[jwplayer config=”Internal” playlistid=”1580″]
Exploring and Opening
Welcome to week four of planning your book. Today we’re going to continue exploring what is possible and what is meaningful for you as a writer.
I call the two parts of me that collaborate, often contentiously, on my writing “the storyteller” and “the brain.” The storyteller is the part of me that dreams. I mean that literally. When you go to sleep, you tell yourself stories for much of the night. Without the brain to tell you that you’ve never been somewhere or met someone or experienced something, your storyteller creates worlds and people and events willy-nilly. You don’t need to make a plan first, do research or keep a “To Dream” list by your bed. You don’t need to be in the mood, to feel inspired, or even to be on a comfortable mattress. You don’t even need to be 100% asleep. Have you ever had that experience where you are halfway asleep and things begin to shift, or you hear dialog that the person with you is not actually producing? As soon as the brain takes a snooze, the storyteller comes out to play.
The brain, on the other hand, likes a plan. The brain likes to be in control and wants things to make sense. Natalie Goldberg and others talk about the editor and the writer, but the brain can write, too, and truthfully, if you’ll let her, the storyteller can edit. They have different strengths and characteristics, rather than different jurisdictions.
We’re going to ask the brain to do some good thinking and scheming and plotting and planning for us down the road apiece. But right now, we want to allow a dream state to guide us. We want to follow the storyteller around and listen. It sounds fun. It is fun. But it’s scary, too. That’s why it’s hard to be a writer. We aren’t given a lot of permission or encouragement to go around inventing or reimagining worlds. In fact, it’s wrung out of us early on.
I remember a story about a woman who told her little girl that she was going to teach an art class to adults. She was going to teach them how to draw. “You mean they forgot?” the child asked. So here’s your chance to un-forget everything you know about storytelling, everything that matters most to you.
John Truby talks about this as writing a story that may change your life, in his richly instructive book The Anatomy of Story. Annie Dillard, in The Writing Life, describes how she learned to chop wood. At first, she balanced the wood on one end and tried to hit it with her ax. Chips flew, the wood itself flew. Then she learned: Don’t aim for the top of the wood, aim for the chopping block. Knowing what you adore, what would change your life in a book is the best way to be sure that you are aiming for the chopping block.
Truby offers an exercise for the kind of self-exploration that will land you in a place where you are writing a story that may change your life. It also gets you in strong dialog with your storyteller. This week’s assignment is to do this Truby exercise. Here’s an abbreviated version of what he says: Write down your wish list, a list of everything you would like to see in a book (or on screen, or in the theater). What passionately interests you? What entertains you? Write down characters, plot twists, great lines of dialog, themes you care about, genres that attract you. Don’t reject anything and don’t organize. Just let it roll.