Writerly resolutions for 2018: dare to daydream!

(This post is a reprint. The writer is on vacation.)

image: pixabay

It’s time for entry number three in the annual list of New Year's resolutions for writers. And much as parents and teachers may have criticized us (OK, criticized me) for daydreaming, it’s more than an escape. It’s a necessary part of any creative work.

“At its simplest, daydreaming (or mind wandering, if you prefer that term), is just another information-processing system, but a highly creative one,” editor Amy Fries writes in her blog at Psychology Today. “(Einstein) famously said, ‘When I examine myself and my methods of thought, I come close to the conclusion that the gift of fantasy has meant more to me than my talent for absorbing positive knowledge.’”

Or consider the connection Sigmund Freud drew between daydreaming and creative writing, as psychologist Maria Popova discusses at her blog Brain Pickings. “The child’s best-loved and most intense occupation is with his play or games. Might we not say that every child at play behaves like a creative writer, in that he creates a world of his own, or rather, rearranges the things of his world in a new way which pleases him? . . . The creative writer does the same as the child at play. He creates a world of fantasy which he takes very seriously. . .”

With the likes of Freud and Einstein weighing in, how can we afford to disparage daydreaming as, well, child’s play? And though it may sound crazy to give advice on how to daydream, serious dreaming requires serious effort. Not so much to dream as to make a clear space for dreaming.

I admit, working quiet time into a day isn’t easy. For starters, it means I have to stop filling my down time up with entertainment. I’m talking about turning off the IPod, TV, game system, even the internet. (But only after you finish reading this!) At least once in a while, we must take out the ear buds that insulate us from the world, ourselves, and our deeper work.

While clearing space inside our heads, let’s get a move on. Consider Einstein’s love of walking while carrying on that conversation with his thoughts. I have a gym
membership, but how can I daydream while I’m busy checking heart rates, mileage, and calories burned on the machine readouts? My dog makes me do at least some of my exercise the old fashioned way. It gives my daydreams a breath of fresh air as well.

But aren’t daydreams, by their nature, ephemeral? How is it possible to hang on to the insights of our daydreams? I found taking a notepad and pencil to boring work meetings always made me look industrious, although I was really “daydreaming” -- jotting down story ideas, descriptions, and dialogue. I’ve also survived jury duty summons with the aid of a notebook. I like soft-bound ones small enough to fit in a purse or pocket. Author/writing guru Anne Lamott writes that she carries index cards to capture insights. Use whatever works for you, even -- although I write this with some trepidation -- a mobile device.

And while we’re at it, let’s do some real dreaming, by getting enough sleep. Sleep that will leave what Stephen King calls “the boys in the basement” free to work on the stuff of your daydreams.

For more insights on the importance of daydreaming, see Fries' blog at Psychology Today, "The Power of Daydreaming".

Adventure classics -- Believe in ghosts to write their story

The Haunting of Hill House

by Shirley Jackson

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"No one can get into a novel about a haunted house without hitting the subject of reality head-on;" Shirley Jackson said about the writing of her acclaimed ghost story, The Haunting of Hill House. "Either I have to believe in ghosts, which I do, or I have to write another kind of novel altogether."

Shirley Jackson

In Private Demons: The Life of Shirley Jackson, biographer Judy Oppenheimer treats her belief seriously. Jackson she writes, had “the ability to see beyond reality. . . she heard conversations, even music, that no one else heard; she saw faces no one else could see. She was acutely aware, even from childhood, that there were other very different realities as true as the one her family and neighbors lived in, existing simultaneously, perhaps only a half-turn away.”

Her belief proved strangely convincing, and not only to Oppenheimer. Jackson’s sister-in-law, Bunny Hyman, recalled an incident once in which the two women noticed a red liquid seeping from a kitchen cabinet. When at last someone dared open the cabinet, they found a spilled bottle of red wine.

