Outlining, Reality and the Thesaurus

Starting your story by adhering to a strict outline is one of the easiest ways to write stories lacking in passion. Outlining is left-brain activity. Besides, how can you outline the unknown? But if you must outline, and I know some of you must, keep it loose. Writers who use outlines successfully expect anything and everything to change.

You also leave yourself open to the dictates of your Inner Critic if you write from a mirror image of your experience. In fiction writing you cannot be a slave to your perception of reality or truth as seen through the lens of memory. Memory is notoriously undependable. Just ask someone about the truth or reality of an argument and you’ll have as many differing points of view as there are participants and witnesses.

Over-dependence on language is another snare. This may sound odd, since language is the vehicle of writers. The catch is that language resides in the left side of the brain. If you begin writing by looking for the best words, you are doomed to never finding them. The critic won’t allow it. Paradoxically, language is far too complicated for the primitive workings of the right side of the brain. Images, feelings, colors, these are the language of the unconscious.

The White Heat of the White Rabbit

I’m not suggesting that you give up your love of language. I’m not suggesting that you shouldn’t fall in love with a perfectly turned phrase. I am saying that you shouldn’t waste your time searching for them. They will come once you’ve fallen down the Rabbit Hole and handed yourself over to your Inner Writer and your characters. They are the ones who come up with the most amazing language, the most brilliant metaphors, the perfect piece of dialogue—and they do so effortlessly.

Have you ever had the experience of writing in a white heat, of hours passing in a matter of moments, and when you finally look up and peruse your work, you find the most unexpected and amazing, dare I say brilliant, writing before you? And you don’t know how you wrote it. It sounds so unlike you, so fluid, so, well . . . good, really good. Why? How did this miracle happen? It’s no mystery. You, with all your judgments and doubts, criticism and fears, got out of your own way. In the language of this book, you fell down the Rabbit Hole. You spent some time in Wonderland.

For those of you who can’t bear the idea of not lolling about in language, not wallowing in words or spinning sparkling images, consider this: Being at home in Wonderland actually makes your own mental thesaurus more accessible. Using language as an aspect of the process, but not as a crutch or the be-all and end-all of the writing experience, is a very important step toward entering the magic of Wonderland. After all, what does the White Rabbit know about language or reality for that matter?

You can imagine that there’s no time for grammar, perfect wording or outlining given this rabbit’s state. Besides, once you’re in Wonderland, the writing miraculously gets better of its own accord. An example of this is the work of Kurt Blankmeyer, who I believe was born in Wonderland! His writing runs the gamut from powerfully poignant and dark to hysterically funny and absurd. In class, we have laughed at some of his scenes until tears are rolling down our cheeks and we’re gasping for breath. Added to his enormous range as a writer is his talent for language, which is part of the engine of his writing, but as you will see, his language never overwhelms. Instead, it flows with seamless, often stunning, understatement from images in his unconscious and the voices and feelings of his characters.

This excerpt, from his dark, not humorous vein, is from a chapter where the heroine, Mellie Mae, discovers a journal that her husband Duane wrote while he was in a rehab center. Duane has just committed suicide and Mellie is trying to understand why.

The first page was headed "Childhood." Duane had a hard one but not any worse than lots of people around here, including me. Then "Highschool"—getting drunk, making out, stealing a car, hunting, fishing, being outdoors with other boys and with men. Then "First Real Job"—it was in an auto repair shop. Then a blank page that I didn’t want to turn because I feared what was coming. But I turned it. The letters were still square and neat but now they were printed, actually dug into the page, with red ball-point: "Vietnam."

"I was twenty when the draft got me . . . After basic they flew us in there . . . I never seen a place so bad and scary, like somebody beat on it and it reared back and turned into a huge poison snake . . . That jungle, it ate people up. Men went in and they never came out, not even in rubber bags. And some people it chewed on and spit em out. They wasn’t anywheres like they used to be . . . not just the physical stuff, arms, legs, shot-off peckers, tore-up assholes. I think they was the lucky ones in some ways, along with them that died. They did their dirt, paid the price, a hand, a foot. Whatever. They shipped home knowing they was paid up. They could look around and see what wasn’t there no more. That old dink lady and her kid hiding in their hooch, the ones we flushed out with napalm? Cost me my shooting eye, pal. Others it didn’t show, only in the back of their eyes or the way they moved on the street—like hunting animals that know they’re being hunted. I was one of that breed. Shipped back to the States, checked out A-okay, but I might as well’ve stayed there . . . in that fucking jungle."

Kurt goes on with Mellie reading Duane’s journal, Duane talking about different experiences and men he met in Vietnam. Finally Mellie is confronted with the line:

"Then there was Mike . . ."

Mike. Suddenly the kitchen felt extra hot, like somebody opened a furnace door in my face. I pushed my body up from the kitchen table, got to the window and turned up the a/c full blast. I held my face against the louvers; that helped but my face still burned. Mike. So it was getting to the bad, hurtful part. Which was what the rehab people wanted, of course, but I didn’t know if I could take it. I turned on the faucet in the sink and let the water run to get cold. It stayed lukewarm as if my own heat reached down to the bottom of the cistern. I stuck my head under anyway and let my hair soak. My hair, my wet, heavy hair, the drain, the black hole, whirling, sucking, pulling at my wet hair. I jerked my head back, banging it hard against the faucet. Shit. Groped for a dish towel, patted the spot. There, there. Blood on the towel. Not a whole lot though.

I turned off the faucet and made myself look down into the drain. It was the same old drain, no eye staring back, no little gray claw. I went to the john and sat there, thinking, okay, I’ve had one of those moments, like when I heard Duane groaning. It’s what Mom said she had right after Daddy died, widow’s creeps. In the bedroom I dried my hair and thought about finishing that damn notebook. I thought about him, I thought, couldn’t we just lie here and make love. The day droned outside the window, my eyelids got heavy on me. The last thing crossed my mind before I zonked was, I hope that damn fog don’t come back.

Later when I got up the kitchen was cooler, but the notebook was still on the table, wide open. I picked it up and read again: "Then there was Mike . . ."