I've Just Always Asked Writers About Writing
As a little kid, I barricaded myself in my bedroom for hours with Legos doctored to look like Spider-man, Batman, and Dracula, playing out epic, interwoven narratives that leapt into my own multi-verse to include Star Wars action figures and the occasional He-Man.
It was still a few of years before the understanding of what I was really doing when I got lost in my own worlds for hours on end came together with the satisfying snap of my Lego fortresses.
I wasn’t much of a reader until in fifth grade when I discovered The Egypt Game by Zilpha Keatley Snyder.
The book was nearly 20 years old at the time, but the kids in it felt as real as my own classmates. The Egypt Game is about a group of kids who create a drawn-out game of the imagination that draws from ancient Egyptian history and lore. They got lost in stories in the same way I did. I didn’t realize it at the time, but the themes and tropes of The Egypt Game were fundamental to me. The supernatural creeps into the corners of their lives. The story revolves around the horror genre impinging on the likable main characters’ ordinary world, causing them to confront their emotions and reach catharsis. There’s a weird younger child connected to the supernatural, without explanation. The stakes are life and death but the things that matter to the kids—family, friendship, school, what’s for lunch—are relatively low stakes.
After The Egypt Game, I devoured the books of Zilpha Keatley Snyder. I loved that she threw me into a group of kids such that I felt like one of them. The Stanley Family series, which includes the unforgettably titled The Famous Stanley Kidnapping Case, were favorites. The books are scary, but not too scary. The ghosts and monsters and otherworldly evils exist at the edges of a recognizable world.
Zilpha Keatley Snyder visited the Boston Public Library in 1986, and my parents took me. I remember feeling excited but also uncomfortable; after all, I was in the presence of a celebrity. And while I knew that Snyder had written these books that I loved, I don’t think I truly understood what that meant until I got to ask a question.
I asked Snyder about the quiet, somewhat removed younger kids who populated her books, the ones who were attuned to the supernatural world, like Marshall Ross in The Egypt Game and Blair Stanley in the Stanley Family books.
Zilpha Keatley Snyder told me that that was a good question. Then she talked about her daughter being this sort of dreamy child who enjoyed disappearing into stories. She talked about her own childhood and the children she’d worked with as a teacher.
Click.
This was the moment.
This character who recurred in the stories I loved was based, in part, on the author’s daughter, an actual, non-fictional person. I remember the feeling of receiving this information viscerally, like finding a trove of puzzle pieces behind the couch that click into existence an entire landscape.
Click.
These stories do not arrive fully formed.
Click.
These stories are created.
Click.
By people.
Click.
People like me.
Click. Into place.
That was the day I became a writer. The landscape was complete.
I could tell stories. I could write characters that I loved and invested in, the ones who felt like they lived in the real world, just like my favorite fictional ones. Once getting hit by this Shazam-style lightning bolt that my future was full of stories waiting to be created, it was just a matter of getting there.
Thanks for indulging me. I’m going to write these kinds of autobiographical entries every once in a while for a few reasons. Foremost, I’ve been pushed these past couple of years to get increasingly personal in my writing. And I like where that’s taken me. The last couple of scripts I’ve written (Acker and I take turns “owning” scripts) have come from the heart. They’ve been emotionally messy and honest. And even if nothing happens with them (though I hope something does!), I’m glad I wrote them and think they’re among the best writing I’ve done. And I’m trying to bring both that honesty and autobiography to everything I’m currently working on.
I also think it’s important to investigate why we write. We tend to write the same stories, visit with the same characters, over and over again in our writing. Sometimes we’re aware of it and sometimes we are not. Writing is our way of working something out, exploring a question. Finding the root of that question, turning over the things that formed us and our creative worldview, takes our current work deeper below the surface.
We’re all just mining our lives for material. It’s where the good stuff is. The real stuff. The honest, emotional stuff.
Get your shovels. Let’s dig in.
Leave a comment telling me why you’re a writer. What was your lightning bolt moment?
One more thing. I’ll talk about my reasons for this in depth later, but on these free newsletters I’m going to include the opportunity to throw me a bit of money without subscribing to the substack. I mean, I think you should subscribe. There’s gonna be good stuff here. But if you don’t feel like it right now or don’t have the means but still want to show you appreciate what I’m doing here, you can do that here: