around the bend.  Spring seems a long ways off, a distant thing that floats around on the wind like some vague rumor, some hushed secret nobody quite dares to believe.

But it wasn’t just the season that was getting me down.  It was my creative life–or lack thereof.  Take the Creative Writing class I was driving to.  Just a fortnight ago, I had turned in a short story called “A Day at the Beach,” full of optimism, confidence, sure that the professor and the rest of the class, who would read it and critique it for the following week’s session, would appreciate the symbolism, thematic nuances, and structure of the story.

They hadn’t.  None of them really “got” what I was trying to say, and very few of them liked the story.  In the days that followed, I wondered about that.  I had tried so hard to create something literary, rich with similes and metaphors, and subthemes that tackled the key issues of life and our existence on this planet.  What had gone wrong?

I passed a dairy farm, the cows grazing languorously in the fading light of day.  They seemed so relaxed, content simply to be.  Everything I wasn’t, with my strivings and studying and worrying over GPA.  Beyond the dairy farm, a dead November corn field stretched for acres, the stalks yellowed, dessicated, like a battalion of corpses. And on the western edge of the field stood a weathered old barn.  I had passed it many times before, on the drive out to the college.  But today it looked different.

 

Its door was open, revealing dark shadows that retreated further into the interior.  Coupled with the two upper window slots near the roof and the one slightly lower, the front of the barn resembled a giant face, the eyes gazing out at the corn field, at the flock of crows gathering, searching for a morsel.  But the door–the open door . . .

It looked like a mouth, open wide, screaming . . .  I shuddered, literally, as I drove past.  My imagination–always overactive–instantly imagined reasons why the barn would feel compelled to scream.  I visualized the terrible things that may have happened within its four wooden walls, its loft, its dusty, hidden corners full of cobwebs and rusted-out equipment, long since useless but lurking, lurking, like monsters in the dark.  What secrets did that barn have to tell?  What horrors did it have to scream about?

 

I drove on, still thinking, still haunted by the image of the screaming barn.  It screamed, but without a sound.  It had a story to tell, but it remained mute, like a creature without a tongue.  And suddenly, I realized that was exactly the way I had been operating in my Creative Writing class.  I had been writing with the art of writing foremost in my mind.  I had been pressing, the literary equivalent to the baseball batter who overswings, trying to hit every pitch over the fence.  I hadn’t been letting my stories tell themselves.  I hadn’t even been writing the stories I needed to write.  If some idea didn’t strike me as “literary,” I chose to toss it aside, ashamed of sharing it with the class.  Instead I stressed over the merit of ideas, the complexity, the themes and symbols.  This was a Graduate-level class, after all.  I couldn’t just write the things I wanted to write about.  I had to write literary stories.

 

No wonder my stories were lacking, uninspired, flat and lifeless on the page.  Just like that barn I had passed, I had my own screams, the ideas that kicked and punched away inside of me, ideas that yelled to be let out, shared with others, not because they were necessarily complex or literary, but because they were mine.  They were the things I was passionate about, the things I cared about and thought about and feared and hated and loved, the things that kept me up at night, tugging away at the soul, not letting go, never relenting.  These were the stories I was meant to tell.  These were my screams, which, too often during that Writing class, I had stifled and ignored.

 

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

I have had a few people ask me why I wrote The Eye-Dancers.  Why sci-fi/fantasy?  Why young adult?  Why are four boys the protagonists?  Why not two boys and two girls?  Or three girls and a boy?  Or . . .?  And I’m sure I could try to come up with some layered answer, discussing the themes and story arcs and character traits represented in the novel.  I could probably break out some aspects of literary theory and point of view and symbolism.  But none of that would express anything real.  None of that would come close to sharing the real reason why I wrote the book . . .

. . . I had a story to tell.  It found me, I didn’t find it.  It came knocking, pounding, banging . . . and I had to answer.  Once I did, it set in motion an inexorable tide of ideas and characters that would not rest until their story had been told.

