Ask the Author: Mark Laporta

“Ask me a question.” Mark Laporta

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Mark Laporta While I do know what the phrase “inspired to write” is supposed to mean, I don’t think I’ve ever experienced it. At least, not in the sense of a mystic vision hovering before my eyes like an afterimage. I write because I have ideas on my mind, issues that perplex, trouble, irritate, frighten or enlighten, entertain, mystify or fascinate me. They are ideas I have no opportunity to express in everyday conversation, act on, or bring to life in any real world I’m liable to inhabit.

In other terms, I write to express an inner reality that is every bit as tangible and nearly as emotionally meaningful to me as external reality. I say “nearly,” because I know there’s no character, plotline, “inciting incident” or dramatic apotheosis that is worth one millionth of a baby’s smile or a lover’s sigh. “Nearly,” because the fate of the planet, and our interdependent social/political survival, the discovery of potent cures to end and prevent suffering, eradicate hunger and improve global mental health are obviously more important than whether my POV character has antennae or scales.

And yet, when kept in proper perspective, writing matters to me as a way to talk about the larger issues of humanity that can’t easily find a voice over lunch, on TV, at the mall, in a stadium, or even, surprisingly, a house of worship.

But all lofty thoughts aside, I write because I enjoy it. It delivers sensual pleasure, if not the kind usually associated with that phrase. And that brings up another point. I like writing because, though it appears to be composed of words, it is the best antidote to the depressing literalism of everyday life, of routine conversation and of “down to earth” discussions about aspects of being self-aware that none of us actually understand.
Mark Laporta I find the phrase “being a writer” a curious expression, because I don’t believe writing is a state of being. The relevant question is, “What is it like to be a person who happens to write?”

By the same token, writing itself isn’t an independent object, any more than a birthday present is the wrapper or the box. Writing is the surface manifestation of an internal process that’s no easier to define than the person whose name appears on a book cover.

Sure, you can take a writing class. You can learn plot gambits, along the lines of those mastered by studying chess openings. You can be pointed in the direction of great writing. But ultimately, that gets you no closer to “being a writer” than ogling flowers in a botanical garden facilitates “being a biologist.”

At the same time, as someone who happens to write, I enjoy certain advantages. My internal process is, after all, a marvelous release valve. It enables me to assimilate the torrent of sensory, intellectual and emotional data I absorb every day. REM sleep, I’m told, is meant to do that, but I have to say my sleep centers don’t know the first thing about narrative. I wake up each morning more discombobulated than before and spend the next eighteen hours sorting out the plot lines of my sleep-tormented mind.

And there, in the sorting, lies the aspect of the process that satisfies me most. When the story is finished, to the extent that anything is ever finished, the tangled threads of observation lie in calm, coherent rows and columns, waiting to be parsed.

While the many squares on that grid contain contradictory moments — of passion, anxiety, love, philosophy or humor — they now coexist harmoniously and, within the realm of the novel, make a rare kind of sense.

The more stories I complete, the more life’s raging chaos shrinks to its proper proportion. It becomes a manageable lump of raw data to be examined under a clarifying lens. An aperture, that is, through which to observe and, finally, feel at peace with the whirling terrors of the external world.
Mark Laporta Asking where creative ideas come from is like asking about the origin of consciousness itself. Part of the answer will always be hidden. If I acknowledge that my current project includes themes pulled from news headlines, I still can't say why those headlines stuck in my head or why they arranged themselves into the skeleton of a story.

Otherwise, I might point to memory or aspiration, but the former has a funny way of shifting and the latter lies deep in my subconscious — where it has a mind of its own.

So that leaves me with nothing more specific than an urgent need to send a message in a bottle. To whom, I ask, and why? Because there's no clear answer, I gravitate to ideas likely to survive a trip through a dark void.

I'm also driven by curiosity about distinctive character types. “What's X doing now?” I wonder. Then the story I write is about everything I see after I kick over the anthill of the opening premise. With an imaginary camera, I capture snapshots of frantic people racing off to make sense of an elusive world. To that extent, my ideas come from my characters.

Now, much as I'd like to see myself as thoroughly original, it's no secret that writers learn from their predecessors. Especially in genre writing, the trick is to keep inherited elements fresh by adding spin, changing polarity and otherwise elaborating, until old becomes new.

More to the point, I cultivate a unifying thought-process to give my story context, meaning and intrigue. Because when my message-bottle washes up on shore, I need to believe that a wad of waterlogged pages can fire up the passions of a sensitive reader.
Mark Laporta The simplest answer is, don’t waste any more time aspiring. Just write. Write until you have the confidence of your own voice and the facility to bring it out on paper. Write until you can feel the wind rustling in your character’s hair, taste their food, drink their wine, kiss their lovers.

Write until the words disappear and your story grows out of experience, sensation, thought and emotion. Write until your logic is unassailable because you carry the whole world of your story in your head and no intrusion from everyday life can knock it out.

Read analytically, like a chef tasting the soup at another restaurant, like a jazz pianist looking for the lost chord in a great improvisation. What is it that other authors are good at that you’re not? How do they solve the same problem you have, that we all have—of calling up something from nothing?

Learning the craft of an art form means being willing to listen to advice, but not so willing that you find yourself chastising your greatest strengths. Know what you know, believe what you believe. The world you create has to be one you could swear you’ve already visited, so this belief is essential. Anything else is mere scene painting, like the stilted step-by-step landscapes you can “learn to paint” from TV.

By now, if you’re already impatient to get back to writing, you’ve moved on to the next level of a trek that never ends. My best advice is: Don’t look back.
Mark Laporta The only time I get really stuck is when I can't see far enough forward in a story. That used to happen frequently in the past, when I'd dive in with no advance thinking. I've since learned my lesson.

Even with an outline, I sometimes have specific plot points to reach, but haven't yet found a logical route to them. The answer for me is to map it out a few different ways until I reconnect to the emotional through line of the story. I also go deeper into the characters and their tendencies, and find a path that way.

But getting stuck can also involve being inflexible. After I've tried to introduce this or that concept several times and it still doesn't fit, I realize it may have to wait until another story. Then the minute I stop insisting on a particular solution, I often find a workable alternative.

Another part of the answer is that I don't fixate on things. The story stays fluid at all times and I remind myself that the delete key is a writer’s best friend. I have no problem ditching pages or chapters that don’t work. I focus on what moves the story forward and what makes the characters more vivid and interesting. I don't fuss over "perfection." There's enough to attend to, to keep a story logical, emotionally authentic, readable, moving and entertaining.

Above all, I don’t labor over the fine points in the first draft. I try to keep the writing as tight and on target as possible but I don’t feel the need to resolve every word in Chapter 1 before starting Chapter 2. Once I’m a few chapters in, I work at both ends of the story at once, adjusting the beginning to match insights I’ve had later, or yanking a later chapter back to align with important aspects of the opening. But I do this with a light touch, knowing I’ll be going back over the story later, to enrich, enliven and elaborate.

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