Category Archives: Fiction

Do You Hear Me?

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Can your inner child come out; Listen to Your Characters

Famous playwright Harold Pinter once said when he is writing his plays he doesn’t know who is behind the door until it opens.

Pinter lets his characters tell the story. Well I’m certainly no Pinter, but I can say I have experienced the same. It happens when my first draft is going really well, when it flows effortlessly and my characters are talking to me.  I just need to listen.

Will character X leave her husband? How does X talk, act, think?  If I listen to X, she will tell me.

If I listen, my writing feels unforced and carries with it a certain heat and depth of experience that hopefully resonates. When my writing is forced, it’s uninspired, unauthentic, flat.

Perhaps I’m not always in the right frame of mind when I’m writing. Frankly, I don’t always know until it’s too late. All I know is when my writing is flat, it’s as if X has shut the door and gone into hiding.

And, by God, the silence is deafening.

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Who’s Minding Your Wild Mind?

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Who's Minding Your Wild Mind

George Takei says: “It is in those moments when our minds are clutter-free that true inspiration awakens.”

True inspiration:  If you create… if you’re an artist, a poet, a photographer, a programmer, a composer, a musician, etc… you know true inspiration is instinctual, intuitive, primeval; it’s what Freud called the unconscious, what Carl Jung called the collective unconscious, and what writers and others call Wild Mind.

I sometimes think of Wild Mind as sort of an un-state of mind. I know I’ve reached this state when my first drafts basically write themselves. And there’s the rub: the story ideas roaming around inside my cluttered conscious mind usually go nowhere.

Good Story Ideas I’ll (probably) never write:

Shaky Road – An unhappy couple take a long road trip.

Idea Guy – Sort of ironic, eh?

Scenes From an Apartment – Can’t remember (:

Below are some of the stories that came from – or at some point were taken over by – my cluttered conscious mind where my idea of the story took the reins, making sure the story followed what I thought/wanted it to be.

I’ve already written and rewritten these stories many times, and they still don’t work.

Stories from Good Ideas That Still Don’t Work:

Madison’s Absence – A man’s out of body experience.

We’re Not Them – A pregnant woman’s paranoia her baby will be born mentally ill.

How She Will Live – A cautious woman who finds herself single and suddenly in lust.

Bottom line, I’ve learned it’s okay to get your conscious mind (where you inner editor lives) involved when you’re critiquing your creation and when you’re re-working it. And let’s face it, we could all use a good editor!

But hard knocks have taught me that your first draft/sketch/form should come from your instinctive, intuitive Wild Mind, the seat of your originality.

Your inner editor might not like it, but your creations definitely will. But enough about me. How do you get to your Wild Mind? Music? A photo? Meditation? Doodling?

My Guilty Pleasure

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Yes, I have one. A guilty pleasure, that is.

It’s mysteries. Now, I don’t write them, but I read them more often than not. I love ‘em, okay? I love their simple complexity. For one thing, a good mystery has engaging characters, and for another, it has built-in conflict. Character and conflict – the basis of all of good writing. What’s not to like?

Speaking of good writing….I know a wannabe writer or two who is very curious about how famous writers write. They wonder, should they lie bed with their computer on their stomachs while they write (like Woody Allen) ? Stand up and write, use only parchment paper…. You get the idea.

Of course it doesn’t matter how you write or where you write, as long as you do. Moreover, as Natalie Goldberg, author of Writing Down the Bones and Wild Mind, says you should set a schedule to write, even if it’s just 15 minutes twice a week. Good or bad writing, just sit down and write something. Which I’m sorry to say, Natalie, I’ve tried, but I just can’t do. I need a bit of inspiration, which many writers scorn.

Well scorn away, it’s what works for me. In fact, if I try to sit down and do some “free writing” I’m apt do this instead:

First, clean the bathroom using a Green cleaning solution, and then wonder if I’m really disinfecting anything.

Second, do laundry. All of it.

Third, watch Chopped, Hardcore Pawn, the mystery DVDs from the library….

Fourth, the most important thing I do, I eventually put down the mystery, and read a book of short stories. Without reading stories, I might never write one. After all, where would I get my inspiration? Plus, I’ve learned how to write stories from reading stories.

