Where Do the Ideas Come From?

I’ve written from dreams and from nightmares.  I’ve been inspired by books and newspapers and images.  Sometimes stories come from nowhere at all.  Writing from life is most complicated for me.  I know infinitely more than I can convey about the characters in my life, the myriad of threads don’t always distill well into themes, and sometimes I am too deep inside of my life to see the story clearly.  I suppose that’s why when it comes to writing, I’ve had the most success taking bits of real life, blending them with imagination, and turning them into fiction. 

My novella, Murmurs of the River, is the story of Magda in Post-Cold War Poland as she searches for the truth about what happened to her mother after her arrest by the secret police.  When giving this elevator pitch about Murmurs of the River, people always want to know where the story came from.  Am I Polish?  Was my mother arrested?  No and no.  But I am the same age as Magda and I lived in Poland during 1994 and 1995, the time the book is set.  In some ways I have a unique perspective on Poland because (despite some great friends) I was an outsider there.  This enabled me to write the grocery store scene you can read at http://www.translationnexus.com/, but I didn’t grow up in Poland and don’t pretend to know everything there is to know about being Polish.   

Regarding the truth of Murmurs of the River—I hope people who recognize pieces of themselves are flattered.  The picture above is of my real skater friends, but the novella is not a memoir and I don’t want it to be one.  As a reader, I always want the story I’m reading to be true.  I find myself Googling characters looking for more details, but ultimately, I don’t want these stories to be factual because it is the perfection of the books that makes the characters seem true and real.  Outside that world, they would be someone else and part of the story I so loved would be lost.  Our time is preoccupied with truth in memoir when perhaps we should be talking about facts.  We all know the examples and I won’t rehash them here.  What I will say is that the best I can hope for is in changing the facts in their memoirs, those writers were trying to speak to the greater truth of their stories.

I cannot tell the story of the Polish experience, it is not mine to tell, but I can tell the story of my fictional character as well as possible and maybe even get close to the truth.  I can only hope Murmurs of the River (and the selection that appears in Soul’s Road) will pique your curiosity enough about Poland and the Post-Cold War era to ask questions and to want to learn more.  I can hope the book will make you less lonely or inspire you to reach out to someone in need.  I can hope you will spend an afternoon simply enjoying the writing I’ve put years into.

Stories come from wherever they damned well please.  As a storyteller, I consider myself lucky to grasp whatever ethereal bits I can before they evaporate and use them to seek out the truth of human experience using whatever details I have to create.

The Best Writing Advice Ever

What is the best writing advice I ever got?  My advisor, Micheline Aharonian Marcom, once told me that I could take my inner editor and tell her to go away for now and that I could always invite her to come back later.  

Perfection is crippling as I stumble trying to make sure each letter is in its exact right place and the words are more likely to bottle up than to flow.  What I’m starting to realize is that perfectionism is a way to not trust myself—it’s saying that the work I put out into the world will never be good enough.  When I take that inner editor and tell her to go away, I am trusting that I will come back and edit this work later.  I am trusting that I will still remember this particular sentence felt wonky and the paragraphs need to be reversed.  I am trusting that I know enough about writing now that I won’t let a bad product out the door.

I am also giving myself the space to get creative and to let my ideas flow.  My writing is better when I’m not thinking about the structure of the plot as I’m writing out early drafts.  I can build better worlds and flesh out my characters.  The story can be bigger and smarter than I am.

So take your trusty editor (this persona is after all your friend—just trying to help you make your best work) and tell him or her to go get a cup of coffee.  You’ll invite your editor back when it’s editing time.  For now it’s time to sit down and create.

On Writing and Motivation

As writers, we tend to find, consciously or not, excuses not to write. Why we do this is something of a mystery, but I have received some good advice recently on how to fight the urge to go watch tv, play a game, read a book, have a drink or indeed do anything other than write.

Stay with the moment.

Don't get up from wherever you're writing. Don't use the bathroom unless you really have to. Don't go for that cup of coffee. Don't think about anything other than your writing. Stay with it, ride it out for at least twenty minutes. And you'll find that those twenty minutes were some of the most fruitful writing you've produced. It's such a simple thing to do, but it's also easy, so easy, to think "I'll just be a moment" while you get that coffee, check your email or what not.

Stay with it, just a little longer. You'll be glad you did.

As a side note, something that assists with this endeavor is careful planning. Having that cup of coffee handy, having your music playlist already arranged or checking your email before you start (but not responding, you don't want to put off writing in favor of email,) will make it easier to stay in the moment.

Now where's my coffee...