"Total Eclipse of the Mind," by nm boliek

 Usually I wake up in the middle of a story playing out in my mind.  I sit up very slowly and attempt the Zen Method of Story Capture or ZMSC for short. I'm sure you're familiar with this method but you probably know it by another name, sometimes it’s called the "Oh @*%#*!@# Method." No, not familiar? Well, let me acquaint you with this quiet but very effective secret to achieving total Creative Insanity.

ZMSC is usually performed while waking from sleep but BEFORE you are fully awake, best results are achieved if no one speaks while you talk quietly to yourself and you completely ignore the dire need to urinate. Here’s a hint:  Do not even attempt to walk to the bathroom - for some weird reason, I have yet to understand, the trip to the bathroom seems to cause the story to vanish into thin air. The summer I dreamed up my novel I wore adult diapers everyday – right up until I had enough story to go it on my own. That should tell you how important it is to not ripple the water, any water.

Now, as you practice this method, you must also try not to focus on the story. Totally ignore the story.  The best explanation I can offer for why you must ignore the story is to point back to another experience I had with my novel:  Somewhere around late May I woke to the pivotal moment in my action scene.  As it played out I carefully adhered to the ZMSC rules- I pretended to be thinking about the laundry… I sorted the lights and the darks….. Remarked to myself about the various types of stains white shirts seem to collect ……and I totally ignored my need to urinate. All of this while passively listening to my main character say his goodbyes to………………. ? “Who? WHO? Who is he speaking to !!!!. I can't see , there’s  a SHADOW!!!!” of course I accidentally yelled these demands out loud to the KESM. And it happened in a flash - the whole scene vanished.  The Keepers of Ethereal Story Matter (KESM) are not to be toyed with. IGNORE THE STORY or perish along side it. Its a tough lesson.

A word about the KESM, because I'm sure you're mumbling “this person is a nutcase” and you're right I am. I won't argue that but that’s beside the point at this point.  The point here is that there are invisible but very real gatekeepers to the Land of Stories. And they take their jobs very very seriously. The Keepers of Ethereal Story Matter - or KESM for short, are the worst of the lot. They allow no human voice to be heard during their pre-dawn screenings. Their punishments are cruel and permanent.  It’s been a years since I made that fatal interruption, and I still have no idea who my main character was so painfully leaving behind. See? Crazy but imbued with massive wisdom.

Another variation of the ZMSC is the often attempted exercise of keeping a notebook on the nightstand. Supposedly so you can “capture”  sleepily scrawled snippets of brilliance for later use, don't bother it’s a worthless exercise. Again I reference my experiences with writing my novel, as the whole third chapter was written using this Sleeping Shorthand Method.  Someday, when I'm very famous and the drafts of my book are published, Aliens are going to be amazed that I was able to so accurately pen an entire chapter in their native language - without ever having set foot in an Alien Academy. I have no idea what happened in that chapter but two of my characters didn't make it into the fourth chapter.  No matter, I carried on without them, thinking eventually I'd stumble across an Alien Language Translator but there has been no such luck.  Let me add that if this method works for you please continue and know that you are among the rarest of writers.  Deep Space Dual Language Translators of the Sleeping Shorthand Method will be much in demand one day. You are ahead of your time, light years ahead.

ZMSC is also a valuable tool for any writer that has trouble threatening or cajoling uncooperative characters into meaningful storylines. But it’s not for the weak or the lazy, as you can see from the few examples I have provided. It requires passive but active awareness at a time of day most sane people find ungodly.  I recommend gradual participation until the voices in your head become clear and impossible to ignore. By the time you feel compelled to eavesdrop on yourself the rules of ZMSC will have begun to make sense in some nonsensical way; this is normal. So is speaking in tongues when your editor calls to inquire about your alternate language submissions. Its simply a temporary side effect of listening to the voices in your head too much. When it happens just hang up. When he calls back pretend you just got out of the shower, claiming no knowledge of the previous phone call.  This has been my modus operandi for years – Now my editor will only speak to me by email.

So there you have it, a tried and proven method for Creative Insanity.  Of course this is really just the tip of the Creative Subconscious Vortex. What lurks even deeper is the Brilliant Scrawling Beast, a mythical writer type that publishes with minimal editor or psychiatric intervention. But that will need to wait for next month; maybe my roommate will have dropped the charges by then.