It is like that with anything, I think.  We each have things inside of us that need to be unleashed, that need to be heard.

 

So go ahead.  Write.  Create.  Draw.  Paint.  Play.  Talk.  Dance.  Decorate.  Sing.    Share the things you care about, not because they are “literary” or “artistic” or “multi-layered” (even if they are).  Share them because they are yours.

Our screams should not be silent.

 

Thanks so much for reading!

–Mike

At the End of the Day . . .

When I was a graduate student, I had a professor in a creative writing workshop who would occasionally pick apart someone’s story in front of the entire class.  It wasn’t for the faint of heart.  But it was educational.  There were about fifteen of us in the class, aspiring writers all.  We would craft short stories, bring them to class, and share them with each other, critiquing our stories and writing comments in the margins.  For the most part, the professor,  a balding, bespectacled gent originally from London, served only as a moderator, facilitating the discussions and making sure the group stayed on topic.  But every now and then, he would decide to single out a particular story, and use it as an illustration of what not to do.

One day, he chose the topic of cliches.

 

“You should never insert cliches in your story,” he said.  “It’s okay to use them in some dialogue.  People, after all, frequently speak in cliches.  But never use them in your narrative description.  Avoid them like the plague.”  (I admit, I nearly raised my hand here to tell him he’d just used a cliche to make his point on avoiding them, but, wisely, I just listened.)

 

He then proceeded to eviscerate one young woman’s story, pointing out no less than half a dozen time-worn phrases in her ten-page piece.  I felt bad for her–brilliant as he was, this professor was not known for his tact.  Nevertheless, some of his lessons have stuck with me over the years, and whenever I edit one of my stories, I tend to keep an eye out for cliches.

I can’t guarantee that The Eye-Dancers is cliche-free.  Far from it!  But, with hope, there are very few cliches in the book.  In fact, if anyone can spot a cliche in the first three chapters, which are included on this website, please contact me, and I will send you a copy of the book for free!  Let’s call it The Eye-Dancers cliche challenge.

This gets me thinking about the entire creative process–from typing that first word, to sharing your work with others, to submitting it for publication.  It’s a challenging thing.  Looking out for cliches can sometimes take a backseat to the seemingly more important items on the writing list.

I mean, executing a story idea is no small feat.  It takes time, effort, blood, sweat, and tears.  Inspiration, after all, is 99% perspiration.  And coming up with a new twist for a story isn’t easy.  You have to push the envelope, think outside the box, and make sure you come up with an idea that hasn’t already jumped the shark.

Staring at a blank computer monitor, the cursor blinking, as if taunting you, can be intimidating, but trusting the creative process is essential.

 

The key is to type that first word and then keep going, keep working, and keep chopping wood.  If the idea takes flight, you will feel like a kid in a candy store–it’s almost too easy, too much fun!  Putting the pedal to the medal, you may speed right through the story, feeling like a champ.

But then you step back, inhale deeply, and take the time to read through what you’ve written during that whirlwind first-draft cyclone.  You may groan.  The rose-colored glasses are off now, and you see the results as clear as day.  The idea may have been worthwhile, the writing, in general, may even be passable.  But, being a first draft, the manuscript is littered with inconsistencies, poor sentence construction, the works.  The job of turning out a polished, completed story has only just begun.

 

Knocking on wood, you hope you can start again at the top, put your nose to the grindstone, go the whole nine yards, and produce a top-notch piece of work.  There is still much to do, but it’s time to roll up the shirtsleeves, raise the bar, and shoot for the stars.  It’s easy at this stage to want to rush through the edits and just say the thing is done.  But patience is a virtue, and, if you’re planning on submitting the story for publication, well–you never get a second chance to make a first impression.  Everything needs to be perfect, and you have to give 110%.

Finally, after a second and third, and fourth edit, the story is finished!  The problem?  You’ve read, reread, edited, and reedited the piece so many times, you’re bleary-eyed and tired of it.  You decide to set it aside for a day or two, then read it one last time before sending it out.

