Sue Grafton
An exerpt from Writers Dreaming by Naomi Epel.
I reach a point in many of my books, when I'm very heavily engaged in the process of writing, where I have a problem
that I can't solve. And as I go to sleep I will give myself the suggestion that a solution will come. Whether this
is from a dream state I'm not certain. I know that I will waken and the solution will be there. I attribute it
to right brain activity. I don't know the relationship between right brain and dreams but I know when the analytical
self, the left brain, finally releases its grip on us and gets out of the way, the creative side of us, which often
surfaces in sleep, comes to the fore and in its own playful and whimsical manner will solve many creative problems.
I was working on a novel called B is for Burglar , which is the second in a series, and I had gotten writer's block.
I sat at my desk for weeks. There was no way I could get past this block and so I set the book aside. I kept saying
to myself, well, instead of calling it "B is for Burglar" I could call it "B is for Blackmail,"
"B is for Burning." But I have a certain interior writing machine that's very stubborn and dominating
and this little machine said, No, Ma'am, I'm sorry, this book is called "B is for Burglar." So I finally
set it aside. I thought, I can't solve the problem, I don't know how to get out of the bind I'm in. Then one night
in the wee hours I woke up and a little voice said " I know how to make the story work." I suddenly understood
I was to take the same story and tell it from a different angle. So, where I had originally opened the book with
the burglar's point of view, I simply shifted off to another character. I could retain all the work I had done
but just give it a different form. Now that didn't come out of a dream per se but it came out of the same state
that does create our dreams.
A frightening dream is wonderful for me because it recreates all the physiology that I need in describing my
private eye heroine Kinsey Milhon in a dangerous situation. For instance, I remember one night I dreamt that there
was a child in a room across the hall playing with a dog. At a certain point, I in my half waking state, understood
that it was not a dog at all but something very dangerous. And the fear and the horror that rose up in me from
the information about this vicious creature in the room with the child created such heart thumping and sweating
that I immediately started cataloguing my physical symptoms so that later, in describing Kinsey in a moment of
great terror, I could use that information. I loved it.
I find that it's very possible to remember what's important so I seldom get up and write things down. Occasionally
I will have an odd night where, as I go to sleep, many wonderful pieces of information will come to me. Whole lines
of dialogue, observations. I will get up and go in the other room and write those down. But I no more than get
in bed then another series comes so I'm up and down up and down. If there is one moment of insight I just trust
that in the morning I will still have it.
As I write I keep a journal for each novel that I work on. And many journal entries begin: "R.B. (right brain)
told me in the dead of night..." That's much of the way I get story twists, plot connection, strange layering
of characters. All of that I think comes out of that same subconscious or unconscious state.
Generally the journals will run four times the length of a novel, so what I do is log in every day and indicate
what's going on in my life. Because my feeling is that, whatever my emotional state, it will come into the writing
itself whether I intend for it to or not. If I'm feeling anxious about a day's work and don't own up to that at
the beginning of the work day, the work gets tight and anxious. So I will log it in. If my cat is sick or if somebody's
coming to town or I think I'm getting a migraine, I will lay that into the journal. Anything right brain has given
me in the dead of night goes straight into the journal because often it will send me on whole new pursuits in terms
of the writing. I also will, in this journal, indicate the problem I'm working on at the moment. For instance,
I have a scene in H is for Homicide, Bibiana Diaz and Kinsey are arrested together. If I'm uneasy about that I
will say: this is the scene I'm working on. I'm worried about the pacing. I'm worried about how it would look,
what it would sound like, who would say what to whom and then I will solve it there in the journal. I'll then get
out of the journal - I work on a word processor - go over to the chapter itself and do the writing. By then the
problems have been solved so the writing comes much more easily.
If I am very blocked or very confused or frustrated I will drink coffee late in the day, knowing that it's going
to wake me up in the dead of night. So I get to sleep perfectly soundly and then, at 3 a.m. when left brain is
tucked away, not being vigilant, right brain comes out to play and helps me.
