Wick Welker's Blog: Wick Welker

The Inspiration of Distraction

As a writer, I usually keep myself open to ideas. I read fantasy novels, watch bad sci fi movies, play open world video games and talk about my writing with family and friends, hoping to spark new ideas for stories. I have no idea where inspiration comes from, but I had an experience the other day which showed me what I’ve been doing wrong.

It was a mystery that would never be solved no matter how much I tried.

Recently, I went to the Seattle Art Museum and was impressed by a particular painting. It depicted a large tree with three compartments within its trunk each with a separate door. One open door showed a miniature home. The next door above held a simple, non-descript sphere. The last door stacked on top, however, was only slightly open, obscuring whatever was within. The mystery of this last compartment killed me. Why did the painter reveal what was inside two compartments but not this last one? What further deepened the mystery was that I was looking at a painting, so I couldn’t just open this compartment door to find out what was within. Worse yet, the artist had long since died so it's not like I could look him up and ask him. It was a mystery that would never be solved no matter how much I tried. What a cool idea for a story, I thought. So, I snapped a photo of the painting, hoping I could look at it later as a source of inspiration.

I could write a story about the very thing that was happening to me.

Later that day, I kept thinking about the perpetual mystery that the painting presented. I was captivated at the thought of a mystery that is impossible to solve. I felt like I had something worthwhile—a concept that I could turn into a plot. I wanted to look at the painting again for inspiration but I couldn’t find the picture I had taken on my phone. It wasn’t in my pic gallery. I couldn't remember the artist’s name either so I started googling, using words to describe the painting. Nothing came up but random pictures of tree houses. I thought about everything else I could do to get a picture of the painting. I could call up the museum and ask or I could just go and visit again. But my mind went further. What if they didn’t know what painting I was talking about? What if the painting was gone when I went back? What if it had never been there at all?

It was then that a thought came to me. I could write a story about the very thing that was happening to me. Write a story where a man is inspired by a painting at a museum that was never really there. There it was, a great idea for a story.

In my pursuit of inspiration, I crossed that coveted barrier between abstraction and plot.

Where did the idea come from? I originally wanted to see this painting again because I was captured by the thought of a perpetual mystery. I wanted to be inspired by that half closed door, as if it would open a world of revelation about a story that could follow. I had identified my locus of inspiration and it was going to be that damn painting. Only it wasn’t. The actual painting isn’t what generated the idea. It was the pursuit of finding the painting that gave me inspiration for a totally different idea.

The pursuit of inspiration took me from an abstract, ill defined idea of a vague story of perpetual mystery to a concrete premise wherein a person is seeking inspiration from a painting that never existed. In my pursuit of inspiration, I crossed that coveted barrier between abstraction and plot. The idea for the story did not come as a result of what I thought was inspiration, it came from searching for that idea.

This is the reason why most people who have an idea about a novel usually don’t end up writing.

Searching for inspiration is not trivial. As writers, we can keep our eyes and ears open, telling ourselves that there are no bad ideas. When we look out the window and it’s raining ideas, we run outside to gulp down water, but often the sun suddenly comes out and dries up the inspiration. Our presumed source of inspiration can suddenly vanish.

But the truth is, ideas are easy—forming a coherent plot from those ideas is not. This is the reason why most people who have an idea about a novel usually don’t end up writing. They have a flash of an idea, a beautiful moment of what if the world was like x, y or z, that would be such a cool book! But disjointed, abstract ideas don’t easily cross over into a plot. The novice quickly becomes overwhelmed with the daunting task of story continuity, crafting conflict, developing mystery and enriching the characterization. If you only start a story with an abstract idea, like perpetual mystery, then you’re not likely going to develop the crucial elements of a cogent plot.

A good idea has roots that can quickly establish a workable plot. Not only does a good idea have roots, but it has branches that easily carry over into the more complex elements of a story. A solid idea will carry your plot forward where abstraction may just stall your efforts, because there’s not a lot of substance. It’s important to start out a novel or a short story on the solid footing of a workable premise.

There’s something about distracting our brains from the problem at hand that unleashes our creativity.

So, we know why we need a solid idea for a plot but the mystery remains: where do we get these ideas? The answer is I don’t really know.

But I know that, much like not finding your car keys until you start looking for your wallet, the idea you want probably won’t be found in the place you’re looking for it. What is important is continually seeking for the idea. And, yes, you may not actually find what you set out looking for but you will find something along the way that may be even more compelling than what you wanted in the first place.

