Why I Write Spooky, Literary, Metaphysical Fiction

I used to be a newspaper and TV reporter, covered politics and school boards, one motorcycle gang shootout, a few fish kills, a lot of other odd occurrences. Then as a travel writer for magazines and newspapers, I tended to accidentally turn up wherever events were about to explode: in Israel for a war with Lebanon, in India in a city where riots broke out, in Poland in time for the second round of Solidarity strikes.

As a novelist, I still fancy myself a reporter of sorts. I'm interested in "things unseen," the shapes and stirrings in our deepest recesses, in mystical experiences of the divine, in the paranormal and the barely conceivable.

MY METHODS: I meditate, though not very much
I write a fast see-what's-there chunk of story
I revise to develop-what's-there
I get feedback from the writing group/class I've been a member of for
22 years
I do more exploratory drafts and more polishing drafts
Maybe get more feedback
And all the while I count on what floats up into my consciousness, the
unexpected connections and images

GETTING THE DEEP IMAGES:
The surprise thoughts rise to my mind usually after two things have
happened: I've prepared the ground by writing about whatever it
is I'm currently most drawn to, and then I've taken a break and done
something physical like exercise, taking a shower, sleeping, raking.

EXAMPLE: In the case of the the novel I'm working on now, COBALT BLUE, the deep connection came to me while I was doing something rather quietly
physical: sitting out on my porch with Bob on a summer night,
thinking about nothing but the slight stirring of the damp air.

What came to my mind on that porch was the phrase: "it's kundalini." I
knew that the "it's" referred to the major event in my novel. In COBALT BLUE, the main character Andie has a sudden mysterious inner rush, followed by a blast of creativity as well as some rather extreme sexual episodes.

There were psychological reasons for this of course. But then this word
that I didn't know the meaning of showed up. I had overheard it
once but didn't know what it meant.

Kundalini, I learned, is a concept of unused life
force stored in every person. When the kundalini
spontaneously "rises wrong" a person can get more than they can
handle. The word is Sanskrit, but the idea exists in the history of
many religions.

I felt the idea slide into the story as if the story had been built
for it in every detail.

So I think of myself as a reporter, doing a sort of reconnaissance. I'm watching for what shows up and,in my way, reporting it. I want to know what's there.

Revising

Today I'm starting back into a novel I thought I'd finished writing. The last third of the book is set in New Orleans and I need to update for the effect of Katrina, and I want to clarify a couple of other things while I have it "opened up."

It's not as hard as it might sound; I know (pretty much) the changes I want to make. On the other hand, every change in a story seems to necessitate others. So this is not a small undertaking either.

THE OBSTACLES I DEAL WITH IN STARTING A REVISION:
the fear that I can't do it
the fear that I'll mess up what's already there
the weary feeling that I've already spent enough time in this story
the question: is it possible that "deep down" some part of me doesn't want to
be immediately clear and finish stories quickly, that I really want to be
"hard to get"

THE GREAT THING ABOUT STARTING A REVISION:
once I've begun I'm involved and excited again
I discover new things to explore
I know I'll get where I'm going eventually

And so the thing now is simply to take a deep breath and begin.

Strategy for Today

It's morning and I came into the office tired. I have four appointments (including a haircut) and so, perhaps fortunately, I can't flop onto the carpet. My plan for today is low expectations: do the stuff I've committed myself to and give myself lavish credit for getting anything at all done otherwise.

What I usually find when I do this is that I get perked up by the first person I see, and then find that the combination of that energy with the pleasurably lowered expectations frees up my thinking, allows me in the time available to get a bit more done than usual.

An Oddly Satisfying Day

Bought some gizmos this morning to be able to tape a big-deal interview this afternoon on my cell phone.

Went with one of my brothers to the funeral of my mother's 94 year-old first cousin and had a thoroughly good time visiting with relatives.

Did the big-deal phone interview--with the great-grandniece of the woman whose biography I'm writing. Important because there are almost no relatives alive who know anything about her. Got a lot of good information and leads. I feel like such a sleuth, even more than during my many years writing for newspapers.

Opened the box from UPS containing my new laptop wireless computer. My current elephant of a machine is tottering. Still this is bold: buying new cutting-edge equipment that'll actually do what I need.

Pretty soon: off to my meditation group for the first time in a while.

And all of this without a twinge of hesitation, second-guessing of myself, or procrastination. That's what I mean by satisfying. Not a bad way to live. I'd like to figure out how to make a habit of it.

Why Life is Like French Toast?

