I am learning, once again, something I have always sort of known, but which I keep on forgetting. It is that, for me at least, writing from the head, guided by intellect, doesn’t work. Intellection has its place, in development, revisions, and corrections, after at least the first draft of the story is finished. 

What does work for me, is writing from the heart, or from the gut, from something inside, guided by feeling, not by thought. Some people might call it inspiration, and I have been struck by inspiration, one time, when I wrote The Planet Masters — seventy five thousand words in eight and a half days. 

I’ve always known that I can’t wait for inspiration to strike. I would wait forever. What I have to do is be receptive to the whisper in the back of my head, that which comes from my heart, my gut, the chill down my spine.

I first started what I call Soul Stone in 2010, and wrote three good chapters, just going with what came to me. Then I wrote sixty thousand words from my head and came to dead stop, a victim of intellectual ought-to and disregard of character. It took me eight years to figure out what I had done wrong. I kept the first three chapters, threw the rest away, and carried on from where I should have left off.

I created a new and marvelous and complex setting, with which I expected to have a lot of fun, and tried to explore it, but no matter how wonderful a setting is, it isn’t a story. The setting is still there, but I’m not using it. 

I wrote a series of chapter objectives, things that each chapter had to accomplish, and superficially they were right. But the story was a robot, it never came to life. I threw it all out. 

I tried other ideas, a but each was only an idea, none of them informed or supported a story. I had forgotten to listen for that whisper. Every attempt to anticipate future chapters failed. My character grows, discovers truths I didn’t know about, experiences events that come by surprise — to me as well as to him — and makes those future chapter ideas irrelevant. 

I think I know what the ending is about — one of three possible endings — but I’m not going to tell you. I did know was what my latest chapter was about, and I finished it, and now I have stopped for a while, to deal with a soul-crushing to-do list.

When I get back to the story, I will know from the gut or heart or spine what the next chapter will be about, and it will move forward when I pick it up again. This has happened several times already. But not now. I need a break, to let my unconscious work on it for a while. At least, that’s the whisper that I almost hear.

And I have to trust my muse, whatever a muse may be. What I write with that trust can be improved and shaped later, by applying acquired skill. But the story comes from somewhere else, and raises goosebumps all over my body. I can feel it working now.

The muse never strikes, except by surprise. But if you listen carefully, you can hear it whisper.

Writers who do work for hire are sometimes considered to be rather marginal. I’ve done it, when I was asked to do it by an editor, and I was paid quite well for it at a time when I couldn’t seem to sell any fiction. Believe me, that work was not at all marginal. It was a text book on computers, not programming, and I revised half the chapters to bring them up to date. That was a long time ago. I’m proud of what I accomplished, but I don’t include it in my bibliography, and when I was asked some years later to do it again, I refused. That refusal ended my career as a non-fiction writer.

Writing fiction for pay — not the same as being paid for what you publish — is suspect. Are ghost writers really writers? Are lesser-known writers who are paid by famous authors to flesh out their outlines really writers? How about artists for paint for hire, like, say Michelangelo, or Joshua Reynolds? 

I was hired, in a way, to write three novels based on the “V” tv series. I did not enjoy doing them, but one of them turned out to be a best-seller. I was asked to contribute to the Elfquest anthologies, “Blood of Ten Chiefs,” which I did enjoy, and was included in all five of those which were published.

How about those who are under contract to magazines or newspapers to write fiction, such as Dickens or Dostoevsky? Are they working for hire? How about the writers who are contacted by a book editor, who wants stories based on an idea he had. I have several on my shelf. Were they working for hire? A number of writers were told by a magazine editor to write a story based the cover illustration he had. Where do they fit in?

I think you can see what I mean. The line grows blurry. I think it’s just a line in the sand. If you write, you are a writer.

A friend of mine once insisted that people who who publish by other means than with a nationally recognized publisher aren’t really writers. His publisher is nationally recognized, and he is, by this definition, a real writer, and very successful. Small presses with limited distribution and small print runs are suspect. Vanity publishing isn’t really publishing, and doesn’t count by anybody’s definition. It is self-publishing which made my friend angry.

I can understand that. There is so much mediocre, poor, bad, and garbage writing out there, writing which has not been vetted by a professional editor, that it can be difficult to find something worth reading. There is, of course, bad writing and storytelling put out by traditional publishers too.

But think think about it. If traditional sales by traditional means are the only definition of being a writer, or poet, or artist, so many who are recognized today aren’t, “really,” what we think they are.

Emily Dickinson can hardly be thought a poet, as fewer than a dozen of her more than 1,800 poems, were published in her lifetime. We don’t think of her as being just a recluse and dilettante. Franz Kafka certainly couldn’t be considered a story writer, per se, since he instructed his literary executor to destroy all his work — which, fortunately, he didn’t do. Van Gogh sold only one painting during his life, so you couldn’t really call him a painter. 

