My lack of steady progress in my current writing project, Walls Ascending, has been a source of consternation of the last two months. But to be clear, it hasn’t been the book itself that has been frustrating. I’ve written the first twenty-five percent, and I think it’s a compelling story so far, and a good tie-in to its predecessor, Vulcan Rising (link). Something else has been at the root of inconsistency for me. It just took me a while to sort out what that was.
The rate of my progress has been quite stilted, which stands in stark contrast to how I wrote Vulcan Rising — almost daily writing for fourteen weeks from start to finish. But Walls Ascending has been an unexpectedly different experience.
January was a pretty good month, in which I wrote for sixteen days in Walls Ascending. There were other days I had to work on other projects or didn’t do any writing. Then came February, when I wrote eleven out of the first fourteen days. I was making steady progress. But then everything fell off a cliff. After Valentine’s day, I didn’t write again until March 23. While I had spent about a week of in March doing the final pass at Vulcan Rising, the great majority of the month saw no creative work being done.
So a few days ago, when I got frustrated about the resistance I was feeling in getting back into the story, I tried to figure out what was going on. What was at the root of my inconsistency?
Digging in to Find the Root of Inconsistency
When I dug in, I realized it wasn’t the story that was problematic. It wasn’t that I had some sort of writer’s block. What has been happening is that I have had an extraordinarily stressful last couple of months at work. I’ve had two jury trials to prepare for, neither of which ended up trying for various reasons. There have been countless other hearings I’ve had to argue and briefs I’ve written. And I’ve been working between 50-60 hours per week for the last six weeks or more.
So when it came time to sit down and write creatively, my brain gave be a “hard pass.” It was taxed. It had no extraneous decision making left to give me, because work has been requiring so much.
There are times when I can work more than hours per week consistently, and it’s not overly stressful. But that is entirely dependent on the nature of the work being done. It’s almost like a pitcher’s pitch count in baseball. Not all pitch counts are created equal.
A pitcher might be in the seventh inning, having thrown 105 pitches, but his team has been in the lead the whole game. He’s still feeling good with plenty of life left in his arm. But another night, he might have racked up 80 pitches by the fourth inning. He’s had runners on the bases all night. His team isn’t producing runs. It’s been one stressful situation after another, and he’s already gassed.
That second scenario has been the first three months of 2021 for me. Stressful days and weeks stacking onto of each other, compounding their effects. The result is that when it’s time for my brain to write witty banter between two characters, it tugs at its ball cap to tell the manager it needs a meeting on the mound.
Do Some Self-Assessment When You Hit an Inconsistent Patch
At some point, you’re going to find that a confluence of life events has conspired against you to prevent your creative work from being done. You may not at first recognize the source of the problem. I know I didn’t.
But once you realize there’s a problem, don’t freak out. The Muse hasn’t abandoned you forever. You haven’t lost your ability to do your creative work. You haven’t encountered an immovable writer’s block.
It may be that your brain is just saying, “I can’t do this right now. Could we instead have some rest? That would do me a lot of good.”
Of course, you may be like me and not be very good at resting. That can be its own source of stress. But dwelling too much on that may derail this particular train. Once you’ve searched out the root of inconsistency and discerned whether it’s something that is present for a reason or a season, allow yourself time to recover before digging back into your creative work.
For me, I took a couple of mornings to write this article, rather than attempting to force my way back into Chapter 10 of Walls Ascending. I was supposed to be in trial this week, but on Monday morning, we were informed that the trial won’t be going forward. But all that pent-up energy, anxiety, and stress doesn’t dissipate like air from a popped balloon. It’s bleeds off slowly like a tire with a small leak.
Now that I’ve become cognizant of the problem, I’m trying to give my mind ample opportunity to get itself right. I’ve got a few relatively non-stressful weeks ahead of me. So I want to be in a proper head space to take advantage of them by pounding out the next few chapters of Walls Ascending.
When people ask me how I came up with the idea for Vulcan Rising, I don’t mind telling them. But they almost universally seem disappointed. It wasn’t what they expected. They don’t know what they expected, but it wasn’t what they heard. Besides that, they find it unsettling that others are walking around with tales of dark and fantastical things rattling around in their heads.
I can almost see the regret formulate within them. They wish they’d never asked. Their perception of me has changed, and there’s no putting the genie back in the bottle. But that’s okay. It’s not me that has changed, just their understanding of who I am. The shadow side was always part of me; they just hadn’t been acquainted with it before.
In the vein of transparency, I don’t mind telling you about the genesis of Vulcan Rising. Then you can cast or reserve your judgment as you see fit.
The Origin Story for Vulcan Rising
This isn’t the first novel I thought I would write. It’s not the first novel I’ve tried to write. Nor the second. But sometimes the muse is working behind the scenes, aligning things just right so that you’ll be ready when the time comes.
Three of the chapters in this book were inspired by real life situations. And while I wrote them down as they transpired, it didn’t occur to me until the third one that I could write a novel that featured these events. That was at the end of August 2020. By early December, I had finished my first draft of Vulcan Rising.
In early January 2020 (before the world went sideways here in the United States), my five year old, Jack, started calling for me in the middle of the night. I looked at the clock and saw that it was 3:40am. With only an hour and twenty minutes left until my alarm was set to go off, I knew that my good sleep was pretty much done for.
I went up to his room and tried to coax him back to sleep. But when he told me that he couldn’t sleep because he didn’t want to be alone anymore, I felt really bad for him and laid down beside him.
But in that little bed with only a minimum of covers made available to me, my mind started racing. And I came up with the scene where Thomas finds Ning in his bed and dismisses Joseph to return to his own.
A Return to Transcribing Dreams
A couple of weeks later, I had a really strange dream. As far back as I can remember, I’ve always been a vivid dreamer. For a time during my 20s, I wrote down my dreams. But that seemed to somehow magnify their intensity and creepiness, so I stopped. Then the dreams returned to their baseline weirdness levels.
