These musings, written between March 2016 and December 2017, began as brief blog posts. They were put together around the time that James was developing  some of his thoughts, feelings, and intuitions behind his Leaving Home Trilogy. Not only do they provide an insight into the sort of family life we’ve all led, in one form or another.  But they also offer an insight into the writing process itself, with the occasional thought-provoking question for any writer.

The following “musings” have been arranged from the oldest to the most recent pieces at the end so you can read through the evolution of James’ thoughts.

It Begins with Your First Breath

March 28, 2016

At the moment of your birth you began to receive impressions of the world you were born into. The impressions were environmental—the emotional feeling, tone that surrounded you—and physical—touch, sound, sight.

At the time of your birth your brain hadn’t yet developed sufficiently to record your experiences in any other way. But you were recording your responses nonetheless. Those impressions were arising from both the external world around you as well as what was going on inside of you. Your experiences were pre-verbal, that is to say pre-cognitive, and they were already beginning to form what will become the unconscious “ghosts of childhood” aspect of your life experience.

So your life, as is everyone’s, is a composite of your more mature conscious awareness and your unconscious content—the impressions that were recorded beneath the level of your awareness throughout your whole life.

During your infancy up to about two years old your child’s brain cannot distinguish between inside and outside. It’s all one and the same. But as you grow that distinction becomes more apparent and is often very frustrating leading to what some parents call “the terrible twos.”

But what’s actually happening is that the child’s brain is growing in its ability to distinguish between “me” and “not me” and a rudimentary self is emerging.

What’s important here is that the early and ongoing unconscious impressions can grip and hold you, resulting in feelings, impressions, and behaviors that, although they are yours, are not wholly within your conscious control.

Just think of a time when you did something or said something that surprised you. It’s quite common for people to say things like—”Where did that come from?”, or “I can’t believe I said that”, or “I didn’t realize I was doing that”.

For another example—have you ever been driving and when you reached your destination you couldn’t remember how you got there?

Or have you ever walked into a room and couldn’t remember what you were doing there?

These experiences are evidence that there is more to your behavior than meets your conscious awareness.

Many people feel the need to change their lives but discover that it isn’t as easy as it sounds. Lose weight. Begin a project. Change how they feel about something. But they feel gripped by internal “forces”—the Ghosts of Childhood—that have more control than your conscious intentions. These unconscious forces, what’s called unconscious content, can be far stronger than whatever they have set out to do. It’s a common experience—when have you experienced this stuckness?

Does What You Believe Belong to You?

March 28, 2016

What a silly question. How can it be otherwise?

Are you religious? A believer in one faith or another? Were your parents believers in that faith as well? Your extended family? Your grandparents? Your neighborhood? Your nation?

From your birth, were you given a chance to choose from a variety of religious faiths or perhaps no faith at all?

Were you even taught, as I was, that when you walk past a church other than Catholic (fill in your own denomination) you were to spit? Or should you as much as step foot into another church, which constituted a mortal sin, and did not rush to immediately confess yourself, you were liable to be plunged into hell for all eternity without recourse or remedy (again fill in your own sin)?

Have you tried to deconstruct what you believe and arrive at your own conclusions as to the verity and validity of what you believe? Did you succeed? Some do. But most give up the effort because it takes painstaking and meticulous commitment to trace what one believes to its core and thus be able to question it, dissect it, and eventually get it to evaporate (sort of).

This is all true, in one form or another, of all religious dogma and doctrine. And these pronouncements have been in place and preached for millennia so they did not originate when you came into this world. I ask again—were you given a choice?

The point here, using the example of religion, is that the task of uprooting and dissolving unconscious beliefs brings with it an inordinate demand because much of what must be identified and unraveled is buried out of sight in the unconscious. Only and until life visits you with a belief-breaking event does it (in most cases) even arise to mind that you might be embedded in an illusion—or at least some precept that no longer works for you.

These are the thought-provoking insights that I explore in my Leaving Home Trilogy.

Writing About the Process of Writing

July 5, 2016

I’ve never seen a writer write a blog about what it’s like during the process of writing.

What’s the day-to-day like—really like?

What’s it like when everything is flowing?

What’s it like when you have to pull teeth to get a sentence on paper?

Not just talking about the craft of writing, but the work of it. That’s what I now intend to do. Report on my work as I am doing it. I’m going to do this not just because I’ve never seen it. I’m going to do it because I fully expect it will make me a better writer for the effort.

