The story surprises me, because in our former neighborhood, where our back yard faced a community college parking lot, we had excellent luck putting things out in the driveway for free, including boxes of used books. Sometimes people took entire boxes rather than a book or two. Nearly everything we put out found a home, including an old sofa we’d acquired already well-used, which I was certain we’d wind up hauling to the dump. Ours wasn’t a busy street except during classes, when students parked there, so I have to assume it was sometimes students who took those items. Then again, my experience with that was ten years ago. Now everyone I see walking around has a cell phone stuck to one ear, and I’m lucky if they avoid colliding with me. Maybe they wouldn’t SEE the books, even with a big sign.

When I was a student, I would’ve browsed through any box of free books on offer, even though I had plenty of other reading that I should be doing instead, for school. My grandmother used to say that no one in our family could clean an attic, because we’d stop to read everything. (That was before bubble wrap, when we used newspaper to wrap fragile items.)

Which reminds me, I dreamed just last night about the car I drove as a student. I hadn’t thought about that car in years. It was a white 1964 Mercury Comet that had a lot of miles on it before I got it. The dream was a mini-nightmare, not because I found myself in that car, but because this creepy guy who’d just followed me out of a bank removed what I thought was a disguise — a wig, under which he had a shaved head — then tried to get me to give him a ride. I was suspicious of him, so first I told him that if I did that my dad would kill me. (I must’ve been a teenager in the dream, which explains the car.) He argued with me, but I got into my car and locked the doors. It isn’t the sort of dream that usually qualifies as a nightmare for me, but it woke me up, heart racing.

That first car had some real-life nightmarish qualities. One was its tendency to overheat if I drove it to a higher altitude. I love the mountains, so not being able to drive my first car to the mountains without it overheating frustrated me no end. As the car aged, it developed other idiosyncrasies. I think my dad and I were at one point the only two people on earth who knew how to start it, which involved pumping the gas pedal just the right number of times, then holding it down . . . oh well, I don’t remember the sequence now. It had other problems too, and I have to wonder now at my desire to drive the thing, but when you’re young I guess you just want to go. You don’t care what you put up with to do it.

That car’s most nightmarish problem was the front passenger door’s sticky latch. My parents paid for my gasoline on the condition that I drive my grandmother anywhere she wanted to go. One day the door didn’t catch, and it flew open when I made a turn. Grandma didn’t fall out, but that incident qualifies as more nightmarish than the dream that ratcheted up my heart rate last night.

What about you?

Do you rummage through boxes of free books whenever you see them?

What was your first car like?

Do different things scare you in dreams than in real life?

These are the kinds of connections that strike me after viewing movies a few times — or reading books more than once. Once I get to know a story, my focus changes and, if the depiction is sound, connections and inner workings start to reveal themselves. I see not only the primary theme, but layers of meaning, sometimes meaning no one ever intended. I like, so far, the fact that I know little about how movies are made. My lack of knowledge lets me keep the illusion alive even while I look deeper.

One of my favorite forms of interaction in movies is between humans and other animals. Horses in particular. This shouldn’t be surprising, considering the connection between horses and people throughout our shared history. But horses in movies seem significant to me because, in spite of the historical relationship, so few of us spend any time with horses today. Including me. I don’t know much about horses except that even though I’ve ridden them only three times in my life (and not very well), I love them, in real life as well as in movies and books. I ate up the Misty of Chincoteague series as a girl, and Airs Above the Ground started my idol worship of Mary Stewart’s books. When I first read The Lord of the Rings, as a teenager, I was almost as upset as Sam when Bill the pony had to be released before entering Moria. I’ve thought that if there is one tiny flaw in Peter Jackson’s movie verions of The Lord of the Rings trilogy it was that Shadowfax didn’t get more attention. He was bigger than life in the books. (But the movie version is so intense and rich that I can’t complain. I can only suggest that anyone who loves the story should also read the books.)

Maybe my fascination with horses is genetic. My mom grew up around horses. Her father traded them, and spent a lot of time at the racetrack. Her maternal grandfather, a Danish immigrant, was a rancher, and a few of her relations were cowboys, either the working kind or, more recently, the rodeo kind. My dad’s grandfather was a blacksmith. So yeah, horses must connect to my DNA somehow. Possibly to everyone’s, considering human history.