More recently, I’ve started writing down dreams that are particularly interesting and stick with me. I’ve started letting my dreams fuel my fiction writing, rather than let them dissipate into the ether.
In late January, I had a dream that was graphic and surreal. I remembered every detail — three men were kidnapping a pegasus colt, and I stopped them in my driveway and shot one of them; then I had to return the mythical creature to its mother.
I had an inkling the dream could be the inciting incident for a much bigger story. But what I had in mind then was a much different story than what Vulcan Rising became.
Fast forward seven months to August 2020. Sometimes you have weird interactions with your kids. It seems like their brains are working overtime all the time. Not infrequently, those conversations lead to story ideas. So when that happens, I try to run as far and fast as I can with it.
One morning, Jack came down from his room and snuggled up right beside me on the couch. He was unusually somber and his responses to my conversation prompts were monosyllabic and noncommittal. His demeanor caused my mind to wander, thinking about its potential causes. One of which was whether he thought he’d seen something in the stairwell. Perhaps, he had. Whatever it was, it probably wasn’t a chimera. But who’s to say for sure.
I’ve always been a vivid dreamer. As far back as I can remember, I have had dreams and nightmares that felt as real as anything I experienced in my waking hours. Lately, I have allowed some of those dreams to fuel my writing. Two dreams I had in 2020 served as the catalysts for me writing my first novel, Vulcan Rising. But what of the nightmares? Those are a little harder to embrace. What if you convert your nightmares into novels or short stories?
Turn Your Nightmares into Novels and Short Stories
Nearly twenty years ago I started writing my dreams down. I have folders and notebooks that are riddled with bizarre dreams. And sometimes it seemed that the more I wrote down, it had an amplification effect. The dreams I remembered got weirder and more frequent.
So I was always hesitant to write down my nightmares. What if I had the same experience and the nightmares too increased in frequency and intensity? I can tell you I’d rather not increase the number of time I wake up in the middle of the night unable to go back to sleep and afraid to do so if I could, for fear that I might fall back into the same dream sequence.
But then I started having nightmares that the more I reflected on them, the more they seemed like good premises to horror and fantasy stories. So I started writing them down as well. My sleep hasn’t been more interrupted, but I do have more story ideas that I’ve been accumulating.
So when you open a story from me sometime in the future to read about what happens in your first two weeks in purgatory or why a child who was kidnapped doesn’t have any memory of his life before he was returned to his family, just know that you have these stories because I converted my nightmares into novels.
What kind of worlds can you create and how can you dazzle your readers if you allow yourself to peer into the darkness and writing down the nightmares that keep you from sleeping?
I woke up with a weird thought for a story this morning. No real idea what it might be or where it might go. All I had was what if there was a blue glow emitting from under my pillow. This is how it evolved.
Luminescence
She woke to the glow of the alarm clock’s digits offending her eyes. But she realized fairly quickly that wasn’t the intruder. The light was the wrong color. The clock was still on, reading 3:27am. But that’s not what had caught her eye.
Her periphery signaled to her that the offender was in the bed. A blue luminescence emitted from under her pillow. Had she left her phone in the bed and shoved it under the pillow during the night?
She glanced to the nightstand. No, it still lay there, perched on the corner. Its screen darkened but waiting eagerly as a puppy for attention.
A river of blood coursed behind her ears. Her heart tried to push out from behind her ribs.
This was a ridiculous response. There was a perfectly valid explanation for the glow. She couldn’t now come up with one, but that’s because she’d allowed herself to panic.
She plucked up her courage and tugged at the corner of her pillow. It didn’t concede to the slight pull she applied. That was weird. It was a pillow. Any minimal amount of force should have dislodged it. What had been fear transitioned to frustration.
She ripped at the corners of the pillow and pried it away from the bed.
The blue luminescence revealed itself.
It comprised the circumference of a void that had opened within her mattress. But it wasn’t really within the mattress. Or touching the mattress. They were … she couldn’t make sense of what she was seeing … occupying the same space. But not.
The void was about the size of a volleyball. The glow around its edge pushed outward. But within was nothingness. It wasn’t even black. She could only perceive it as a total absence of anything. As if it devoured whatever it consumed.
She hovered her hand over the opening. It pulled at her. A gravity well with a strength many times greater than its size should permit.
Her phone screen lit up. A Twitter alert. The momentary distraction was enough. The void seized her hand. It pulled her in up to her wrist. And then to her forearm.
She strained against it. She pushed against the mattress with her left hand for leverage while the void consumed her right. She was elbow deep now. The luminescence brightened and thrummed, overjoyed at having captured its prey.
She couldn’t extract herself. She was freaking out. Shoulder deep. Her face pressed against the mattress. Still she pushed against the mattress to no avail.
She screamed for help. But she lived alone. Was alone.
The ambitious aperture further opened its jaws and drew in her wider parts. Her hips and midsection fell in. She tried to grab the sheets with her toes as she splayed across the chasm. But she couldn’t sustain her weight as the opening slid outward so her heels fell in.
She sobbed now. Her destruction an inevitability. Still she resisted. She was proud of her resolve, despite the certainty of the result. She took a deep breath as her head sunk into the void, facing upward. Her ceiling fan still spun counterclockwise, oblivious to what was occurring beneath its blades.
With her left hand, she clung to the illuminated edge of the void. Having eaten its fill, it closed around her fingers, a shrinking pupil. It closed with a silent clang, lopping off her fingers at the first joints. Leaving in its wake four fingertips on an untidy bed with disheveled sheets.
