And then one day, Sam told me what he wanted, why he had come into my thoughts, and the story he wanted me to tell others on his behalf.
On a Saturday afternoon, I was driving to church, and I looked up and saw the cross on top of the steeple. And in that moment a clarity came to me unlike any I had experienced before, and I realized what Sam Hell wanted. He wanted what so many of us want. He wanted to believe. He wanted to believe there was a reason he was bullied. He wanted to believe there was a reason he suffered. He wanted to believe his mother when she told him, “God gave you extraordinary eyes because you’re going to lead an extraordinary life.” He wanted to believe that all of his mother’s novenas to the Blessed Mother on his behalf had not been prayed in vain, that her desire of a good life for Sam would not go unfulfilled.
I made an illegal U-turn, drove home, opened the file, and let the magic happen. I let Sam Hell tell me his story:
My mother called it “God’s will.” At those moments in my life when things did not go as I had hoped or planned, and there were many, she would say, “It’s God’s will, Samuel.” This was hardly comforting to a six-year-old boy, even one “blessed” with a healthier dose of perspective than most children at that age. For one, I never understood how my mother knew God’s will. When I would ask her that very question, she would answer with another of her stock refrains—“Have faith, Samuel.” I realize now that this was circular reasoning impregnable to debate. My mother might just as well have responded with that other impenetrable parental reply, “Because I said so.”
Six months later, I’d finished Sam’s story, and in the process, I’d let him live his life.
The e-mails I have received regarding that novel have been touching and often heartbreaking. People have shared their own maladies that made them the subject of others’ ridicule and bullying. I received an e-mail from an Ohio State graduate who wrote, “Fuck you. A grown man is not supposed to be bawling his eyes out as he drives down the road.” Sam Hell’s life had touched his heart and brought him to tears. He empathized with Sam’s pain and his humiliation, and he related them to his own childhood. He told me how, for years, he, too, had struggled to understand the reason for his suffering, and he had found that reason in Sam Hell. He told me that Sam Hell had made him believe that everyone has the ability to lead an extraordinary life.
Magic. Telepathy.
IT’S A SCARY PROPOSITION WHEN SOMEONE SAYS, “WRITE FROM the heart.” It implies that you sit down at a computer terminal and simply type. Not so. The mystery of writing revealed itself to me only after years of studying the craft and failing. Perhaps this is what is meant when they talk of a writer suffering. I still have much to learn.
Writing from the heart also requires first that you have one and, most importantly, that you’re not afraid to share it, knowing that it will be trampled and criticized. It’s about not being afraid to be vulnerable. It’s about understanding that the magic doesn’t happen to everyone, and the telepathy will fly right past those not on the same wavelength. The mystery of writing is never losing faith in the magic or in the knowledge that you, and you alone, are uniquely able to transcribe the story being told to you, a story about people you’ve never met. The mystery of writing is in believing that the story you tell will touch the hearts of readers you will never meet and never know.
Stephen King called it telepathy.
Diana Gabaldon called it magic.
Telepathy. Magic. Whatever you want to call it. The mystery of writing is being brave enough to let it happen.
I WANT TO BE A MAGICIAN
– Anne Perry –
I WANT TO BE A MAGICIAN! NOT THE SORT WHO MAKES things appear and disappear inexplicably but the one who creates worlds and peoples them, makes events occur, marvelous, terrible, funny, heartfelt, and I want them to last so they can be revisited anytime. And, of course, all kinds of characters, old, young, eccentric, brave. I want to be one of them. Put more plainly, I want to be a writer. I want to make squiggles on paper and bring dreams to life, and understandings of anything that my imagination dares grasp, and then share them.