The journals are actually done on the word processor and I can switch between the two. I'm finding now that some
of the freest writing I do is in the journal because psychologically that feels like playtime. Once I get into
the chapter itself it starts feeling too earnest. I think, this is a solemn piece of writing here and I had better
not make a mistake, and so I start getting tense. In the journal I can just write down exactly what I'm thinking.
Often it's quite lovely writing and I just lift it from one document to the next.
I'm sure I did not invent it but I began to use the journal technique with B is for Burglar . I can't remember
the origin of it but I've become more dependent on it as the books proceed. Each book feels impossible. Each time
I write a book I think, I surely cannot do this. I have no skill. I have nothing left to say. It's going to be
undoable. It will surely defeat me. Which is why I sit and whine throughout these journals. But when a book is
finished and I've tucked the journal away and tucked the finished draft of the book away and I'm stuck on the next
book, I will often go back and read my journal and I realize that it is part of the process. That even the feeling
of it being beyond my skills is part of the process. So it's very reassuring to realize where I was, at this juncture,
in the book before.
I write letters to right brain all the time. They're just little notes:
Dear Right Brain,
Well sweetie, I've asked you for a little help with this and I notice you're not forthcoming. I would really appreciate
it if tonight you would solve this problem.
Your pal,
Sue
And right brain, who likes to get little notes from me, will often come through within a day or two.
As I work, I will write in the journal for maybe two or three weeks. I go through and print out pages and just
let them accumulate. At a certain point, if I'm feeling stuck, I go back and read the journal with a high-lighter
and mark everything that looks interesting. I find that often I have already solved the problem and it's sitting
right there. I've just forgotten it. I have forgotten that I considered the question and found some possible solutions.
And with some distance, when I have already moved on in the book itself, looking back in the journal, I can see
that right brain, or the elves and the fairies or whoever it is that helps us with our creative work, has actually
done the job for me. That's what it feels like. So it's a real gift. *** My mother used to show up in my dreams.
My mother died in 1960 on my 20th birthday, after a very long bout with cancer during which they surgically removed
her tongue and her vocal chords. She was a mess when she died. But in the dreams she would be alive and I would
say to her, I thought you were dead. I had no idea. Or she would be speaking and I would be so amazed that she
was able to speak. And I remember very clearly waking and being amazed that she was still with me. I think she
is still with me actually.
My father, C.W. Grafton, was a full time attorney who wrote mysteries on the side. He has not shown up in my dreams.
His help was while he was still living in the very sound advice he gave me about the process of writing. He always
said to me "it is miracle enough if I have an idea translated into marks on a page and someone else can read
those marks and have the same idea appear in their minds." His feeling was that a writer's first obligation
was to keep communication clear and simple. He never wanted me to tamper with language or punctuation or spelling
because he felt that would muddy the whole process of communication. He also taught me a lot about how to take
rejection and how to take editorial criticism. What he gave me were all the tools neccesary to survive as a writer.
I feel so many people have the ability but they can't with-stand the long apprenticeship that every artist must
go through. So that if they have the courage or the technique for survival, and they can hang in long enough to
learn their craft, they might be fine writers. But often people get discouraged and disheartened and give up way
too prematurely. I'm very greatful to my father for teaching me so much about language and the process itself.
Someone once said to me "well what was it that you learned from your mother?" And I said, without even
thinking, from my mother I learned all the lessons of the human heart.
Kinsey Milhon is truely an extension of my personality so I'm sure she looks just like me. People who meet me
always picture me as Kinsey Milhon though I am older than she by far and I will always be older. By the time I
get to the last book which I think will be called Z is for Zero , Kinsey will be turning 40 and I will be 68 years
old. She will have totally taken over my personality by then and I may appear in her dreams not she in mine.
Often situations that I later see her in will appear in my dreams. Anything that's tense or frightening is the
best for me. Because often when you describe a character in a tense situation you can't remember where it is in
your body. Where is fear in your body? Where is tension in your body? My life is generally quite placid and I live
a lot of my day at the machine writing. It's not as though I'm out facing the bad guys or the monsters in the world.