Sometimes you have weird interactions with your kids. Their brains are working overtime all the time, it seems like. Not infrequently, those conversations lead to story ideas. Sometimes they turn into something, like this one about a magical animal that appears on his bed. So when it happens, I just try to run with it. An exchange my son and I had a couple of days ago inspired this story, Something Black in the Stairwell.
[Note: I have adapted a version of this story to be incorporated into my debut novel, Vulcan Rising. Read more about the novel at jwjudge.com.]
Something Black in the Stairwell
The boy called through the monitor, “Can I get up?”
I looked at the clock. 5:57am. It was still a little earlier than he was supposed to get up, but I knew telling him to go back to sleep at this point would just create a fuss and yield the same end result. “Yeah, buddy, come one down.”
I returned my attention to my work and waited for the boy to join me on the couch in the living room. I heard the thud of feet above me as he slid off the bed to the floor. Then plodding to the stairs. At this point his foot sounds crescendoed. Every time. It was as if he were wearing too-big work boots while trying to navigate the stairs. It was incomprehensible to me how such a small person could make such racket.
There was a pause before his steps descent resumed at a more rapid pace.
I was entering data into my spreadsheet when he came into the room, not saying anything, and sat right up against me. The sectional can comfortably seat five. But he glued himself to my ribs and burrowed in, snuggling so that I had to put my arm around him. Unusual, but okay.
“Did you sleep okay?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“Not me,” I told him. “I had a hard time getting to sleep. Was thinking about this presentation for work.”
“Did you stay awake all night long?” he asked.
“Nah. Just woke up off and on.”
Several minutes passed with the only sound being that of me depressing the keys on my laptop. The boy broke the rhythm without looking up at me.
“Something black tried to get me on the stairs.”
“What?” Not sure I’d heard correctly, or if I had, what it meant.
“When I was coming down the stairs, something black tried to reach out and get me,” he repeated.
“You mean you saw a shadow on the wall?” I prodded.
“No.”
“Buddy, we’ve talked about this. The streetlamp shines through the trees and makes shadows.”
“No,” he said again.
“What do you mean no?”
He finally looked up at me. “That’s not what it was. It reached out to get me.”
“Why did you wait so long to tell me?”
He shrugged.
“Alright, I’ll go check it out,” I told him.
He clung to my shirt as I shifted my weight to get up. “Please don’t leave me in here by myself.”
“Well, bud, I’ve got to go check it out. You can either stay in here or go with me.”
The decision weighed on him. Where did the greater fear lie? Then I watched him summon his courage and resolve to go with me. “Okay, let’s go,” he said. He was like his mother in that way. Once the decision was made, he was committed to it, come hell or high water. I admired it.
We walked from the living room through the kitchen and into the entryway. We turned to look up the stairwell. Best I could tell, everything was as it should have been. “Buddy, I don’t see anything here. You sure it wasn’t just the shadows of the trees moving?”
“Yes.” Just a stoic yes.
We stood there a minute longer, looking at nothing. “Well, I don’t know what to say. There’s nothing here. Let’s head back to the living room.”
I had started to take a step when he said, “It’s not here any more.”
“How do you know?” Doubting that it had ever been there to begin with.
He shrugged his little shoulders again. “I can feel it.” He was looking at the place in the wall where it must been as he’d come down the stairs. A cold shiver crawled up my spine. He turned his face to me. “But it’ll be back. I can feel that too.”
I’ve committed to finishing the manuscript of my first novel this year, which is far more challenging than expected. Having now written three non-fiction books, I had thought that written a novel would come easier. I was mistaken.
Nevertheless, I’m now 25,000 words in and in Story Grid terminology, I’ve finished the beginning hook. This feels like an accomplishment on its own … at least until I realize there’s another three-quarters or so of the novel to write.
Journey through the Beginning Hook
But what I’ve found is that not only is writing this novel difficult because it’s a difficult thing to do generally, but specifically, this novel is difficult for me to write. Here’s the premise that I wrote down in my moleskine notebook when I was first struck with the idea in August 2019:
Child sick with terminal illness. Dad is a lawyer who loses his job due to time missed from work. Loses health insurance. Can’t pay hospital bills. Desperate. Plans bank robbery. Sees former partner at a gas station. Shoots him and is killed.
Some of that has evolved since the initial idea was born. But what hasn’t changed is that it’s about a father whose child has a potentially terminal illness. Being the father of two small children, I have this (irrational) fear that I’m writing something into existence for my family.
I was originally working with the title, A Sick Kid, but I never loved it. I stopped working on it for a while, and the project began to languish. It nagged at me that I wasn’t working on it, but between work and my non-fiction projects, I wasn’t prioritizing it (which is a cycle that has continued).
By all means, Feel sorry for yourself. By all means make excuses. By all means feel discouraged. By all means don’t play like this game is the most important thing to you. By all means entertain yourself with other sh*t because the game of baseball will be here forever and you will have infinite opportunities to play this game. You will [have] infinite opportunities to put on your gear, feel the glove, the ball, etc. The game of baseball will wait for you. Life will wait for you.
It’s not as life can be taken away from you at any moment. Nooo that would be crazy, that would be cruel. Right? So, by all means, play the game as if [you] will have all the swings you can dream of and when the day comes when you realize baseball, that life doesn’t work that way, you will understand that the best [way] to play is by ANY MEANS necessary. By any means. No excuses. No waiting. F*ck patience. F*ck injuries and f*ck THEM. PLAY as if every at bat may be ur last because it very f*cking well could be. So let’s make every single f*cking one count. Lets go get these f*ckers!
The title became By All Means. A logline followed on its heels: “What wouldn’t a man do for his family?” And since then, I’ve had a much better vision for the book. I’ve rough plotted the rest of it. And now it’s just a matter of taking the time to write the thing … which, you know, isn’t a foregone conclusion.
