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Where do story ideas come from? More mysteriously, from what place do the insignificant details come that together flesh out the characters in a story? The answer is wrapped up in a technique that all writers ultimately master. Life experience obviously comes first-the richer the experience the better, then something else takes charge. Something I'll refer to as: THE DREAM. THE DREAM... a quick snapshot, or possibly a slow-moving scene, parading through your mind in a sort of sleep-walking process. You might bring it to your keyboard in the middle of the night: it's not unusual to have it awaken you, ready to be placed on the page. Perhaps, in the quiet of a morning, it floats back and forth just out of your mental field of vision, until it coalesces into something finite-suddenly, you have it! THE DREAM is mysterious, miraculous. I suspect It's a process of the wiring in your brain short-circuiting across the barriers of confusion and distractions of daily life, solving problems and answering questions that baffled you days or weeks before. Surprisingly-there it is, laid out for you, ready to set down on the page! It comes with practice. You needn't be asleep to awaken the process. I think I'd been at the keyboard three or four years before I had a glimmering that something unusual was happening. In a waking state, I had mentally slipped from the room-suddenly seeing, hearing, smelling, touching, the figments of a scene I was concentrating upon. Divorced from the realities around me-along with my characters, I had entered THE DREAM. Now I don't say you will experience exactly the same thing that I nearly always do; my first four years of writing have stretched to twenty now. But departure into THE DREAM is so unique, so distinct, you will immediately be aware that it's happening to you. How long does it last? Maybe a few seconds; but it can last for minutes, hours. Once comfortable with THE DREAM you can turn it off, bring it back, reconstitute it. (You never know just how it may twist, turn, or warp when pushed away for awhile). You can fast-forward it, or back it up. Think of it as an action clip recorded on a gooey, unstable strip of 35mm film. Listening to music or viewing art are two powerful ways to bring on THE DREAM. I'm a jazz fan. I particularly like intricate, fusion jazz. Writing 3ACES, I collected over 200 albums that I played incessantly. Certain artists, certain arrangements served to stir a given scene or highlight some point of character action. I found that some melodic lines clarified the meaning of action within the scene. (This kind of thing is purely idiosyncratic...) With me, the music bit is a hit and miss process. I'm prepared to revisit the music and/or the scene, over and over, until whatever is meant to happen, "happens." In museums I have gazed at works of art...until a sort of auto-hypnosis relaxes me...again setting the process to work. At this point, you may say that I fritter away great chunks of time encouraging THE DREAM. Yes...Guilty! But, in this way, nine years of long haul trucking over the Big Roads of North America trickled from my head to the page, finding an honest route...urging me past wrong turns, leaping the barriers...plotting a clear track to the points I needed most to express. The writing of 3ACES took time and patience-seven years of it. The love of my subject matter held me at it...waiting, watching, until that parade of mental sparks I call THE DREAM came together in a finished book. dissertation writing service
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