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Tag Archives: dreams

Through the Blackness of Fear – Origins of a Short Story

17 Monday Aug 2015

Posted by Jay Magidson in colors, fiction, Horror, ideas, writing

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black thoughts, colors by jay magidson, dreams, fears, ideas, inspiration

Colors by Jay Magidson is now available in print

Colors by Jay Magidson

Sometimes an idea builds inside like a kind of spiritual pressure, threatening to overwhelm the holder, even consume him. This happened to me about ten years ago. I had been writing short stories over the past year. There was no thought to what they might be used for or why I was writing them, just when they came up, I would commit them to paper. It was only recently that I even understood their purpose, and their power in my life.

Each story had a single color as its title. The first was Gray, the Kafkaesque tale of a man lost in a featureless city. Another was Yellow, about an antique’s dealer consumed slowly each night by a dead cat representing his contradictory life.

The story that began to overwhelm me, I later called Black. It started as only a seed of a feeling, a bit of undefined anxiety. I would wake at night with a deep, unexplainable fear. Everything was going well in my life and I had no reason to feel this way. I pushed it aside, ignoring it as just general anxiety about life. But it grew stronger until it began to consume me, holding a kind of opaque fabric in front of my vision.

I lost quite a bit of sleep, lying there, desperately trying to push the horrible feelings away, running from this undefinable dark fog. Out of desperation on the third night, I got up, my stomach in a deeply clenched knot and sat in front of my computer and began to write. Without thinking about it, the words began to pour out of my fingers and instead of feeling relief and peace, the way I usually do when I sit down to write, the fear grew worse. I realized there was no way around this feeling, that the only way out, was through the blackness. I was terrified.

With a deep breath, I dove into the bleak feeling and for the first time, touched it. The best I can describe it, was like a kind of river flowing beneath the surface of my life, a river of unexplored pain. I dipped my hand into that river, touching its icy thickness. The fear and anxiety only grew worse, and I knew what I must do in that moment. I had to jump in.

The story began to flow like nothing else I had ever written before, nothing related to my life, as if I were a completely different person releasing this horrible and dark crime that had been eating at me, consuming me with guilt until I couldn’t bear it anymore.

The entire story came out that night, in one marathon sitting. And when I laid done the final period I was free. The fear had left me, replaced with a deep sense of gratitude and wonder at life. I had dove through that river of pain and had been cleansed by its fire, rising up on the other side a different, better person.

I’ve put the short story online here, if you would like to read it. It is surreal and personal, without any reference in my life. I read it now, still wondering where it can from, or why I wrote it, not really sure what it means. I only know that I had to write it, had to release it, or would have been consumed by it.

I think we misunderstand fear, shying away from it, avoiding the pain it represents. And when that suggests bodily injury, that’s probably wise, a mechanism for keeping us safe, built into our DNA. But there is another kind of fear, that which we need to embrace. It holds a deep kind of meaning on the other side of its invisible veil; we must leap the chasm with only our faith to keep us aloft. And on the other side is peace, growth, understanding, and maybe if we are lucky, a bit of wisdom.

 

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Where Do Ideas Come From?

17 Sunday May 2015

Posted by Jay Magidson in ideas, writing

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

dreams, goya, ideas, Writer's block, Writing

Granted, this is not new territory, but the question continues to get raised, by readers, and by writers looking for new story ideas. I can’t speak (write) for anyone else, so I’ll tell you how ideas sometimes come to me.

One place I go for ideas is that sweet spot between waking and sleeping. When I go to bed at night, I kind of play with that twilight zone before sleep, not quite awake, not quite asleep, seeing how wide I can stretch it. It is kind of like daydreaming, but much richer, crazier, none of the rules of reality get in the way. It’s like a kid asking, what if I could fly, or be invisible or jump inside of other people’s dreams? And I just let the ideas come, the wilder the better. Some I grab and tell myself. “I’m going to remember you.” Sometimes I do, sometimes I don’t, but it doesn’t matter. It is far more important to keep the ideas flowing then destroy the process by getting up and writing something down. How pedestrian can you get?

Other ideas come from daydreaming. I daydream all the time. I doubt my family has any idea how much. Except maybe my daughter, she is a master daydreamer too. It is likely most writers and artists are great daydreamers. A cloud floats by and it reminds you of a clown, which makes you think of the circus, which makes you think of all of mankind locked in a freak show without knowing it. And on it goes.

Maybe you’re sitting at a restaurant and you overhear two people talking. “What a great baritone voice that man has.” You think he could be a radio personality with that voice, but maybe that is just a cover and you create some spy scenario in your head. OK, I know, most of life is not all that interesting, but add just a drop of untamed imagination and it is never boring. I have no idea what it’s like not to have an overactive imagination, telling oneself stories all the time, inventing characters and scenarios. People without wild imaginations probably get a lot more stuff done.

Ideas come from nowhere too, and those are the best ones of all. I get up early, before anyone else, when the house is quite and I can write, not feel guilty that I should be helping with the millions of things that need to get done when you have a family. Many times, I have a blank page and no starting place. I know I need a new chapter, but have absolutely no idea what is supposed to come next. I don’t agonize over it, I just write. It starts out as pure shit, but I don’t stop, because I know what’s going to happen if I just trust the process. And pretty soon, my fingers kind of disconnect from my brain, and out comes…stuff. Pretty good stuff, sometimes even great stuff. Then I hear a soft peep out of the critical part of my mind, “hey what’s that, where did that come from, that’s not you, you can’t write like that.” But I give him a good gagging and let the process continue. Maybe it lasts a few minutes, maybe a few hours. And damn if it isn’t pretty good.

Where did it come from? I have no idea. Call it the muses, call it intuition, the subconscious, long buried memories, call it God. What difference does it make, but by all means don’t stop it. That is the most creative a human being can be. And it is way cool!

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