She said, “Please don’t hurt me.”
He said, “Come with me!”
She shook her head and tried to dodge him. He grabbed her as she went past, catching her by the blond curls. She fell, and he felt her head twist in his hands, twist around in a full, impossible circle, so that her body was turned away from him while her pretty blue eyes still stared into his face.
“Never!” she said.
In a spasm of rage and revulsion, Baxter yanked at her head. It came off in his hands. In the neck stump he could see bits of glass winking in a gray matrix.
The mama and papa and baby dolls stopped in mid-motion. Long John Silver collapsed. The broken doll’s blue eyes blinked three times; then she died.
The rest of the toys stopped. The organ faded, the spotlights went out, and the last jungle flower clinked to the floor. In the darkness, a weeping fat man knelt beside a busted doll and wondered what he was going to tell Conabee in the morning.
HOW PRO WRITERS REALLY WRITE—OR TRY TO
Like most authors of science fiction, I was an avid reader first. Back then, as an aspiring writer as well as a fan, I wanted to know how professional writers actually do their jobs. How do they develop their ideas, plot their stories, overcome their difficulties? Now, twenty-five years later, I know a little about it.
Professional writers are extremely individualistic in the ways they approach their task. If you are among a lucky few, it is relatively simple. You get an idea, which in turn suggests a plot and characters. With that much in hand, you go to a typewriter and bash out a story. When it’s done, a few hours later, you correct the grammar and spelling. This editing usually results in a messy-looking manuscript, so you type out the whole thing again. For better or worse, your story is now finished.
That’s pretty much how I went about it early in my career. If anyone asked, I would explain that plotting a story consists merely of giving your hero a serious problem, a limited amount of time in which to solve it, and dire consequences if he fails to do so. You preclude all easy solutions, The hero tries this and that, but all his efforts serve only to sink him into deeper trouble. Time is soon running out and he still hasn’t defeated the villain, rescued the girl, or learned the secret of the alien civilization. He’s on the verge of utter, tragic defeat. Then, at the last moment, you get him out of trouble. How does this happen? In a flash of insight your hero solves his problem by logical means inherent in the situation but overlooked until now. Done properly, your solution makes the reader say, “Of course. Why didn’t I think of that?” You then bring the story to a swift conclusion—and that’s all there is to it.
This straightforward approach sow me through many stories. Inevitably, however sophistication set in and I began to experience difficulties. I began to view writing as a problem and to look for ways of dealing with that problem.
I looked to my colleagues and their individual methodologies. Lest Del Rey, for example, told me that he wrote out his stories in his head—word, for word, sentence for sentence—before committing them to paper. Months, even years, would be devoted to this mental composition.
Only when he was ready to type out a story would Lester go to his office, which was about the size of a broom closet, though not so pretty. He had built it in the middle of the living room. After cramming himself inside, Lester would be locked in place by a typewriter that unfolded from the wall into his lap. Paper, pencils, cigarettes and ashtray were there, and a circulation fan to keep him from suffocating. It was much like being in an upright coffin, but with the disadvantage that he was not dead.
Philip Klass, better known as William Tenn, had many different work methods back in those days. He developed them in order to cope with a blockage as tenacious and enveloping as a lovestricken boa constrictor. Phil and I used to discuss our writing problems at length. Once we invented a method that would serve two writers. The scheme involved renting a studio and furnishing it with a desk, typewriter, and heavy oaken chair. The chair was to be fitted with a chain and a padlock. According to our scheme, we would take turns in the studio. When it was, say, Phil’s turn to write, I would chain him to the chair, leaving his arms free to type. I would then leave him there, despite his piteous please and entreaties, until he had produced a given amount of cogent prose. At that point I would release him and take his place.
We never did carry out our scheme, probably because of the unlikelihood of finding a chair strong enough to restrain a writer determined to escape work. But we did try something else. We agreed to meet at a diner in Greenwich Village at the end of each day’s work. There we showed each other the pages we had done. If either of us had failed to fulfill his quota for the day, he would pay the other ten dollars.
It seemed foolproof, but we soon ran into a difficulty. Neither of us was willing to let the other actually read his rough, unfinished copy. We got around this by presenting our pages upside down. But this procedure made it impossible to tell if we had really written new copy that day or if we were showing pages from years ago. It became a point of honor for each of us to present new copy that the other could not read. We did this for about a week, then spontaneously and joyously reverted to our former practice of just talking about writing.
As the years passed, my own blockage became wider, deeper and blacker. I thought I knew what my trouble was, however. My trouble was my wife. As soon as I did something about her, I reasoned, everything would be okay. Two divorces later, I knew it was not my wife.
The trouble, I next decided, was New York. How could I possible work in such a place? What I needed was sunshine, a sparkling sea, olive trees, and solitude. So I moved to the island of Ibiza. There I rented a three-hundred-year-old farmhouse on a hill overlooking the Mediterranean. The house lacked electricity, but it did have four rooms, any one of which I could use as my office. First, I tried to work in the beautiful, bright rooms upstairs. Alas, I couldn’t concentrate on my writing here because I spent too much time admiring the splendid view from the window. So, I moved downstairs to a room that had only one narrow window, with bars over it in case of attack by pirates. Formerly a storage place for potatoes, the room was dark and dank. There was nothing to divert my attention. But I couldn’t work here either. There was no electricity and my kerosene lamp gave off too much smoke.
At last I saw what the real trouble was. It stemmed from my working indoors. Henceforth, I would toil outdoors, as it was meant to be. So I set up on the beach—only to be frustrated again, this time by the heat of a searing sun and by the ceaseless onshore breeze blowing sand into my typewriter. I tried composing under a shady tree, but the flies drove me away. When I tried to do my writing in a café, the waiters were too noisy.
I gave up on Ibiza and moved to London, firmly convinced that my problem was a shortage of self-discipline. I began to search in earnest for ways of doing by artifice what once I had done naturally. Here, in no particular order, are a few of the methods I have utilized.
When I am blocked, my tendency is to avoid writing. That’s quite predictable. But the less I write, the less I feel capable of writing. A sense of oppression increases as my output dwindles, and I begin to dread writing anything at all. How to break this vicious cycle? The hard truth is that it can only be done by writing. I must practice my craft regularly if I am to maintain any facility at it. I need to produce a flow of words. How am I to achieve that flow when I am blocked?
To solve this dilemma, at one juncture I set myself to type five thousand words a day. Type, now write. Wordage was my only requirement. The substance of what I wrote did not matter. It could be anything, even gibberish, even lists of disconnected words, even my name over and over again. All that mattered was to produce daily wordage in quantity.