I got twelve pages into the story before I bogged down again. I had the main character, the healer Snake; her patient, the little boy Stavin; and three serpents genetically engineered to produce medicinal venom: Mist, the albino boa constrictor, Sand, the rattlesnake, and Grass, species and purpose unknown, as yet, to me.
It’s tempting to claim I was bogged down because I was tired, but in truth I couldn’t figure out what a serpent named Grass would do.
I turned in my twelve pages the next day. As I remember it, almost everybody else turned in a completed story (good ones too—at least half a dozen were published), but I had excuses. I wasn’t a student. I was the workshop organizer. I had a lot of organizing to do. I had to sulk because one of the local students threw a party and didn’t invite me. I had to track down some chicken feet so Avram could make soup.
My story languished for several weeks, very badly stuck on page twelve. People asked me about it. I glared.
Finally, during Terry Carr’s week as writer-in-residence, I realized that a serpent named Grass should have hallucinogenic venom. The idea came from out in the ozone (or maybe the back forty again), and my only excuse for not realizing it sooner is that during the 1960s I was a science geek. I’m one of the few people around who understood Bill Clinton when he said he couldn’t inhale. My response to the question, “Did you smoke dope in the sixties?” is the minority reply: I admit I was too chicken. (The majority answer is, “Of course—didn’t everybody?”)
I stayed up all night writing the story of Snake and her serpents, including the dreamsnake Grass. In the morning I staggered to class and turned in my story and struggled to stay awake. That day’s story photocopies came back. We all picked up our copies. I staggered back to my room (guarded by a poster from Ursula K. Le Guin: two buzzards on DayGlo pink, with the caption, “Patience, my ass! I’m going to kill something!”). I fell asleep.
The door of my room burst open and slammed against the wall. Someone stormed in. I sat up, half asleep, completely disoriented.
She flung down the manuscript. She was the student who suggested the name Snake. “How dare you,” she cried, “write a story that makes me feel sorry for snakes!” And stormed out again, slamming the door behind her.
“Huh,” I said, and went back to sleep.
The next day the story got a pretty good reception, though the class snake expert and boa constrictor owner said that even genetic engineering would not excuse a venomous constrictor. Never mind, I said, it’s too heavy to carry—I’ll make it a cobra. Terry Carr asked to look at the polished story for Universe, his extremely prestigious anthology series. I was pretty puffed up by the end of class.
A week later, as I polished the story, Terry wrote to tell me not to bother submitting it; he didn’t want to see it after all. I never did sell Terry Carr an original story.
Instead, I sent “Of Mist, and Grass, and Sand” to Analog. It isn’t what you’d normally think of as an Analog story, but Analog was the magazine I grew up reading. I always sent my stories first to Analog, even though John W. Campbell always rejected them without comment. (He was renowned for his lengthy comments on stories he rejected. Other people’s stories.) Ben Bova had recently become editor. To my astonishment and pleasure, he bought the story.
“Of Mist, and Grass, and Sand” was nominated for the Hugo and won the Nebula (despite a review that said it was a bad story because it wasn’t a proper Analog story). Astronaut Edgar Mitchell, one of the guest speakers, handed me the award—a thrill equal to winning.
And Terry Carr reprinted it in his Best of the Year anthology.
I hadn’t planned to expand the story, but the characters didn’t like being left, figuratively, hanging by their thumbs. They protested. That’s another thing many writers will tell you, besides that they have no clue where they get their ideas: a writer’s characters will walk into the writer’s mind and start talking.
When this happens, any smart writer won’t ask where the ideas came from—she’ll shut up and take dictation from her characters about their lives.
EXERCISE
Avram’s Exercise:
1. Choose a dozen or so words of a pastoral nature.
2. Choose a dozen or so words of a technical nature.
3. Randomly pick one word from each list.
4. Write a story based on the two words.
5. Variations: Change up the subjects of the lists. Politics. Medicine. Religion. Archaeology. Comedy. Law. Your favorite subject here.
6. If you write an app for the exercise, let me know, K?
KEALAN PATRICK BURKE
Walking the Dog
KEALAN PATRICK BURKE is the Bram Stoker Award–winning author of The Timmy Quinn series, Currency of Souls, Master of the Moors, and Kin.
Argue the legitimacy of writer’s block all you like—and people do—the fact remains that there are few things worse for a writer than sitting down at the keyboard with a head full of ideas only to find that the words won’t come. We’ve all been there at one time or another. Perhaps there’s a deadline looming so close you’ve lost the luxury of the time needed to organize your thoughts. Maybe the pressure is so great it’s hampering your muse. Or maybe you just have too many other things on your mind for the words to find a straight path to your fingers: bills, repairs, what’s on TV right now . . .
Whatever the case, it’s stressful, and it’s happened to me more times than I can count.
But, rather by accident, I found a way around it.
