October 15, 2003

    Well, it seems Shorn was serious when he said "There's no milk left." 

    Usually, that means "There wasn't enough milk for me to have my cereal, so I went hungry this morning.  But I left you a few tablespoons so that you could have your coffee and live happily ever after.  Don't forget to buy milk."

    And so I went downstairs today fully prepared to brew a very small batch of coffee with which to savor the household's last few drops of milk.  But when I got to the kitchen, all I found was a stack of dirty dishes (we went out to dinner last night, and ignored the kitchen) and an empty carcass of a milk carton.  Woe!

    I grumbled, began unloading the dishwasher, and considered my options.  I really didn't want to go out to the store this early in the morning.  I only had two hours before I had to leave for class, and I had plans for that time.  Writing plans.  But I didn't want to go without the Joe either.  It's not like I'm completely dysfunctional without coffee, it's just that I'm so much happier with it.  Nice and warm and sweet, makes my head go buzz, buzz, buzz. 

    I made a brief search of the cabinets and pantry for some sort of milk substitute--creamer, soy milk, sweetened condensed canned goodness--knowing full well that there was none to be found.  Finally, demoralized, I poured myself a glass of coke and headed back upstairs.

    As I sat down and began to write, I considered a conversation Rita and I had last night about writing, and the habits associated with writing.  We discussed our old joke that omelets and hot chocolate are the science fiction foods--probably because they are easy, and that's what authors often end up eating.  And then it struck me:  hot chocolate!  I have hot chocolate!  I could put hot chocolate in my coffee!

    And as I was brewing my sweet nectar, I revised the joke.  Omelets and hot chocolate are the sci-fi food not just because they're easy, but because there comes a point in an authors existence when they cannot bear to leave the house, but there is nothing left to eat except cocoa packets, old eggs, and moldy cheese, and that's the point when one's consciousness becomes completely inseparable from the manuscript they are writing.  These are the times when authors really bleeds through into their characters.

    The gastronomic details of this scenario vary from author to author, of course, but I imagine the basic scenario stays the same.  I can visualize Lois McMaster Bujold trapped in a small house with two squalling children and nothing to eat except instant oatmeal and leftover packets of bleu cheese dressing.  In those painful moments, the more fiery aspects of her personality leaked onto the page and swirled into the character that we would come to know as Cordelia. 

    Once, many years ago, when we were both idealistic wee lasses, Rita said to me that she challenged the idea that artists (of any type) had to suffer in order to produce art.  She believed that an artist had to experience, but not suffer.  It seemed like a reasonable statement at the time.  Now I have to chuckle.  After all, that is the idea that really separates adolescents from adults, isn't it?  The believe that you can gain knowledge without suffering.  So now I do believe that one must suffer in order to create.  An author cannot create a believable, suffering character without going through the motions themselves.  The difference is that the author's suffering needn't be as serious as the character's. 

    Consider this: nothing to eat except hot cocoa.  For an author, this is disastrous.  Depressing.  Enough to make a sensitive author type break down into tears at the prospect of having to get dressed and leave the house in search of something more substantial than a sugar high.  For a character, this is just icing on the cake.  When you're stranded in space on a derelict spacecraft, and everybody you know is dead or dying, and you're being hunted by interstellar bounty hunters, and then you find out that all you have to eat is hot chocolate, that's when you want to cry.  And the reader will cry along with you.  Not because eating only cocoa is such a bad thing, in the grand scheme of things,  but because it's the only thing that the reader really relates to.

    So yes, writers have to suffer in order to write.  Not so that they can relate to their characters, but more so that they can relate to their audience.  So it's okay if you've never been a refugee, or been divorced, or audited, or had your house burn down.  If you're writing for a standard middle class audience, it may be enough that you have a phone that rings off the hook, a stack of dirty dishes, and a backed up toilet. 

    Inspiration is where you find it.