As far back as I can remember, I’ve always been a vivid dreamer. For a time during my 20s, I started writing down my dreams. But that seemed to somehow magnify their intensity and creepiness, so I stopped. Then the dreams returned to their baseline weirdness levels.
More recently, I’ve started writing down dreams that are particularly interesting and stick with me. I’ve started letting my dreams fuel my fiction writing, rather than let them dissipate into the ether.
A few weeks ago, I had a dream that was graphic and surreal. I remembered every detail. And I had an inkling it could be the inciting incident for a much bigger story. It remains to be seen whether that last bit becomes a reality. Regardless, here’s the dream that fueled this particular bit of fiction.
[Note: I have adapted a version of this story to be incorporated into my debut novel, Vulcan Rising. Read more about the novel at jwjudge.com.]
I’ve also found that my kids inspire my writing. An episode with my son was the catalyst for what became a follow-up scene in whatever this story will eventually become.
When Your Dreams Fuel Your Fiction Writing, Magic Can Happen
Josiah and his wife were awakened by a loud, strange noise. Josiah propped himself up with an elbow, straining to hear what was no longer there to be heard. He had thought it came from outside.
“What was that?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” came the croaky response.
“Did it sound like an animal?”
“Don’t know. I was too asleep,” she said.
Josiah swung his legs off the bed and padded over to the window, where he peered through the blinds. The ground and trees were bathed in moonlight. Josiah, having forgotten to look at the clock as he traipsed across the room, judged that it must be very early morning now by the way the moon hung above the western sky. At first, all was still and quiet. There were no indications that anything was amiss.
As Josiah was about to return to bed, he saw three figures in dark clothing stalk through the gap between his house and his neighbor’s and walk into the woods behind his house. Before he could comprehend what he was seeing, they disappeared into the shadows.
Moments later, Josiah heard an animal noise again. He was staring into the tree line but could see nothing. “Alright,” he whispered to himself, having made a decision about that to do next.
Josiah walked to his nightstand, pulled open the top drawer, and retrieved his Smith & Wesson .40. It had lain dormant in there a long time, in anticipation of a moment like this one. Josiah pulled on a sweatshirt, pants, and a pair of moccasins. With the handgun snugly in his left hand, he opened and closed the front door with his right.
Staying close against the house, he walked around the front and down the opposite side as the intruders’ route. He wished the siding were a darker color, to hide his movement, but there was nothing to be down about that now.
He reached the bottom of the driveway and stopped. Waiting. For what? He had no idea. He couldn’t very well go stalking into those woods with no light. Josiah realized that he should have grabbed a flashlight or headlamp. Anything that would provide illumination. He patted his pockets. He hadn’t even brought his phone.
So he waited. The only movement he saw was his breath emerging from his mouth and dissipating in the night air. Then a shrill animal scream ripped the silence apart. Josiah thought it sounded like a horse. Or maybe a donkey. Something in that family. Still, he could see nothing.
Movement. Emerging from the woods. Three figures. One was much bulkier than the other two. As they exited the shadows into the moonlight, Josiah could make out that the third man’s bulk was because he was carrying something. Something that was struggling against him.
The three men were moving quickly without running. And they weren’t moving in the direction they’d come from, they were coming toward his side of the house. Josiah had no idea what to do. Whether to do anything. They were closing ground, less then a dozen yards from the bottom of the driveway, where Josiah had all but made himself a part of the house.
As the dark-clad men came parallel with him, Josiah saw that the third man was carrying a horse. A foal. And a young one. Something was … wrong with it.
“Halt!” Josiah commanded, surprising himself and everyone else. All three men jerked to a stop, turning in the direction of the sound. The foal whinnied and bucked. It arched its head backward trying to headbutt its captor.
“Halt?” asked one of the men.
“Yeah. Stop.” Josiah found that his gun was raised in their direction. His hand was shaky, but he didn’t know whether it was visibly so.
The same voice said, “We’re stopped. Now what?”
Josiah didn’t know now what. He hadn’t had a plan to this point. “I’m gonna need you to leave.”
“What do you think we were doing?” asked a second voice.
The three men were standing in a clump. The man in the middle was speaking. All three were larger men than Josiah. Although it was difficult to gauge the size of the man carrying the foal.
The first voice suggested, “Why don’t you step out from the shadow and we can sort this out?”
Josiah realized his advantage, however slight. “I’m good. Put down the horse and be on your way.”
“Horse?” scoffed the second voice. “That’s not a—”
“Shut up,” the first voice instructed.
The third man started to lean forward as if to set the horse down. The first voice pointed at him, “Don’t.” And the third man stopped moving. “We can’t do that. We’re gonna take the … horse and be on our way.”
“No. You aren’t,” Josiah countered. He had no inkling why he cared what happened to this foal. But whatever was happening was inherently bad. Evil maybe.
“Enough of this,” said the first voice. He ordered, “Gary, handle him.”
The left-most figure began stalking toward Josiah, reaching into the front pocket of his hoodie.
A deafening bark. A flash of light. Gary fell into a sitting position, holding his belly. The sounds of the night had stopped. Or maybe it was just that Josiah could no longer hear them. His vision was interrupted. The imprint of a flame was placed over anything that he looked at directly. He could see in the periphery that none of the men were moving.
“Now, you’re gonna go. And you’ll leave the horse.” Gary had fallen onto his side and was moaning. “Set the horse down. Gently.”
The third man squatted down slowly, setting the animal on the concrete. Josiah could see it clearly for the first time now that two arms were no longer wrapped around it. It wasn’t a horse. It was … what was it?
“Y’all go on now. And take him with you.” No one objected. They got on either side of Gary and started trying to get him upright, to be his human crutches like a football player being helped off the field. But Gary’s clothes were glistening darkly in moonlight. He would have to be all but carried.