My problem is I can read fifty stories and not one of them inspires a word. Then suddenly, the fifty-first story clicks: it’s tone, characters, its narrative voice, who knows what does it, I simply can’t explain the inner rush I feel. It’s not that I’m not curious why it works, but when the “click” happens, when the rush feels ready to implode, I don’t delay. I just say, ‘thank you’ and head to the nearest writing instrument…..

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Everyone has their favorite authors. These are some of mine: Anything by Aimee Bender, Amy Bloom, Raymond Carver, Molly Giles, Lydia Davis, Lorrie Moore, Ellen Gilchrist, Leonard Michaels, Mary Gaitskill, Jennifer Haigh, Marian Thurm, Miranda July (notice all the M names! – what’s up with that?), among many others. With the resurgence of the short story, there are so many from which to choose.

Questions from The Oldest Living Middle-Aged Writer

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Writer

by Guest Blogger, Pat Childers

Why do you write? I know why I write. I write for money. I write creative nonfiction for money, but I also write fiction to make myself laugh and so far nobody pays me for that. Sometimes I write to find out what I’m thinking and that can be really scary, but it does help me straighten out my medication.

I’m currently writing a science fiction thriller titled “Robot Love.” I thought of calling it “50 Shades of Robot Love,” but that would make it an entirely different book, albeit entertaining. I’m also writing a mystery that takes place in Chicago about a private investigator named Murray Antoinette. Anyway, I’ve had my picture taken for the dust jacket, written the prologue and thanked the people who helped me. It’s just that stuff in the middle (the actual text) that I’m having trouble with.

But what I want to know is: why do you write? What is it that you have to say that is so insightful, thought-provoking, or entertaining it needs to be shared with as many people as possible?  Do you have a story inside you that will cause a reader to pause and re-read a passage because it is so well said it is startling? Is it plot-driven, character-driven, or written in stream of consciousness like Virginia Woolf? I am anxious to know.

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The Oldest Living Middle-Aged Writer lives in Midwestern flyover country with her dogs. There have been reported sightings of her husband. In between innings of the Cubs game she is working on her web site and can be contacted at pat@pjchilders.com.

I Love Jack Reacher

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Reacher Book Cover

Compliments of Guest Blogger, The Oldest Living Middle-Aged Writer

I love Jack Reacher, a man with no baggage. I’m not speaking metaphorically; he literally carries only a toothbrush and a wallet. When his clothes are dirty, he throws them away and buys new ones. No ex-girlfriends; actually no immediate relatives at all, Jack is the perfect guy. Well, except for the fact that he’s never home.

What makes the enigmatic Jack Reacher and his adventures so readable is the repeated storyline of deceit and malice fomenting in a small town and ensnaring Reacher, an innocent bystander. He then feels compelled to save those in harm’s way and right wrongs until the bad guys are brought to justice. And the end result is Jack Reacher’s justice alone, which is quick and deadly. And then he moves on.

Most people are aware that Jack Reacher is a figment of Lee Child’s imagination (real name Jim Grant). I had the opportunity to meet Lee Child and hear him speak at the 2012 Thrillerfest in New York City. He is witty and humble, and let us in on how Jack Reacher came to be.

It is a well-known story that Grant worked in television production in England until, at age 40, he was found to be “redundant” and jettisoned from the job. He had seven months’ savings and decided to write a book in the thriller genre and get it published before his money ran out.

He began by reviewing the thrillers on the best seller list, his competition. The protagonists had interesting names, so he chose a simple name, Jack. They were tied to cities and jobs, so he gave Jack the entire United States. They were average-sized individuals, so Jack became 6’5”, 250 lbs, with a 50” chest. They had families and responsibilities, so Jack had none. Then he gave Jack a background in the military to fortify him and sent him out to a small town in Georgia.

With the pseudonym of Lee Child, he sent chapters of the partly finished book to a random agent. He heard that it took weeks and even months for an agent to respond. However, the agent responded within days, and requested the balance of the book. Lee Child put the effort into high gear and remarkably at the end of seven months, he had a publishing contract for “The Killing Floor” and a check.

Of course a character in a book can’t exist without a great story and excellent writing to propel him forward, and Lee Child has accomplished that in his series of Jack Reacher books. And in today’s reality, where  justice seems seldom served and tepidly at best, in the fictional world of Jack Reacher, crimes are solved and absolute justice is meted out to the guilty. Very satisfying to this reader.

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Pithy and occasionally irreverent, the Oldest Living Middle-Aged Writer (aka Pat Childers) is a student of classic literature, contemporary writers and writing in general.