A Tale of Two Shinyperfects
/In the ongoing archaeological dig that is my study, I came across an artifact of a shinyperfect, and it reminded me of a second example, and I thought the contrast between the two might be instructive.
Our first example is a scrap of paper that I remember scribbling into the WASTE BOOK we all keep by our beds — don’t we? — as I stumbled into bed after a lovely evening out in the labyrinth. As my thoughts wandered watching the fire pit, the image came of a father watching his three children play in the dusk, and being overcome by the surety of their eventually growing up leaving.
And so I hastily scrawled this:
Transcription:
Dad losing
kids to
interest areas
“Tell me what
you see…”
And the man
began to tell
them…
plants/a
rocks + dirt
animals [moved to plants…]
stars
Although there’s no mention in this note of an important theme of the story, I know it was in my head from the beginning: the concept of “losing” one’s children to adulthood. The unabashed magical realism in the climax was always there. And I remember the moment the last line came to me: It was shinyperfect!!
But that’s all I had: an opening scene, the finale, and a structure for the storytelling.
Those who’ve read the book — or even just this blog — know that our art does not ever spring fully formed from our brains, nor does it flow in an unbroken stream from our brains into real space. (That would be the Henry Ford Factory Model Shinyperfect Model Factory, a term I just made up and which is ripe for simplification, which means the mistaken belief held by many people that artists create their art in one inspired moment after another as those moments shinyperfectly tumble off that conveyor belt. In order. It’s an alternate interpretation of the King of Hearts Fallacy.)
And so I began to hammer this thing out.
Lots of scratch-outs, rearrangements, second thoughts.
Here are my scribblings for the older child, Abigail, as she tells her father what she sees. I just dumped everything I could think of, then decided on three items (NO ONE CAN BREAK THE RULE OF THREE!) that Abigail would be apt to notice and her father could explain. Authorially, I wanted to create the sense of wonder about the natural world that the father was attempting to engender in his children. (OF WHICH THERE ARE THREE — GET IT?)
After pages of scribbling, I began an actual first draft.
ASIDE: I’m beginning to notice the Beethoven Blueprint — the nomenclature is still a bit hazy — in a lot of my work: WASTE BOOK [A] to scribble shinyperfects >> WASTE BOOK [B] to flesh out the shinyperfects >> WASTE BOOK [C] to start to assemble all the pieces into a coherent whole.
Eventually, one or two drafts later, it was good enough to ABANDON.
Now that I have your attention, go read the still-untitled children’s book. Got a title? Send it to me. Want to illustrate it? Let’s talk.
Our second example does not have as happy an ending as our first… yet.
This shinyperfect sprang from an instance in our real life: We had been burglarized, and we decided we needed a security system after all. While we waited for it to be installed, I was outside in our rather steep driveway, sweeping up leaves, and I saw a cigarette butt.
The opening wrote itself:
There had been a break-in.
He looked at the cigarette butt there among the leaves he had been raking. There had been a break-in. They had been out of town when it happened…
Again, a strong theme presented itself, that of what loss is and isn’t, and I had a vague shinyperfect for the ending.
And so I got to work. I’ll spare you the images of the breakdown; I just couldn’t find the emotional arc of the main character through the mental/spiritual conflict of the story. I tried writing in first person, in third person limited. Nothing clicked. Here’s where I stopped.
From our lofty perspective almost a decade in the future, we can chortle at the author’s optimism. (There is one more page in this WASTE BOOK [A], a grid with a timeline involving the main characters — the main character, his wife, the security system installer —but that’s the end of that WASTE BOOK.
I still think about this story from time to time. It has a powerful, emotional ending, and I think readers would like it. Some day. I mean, I have the notes, right?
The point, if I have one, is that if you think the brain is handing you a product, you are mistaken. It’s merely had some kind of happy-juice discharge and is letting you know that hey, man, I got this brilliant idea thing for you.
The rest of it is hammering away at that mess, shoveling it from [A] to [B] to [C] as we can.
And sometimes, that mess won’t shovel. Time for a little TASK AVOIDANCE.
Cras melior est.