There is a special horse in the movie version of The Lord of the Rings, nonetheless. Each time I watch The Two Towers, I have to go back and play a particular scene over again. Perhaps you know it. Aragorn’s horse finds him washed up on a riverbank. The horse nudges him awake, and then kneels to help his injured rider mount. The relationship between horse and man hits me, there, every time. It’s just a movie, right? Well, a little research led me to the fact that Viggo Mortensen spent extra time with that horse during filming and even purchased the horse after finishing the movie. He went on to make his next movie, Hidalgo, with another horse named TJ, again spent lots of time getting close to the horse during filming, and again purchased the horse afterward. Old news for many fans, perhaps, but new and touching for me. I haven’t seen Hidalgo yet, but now I’ll have to.

My favorite movies are the ones with so much intricacy and detail that I can watch them over and over and see something new each time. I’m the same way with books, with poetry, with artwork of all kinds, including architecture. I like the appearance of simplicity, with complexity running deep within. I like infrastructure, lots of background and foundations we never see but sense are there. I like fine craftsmanship in all forms, and the drive to put one’s heart into one’s work. I’ve started to notice this chemistry in movies sometimes, a hint of how a cast and crew must have worked as a team, that remains as a very personal energy running through the finished product. I like to think that even what winds up on the cutting room floor has a part in that energy. That’s how the world is, after all, it’s full of interconnections and even interspecies cooperation, as well as competition, yet deceivingly simple on the surface — for all its obvious glory. The best fiction and the best artwork is, after all, a metaphor for life — at times even something beyond this life.

Which leads me to a final observation from those movies, one that led to an epiphany for me. It came to me the last time I watched The Return of the King. At the very end Frodo turns for a last glance at his friends, and his face transforms from a look of sorrow and grief to a combination of mischief, delight, anticipation, and near beatification — the same expression Galadriel wore when we last saw her a moment earlier. They remind me uncannily of accounts I’ve read of near-death experiences or of messages received from the other side by mediums. Earlier in the story Gandalf even spoke to Pippin about death, referring to it as a passage to a distant country, full of wonder and beauty.

This got me to thinking about why we love fiction, and Joseph Campbell’s perpetual examination of the power of myth.

Too often today fiction is criticized as a form of manipulation, and in many cases rightly so. We see the manipulation in advertising every day, even the most artistic of it. More and more product placement in TV, sensationalized — almost fictionalized — news rather than objective coverage, celebrity worship, so-called reality TV, politicians pumping themselves up or dragging others through the mud, and religious figures taking on exaggerated roles, promising to save us from hellfire of one flavor or another. Even in purer forms of fiction, in the quest to make money, publishers and writers pump out novels faster and faster, according to contracts and marketing ploys, seeking the next book that will be like the one that sold so well before. Stories seem to lose something in the process. They become pure entertainment and cleverly rather than artistically crafted, in a hurry, with little art remaining, little beneath the surface. A tree is cut down for something that remains on bookstore shelves for a couple of months and then is sold used for a penny at Amazon, or forgotten. The reader can begin to feel manipulated or addicted to the illusion and rapid consumption rather than edified by it.

In the midst of all this, why do we still love fiction? Why do we feel driven both to create and consume story? Is it a waste of time? Is it mere child’s play, the pastime of dreamers who need to get a grip on reality? Or is there something much deeper, an innate hunger or instinctive need at work?

If, as some philosophers surmise, and many near-death experiencers and mediums claim, this world is but an illusion, then is all fiction a metaphor for this great stage performance we call life? Plays within the play? Dreams within the dream? Is its purpose to teach us to see the difference between the smaller play and the bigger play, in order to prepare us to see beyond the greater play we act out in this life? (Which might mean Shakespeare’s Hamlet is holy scripture.) Is fiction a tool, an abstract ritual object we use to prepare us to see through that illusion and finally leave this world behind?

I wonder does that make directors, actors, publishers, and fiction writers the priests, handing out the keys to salvation in the form of story? Are theaters and libraries our true temples? Some of us would love to think so, I’m sure. What an ego pump that would be, for a few. What a power trip.

Or is the truth that each human saves himself, perhaps with the cooperation and companionship of his chosen cohorts? Does each of us take in each story and each experience and sift out those of his own choosing and discretion? Does each, in his own way, create his own story, and interpret it as he journeys through life, thus honing his ability to see past the illusion? Does each person make his own way to a deeper truth, progressing step by step toward the blazing dawn of enlightenment?

