Happy Anniversary
Taking Stock
A year ago…
Chelsea Cain and I were leading a workshop called The Bad Dream Factory, in the derelict Day Theater. The movie theater itself had been closed since 1964, but remains largely intact. One night we toured the place from basement to attic, and a writer/firefighter repeatedly pointed out, “Asbestos… asbestos… asbestos.”
Despite the carcinogens, people produced work. And the people who presented their work and took feedback, they became better writers. Peer support has always been crucial to me as a writer. If I took nothing else away from the Landmark Forum in 1988 it’s the practice of joining or creating a social group that will encourage me to write. My membership in the group depends on doing the work. The writing, revising, marketing. Sharing our failures as well as our victories.
Beginning in 1990, I paid twenty bucks each week to attend Tom’s workshop. That’s skin in the game, and the first thing Tom ever said to me was, “Someday you’ll kill me.”
He was referring to the idea that the student must someday grow beyond the teacher. In the meantime I got to make a boatload of mistakes. Horrible, tedious stories, I cringe when I recall any of them. But there was Tom: living proof that the goal was attainable. If I must kill him, I’ll kill him with praise and gratitude. People became full-time writers in his group. Some people came and went once they saw it wasn’t going to be easy.
How to avoid the 400-page mistake…
It’s common to fall in love with an idea and launch into writing it, then find after four hundred pages that—it’s not a great idea. The energy sputters out. If you’re part of a workshop you’ll be able to test your story’s premise page by page. You’ll find the flaws right away. Better yet, you’ll have help resolving those flaws. Before Tom’s workshop I’d written an 800-page novel called If You Lived Here, You’d Be Home Already. This I revised to a 400-page novel called Home Already. I showed it to Tom, and he told me, “The world already has a Stephen King. They don’t need a bad Stephen King.”
He’d charged me five hundred dollars (in 1990 money) to read the manuscript, and his withering pronouncement was worth every penny. Ouch.
Of that novel, the only bits that survived were Marla’s speech about “the condom is the glass slipper of our generation” transplanted to Fight Club, and the scene in Snuff where the boy rushes sex with a slowly deflating sex doll. Were it not for Tom and the workshop he fostered, I’d likely never have written fiction again.
So whether it’s The Inklings or the Mermaid Tavern, a peer group of writers is crucial.
In closing…
When Randy Dong launched New York Story Night he asked me to write a short introduction he could read the first night. It went as follows:
First the bad news. No one will ever write exactly the book you want to read. You can wait, but it will never happen. And no film will ever catalyze social change the way books have. From Uncle Tom's Cabin to On the Road, only books have the power and depth to change civilization. When I first began to write in the 1990s it looked as if stand-up comedy was the last vestige of oral storytelling. Now even stand-up is disappearing. In its place, let us reinvent something ancient. Something fuller. Not just stand-up comedy, but stand-up horror and stand-up drama and stand-up tragedy. Let's bring back an ancient history of telling stories aloud, and alive. Let's listen not just for laughter, but also for the deep silence of an audience fully enthralled. Let's listen for gasps and groans and weeping. Such reactions are better than any applause, and certainly better than any intellectualized feedback from a professor. Storytelling is an impossible job, yet people do it. You can do it. You are the result of the best choices made by the strongest people in history, and you can do this job. It's no accident that you are here. It is destiny. You are the spearhead. I applaud you for being here, but I will admire you for coming back. Learn from each other's success and failure. Please never let either stop you. Now, as I've asked my friends for the past thirty-five years, "Who has pages, today?"
After the fact, it struck me that I forgot to mention the good news.
The good news is that you can do this impossible job. And one day I hope you kill me.1
Metaphorically, that is.
Happy anniversary to you too Chuck. Thank you for starting Plot Spoiler and producing your work. Attempting to become a consistently effective storyteller/writer is one of the most challenging endeavors. I'm sure most people here would agree that your efforts and examples have made it easier to keep going—even if in relative obscurity. Thank you.
Also, in response to the post about Peter Christopher's book coming out, I wanted to tell you that "submerging the I" is probably my favorite things I learned from you. Just that alone made me rethink how I write. So, a huge thanks to Peter for passing on such a great tool.