To Be A Fly On The Brain, by Josh Stallings

Q: Which author(s) (living or dead) would you like to meet one-on-one to talk about the writing craft? What is it about their writing or life that most interests you?

A: My father, Tobias Jean, was a painter, a sculptor, a poet, a jeweler, and much more. He lived his life immersed in the river of creativity. Walking through a museum he never wanted me to read the cards beside a painting, the ones written by a curator giving the work’s context. 

“That,” he’d point at the painting, “Is the artist’s first statement in a conversation between them and you the viewer. The next line comes from you, what do you think about it on first glance. Later maybe you notice the deep powerful brush strokes, that is the next part of the conversation. This conversation between artist and viewer can last ten minutes or a lifetime.

I remember my father spotting Henry Moore’s sculpture Knife Edge. He gave it a smile of recognition, “There you are.” He had been in conversation with that work for many many years. He was fascinated with “the line” of a thing. He searched for a single simple line that could carry the weight of a object. One line with all the sensual power of a swan. Not a line that stood for a swan, but one that was a swan at its purest. His conversation with Knife Edge was more enriching than anything Henry Moore might have said about it, much less a curator.

I would give much to have another couple of nights with my father, drinking coffee and talking about the creative life. I wish I’d asked him more about what colors felt like to him. And how did he know when a piece was finished? I’d like to hear his laugh and riff about nothing important. Film editing, writing fiction, painting a dragon god, all come from the same place. But the tools used are very different.

Over the years I have become suspect of what we writers say about our work. It’s complicated to decipher our true motives for writing what we write or how we write it. 

Books are rich beasts. First there is the book we intended to write. Below that is the book we did write. And below that are the truths about ourselves that we never meant to tell anyone. When readers discover and point out pieces of me I was unaware I had exposed, I love it. It means I’m being honest down to a micro level.

Then there is discussing craft with writers. What we say in public about craft is tinted by marketing, what we want readers to think we think. This may be even how we remember it, but memory is massively subjective. Our brains are big old justifying machines. They tell us what ever it takes to help confirm that our world view is correct.  This creates two realities, what we say happens in our minds when we write and what really happens up stairs when we type. 

Rather than talking craft, I’d like to be a fly on James Crumley’s or William Shakespeare’s brain while they were creating… Wow, that sounded much less creepy in my head than it looks on the page. What I’m trying to say is I’d like to see how they solved story and literary problems without being confused by their explanations.

Things I would like to do with master writers: I’d love to go fly fishing with James Lee Burke. The way he describes a river makes me want to stand in it with him. That or tour Bayou Têche with Burke as my guide. He writes a swamp richly beautiful, I’d love to have him show me what inspires him to step out of a tense crime novel and take the reader for a drift on the water.  

“I was conceived in a Morris Minor on the Mexico side of the border traveling between Ensenada and Los Angeles.” Is an opening sentence I never imagined typing while talking about hanging with writers. But it is important back story. Before and after my birth my family lived for a time in an artist’s colony in Baja. I was too young to have memories of that time, but it lives large in my mythos. Many a grand time took place south of the border. Much of Out There Bad the second Moses book took place in Baja. For that personal reason I would love to travel through the US Mexico borderland with Don Winslow, Cormac McCarthy, and Gabino Iglesias. They each are amazing writers with very different takes on the border. Their books have helped me sort out my own feelings on the the messy land between two nations. Reading about a location, even one I know well, from multiple perspectives creates a three dimensional picture for me to draw from.

Stop the presses. I may be about to actually answer the question… 

Here goes: I’d love to spend time talking craft with David Mitchell. He writes incredibly complex multi-character multi-timeline novels. Utopia Avenue and The Bone Clocks being among my favorites. What I want to know is how the hell he knows the exact moment to end a chapter so that it feels both natural and acts like a cliffhanger but free of the feeling that I’m being manipulated. And then how does he return to a storyline at the very moment I’m wondering about it. What is his trick? Skill and talent I suspect. Does he plot it out on the world’s largest whiteboard or does he intuitively know where he needs to be. David Mitchell, if you read this and find yourself in Southern California, I’ll buy dinner if you explain how you do what you do. 

Reality check: These are fantasy ideas. In the real world, I am lucky enough to count some amazing writers as true friends. When we get together we share what we’re working on at that moment. Talk about our struggles, stumbles, and successes. Hearing another writer’s struggles I feel less alone in my own. Having friends to share this journey with is one of the great gifts of a life spent writing.

“Don’t wait for the muse, just write, because you are the muse, and the only way the muse shows up is if you show up.” - Joe R. Lansdale, The Donut Legion