I just ran across a charming site/blog by a visual artist: Frenchtoastgirl.com. It was featured in the April issue of Artist's Sketchbook Magazine, very appropriately, in the Inspiration section. It's whimsical in a way that's catching.

This Trick Worked

...or maybe it was simply the passage of time. In any event, my work jitters have eased off. I tried yet another of my collection of gambits: cleaning out closets while listening to motivational tapes. This is one of my things-to-do when I get in a sticky place about writing. One of them always works for me eventually.

So today I am so free of inner clutter that the tasks of the day are mere trifles. I have fuel and sparkle to spare. It's a more-than-nice feeling. Pretty day here too.

Free Weekly Courage Counseling

Yesterday I discovered "Purple Fridays," and found that afterwards I worked better and felt perkier the rest of the day.

What this is: the website called Courage Lender (click on the title in my link list) is by a coach, Amanda Murphy, who offers a free group session by phone most Fridays at 1 p.m. Eastern time. It's aimed at helping participants keep up the courage to do bold things, and Murphy's specialty, or one of them, is self-employed professionals. You can join in the hour-long phone session as many Fridays as you want at no charge.

I dialed in for the first time yesterday. There were four or five of us on the call, all of us concerned with issues in our idiosyncratic one-person businesses.

What was helpful was the way the hour helped me to stop fighting my fears, at least for a few hours, and thus have that much extra energy available. It was just a matter of agreeing to coexist with fear, and that took a lot of the power out of it.

I highly recommend giving this one hour thing a try. All it cost me was my cell minutes. And an hour that, in the mood I was in, I'd likely have wasted a lot of anyway.

Stamina

Just as important as boldness in creativity is the ability to be bold again the next day and the next. I've been a freelance writer since 1972. It's the only way I can imagine living. Yet periodically--for instance, now-- I feel a wavering in the ability to "do it again today." I suppose I could say "the hell with it for right now" and go out and play. But that's a little scary when the work is your day job. So I stay in the saddle.

I know why the wavering happens: it's when I've gone too long since the last burst of out-in-the-world feedback. Right now I'm waiting for two long-overdue phone calls. And that waiting is getting in my way.

Gandhi says we should do the work "and then step back." Don't look around for rewards. Let the focus be on the work alone. I can only do that for so long and then I start to fray.

What helps is refocusing on work. And the ability to do that once again is stamina. By now I have a million psychological tricks I play to keep that happening every day. Sometimes I have to try several. (Today I'm using this blog to get my frustrations off my chest.)

Finally, the process of living a boldly creative life is the ability to start again and start again. The same thing is true of meditation. When my mind wanders, I must kindly guide it back to the moment. The kindness is key. So I'm trying to speak nicely to myself about being so frustrated and give myself credit for getting to work again.

Why I (Sometimes) Indulge in "Negative Thinking"

Natasha--of the Daring Female blog--offers bold advice to counter the dismal "publish and perish" view of the publication experience described this week in the NY Times Book Review.

In a comment posted here yesterday she urges us to remember we need to get better results by doing our own publicity, on-line and otherwise. I agree. I paddle my particular canoe as hard as I can.

Both the optimism and the writer's publicity campaign are necessary, crucial. Publicity is what most published writers spend a great deal of time doing these days.

And I'm convinced that my setting my own course and persisting are the route to the largest success. I believe that most of the time. I build my life around the idea.

Yet I also find that it helps in low moments (I'm feeling pretty frustrated just lately) to remember that what I'm trying to do is difficult, that a lot of the world will tell you it's impossible. When I factor the huge challenge into the equation, then I have more stamina and more pleasure, greater ability to stay bold through the long roller coaster ride of writing and selling novels.

Publish and Perish?

There's a dreadfully on-target essay in the just-released NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW that captures the typical experience of having a book come out. It's at www. nytimes.com/2005/10/23/books/review/23royte.html. (Sorry I haven't yet figured out how to make a neat little click out of that.) It offers details that made me cringe with recognition: the period called The Big Suck-up, in which the author sends flowers and candy to her publicist, for example.

The piece even included The Honeymoon and the moments of boundless hope and euphoria. And yet...the bottom line was what the author called "self-induced misery."

And yet...how we all crave to do it again--and immediately. This minute!!! And don't try to get in my way!!!

Sister India

Sure, SISTER INDIA is the title of one of my novels. At the same time, for me, the phrase "Sister India," refers to an anxiety-reducing idea: the way that the sensory can stop time.

Here's how I came to have this thought. A few years ago I was asked to write an essay for an anthology about the most-something-or-other book or books I'd ever read. For example, the most stirring, or the most revealing, or the most exciting...book I'd ever read.

