Ask the Author: Albert Wendland
Answered Questions (2)
Albert Wendland
You can make your own world. To use a title from Theodore Sturgeon, you can become a "microcosmic god." Or, as William Faulkner put it, "sole owner and proprietor" of the place, people, and events in your book. Maybe it's a power thing. But also, and I believe this is even more significant, you can recreate for others the kinds of stories that you yourself loved in the past. To be able to pass that on, to give to someone else the same wonder that a treasured author gave to you--there's nothing like that. It's the perfect gift, the ideal way of paying back what someone did for you so long ago. When a reader says, "I loved that scene," or "I want to be that character," or "this book made me think in a new way," or--and a truly wonderful compliment--"I wish I too could write like that," well, you just can't help feeling great. When you can see that someone has entered your world, has lived there for a while and enjoyed it . . . that is SO rewarding. For then, just maybe, with a lot of luck, you might have given them something that they too might cherish and remember.
Albert Wendland
You just need to get away from it. When you can't write anymore, stand up, step away, and do something else entirely. Something not related to writing or the topic you're working on. If you take a walk outside, make sure you'll be distracted by the things you see, for you don't want to keep thinking about the problem. You want your mind to go elsewhere. Someone might say, "But this is forgetting about the problem, burying it." No, it's just moving it to a deeper level where the sub-basement of your brain can work with it. Creativity is more an unconscious process--you usually can't force it (though, I admit, deadlines do so :-). It's like taking a deep breath. The brain still works, like it does when you're sleeping. So sometimes you just need to let go of the rational overseeing control-junky we try to be. And when you come back to the blocked narrative, whether it be ten minutes later, an hour, a day, a week, you might find that something has happened, that somewhere deep down and unseen your brain has worked with it, out of touch beneath all those troubling conscious thoughts. It's scary, because you have no control over it, but I find it often does works.
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