This has been a weird period of writing. This weekend, I wrote myself to a place with unlimited possibility. And whenever I find myself in such a place—a pivotal juncture—I know that it’s best to give myself time, not to try to write and delete and write and delete, but to step away and breathe.
Monday morning, I sat down and wrote a violent, frightening exchange. It came unbidden, and easily, and even as I wrote it, I understood how the scenes around it were clarified by the incident, how they were written with the incident in mind. How is this possible? How can I write to a place that I cannot imagine—how do I lead myself there?
It’s more than faith, certainly. There’s a guide rope of some kind, and I’m never sure if I’m the guide, or the guided, but I know when I’m on the path.
Sometimes I believe the romantic idea that a story is like a puzzle — complete, and apart from me — and I only need to put the pieces together.
Not so much a creator, then, but a facilitator.
But how do I know it without that picture on the box? Where are the corners? The edges? The tangled, undefined middle?
I only know that what begins as an overwhelming mess develops a momentum of its own, under patient hands.
What’s your process like, Shelly? Do you outline?
God, no. I wouldn’t know how to outline stereo instructions.
Honestly, I’m much more of a poet than a storyteller. That can be a roadblock. But I enjoy writing more than that — I enjoy the structure of fiction. Still, my stories develop from nebulous emotion. I start with a note, a picture, a connection — as I would with a poem. It’s never a character. It’s never a story.
Process is actually too complete of a concept for what I do. I’m flirting, more or less, with ideas and voices. It takes pages and pages of pure experimenting to solidify anything — like wedging, forcing the air out of clay. It’s physical labor.
But I’m interested in what you’ve said lately about your manuscript because for me the “process” really starts when I’ve got something that seems independent. (Of course, it’s frustrating that I need this before momentum kicks in and silences the critic; I have many aborted chapters.)
On the rare occasion when I get to that, though, I mostly just try to listen. And in revision, the whole thing starts again.
I wonder if that’s common among poets: to begin with an image. That’s the germ for me—an image that intrigues me—and it’s always from a moment that I write toward. Well, until this current manuscript, which is different in most ways from anything I’ve experienced previously.
What is your poetry like? I realize it might be a professionally prohibited notion, but I’d be curious to read some, if you wanted to share.