The way I approached writing my whole life was ridiculously simple: I would write when the whim warranted or when after a great deal of time had passed without expressing words upon page. The latter would usually fall upon me something like this: I would look out from the windshield of my car while drinking a coffee and see a treeline, for instance. Said treeline would cease to become a visual image almost immediately and transform into a string of sentences in my head. When words overwhelmed my visual interpretations it was usually time to write or have my frontal lobe flooded with a maelstrom of fonts.
Over time this has led to haphazard release schedules and a great many unfinished manuscripts. On those that I have “forced” through the process, well, I’ve never been overly pleased with the results. It seems to work much better for shorter fiction of which the majority of my catalog is comprised of.
My Name Is Joe began as mix of both whim and flooded mind and originally came out as a short story with a minor twist for the ending. This was usually good enough for me. But as I settled in for what should have been a rapid rewrite something happened. Something, that until recently I hadn’t been able to form into open thought. Yes, the story grew and from there grew some more. The ending changed many times as the time I spent with Joe increased. In the end, I found myself taken on a journey that while deeply emotional was also intellectually stimulating.
After all the editing was complete I wrote some other pieces, fresh off the energy of Joe. A short story, a poem, a novelette. They were fun, but not as rewarding as Joe had been and I began to fear, as any artist does, that the magic touch was slipping away. While I still had hold of some of that lingering enthusiasm I set out to write the next book in my mental schedule, When It Rains. I made several attempts at it and while I didn’t hate the words that came forth, there was something missing. Some small but important ingredient wasn’t present in the mix. I saw this echoed on my wife’s face as I read her the tender beginnings of the new book. I saw the look I’ve come to know as someone who desperately wants to feel connected to the piece but simply cannot reach it. I wish I could say that I was immune to being defensive in those situations but as a writer I’m never more vulnerable to insecurity than in the first few thousand words. I made it my crusade to express to her exactly why the book was working and of course the sad truth of the matter was that I was merely trying to convince myself. I failed on both counts. Consequently I stopped working on the book.
Shortly thereafter the season began to change with the days growing shorter and as it is here in this part of Virginia, the clouds ruling most of the days. Yes, the winter doldrums had begun. Last winter was a nightmare for me. I went without sleep for 3 and 4 days at a time. I barely ate. The notion of sleeping brought on tremendous panic and could only be accomplished when I was certain I would lay down and instantly pass out from exhaustion. All my mental energy went from right-brain creative to left-brain pragmatism. I dabbled with programming languages as playing games wasn’t enough. I broke them apart to see if I could find out how they worked. I did anything that would occupy my time and mind so that I could parse out the dread that I felt deeply seated within.
Finally, thankfully, the spring came and shortly thereafter Joe revealed himself to me. I rode a high the likes of which I had never before experienced. I read book after book and dreamed out loud, formulating ideas for a dozen of my own printed page conceptions.
When When It Rains wilted on the vine and the seasons began their descent into the grey hell I had become so familiar with old habits of the left brain began to reveal themselves. Reading became less and less of a desire. I found myself back in front of the computer for hours at a time. I began once more to avoid sleep. Seeing this coming Holly and I began to spend hours talking about it, keeping it in the forefront of our minds because we seriously didn’t know if I could survive a repeat of last winter. We began in earnest to compare my time in the summer when writing Joe was the reason of the day and how things were different now. One thing was for certain, we were darker now. Even the writing ideas that spawned in my head were less graceful, less hopeful than what I had been working on previously. But, as desperation warrants, any idea is better than no idea. I told her that I’d been thinking a great deal about political instability and its impact to freedom, though I was weary of the larger picture and wanted a more granular, more “human” version of such impact. Orwell of course sprang to mind and with him his singularly terrifying version of a totalitarian future. In My Name Is Joe I wanted to view personal redemption along the lines of my favorite themes, specifically Dicken’s A Christmas Carol. The story never fails to move me. I read it aloud every Christmas Eve and without fail struggle through the final pages with a lump the size of a fist in my throat and the text blurry from watering eyes. The story has so much meaning for me. I wanted to understand redemption and what it really means, for me at least. And with Joe, I accomplished that. After my wintertime hell I needed to ask the universe a question and I sought my answer within the pages of a story of which the protagonist seeks the same answer. Orwell’s vision is so bleak, so invulnerable that I wanted … no I needed to examine it more closely.