When you read it again three days later, you are satisfied–it’s ready.  It’s time to submit the story, sink or swim, do or die.  Who knows what the editor will think of it?  All you can do is send it off, and let the chips fall where they may.  Nothing ventured, nothing gained.

And then you wait, and wait, and wait, and wait . . . and finally, after five months, a postcard arrives in the mail.

“Dear Writer,” it reads.  “Thank you for sending us your work and giving us the opportunity to read it.  However, we regret to inform you that it does not suit our needs at this time.  Thank you again for thinking of us.  Happy writing!”

You read the note again.  It’s frustrating.  After all the work, all the revisions, you don’t even receive a personal response.  Dejected, you wonder why you bother, but then you realize–there are so many other outlets where you can submit your story.  There are other fish in the sea!  Rejuvinated, you send the story to five other places within the next couple of days.  After all, when life gives you lemons, make lemonade!  Besides, rejection is as much a part of the writing life as, well, writing.  It’s par for the course.  Some of the magazines you’re submitting to inform that they do not want simultaneous submissions–but this doesn’t seem fair.  So you simultaneously submit anyway!  Living dangerously can be fun.  And you need to break a few eggs if want to make an omelet.

Meanwhile, as you wait to hear back from these five new outlets, you are working on a novel–a vast, multi-layered tome that will likely take months, maybe years, to complete.  And then the process will begin anew–perhaps querying agents, publishers, networking.  Maybe you will try the indie author route.  So many options!  Life is a bowl of cherries.

One day, months later, while working on chapter twenty-one, you receive an email from one of the magazines where you submitted your short story.

“Dear Writer,

“We regret to inform you . . .”

 

You sigh, print the email, and toss it into a rejection pile on the edge of your desk.  You toy with the idea of wallpapering your room with these slips.  Oh well.  That’s just the way the cookie crumbles sometimes.  The story is still under review elsewhere.  Maybe someone is considering publishing it.  You never know.  Your fortune can change in the blink of an eye.  And truth is stranger than fiction.

A week later, another rejection slip–snail-mail.  But this one has a handwritten note!  “Great prose.  Keep up the good work.”  A rejection never felt so good.  You pin the slip on the wall, and get back to the novel.  There are still a dozen chapters to write, and hundreds of pages to edit, watching out for, among other things, all those pesky cliches!

“The life of a writer,” you say with a smile.

At the end of the day, it is what it is.

Thanks so much for reading!

–Mike

Short Story — “The Hitchhiker”

Have you ever felt inexplicably called to do something, even when you can’t figure out why, and even when it flies in the face of logic and common sense?  Certainly Mitchell Brant, Joe Marma, and Ryan Swinton have.  In The Eye-Dancers, in the recurring dream they share with one another, they feel compelled to look into the “ghost girl’s” eyes, unable to avoid them.  She has an almost magical, hypnotic force about her, and the boys cannot fight it, no matter how much they might want to.

Likewise, in the short story “The Hitchhiker,” which I wrote while in the middle of working on The Eye-Dancers, the protagonist feels compelled to pick up a hitchhiker he sees walking along a country road in western New York State on a cold, dark November evening.  He doesn’t know why he feels he must give this stranger a ride.  He just knows, instinctively, it’s something he has to do. . . .

I hope you enjoy the story.

“The Hitchhiker”

Copyright 2013 by Michael S. Fedison

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

It had been nearly twenty years since he’d left, but now, coming back, Kyle’s memories felt so near, close enough to touch.  He wished it weren’t so.  Some memories, some people, were better left in the blurry, distant past.

The road leading out to the college was also much the way Kyle remembered it.  The hills came and went, like a gentle roller-coaster ride, as the road passed through a handful of small towns, with their old brick storefronts and well-kept, tidy main streets.  It rolled through the countryside, past farms with yellowed, desiccated corn stalks and Holsteins grazing contentedly on the still-green grasses.  It wound through stretches of woodlands, the bare branches of the trees blending in with the early evening gloom, gray on gray, faded brown on dull slate.

