It’s finals week at Fullerton College! Before I  grade a tall stack of essays, I’d like to share the last of my three recommendations for books on writing.

In my previous post, I blogged about Robert Olen Butler’s From Where We Dream: The Process of Writing Fiction and the importance of the “creative trance” for writers (being in “the zone”).

Continuing this train of thought, I highly recommend another excellent book on writing, Ron Carlson’s Ron Carlson Writes a Story. In this book, Carlson walks us through his writing process, which culminates in his polished short story, “The Governor’s Ball.”

One of my favorite moments in the book comes when Carlson discusses writing as an inherently creative and imaginative activity. He writes:

To write a story is to stay alert and open to the possibilities that emerge as each sentence cuts its way into the unknown… If you get what you expect, it isn’t good enough.

(If you are writing what you expect, you are probably–to borrow from one of Robert Olen Butler’s phrases–“generalizing, analyzing, and abstracting,” and the work will ultimately fall flat.)

Carlson co-directs the graduate program in fiction at the University of California, Irvine, where he works with many promising and talented writers. He writes:

…one of the things I’ve been saying a lot in these past years is: solve all your problems through the physical world. That is, if you have a scene that’s stalled or muddled, go back into it carefully and write the next thing that happens in real time. Don’t think, but watch instead: occupy. Many times a story will get twisted when a writer knows where she wants to go, what irony or point she wants the story to achieve, and she’s got her eye on that goal and she can’t see or hear the opportunities that are arising in the current scene.

This ability to write from a “creative trance” or “the zone,” rather than stringing together plot points to support a story, is what seemingly defines the best literary fiction. And yet, I don’t think I’d be alone if I said that this approach to writing was intimidating. But it becomes absolutely necessary if

We want the story to be true. We don’t want it to have a point, theme, doctrine. If we write the story well, those things will emerge–we can’t prevent it.

Outer story is event, and event is there to serve and amplify and reveal character. This simply means that the trials your people confront will illuminate who they are. (50-51)

Let’s strive to write the kind of fiction that illuminates who our characters are by never failing to see or hear the opportunities that surround them. Write your heart out!