It's in There.
How to find your way forward when you have no idea what to do.
Years ago, I worked with a veteran copywriter who enjoyed telling me about his brilliant ad campaigns. I've forgotten all of his yarns except for one about how he came up with a tagline for a spaghetti sauce.
Alan's mission was to convince consumers that a lower priced, run-of-the-mill commercial sauce was as good as the high-priced gourmet brands.
Alan went to the factory where they made the red stuff. A product manager took him for a tour. Alan stood in front of the bubbling vats asking the manager questions like: "Does you use garlic?" The guy said, "Yeah, there's garlic in there." "How about tomatoes? You know like real chopped up tomatoes." "Yep, that's in there." "Olive oil?" "Onions?" "Tomato paste?" Every time Alan came up with an ingredient, it turned out it was in the sauce.
By the time the tour was over Alan knew exactly what the tagline should be to give the tired old brand of spaghetti sauce the old ooh-fa!
I'm sure you've guessed it. "It's in There." Whatever those premium brands got, we got.
What's my point?
I have written and published nine novels. If you've been following these missives, you know I'm working on number ten. I'm about a third of the way into the first draft.
What you might not know is that when I set out to write a novel, I don't have much figured out beyond a basic idea. For instance, the idea behind the new novel was that James Beck would get caught up in some sort of problem that would force him to call on NYPD Deputy Inspector Dianne Brennan for help. (He met Brennan in a previous novel DEATH COMES DUE). I didn't know what the problem was going to be. Or why he needed Brennan's help. All I knew was that asking Brennan wasn't something James Beck wanted to do for reasons I want go into here. Beyond that, it would be a matter of figuring out the story as I wrote it.
This process is generally referred to as the Headlight Method. A term derived from this quote from E.L. Doctorow: "Writing is like driving a car at night. You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way."
Many writers think the Headlight Method is nuts. They believe the best way to write a long form work like a novel is to figure out the story and outline it before they start writing.
Both approaches have their pros and cons. A major disadvantage of the Headlight Method is that you risk coming to a point where you have no idea what should happen next. You're stuck. It's the dreaded "Oh shit, now what?" moment.
Experienced writers know that when this happens, they'd better not toss in some half-assed idea just to keep going. That only makes things worse.
So, what does one do? I remind myself to calm down and remember Alan's tagline for spaghetti sauce: It's in there.
What does that mean? It means that something I've already written, something that's part of what got me to the impasse, holds the key to figuring out what comes next. It could be something that a minor character said or did that is the key to going forward. Or a situation or place I rendered without any idea it would become important.
I've gotten stuck many times. It's already happened twice in the new book. Time and again, I find that the key to unlocking the next turn in the road is already in the story.
How does this happen? I don't exactly know. I usually explain it by saying the muse or my subconscious put something in place that I never noticed. However, I sense that something deeper is going on. Astrophysicists have discovered that all the visible matter we can observe makes up only about 5% of the universe. The other 95% is called dark matter and dark energy. Dark because both are invisible. They don't interact with light in ways we can observe. Nevertheless, these unseeable, imperceptible forces influence the formation and evolution of entire galaxies and the expansion of the universe.
Clearly, there are forces at work we just aren't aware of. So what? I don't really care how "it" got "in there". What matters is knowing it's there. Having confidence that the solution to a problem is embedded in the problem makes me more relaxed and open to discovering the solution.
And this doesn't just happen with writing. It happens in life.
So, the next time you get stuck, stymied, blocked; when you can't figure out a way forward, remind yourself the answer is in there.
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