I remember, quite clearly, writing the Wild West Saloon story. I was maybe 10, and was basing it on a photograph I had taken with two childhood friends at an “Old Time Photo” studio in Hampton Beach, New Hampshire. We were dressed as saloon girls–satin, corsets, fishnets, lace, feathers in our hair. We were posed with guns and boas and bags of fake money. One of us held a cigarette in a long antique holder, feigning smoking. Thirty-four year old me would like a word with the man who set us up like that.
The picture enraptured me. Who were these women (ten year old girls)? What were their names? What did they do? What had they done? I needed to know, and no one else was going to tell me, so I sat down with a spiral notebook and mechanical pencil and figured it out myself.
That’s how most of my stories started. I needed to know how something ended, how a certain situation would unfold. As I aged it became less about finding the end of a story, and more about how the story made me–and others, if I let them read it–feel. Did I find it romantic? Terrifying? Giddy? If I didn’t, I knew the far-off reader wouldn’t, either.
That’s one thing about genre writing, especially horror–you want a visceral reaction from your readers, for them to react to your writing with heightened emotion. I find that one way to get that reaction is if I, as the writer, am scared. If being dropped into this scene would terrify me, make me weep, or faint–then it must be a good scene (content wise, anyway. My first drafts are rife with grammar crimes).
I also find it fascinating to hear about other writer’s methods. I want to know how they do what they do, how they get the proverbial muses to sit with them and sing their song. I find I often can’t wait for those mythical goddesses to show up–I need words on the page, and that often means ass in seat with no romanticized inspiration to guide me.
But there are times–beautiful, magical times–where something clicks. The sun hits the paper at the right angle, or my tea steeped just so. And then they come, these beautiful ideas that turn into words, and they flow forth and I lose myself in them, grammatical errors be damned. It is not often, and it is not always for long, but it does happen, and that high is what keeps me writing. Even if it ends up being something no one ever reads, I felt it, and that’s enough for me
Leave a comment