Does that sound arrogant? It isn’t. Not really. Other people have done that down the centuries and shared their visions of the wonderful, the terrible, the elusive and mysterious, their victories and losses, the beauty and laughter and pain. I have been with them as they sought the reasons for everything. I have seen the Great Flood with Gilgamesh and watched the heavens rain and the hidden waters of the great deep spew forth. I have praised the rising sun over Egypt with the rebel Pharaoh Akhenaten, who dared to say there was only one God. I have seen the fall of Troy and the eruption of Vesuvius that buried Herculaneum and Pompeii. I have searched for the source of the White Nile. I have traveled alien worlds that don’t exist, except in the imagination, and been with fantastical creatures.
And more than that, I have had companionship in my loneliness, courage in my fear, and beauty in the midst of pain through the words of others. I want to put something back into that great tide of human sharing. Perhaps it is an attempt to be like those I most admire and ultimately to belong to that golden fellowship who fill my daydreams. Don’t we all hunger to belong? And where better? As long as we remember them, they are immortal.
Like everyone else, I have only one life here. But through these words on a page I can share the lives of people without number—I become a citizen not only of the world but of time. I like that! A citizen of time! I take the wealth of the past and give to the treasures of the future.
Letters that form meaning, especially if written down, are a kind of magic. Past civilizations recognized that. They believed that your name, if written down, could carry some essence of your identity. And in many ways, they were right. What is more “you” than your feelings, your beliefs, your dreams, your hope, your pain, and your courage?
When I have had no light by which to read, I have called upon stored-up poetry in my mind to repeat to myself and defy the void to dare the darkness of the spirit with sublime courage.
Up through an empty house of stars,
Being what heart you are,
Up the inhuman steeps of space
As on a staircase go in grace,
Carrying the firelight on your face
Beyond the loneliest star.
“THE BALLAD OF THE WHITE HORSE,”
G. K. CHESTERTON
When I remember that, I am not alone! I have a radiant companionship of all those who have trodden the same path, a web of light around me. I long to be like that—carrying the firelight of courage and vision with me into an unknown darkness. It ceases to be a terror and becomes a challenge.
What if God were to ask me, as the Bible says he did Solomon, What gift would you have me give you? I played with all sorts of answers, but there was only one that seemed right to me, and that was the gift of communication, to be able to reach out and touch somebody else with the passion of my feelings, the complexity of my thoughts, the wonder, awe, joy of what I sense in any way. Everything is too important not to be shared. There is no limit to the wings of the imagination.
Words! Palaces in the air, the way to capture and hold anything, everything, and multiply it.
SINCE THE STONE AGE, WE HAVE SAT IN THE NIGHT AND looked at the stars and then asked in awe, Who are we? Where have we come from? Where are we going? And above all, why?
I need to believe there is a purpose. There is sense to it all. What have other people found? What did they believe, and why? When I have sat and thought deeply, the parts have fallen into place, and I have a new piece of understanding. And each new piece adds a little; I just have to find the right place where it fits.
Stories tell of who we were from our birth in the skies, who were our first fathers, their greatness and their folly, all that they have bequeathed us, for good and ill. And, of course, where we are going, who are our gods and who our devils. I need to know in order to face the adventures that will surely face me, and all of us.
My mother told
me that when I was very small, she used to sing a lullaby to me, but I remember the words repeated later. Do you want the moon to play with and the stars to run away with? She said my answer was “They’ll do to begin with!” Loosely, of course. But I get her meaning, and “Yes, please, I do!”
I want words to frame the glory of the stars, the fire and the energy, and to envision the endless, wonderful variety of it all. I marvel at how it all makes sense! The more you look at even the beginnings of science, the more it all fits together.
And in my mind, to see beyond the obvious, I must explore not only the stars but also the cold and lonely places between them, the world of the night and the utterly lost. That is where the ultimate adventure is to be found, the way no one else has been.
The entirely new, the thing from another state of mind? How to frame it?
“The Greeks have a word for it.” We used to say that when we didn’t know how to frame a new thought. A new idea is a wonderful gift, one you can play with, holding it like a colored light to add a new dimension to all sorts of things. That sounds theatrical, but it is real.