My problem was one of intimidation. There were days when I would sit at the computer knowing what I wanted to write but unable, or unwilling, to write it. It seemed like a task that was greater than my capacity to deal with it. How do I sit here and essentially create a world from nothing when I feel as if I’m missing half the tools? Gods of literature do not approve of ill-fashioned worlds. My situations seemed convoluted, my action stilted, my characters forced . . .
In the end, I looked out the window and saw a man walking his dog, and that became the solution. Did I start my story: “A man walked his dog”? No. Did I create the world in which this man and his dog belonged? Not at first. I reduced it almost entirely to dialogue and imagined the conversation this man might have with his dog, but not just an ABC run-of-the-mill conversation. After all, if you’re going to have the dog as one of your key players in this little tableau, you might as well make it interesting:
“Every day,” Patch said.
The old man raised his eyebrows. “What’s that?”
“Every day the same old walk.”
“You don’t approve?”
“I don’t not approve, exactly. But it wouldn’t kill you to change direction once in a while.”
“I suppose we could do that.”
“How about swinging down by the school? The children love me.”
“Yes, they love you. The older ones can be cruel.”
“You let me worry about that.”
“If I let you worry about that, we’re both in trouble.”
“How about the beach, then?”
“The sand is filthy.”
“That’s part of why I like it.”
“Plus, there’s that homeless guy.”
“I like him too.”
“I don’t.”
“Why not? He’s never interfered with you.”
“Maybe, but there’s something I don’t like about him.”
“Maybe it’s the fact that he stole your fashion sense.”
“Very funny.”
“And yet you didn’t even crack a smile.”
More often than not, I have no idea where this dialogue is leading me, but it spins out into a story of some sort by the time I get to the end. It creates itself based on the exchange. The characters let me know their thoughts, their characteristics, their dilemmas, and the conflict at
the core of their tale. They work it out for themselves and for me, on the page. And even if I run out of steam and never complete the piece, I have overcome the block that kept me from writing anything at all. And that’s what I always do when the words are not coming with their usual aplomb. I start with dialogue.
EXERCISE
Try it yourself. Have a look around you. Snippets of conversations caught in a crowd at the mall, or in the park, are usually enough to engage my imagination. A woman is on the phone and says: “Yes, but if it had been the blue one, nobody would have been angry.” Imagination kicks in. A blue what? Who was angry and why? It’s creative eavesdropping designed to engage the muse.
Even if you’re at home and looking out the window, you don’t even need the auditory cues to get your creativity in gear. That woman sitting in her car singing along to some song you can’t hear. Is she always this carefree and happy? Does that joy flee her heart by the time she gets home when she realizes that yet again she has to face . . . what? Or was she listening to a tape of her old band playing their biggest tune? Mixed in with that joy is nostalgia and regret that she left the band back when they were on the verge of superstardom. Perhaps she’s wondering where she’d be now if things had worked out differently.
And that’s where you come in. You’re a writer. You can time travel, teleport, read minds . . . it’s what we do. So when the words aren’t coming, rather than sitting there in frustration glaring at a white screen, find the words. Sometimes it’s like Where’s Waldo? but they’re there, hidden in the mundane, the ordinary, waiting like a lit match to touch the fuse of your creativity.
You just need to remember how and where to look.
And sometimes it’s nothing more complicated than a man walking his dog.
“I used to want to be a writer, you know.”
Patch looked up at his master. “I didn’t know that. Why didn’t you pursue it?”
“I didn’t know where to start.”
“At the beginning?”
“It’s not always that easy to find it.”
“Isn’t that where we are right now?”
SABRINA BENULIS
Magical Inspiration
SABRINA BENULIS has a master’s degree in writing popular fiction from Seton Hill University. Her debut novel, Archon, was released by Harper Voyager (the science fiction and fantasy imprint of HarperCollins) and is the first installment of the Books of Raziel trilogy. She’s learned to follow her dreams, both literally and figuratively.
I think every author or serious writer hears the question at one point in their career: “Where do you get your ideas from?” And as someone who writes speculative fiction (fantasy, horror, and science fiction), I often reply, “Well, I just use my imagination.” But both I and the reader know that there’s much more to it than that. The problem is explaining the magic.
How do writers—especially speculative fiction writers—get inspired?
Is it images? Songs that we love? Fleeting moments that we’d like to capture in text forever? Memories? Worse yet, it can be so hard to admit that sometimes, the magic is more like a slow evolution—and sometimes that evolution stagnates, writer’s block sets in, and we wonder if we’ll ever have the energy to dazzle our readers that final time.
Because inspiration is so important—both for new and seasoned writers—that means it’s just as important to share personal methods of sparking it. Here are a few of my own in no particular order, and I hope they can ignite your creativity as much as they’ve ignited mine. On those days when you just don’t have the energy to work, having a little fun can sometimes make all the difference.