How does that come about? The best fiction, the best movies, draw us in so completely that if we let ourselves we can believe they’re real at the time we’re in the story. Is that the key to realizing how completely we can be drawn into an illusion, the key that helps us begin to see that it is possible this life, this world that seems so real and has such a hold on us, might possibly also be just a story, only an illusion? Does creating our own illusions show us how it’s done?

That’s my little epiphany, perhaps not meaningful to anyone but me. These things are personal. But I didn’t invent the possibility of the world as an illusion. Plato wrote about it in his Allegory of the Cave some 2,300 years ago, and it’s my understanding there are similar teachings in Hindu scriptures possibly more than 5,000 years old. It’s a thought probably older than that, painted on the walls of caves and leached into the earth from the ashes of ancient campfires, blown on the wind by their smoke, still inhaled each day by us. An ancient thought, as ancient perhaps as myth itself, and human self, which we explore today in the form of movies, plays, short stories and novels, through art, poetry, music — as well as through religion, history, and science. But it’s new for me to think from this perspective, and I don’t think I can ever see the fiction, fantasy, dreams, or creative endeavors I choose to partake in as a waste of time, from here on out. Not that I ever did. Some instinct in me drew me to them, and I answered. Perhaps all I’ve gained from my epiphany is an answer for those who would denigrate such as being a waste of time, of being a symptom of escaping reality or not being practical. It could be that carefully selecting my chosen forms of illusion is a way of taking greater control over my own life rather than escaping it. I can tell the “realists” who call me nothing but a dreamer to . . . watch a movie . . . read a story . . . write a poem. Get real by way of study of the dream within the dream.

Edited 12-21-2006. —BK

Five Weird Habits:

1. Doodles. Usually the doodle is something strange and nondescript and appears magically on the paper when I’m not paying attention. I’ve heard you can interpret these things the way you do handwriting. I’m afraid to. Sometimes I draw things on purpose. My current flower of choice is an iris. (Iris is the protagonist’s name in my current mystery.)

2. Hand Lotion. Even as a kid I didn’t like my hands to be sticky, dirty, or parched. I don’t wear my nails long, I don’t like nail polish, and I can barely stand to wear my wedding ring. I keep hand lotion beside every sink in the house, and in my purse.

3. “What did you dream?” The journeys our minds take while we sleep fascinate me. One of the first utterances to pass my lips on any given morning is, “Do you remember any dreams?” Or I tell one of mine.

4. Call pets by silly pet names. My cat Emily also goes by Emmylou, Auntie Em, and The Divine Miss Em.

5. Sort M&Ms by color before eating them. Eat the orange ones first, so I don’t have to look at them. (I’m not partial to that shade of orange.) I don’t feel a compulsion to sort anything else before I eat it, and I don’t care if different foods touch on my plate—in fact I like them that way. It’s just an M&M thing.

I’m supposed to tag five other blogging friends, but I’m breaking the rules and leaving this open. If you feel inspired, please continue the meme, and share with the rest of us. See the links in my blog list and comments for fun places this might appear next.

The Rules: Start with the topic “five weird habits.” People who get tagged need to write an entry about their five weird habits as well as state this rule clearly. In the end, choose the next five people to be tagged and link to their web journals. Don’t forget to leave a comment in their blog or journal that says “You have been tagged” (assuming they take comments) and tell them to read yours.

Later I taught myself to type on an old Smith Corona typewriter my mother or her mother purchased when Mom was in her teens or early twenties. She was born in 1923, if that gives you a clue to its age. It’s one of those typewriters that could be used to trace a murder suspect because of the way it slightly superscripts certain characters. I used it while seated on the floor of my bedroom beside my bed. Sometimes the typewriter rested on the floor, sometimes on a little castoff maple end table.

When I was about eighteen my parents bought me an electric typewriter for Christmas, and when I opened it my mother recalled hearing me pound away on the old one to finish up a term paper a few evenings earlier. She had almost given me the new typewriter then. I used this typewriter on an old sideboard from a great aunt’s house that originally had extra leaves one could add to extend it into a spare dining table. The leaves had, by the time I used it as a desk, been converted into storage shelves under my parents’ breakfast bar.