I remember a train journey from Madrid to Barcelona. At sunset we passed through a high, lunar-like landscape to the south. Giant standing rocks of apricot and indigo seemed to burn where they stood and to cast gigantic shadows that turned purple and melted into the sky. Real? Of course… rock real. But when I remember it in words, it becomes more than that, sounding tender, soft-edged, cool wind rippling across the sand as the light seeped out of the sky and we were running alone in the dark. On our earth? Or on some planet out of Star Trek?
Without the words to describe it, I might forget, and then I couldn’t share it. It would have gone.
LIFE CAN BE TERRIBLE, LOSS TOO BIG TO HAVE A NAME. A PRIMAL howl releases the tension for a while. Then it comes back, fresh and just as strong. Ordinary words help, used anything but ordinarily.
I carry the music and the passion of them in my head to make the hard things bearable. They are other people’s words, but when I repeat them to myself, I am not alone, and all wounds hurt less.
If here today the cloud of thunder lours
Tomorrow it will hie on far behests;
The flesh will grieve on other bones than ours
Soon, and the soul will mourn in other breasts.
The troubles of our proud and angry dust
Are from eternity and shall not fail,
Bear them we can, and if we can we must.
Shoulder the sky, my lad, and drink your ale.
A. E. HOUSMAN
I can’t write poetry in the same human world as that. But I believe I can write stories, create characters, and make them say and think and do things that stir the deepest emotions. I can give them actions and emotions and make you feel something you did not feel before.
In doing so I will try to discover new and deeper meaning. I must place myself in each character, share and see their lives as they see them, and understand what they want, with their fears, and feel pity rather than condemnation. There are two places to look. The first is in their lives: what are they, and what did they want? What are they afraid of? What hurts them, and why do they get some things wrong?
I can see in myself too clearly why I identify with a character’s temper or fear that they have sidestepped, instead of facing, the excuses made. What would it be like to be that person? Have I ever been as alone as they are? Have I been scared stiff, rigid with fear, sick with it? Have I loved anyone enough to give all that I have, even my life, to save them? And if not, why not? What am I missing? Am I wiser or only less brave… only half alive? The pieces fall into place, and I understand more than I did before.
In trying to make everyone real, I discover odd things about myself, not only the eccentric or endearing things. The other things might be more useful as a writer, if not always pleasant.
It’s time to talk about courage and what I think I would do, whom I would stand up for, whom I would help. Love can choke back fear. But we are talking about real loss, not something on paper. Try it. Burn just a little bit of your skin, and it hurts like hell. Would I stand up and step forward for someone else? Once you’ve done it, you can’t go back.
Excuses are reasonable. They flood the mind. Well, maybe next time! There is so much to treasure, so much to lose. The act of one second can change everything. Wait a moment! Think what you are doing! Are you sure it will work?
Too late! The chance is gone. But when it is real, the person you did not save is gone. You will never see him or her again.
Courage is real. Make heroism matter.
I HAVE TO WRITE, BUT WHY DO I WRITE MYSTERIES RATHER than anything else? Why not romances, Westerns, literary novels, adventures? Lots of reasons, starting with because I like them. I have always enjoyed mysteries. I like the intellectual puzzle and, more than that, the moral one. Far more than in the past, they deal with real social issues. Guilt is cloudier, questions of degree rather than black-and-white. There used to be heroes and villains—oh, and victims, seldom morally involved in their own fate. Now all the players are complex. Social issues can be explored, family relationships, individual guilt or collective; very little is obvious or simple.
I can say what I really mean, ask the questions.
I love it when I close a book I have just read and feel I have learned something about people, judgment, issues that matter. I have been made to think! How wonderful. My world has been made bigger and deeper, and subtler. There are more colors in it than I had seen before.
I don’t even try to work out the plots of other people’s books, but it doesn’t spoil it for me if I see it. As long as I believe it could be true, I care, and I am happy. I don’t want cardboard heroes or cardboard villains. I want the villains to be understandable, perhaps even to feel sympathy for them or at least a sympathy. Above all, I want to feel that the hero cares for something more than his or her job or the answer to a puzzle. I need heroes to have emotions, and a stake in what happens, and why, and to whom. If they do not learn anything, then the journey wasn’t worth it.