As I’m here at the edge of this final book in my trilogy project, I have no real idea what will happen. Sure I have ideas and I, no doubt, will put many of them on these pages. But the depth of what will happen, that’s another story.

I’ll write about the good times and the bad times; when words fall into place and I sit back and read beautiful sentences; when I just don’t hit a wall but merge with the wall so I feel like I’m inside of it and can’t get out, forward or back.

Is that “writer’s block”? I don’t think so. I can always write my way out of jams. It’s more than that. It happens when I feel lost, when I don’t have a feel for the story so I don’t know what to do next. Am I procrastinating? Waiting for inspiration? What the hell is happening?

Anyway, that’s what this pieces will be about for now.

Writing—the work.

I invite you to join me. I hope you will.

How Do You Envision Your Imagination?

January 12, 2017

I see my imagination as a field impenetrable to light, a black opacity up from which ideas, feelings, characters, stories emerge from my investigation and choice. They are immaterial, invisible, and they become as concrete and palpable as this chair I’m in, as the computer I’m using, as the figures that people my paragraphs and pages.

Reflections

January 16, 2017

The world is a mirror reflecting other mirrors.

Mirrors upon Mirrors.

I’m at Starbucks. I see a man with a pot belly. I think of Buddha. Not as a representation but as a justification for a redemption of the man’s pot belly.

Have you ever seen Buddha’s belly? It’s huge.

The man at Starbucks sits down with a medium cup of coffee and milk (I don’t know Starbuck’s jargon that describes sizes) and a pastry—perhaps the cause of his belly, perhaps not.

As I look around, all the men, including me, have potbellies except one, a football player type. We all mirror one another and are mirrors for one another whether we’re aware of it, or whether we like it or not. We are mirrors for all pot bellies around the world. Mirror upon mirrors.

Editor, Maxwell Perkins, circa 1943

Fitzgerald, Wolfe, and Hemingway

 January 20, 2017

I’m reading a wonderful book—Max Perkins: Editor of Genius by A. Scott Berg.  Perkins was the editor for F. Scott, Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, and Thomas Wolfe, among others. It’s a very intimate portrait of Perkins as he related to his writers and as he himself grew as a man.

It’s very revealing of who these men were in their day-to-day lives, their brilliances, struggles, rages, and elations and how Perkins, whom they respectfully and affectionately called Max, managed them. He was editor, mentor, psychiatrist, financial advisor, and a deep, deep friend. His belief in them kept them going. He inspired them to produce at their best.

It opened my mind to the realities they endured and I felt support by Max.

I’ve found it more than just worth the read.

Behind the Obvious

January 23, 2017

There is always something behind the obvious. Always.

It’s what creates mystery and curiosity. If life were utterly transparent, many people would just check out. As Hamlet considers—do we repudiate the hurts and insults of life and take ourselves out? But what follows? That’s the stopper. There are times when ending it is not so bad an option. The meaninglessness. The madness. The who knows what? So why do we stay?

Because of what’s behind the obvious, which is either compelling and we want to discover, or terrifying and we’re not up to the risk. The Behind-the-Obvious is the dark and the light magic of life, the obsession for those who can’t resist and the bludgeon for those who are bled of courage and can’t act.

Subtext or no Subtext

January 25, 2017

I’ve been re-reading Hemingway lately. And I still don’t get why he is highly praised.

Recently I read a piece on Hemingway by critic Harold Bloom. In it he says that Hemingway’s power was found in his style: that is: short declarative sentences. That’s pretty clear, but why?

Bloom argues that Hemingway’s intention was not to write what he wanted his reader to feel and fill in. Said positively, he wanted to create a prose through which the reader could experience the background, the emotional background, for which the words were just symptomatic (my words.) Hemingway did not respect writers who “overwrote” as he called it.

For the reader to use his or her imagination to fill in the subtext—perhaps not even the subtext but the actual story for which the text is only an indication, a pointer to the reality of the narrative is for me, intellectually interesting but emotionally vacant. One such example is one of Hemingway’s short stories, “A Clean Well-Lighted Room”, which is the story about an old, deaf man in a tavern, which is actually a story about nothingness. You might argue that nothingness and emptiness are synonymous, so I got it. Maybe.

But I didn’t feel it and I didn’t read to engage in a math exercise. I find Hemingway flat.