Josiah watched until they were beyond his eyesight. They walked into the shadows of the trees that canopied the street. A short time later, he saw taillights ignite. The reverse lights flickered as the vehicle was put into drive. Josiah heard the thrum of the V-8 engine as it accelerated and carried them into the night.
Josiah heard the front door of his house open and close. Agatha asked, “Honey, is everything okay?”
Josiah remembered the horse-ish thing lying in the driveway behind him. It wouldn’t do for her to see that. He shoved the gun into the waistband at the small of his back and thought about all the times he’d thought movies were ridiculous when they had somebody do that. But he’d never considered that there was nowhere else to put it when you didn’t have a holster. He was just glad the barrel wasn’t still hot. He jogged around toward the front of the house. His wife was walking his direction as Josiah rounded the corner.
“Yeah, baby. Just … um … a … uh … fox.”
“A fox? I was looking out the back window but never saw anything.”
Josiah was relieved. “Yeah. He had come around the side.”
“Did you get him?” she asked.
“Yeah. I need to take him back into the woods and get rid of him,” Josiah said.
“Now? Tonight?” she asked.
“Got to. He’ll attract coyotes and buzzards. You just go back inside and I’ll be back shortly.”
“Alright. Be careful.”
“Yep. Will do.” Josiah turned around to go the way he’d come.
When Josiah reached the side of the house again, he saw that the horse creature was standing, looking at him. It was young. Not more than a few weeks old. Maybe days. He just couldn’t believe that what he was seeing was correct. Wings. On a horse.
He walked toward the animal slowly. As he got about twenty feet away, the foal got nervous. It started looking around a little wildly and shuffling its hooves.
“Whoa, boy,” Josiah said, in not more than a whisper. He held out his hands in front of him in what he thought would be a non-threatening gesture. “I’m not going to hurt you. Just want to see if I can help.” He kept walking as he talked. The foal seemed to settle a bit.
Josiah approached to little more than arms length and stopped. They stood taking each other in. Maybe the wings were some sort of prank? Some attachment the guys had put on its back. None of this was making a good deal of sense. And why was there a horse in the woods?
Whatever the answer, this was a beautiful creature. All white with a pale mane. White wings that were folded onto its back. The moonlight gave it an ethereal quality.
Josiah started talking softly to the animal again. “Hey, boy? Where did you come from? Is your momma around?” As he spoke, he stepped forward and raised his left hand to rub its head between the eyes. The foal snorted and shook its head with the approach, but didn’t back away. Josiah kept talking and made contact. After a minute, the foal pushed back against his hand. With his right hand, Josiah began to rub its neck.
“That a boy. Nothing to be scared of. Now I’m just going to reach over here to your shoulder. Good boy.”
He didn’t know whether the talking was helping. It didn’t seem to be hurting though. He also didn’t know whether the foal was in fact a boy. But that also seemed inconsequential in the moment. Josiah continued to scratch and pet its head with his left hand, while migrating his right back to its wings.
“Holy cow,” he whispered. “Those are really yours, aren’t they? Yep. There. I can feel it coming right up through your hide.” A shiver crept up his spine.
When Josiah started handling its wing, the foal shrugged its shoulders and shuddered. Then it unfolded its wings. The transformation was majestic. Josiah took an involuntary step backwards. It was white as a ream of paper. He thought this was probably a dumb comparison, but it was the first thing he thought of. A wingspan greater than the length of its body from head to tail.
“Wow, buddy. That’s … I mean, that’s … wow.”
Josiah took to petting its head and neck again, and it tucked its wings away.
“What are you called? Not a unicorn. You don’t have a horn,” Josiah was thinking that paying closer attention during literature — or was it mythology? Whatever — it would have been helpful about now. “Icarus? No that’s a Greek guy. What did he do? Fly to close to the sun. Hang on. You’re a pegasus, aren’t you? That’s the one with wings, right? Except you’re not real. How can you be? I’m just losing my mind or something. Which is fine, I guess.”
The pegasus nuzzled him. “We’re going to need to get you back home. Is your momma in the woods? Let’s go for a walk and see what we find.”
A few days ago, my 5 year old started calling for me in the middle of the night. I looked at the clock and saw that it was 3:40am. With only an hour and twenty minutes left until my alarm was set to go off, I knew that my good sleep was pretty much done for.
I went up to his room and tried to coax him back to sleep. But when he told me that he couldn’t sleep because he didn’t want to be alone any more, I felt really bad for him and laid down beside him.
But in that little bed with only a minimum of covers made available to me, my mind started racing. And I came up with the scene below, that is being incorporated into a work in progress — as in, this is only the second scene for that project, but it looks to be weird and interesting.
[Note: I have adapted a version of this story to be incorporated into my debut novel, Vulcan Rising. Read more about the novel at jwjudge.com.]
So when people tell you that having a family is a deterrent to being able to write more, I have two responses: (1) that’s probably true, but you have to make time in the margins to write if it’s a priority for you; and (2) this isn’t the first time that having kids has been good for my writing and inspired some content, fiction or otherwise.
Now, I’m not saying your should have kids just so that can serve as sources of inspiration — though I’ve probably heard of people having kids with worse motivations for bringing them into the world. But if you do have kids, you may find that it’s good for your fiction writing from time to time.
Here’s the scene that was inspired by my 3:40am wake-up call.
