Writing on Purpose

In the summer of 1990, I took my first steps away from a soft-cubicled work day. I had some money available, and my employer at the time offered an extended-leave-without-pay benefit that I decided would fit me just fine for a year, anyhow. I was desperate, see, to learn if I really could write — not just for my eyes and my family’s and friends’, but for the eyes of complete strangers.

(There was a secondary purpose, too — what I once described as my potatoes-in-a-colander purpose. I may write about that later. Not now.)

As I’ve written before, by then I’d been subscribing to the Compuserve Information Service, or CIS, for a couple years. There I’d “met” people from all across the country, especially writerly sorts of people. A lot of them gave me a lot of good ideas where I might want to live during my year’s experiment.

I wasn’t familiar with many of these places (sheltered life to that point, dontcha know: 40 years in New Jersey, and that was about it). So I opted to take a week or two simply to visit the ones that seemed most interesting. And then I’d decide.

At the top of the list was a small city in Oregon. I didn’t move there, as it happened. But I figured as long as I was going to be on the west coast, I might as well make a real trip of it. Happily, another of my CIS acquaintances would be running a weekend writing workshop in southern California, at the very start of the trip.

That acquaintance’s name was — ha ha, still is — David Gerrold. A well-respected writer of science fiction (that’s the cover of one of his earliest books at the top of this post), David had impressed my wannabe-writer’s mind with the astringency and wit of his comments on the LitForum board, which he sort of lobbed into the conversation just before wandering away for a couple weeks. (After which he’d toss in another one, without breaking stride, making me wonder if he’d just been lurking the whole time.)

Anyway, on the side David also ran an occasional workshop — the one I signed up for — called “Writing on Purpose.” And it was, as they say, a mind-blower.

Aside from the title, I took away from the workshop primarily two things.

First, what was practically the workshop’s mantra:

Ask the next question.

By that, David meant — literally — that as you write your novel or short story, you ask yourself any and all questions you can think of about the story. Not all of it will end up in the finished work. But you must be able to know your characters and your story sufficiently well that no matter what question might come up in a reader’s mind, what does appear in the finished work supports a plausible answer.

(Which was the other, unspoken, half of the mantra: Know how to answer any of those questions. A reader — an editor, say — might suddenly ask you out of the blue, “Now why did Character A do that?” Or even something really elementary like, “What was she wearing when she went out that day?” If the question stopped you cold, if you couldn’t even toss off some reasonable, improvised-on-the-spot response, then you simply didn’t know your own work — your own PURPOSE — well enough.)

And finally, David said, you will run out of questions. That’s when your story is done.

The other thing I got from the workshop, the really mind-altering thing, was the experience of a little exercise which David walked us through on Sunday, the course’s last day.

In it, he dimmed the lights. He had us close our eyes as well, and relax, adopt an easy posture, one which would not become a distraction over the next 15 or 20 minutes (or however long it took). And then he proceeded to demonstrate to us how the “Ask the next question” mantra could open up our writing universes, our writing minds.

What he did was recite a long series of questions interspersed with gentle imperatives. For instance (this isn’t a transcript, just want to give you for now a sense of how it went):

• You’re going to meet a character of yours, from a story you’ve written or going to write.
  [Pause, for a few seconds’ duration, to let that sink in.]
• You approach a building from a city street. [Pause]
• What does the building look like? [Pause]
• What kind of exterior does the building have? Is it brick? Stucco? Glass? If it’s glass, is the glass smoky or clear? [Pause]
• You reach for the handle or knob of the door which will admit you to the building. [Pause]
• What does the door look like? What is it made of? Is it carved or flat? [Pause] What about the doorknob? [Pause] Is there a door knocker?

And so on, all the way to some sort of theater or auditorium. Backstage, you pick out a costume for your character. You visit the makeup and lighting departments as well, you talk with a gaffer and a cameraman who is going to film what takes place on the stage…

And then you yourself are onstage. Sitting in a pool of light, surrounded by darkness, in a chair.

Another spotlight comes on and you see, just a few feet away from you, a matching chair, which is empty.

You hear footsteps. You look up, peer into the darkness behind the other chair…

…and there is your character, wearing the attire and the haircut you chose, posture exactly as you imagined, walking with exactly the pace and rhythm which you knew he or she would have. Your character sits down in the empty chair, and looks across the short distance which separates the two of you. Your character smiles (“What kind of smile is it? Does your character show teeth? Or are the lips drawn tight? Does the skin around the eyes crinkle?”).

And then your character asks you a question.

What is that question? And what do you say in reply?

…at which point the lights came up, and — shivering with excitement — we tore into the notebooks* and scratch paper on the tables before us, writing furiously for a half-hour or so until exhausted.

I want to tell you, the hair stood up on my neck when my character spoke. (Even now, I can feel myself on the verge of a shiver.) I believe my eyes actually watered a bit.

But the conversation which ensued was anything but frightening.

They say about many experiences that “you always remember your first time.” That was it, for me. My purpose in writing — at least in writing about that character — suddenly coalesced from thin air, a cinder block conjured up from nothing at all.

“Nothing”? No, correction, not nothing. From something simple, but simultaneously complex, enormously complex: from simply asking (and answering) the next question.

What a great experience. Hard to imagine that I might not want to write after that.

* Yes, real notebooks, cardboard- or spiral-bound or looseleaf paper, not notebook computers. Remember, this was 1990.