“Welcome home,” he said, as he cruised along in his rented Subaru.  “About the kind of reception I’d expect from this place.”  But then, how did he think it would be?  Warm and sunny?  This was western New York State in mid-November, after all.  For years, his alma mater had asked him to come back, give a presentation.  He’d always refused, but this year he accepted.  Now he wondered why he hadn’t decided to come in the spring, when—

There was a man walking backwards along the shoulder of the road, arm extended, thumb up.  He wore a black hooded sweat jacket, and carried a duffel bag.  Odd.  Why would someone be hitchhiking at this hour, in this chill?  In just a few minutes, it would be dark.

He passed the guy, still not getting a clear look at him.  All he could see was the arm flop back to the man’s side.

“Sorry, buddy,” he said, glancing back in his rearview mirror.  “But you know how it is.”

He drove on, his rental car effortlessly conquering the miles.  He glanced at the digital clock on the dashboard.  Four-thirty.  No wonder he felt hungry.  He hadn’t eaten since breakfast—and that had been breakfast on London time.  He would stop for a bite to eat at the first diner or fast-food place he saw.  And he knew from memory, there were plenty of both along the route to the college.

Sure enough, a place called Shirl’s Diner came up on the right.  He’d never heard of it, but it would do.

“Hope their food’s all right,” he said, as he pulled into the parking lot.  A dozen other cars were parked out front.  “Wouldn’t want to come down with food poisoning the day before my speech.”

He smiled.  Still talking to himself—that was a habit he’d never been able to shake.  He remembered how Renee had caught him doing that several times, rambling about a homework assignment, the Mets’ chances at making the postseason, a short story he was plotting, or, most embarrassing of all, his growing fondness for her.

“Well, I’m flattered,” she’d told him one time after walking in on one of his monologues.  He’d been saying how beautiful her eyes were, how much he liked to look at them, at her.  “But you know, you might have told me directly.”  She smiled then, and hugged him, and it felt so good.  So good.

“Stuff it,” he said, getting out of his rental, pressing the automatic Lock button on the handheld remote.  Thinking about Renee again.  That’s the last thing he needed.  She was a part of his past, the past he’d escaped—the stifling small-town life, the provincial narrow-mindedness, the ignorance.  He’d visited New York City, Boston, Philadelphia, Paris, Berlin, before completing his MFA in London, and settling down there.  He’d met brilliant professors, talented writers, intellectual giants.  He’d brushed away the residue of his childhood home.  It was the best decision he’d ever made.

He went inside, heading right for the counter.  Three men sat there, scattered, no one sitting next to anyone else.  He followed suit, finding a stool three removed from the closest patron.  From a radio behind the counter, a Country singer he didn’t know whined about losing his job and his girl.  Off to the left, a few other people sat in booths, couples mostly, talking with each other, eating the burgers, fries, and greasy fried chicken that evidently was the staple of Shirl’s Diner.

“What can I get ya?” a middle-aged blonde woman with cigarette breath asked him.  She had bags under her eyes, and her forehead was wet with perspiration.

“I’ll have a cheeseburger, well done, and a side order of fries,” he said.  He hadn’t had a burger in months.  It sounded good.

“K,” she said.  “That’ll be just a few minutes, hun.”  She rang him up, then vanished momentarily through an open doorway that led to the kitchen.  Kyle could see her telling something to the cook, an overweight guy with a bald head and a goatee.

He glanced back at the booths again.  One couple in particular caught his interest.  They were young, probably college undergrads, and they looked so happy with each other, so comfortable, so alive.  They even held hands across the tabletop as they ate.  He saw them share their food, letting each other sample what the other had ordered.  At one point, the girl leaned across the table and kissed the guy, then sat back down, a flush on her face.

She made him think again of Renee, of the times he’d shared with her, the way her nearness always had such an effect on him, the way her laughter always made him feel as if he were soaring.

