The Thursday! Newsletter 1-37: Writing into The Lighthouse
Volume 1, Issue 37
I've been writing quite a lot lately, but have little to show for it.
Okay, that's not exactly the case. I do have quite a bit to show but nothing that's ready to show. In fact, I'm writing two completely different things. One of them is a big poetry thing about which I'm not quite ready to talk yet (but when I am, I'm pretty sure you'll know first, right here in the newsletter). The other one is a story I'm writing mostly in public but also privately in fragments and notes and collected pictures. That's what I want to talk about this week.
The working title of this monstrosity is The Lighthouse and I fully admit I don't know very well what I'm doing with it. About a month ago, give or take, I wrote a little story I thought would make a fine creepy, mysterious vignette. I was right. It was both those things, but it was also "sticky". That is, the story had something about it that made it impossible for me to simply publish and move on. The next week, I wrote a sequel (more or less) that was not only as sticky as the first story but that left off at a bit of a cliffhanger.
The stories are quite good, so I can't quite discount them as just idle fiddling. They combine some big influences I've had in my head for a long time -- Stephen King's Dark Tower novels, Thundarr the Barbarian, the first Shannara trilogy by Terry Brooks, and a couple computer games I played back in the day whose names I don't quite remember, but which apparently left very strong impressions on me.
More importantly, they call to me.
I find myself daydreaming about what might happen next. Now you might ask me why that's bothersome. After all, I ought to know what's happening next because it's my story, yes? Only a crazy person would launch into a big creative project inch by inch without having at least some idea of where it's all going.!
Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Jimmie Bise, Jr., Soooooper Crazy Person.
I don't actually know what I'm writing. It might be a novel. It might be a series of short stories. It might be a comic book or the underpinnings of a computer game or even a television show. I can't even say it's a story right now because I have no plot nor eventual conclusion in mind. I'm making up the world as I go along. I've called it The Lighthouse, but I"m not even sure it's a lighthouse. I know next to nothing about the viewpoint character, Joshua -- not even enough to say he's an actual protagonist. Something spoke to him in the second story, but I don't know exactly what spoke, or even how it spoke! He stumbled into The Lighthouse at Heartsafe Harbor, but what The Lighthouse is or what it does, where Heartsafe Harbor is and if that name has any significance, the location and number of other lighthouses, and a hundred other details you might have expected me to have some handle on are all shrouded in mystery.
In the third chapter, which is only a rough draft right now (I expect to whip it into shape this week -- probably during Sarah's live write-along), the speaker identifies itself, which only dispels some of the mist obscuring the exact details. Joshua will get a long look at the room in which he finds himself, but what he sees won't always be clear to him (though perhaps the details will matter to you). He will have an opportunity to explore further and, though I fully expect he will do so, I can't guarantee it.
So. Here we are. I'm writing something about which I know almost nothing. Yet it's working. I'm having fun. I'm interested in what happens next. I am doing what Dean Wesley Smith calls it "writing into the dark". Other folks call it "discovery writing" or writing like a reader. Basically, I'm following a path through a dark wood using a lamp that only lights a couple of inches in front of my feet. I might find my way to a very cool place.
I might fall off a cliff.
Now, I don't think that will happen. The worst I expect is the story just won't be very good. It'll have a ton of loose ends, unanswered questions, continuity issues, and an ending that makes no sense at all but at least it'll be an ending. In other words, I'll have written Lost except I won't have spent several truckloads of money and lied by face off to the people I conned into loving the whole thing. Then again, the guys who wrote that train wreck of a story did okay, so clearly the idea can work out quite nicely for someone.
If it works, though? Hoo boy! It's going to be a heck of a...whatever it's going to be.
But enough about me. You get to have fun here, too! There is something that's been itching the back of your mind for a while now. I don't know what it is, but you do. You have a creative thing you've wanted to bring into the light but you haven't because you don't know all of it. Heck, you might not even know a quarter of it.
I'm asking you to bring it out now. Make it as you go. Lay down word after word, sentence after sentence, using only your creative instinct and the faint scent of story to guide you. Paint it stroke by stroke, following the guide you can't see with your eyes but know is there. Stumble around the dark and feel for the edges. Put down flags to mark your path and keep on stumbling. When you're done you can look back. For now, just don't. And don't worry if it wanders or skips and hops. Don't fret if it seems too long or too short. You need to see it all in the light.
You need to know what you can do when you don't drive with the emergency brake on. Know what I mean? Did you just nod and smile? Yeah, you did. You know what that feels like. You create stuff but you know in your heart you haven't ever really let yourself go. You haven't revved your creative engine hot, dropped the brake, and launched yourself like a red hot orbital rocket of awesome and wonder.
What's keeping you? Fear? Bah. Fear is the brakes. Fear is the light touch on the pedal. The thing you write or paint or sing isn't going to wreck the world. But it might change a life. Maybe yours. Maybe you'll get to love creating into the wild, monster-infested, wonder-rich, creepy-dark, surprise-laden darkness. I sure hope you will.
I sure hope I will!
And now I must go. Something is speaking to Joshua. It might be an angel. I'd better listen in and write it down.
You? Get to creating. Drop me a note and tell me what happened when you did.
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What I Wrote and Read Last Week
Sometimes I write a story that would have been at home in an EC Comics book, like "The Concrete Slab".
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One Last Thing
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