WHAT IS GOOD ABOUT WRITING MYSTERIES? WHAT IS VALUABLE and fun? I wrote unsuccessfully for years. I think I know what was wrong. I was writing historical novels, lots of enthusiasm and lovely scenes but no structure. My hero was all over the place. He observed things happening; he didn’t make them happen. He had no driving need for anything! Nothing was explained, taken apart, or understood. He made no inner journey. And therein lies the key. My involvement was skin-deep. It must be to the bone. I did not explain issues in real people here and now. The wounds are still deep, infected; the corruption, the greed, the spoiling of the land—I could go on.
Daylight penetrated my murk at last. I had a hero who solved a mystery and became involved with the people. More than that, I had a heroine whose ideals and illusions about her own family, even about herself, were stripped away. She had to reassess everything, just as in the past I have had to at times. Disillusion faces us all, and it is one of the most difficult things we deal with. The more radical it is, and the more our beliefs are bound up in these people, the more difficult it is to accept the truth.
But I had a story! Change. Growth. And romance! But that’s incidental. And since the hero is a policeman in London, it will not be surprising if he solves other cases in the next book. It’s his job, and London, circa 1881, is the place for it. (Jack the Ripper is 1888. You have to have heard of him. He is the ultimate horror.)
London? Paris? Any place will do. That’s another good thing about mysteries. They can be wherever there are people or, I suppose, beings with a moral sensibility. Absolutely anywhere at all! You can have a country village, the heart of a big city, a rocket station on Mars—or an alien world if you can be bothered to create one. As long as we believe it matters!
And it can be anytime, past, present, or future. As long as it makes sense and does not have any noticeable internal contradictions, it’s fine. Unfortunately, humans can take violence, ph
ysical or emotional, with them anywhere.
Stories can also be set against all sorts of specific backgrounds, interesting in themselves, as long as you know the background or research it well enough to be believable. For example, the court of Queen Elizabeth II of England. Lots of color and certainly lots of violence. Or the court of one of the more eccentric popes, again color and violence. Or a free-thinking artists’ group in Paris at the turn of the twentieth century, so vivid and unique. A modern city bank on Wall Street, a fashion house, a farm, a factory, the Secret Service. You get the idea. The world can be yours. Cheapest and safest form of travel ever.
But you must have a crime, a victim, a motive, at least two possible suspects, emotion. Oh, and a solution that makes sense. A reason why it all matters intensely. And if you can make a good story without one of these, good for you! Miss Pym Disposes by Josephine Tey broke most of these rules, and it is one of the best mysteries I have ever read. But she was special! She had a touch of genius.
The detective is the modern knight errant. You know, the one on the white horse who rides in and rescues everybody. The point is, detectives find chaos (not difficult these days), fear, and injustice. They sort it out and leave you with justice, or at least an understanding. Finally, we feel as if we have some sort of control… most of the time. We are not as helpless as we thought. Somebody knows what is happening. Then they ride off. Or stay, and we become part of the next solution to a problem, knights errant as well.
WHAT HAVE I LEARNED IN WRITING? ALL KINDS OF THINGS. Of course a lot of medical and legal details, which have to be as correct as you can make them and are also genuinely interesting.
One marvelous book that I relied on a great deal is the memoir of Larrey, who was surgeon to Napoleon. He kept voluminous notes on medicine in general, but for my purpose, far better than that, specific notes on such things as the amputation of a gangrenous limb. Description of the injury, how it appeared, how the patient’s health was affected, what the surgeon did, where and how he cut, how the patient responded. And another horrific case of tetanus, treated by searing and cauterizing with a hot iron. (He lived!) And much more. It makes it possible to write medical scenes as if you were there. And be sure you have it right! Horrific. But accurate. Thank God we didn’t live then.
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