“Nowhere else,” as Hyman recalled, “would you assume that a trickle of red liquid had to be blood. At Shirley’s house, you not only assumed – you almost expected it.”

Despite her paranormal leanings and often disturbing stories such as her widely anthologized “The Lottery,” it took the witch trial-steeped atmosphere of rural New England to prompt the writing of an actual ghost story. Having made up her mind, Jackson began researching the subject eagerly. She searched for pictures of old houses, looking for those that depicted the “vile. . . diseased” appearance she had in mind for her fictional Hill House, and was delighted to find one she heard was built by her own architect great-grandfather.

1963 film version

No tenant since the death of the original owner’s family has stayed more than a few days in Hill House. It’s the sort of place scholarly paranormal researcher Dr. John Montague dreams about. And he’s gathered a group of psychic researchers to help him: Eleanor Vance, who once experienced a poltergeist episode; a self-proclaimed psychic who uses only the name Theodora; and a family member of the house’s current owner. Montague “had taken his degree in anthropology,” Jackson writes in Hill House, hoping that field would be the closest “to his true vocation, the analysis of supernatural manifestations.”

Perhaps Jackson, whose husband was a college professor, also found satisfaction in giving the leader of her band of investigators a scholarly, academic standing. And perhaps only a writer with architectural ancestors could imagine a house as subtly bad as Hill House.

The Victorian mansion on a wooded estate (in a region unnamed but clearly New England) was designed by its builder without right angles. This peculiarity is – at least in part – what gives Hill House its unsettling air. The tower library, where a former owner hanged herself, is invisible from the bedroom windows of its guests. The interior rooms, many lacking windows, are so oddly arranged guests need a map to find their way around. And then there are the doors, which resolutely shut themselves whenever they are opened.

But those aren't the worst of Hill House’s peculiarities. Between locked gates and a surly caretaker (husband of the equally surly housekeeper/cook), the guests had barely been able to get into the grounds of Hill House. Leaving will be harder; after dark impossible.

“Hill House has a reputation for insistent hospitality,” Montague tells the group. “The last person who tried to leave Hill House in darkness . . . was killed at the turn in the driveway, where his horse bolted and crushed him against the big tree.”

Eleanor Vance is at first as shaken as the rest. But something in the house calls to her. As a child, her home was repeatedly pelleted by stones in a possible poltergeist attack. Now, in Hill House, she attracts other acts of vandalism – mysterious writings that appear on the walls, a shower of blood that drenches Theodora’s clothes, insistent poundings on the (fortunately) closed doors.

Is she the innocent focus of poltergeist attacks? Or is she committing the acts herself, consciously or not? Or is it something else indeed? As Eleanor tells the others, “I could say. . . ‘All three of you are in my imagination; none of this is real.’”

“If I thought you could really believe that,” Montague says, “I would turn you out of Hill House. . . You would be venturing far too close to the state of mind which would welcome the perils of Hill House.”

And when Eleanor at last follows a voice only she can hear up the half-ruined stairs of the library’s tower, Montague decides he must expel her from the group, even against her wishes. But is Hill House willing to let her leave?

Stephen King has called The Haunting of Hill House one of the greatest horror novels of all time. It’s widely available on Amazon, if not in a local library, where I found my copy. This Halloween, consider curling up with a copy. Just be sure to close the doors.

(Next Friday, Adventure classics begins a November of fantasy with the Brothers Grimm tale, “The Fisherman and his Wife.”)

Wordcraft --Resolutions for writers, in brief

The thing that makes New Year’s resolutions so hard to keep is their too frequent vagueness. Or maybe it’s their habit of being just too open ended. Or too painful. It doesn’t have to be so. One year I resolved to kiss my loved ones and tell them every day that I loved them. I recommend it. And for this last post of 2013, I’ll list a very few resolutions for writers that are short, sweet and joys to keep.

Number One -- Get a library card! To write, we need to read. And we need to nurture other readers. So don’t just get a card for yourself, but for every member of your household.

