Tonight I was lying in bed trying to think up a solid way to launch into an exploration of the traveling life of a football player as my wife watched her shows on the DVR (Big Bang Theory, the Daily Show, Modern Family, and the Colbert Report, for those interested). Basically, I wanted to write something about how I fly all over the country but I pretty much see only the interiors of hotel rooms and locker rooms; name a tourist trap I’d enjoy checking out, and I probably have no idea what you’re talking about.
Then, as I got into the piece, I realized I needed to do some traveling of a different sort—I had to move from the bed because I was getting distracted by the TV (I enjoy listening as my wife watches, but it tends to focus my concentration toward the TV and away from the writing).
Luckily, since I write on a laptop, moving to the family room was accomplished with relative ease and minimal spousal strife, affording me ample solitude to work on the traveling piece. Sitting on the couch with the lights off, the monitor glow my lone island of illumination, focused fully on the task at hand, I was ready to start deriving meaning from formlessness.
Only now I wanted to write about something else.
I was suddenly reminded of a picture I had seen on Twitter several days before. It was of author Neil Gaiman curled up on his couch writing a new Sandman book (if you haven’t read the Sandman series, you should; they’re awesome graphic novels) in the dark—and it amazed me how similarly the creative process was playing out for me.
I knew I wasn’t going to write about flying; I wanted to write about writing (how meta!).
Alone in the dark with only my thoughts, no outside distractions creeping in, my own private interpretation of the universe ready to spring forth from my mind, awaiting only the proper electrical impulses to transfer thought into action—is this what all writers, all spinners of fables and yarns, crave? That tiny darkness inside our heads that envelops the spark of imagination, itself surrounded by the sensory deprivation we need while we go about the act of creation? Do we subconsciously harken back to the primal days of our ancestors as they gathered around the campfire while unseen creatures’ noises echoed through an undefined night?
It’s as though we’re ancient men, travelers in a hostile world, slaves to our environment, spinning tales of Fox and Coyote (Trickster!), Lion and Bear (Strength!), Owl and Crow (Wisdom!) as shadows beat at the edges of flickering light, telling stories that, perhaps, can cage the darkness surrounding us, give it a name, make knowable the unknown.
Is that what we as writers look for? The mad unknown? The huge, hazy shapes of ideas our minds long to grasp, the wriggling words we try to pin on transient mediums? Is that why many of us, consciously or not, re-create that same prototypical world, the physical darkness all around? In order to communicate in a shared language every one of us upright apes instinctually understands, the language of concept and metaphor?
(I wish I could accurately describe how difficult it is to get thoughts from my head onto the screen in front of me when it comes to ideas like this. The best way I can describe it is it’s like trying to wrestle a fog bank into a condensed ball; I’m constantly trying to corral and define the edges in order to create a recognizable shape, and it fights back at every turn. Seriously, in my head, I just went from football and television pop culture to the metaphysical roots of how stories are told. The darkness does not give up its secrets easily.)
When trying to write, many people never go looking for that primal act of creation, that tiny spark amid a roiling sea of black. Instead, they shut out the world within them, drown it in the glitzy flash of blinking lights and empty noise, banish it beneath the harsh glare of outrospection. Someone sits down to craft a novel, or a play, or a movie, or even a Tweet, but he gets distracted by the mundanity around him, the sheer overwhelming chaos of it all (which is not to say that you can’t write while listening to music or whatever; I’ve just noticed that when I do that, it’s a lot harder and the writing tends to be more about the influences around me).
Or, worst of all, someone stops writing because he listens to that tiny voice that says, What you’re writing isn’t any good because someone else has already said it.
Well, you shouldn’t listen to that voice, because while it’s partially right, it’s also wrong. The stories we craft, the webs we weave, they are all drawn from the same common threads scattered throughout our shared histories. There’s no such thing as originality in the components of a story—our distant ancestors saw to that long ago with those ancient fireside tales.
No, the originality comes from what you bring to the table, the perspective you look out on the darkness with, the way you wrestle that fog into a shape no one has ever seen before.
So the next time you’re struck with a thought, trying to tackle a concept, or just want to explore your own mind, let yourself. Turn out the lights and go in a direction you never saw coming. Go traveling.
What you find in the dark may surprise you.