Napping and Other Writing Secrets

I have been given a ton of grief over the years from telling my children and significant other, “I’ll be working on the couch, so keep it quiet please.” To the untrained eye it appears I am napping, nodding off into Lala land, but to other writers, it is recognized as work, a necessary and important part of the writing process.

I sometimes think the subconscious is where the real work gets done. It is for me where the originality, if I have any, and uniqueness of my work emerges. Every artist I know has experienced ideas seemingly appearing out of the ether. Sometimes a line, melody, or idea just pops in their head as a gift from the gods. I say it isn’t a gift at all, but rather the fully formed work of the subconscious bubbling up to the conscious. Who knows how long they have been working down there, hours, days, weeks, months? Bottom line it is still a product of the artists mind, just on a deeper level. I think an artist’s real talent isn’t necessarily their ability to write, paint, sculpt or whatever their discipline, but rather their ability or openness to tap the subconscious.

A few months ago I was doing some editing on a legal brief for a lawyer friend of mind and came across the practice of soring a horse.

Soring Definition: 

Soring involves the intentional infliction of pain to a horse's legs or hooves in order to force the horse to perform an artificial, exaggerated gait. Caustic chemicals—blistering agents like mustard oil, diesel fuel and kerosene—are applied to the horse's limbs, causing extreme pain and suffering.

I was at first repulsed by the practice then fascinated. A day or two later I thought a super villain with skin like sandpaper would be interesting. The image of a big brute attacking people and rubbing them raw between the thighs or under the armpit would be repulsive and funny. So, I started writing. I had no plan, no characters, except the villain and no plot. I just started typing, almost reading as I went along. I knew it had to be noir, then it fell more into hardboiled pulp. I pulled some Fredric Brown off my shelf and reread some of his work. I researched hardboiled pulp slang.

The words just kept coming out. Characters developed and started doing things. I just followed along. My short stories usually run about 3,500 to 4.500 words but this story blew by that word count with no ending in sight. It actually began to get annoying. There are very few publications that accept stories longer than 4,500 words. Finally, the ending showed itself and I wrapped up The Soring at around 6,500 words. Even at that it felt truncated. I plan, at some point, on going back and letting it loose, maybe see if I can get a novella out of the idea.

My point is I didn’t really try and force a plot on the story, I just let my subconscious lead the way. As a teenager and into my early twenties I loved pulp science fiction and detective fiction. I had read tons and tons of the genre. Fredric Brown is an idol to me. The rhythm, pacing and style was still in my brain, just buried. When it was triggered and let loose it bubbled up and wanted, until I choked it off, to keep going for who knows how many more thousands of words.  

So, open yourself up, get to work and take a nap.

Here is an excerpt from “The Soring.”

     By 11pm the alley rats began to scurry behind the Major and the streets were completely empty. Only three people had entered the building on the Major’s watch. Two women and one man. They all had keys; no one had to be buzzed up and no one had exited. 

     The Major began to fidget. He had neglected to bring a flask or buy an extra bottle at the package store. Without a few pulls of whiskey the tremors would begin to set in soon.

     Sudden movement caught his eyes as the suspect walked in front of the left window shade. His gait was jerky and when only half in the frame he collapsed and fell. The Major stood straighter. The shades on both windows shook. Apparently the suspect was rolling violently on the floor, hitting the wall periodically. The subject was down, out of frame for a full fifteen seconds, then, a second figure, much larger than the suspect, rose from the floor and passed, unsteadily, by the right window shade. 

     “What the hell…” thought the Major. 

     This unexpected action brought the tremors on full force. The Major cursed. He knew the location of most every liquor store in LA but had no mental map of Compton. While he contemplated leaving his post in search of a bar or package store, the hulking figure passed, from right to left, by both window shades, a few seconds later the lights in the apartment went dark.

     The Major was now in a pickle. 

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"The Soring" will be published in the new pulp magazine Crimson Streets in October or November.