If you’re an adult living in my town--Dallas, Texas--all you need to get a library card is a current government-issued photo identification and proof of Dallas residency, which can be as simple as a utility bill. If you’re applying for a card for a child, you as guardian, will need your photo ID and proof of Dallas residency, or the child’s school registration (within the city of Dallas) and/or ID. Teens may apply for their own library card with a current Dallas school or government ID. In some cases, you may even get a Dallas library card for limited use if you’re not a city resident (although you should check with your local library about its requirements). For specifics, see http://dallaslibrary2.org/about/libraryCards.php/.

Number Two -- About that reading thing. . . . The more I wrote, the less time I thought there would be to read. But in Stephen King’s On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft, he notes that he reads sixty or seventy books yearly. If King, who releases a new book practically every hour, can find that time to read, can’t we? Consider shoehorning in reading time with audio books, which King likes as much as I do.

And (although this is anticipating resolution number three) consider keeping a record of books read. Since I sometimes feel uncomfortable about not having read whatever the book of the hour is, I fall back on the wisdom of my newly favorite author, Pierre Bayard and his How to Talk About Books You Haven’t Read. Bayard marvelously organizes reading in cultural contexts. And speaking of cultural contexts, I’ll be searching for new reads from around the globe, via
http://ayearofreadingtheworld.com/.

Number Three -- Keep a record of progress. Writing is hard lonely work. If we don’t keep track of our milestones, who will? So, let’s keep logs of stories, poems and articles we’ve written. And of stories, poems and articles published. If we write blogs, notice how many posts we write and how our writing improves along the way.

Number Four -- Make a collection that doesn’t cost anything, which in some ways is also a record of progress. I have a tiny notebook of first sentences from books I love. Or we can collect last sentences, such as the lyrical passages Cormac McCarthy typically ends with to compensate for his blood-soaked prose. Or worst sentences, to make us laugh. Whatever we collect, it should be something that gives us joy, such as this short and lovely first sentence from my recent reading, “It began to snow.” (The Samurai, by Shusaku Endo). (RIP, Leonard Elmore. Sometimes it’s okay to write about weather.)

Adventure classics -- Prom from hell -- aren't they all?

Carrie

by Stephen King

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Is there any equivalent outside the United States for the horror that a high school prom can generate? No wonder Stephen King, then a high school teacher, chose prom night for the climax of his 1974 first novel, Carrie. Given the normal angst sweaty-palmed adolescents feel about asking a peer to a major public social event, compounded in recent years by the hovering of parents and school officials who question kids’ choices -- can boys ask boys, girls ask girls, blacks ask whites, can anyone wear a prom dress constructed from duct tape -- I don’t doubt many students would gladly set the prom site on fire.

King famously wrote Carrie during the winter of 1972-1973, while he and his wife, fellow writer Tabitha King, were living in a trailer in Maine with two small children.

“Steve doesn’t talk about what he may be trying to do,” Tabitha writes in her introduction to the 1991 collectors edition of Carrie. “He just writes a story. In the midst of the women’s movement, he had taken some criticism in university seminars and workshops, and in student bull sessions, over his female characters. It wasn’t until after I fished the beginning of the story out of the trash that he admitted he had been trying to see if he could write female characters who weren’t either zeroes or bitches. . . . I swallowed the first sentence and kept on going.”

The backstory on Tabitha’s fortuitous fishing expedition, the story goes, is that a friend bet King he couldn’t write a story from a woman’s point of view.
 
“It was a tough story,” Lisa Rogak quotes King as saying in her biography, Haunted Heart. “It was about girls and it was about girls’ locker rooms and it was about menstruation, a lot of things that I didn’t know anything about. . . Women are bad enough! Girls are even more mysterious.”

Tabitha King credits -- if that’s the right word -- her own problems with premenstrual syndrome for some of her husband’s use of Carrie’s first period as the book’s opening scene. The bloodiness of the event emphasizes, Tabitha writes, Carrie’s "enormous threatening power."

