Two Heads Better in One

I just got my author copies of my new book. THE BENTLEY'S BUY A BUICK will be on sale August 23, 2011, about a month from now. This is my twenty-third novel. That's not counting several novellas and one story that never made it to print. A new book should definitely be no-big-deal for me. But that's not how it feels. I'm as excited about this one as I was about my first.

I think it was Dorothy Parker who said, "I don't like writing, but I like having written."

I can identify with that. There are definitely good days and bad days in the writing process. But when you have the completed book in your hand, it doesn't matter if the story poured out of you like melting butter or was painstakingly pick-axed out of granite, it's a feeling of accomplishment.

I answered a question yesterday about how I first got published. I don't get those questions so much anymore and I don't think about it much. But pondering it yesterday, looking back, I simply had to shake my head in disbelief. Who could imagine that someone like me could ever get to have a career like this? It's a dream come true.

Well, not one of those dreams. I didn't go to sleep one night, dream I was a writer and the next day wake up to be one. Not quite that easy.

It's curious that in English the word "dream" can mean both are hopes, ambitions, goals and also mean those crazy things that go on in our heads while we're asleep at night. You know what I'm talking about. I know I'm not the only one whose gone through the nightmare where it's the final exam and you forgot to take the class all semester. Or where you're sitting behind your desk at the office and realize that you forgot to put on any clothes from the waist down. (My cure for that one has been the home office. I'm truly working in my pajamas more often than I'd like to admit.) One of the worst for me is losing my purse. In my sleep, I imagine losing my purse at least two or three times a year. Now there is not anything irreplaceable in my purse, but symbolically it freaks me out.

My friend and fellow writer, Janece Hudson is an expert on dreams. Jan's a psychologist who's been writing and teaching about dreams for thirty years. She's always been willing to help me understand what my brain was trying to tell me. Especially so when my personal life was very tough. I saw her recently in Austin. Still frank and funny, I enjoy her company. And I recommend her classes and workshops. She's got a brand new book out now called Into Your Dreams. I can't wait to dig into it.

Of course, there are a lot of people who don't think that dreams have any meaning at all.

These folks suggest that our nighttime scenarios are just the brain misfiring. That what you see and hear and feel during them signifies nothing and you shouldn't spend a minute imagining that it's more. That may be true for some people. We're all different. We all use our brains differently. Those differences are obvious and vivid while we're awake. For me to understand anything, I've either got to create a backstory for it or hum it to a tune. My husband on the other hand, will need to put the data into a graph, or worse yet, a spread sheet.

So while his dreams may be misfires, I see mine more as hints. I think that dreams are my subconscious mind working on the stubborn, rusty parts of my conscious mind.

I am a big fan of my subconscious mind. I often joke that "my subconscious is a better writer than I am". And I readily admit that's true. I'm one of those writers that simply don't plan a lot of stuff. I start out with a premise and I just sort of see where it leads me. Disclaimer for those of you who don't write, or even for those who do: This is not a typical or even a preferable way to construct a story. It is definitely more sane and efficient to know what you want to say and plan how you're going to say it. Instead of that, I wander around in the wilderness, not really knowing where I'm going on what I'm doing. I'll be writing a scene, maybe something I've been thinking about for a while, and suddenly appearing before me on the computer screen are words and paragraphs about something completely unrelated. Something I may not know anything about, nor have any interest in. It's a "rabbit hole", a tangent, an annoying distraction from the direction of my storyline. My first instinct is to hit DELETE. I have learned, however, that those tangents, those rabbit holes are where the heart of my story is going to be. I've got to follow that and see where it takes me.

Maybe my subconscious mind does better writing than me because it does not have the fears that I do. In my sleep journeys I will hang out in neighborhoods that I wouldn't venture into in daytime. I will attempt things that conscious daylight finds terrifying. Consciously I walk around so afraid of heights that I avoid glass elevators. In my dreams I joyfully leap from high places, unafraid.

The same is true of my stories. My conscious mind warns me, "this is not what people are buying" or "what are my writer friends going to think?" But my subconscious apparently doesn't care about sales trending or the weight of peer pressure. My subconscious has a story it needs to get out. And it's only allowing my conscious fingers to do the typing.

I once heard Sharon Sala say that her stories come to her in dreams and that she wakes up and writes the whole thing start to finish. I hope I'm not misstating her. But I was blown away by the whole idea of that. I couldn't even imagine such a thing. But I've come to think that my "method" such as it is, is not a bit less strange and miraculous.

Some reviewer of my last book said something like, "surprisingly deep for such a frothy premise." Blame it on my subconscious. Consciously, I'm as frothy in my books as I am in person. Now if I could just figure out what my head is trying to tell me when that transvestite dwarf shows up.