I agree, that there might be some authors who experience this. Perhaps even every time they write, and of course that includes God Himself (of course, for Him, this sentence would be preterite). But I say that I just don’t believe that the “what it takes” of author-dom resides only in those who have the foresight for every (or even most) of their plots and character developments. I surely don’t possess this.
Whenever I walk into Barnes & Noble or the like, I feel a sudden overwhelm of insignificance. It’s like being at the Pacific Ocean shore at night, when you are enjoying the warm salty air and suddenly a wave of water powerful enough to rip you out to sea before you have time to say goodbye to your mamma slams into your knees (of course soaking the jeans you so practically rolled up), pushing your thighs backward while simultaneously lifting your feet up into its swarthy jaws, and you stumble, tripping and panicking, up the sandy dune, screaming….
Except when you're in a bookstore, all of that happens just in your chest and lungs and whatever gland it is which throws out hormones to the rest of your body and resides at the bottom of your brain.*
There. Are. So. Many. Books.
And so many authors! Those modern books and authors which will definitely become classics (such as The Kite Runner) and those that become pop-culture so quickly that movies are made before the final book of the series is even written (I do love Harry Potter), and then those that are famous only for those who like that sort of genre but famous nonetheless (think Beverly Lewis), hard cover books, reflections and spin offs and remakes of classics (try Pride, Prejudice and Zombies), books that are so much like the other 300 written by the same author that the cover design begins to resemble all of Stephen King’s novels, (John Grisham, anyone?) memoirs of presidents and founding fathers and the marginally well-known, fiction books about non-fiction, non-fiction books about fiction…..
Don’t get me started on those that stock the shelves of “Classics,” I’m already out of breath just re-reading what I wrote.
In sum, I always am hit with the Surprise Pac-Coast Water Wall and Foot Sucker of identifying myself as white noise. That same feeling overtakes me when I begin a new story, and brushes my forehead over and over again as I fight to create a character, or devise a plot that makes sense and makes change. Who am I to think my little inspiration will stand out when I cannot even lace together the shoes of my story?
I have come to the realization (or perhaps it is a justification, I haven’t really asked anyone else) that the story must unfold as I write, as if it exists in reality outside of my own mind; as I grope and battle for a point. The beloved girl child learning to swim whom I can’t seem to really discover; the hellion for whom I can’t outline a travel plan; the nihilist who I can’t get to shoot at nothing: I think I won’t know their full stories until I have bashed out the dents of my initial inspiration.
Am I too sanguine in asking, ‘How can I?’ As I write, I have to fit things to make sense, and everything that is not trivial effects and changes the story of or the character himself. The reader won’t know the real Betta or John before the last page, why should the author?
Perhaps that’s the comedy of being an author-who-is-not-God (or one of many): our lives and the stories we help to compose are not conspired by us from the beginning, but we merely discover them.
How glad I am that He is God and I am not!
Now, please help me conspire……
*I have never actually retreated from a bookstore screaming. Perhaps some have. I was thinking of the “I’m having fun” scream anyway, but there must be those who let out a blood-curdle at some point in bookstore history.
*I have never actually retreated from a bookstore screaming. Perhaps some have. I was thinking of the “I’m having fun” scream anyway, but there must be those who let out a blood-curdle at some point in bookstore history.
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