And Carrie’s power isn’t only the normal one of feminine sexuality. She also carries (as King’s obsessive pseudo-documentation demonstrates) a special power -- telekinesis, the ability to move objects by willpower. Reared by an obsessively religious widowed mother, Carrie’s telekinetic ability has been suppressed since childhood. But her increasingly insistent sexuality leads her to challenge her mother and the school bullies who have tormented her from childhood.

The book opens with fellow schoolgirls tormenting Carrie as she mistakenly believes her late-onset puberty means she is bleeding to death. When the worst of the bullying girls plays a terrifying prank as Carrie reaches her peak of bliss -- a prom date with one of the school’s most popular boys -- her powers take on a life of their own. The small town of Chamberlain, Maine, would never recover from their effects.

“There’s a little bit of Carrie White in me,” King has admitted. I’ve seen high school society from two perspectives, as has any high school teacher. You see it once from the classroom where the rubber bands fly around, and you see it again from behind the desk.”

Fortunately for King, the success of Carrie, in book and movie, enabled him to quit teaching school. Fortunately for the rest of us, after nearly forty years, he’s still writing, still finding the terror behind the everyday realities of life.

“Who’d ever have guessed so much could come out of some girl having trouble with her period,” Tabitah says.

(Next Wednesday, Adventure classics continues an October of Halloween horror with Jane Austen’s lighter but penetrating spoof, Northanger Abbey.)

Wordcraft -- Resolution III: dare to daydream

It’s entry number three in the annual list of New Year's resolutions for writers. And much as parents and teachers may have criticized us (okay, criticized me) for daydreaming, it’s more than an escape. It’s a necessary part of any creative work.

“At its simplest, daydreaming (or mind wandering, if you prefer that term), is just another information-processing system, but a highly creative one,” editor Amy Fries writes in her blog at Psychology Today. “(Einstein) famously said, ‘When I examine myself and my methods of thought, I come close to the conclusion that the gift of fantasy has meant more to me than my talent for absorbing positive knowledge.’”

Or consider the connection Sigmund Freud drew between daydreaming and creative writing, as Maria Popova discusses at her blog Brainpickings. “The child’s best-loved and most intense occupation is with his play or games. Might we not say that every child at play behaves like a creative writer, in that he creates a world of his own, or rather, rearranges the things of his world in a new way which pleases him? . . . The creative writer does the same as the child at play. He creates a world of fantasy which he takes very seriously. . .”

With the likes of Freud and Einstein weighing in, how can we afford to disparage daydreaming as, well, child’s play? And though it may sound crazy to give advice on how to daydream, serious dreaming requires serious effort. Not so much to dream as to make a clear space for dreaming.

I admit, working quiet time into a day isn’t easy. For starters, it means I have to stop filling my down time up with entertainment. I’m talking about turning off the IPod, TV, game system, even the Internet. (But only after you finish reading this!) At least once in a while, we must take out the ear buds that insulate us from the world, ourselves, and our deeper work.

While clearing space inside our heads, let’s get a move on. Consider Einstein’s love of walking while carrying on that conversation with his thoughts. I have a gym
membership, but how can I daydream while I’m busy checking heart rates, mileage, and calories burned on the machine readouts? My dog makes me do at least some of my exercise the old fashioned way. It gives my daydreams a breath of fresh air as well.

But aren’t daydreams, by their nature, ephemeral? How is it possible to hang on to the insights of our daydreams? I found taking a notepad and pencil to boring work meetings always made me look industrious, although I was really “daydreaming” -- jotting down story ideas, descriptions, and dialogue. I’ve also survived jury duty summons with the aid of a notebook. I like soft-bound ones small enough to fit in a purse or pocket. Anne Lamott writes that she carries index cards to capture insights. Use whatever works for you, even -- although I write this with some trepidation -- a mobile device.