I decided to write on the most seductive books I'd ever read: which are novels set in India. The reason was that they're almost all so sensory, so full of the color and sound and smell and feel of moment after moment.

That sensory detail creates a sharp focus on the present moment that is the heart of all concentration and focus and ease in action. These novels, with their physicality, stop time for me, relax me, give a pause to my obsessing.

This is not to romanticize India as a laidback place. From what I've seen, it isn't. And the novels don't present that--not the good ones. India is the most actively business-minded place I've ever been. That was true in the early 90s when I spent a winter in Varanasi. Since then, of course, India has liberalized its laws on foreign investment and started handling work for many American corporations, becoming a major economic force in the world.

Even so, those novels, no matter the subject, have a quality that is like a soothing and spirit-lifting companion.

At a bookstore appearance in the U.S. shortly after this novel of mine came out, a man asked me to inscribe a book to his wife. He said she read novels about India for therapy. That might sound odd. But I understood.

The Courage to Create a Revolution

As you no doubt know, Rosa Parks died last night. When she refused to give up her seat on the bus, life in the United States changed for the better for all the generations to come.

Her radical act was not planned and orchestrated. She didn't strain to work up her courage, or gather an army of support. Instead she performed a simple, quiet act that turned a great wrong on its head.

That's boldness. Makes me wonder what small reflexive routine I could vary today that would set something good in motion.

Underachieving Writer

I considered several alternate titles for this post, including "The Pressure to Produce." In my case, and in the case of most fiction writers, the pressure is largely internal. And fierce.

Last night I was reading Reynolds Price's latest novel THE GOOD PRIEST'S SON. I noted once again that Reynolds has published something on the order of 50 books. I wiped the exact figure from my mind.

I envy such productivity.

I hold no grudge against the success of others. In fact it's a pleasure that inevitably gives me hope. But output--that's a different matter.

Then too, out-in-the-world reception of my books is not directly in my control. Productivity is. Or so I nag at myself.

I try to tell myself that my currently unbudging slower pace is part of some divine natural order. Plants grow at different rates, and all that. The argument works some of the time.

If I felt I was giving writing books my 100% best effort every day, then I think I'd be satisfied. But who does that? Quite a few writers, I imagine. Not me. I procrastinate part of almost every day. I do get to the work. But what of those hours of desk-puttering? I wonder what my life and my work would look like if I focused all day. Maybe better, maybe worse. I don't know that I'll ever know.

The Axles of my Fiction

Well, my computer is running today. But two axles on my car are falling apart and my voice mail isn't answering except when it feels like it. Most tediously , my writing group this afternoon offered a barrage of criticism on the structure of a story I'm working on. Unquestionably helpful, but tiring. I'd kind-a thought I was close to the last draft of this one.

The problems they noted are the large, persistent kind: characterological. They have to do with my very soul and are the same problems I have to solve again on every novel or piece of fiction or story of any sort that I write. The most important one is over-subtlety.

The first one is the hardest. I always think I've made the point, the action, and the characters so rampagingly clear as to be garish. Yet, the most discerning of my readers frequently miss major points on the first umpteen drafts.

So now I've got to go back to these same pages and get more overt, more underlined, more garishly obvious about what's going on between these people in the story. I thought I was already in-your-face. Apparently I need to go into the reader's inner ear with my message.

Well, this matter is fixable, like the axles on my car. And in the case of the story, I can do it myself instead of taking it to a mechanic. But jeez, when do I get to move on? One day I'd like to write something that came out clear in under ten drafts.

Small Familiar Obstacle

Yesterday a supposedly minor problem threw me. My computer wouldn't print or go on line. It was protesting my attempt to go wireless.

So I called a repair person. We set a time for her to come to my office today. And then I couldn't write. For more than an hour, I booted up and shut down over and over, all the while watching for the proper blinking lights. The lights never came on.

There was nothing I knew how to do to make the slightest bit of progress. Yet going back to work on my manuscript felt like throwing off a small rabid animal that was gripping the back of my head.

Here's the good news. I threw it off. Don't know how.

At first, turning back to my pages, I was miserable and certain I wouldn't be able to clear my mind. And it took a while. Maybe half an hour later I was engaged again in my work.

A small triumph. It seems the same ones have to be won over and over again.

The repair lady did fix my computer, by the way.

Mid-Career Writer Burnout

I can talk about this more easily now because, at the moment, it feels safely past. In the last couple of years, I've felt pretty worn down by writing and, at the same time scared of it. I think that's probably in large part due to the novel I've recently finished: it's fully of scary material, and I think the writing is maybe the best I've done. Maybe that's why it drained all my energy. But it felt like I didn't have much in the first place.