I sat down at my little table in front of the window and began to to type. When I was done for the day, drained of any meaningful expression, I had accumulated about 3,000 words of an untitled (and I have never started a piece without knowing the title, the beginning the middle and the end) story. This felt different than my previous attempt with When It Rains but I couldn’t say why. I felt good. Washed clean. Still, I couldn’t be certain if this was merely hope, the heady excitement of new creation or I had somehow found that same magic I had with Joe. Without much hope I emailed the pages to Holly and she read them over her lunch break. What resulted was a whirlwind of adjectives and expletives. She was floored. She loved it. Most importantly she stated, “Wherever you went in your head to write this is where you were when you wrote Joe!”
I was certainly ecstatic from her response, but even more I was curious. Why did this work when Rain had failed? It occurred to me then, the way truth can simply explode in your mind. The “A Ha!” moment that some refer to. With Rain, I wasn’t curious about the plot. I already knew the truth of the story and as a result, there was no magic in my heart for it. I had no grand question to ask. I was seeking nothing.
In this story, what was I asking? Well, I surely wanted to know how something like 1984 could have happened. Orwell wanted to express his fear, wanted to warn Western Civilization of a future that he could envision if things of his era did not change. But in my opinion Orwell made one grand mistake. He inserted us into the story after totalitarian system was already in place. The result was frightening to be sure, but in the heart of most readers hopeful optimism kept the story from being too real; made the story too fantastic. “Things will never get that way,” we say to ourselves by means of comfort. “Someone would stop this from happening.” I wanted to explore how something like this could happen. Exploration however, is simply that. Exploration. A curiosity. What was my true question? I reread what I had written that day and instantly saw between the lines, so to speak. My real question was this: Can mankind, with his history of domination and violence ever step outside of that history? Even further: Can he ever put away greed? For this is the root of all evil. All the deadly sins can be rerouted through greed. All governments, all societies and groups of man are ultimately corruptible because greed still exists in his heart. Absolute power corrupts absolutely. We all know this. But what is power if not greed? The ability to take what YOU want because you believe you need it or worse, because you simply want it. This is the single question I’m really asking. Can we put this aside? Will we ever? And do you know what my friends? I don’t know. That’s why I’m writing The Wind and the Breath. Because I need an answer. I need to know.
From my once simply writing mentality to a much deeper personal need, this is how I’ve changed as a man and a writer. Without a question that needs answering I’m merely playing at being a writer, an entertainer. We have plenty of entertainment in the world these days. We’re inundated with it at every turn. Every quiet moment we once had can now be filled with movies on our cell phones and music streaming from every source. We’re driving out serendipity and pushing questions from our minds. I can’t abide that. It is too much like my winter mind, to ready to be filled with noise and unimportant tasks. My summer mind speaks of life and its imponderables that I am driven to ponder. I now have big questions and a list of books ready to be written that will ask and hopefully answer those questions. For the first time in my life I’m writing books for me. The questions I ask and the answers I find are for me. If you read these books and ask yourselves questions, seek your own answers, then I’ve made a small but hopefully significant difference. If something causes you to think, to question your own existence, to open doors through which you can redefine yourself, that’s not entertainment; that’s art.
I don’t know what I’m hoping to find in my books. All I know is that the searching is keeping me alive, keeping the greyness at bay. And maybe someday, when it’s all said and done, my epitaph will read, “Here Lies Stefan Bourque, Artist.”
Stefan
