Robert Butler - From Where You Dream - The Process of Writing Fiction

I'll be taking a few notes, nothing evaluative; I just want to get it down so I'll know where to come back to.

Sandra: I don't remember how old I was, but I walked through the streets of Liverpool to visit my grandfather, who had a barbershop somewhere. It was probably nearby somewhere, but I thought it was a long way away. And I went to the shop to visit him, and he was shaving. He used an old-fashioned razor. He stopped what he was doing — I think he said something like "Hello luv" to me. And he went over to the window and he picked up a pair of earrings, which were in the window. I don't know what he was doing selling earrings, but they were in the window and he just picked them out and gave them to me and I put them on. I really loved them. My wonderful grandfather. My mother never understood why I liked him when she didn't, but I think that was one of the crucial moments forming a relationship with him.

ROB: Excellent, that's going to be very useful. That gives us a lot of good stuff to work with. Who else?

Mary Jane: This is about the day after my father died. My brother and I drove out to the funeral home to make arrangements for his funeral, and walked in the door, and it was like a movie cliche of a funeral parlor. It had this really thick carpeting on the floor and heavy curtains; it was dark inside and there was air-conditioning and it was really cold. And then the fellow who was the funeral director — you know, black mustache and a cheap suit — exactly what you would expect, I guess. We went in and sat down, my brother and I, across the table from each other, and went through the checklist of what you have to do to arrange a funeral. My father wanted to be cremated, but what we didn't realize is that by law you have to be cremated in a casket, so we had to choose a casket for him anyway. So we took a tour of the funeral parlor; we got to look at all the caskets, and my brother and I decided we would buy the cheapest thing, which was a cardboard box, which in a way is kind of shameful, but we also looked at each other and thought if we did anything else Dad would kill us if he were here because he wouldn't want to spend the money. Some weird things happened, like we sat there across from each other arranging this funeral, trying not to laugh the day after our father had died, because it was all such a cliche. And I said, "Can I pay for this with a credit card?" and I thought: this is weird, to pay for this with a credit card. And the last thing that happened was somebody had to go and identify the body, and my big, tough, army-helicopter-pilot older brother didn't want to do it, so I did it. I went in and saw my father wrapped up in a blanket, laid out in this room, and somehow I had to touch his head and he was so cold that I thought, "He's been in the refrigerator overnight." It was very strange.

ROB: Thank you, Mary Jane. Brandy?

Brandy: When I was three years old, I went on vacation to Broken Bow, Oklahoma, at Arrowhead State Park, and I was seesawing with both of my brothers, the older brother on one side of me and the next oldest on the other. The middle brother always had middle-child syndrome and couldn't stand me, and he got mad at one point and decided to get off, but he didn't realize that my legs were in the handle part of the seesaw, so when he did, it shot me up in the air and I broke my leg, and I had to drive all the way back home with a broken leg.

ROB: Thank you. That works too. Leslie?

Leslie: When I was small, I grew up in a house surrounded by hay fields and pecan orchards, and in the middle

of the fall, about this time of year, my cousin Gaines — who looked a little like Clark Kent, with big bottle glasses — would, get on his tractor, and he would mow all the hay and leave hundreds of bales of hay the size of a Volkswagen out on the edge of the pecan orchard. Then my brother and I would climb up on the hay bales and jump from bale to bale and play king of the mountain. The goal was to knock the other person off the bale. When I was very small, I couldn't get onto the hay bales because they were round, and sometimes they'd be so big that I couldn't get a grip in smooth hay without digging into it — and it's hard to dig into it because it's real dense — so I'd have to find two bales that were close together and crawl into that narrow space in between and inch away up sideways, and my brother would knock me off and sometimes it hurt really bad falling down.

ROB: Thank you, Leslie. If the four of you are serious about continuing, then that's probably all we're going to need. Who'd like to go first for the retelling? Come on, Sandra.

All right, I want you to remember that you're all in this together. I want you essentially to take on Sandra's consciousness, participate with her, really try to see this scene — a little bit ahead of her even.

Sandra, I want you to relax, clear your head. Don't consider your words. Speak in full narrative sentences, but don't worry about your grammar and syntax. Just try to keep things flowing, and just let what comes out of your mouth be simply an articulation of what's going on in that cinema of your own mind.

Let's take you from the first moment you step into the barbershop, Sandra. Pick us up there, and understand that the goal is to articulate only in the moment through the senses.

Sandra: I can see a lot of men pushing around me.

ROB: OK, you've just now generalized. "A lot of men" is a generality. You take that first step in the door and you stop. You place yourself in that room and I want you, like the camera eye, to see it in its fullness — look from left to right, up to down, whatever, but let's see what you're seeing in the moment.

Sandra: There are men sitting.

ROB: You've generalized once again. Let's start at one specific spot in the room. If you're taking in a generalized view of the room, it's not really general because, in fact, there's a picture full of detail, but because we're not painters — we're fiction writers — we have to place those details in a sequence, don't we? So take the step in, and I want you to look at a specific spot and see that spot, then move your eyes, and move them, and move them.

Sandra: OK, I go through the door.

ROB: That's also summarized: "I go through the door." There's no engagement of the moment with the doorknob, no sound of the door opening, no feeling of the exchange of air between the outside and barbershop. Do you understand? There are so many moment-to-moment sense impressions going through the door that were left out. What we're looking for is every moment-to-moment detail. But let's not get hung up at the door. You have entered and have just closed the door behind you. You are in your first moment completely in the barbershop. Let your eye fall on one specific thing right now.

Sandra: It's a man.

ROB: Now you've started this with a summarizing state-ment. I want you to see it in the moment specifically. What is the first feature on that man's whole being? What's the first thing your eyes come to? Engage him with your eyes in the moment. So tell me the first thing you see about that man.

Sandra: I can't see him properly.

ROB: OK, that's probably because you're trying to remember him from the literal event. What I want you to do now is invent him. Make him a sensual reality in this cinema of your mind, in your imagination. Take a moment. You've just touched the brass of that doorknob and it felt cool in the very center of the palm of your hand. You've turned it and you've leaned into the door and it has creaked open and a little bell tinkles at the top and the smell of powder and..

Sandra: Shaving cream..

ROB: Good. Pick it up. What else comes out of the air as you're just stepping through the door.

Sandra: The sound of the strap as he presses the blade.

ROB: OK, the sound of the strap — what is that sound? — give me that sound.