“…the practical mind is useful, but if it weren’t for imagination people wouldn’t have gotten very far; there wouldn’t be any electric lights, baseball, math and science, or art of any kind..’

“Without imagination, no one would make anything new. Imagination is as important as practical thinking…”  Fr: Arthur Collins and the Three Wishes  by Linda Rash Pilkington

On June 4, 1999 City Castles became an LLC.  By 2000 we were http://www.citycastles.com on the Internet, and looking back, I’m not sure how I ever got us there because I barely knew what the Internet was, let alone how to get my company on it.  It began, as most creative undertakings do, with an idea that was to be made into something-in my case–a product. 

For me the product was the STOP FORM, a form for colleges and universities to aid their efforts for student retention.  I had created and designed the form, and City Castles was the company that I built to sell it. But of course there had to be more then one product, and so everything else on City Castles came into being. 

  City Castles, and its products, were the result of my creative mind and my practical mind coming together to imagine, play, plan and struggle, and then to find practical solutions to bring into being what I had imagined–that finished product– that had begun as my idea.

After the initial creative struggle, the steps between idea and the product, were the hard parts for me. Those practical details of making an idea into a reality, the how, and the who, and the what do I do now? Took as much courage and struggle as the courage involved in artistic creativity that Rollo May wrote about in The Courage to Create.

May’s insightful 1975 book, recognized that all professions, as well as business and science also demand creative courage, but that creative courage is an absolute necessity for artists whether they are writers, painters, or musicians.

 May believed that the artists who create new art forms change the world as they do it. He described the artist’s  encounter with the problem, and then on through the process by which the creative solution came to the mind of the creator. And he gave a wonderful description of that “Ah Ha” moment.

May first described the periods of thought, the struggle for the right solution and the practical work of the creative person. And then, usually during a period of rest– the flash of inspiration, of illumination: the solution the artist had been looking for, suddenly, and joyfully, appeared.

That breakthrough in thinking is a recurring experience for writers of fiction; it is similar, but more profound than arriving at a good idea. The creative process, the searching for the “ah ha” moment constantly presents itself on page after page, because much of writing consists of solving problems. 

Talent helps, serendipity plays a role, but that is not all, and artists know that, whether they have the courage or the humility to admit it.

Good writing isn’t just a matter of  plotting, or of solving problems, there is something  mysterious and beautiful about creativity, and creative inspiration, that guides the work and that comes both from within and from outside the writer.  Some joke about the “muse” that brings them inspiration, but others, when caught  in their most honest and solemn moments, admit, sometimes haltingly, that creativity is a gift from a most generous God.

Much of today’s writing comes from writers more interested in maintaining their own sophisticated image,  and a reputation for being cool, rather than in expressing themselves with freedom and creativity.  

 Often they think of themselves as clever rebels. Instead, they are talented, but careful conformists.  Reading what their friends read, watching what their friends watch,  thinking what their friends think and writing only what their friends and colleagues will approve. 

What they write must pass a strict inner censor, (I imagine David Letterman) who gives a quick “thumbs down” should the writer stray too far from the realm of coolness.  This level of coolness covers all thought, and human behavior. It has a top ten list that is closely adhered to or else the writer may become an object of derision, and will be cast into darkness, away from the culture of cool, and out of the stylish set that  he is desperately trying to  be part of.   

Like teens, striving  for acceptance by the  elite high school clique, many adults in our society are trapped. They are  frozen into certain tastes, beliefs, and behavior.  They have accepted the rules of  the Culture of Cool without ever giving them much thought.  And, they have thrown away their innate right to freedom of thought, and action,  in order to belong.  

And, just as the highschool clique leads people within it to deride and exclude all who do not hold the elite’s point of view, those opposed to: The Culture of Cool, are also derided and discarded.

 For the writer, the self-censoring of all that is not cool from his work is destructive because it takes away anything that is unusual, or creative.  It removes all that is unrehearsed, impulsive, real, passionate, sweet,  true, and unique in him; it limits what he will think and what he will write because it eliminates his courage. 