EXERCISE
1. Peruse art and photography books.
Have you ever looked at a fantastic painting and noticed your mind working, grinding its gears to weave a story around the image? If so, you are a visual writer like me, and many more times than I can count, I’ve found that a great way to jump-start some flagging creativity is by picking up an art or photography book and flipping through the pages. The best way to do this is to select a subject that interests you and consequently pick up a beautiful book illustrating that subject in a way that speaks to you on a creative level. And it doesn’t have to strictly be a book of van Gogh sketches or Ansel Adams landscapes. I’m talking about things as diverse as architecture photos that you like, Vogue magazine, or even a cookbook. Those are pictures too, and you’d be surprised by what can nudge you into story writing.
2. Listen to the soundtrack of your favorite movie.
Yes, any music can be inspiring. But you’ve associated the music of a favorite movie with particular scenes, with particular emotions in the scene, and also a specific atmosphere and pace. In other words, let’s say you are eager to write an action scene, but you can’t quite nail the rhythm of the action and find it lacking somehow. When this happens to me, I take a few minutes to listen to a soundtrack from some television show or movie I admire, one that matches the type of scene I am trying to write or atmosphere I am trying to convey. More often than not, I find it much easier to write that scene afterward. This is because you, the story writer, are making a movie with words. So why can’t those words have their own catchy soundtrack? Maybe even one that you already love.
3. Weave together spontaneous images and ideas.
While this is certainly related to #1, it’s not quite the same. In this instance, we’re looking for inspiration not in the images themselves, but in the end result when we weave them together. For instance, perhaps you love the fantastical imagery of jeweled insects used as money, the idea of a world smothered in golden sand, and a war between two races over access to the last lake on earth. Now, these are all separate ideas and images I happen to like that I also simply dropped on this page. There is no real story yet to be found. But perhaps you are already forming a story around them in your mind, getting inspired. The point here is that sometimes a great way to get our creative juices flowing is to force them to make connections we otherwise would not. Try it yourself with three random ideas and images you like. You’ll probably be pleasantly surprised by what you can think up.
4. Take a few random lines of dialogue and see what you can do with them.
For example, what does your mind conjure up in this instance:
“No,” she whispered, clutching the cup to her chest. “I’ll never let you have it.”
What story are you creating right now? Is our newly developing character carrying a Holy Grail no one else can touch? Is she just holding a cup of tea and talking about something else entirely? Does she sound afraid, angry, or determined? Are her intentions good or evil, and if she is trying to hide something, what might that be?
Your possibilities here are endless, as is the realm of your imagination.
Perhaps the problem lies not so much in explaining the magic as it does in finding where we might have stashed it away in the little kingdom of our dreams.
ELLIOT LAURENCE
Unlimited Ideas
ELLIOT LAURENCE has a multifaceted background as an architect, designer, inventor, musician, writer, actor, director, and teacher. In 1991 he received an Educator of the Year award for his teaching methods at the Academy of Art University in San Francisco. He is the author of two books: Why Anything Anyway (unified theory of conscious enlightenment) and The Creative Quotient (unlimited creative power).
When it comes to writing anything, it is about coming up with a good, believable premise and then giving it a good twist or two or three. At the same time, it has to have plausible solutions within the context you are writing. This is true for comedy, drama, mystery, as well as sci-fi.
The first part is about coming up with a good premise or idea. Sometimes we are just simply inspired and that is always great, but inspiration is like money you find on the street: It’s great when you find it, but you can’t depend on it. It is better to develop a depen
dable method that can work whether you feel inspired or not. I have some exercises that can help create an endless amount of ideas that work every time, that not only build bridges between bouts of inspiration, but also increase their frequency.
The first concept to start with is to create whimsically and not seriously. “The road to great ideas is paved with idiotic ones.” Why is this phenomenon true? Because when you are serious about your idea, you tend to be single-minded, stubborn, and limited to that idea alone and will eventually have a creative block and/or not be able to see what you are doing in any objective sense or take any kind of criticism constructively. However, if you come up with ideas whimsically, you can envision several ideas to a certain point, let go of them, develop more, and then sit back and look at all your ideas more objectively, refine and combine them, or develop even more.
A lot of people think that if you don’t work on your ideas seriously, your ideas won’t have depth. The fact of the matter is that whatever depth you bring to the table, it will naturally, at some point, be infused into the story you are writing. You cannot manufacture depth beyond your own level of being, and you cannot stop your depth from being interjected into whatever you are writing, even if it is comedy.
Think about this: It is estimated that there are approximately 500 billion stars in our galaxy, the Milky Way, and there is an estimate that there are at least 100 billion galaxies that we can possibly know at this time; on top of that our universe is expanding at an accelerated rate, not to mention other dimensions and dark matter. So with this in mind, do you think that anything you could possibly imagine is possible somewhere? It is even possible that whatever we can possibly imagine could truly come into being somewhere, simply because we imagine it.
EXERCISE
The exercise involves taking two or more things that you wouldn’t think would go together and making them work. You can even ask other people for things that don’t go together and really challenge yourself. In fact, to a reasonable point, the more difficult the mix of ideas, the more interesting the story becomes, because the audience will wonder how in the world will these ideas all come together.
Now Write! Page 6