He shook his head.  Why was he thinking so much of Renee?  Maybe it was because he’d returned home, the place where they’d met, loved, and ultimately bid each other farewell.  Well, he had done that.  He explained to her that he had to leave, had to see the world, cultivate the talent he’d been born with.  He was destined to be a writer, he told her.  Writing was his first love.  Besides, it wasn’t as if he had any close family.  His mom had run out on Dad and him when he was just a kid, and Dad died a few years later in an automobile accident.  He had no brothers, no sisters.  There was nothing to hold him here.  Couldn’t she understand?  If she would agree to travel abroad with him, to relocate . . . but she wouldn’t.  She said he could be a writer right here, in western New York.  He didn’t need to go to Europe.  He told her she was naïve, and left her in tears.

It was the right thing to do, the only thing he could do.  Better to sever the strings than leave her hanging, waiting for a change of heart that wouldn’t come.  And when he would sometimes think of her in the years since, lying in his bed alone at night, lingering under the massage of a hot shower, during those moments, when her face, the one she had years ago, young, unlined, a fresh canvas upon which the passage of time, the pain of experience had yet to carve their testimonials, came to him, he would tell himself that he didn’t miss her, didn’t long to be with her, didn’t wish for the warmth and closeness of her embrace.  He of course had his share of flings with London women, but none of them had ever evolved into anything serious.  Perhaps because no one else could replace Renee.  Or perhaps because he was just too busy, and didn’t have time to pursue a serious relationship.  That’s what he liked to tell himself, anyway.

“There you go, hun,” the waitress said, breaking his train of thought.  It was a welcome interruption.  What was the matter with him, anyway?  It was as if coming back to his roots had reawakened his old feelings, sending an electrical charge through them.  Had Renee ever moved away?  Or was she, as he sat here now, within a mere few miles of him?

“Makes no difference,” he said, taking a bite out of his burger.  It was greasy, but thick, a mouthful of meat.  Delicious.  “Imagine that.  Still like the cheap stuff.”  He preferred to believe that he’d changed over the years, improved himself.  Maybe he hadn’t.

He glanced back at the love-struck couple.  They still held hands, still gazed in each other’s eyes.  He wondered if the guy would one day tell her he had to leave, to make it big somewhere else.  He wondered if she’d go with him, or stay behind and cry.

He blinked, looked away.  This was too much.  He should just wolf down his food and get out of here, make the drive out to the college, check in to the hotel they had booked for him.  Look over his notes for the presentation he would give tomorrow evening—telling the audience how writing is a passion.  If it’s in you, it has to come first, or else you’ll never make it.  Yes.  That’s what he needed to do—think of his work, his career, perhaps even write a few more pages on the novel he was crafting.  Something to get his mind off of the past.  Off of Renee.

He finished his meal in a hurry, then left.  Back outside, the last lusterless drop of daylight was bleeding away, as though being sucked into the low-lying clouds, which hung over the landscape like dirty laundry.

Hopping into his rental car, he switched on the ignition, and cranked up the heat.  Living in London for years now, he was used to the chill.  But somehow the cold here in upstate New York seemed to penetrate more.  Or maybe it was something else that caused him to shiver.  He couldn’t know for sure, didn’t want to.

Back on the road, he accelerated to sixty-five, ten miles per hour beyond the limit.  Surely no cop would care, there was virtually no traffic out here.  The biggest problem he had was relearning to drive on the right side of the road.  It was ironic, really.  For months, in England, he had all the rules of the road in reverse—sometimes he worried that he’d never get the hang of it.  Now, it turned out, he’d gotten the hang of it too well.  He had to fight the impulse of swerving past the yellow line, into the other lane.  He laughed.  That wouldn’t be a good idea.

“Nope,” he said, considering whether or not he should turn on the radio or drive in silence.  He normally liked the silence—he was able to come up with story ideas, ponder character motivation, enjoy the faint echo of his thoughts.  But this evening, with his mind taking him places he didn’t want to go, perhaps it would be better to turn on some noise, listen to some local talk-show host jabbering in that nasal western New York twang he’d fought so hard to get rid of in the years since leaving.