 Such limitations are intolerable.  Cool or not, a writer must choose freedom.

In my first post I wrote about John Gardner, author of  The Art of Fiction Notes on Craft for young writers.  Gardner was not just a teacher to me, he remains one of my favorite authors.  His book, October Light, is a thing of beauty. I’ve reread it often, loving the story about the feud between an old man and his elderly sister, which is also the story’s  symbol for the feud between liberals and conservatives in the United States.

Copyrighted in 1976, Gardner’s word pictures, and the thoughts that he evokes would be enough to make it a great book even without the humor.   The protagonist, James Page, is a “thoughtful man” a man of character. This is an attribute  in short supply at the present moment, and so, whenever I need to remember men of character, and remind myself that they existed, I linger over October Light.

When I read October Light, The Art of Fiction, or Gardner’s essay, Learning from Disney and Dickens, I can’t accept  his conclusion that fiction, or painting, or great music don’t, in the end, interpret life’s  meaning. I reject the idea that they are wonderful as works of art, and bring us joy, but perhaps are  useless, or even meaningless.

That was the conclusion that he drew towards the end of  the essay, Learing from Disney and Dickens, which was written  shortly before his death. The essay, on the whole,  is a joyous one; as I look at it now, I who never met, but am fond of him, can feel Gardner’s presence in his words.

I feel his character, talent and humor, and can still rejoice in them. And so I wonder at his conclusion about the meaning of fiction. Was that conclusion an afterthought, a gloomy thought that overtook him just as he finished that good humored essay?

I never knew John Gardner, but if I could speak to him now, I would try to persuade him that his belief about fictions importance, was mistaken, and I would offer his own words, so carefully written, as my argument.

I would say, “You are alive in these words, John Gardner, you built the fictional dream for me, and made James Page matter to me.  You made me understand and love these people.  They live again in the book and in the mind of the reader who reads them. They live in my mind and my heart; they made me laugh and cry.  Whenever, the world itself is too much for me, and everything hurts too much, I can turn away for awhile..I can escape into the story and the world that you made for me, and heal.  And that, sir, is neither useless or without meaning.”

I was a shy, diffident child, tender of heart, lacking in confidence, and self-esteem who grew into a young woman with those same qualities.

It took middle age, hormonal changes, the “hard knocks” that life brings, and the sheer indignation of betrayal, to bring forth, much too late in life, the grit, the Irish courage, and the brave heart, that lived within me. Thank goodness for those hormonal changes because I needed a brave heart simply to survive as a human being,  but even more if I was to triumph as a writer.

Except for that brave heart, my other personality traits made me an unlikely writer, or even a student of fiction, for such a writing teacher as John Gardner. Maybe it is best that I never met him.  Nevertheless,  he had a part in teaching me to write.

Gardner’s,  The Art of Fiction: Notes on craft for Young Writers, is a desk top companion that I return to for writing advice and sometimes when courage  fails me.

It is not that Gardner, the perfectionist, would have given me encouragement to write-he wouldn’t have; his standards, his list of requirements, and background for those who aspired to write was strict, and lengthy. I wouldn’t have been a candidate.

If Gardner encourages me it is because we agreed on a fundamental point of writing that he called, The Fictional Dream. It was his belief, and my feeling, long before I ever read a word that he wrote, that it is the author’s art, and a purpose of fiction,  to create a world, word by word, for the reader to escape into.

Creating that fictional dream, and telling the story without distracting, or awakening the reader from that dream is my aspiration as a writer.  Maintaining the dream, and not awakening the reader from dreaming often stops me from dragging in distractions, and my personal point of view, into the story.

Sustaining the dream keeps me to the point, focused on my characters, my plot and all of the solutions and surprises that creativity brings; it keeps me away from belaboring  my own beliefs, it sends me on to do what the Story Teller is expected to do: tell the story.