“Daddy! Daddy!” Josiah scrunched his eyes to read the clock from across the room. 3:40 AM. He fumbled for the monitor beside him, punched the button, and asked “What do you need?“ “Can I come to your bed?” came the four year old’s request. “No,” Agatha whispered to him. He relayed the message. “No, buddy. It’s too early. Just go back to sleep.” “I’m scared,” the boy complained. “There’s nothing to be scared of. Just go back to sleep.” Josiah heard whimpering. “I’ll be there in just a minute.” With the grunt, he shoved off the covers and sat up. The cold air struck him like it had been a bucket of water. He pulled on a pair of sweat pants and padded down the hall to the boy’s room. “What’s wrong?” he asked. “I don’t want to be alone anymore.” Josiah’s dad-heart broke just a little bit when he heard that. “Okay, buddy. Scooch over. I’ll lay down beside you for a couple minutes. Let me have some of those covers.” They nestled in and within a few minutes the boy again. A few minutes after that, he could hear gentle snoring. Josiah had just started to drift off himself when the boy jerked and sat up. “Something fell on my legs!” “What?” “Something fell on my legs.” Josiah began running his hand over the bed covers hoping it wasn’t another water leak. “There’s nothing here,” he determined. The boy argued, “Uh-huh. Look at the leaves.” Josiah strained his eyes in the dark, assisted by the dim glow of the nightlight. He felt around the middle of the bed where the boy’s legs were curled up. There were no leaves. “There’s nothing here. That’s just the bedspread.” Rather than conceding that his imagination was running wild, the boy said, “There’s an animal too. He’s curled up by my feet.” Josiah’s frustration level was escalating. “Bud, there’s nothing here.” “He says he’s a red panda.” “What?” Josiah asked. “The animal. He says he’s a red panda,” the boy replied. “So he just told you that?” “Yeah. He says he’s here to keep me company so I wouldn’t be alone anymore.” Josiah was at a total loss. “Okay. Well, I guess I’ll just lay here for a few more minutes ‘til you go back to sleep. Lay down now.” The boy said, “I don’t need you now. You can go back to your bed.” “You sure?” “Yes. Panda said he’d stay until morning.” Pushed himself out of the bed started walking back to his room, not sure what was happening but relieved that he was going to be able to try and get some more sleep. When you climb back into bed, Agatha asked, “Everything alright?” In the dark, she couldn’t see the peculiar expression on his face.“I guess?” “What does that mean?” she asked, pushing herself up onto an elbow. “Well, he said he was scared and didn’t wanna be alone anymore, but now apparently there’s a panda in the bed with him so everything is okay. But there’s nothing in the bed other than that boy. Oh, and the panda can talk.” “Okay.” “Things are getting kind of weird around here,” Josiah observed. “I know,” Agatha said. “That’s … not the response I was expecting.” “I know,” she said. “I think we need to talk in the morning.” “I know,” she said.
Sleep didn’t come easily for Josiah after that. There was too much strangeness going on. When the alarm started fussing at him at 5:00 AM, he felt like he had barely closed his eyes again. After seeing the boy off to school, Agatha grabbed a cup of coffee and sat down at the kitchen table across from Josiah. “Well?” he said “Well what?” she asked. “Well, what the heck is happening around here?” “Why don’t you start with telling me what really happened outside the other night?” Josiah was caught off guard and it was written all over his face. He tried to recover. “What do you mean the other night? There was a fox. I told you that.” “Josiah. Look at me.” He looked up from his coffee mug. “Do you think I’m a moron.?” “No, ma’am. I do not.” “Do you think I didn’t look outside when I heard that pistol fire?” “Well I had —” “Do you think I didn’t see three men out there with one of them laying on the ground and an animal in the driveway?” “I, uh —” “Do you think I didn’t notice the sand in the driveway to soak up the blood?” “That could have been from the fox,” he said. “It wasn’t.” Agatha said flatly. “Then, no, I reckon you saw all those things.” “So why don’t you tell me what happened?” “It’s kinda hard to explain,” Josiah started fidgeting with some crumbs on the table. He felt like a child that had been caught in mischief. “Try me. I’ve got time.” “Not really sure where to start. Not even really sure what happened.” “How about I tell you something that maybe make it a little bit easier for you?” “Okay.” “This is going to be a little hard for you to hear,” she warned. Josiah was surprised again, “What does that mean?” “That means there’s something about me I haven’t told you.” “Oh boy. Alright. Go for it, I guess.” “I am … Well, we don’t really have a word for it.” “What do you mean we don’t have a word for it?” Josiah asked. “In English. We don’t have a word for it in English,” Agatha explained. “Are you meaning to tell me you speak another language? I thought it was gonna be way different than that by the way you were carrying on.” “I do. But that’s not what I’m trying to tell you.” “Oh.” “I’m … you could say I’m a witch.” Josiah just looked at her. “Did you hear me?” she asked. “I don’t rightly know.” “I said I’m a witch,” she repeated.” “Yep. I heard you then.” Josiah took a deep breath and exhaled. “I’m going to go smoke.” “You don’t smoke.” “I didn’t smoke. I do now.” “You don’t even have any cigarettes.” “I will have. I’m going to the store to get some, and then I’m gonna have a smoke.” Josiah got up from the table snagged his keys off the wall and went to the garage. Agatha heard the garage door raise and then lower. About 15 minutes later she heard the garage door raise again then his car door open and close. Shortly after that she heard a good deal of coughing. When she got outside, Agatha asked, “How’s the smoking going?” “I think it’s gonna take some getting used to.” “You want to pick a different vice?” “Nah. I’ll stick with this for now.” He took another drag and coughed some more. “So do you do spells and potions and whatnot?” “No, I’m not that kind of witch.” “There’s different kinds of witches?” “Yes,” she answered. Leaning against the house, Josiah looked at her kind of sideways. Up until now he’d just been looking out into the tree line trying to wrap his mind around this new revelation. “Are you a good witch?” “Like, am I good at being a witch? Yeah, I guess I am.” “No,” Josiah shook his head. “Are you a good witch, like Glenda the Good Witch?” “Oh. Well, then. I guess it depends whose side you’re on.” “There are sides?” “Yes,” she said, “there are most definitely sides.” “I reckon I’m on your side.” “In that case, I think you’ll find that I’m a good witch.” “Alright,” Josiah said. This was followed by several minutes of silence. Agatha let him have it. She knew this was tough to process. “You said there was several kinds of witches?” “Yes.” “What kind of witch are you?” “I can talk to animals.” “Like, you can talk to the dog?” “I could. I don’t. He’s an idiot.” “That confirms that suspicion.” He looked at his half-smoked cigarette before grinding it under his boot and said, “I’m gonna need something stronger.” “You’d better get on to work.” “Yep.” He walked back into the garage and opened the door to his truck. He turned back toward Agatha. “Seems kinda weird to be going to work after this.” “It’ll be fine. Nothing’s changed.” Josiah laughed an unexpected laugh. Agatha smiled, and he pulled the door closed. After he started the truck up, she knocked on the window. When it had stopped lowering, she said, “Tonight, you can tell me what happened the other night.” “Oh, yeah,” he said, having forgotten he still had his tale to tell. “Have a good day. Be safe.” “You too. Or, yeah. You know.” He raised the window, shaking his head at himself, and starting backing out. At least at work, he only had to deal with putting out fires and helping old ladies who’d fallen down and couldn’t get themselves up.