I later bought my own more modern electric, with a little daisywheel that whirred back into position at each return, instead of the whole carriage moving. I used this typewriter on an old wooden desk my husband bought at a friend’s garage sale. This desk has a center section that lowers to hold a typewriter, which I thought was pretty snazzy. It reminded my father, the first time he saw it, of a desk he used when he was in the Army during WWII. The most frightening detail of this story is, we still own that desk–though not the daisywheel typewriter. We also still own the castoff maple end table. (Oh my God, do we need new furniture.)

I’ve never dreamed of building an office over the garage as a place for me to write (as the man did in Eric Mayer’s post). I’ve been too busy writing. I write where I can, sometimes in bed like Colette, though that doesn’t seem to help me write stories like hers. But then, she never had a laptop computer she could carry anywhere she wanted.

I still do some of my best creative writing on a yellow lined pad with a pencil—and a good eraser.

I also, like Eric, prefer those chunks of uninterrupted time. Even when I think I should have time, I’m interrupted or distracted by pets, by spouse, by my own ineptitude, by the Internet, and by the dryer buzzing, or by guilt and self-loathing over house or yard work left undone. It’s always something.

The writer simply writes through it all. But sometimes it is a real pain.

When I’m writing fiction, I tend to read mostly nonfiction, often research related to what I’m writing, or a good book on writing, creativity, or personal growth. Anything that helps understand people and their motivations better is helpful to fiction writers, as well as anything that improves our story building skills and instincts—which isn’t necessarily limited to books on writing. I don’t go for the type of self-help books that offer quick fixes to personal problems. I classify most of those with fad diet books. But I’m drawn to books that help me understand human nature and the human experience on a deeper level.

My most recent satisfying nonfiction read is Sam Keen Inward Bound: Exploring the Geography of Your Emotions, first published in 1980 and revised in 1992 when it was resurrected from out-of-print limbo. This is the second time I’ve read this book, and I’ve come away with something new each time.

A few months ago I might’ve answered Susan’s question differently. I only recently realized I avoid reading fiction while I write it. I think it was a remark Eric Mayer made on his blog a few months ago that first prompted me to examine my reading habits. I sometimes try to pick up a novel while in the throes of a fiction writing cycle, only to notice I keep wanting to write instead, or that I begin to move away from my story in a way that isn’t helpful to my writing process. Now and then, when I burn out on my own work, I take a break and read fiction, but then I have to wiggle back into my story again. When I’m creating a populated fictional world I want to keep that world and its characters alive in my mind, not fill my mind with someone else’s. Reading fiction can inspire me to write, but I find that once I’m doing the creative bit, I’m caught up in a flow that I want to avoid interrupting unless I get stuck or burn out. I even sometimes find myself reading nonfiction from the mindset of a character in my story.

Movies and TV don’t have this effect, just reading. I watch my favorite movies and shows, and they don’t seem to hamper my illusory dream. But then I don’t have to work at watching those the same way my mind needs to be active while reading. If I was a TV writer or a movie maker that might be different.

I know I’m burning out when my own writing begins to invade my dreams at night, and those dreams prove more repetitive than refreshing. Then it’s time for a break. If it’s an extended break I may turn to novels.

Fiction writers need to read, and most enjoy reading lots of good writing, both fiction and nonfiction. My breaks tend to include some fiction, both as entertainment—one of my favorite forms, ever since I was a kid—and as a way of keeping up with the best work out there, letting the greats teach me by example. This year at this time I’m watching other blogs, reviewers, and reading lists like DorothyL, for their best reads of 2005, so I can build my own reading list to choose from at my next break. That way I won’t wind up one day, desperate for fiction, grabbing the first thing I glimpse in the grocery store—too often a source of disappointment. Word of mouth and careful browsing tend to lead me to the better books.

It’s probably healthiest for the aspiring writer to look at fiction writing one of two ways. 1) As an after-work side job or business that one is willing to give up on if it doesn’t pay off, or 2) as a beloved hobby to pursue in one’s spare time—after time with family, after taking care of responsibilities, and perhaps even after just goofing off.

There were a few years when I spent every evening and weekend writing, and every vacation editing, revising, or otherwise working toward publication. I wish now I’d just taken a trip somewhere. That would’ve made me happier, healthier, and perhaps even fed my writing more effectively. I might’ve had something more interesting to write.