Which is silly, because they really are those things, aren’t they. And so are the rest of us.

One night, when I was in high school — in a kind of ranch school in Tucson — I had a dream. Actually I have dreams every night, but in that dream, I had somehow acquired sixty two million dollars. That exact sum. In the early sixties, that was a lot of money.

The dream stayed with me for weeks, always somewhere in the back of my mind, and sometimes not so far back. During that time I would — when not otherwise occupied with classes and friends and horses — fantasize about what I could do with such a fortune. I don’t remember what my thoughts were, except that they were not what someone my age might typically wish for. No cars, no boats, no big houses, no social power, no world travel. I don’t think I indulged in the same fantasy more than once.

But after a while I realized that, no matter what the fantasy, no matter how elaborate and detailed and extravagant, it always ended with, “…and then I’ll have time to write.” And that stopped me short. That was the real fantasy.

I had no more daydreams about wealth, just a longing for the kind of freedom to write which it might give me. I knew what I wanted to do with my life. While my school-mates were struggling to figure that out, I was sure. I didn’t know how I was going to accomplish it, that took me a while to work out. But I have been, in one way or another, whatever else my life was like, a writer ever since.

I’ve called myself a writer, mostly of fiction, for all my adult life. I’ve written some computer books, back in the day when computers were new and I could do most of my research in the ads in Byte magazine. I wrote columns for magazines whose market was those people who knew nothing about computers. But mostly I wrote fiction. There were short stories, two of which were published. And over time there were nine novels, traditionally published, because that was the only option, except for vanity press.

But during the last few years I’ve come to realize that a more accurate term for what I am is storyteller. It’s the story, not the writing, that motivates me. I write my stories, and try to do as good a job as I can. What I want, and need, is a story, with beginning and end, conflict and resolution, problems and solutions, characters who feel like real people, places I can see and feel, and a plot string which ties them all together in a developing sequence, hopefully with surprises along the way. When I’m doing my best, the words flow, whether by pen or by keyboard. Writing is fine, but telling a good story is what I really want to do.

Some time ago, in the late ‘70s or early ’80s, I was transcribing a longhand draft by typewriter. There were no word processors then. Typically, one reads the original and types the copy simultaneously. Diane came in, and we had a brief conversation, which did not interrupt my transcription. Which, in turn, did not interfere with our conversation. I was engaged in four different verbal activities at the same time — reading and writing, and listening and speaking. When Diane left, I continued my transcription, and had the simultaneous thought that this was pretty neat.

I came across an article some years later, about the verbal areas of the brain, illustrated with brain scans, which showed that reading, writing, speaking, and listening were, indeed, in separate if closely connected areas. Each area had its own verbal function. So my observation of some years previously was validated.

It can be more complicated than the article showed. I have, on occasion, listened to two conversations at once, though neither with as much comprehension as if I were listening to just one. I have been able to respond to two (rarely three) different conversations in sequence without pausing, first this person, then that. But I am not (some people would think fortunately) actually able to say two different things at the same time.

I have not tried reading two books simultaneously. I can easily switch between three or four sequentially, without losing my place in any of them. I have always been a slow reader anyway. I read in real time, hearing the dialogue, seeing the scene, experiencing the atmosphere, and so on. Nor have I tried writing different things with each hand (though I can, with some illegibility, write with my off hand). But I do write and think at the same time, transcribing my thoughts while I have them. Everybody does that, I think.

I have learned that when I run into a problem with a story that makes me stop, the best thing I can do is — to just stop. If I can’t see any immediate way to fix the problem, but just keep pushing on, I find later — days, months, years later — that everything I wrote past that point is garbage.

If, on the other hand, I stand up from the story, and go off and do “useful things,” a solution may come to me, when I am occupied with dishes or laundry or groceries or putting things away, which I can then stop doing and get back to the story.

Or, nothing may come. If I push, I get nowhere. So I let it go. And frequently I wake up the next morning, before the alarm goes off, and I have the solution. Then I can move on.

But I had to stop first. Sometimes I have to put the story aside, and work on something else. It took me seven years, of productively writing other things, before I understood that the reason for grinding to a halt with Soul Stone, was that in chapter four, I had my hero do something he would not have done — that I would not have done — and just pushed on, as we are so often advised to do. While pushing, I wasn’t even aware that there was a problem.

This morning I woke up early, having had a good night’s sleep for a change, with the feeling that, despite all the good work I had done on Soul Stone, I was going nowhere. I know what happens next. I know the adversary my hero will meet and what happens to him. I know I’ll have more ideas for part four — but I’m going nowhere. Even with exciting images of an exciting ending.

I could just push on, and produce thousands words of a story which just doesn’t work. It will be finished, it could be published, but it will feel wrong.

Or I could stop now, get on with the other half of my life (household management and engineering) and put the story away in the back of my head to just brew for a while.