As a lawyer, I have observed that sometimes judges do things in the courtroom that make you look sideways at everything. They enter orders that run contrary to established precedent. They allow things into evidence that never should have been. And mostly there’s very little you can do about it in the moment. So when my protagonist lost his mind as I was writing a scene and let a judge have it, it was a really cathartic experience for me. It occurred to me in that moment that our characters can say things that authors can’t.
Set Characters Free From Your Inhibitions
We can set characters free from the inhibitions that constrain us. Now what we enable them to do may be a bad personal choice, just as it would have been for us. And they may then have to deal with the consequences of it, just as the protagonist in my story will, but it’s really nice to have that freedom.
Writing fiction is a way to explore the cause and effect of interpersonal relationships. You get to play out the results of your character’s choices in a way that provides insight and wisdom, that may be applicable in your life outside your manuscript.
Give Characters License to Make Poor Decisions
Here’s the snippet from my scene where I let my character say what I can’t [or at least, haven’t yet]:
Judge Stuart held up his hand and cut Jim off, “Just to be clear, you want this court to believe that your guy wasn’t impaired when he was all hopped up on crystal meth?”
“That’s not what I’ve said judge. What I said is they don’t have the expert testimony necessary to—”
“No. I’m not having this. What it sounds like to me is we need to continue this trial out to a later date so y’all can have time to work through these issues. I’m going to deny the Motion to Exclude and continue the trial setting.”
Something inside Jim that controlled his restraint and better judgment broke. “Well, what it sounds like to me is I should have contributed to your re-election campaign.”
Now it was Judge Stuart who was visibly reddening. A gallery full of lawyers who were waiting for their cases to get called was silent. The court reporter’s keys and stopped clacking, and she sat there mouth agape.
“Excuse me?” “You heard me. You sit up there like a tiny tyrant ruling over your fiefdom. You disregard whatever laws don’t suit your agenda. Acting like you’re the heir of the divine right of kings.”
Jim didn’t let up when Judge Stuart leaned over and instructed his law clerk to get one of the sheriff’s deputies into the courtroom.
“But I can’t say your rulings are arbitrary. They do always favor the folks who either contributed to your election or helped with the campaign. So at least you’re consistent. I was wrong about you being a tyrant. You’re more like Pappy O’Daniel. When we all walk in the courtroom, you might as well ask, ‘Is you is or is you ain’t my constituency?’ Because that’s the way the wind’s going to blow. Except there’s no reason for you to ask the question. You already know the answer.”
Jim seemed to run out of steam at that point. He had been standing still about three seconds when a deputy entered the courtroom through the side door. The phone that were out and recording in the gallery were hastily put away before anyone noticed them.
“Mr. Henton, you’re being arrested on civil contempt of court. Deputy.”
You’re probably thinking right now: it wasn’t Pappy O’Daniel who made that statement in O Brother, Where Art Thou. I know. And Jim figures it out later. He’s going to dig his hole a little deeper when the judge asks him to apologize, and he says he’s sorry for attributing the quote to the wrong person.
You may also have thoughts about whether the dialogue is any good. Maybe it is and maybe it’s not. This is the first draft, so it’ll get some more attention later. The point is that we need to set our characters free from the things that would hold us back. They have to make their own decisions, their own mistakes. And eventually, their own reconciliations.
Let Your Characters Say the Things That You Can’t
We authors have life experiences that our characters don’t have. Our story is not theirs. They have to make their own choices. We are the conduit for that. I had a moment this week where I realized characters can say things that authors can’t. I have envisioned delivering different versions of the speech Jim gave. But I’ll never do it. Probably.
But Jim can. And did. Now we’ll see what develops out of that. If I had imposed my own sensibilities on my protagonist, this would be a much more risk-averse story. But I’m trying to separate myself from him so he can do the things that are inherent to his character.
I always thought the idea of writing prompts was dumb. I thought writing prompts were for not-serious writers. They also kind of seemed like cheating the system. If you couldn’t think of something to write about on your own, was writing a scene based on some prompt really going to make you legit?
But then — and this is how it always goes when I form some uneducated, half-cocked opinion.
But then this tweet from Writer’s Digest came across my Twitter feed.
I didn’t even read the article. I just saw the tweet as I scrolled. Then I set about unloading the dishwasher and putting away the kids’ toys. And a scene began to unfold in my head. A scene that was catalyzed by a writing prompt about a truth or dare moment.
I immediately concluded that writing prompts have their place. They can be fun. I might have been [read: definitely was] wrong about their usefulness.
So after we had put the kids to bed and my wife had fallen asleep while we watched our show, I wrote this scene. I’m not saying it’s groundbreaking. But I had fun. And it’s a scene that didn’t exist before and would never have existed had I not seen Writer’s Digest’s idea for a writing prompt.