There’s something about distracting our brains from the problem at hand that unleashes our creativity. My best ideas don’t come when I’m staring at a blinking cursor on the computer screen. That’s usually the point where I’d like to smash my laptop and give up writing forever. No, my best ideas come when I’m showering. They come when I’m jogging. They come when I’m driving around listening to podcasts. They’ll come when I’m trying to go to sleep. You know, while I’m doing really exciting things. I don’t know why, but there’s something about routine that frees up the brain to unleash its creativity. Creative inspiration is like that damn cat who you want to come and sit in your lap but won’t until you’ve given up and started eating dinner. Then that cat is all up in your face for attention. That is how inspiration works.

We need to completely exhaust ourselves until we think that we’re just total hacks at what we’re doing.

The irony of my experience at the art museum was that the idea of a man being inspired by some sort of ghost painting that he saw at a museum is that this idea contained that mystery abstraction that I started out looking for to begin with. I stumbled on the very idea I was looking for by not being able to find the original painting that inspired me.

As writers, we just need to look and not stop looking for sources of inspiration. We need to turn over all the proverbial rocks and completely exhaust ourselves until we think that we’re just total hacks at what we’re doing. The hope is that we won’t necessarily find inspiration where we’re looking but that we’ll stumble on it by being curious, receptive and open minded about the world. We need to keep asking questions until the ideas find us.

My Yellow fury: Part IV

Part IV: The Chasm

I looked to the rock face across the rift. A small tollbooth the size of a coffin erupted from underneath the cliff rock. At first I was confused at the weathered tollbooth that had been borne right from the boulders but I soon remembered it. This booth, fit for only one gnarled man—a small man in both stature and character—is where my Father had worked. Below the tollbooth, a causeway grew from the rock cliff and inched out toward me, bridging the crevice beneath my feet.

Although I stood far from his booth, I could see the magnified expression on his face. His brow was dim and sunken above his eyes. His nostrils flared, tenting the top of his mouth into a bitter grimace. He stared at me behind the window of his booth with wide eyes.

Although his face was vacant for the moment, it twisted in delight as he pulled a lever within the booth, which raised the bridge high into the sky, marooning me on my cliff.

His smile rotted on his face with pleasure at my plight. As I mustered the same hatred that I had reserved for Cosmos, my heart jumped as something fell on my foot. It was the yellow toy truck.

Curious now, I picked up the toy and spun one of its wheels, watching the small axle swivel in place. I was confused at its appearance but quickly learned that my Father’s face was washed with anxiety. Fear weighed his eyes and desperation spilled from his gaping mouth. It was the first time I had ever seen him care about anything. Realizing my leverage, I simply held the truck out above the chasm, threatening to drop the suddenly coveted toy.

I couldn’t hear his voice, but his face screamed with a panic and fear of which I never thought him capable. He held his palms out toward me in resignation and dropped his hand on a throttle, bringing the bridge back into place in front of me feet. Proudly I stepped forward to cross, but the scene cut out once again. The tollbooth sunk away and the bridge splintered beneath my feet as the toy truck became wind in my hands.

I fell through space and air for a moment, now fully submitting to whatever being or force that had brought me through these ancient memories.

Before I could guess where I’d be taken next, my feet lightly dropped in the middle of a playground.

MY YELLOW FURY: Part III

Part III: The Smoke Shack

At first I thought I knew the yellow truck, as some vestige of my childhood but I realized it was no toy that I had played with. Even though I couldn’t remember the truck, somehow its brilliant yellow and black rubber wheels were enshrined in my mind. Along with a familiarity of the toy, I soon abhorred its mere arrival.

Despite my annoyance at the truck, it served as a distraction for Cosmo. The dog lunged at the yellow truck, which drove itself away from his assault and took off toward the open garage door at the side of the house. Cosmo made chase at the truck and disappeared into the garage as the door slam shut behind. He howled within as I lowered myself from the oak. To my dismay, the woman who had fallen at the trunk had vanished beneath me.

Incensed, I looked up at my childhood bedroom, which still flickered with the light from a single candle. As I was about to run across the moonlit lawn to the house, I noticed a new light now at my side. It was the light from a cigar, whose end burned with a single ember.

The cinder smoldered within the darkened window of my Father’s smoke shack; once only reserved for his silent smoking and secret thinking. It was no place for his small son.

Tempted, I ran at the lean-to shelter, bursting through the creaking door. The room was black before me. The blackness curled around me, inching over my skin and drawing out my memories. Within this blackness, his cigar fire suspended freely. I could hear his breath taking deep drags, moving the cigar light in the room like a lazy firefly.