Dot Net Just in Case

January 27, 2017

Recently I came up with a new title for the third book of my trilogy. What’s it going to be, I thought? And then I decided—“When Angels Die”.

The first thing I did was check with GoDaddy.com only to find out that Whenangelsdie.com is not available.

So next step, go online and see who has it. Maybe they’re not using it. Turns out it’s the name of a heavy metal band that describes itself as a combination of beauty and melody contrasted against unparalleled aggression and chaos. Aggression and chaos for damn sure. Beauty and melody like the scrape of a large plow on concrete. What a downer. Dot.net is available. So I bought it just in case. 

A Gambler’s Anatomy

January 30, 2017

I’ve just finished reading a review by Kurt Andersen of Jonathan Lethem’s new book A Gambler’s Anatomy in the New York Times Book Review Section.

Andersen wrote that he likes Lethem’s “fundamental literary ratios—plot-to-pensées, comedy-to-tragedy—and the prose is a pleasure, lucid sentences that swerve and surprise without being show-offy”.

Andersen’s statement is a condensed and concise lesson in writing fiction.

Plot-to-Pensées (Plot-to-Reflection or Thought) — Pure plot novels, no matter the twists and turns, are mechanical. No matter the content, a heavily plot novel is predictable. The most obvious example of this predictability are Romance Novels. Read one and you’ve read them all. They are without thought or reflection because pensée would get in the way of the titillation. A moment’s reflection would strip the fantasy of its power and drain the reading of any purpose or pleasure. There is a need for plot to shape and control the narrative. But plot alone is like a skeleton without a face.

When a Work Comes to Life

February 1, 2017

Autobiographical fiction, which is what I am writing at this time, is neither purely autobiographical nor is it purely fiction.

As the story emerges it creates its own demands—dramatic, narrative, poetic—and those demands take more of a lead than anything I may have thought in advance. That’s what I love about writing—the discovery. All my stories to date are based on the phrase, Inspired by Real Life Events.

And that’s true. They all happened in real life.

But those events, as they occurred, did not have the need for clarity, unity, coherent characters, and a narrative line holding them together. They just happened. Now I am shaping them to bring a reader along. It’s this last point—bringing the reader along—that turns what happens in life into a genuine “story”, a consciously directed telling with the intent to capture, hold, and move the reader.

Very often real life doesn’t do that. It can’t. Real life is not a work. Much too much goes on, is implied, is layered to accurately and precisely write it down. The amount of detail alone, in any one moment, would be both overwhelming let alone boring. So choices have to be made. And it’s in that process of consciously choosing that the “story” comes to life. Because choices are being made to serve the story the result is neither purely autobiographical—details are added that hadn’t actually occurred—nor is it purely fictional for the same reason.

The Highest Value I Can Imagine

February 3, 2017

Being an atheist doesn’t rule out a search for God. My writing, both fiction and non-fiction, is driven by the idea of God. Even though I’ve long abandoned the God(s) of Western Civilization—in my heart my search goes on. Sometimes it’s explicit, but mostly implied.

In my Leaving Home Trilogy the Catholic Church is a central character. But that’s about religion. Religions rise up out of someone’s notion of the supernatural and that’s where God comes in. At least in history. But for me God means the largest, grandest, the most extensive perfection imaginable. So every time I write, I reach for the best I can realize so I am always in the hunt.

All Experience Is an Arch through which Shines “A World Beyond”

February 6, 2017

By a world beyond, I do not mean a science fiction world, nor do I mean a supernatural world, nor do I mean a paranormal world. What I refer to is the everyday world we experience as we as we go about our lives. It’s the world that is present in its detail and depth that often goes unseen, unperceived. It’s the world of subtlety and nuance that lies hidden in habit, in what we call normality. And in what we take for granted.

As a writer, the task is to bring that beyond world to perception either directly or by implication. But first the writer must experience that subtle world. What you don’t know you can’t write about. What you don’t see you can’t describe. Most important, what you don’t experience you cannot convey in depth in any way that’s compelling.

For example, in my experience, and what I’ve just written about in my most recent novel, When Angels Die, seeing the color of a red rose I asked a number of people where does the color reside on the rose? Almost all of them said on the surface, or words to that effect. When you see the rose the color that you are seeing is on the surface, when in fact the color emerges out from the core of the rose. When you see a red rose the redness of the rose has not been applied to it like color would be applied to a wall. The redness and the rose are equivalent. They are inseparable. Redness is part of the identity of the rose itself.

