This is the story I always tell: at an early age, when I started to read, I decided I would be a writer. Then, through whatever television tropes appeared in the cartoons back then, I got the impression that in order to be a writer, I’d have to have “experiences.” The whole Hemingway thing: I’d need to get into bar fights, go to war, maybe live, starving, in a garret. This sounded like no fun at all. I blame “Bullwinkle and Rocky” for that.
The other thing was that writers and other artists were depicted as wildly creative geniuses, who could summon fully-realized, fantastic visions with the blink of an eye. Like magicians waving a tentacle and saying the charmed word.
I didn’t want adventures, not like that. I supposed I wasn’t creative enough to be a writer.
I told myself this for years. Decades.
Then ... I had my adventure. I certainly didn’t mean to. I was surveying an archaeological site when a man showed up, using a metal detector on the property. He started digging, looking to steal artifacts. My boss spoke up. The man pulled a gun on us both. If I ran, would he shoot? If I did nothing, would he shoot? Waiting for something to happen, I memorized all I could about him. Eventually, he left.
When I told a friend about the experience months later, she said, “You need to write this down.”
Zip, boom, squish, and a blinding flash of satori: I suddenly realized that I needed to write a book. Fiction, as opposed to the academic non-fiction I’d been writing for decades. I wrote that novel in secret, because I wasn’t creative enough to be a real writer. Then I realized I’d need critique, from better and better writers, to set me on the right path, if I was gonna try this at all.
I wrote and published a total of six mystery novels featuring Emma Fielding, but remember, I’m not creative. I had a character, not unlike myself: an archaeologist, living in New England, happily married. All I was doing was taking different settings, deciding what was at stake there, adding archaeology and a murder, and making everything much more exciting than my life really was. I don’t like adventures, remember (not those kinds), and avoid them like a hobbit. So it wasn’t “creative,” it was just ... exaggeration. I was practically cheating.
Then came the chance to write urban fantasy. I was invited to contribute to a collection of short stories about werewolves at the holidays. I was delighted, honored, thrilled to death. I said yes, in a heartbeat, and do you need any vital organs I currently have?
I did what I always did, whenever I wrote anything in the past twenty years: I went to my home library, and looked for my reference material.
I had no reference material on werewolves. What the hell was I going to do? I broke into a cold sweat, shaking, in a terrible panic. I couldn’t let my friends down by writing something awful, but which werewolf canon was I going to follow? Was there a werewolf canon, outside of the movies? I wasn’t creative enough for this (even after six novels) ...
It came to me in another flash: it’s fiction. I can just make it up.
Fortunately, when I realized that, the situation presented itself as a problem. While I didn’t think of myself as creative, I can solve a problem or six. A lifetime of archaeological puzzles had prepared me for that.
I started with the usual conventions, and flipped them upside-down: werewolves and vampires are often depicted as enemies, but it’s because they’re related, and family is always difficult. They’re related, they both have fangs, they’re born, not made, so they are “Fangborn.” They’re not killers, but everyone thinks they are, because so many have been seen leaving murder scenes. Why do they do that? They’re secret superheroes, dedicated to protecting humanity from evil with a capital “E.” What is the nature of that evil? Their tradition is that it was the evil released when Pandora opened the box, and the “hope” that was left at the bottom? That was the Fangborn, Pandora’s Orphans. Just answering those questions gave me that story, and then another dozen or so short stories, and three more novels.
The moral: Don’t get hung up on labels. Don’t get hung up on what other people think it means to be a writer. Don’t find a reason to not-write. Jump in, flail around—it’s not like swimming, you won’t drown—and you’ll find your way as a writer (or any “Creative Adventurer” for that matter). I don’t write from beginning to end, I write chaotically, whatever scene pops into my head. Later on, I can solve the problem of why everyone is there, what is at stake, and what is the deal with that magical thingamabob, glowing greenly in the corner. Steal the fifteen minutes at lunch or after work, and eventually, you’ll find the novel or short story. Be open to the things that make your brain tick. Don’t be swamped by asking “what if I don’t know?” To me, “what if?” can be overwhelming, suggesting that you still have everything in the whole universe to choose from. Take a thing you love, and ask yourself, what if it’s the opposite of what I’ve always thought? What if it’s the same, but we understand but a small percentage of everything behind it? What if not everyone sees it the way you do? Take a thing you hate, and try that too.
That notion of creativity being instantly on tap for certain people is a huge myth. I had the immense privilege of watching an acclaimed Japanese calligrapher in her studio. She described her process, starting each morning by grinding her ink on a stone, then mixing it with water for her day’s work. It was her way of finding her flow state. Then she said something that stayed with me: “Some days, all I do is grind the ink.”
That sounded awfully familiar.
Another friend described experiencing her creativity this way: Her cat would show up at the mouse hole in her apartment every day. The cat didn’t catch a mouse every day, but if the cat hadn’t been at the hole, he could have caught nothing. Some days you have to sit and stare at the mouse hole—or the screen, or the blank page—and think about your work until an idea nudges itself loose. Some days, all you’ll have done was ground your ink. It really is ninety percent perspiration and ten percent inspiration.
I mentioned critique before. Receiving criticism, the kind that says “this is working/not working for me, and here’s why,” is a gift. Worth its weight in platinum bars. And it’s terrifying, trusting other folks with your work. But critique gives you a perspective from outside your head, which is invaluable in making your work better. It teaches you which questions to ask yourself to move your process along. It also teaches you when to trust your beta readers, and when to trust yourself.
Voice. This is a tricky one. Use yours. Ask yourself, what is it that makes my stories interesting? What is my unique perspective? I started out trying to write like a famous writer. The resulting prose was flatter than flat. A story from Jackie Chan’s autobiography showed me the way: everyone making a martial arts movie wanted him to be the next Bruce Lee. He realized that everyone was trying to be the tough guy, and he had an inclination to comedy. That was his way to distinguish himself. I figured out that I needed to add more Dana to the mix (think: strong female characters, archaeology and science, lots of action, and what one lovely reviewer once referred to as “sly humor”), and suddenly, things started to work. Not perfectly, but much, much better. If you are bored or dissatisfied with your work, you can guarantee your prospective readers will be, too.
Pick a problem. Solve that. Figure out what the next problem is. Repeat. Draw from your own life, and take it to the nth degree. Reality isn’t the most important thing in fiction, only that the reality you chose to depict must be consistent. Show up every day, even if it’s only for those stolen moments. And find readers whose work and opinion you trust. All these constitute Adventures in and of themselves!