And while we’re at it, let’s do some real dreaming, by getting enough sleep. Sleep that will leave what Stephen King calls “the boys in the basement” free to work on the stuff of your daydreams.

For more insights from Fries and Popova on the importance of daydreaming, see www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-power-daydreaming/ and www.brainpickings.org/.

Wordcraft -- Being there, déjà vu

During his recent appearance in Dallas, Stephen King bemoaned the fine points of a setting you can’t know until you live in a place. He visited Dallas during the course of extensive research for his book about President Kennedy’s assassination, “11/22/63.” And still there were a couple of items, both minor, that he said had gotten by him.

One was the local pronunciation of Oak Cliff radio station KLIF. Another was the spelling of the town of Killeen. Two l’s, not one as in King’s book, although he said not even his fact-checker caught the tiny omission.

His visit reminded me, on this last day of 2011’s NaNoWriMo (national novel writing month), of the importance to your novel’s setting of your presence in that setting.

I love researching in libraries, online or off. But writing stories and this blog has prompted me to go places I wouldn’t have gone to otherwise. And the experience of being there gives me a feel for the subject I can’t get otherwise.

How would I have known how King responded to Dallas journalist Lee Cullum’s quip about his greatest fear if I hadn’t been in the audience? How would I know how blue the lights are at a strip club if I hadn’t seen them with my own eyes? Or how dragonflies hover over the rain pools of a paupers’ cemetery?

Those of us who write fiction are, by definition, professional liars. But we have to tell really good lies. Lies that can stand up to the utmost grilling our readers can give us.

Journalist Bill Marvel wrote this month in the Dallas Morning News about the perils of photography in public places. I complimented him, confessing that I carry my camera everywhere, photographing such unlikely spots as Dallas Rapid Transit stations and the surroundings of the county hospital without incident. (FYI -- a portable toilet at one station looks like a great spot for my antagonist to dump a body.)

Marvel told me a lot of writers use their cameras this way. But be careful of the old pump house at White Rock Lake (a former city water source), he said. One of his readers was hassled by police for photographing it. Makes me want to go there!

In these last few hours of NaNoWriMo, consider stretching your word count by incorporating a description of your favorite site. Port-a-potties and all.

　

(For Stephen King’s answer to Lee Cullum, see my post for November 16, “Stephen King on changing history.” For Bill Marvel’s article, see http://www.dallasnews.com and search “opinion, Sunday Commentary.” The article title is “The illegal assault on photographers.” For my previous post on settings, see November 10, 2010, “Nothing beats being there.”)

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Market update: Julia Carpenter, the go-to person for a book reading group I attend, found a new outlet for fiction and nonfiction at www.dallaswritersjournal.com/ A paying market for a wide range of material. Thanks Julia!

Wordcraft -- Stephen King on changing history

Stephen King

Stephen King couldn’t have appeared more casual as he strolled onto the stage of the Majestic Theatre in downtown Dallas last week to discuss his new book, “11/22/63,” about the assassination of President John F. Kennedy on that date. Smiling and applauding crowds packed the auditorium, but I wondered whether he recalled the smiling crowds that had surrounded the soon to be murdered president.

Perhaps Dallas Morning News journalist Lee Cullum had the same thought. But to her question about what most terrifies the master of horror, he replied, with a deadpan expression, that the true horror was what might lurk in the back seats of all the cars people forgot to lock on their way to see him.

King’s newest book, however, isn’t about his signature horror genre but about the struggle of a man, Jake Epping, who finds a time tunnel -- a “rabbit-hole,” in King’s words, to the past, in the back of a trailer in a tiny town in Maine. A rabbit-hole he will go down in an attempt to prevent Kennedy’s assassination.

Prevention, of course, means knowing whether Lee Harvey Oswald, the man arrested but never tried for Kennedy’s murder, was the real assassin.