So dreams keep me connected to very dark matters. And often very visceral experiences. In my own life I have carefully
engineered the world so that I don't have to face these same demons.
I have never seen any particular connection between the circumstances of my life and the dreams themselves.
I do believe that often our dreams carry our emotional states, so that you can look at a dream in terms of its
over-riding emotion. Is it frustration? Is it anger? Is it fearfulness? But I have not been able to see any direct
connection between events. Sometimes trivial events will appear in my dreams but I don't feel they're significant.
I think the dreams that are memorable for me are always quite dark. It seems to me I have dreamed that there are
people in the house. My dreams, the linking, seems to be the sense of the ominous presence of the other who is
after me and that's the one that comes most readily to mind.
My recurring dream is of being in a house where I feel there's danger. There is something outside the house that
is coming after me and my job is to see that all the doors and windows are locked. So I go around and there are
hooks and there are latches and there are catches. And every time I secure the premises I look back and I see that
the walls have slightly separated so that the hook has come out of the latch. The fear begins to accumulate as
I work ever more feverishly to secure the premises while "it" is making it's attempt on my life and my
safety. That dream is one that has haunted me for many years, though not so much lately. I think it comes out of
an event in my childhood.
When I was young my father went into the army. He left in about 1943 and came back in '45. During the years he
was gone my sister and my mother and I lived in this quite large house alone. And I can remember once some drunk
came to the door and pounded and made a nuisance of himself. I often think that the feeling of jeopardy comes out
of some of those nights when I was alone as a child. Even with my mother and sister in the house, the feeling was
of being in great jeopardy. I am assuming that's the link.
Often the writing process is filled with a sense of jeopardy because, in essence, with every book I turn myself
inside out. One of the things I've learned about this process is that you have to give everything away every single
time. You can't hold back. You can't say to yourself, "Oh this is a wonderful idea but I'll save it. I won't
put it in this book, I'll keep it for another book." So always there's the sense of consuming yourself. Using
yourself up with the worry that you'll never have another book in you. The truth of the matter is that if you give
yourself away every single time you fill up like a well. Always the water replenishes itself. But I'm never sure
of that so as I work I am very fearful. Also, nowadays I am getting so much attention that many more people have
opinions of my work. So the critics will hump and hurumph. And even praise creates a kind of pressure. Can I be
that good again? Can I be that witty? Can I be that clever? So that as I write I am constantly worrying about whether
I am measuring up because I have such high standards for myself and I am so determined to make each book different.
And to keep the quality up. That general sense of anxiety and fearfulness will translate into heart-stopping dreams
that just make the hair rise up on the back of my neck when I wake from a sound sleep.
Generally I begin a book with a title since I am locked in to the alphabet for life. With C is for Corpse , I always
knew the title of the book. For a while that's all I knew about that book. But originally I thought to myself,
I want Kinsey Milhon to work for a dead man. And that was absolutely as much as I knew. The plotting of the book
and the generating of that story was a question of sitting with myself alone, day after day, asking various questions.
How could it be that someone could work for a dead man? I knew I wanted her to be hired by someone who felt his
life was in danger. She takes his money, begins the investigation and he is in fact killed. By then she has formed
such an attachment for this kid named Bobby Callahan that she continues the investigation out of honor and her
affection for him. But that process of discovering the story by quizzing myself is another way of keeping in touch
with the unconscious. Sometimes I believe these books are already written and my job is simply to allow them to
come through me. My job is to get out of my own way so that I can let the process take care of me. But that's scarey
stuff.
