Writer's Ritual

Writer’s Pre-Game Rituals

A fan recently asked me how I was able to ‘get so deeply into the world of my characters’.  My answer, of course, was that my characters live in their own world and I simply visit them before returning to report what I’ve seen.

While that is true, for the most part, I feel that I owe her more than that simple answer.  It is true that I don’t make up the stories and that I’m merely an ethereal spectator to them.  It is also true that my characters live out their lives on the other side of my imagination’s door where I can hear them whispering and plotting against me.  If I don’t visit them often enough, then they move furniture loudly enough to keep me up at night and, if I visit them too often, they move the furniture in front of the door to block me out.

So, the question is probably better stated, how do I become a voyeur into the lives of my characters without influencing their behaviors?  Well, I’d like to say it was simply the quality of the whisky, but it has always been much more than that for me.  There is a ritual that I must follow to relax enough to go from story teller to transcriptionist.  Some might consider it as some ceremonial ‘Pre-Game Writing Ritual’, like a fighter who punches the same bags to warm up before the fight—jab, jab, upper cut.  Others might think of it as a form of visualization, like a receiver picturing the ball soaring over his shoulder.  Whatever it might be described as, I know that I have to relax enough to control the game without letting the game control me.  No matter if I’m at my desk at home or in a hotel or on a berm in Iraq, I try to follow some generic form of this ritual and, if I don’t, then I inevitably find myself ready to write, but still waiting to be let through that door into the world of my characters.

What constitutes that ritual doesn’t seem to matter as much as the actual process of relaxing and allowing my characters to unlock the door and waiting for them to wave me inside.  If I’m at home and sitting comfortably before my writing desk with bottles of whisky aplenty, my ritual consists of tall glasses, warm candles, and classic Floyd.  If I’m dead sober in the cockpit of my helicopter at night in hostile territory (where I wrote the majority of my first novel), then my ritual is simply to let the pen write what it can between listening to radio calls and watching the world around me.  But, no matter where I might be, the meat of my ritual is to take a quiet moment to forget myself and let the characters come to the door on their own.  I don’t try to control them or mandate their movements as I am simply a visitor to their world and, in return, I can only hope that they will ignore me and play as they might if I were not there.

So, to answer the question of how I get through that door, you must imagine yourself as I see the world of literary creation.  While I know all authors are different, this is how I picture it:

I close my eyes and ignore the world around me.  I feel my breathing slow and my chest rising with each breath getting deeper.  I knock on creativity’s door and wait as the characters of a hundred stories scurry behind it.  Their whispers seem to filter under the door, some beg for the door to open while others demand it barred shut.  I pray that they will let me in and won’t seclude me from their lives.  Sometimes they do lock me out, but I can only consider myself blessed on those few days that they actually open the door and play out their tales before me.  When they do, I type what I see and hope that the reality of the world doesn’t distract me from the feel of my fingertips bouncing against the keys as I watch and listen like a visitor to the zoo’s greatest attractions.  They talk, they fight, they love, and they throw poop at each other as I watch and transcribe their movements to paper.

Maybe one day I will be able to trap one of my characters and hold them long enough to interrogate.  I will try to get the information without resorting to waterboarding, but the truth is that I’ve been waterboarded myself and didn’t find it all that scary. 

Until I capture a character and force it to do my work as a novelist, I will continue to resort to relaxing and waiting at their front door.  Oh, and enjoying a few sips of that lovely liquid—whisky.