Hmmm. Even now, having decided to stop, I think I can see a solution. If I had just pushed on, I would never have found it. Hmmm. It won’t be easy, but — 

Yes. There is an answer. And it hasn’t taken me seven years to figure it out.

I’m getting ready to publish A Thing Forgotten at last, now that I have the cover. (Darcy has been working very hard for a long time, earning a raise.) I started the process, but it’s more complicated than it has been before in some ways. I have to work with Amazon, Bowker for ISBNs, Library of Congress for copyrights, all at once, and there is a question of actual publication date. I could not be sure that the book would go live in 2018, so I decided to postpone until after New Year’s, so there wouldn’t be a conflict between my copyright page and LoC’s records.

In the mean time, I decided to make a start on what is now called Soul Stone. At first, years ago, after some fan reviews and comments on The Eye in the Stone, I thought I would write something in the same universe, but not as a sequel. I did three good chapters, followed by sixty thousand words of garbage. I had forced my hero to do something he would not have done.

I’m keeping the first chapters — they could start a story in almost any setting or universe — and I’ve thrown out the rest. The character is not the same this time. The universe is not what I thought I’d use. It’s all new stuff, and instead of intellectualizing what I think the story ought to be, I’m letting it grow, following my gut, that dim voice in the back of my head where all creativity comes from, discovering where it will take me, rather than forcing it beforehand. I have sketched out four new chapters, just letting it happen, but keeping a hint of an idea of a possible ending in mind. And it feels good.

This is going to be fun.

I have the most difficulty when I need to introduce a new setting or situation. This is usually, but not always, at the beginning of a chapter or scene. I have an idea of what is there, but it’s all intellectual, not visual. And if I can’t see it, I can’t describe it. If I just say, “A man came up to me,” what do you see? Not much. If I say, “A tall man, well dressed, rather pale, and with an anxious expression came up to me,” now you can see him. (I’d have to revise that a few times to make it work in the context.)

The difficulty comes when I’m too concerned with moving the story forward to spend much time on settings, situations, characters, sometimes even actions in early drafts. If on a second draft I correct for text, for grammar, for logic, I eventually realize that no matter how well written it is, I still can’t see it. It’s still just a man — a silhouette as it were. 

Especially if the setting, the place, the situation, is complicated, involving character action and reaction. It can take me a long time to figure out what things look like, sound like, feel like, smell like — to describe what really is there, not what I just think is there. So I take the twenty minutes, or two hours, or however long I need to make the setting, a paragraph perhaps no larger than the first one above, sensorial rather than intellectual. If I can’t see it, then you can’t see it, and it’s so easy then for a reader to just drop out of the story.

 There is a real difference between what I know in my mind, and what I experience with my senses. I don’t want to be outside the story, looking in. I want to be inside the story, experiencing it. For me, it’s worth the effort.

The Black Ring is six volumes and nearly 700,000 words. It is not a series. Each volume leads into the next, and follows directly from the one before. It would read better if it were published all in one volume — turn the page, next chapter.

But publishing a book of something like 2,700 pages is a problem. I don’t have the reputation to convince editors that they should take a chance on it. I don’t really write “commercial” fiction, after all. If I wanted to get The Black Ring published, there were three options: 

I could butcher the six manuscripts to fit the guidelines. Each volume is too long, so it would have to be tightened and shortened, leaving out essential descriptions and character growth and plot development. I didn’t want to do that. And each volume would have to be more or less stand-alone, which now they are not. I really didn’t want to do that.

I could put these stories away and write something more acceptable. But this is the story I wanted to tell, it has taken me most of a lifetime to do it, and if I wrote something like it but just to fit the publisher’s guidelines, it would have no heart. I didn’t want to do that.

Or I could publish the six volumes myself. And it would have to be six volumes, because I don’t think CreateSpace/KDP can handle 2,700 pages all in a lump. I would have to learn how to design the book, how to make it look professional, how to deal with typography, how to prepare covers, how to become an editor and publisher (of sorts), not just a writer. But if that was the only way to get The Black Ring, all six volumes, published the way I wanted them to be, then that’s what I would do.

It has taken me a long time to acquire the skills I needed. Everything from Cat Tales to Slaves of War was preparation for The Black Ring. And then I had an opportunity to go with Double Dragon, instead of doing it myself. It wasn’t an easy decision, but I chose to do that. It’s out of my hands now. We’ll see what happens.

All the books which were published traditionally, except the three V books, were re-issued by ReAnimus Press. The Black Ring is available now from Double Dragon and Amazon. The books I published myself, more recently under the Ogden House imprint, are also on Amazon. Sometimes I sell a copy or two. 

If success is measured by how much money I make, I am a failure. But my stories are out there. People can find them and read them. If they tell me honestly that they really enjoyed them, then that is a form of success.

I choose my own definition of success, not someone else’s. I will not give up my growth, my development, my learning, just to do what someone says I ought to do. Even if they seem to be right.