He reached for the dial, then stopped.  Up ahead, arm extended, thumb up, walking backwards along the shoulder of the road was the same guy he’d seen earlier.  That was strange.  He’d passed this guy over ten miles ago.  He’d been in the diner no more than a half hour.  How could the guy have gotten ahead of him in such a short span of time?

Unless someone picked him up back there.  Yes.  That must have been it.  But why would someone pick him up only to drop him off a few short miles down the road?

He was nearly beside him now, but still couldn’t get a good look at the man’s face.  The hooded sweat jacket, coupled with the near-darkness, concealed his features.  He might be a maniac for all Kyle knew, a madman with a collection of hunting knives in his duffel bag.  Then again, if someone had just picked him up, maybe he was harmless.  And it was a chilly evening.  And he was driving in the same direction the guy was headed. . . .

He was surprised as he slowed down, then came to a stop a few feet ahead of the hooded man.  He had never picked up a hitchhiker in his life, and never thought he would.  It was a foolish, dangerous thing to do, especially on a country road like this, in the November dark, with barely any traffic around.  And yet, something inside him seemed to urge him, tug at him, telling him to stop.  Besides, there was a town just a couple of miles ahead.  Surely he would reach it in time if the guy tried anything.

Before he could second-guess himself and pull away, the passenger-side door opened, and the hooded figure hopped in.

“Thanks,” he said.  “Gonna be a cold night.”  Then he shut the door, buckled himself in.

Kyle rubbed his chin with the palm of his hand.  This wasn’t the normal way it went, was it?  Wasn’t the hitchhiker supposed to ask the driver where he was headed, or vice versa?  Wasn’t the hitchhiker supposed to look the driver in the eye, so the two of them could examine each other and decide whether or not they wanted to take the risk?  As it was, he still had no clue about this guy—not where he wanted to go, not his name, not even what he looked like.  The overhead light in the car wasn’t working, and the man still had his hood up.  For all Kyle knew, the guy seated next to him might have a scar raging along the entire length of his cheek.  He might be wearing earrings or a necklace.  He might have a head full of wavy hair, or be completely bald.  There was no way to tell.

He decided to just go with it.  That feeling inside him, the instinct, if you wanted to call it that, which had made him pull over in the first place still urged him to drive this guy along.

“I’m headed for the college,” he said.  “Well, not exactly.  Not tonight, anyway.  I’m giving a presentation there tomorrow.  Tonight I head for the hotel on the other side of town.  So, that’s as far as I can take you.”

Against his better judgment, perhaps, but still believing it was something he was supposed to do for some reason, Kyle pulled back out into the road.

“That’s perfect,” the guy said.  “I’m a student at the college.”  That wasn’t surprising.  He did sound young.  Still, what had he been doing, wandering along the roadside in the dusk?  “Oh, just thinking, I guess,” the hitchhiker said when Kyle asked, as if that explained why he was more than ten miles from the campus without any transportation.

They drove along in silence, passing through the next town in less than a minute, then finding themselves back out in open country again.  A deer suddenly darted in front of the Subaru, but Kyle braked in time.

“Dumb deer,” he said, watching the animal disappear into the yawning mouth of the night.  “I’m not used to them jumping out in front of you like that anymore.  Nothing bolts out in front of you in London except people.”

“You live in London?” the hitchhiker said.

“For seventeen years now,” Kyle said.  He glanced at the young man beside him, still unable to see anything save for the side of his hood.  Even so, there was something about him.  Something . . .

“You know, I sometimes think I wanna go live somewhere else, too,” the young man said.  “I mean, I want to learn, to experience things, you know?  But I don’t know.  I mean, I’m not sure if I want to move away or not.”

They passed a green road sign with fluorescent white letters, telling them that the college was six miles ahead.