When the
door closed, Curt looked up from his phone to see three men standing across
from him. One was far more slight of build than the other two.
“Tommy!
It’s good to see you!”
“Thomas,”
the smaller man corrected.
Curt
replied, “I like Tommy. Imma go with that.”
“You
could have called instead sending your guys to pick me up.”
Curt
shrugged, “Yup. But they make a certain … impression. You needed to
understand that I’m not dicking around.”
“I’ve
still got time. The payment’s not due until next week,” Thomas said.
“It’s
due now. You know how I know that? Because that’s what I decided.”
“That’s
not what we agreed to.”
Curt mocked
in an adolescent tone, “’That’s not what we agreed to.”
Thomas said,
“We had a contract.”
“Whatchu
talking about, a contract?”
“We
agreed to terms. You loaned me money. I have three months to pay it back.”
“Yeah,
well, I want it now.”
“No. We
had a contract. Contracts are the fabric of civilization. They’re sacred.
Without contracts, nothing works. You can’t just —“
“I can
and I will. Skip the civics lesson,” Curt said flatly.
“I don’t
have the money.”
“I
know.”
Confused,
Thomas asked, “Then what are we doing here?”
“I wanna
play a game, Tommy.”
“I don’t
have time for games. Play with one of your automatons.”
“Don’t
bring your ten dollar words in here. I will have your tongue cut out just
because it suits me,” Curt replied a little more heatedly than he’d been
before. Thomas knew that Curt was intellectually insecure in this situation. He
couldn’t help but provoke him, even knowing that it may lead to rash behavior.
It was
Thomas’s turn to shrug now, “Look you got me out of bed. I don’t have your
money. I’ll have it by the time it’s due.”
“No, you
won’t,” Curt said.
“You’re
right. I probably won’t. But I’ve still got some time.”
“For a
smart guy, you don’t seem to get it. There’s no more time. Well, that’s not
true. There is time, just not for that. You know what time it is?”
Thomas
responded, “Game time. Woo!”
“What? What
was that? What did you just do?!”
“You
don’t remember the Bulls? Mid 90s? Before tip-off, they’d say, ‘What time is
it? Game time! Woo!’”
Curt
shook his head quickly, like a dog trying to get rid of an itch in its ear. “Of
course, I remember the Bulls, man. I just wasn’t expecting it from 40-something
white dude. Or like, right then.”
Thomas
conceded, “Yeah, I was uncomfortable. It just kind of happened.”
Curt
realized things were getting away from him a bit. He leaned forward in his
chair and looked directly at Thomas, who was still standing in the same spot, “Whatever.
Back to the business at hand. You owe me money, and I want to play a game.”
“Alright.”
“Truth
or dare.”
Thomas
was puzzled, “What, like the game you played as a kid?”
“Yup.
That’s the one.”
“Are you
kidding? That’s how you want to do this?”
Curt
smiled and sat back a bit, knowing he’d reasserted control of the situation, “Yup.
You owe a debt. I’m calling it in. So … truth? Or dare?”
“I can’t
ev — I just — really? This is nuts,” Thomas said.
“Pick.”
“Dare, I
guess.”
Curt
laughed and addressed the men on either side of Thomas, “Oh, man! Tommy’s got
secrets!”
“Of
course I’ve got secrets. I’m a lawyer,” Thomas replied.
“Well,
now you have to pick truth. I love to hear secrets,” Curt said with lust in his
voice.
“No.”
“What do
you mean ‘no’? This isn’t a negotiation.”
“No.”
With an
edge of anger, Curt asked, “Do you know what I can do to you?”
“Yes.
The answer is still no. They’re not my secrets to tell. They go to the grave
with me.”
“That
might be sooner than you’d like.”
Thomas
didn’t skip a beat before asking, “You have any money on you?”
“This
isn’t a time for you to be asking questions.”
“Just
work with me a minute. You got any cash?”
“Course
I do,” Curt answered.
“Pull it
out.”
“Watch
yourself, Tommy,” Curt said. But he reached into his pocket and pulled out a
messy stash of money.
“It’s Thomas.
Hand me a bill. Just that one on top there.”
Curt looked
up from his money and raised his eyebrows at Thomas, “That’s a hundred bucks.
You’re already in it for ten G’s, and you wanna add another hundred to it? Be
my guest.”
“This
isn’t going on my tab. Hand it to me,” Thomas asserted.
Curt
started to hand the bill over, but didn’t let go when Thomas clasped the other
end. The money was taut between their hands. Curt finally let go with a laugh.
Thomas said,
“Good. Now, I’m your lawyer. And I can keep your secrets too. I can never tell
anyone the things you tell me.”
Curt’s
eyes brightened. “Anything? I can tell you anything and you can’t tell anyone?”
“No one.
Ever,” Thomas affirmed.
“Not
even the cops.”
“Especially
not the cops.”
“Why
didn’t anyone ever tell me this?” Curt asked.
“You
ever talk to a lawyer before?”
“No,” Curt
answered with contempt. “Only lawyer I ever had was the one they appoint you.
And she was getting paid by the same folks as was paying the D.A.”
Thomas
held up a finger and said, “Listen. There’s only one exception.”
“There’s
always a catch,” Curt said, readopting his defensive posture. “Give me my money
back.”
“No.
This is important. You can never tell me that you’re going to kill somebody.”
“What?”
“You can
tell me anything, and it’s privileged – that means I can’t tell anyone. But you
can’t tell me if you’re planning to kill someone, because I’d have to
report that.”
“So if
Imma put a dude down for snitching, I can’t tell you that.”
“Right.”
“But if
I do it, I can tell you about it afterward. And you can’t tell anyone.”