Many of the questions I ask myself have to do with who's killed. Why are they killed? Why wouldn't the motive be
immediately apparent? If you wanted to kill somebody and hide the body where would you put it? Getting rid of a
body is a devilishly hard thing to do. You know you can't leave it on somebody's doorstep, they will quickly discover
it. I often put myself in the position of Kinsey Milhone. What would she do in this circumstance? Why wouldn't
she call the cops? I personally hate detective stories where you see the detective do something very stupid, especially
if it's a woman. You want women to be sensible and you don't want them to go out in the dead of night with just
a flashlight when the wolves are howling. The minute I see a character do that I think, why didn't she call the
cops? So you need to design a story which will serve your purpose which is to have constant action, jeopardy, excitement,
mystery, intrigue, without making your character look foolish or stupid. That takes some doing.
You're honor bound as a mystery writer to give your reader all the information you have. Actually it's sleight
of hand because you certainly don't give them all or you would just publish your journals and they would know as
much as you did. But my hope is to tell a story with characters that are engaging so that the reader becomes involved
in the story of their fate and truly wants to know 'who done it.' Then the question is: can we keep the story moving
at a pace that will hold the reader's interest? Is there enough balance between pacing, narrative and dialogue
to give some variety as the reading progresses?
Once I begin to ask myself questions, an outline will emerge from that process. Little by little I begin to understand
what the story is and then I will tell myself a story. C is for Corpse is the story of Bobby Callahan who believes
his life is in danger, and so on. When I can tell myself enough of the story, then I feel confident to begin the
writing. Often I don't know all of it and the writing process is one of discovery for me. I will know the beginning.
I often know the ending. The middle is the part that makes me sweat bullets night after night.
Part of the construction of a mystery is deciding the order in which you will give information to a reader. For
instance, I think of a mystery in three parts. There is what really happened, so the first question is what really
happened? There is what appears to have happened, and then there is the sequence of events whereby the detective
pieces together the information. So you really have three layers to the story. My first job is to decide what really
happened. Then I need to go back and find a way to disguise the obvious from the reader who is wiley and clever.
Mystery readers are fanatics. They read hundreds of mysteries. They know all the tricks. To fool one, which is
very satisfying on all sides, requires great ingenuity. Because I can't use any of the obvious devices. In a mystery
novel the person who looks guilty probably isn't and the person who looks least guilty probably is. But you're
always playing with that optical illusion. I feel I'm honor bound to tell the truth. You can never have the detective
pick up the critical clue and tuck it in her pocket without saying what it is. So, in the unfolding of the mystery,
once I know what really happened and how I'm going to disguise that fact, then I come back up to the layer in which
I talk about the actual sequence of events. And some of that's logic, just the logistics. That's where left brain
comes in.
H is for Homicide is a little bit different. It's not a traditional who-done-it. In this book, a colleague of Kinsey's
is found murdered. She knows that it's the proper providence of the police to solve the crime so she does not get
involved in it. However she stumbles into another police investigation and the two turn out to be connected. That
was a suprise to me. But again it's the process of journal. When you ask the right questions then you will get
the right answer.
The tricky thing in putting together a mystery plot is that sometimes you feel so tenuous or so uncertain you're
afraid to ask the critical questions. And yet if you don't ask those questions, even at the risk of your plot falling
apart, you don't get to the better solution. With the word processor, if I'm in chapter eighteen and discover that
I've left a clue out, all I have to do is get out of that document, whip back over to chapter seven and insert
the line that I need to make it work later. So the beauty of word processing, God bless my word processor, is that
it keeps the plotting very fluid. The prose becomes like a liquid that you can manipulate at will. In the old days,
when I typed, every piece of typing paper was like cast in concrete.
All the humor in my books comes from Kinsey. Some of the books get very funny because she's very impish. In
the process of writing I swear she's standing looking over my shoulder going: Do this, do this, nudge nudge wink
wink. And she gets tickled. There are times I write things I get so tickled with myself. Sometimes I can't keep
them in the book. They are either beyond the bounds of good taste or they are not pertinent to what's happening.
She takes over and does something waggishly funny. It's a fun process because she's so helpful to me, whoever she
is.