“From the book,” Cullum said to King, “it appears you are almost certain (Lee Harvey) Oswald acted alone. Why?”

“I’m afraid the conspiracy people will jump up and say ‘you lie,’” King admitted. “But I’m ninety-eight percent sure it was Oswald acting alone.”

The reason, he said, is the gun. “Follow the gun. It was Oswald who ordered the gun. He picked the gun up at the post office. His wife photographed him with the gun. It was only his gun.”

Still, King leaves room for speculation. If Oswald’s original intent was to assassinate Kennedy, why did he get a job at the Texas School Book Depository where the fatal shots were fired before Kennedy announced plans to visit Dallas, King wondered. What difference might it have made, if Oswald’s estranged wife had been willing to reconcile with him?

“There are forces that decide ninety-five to ninety-eight percent of our lives. The rest of it is wild.”

And why another book about the Kennedy assassination now?

At least partly, King said, because of his belief that history repeats itself -- and not just for his time traveling hero, Jake Epping.

King first tried to write a book about the assassination in the 1970’s, he said, but the experience was still too raw. The urge resurfaced after the election of Barack Obama, who King saw as paralleling Kennedy in many ways, including “the hate that surrounds him,” and with the rise of the tea party movement he equates with the political extremism of Dallas in the 1960’s.

But even for time traveling Jake Epping, the past proves hard to change. As Epping learns, “the past is obdurate. It doesn’t want to change.”

“I think (opponents) sensed in Kennedy the possibility of a real change in society and that scared them,” King said. And then he noted that despite the hatred, people cheered the president along the motorcade route. “The political atmosphere was very dark, but really, there was only one Oswald. But all it takes is one.”

Wordcraft -- Get your NaNoWriMo on

I was chatting with a fellow Dallas Writers Garret member during the intermission in last week’s Orchestra of New Spain concert when the subject of NaNoWriMo came up. That’s pronounced “nan-oh-rye-mo”, short for National Novel Writing Month, although it’s now gone international. It’s an organized effort to get people to commit to writing 50,000 words of their novels during the month of November.

Mandy looked sympathetic when I confessed I hadn’t even signed up at NaNoWriMo’s official website . “You’re only four days late,” she said.

As I write this, I’m getting even later.

(Mandy will also blog about NaNoWriMo on November 10, at http://ordinaryaddictions.wordpress.com/)


Gimmicky though it sounds, NaNoWriMo gives a lot of us the incentive to get busy with that book we’ve always meant to write. Or the next one, or the one after the next one. Whining all the way about other commitments (I was cleaning out an old family house for sale), even I managed to add more than 10,000 words on my novel in progress last year.

The official website is www.nanowrimo.org/ ,where the highly competitive can also log in their daily word counts.

The whole point of NaNoWriMo is to turn off your inner editor -- the voice saying you must correct all the misspellings, the lapses in logic, the bad grammar and punctuation -- before you can move forward. The NaNoWriMo attitude is, just let go and write. Editing’s what the other eleven months of the year are for.

But if you need help getting started, check out www.io9.com/581467/the-7-types-of-short-story-openings/. The site titles these as openings for short fiction, but there’s no reason you can’t use them to start a longer piece as well.

I’m always skeptical of writers who claim not to have any plan for their books. My own experience from previously writing apparently without plan is that I at least knew who my characters were and had some idea of what would happen in the story’s course. (I always look for places and ways to blow things up.) But once past the basic idea of your novel, if you need help with structure, consider Kristen Lamb’s blog,
www.warriorwriter.wordpress/. Of course, I’ve blogged about structure, scene, and characters, but Kristen’s put it all in a connected series. Tell her I sent you!

(Next Wednesday -- Hear what Stephen King has to say about his newest book, “11/22/63,” hailed by Dallas Morning News writer Joy Tipping as “Stephen King’s Great American Novel”. At this writing, some tickets were still available for King’s appearance Thursday, November 10, at www.showclix.com/)