Many of us grew up with the notion that if we give up on a dream, or anything we’ve invested much time or effort in, we’re quitters—failures—the next worst thing to total losers. We were taught to never quit a job unless there’s a better one already waiting. That’s probably the worst way for an aspiring novelist to think about writing with the dream of publication. An aspiring novelist’s desire to be published is sometimes like a gambling addict’s urge to place the next bet. Every failed effort leaves us planning the next time—because next time we’ll make it big. This realization hit me hard, because I don’t even like to gamble.

There’s more to life than writing.

There’s also more to writing than being published. At one time I was unhappy, and convinced myself my unhappiness was due to not being published. I quit writing altogether after a wounding critique from an agent I’d actually paid to drop me into such a trough of self-doubt. The really awful thing was, he was right, about that manuscript. I just stopped. I didn’t write any fiction for a year. After that year I still didn’t want to write for publication, but I realized I had to write this one story that had been developing in my mind for years. I needed to write it. I started it because the story wouldn’t leave me alone. After a year of writing nothing but miserable journal pages, I plunged into the first draft. I wrote my best work yet. Maybe the reason it was better than what I’d written before was that I didn’t care whether it would be published. I just wanted to write it, for me, and for the story itself. It had to come out of my head onto paper. This took a long time. It was a long story. Too long. The cutting and editing process seemed to go on forever.

As it turned out, I couldn’t interest an agent in it. Fifty submissions—yes, fifty, and not random, but well thought out submissions to selected agents—resulted in two offers to read my manuscript for a fee and “doctor” it. Instead I self-published Shadows Fall, first through iUniverse, and later on my own. A few years later I self-published Snow Angels on my website as a free ebook. (My reasons for that are a whole other post.)

These days I still want to be published—by someone else. Self-publishing is too much like publishing, which isn’t writing. Besides, it doesn’t pay. I never broke even on expenses, in spite of some glowing reviews and personally rewarding feedback from readers, which happily continues to trickle in.

I eventually realized it’s more important to live than to live for publication. In my case living includes writing, spending hours at the computer or sometimes with pencil and paper, crafting a story, and being happy doing it. As soon as I begin thinking again that I must be published, I find the writing isn’t nearly as much fun. I still visualize seeing it published. I don’t think I’d care so much about the writing process if I didn’t. But that’s no longer a reason in itself to continue writing. My happiness as a writer no longer relies on it. Instead of focusing on wanting to be published, I’d rather expend my passion on living the best life I can, including doing the best job writing when I’m doing that.

So, yeah, I’d like to be published, and published big if at all possible. I’d also like to win the lottery. But I’m not giving up the rest of my life in hopes of winning the lottery, so why would I give it up for a dream of publication? I write because I like to write.

Does this love of the process mean I’ll keep writing no matter what? No. I like to do other things, too. I have a passion for needlework, and for watercolor. I like to take lots of time to cook. I hope to travel more. Perhaps another new career altogether will take hold of my passion. (I retired early from my last career, in technical writing, editing, and distribution, and I’m not 50 yet.) I take fiction writing one project at a time, these days. While I’m writing, I have that loose possibility of publication in my head, mainly because I need to have a reader, an audience, in mind. I think that makes me a better writer, it keeps me reaching for excellence. But I don’t commit myself to continuing no matter what. If I finish this book and it sells, so be it. If I finish this book and it doesn’t sell, so be it. If I finish this book and never want to write another story again, so be it.

If a writer still enjoys the writing process and wonders if she should continue, after any length of time spent unsuccessfully attempting to publish, the primary questions I believe she should ask herself are—Am I improving as a person through writing? Do I stretch myself in the direction of publication and reader enjoyment? Do I seek feedback and can others derive satisfaction from what I write? Do I have an instinct for telling a story? Am I growing my skills? Or do I engage in this only for my own narcissistic pleasure? Because whether she does it for herself or for publication, if publication is even a vague goal, the writer needs to keep that possibility, and the need to treat this like a business, in view. Fiction is a form of communication, and that implies others will get something of value from it if they choose to read it, even if it’s simply for entertainment.

Published or not and writing or not, I intend to be happy living my whole life, not just the writing life.