“She should’ve known what was best for her… for her… for her…” he said. His voice crept along the floor and up the walls. It came from all directions, surrounding me in echoes. “Couldn’t let things be… things be… things be…”

Did he know I was no longer a child? Did he know how perfectly my hands could fit around his neck?

I lunged at the dangling cigar but the darkness was suddenly swept before me into the bright day of a clean, blue sky. The house, the yard and the old oak evaporated around me. The curtain of the smoke shack was cast away leaving me by a cliff-side with a large chasm beneath my feet. Although I could still smell the smoke from my Father’s cigar, the entire scene had been lifted from my eyes by whatever force that brought me to my childhood home.

My Yellow Fury: Part II

Part II: Cosmo

Cosmo’s fur had changed from a sleek coat of jet-black to a bubbling surface of mange and dried blood. A ragged nub replaced the happy wag of his once friendly tail. His floppy ears, now shredded into tattered flesh, twitched with the erratic thrusts of his neck. Cosmo stripped skin away from the face of a black-haired woman whose locks ran over the bursting oak roots of the front yard.

Cosmo had not noticed me as I peered down at the woman, whose face was obscured by the feasting dog. Her body rocked like driftwood with each thrust from the dog’s jaws as I angled my neck to see her. Somehow, like an orchestrated ruse, Cosmo turned his body as I aimed to catch a glimpse of her face just in time to block my sight.

Before I could see her face or even discover the cause by which she had suffered beneath the oak tree, my bough gave way beneath, releasing a tremendous crack into the air. I would have fallen onto Cerberus himself if it weren’t for another branch just beneath. I groped the branch in relief, but saw that Cosmo now looked up at me.

His eyes encircled with yellow rings that shone with light from no earthly reflection.

He stared at me, stoic, for a moment longer to show the things he knew. His eyes told stories of panicked stabbing and silent strangling in the night.

Cosmo told his horrors and then released his bark, piercing and unrelenting up the oak tree. He maddened with my presence and barked until he choked for breath, which only fueled his frenzy. His lips curled, beneath his snout, exposing the sharpened teeth of no household pet. I didn’t know where the creature had come from but his entire wrath was intended for me.

His eyes widened with anger and his bark grew with desperation. For every ounce of hate he spat at me, I doubled it over and filled myself with the thought of my Father. I could still see in Cosmo’s side the single handle of a butterfly knife that wept with blood. My Father had wanted to take the only thing that had mattered to me; the only friend that I had ever known: Cosmo.

What this new realm had underestimated in me was the power of hatred to stew for three decades.

It had ripened and matured within my heart, which produced a heated funnel of energy that butted Cosmo’s fury. I struggled with his contempt as his eyes glared at me. It was at a moment when I thought I would be overwhelmed by the beast that I noticed a single, yellow toy truck roll up behind the dog.

My Yellow Fury: Part I

Part I: Return to Home

I made sure to watch the bulldozers. I had seen their shovels push the porch pillars down like Romans butting their shields into a frontline of barbarian spears. The rotting wood of the deck where I had once chipped my tooth churned into instant splinters in front of the yellow machines. My father’s smoke shack that I remembered glowing with the flame of one cigar was toppled in an instant. Even the ancient oak tree, where my mother had decided to hang, fell to the ground uprooting its memories. I watched the house collapse in less time than it took for my Father to bleed out over the cold cement floor in the basement.

I had seen its walls fall right in front of me, yet right in front of me is where the house still stood. The running ivy framed the house into a face that stared at me, vacant but pensive.  Its darkened windowpane eyes watched me in silence. The chipped, yellowed skin of the walls shuddered with a concealed pleasure at my approach. I could hear the weathervane’s squeaking laugh as the wind pointed its arrow at me. Even when I had watched the house collapse and rot I had known that its power would always lie in outer realms.

Without words, it drew me in. The lonely shrew had grown angry in its patience and now lit a small light inside my childhood room. It beckoned me in but delighted as the gate slammed before me. For a moment I hesitated but then remembered my rebellious days. I caught hold on that ancient oak that had led me over the wall after midnight drinking as a young man. Within its wilted bark, it carried be over the black iron gate and perched me high above the yellowed grass of the front yard.

Within the tree, I paused for a moment, tuning my ears to a new sound that had a churning quality like someone stirring a large stew. After glaring through the dark windows of the house, I saw that the sound came from just below me. At the bottom of the oak’s trunk, I saw the familiar black fur of a once dear friend. He had hidden with me during drunken fights and barked out as scotch tumblers smashed into the walls. Below the oak tree is where I had once buried Cosmo as a small boy. It was the same place where I saw him now, chewing on a girl’s face.