What about character? When I was 13, I was in a street gang called the Royal Lancers. It was normal. almost demanded. that the guys kept toothpicks in their mouths. Without one you were considered weak. Did the toothpick emerge out of the core of who I was then? Absolutely! It emerged from the world beyond, from my deep almost desperate need to belong somewhere.

At that time I would have done almost anything to feel accepted, to feel valued. And as silly as it may sound now, my identity was wrapped up in that toothpick. That was the world beyond, implied by my keeping that toothpick in my mouth.

On the surface it was just a piece of wood, or a piece of behavior, but it suggested depth to anyone who was looking beyond the surface. And that’s an example of what I mean by a world beyond.

What examples do you have in your writings, with regard to your characters or even you yourself as the narrator, that point to a world beyond?

I believe that implying a world beyond is what makes the story compelling, thereby keeping the reader’s attention. The reader will sense that world, but it’s not obvious. And when the reader connects with that subtle world the story becomes fulfilling, not just interesting, but fulfilling and meaningful.

Mining Intuition

February 14, 2017

A logic teacher I once had told us that an intuition is like a container, it comes packed with the information you will need in order to realize what you sensed in that intuitive moment, but it must be unpacked.

That statement describes how I go about writing.

I begin with an intuition or what I call “an intuitive hit.” Another way to say this is that I begin with an idea that is emotionally meaningful to me and is pregnant and filled with possibilities. But the details of the story unfold only as I unpack the hit.

How do I know that this will work?

Because of my emotional response, the resonance I feel, the conviction that I am on to something. I have been touched deeply and it’s worth pursuing.

I don’t know what those possibilities are when I begin. In fact there’s no way I can know. Because an intuition is an invitation into mystery, the mystery of the story.

I don’t mean a mystery story, intuitions can result in love stories, sports stories, political stories. I don’t believe you can have an intuition sufficient to motivate you to write outside of what you are usually are interested in.

So when an intuitive hit occurs, I have to pay attention. It’s the entranceway into a gold mine of feelings, images, ideas that become the marrow of the project, a book, a short story, a screenplay.

For example, one of my favorite themes is Leaving Home. I don’t mean the obvious understanding of leaving home—moving to a different house in a different city, or state, or country for that matter. That’s a superficial meaning of the phrase Leaving Home.

The home I am referring to is the psychological home we all carry with us, in the unconscious mostly, as a result of the experiences in our early family life. To leave home deeply, fully, and effectively, requires effort and self-awareness, which are qualities that do not come with birth but must be developed.

In the first book of my Leaving Home trilogy I began with a one-line hit: “Shot and a beer,” Uncle Bo shouted as he walked through the back door, his wife, Irene, in tow. This moment is the first line of my first book, Worship of Hollow Gods. The page opens on a kitchen scene in the home of my parents in Detroit in 1950. Relatives are gathering for a poker and pinochle party— a family ritual. From that intuitive hit a 203-page novel emerged.

I say emerged.

I have learned to trust such intuitive hits and know that they contain all that I need to complete whatever the project is.

Because of my trust, I don’t then lay out a plot. Why not? Because I don’t know the plot. The plot will emerge as the story is being told. Or to say it another way, as the story tells itself as the characters interact and I follow along.

What I do next, after the hit; I begin writing because, in truth, there is nothing else to do. I build my stories around the interaction of the characters organically evolving in situations. And as long as I am honest with the storytelling, the characters who exist inside the intuition will come forth. It’s my job to listen and follow.

I do not impose on a story. That’s to say, I don’t manipulate them to make sure a plot works. I let them lead and the plot comes to life. In that way my writing is very intimate, of the moment, producing a fluidity that makes the reading easy, carrying the reader along. My process makes writing joyful for me—a process of discovery for me and the reader.

The moments in the story are authentic to the story because they belong to the story and not to me. They emerge out of situations and are not known beforehand. This approach protects against predictability. I’m sure you’ve read books or seen movies that from the first moments you know how they will end. You can almost predict the development. That takes the pleasure out of reading, out of being the author’s imaginative partner.

Intuitive “hits” don’t just happen at the beginning of writing, and, of course, when I feel them they must be followed throughout the storytelling. They can change the course of the story and can take it in directions you have to explore to be able to express. Trust your intuitive hits, they are loaded.