Now I'm enjoying a fresh burst of enthusiasm. And I've just run across an item that in retrospect cheers me. Anne Lamott, well known for her book about writing BIRD BY BIRD, has a few paragraphs here and there about her writing career in her book about faith TRAVELING MERCIES. I was reading along in the faith book, not thinking about career issues, when I came to this companionable little item:

"The truth was, though, that I'd hardly written in weeks, and then only pitiful stream-of-consciousness writing exercises, like Job's wife trying to get THE ARTIST'S WAY to work. I couldn't remember the point anymore; a lot of rewards had come my way, but I felt like a veteran greyhound at the racetrack who finally figures out that she's been chasing mechanical bunnies....It was an awful predicament, to be so tired of doing what I do and, at the same time, worried that I wasn't going to be ALLOWED to do it anymore. That the authorities were going to call and say I'd blown my chance to be one of the writers--but they'd found me a new job, at the Laundromat. I was going to be the anxious woman who hands out change: "Here, here's some quarters. Don't use that machine, it overflows! Hey! That man's using your basket!"

I was both thrilled and amused to read this and recognize my own feelings: the sense that I dreaded doing the work but that I might be on the verge of losing the chance. Since that moment of hers, Anne Lamott has continued to publish good writing. And I feel that I've done my own best work while in that dismal state. So the mood is not crippling or terminal and--Hallelujah!--it's not mine alone.

Fresh Breeze

Today was my 2nd full day of work in my brand-new mango-colored office. I'm enjoying this new and uncluttered, bright space and, at the same time, new and total surgery recovery. Truly I feel the energy of a fresh start. I got a ton of work done today--writing...which I was reasonably pleased with. (If I'm extremely pleased, it's a little suspicious.)

The change of venue shakes up my mind in a good way. Having to be away from work for weeks has made me appreciate the chance to do it now. Having my friend Carrie in the office next door is terrific. So many good changes at once. And the amazing thing is that all of this is providing the burst that such changes are supposed to do.

THE LITTLE LOCKSMITH

I just now finished reading a book that I can never forget and will surely read again. THE LITTLE LOCKSMITH, its title misleadingly like that of an antiquated children's book, is as honest and intelligent and transcendent a book as I've ever come across. More than any book I know, it inspires living with courage and creativity.

This memoir by Katharine Butler Hathaway was a bestseller in 1943, reissued in the year 2000. Here's what the NEW YORKER said: "When (she) was five, she fell victim to spinal tuberculosis. For ten years she was strapped to a board...and for the rest of her life, though she could move about, she was hopelessly deformed. Her body never grew any larger than that of a ten-year-old child. Her imagination, her understanding of herself, and her vision of the modes by which her life could be transformed--these, however, grew greater and greater." THE NEW YORK TIMES said, "You must not miss it."

I first learned of this radiant book through an essay by Lee Smith in the anthology REMARKABLE READS (in which I had an essay on novels about India). Lee's essay was called "The Most Luminous Book I Read" and it described, incidentally, how this memoir helped her through a difficult stretch in a novel she was working on. I was moved by that piece and then forgot to go and get the book. Last night, I ran across it in the library.

You might as well go ahead and buy it. You'll want to keep a copy, I expect.

A Big Move

On Friday, I'll be unpacking my boxes in a new office with walls painted a color you might call mango. This is a fresh new start for me--in my 33rd year as a freelance writer.

My new space is in a Victorian house bought as an office building by my good buddy Carrie, a writer and visual artist. For the last 3 and a half years I've worked in a little office that has many charms but is so isolated I get a little buggy sitting there all day. For some reason, my landlady there decided to rent me an office and then rent none of the other spaces on the little hall.

So now I'm moving back into human contact, with a good friend, and in a central location where people can pop in and say hello for a moment.

And of course I'm cleaning and sorting and throwing stuff away. A key part of a fresh new start.

I have great hopes for this move. I mean for it to be symbolic as well as more fun. More mango in my life. More mango in my writing. Not that they weren't pretty juicy already. Even so, I'm prepared to go over the top.

Released!

This morning I graduated from the Hysterectomy Mystery School of Unsought Wisdom. I had my one-month-after-surgery checkup and my doc said I'm fine to pump iron and move pianos and do anything else I have energy for.

So look out! I re-enter the world with a whole new glint in my eye: ready to seize the day when I feel like it, retire again to the sofa when I don't.

I imagine that this is how it is to come back from a war and start college again: in the time away, my view has changed. It's harder now to see how I could ever be thrown off balance by the small events of an ordinary work day.