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Rookie Mistakes

Give the Lady a Ride was the result of my failed 2007 NaNo attempt. Want to know why I failed? I got so excited about my subject, I wanted to research it. So I did. Trust me, that amount of time not writing is guaranteed failure in a contest where word count is everything.

Instead of competing in NaNo, I interviewed a former bull rider, visited a rodeo ranch, watched calves being tested for the bucking abilities, studied tapes of bull riding, attended a cattle auction and interviewed the ranchers, cowboys and auction workers on the scene. I did a lot of foot work, and I'm proud of the authenticity it gives my novel.

There's only one problem: I wanted to include absolutely everything I had learned in my book. You've heard of information dumps? Well, I'm guilty of a research dump. I found the world of ranching and bull riding to be fascinating and didn't want to leave out a single detail for my readers. In doing so, I lost sight of the plot. Give the Lady a Ride is a romance. The plot, dictated by the genre, is: Boy meets girl. Boy loses girl. Boy gets girl back.

In her letter rejecting my submission, the editor of White Rose Publishing actually counted how many times my main characters shared a scene in the five chapters I sent to her, and the result was not pretty. It's cool that she read all five chapters and took the time to respond, but the point is: Ride is a romance, not a college course on bull riding or ranch management.

I needed to weave my research into the story just enough to create the authenticityI was seeking, to give the reader a feel for the setting, the life, the activity. Don't get me wrong--the research was vital. I'm not saying cut corners doing it. I'm saying it's not necessary to write into your manuscript, in detail, everything you've learned.

I went back this past weekend and axed twenty-seven pages worth of research dump. The pages read well. The characters were active and engaged. Tension and conflict and all the wonderful stuff that makes a good novel better flowed through the scenes. What they lacked was a point. What they failed to do was to move the characters forward. I took out all those pages without affecting the story. The reader will never miss them. Heck, I don't miss them!

*Flickr photo, "Bustin' Out of the Chute" by Al_HikesAZ

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"Writing Rituals & the Voodoo of Vinyl," by nm boliek

At various times in my life I have produced masterpieces with simple words, words that flowed like water from an eternal fountain. And I felt invincible at those moments; of course those were some of the most defining times of  my life-when pain and vulnerability along with my quietly bleating heart hung dripping and gutted, from my bloodied sleeve.  Now those were the days.

I survived love, loss and the intricacies of youth in an ill managed and foul mannered way that eventually became my hallmark; a slamming door followed by days of silence, nights of rotating vinyl and page after page of woeful exaltations’.

Emergence would only occur after Axel Rose and I had convened and summated on all the various machinations of inner turmoil. Of course he sang while I wrote, but together through the years we arrived at the same conclusion: love, people and money all come and go but the process remains. No matter what, there’s still the middle of the night, vinyl to spin and pen scrapings of scabs and wounds old & new. You see, I’m a habit writer, a formula hack, a ritualistic superstitious, gift bearing, prayer offering, soul selling, well meaning totally desperate artist. And I live under an umbrella of sheltered complexities that are more needs than desires for my creations. I happen to think most writers are like this – we need certain things to birth our creative babies – we need a tried and true process.

Finding the right combination to process is sometimes the most difficult part of being a writer. I admire those I see sitting in Starbucks tapping out their novels or the ones that create on the rush hour train. But whenever I see these people I slightly die and the laughing doubting voice inside my head utters my fears: that truly creative and passionate people can create ANYWHERE. Maybe, but creating is such an intimate process to me that I cannot imagine bearing my soul in that manner. Sometimes it’s all I can do to bear it to the cold winking cursor that cares not. On a stage, no matter how small is just not for me.

Over the years I've gotten better at confronting this fear and creating on the fly, but it’s not the way I WANT to create. And that’s really the key to how process develops - deciding how you want to do it then actively or spontaneously working to create that formula. Because once the process cements itself, you know for certain that your creativity is real and controllable and whenever you desire you can tap parts of yourself that previously only God had seen.  And this feels good - it confirms everything we've thought might be true about ourselves; that we really are more than housewives, husbands, dishwashers, sales clerks or zombies - We are Artists. Through process and communion with our soul the subsequent art we create allows us to give back to the world some of what it so graciously or cruelly handed to us.

So next time when the words are burning up the pages, stop and look around, ponder the trail traveled to this moment and mark it well. It might just lead you back here again and again. If not,  well,spin some vinyl and call up your ex from high school – that ought to do it. I can hear the door slamming now.

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