The Genesis of Any Story
More later, of course, but for now let’s suffice it to say that the genesis of any story is when you feel that unmistakable sharp, poignant prick of the emotions that resonates with the reality of your conscious experience. This often heralds the beginning of a story. I liken this to finding bits of precious stones caught in a web or realm of meaning that surrounds you. First you sense a vibration, find a few diamonds in the rough, chase them down, and discover the mother load.
A writer cannot know in advance what may, as Curry puts it in her book, “kindle the spark.” The spark that invariably causes the mind to begin its marvelous and fantastic journey of sorting through the rag and bone shop of experiences that may become a story. Or, as she says,
What the writer needs to approach his writing is that genesis or source, that kindling spark that sets his imagination afire. Without this he could spend a lifetime stacking up dead timber in terms of story material and never have anything to start the fire (page 21).
When I first began No Journey’s End I had several firm advantages in terms of raw data. For one thing, I have been a lifelong diarist and began detailed daily entries in 1975, which I’ve kept for over forty years running. I haven’t missed many days. In fact, I’ve not missed more than 20 days out of the last 14,600. I have them here with me now in this room. In future FURTHER NOTES I will scan a few as examples of what I will be talking about in terms of how to keep simple, yet worthwhile details in daily records. A truly invaluable tool for any writer. But, as I say, I also had hundreds of pages of letters, pictures, and notes from Leslie to work with; a library of great books; and Internet access to data bases, including the Los Angeles Times and Toronto Star newspapers. There was more.
But when would lightning strike the wood pile and ignite the dazing-coloured lights of my imagination? Then something else happened. I felt another sharp tug on the wire…
Déjà vu
Director Bennett Miller’s film Capote, starring Philip Seymour Hoffman in the title role, came out in 2005, but I didn’t see it until several years later. However, when I did see the film it caused me to reread a Christmas present my ex-in-laws gave me in ’88, Gerald Clarke’s biography Capote (1988).
Truman Capote and another favorite author of mine, Norman Mailer, appeared on David Susskind’s program Open End in 1959 to talk about writers and writing. Mailer defended the Beats, such as Jack Kerouac, when Capote attacked them. “None of them can write,” he said, not even Mr Kerouac…[It] isn’t writing at all—it’s typing.” Ouch. Okay, so Truman wasn’t right about everything, but when I turned the page to 317 in Clarke’s book something else bit me. Hard. Here’s what I read:
[Truman’s] mind was really on nonfiction. “I like the feeling that something is happening beyond and about me and I can do nothing about it.”
In that mood he opened The New York Times on Monday, November 16, 1959. There, all but hidden in the middle of page 39, was a one-column story headlined, “WEALTHY FARMER, 3 of FAMILY SLAIN.” The dateline was Holcomb, Kansas, November 15…
That pricked my emotions. Those of you reading No Journey’s End will recognize the similarity to the spark that sets my story off at the end of chapter one, “A Certain World.” Reading the Times led Capote to write In Cold Blood. Now some parallel, inciting incident was about to set off my nonfiction novel as well:
I wasn’t writing to the girl with the ‘X’ on her forehead. I was writing to the beautiful young woman with the dark hair, pouty lips, and wide-eyed good looks. When I read about Leslie getting her second chance to be free of that madness, I felt duty-bound to let her in on my own journey for freedom and independence. I felt sure she’d have one hell of a story to tell if I met her. Try as I might, I could not fall asleep right away. This was my second restless night in a row. I cut out the newspaper photo of Leslie and propped it up on my desk where I could readily see it. When I woke up in the morning, the first thing I did was to re-read the “Ex-Manson Girl Returns to Court with New Image” Toronto Star clipping, and then reviewed those “then and now” photos and dog-eared pages from Helter Skelter.
I had the distinct, hedonic sense that I was about to seduce somebody famous.
The Writer’s Blood
You see the parallels, with a twist. That’s the point at which my story takes off from. My theory is this: The proposed sense of recognition in any creative writing involves achieving a good match between the present experience and our “rag and bone shop” of language, history, and past experience. The reconstruction we do in creative nonfiction may differ from the original events that we “know” we have experienced before in some form—and even though they must be condensed and refined into a coherent tale, they are still nonetheless “true.” Or in the case of pure fiction, not as true perhaps. Or perhaps, even more so. But it’s all based on some fundamental, conscious experience that belongs only to you, the writer. Only makes sense. Now it’s your job to share what you know to be true with others who feel the same way about what they write and do.
What makes a story isn’t the material you might reach out and collect off the shelves or out of boxes, like packaged fruit. As Curry reminds us, “What makes the story is the tree the writer allows to grow from deep in himself [or herself], sprouting from that first small seed of impelling interest. It is the tree watered by the writer’s blood, fed in the soil of his memory, and towering toward heaven in the sun of his imagination” (page 30).
Now back to work for you and me too. See you again soon I hope with “Further Notes 3, Writing in the Climate of Identity and Realms of Emotion.”
Dr. Peter Chiaramonte 