4/15/23
Newsletter #307
The Crack of Dawn
I’ve been a writer since I was fourteen and moved down into my parents’ basement. When I set up my room in the unfinished basement, among all of the old shit down there I found an abandoned typewriter. It was a slim, compact Olivetti that my elder sister had gotten as a gift, then immediately discarded. I set it up, rolled in a piece of lined paper, then came to the first realization a writer must constantly confront – what to write? Just because you want to write doesn’t mean you have anything to say. And just because you have something to say doesn’t mean you can write.
So, where do story ideas come from? The writer Harlan Ellison said that the question he was asked most often was, “Where do you get your ideas?” Being a smartass, his ready-made answer was, “I get them from a store in Poughkeepsie, New York. The idea store.” Many times the person inquiring would follow up with, “Could I get their address?”
But not only is getting an idea mysterious, getting another idea after that is even more mysterious. Just because you got one idea doesn’t mean you’ll ever get another one. The famous example of this horrible conundrum whom I see often as a guest on talk shows is Fran Leibowitz. Ms. Leibowitz published two books forty-five years ago – I hold in my hand a 1978 paperback copy of her book, Metropolitan Life, which I bought and read at the time and was sadly underwhelmed – and she has been in a state of writer’s block ever since. Luckily for her, she has diarrhea of the mouth, and she’s funny.
But that seems crazy to me. I’m never in a state of writer’s block because I get up every day and write. I’ve frequently been in a state Good Idea Writer’s Block where everything I come up with is shit, but I still write down; I’m still writing, and that counts, too. I say that it’s better to write mundane shit than nothing it all.
I’m reading one of my favorite writers, Carson McCullers (on whom I wrote two Newsletters #98 and #99). I’m reading her two unfinished autobiographies, Illumination & Night Glare. McCullers refers to getting ideas as illuminations, which I like. If I bring up this book, play and movie enough times, maybe somebody will actually watch or read it, but Member of the Wedding (1953) was just a setting with a couple of characters in her head for a long time – a kitchen with a twelve-year-old girl, a six-year-old boy, and the black housekeeper. That’s swell, but it’s not a story.
A story, by the way, is: something causes something else. Cause and effect. Given that definition, you’ll now be surprised to find how many movies don’t have it.
So, Carson McCullers had this setting and three characters lurking in the corner of her brain for a while, then she had an “illumination” – the twelve-year-old girl is not a member of anything that summer. She’s no longer a member of the kid’s clubs, and they won’t let her in to the older girl’s clubs. It begins with, “That was the wild and crazy summer when Frankie was not a member of anything.” Ms. McCullers’ illumination was, what if her older brother is getting married, and Frankie childishly, and irrationally, decides that she’ll be a member of the wedding, and go with them on their honeymoon. For Frankie, the problem is solved.
Something causes something else. And in this case, what makes it brilliant to me, is that it is just the kind of silly, ridiculous idea a twelve-year-old girl might think was a good idea, that’s a really bad idea.
A kitchen and three people is not a story. The issue of being twelve and thinking you’re smart when you’re not is universal. And it’s that magical “illumination” that makes a setting and characters into a story.
Forget my silly accomplishments, whatever they may be, I’ll tell you what I’ve truly achieved in my 64 years – I have outlived both Theodore and Franklin Roosevelt. Teddy made 61, Franklin, 63. I may not have done much, but I’ve done that.
Good on ya.