“Well, I couldn’t encourage you enough to shake the dust of this area off your shoes,” Kyle said.  “I grew up here, went to college here.  That’s why they want me to give a talk tomorrow night.  I’m a writer.  And they want me to talk about how to succeed, how to define your dreams and then reach for them.  Maybe you can attend.”

The hitchhiker just sat there, glancing out the window at the dark fields, the impenetrable shadows of the nighttime woods, the occasional farmhouse with its trusty porch light on, cutting a swath of brightness through the murk.

“I want to be a writer, too,” the hitchhiker said, still looking out the window.  “And I know there’s a lot I can learn by seeing the world.  I just had a professor talk to me about that the other day.  It’s just . . .”

“Family?” Kyle asked.  That was the reason Renee gave him.  She wouldn’t leave her mom, her dad, her brother.  She couldn’t.

The hitchhiker just shook his head, as they drove on, nearing the college.  It didn’t take a genius to figure out what was preying on his mind.  He must have a girlfriend.  What was it with these kids?  Couldn’t they understand that the relationships you share when you’re twenty rarely last?  Couldn’t they look beyond the narrow confines of the present and appreciate tomorrow?  He suddenly felt angry.  How many great writers had never been published?  How many literary masterpieces had never been written, because their would-be authors gave up too soon or failed to dedicate themselves to their calling?  How much wasted talent existed, littering the earth like the confetti of a million unrealized dreams?

“Don’t waste your skills,” Kyle said then.  “I’ve never seen your work, but you must know if you’re any good.  If you are, don’t let anyone hold you back.  When I was your age, I had a choice to make.  Stay here, maybe settle down, have a steady job, a family.  Or come to terms with the fact that I had a gift, a responsibility to use that gift, to give it back to the world.  I chose the latter.”  He paused, amused, realizing he had pronounced the word “latter” like a born-and-bred Englishman.  “If you give up now,” he went on, “you’ll never know.  You’ll never know if you might have made it.  That’s a tough way to live, if you ask me.”

The hitchhiker offered no response.  He just continued to glance out the window, then looked down at his lap.  Kyle hoped his words were getting through.

Yeah, tell him to live like you.  Tell him to give up on the things that really matter.  You’re blowing it with this kid, and you know it.  You’d give your right arm to do it over again, to marry Renee, spend your life with her.  Coming back here, to this place, you know that now, don’t you?

“Shut up,” he said, and the hitchhiker glanced at him quickly, then turned away.  “I wasn’t talking to you,” he said, feeling a touch of warmth on his cheeks.  “Sometimes my mind doesn’t want to shut up, that’s all.”

The hitchhiker nodded.  “I know what you mean.”

They were in the town now, and Kyle could see the campus lights straight ahead.  He pulled in to the main parking lot, trying to quell the longing he felt.  How many times had he walked along the pathways and lawns of this campus with Renee beside him, their hands clasped, their fingers intertwined?  How many times had he kissed her, held her, stayed up late and studied with her, shared secrets with her that he wouldn’t tell anyone else, and never had in the years since?

He felt an urge to tell himself to shut up again, but he didn’t.

The hitchhiker opened the passenger door, ready to get out.  Kyle still hadn’t gotten a good look at him.  But what did it matter?  “Thanks for the lift,” he said.  “And the advice.”

Kyle nodded.  “She . . . she must be a special girl, I bet,” he said.

“Yeah.”  The young man shifted in his seat.  “Yeah, Renee’s the best.”  And then he got out, gently shutting the door behind him.  There was a sadness in his gait as he walked away.

Kyle blinked, took a deep breath.  It all came clear to him now—why he felt such a need to stop, to pick up this particular hitchhiker.  No.  That was the only word his mind could construct.  The writer, the wordsmith—all he could think was, No.

“Wait!” he yelled, but the hooded figure of the boy, of the young man, was gone now.  Gone.  And Kyle knew that he would never return.

“Wait,” he said, softly.  “Please.  Please wait . . . ”

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

Thanks so much for reading!

–Mike