The Confabulator Cafe

Author: jcampbell

  • A Monk of the Order of Bradbury

    “You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you.” – Ray Bradbury

    I am a collector of worthless books.  For some unknown, deep-seated, pathological reason, I have the need to hoard large number of books.  Most were purchased for a buck or two from used bookstores and will never have a financial value worthy of their shelf space.

    Yet, I love them.  I read them.  I gaze at the spectrum of colors and shapes they produce on my bookshelves.  I shamefully smell their crisp, yellowing pages.  But, I rarely re-read them.

    Certainly, I have books I enjoy, even books I love, but with the sort of memory I have, the idea of wasting time reading a book I have already read seems inefficient and clumsy.  The exception has come with two or three particular books.  I enjoy them immensely, but my favorite book of all-time is Zen in the Art of Writing by Ray Bradbury.

    As a reader, I go through spurts of reading a particular writer.  One of my Bradbury spurts happened along at the same time I was really learning to write fiction.  I’ve read countless tomes on grammar, mechanics, plot and structure.  Most were individually forgettable, although I did get some nugget of information from each that will hopefully someday bear fruit.

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  • Flogging the Muse

    “Sing to me of the man, Muse, the man of twists and turns, driven time and again off course…” – Robert Fagles translation of Homer’s Odyssey

    I am not the sort of man who waits for his muse to sing.  I put a quarter in the jukebox, and if the music doesn’t start, I kick it like a roid-raged Fonzie.

    I keep my muse on her toes.  I don’t give her time to rest.  I keep a constant stream of input flowing to her from any source available, about anything I can find.  Each new string of thought strikes her, like a whip upon a plow horse, driving my muse through the muddied earth of imagination, in hopes that something new might grow from the shattered pieces of inspiration surrounding me.

    Whether it is real life or art, I expose her to anything.  But I also have several tricks I use when that fails.  Here is one of my favorite techniques to try when story prompts, current events, and plain old creativity fail.

    I love stealing phrases from poetry.  Poets are forced by their medium to make every word matter.  Every phrase is an image.  I use poetry that mirrors the tone of my writing and steal favorite phrases.  I have certain poets I read most often.  Plath, Poe, and Dickinson are some of my favorites.  The Homer quote was no accident.  My inspiration sometimes goes  back to the ancient tragedies.

    There is a line in the film As Good as it Gets when Greg Kinnear talks about a light coming over people that tells him that is when he needs to paint them.  That is how I feel when I find the right phrase.  I take the phrase totally out of context.  Sometimes, I will read the poem backwards to make sure I don’t get distracted by the meaning of the poem.  I don’t want the writer’s meaning of the phrase, I want my own.

    The next step is stolen from Ray Bradbury.  Type the phrase at the top of the first page.  Then, just write.  I am a seat of the pants writer.  If a story comes to mind, I’ll write it.  If I have nothing, I will write about the phrase.  When the story shows up, I’ll run with it.

    I will never wait for ideas.  I don’t have time for that.  I take a blue collar approach to writing.  Clock in, work, and clock out.  Ideas, be damned.

    You don’t have to be a poet to try this technique.  I don’t write poetry, and I rarely read it for pleasure.  Yet, I have found poetry to be a gold mine of inspiration.  Give it a try.  Go pick up a couple of poetry anthologies.  Get big, thick ones, and bludgeon your muse with them.