Secret Tricks of Literary Guinea Pigs
I think it was Stephen King who said that amateurs sit and wait for inspiration, while the rest of us get up and go to work. And it’s true, but not exactly in the way you might think. If you open your eyes and ears, the stories are everywhere, so always keep a notebook on hand and when you’ve absorbed enough of it, just let it get out on paper. Many books have been written trying to explain how to catch that little bit of magic dust you need to become a prolific, successful author. I’ll let you in on a little secret: it doesn’t involve any ivory towers or an altered state of mind. Just focus. Get out of the house and sit at a crowded coffee bar. Even if you think it’s embarassing to sit there alone, don’t be fooled. Sip your drink and listen. Watch. Be on alert, but don’t be a voyeur.
People tend to be emotional exhibitionists when they think no one around them is paying attention because they’re too busy with their smartphones or books. I call them literary guinea pigs. Once I was sitting there, and at the neighboring table there were two women trying to sell a life insurance policy to a potential client. From what you could see, the sales agents presented a convincing offer because it was delivered in a cold, calm and statistical fashion that makes your life sound like an Excel sheet. By the time they switched to pleasantries from the business part, I felt an urge to buy a life insurance too. If you’re serious about writing, you need to develop a serious level of empathy because it allows you to relate better to others and their own experiences that might find their way into your work.
On Christmas Day a few years ago, two sisters died, suffocated by smoke in their house where a fire broke out. When I passed by a few days afterwards, there was a notice of death at the door, two roses and a sheet of Chopin music, highly puzzling. At time I was struggling about an additional plot for my new book and the tragic fate od the two women was just what the editor ordered. They’re commemorated in the opening scene of the book, but I won’t spoil the surprise as to their cause of death in it. You shouldn’t let a lack of knowledge about certain people keep you from writing about them as long as you’re careful about what you choose to do.
I’m no Knausgard and couldn’t be bothered to write something as demanding and self-indulgent as My Struggle, so I’m not afraid of lawsuits from family members. In order to do that they’d have to read the book first and that’s too much to ask for many of them. There’s truth indeed to the saying that fiction is the best reality. In poetry, it’s wonderfully exemplified by the poet Jozefina Dautbegović and her poem about a shop window cleaner, where each strophe is a little story about what he sees in the windows along his route. In the end, she makes a dramatic point which resonated profoundly with me ever since I read it the first time: it’s always the poor that end up as cannon fodder, while their superiors watch it all unfold as if they were sitting in a comfortable theatre box.
When in doubt, just get out and open your eyes. It’s going to come to you. It’s almost as if what I do for living was etched across my face, I keep running into these guinea pigs, gifts that keep on giving. Yesterday I went to my doctor’s office for a check-up. In the waiting room, a woman approached the counter with her child that needed a prescription for diabetes. Next to a bar where I usually hang out is an old joint managed by a man that turned out to actually be living there. When you pass by the place in the evening, you’ll see a flicker of lighting inside and occasionally tv noises. I’ve never seen a patron there yet he keeps it all tidy and you can’t notice any trace of time passing on it. Almost as if it were enbalmed in an invisible protective cloak.
Sometimes it’s fun to completely reinvent yourself when you’re not at home, because you kind of feel you left the old you there, like taking off a glove and now for a while you’re something new, a stranger you embrace. It happened in a romantic little town on the island of Brač. I was sitting in a local bar when a stranger invited himself over and tried to convince me to buy him an ice cream. My new guinea pig didn’t seem like he’d give me a headache so I decided to let my inner George Constanza off his leash a bit. But not a marine biologist or an architect. A psychiatrist from Vienna, on a vacation where I was working on a novel, on a break from my stressful job.
It intrigued him right away so he switched to whining about his relationship with a woman who was a cellist and the strained relationship with her mother. Inevitably, the girl showed up, dragging along her instrument from practice. He already warned her regarding my qualities so I was almost forced into psychoanalysing her. Which was easy since he told me all I needed to know before she arrived. She was perplexed but nevertheless accommodating. He did earn his ice cream in the end, a generous dollop of crisp vanilla seasoned with salted caramel. People are prepared to believe little, embellished stories that make others slightly more interesting than they really are, which is the essence of politics, albeit on a more or less harmless level. After all, I’m not running for office here.
Still, I wouldn’t call writers professional liars. Only the really good ones reach that status. Because that’s what fiction is: a lie, though an enjoyable one. Even when it’s a mosaic composed from particles of truth, it’s the hand that does the writing that has the final say before the editor does his bid to give the text the final touch. There’s been a considerable change when it comes to writing and publishing. Due to the emergence of social media, blogging and websites like Medium, you can skip on editors, publicists and publishers and do it all on your own, throw your piece into the endless pile of other authors that fight for likes and followers in order to monetize their work. In that sense, the old-fashioned road to success is still the best one: printed media, critic reviews and pitching to publicists that know how to put your book into bookstore shelves. It takes much more work because the biggest publishers are traditional players when it comes to basic output.
Sooner or later you have to decide if it’s going to be a hobby or something you’ll invest time, work and resources in. More often than not, it takes reading a truckload of serious fiction to learn the craft yourself. And a bit of talent helps too. The health benefits are immense too: keeping your mind on a safe distance from ignorance and dementia. Develop a routine and keep to it. Queen Elizabeth said she needs to be seen to be believed. Treat your writing the same way: if you want to grow and reach further, you need visibility and continuity. Get your readers used to expecting more material and more often. If you keep them on their toes, they’ll stick around. Only the top of the writing crop can expect to stay on the radar even if they publish a book every couple of years. What makes them great is the ability to keep a certain standard of quality even in lesser works.
Writing is not a chore. If you treat it like that, you’ll no longer look forward to your keyboard. When it’s a profession, there’s a combination of pressure and pleasure to it because that’s when you finally get to the deeper end and don’t have to wait for posthumous feedback. That’s only flattering in someone else’s biography. It’s the road to the deeper end that matters and the lessons it provides for your future work. Andy Warhol said he wears a suit to his studio because it’s just a job. Demasked of the mystique we like to associate with artists, it sounds harsh and bureaucratic. I’d argue that it’s not really a bad angle. It’s what writers do, after all. It’s annoying how people are sometimes startled when they hear an answer like that. Well, what else are we supposed to say? It’s a difficult, serious and beautiful profession.
If you don’t take your own work seriously, don’t expect others to do it either. It’s a matter of pride self-respect and you can’t hide it if it’s real. A gift like that shouldn’t be treated like a caged bird: it demands to be shared in order to grow. Everything else will naturally follow. Publishers, readers, followers and the rest. You have to take responsibility for it: you can’t rest on your laurels. There’s nothing as daunting as that second novel, the breaking point where you either keep going up or do a reboot and swallow a few bitter pills before you can continue to evolve. It’s actually good, it keeps you grounded. They compared my first novel to a toilet bowl in a newspaper article.
That effectively killed my fear from the second book syndrome. Don’t be afraid. As long as it makes sense for you, as long as you got something to say and a way to channel it to others, it will mean something. You can tell when a writer is so used to a trick that succeeded once that he sticks to it through his career and it gets tired eventually. You can’t fool a serious reader. There will always be a market for easy stuff that don’t require too much involvement from the average reader. But don’t go down that road unless you have to. If you do, consider changing careers. Serious writing shouldn’t be a place for compromise. It’s a place for bravery, risk and joy. In the long run, only those that aren’t afraid reap the immense rewards of this life-long journey and thrilling experience.
Now it’s time to pack up and go piggy-hunting again. The evening is upon us and the bars are full. I got a feeling it’s going to be anything but dull.