Mostly it is a question of connecting with her inside of me instead of imagining her as a separate creature. It
is getting in touch with the piece of my nature that is linked to her. So instead of projecting it outward I need
to stay very calm and centered so that I am joined with her. It does sound like channeling, and it's not quite
that, but truly it's not that far from what I imagine channeling would be about.
In order to get in touch I have to block out ego. Ego is the piece of me that's going, how am I doing champ? You
know. Is this good? Do you like this? Do you think the critics will like this? Because that has nothing to do with
creating. That has to do with the finished work that's out in the world and that's a very seperate creature. So
I need to work from within instead of an out of body experience. And that's a question of not being self conscious,
not being cute, not thinking I'm so hot. Not thinking anything. Not making judgements about myself. Not sitting
critiquing myself but being still enough to hear the voice that'll tell me what I'm supposed to do next. Which
is maybe the unconscious, maybe the subconscious. Maybe it's right brain. Maybe it's the soul. I'm not real sure.
Sometimes I do this through meditation. Something as simple as self hypnosis, a process of relaxing and breathing
properly, trying to still the yammering. And then I feed in a suggestion that I'll be productive, energetic and
imaginative. I also feed in the suggestion that I will solve the problems I'm facing. Which I do either at the
machine or elsewhere. There are moments of insight, sometimes you'll be out driving in your car and you'll have
a flash of real ingenuity. Once for instance, and this is not even a mystical experience, I was lifting a sash
window and I heard the window weights banging in the wall. And I thought, now wouldn't that be a great murder weapon.
You take the frame off the window, you take the window weights and untie them from the ropes, bash somebody on
the head, tie them back in, put the window frame back and who will ever know the difference? And in fact, in one
of the books, that's how Kinsey figures a murder out. She's lifting a window and she hears that weight bang. That's
the way the creative process works.
I work from nine in the morning til about 3:30 or 4:30 in the afternoon. I get up at six, run three miles, come
back. I have breakfast and shower and clean up, read a little bit of the newspaper to see what's going on in the
world and then go up to my desk. I find, as I get older, the work hours are stretching. I used to work maybe two
hours a day and I'd fall back exhausted. Now I find much value in staying connected to the work for much longer.
Then late in the day I take a walk just to sort of blow off some of the tension.
Until the last couple of books, I was earning a living writing movies for television with my husband. I would work
on the books in the morning and do a teleplay in the afternoon. There was even a period of time when I would get
up at twenty of five and write. I was translating one of my father's books into screenplay form from five to six,
then I would go run, eat breakfast, come back, work on a book in the morning and work on a teleplay in the afternoon.
Which I only did for about four months. I just needed to know I could do it. I really feel we don't quite stretch
ourselves as much as we could and I wanted to test myself.
I think there's a sort of mystical process of getting information. I swear. It couldn't be luck because it happens
too often. I always find exactly the right person to help me. It's like I'll look in the yellow pages and I'll
pass up six names and pick one, inevitably somebody who's reading my books, somebody who has just the perfect touch
of information.
I have a private investigator who helps me, he's out in Columbus Ohio, and he'll just spin off stories in asides,
giving me other pieces of information. Later I'll go, that's a plot to a novel. So, I keep a running set of files.
If I think something belongs to another book I just tuck it in the file 'til I'm ready to deal with it. But it
is mystical to me that inevitably I find people who are just perfect for what I need.
For a while I was writing dreams down and I could see the pattern. I think if you tell your unconscious to give
you information in your dreams it will oblige you. It's really amazing how the unconscious longs for ways to get
in touch with us. And dreams are a perfect way to do it because they often seem so unrelated to our conscious worries.
At one time I was in an unhappy relationship and I could see how my unhappiness would translate into dream objects.
But I never analyzed it. I know that I kept a journal of dreams and later, when I went back and read them, it
seemed very clear to me what the dreams were saying about the unhappiness. But at the time I didn't have a means
by which to interpret them. And from my point of view I'm not sure I believe that an object always means the same
thing. I think we all carry our own talismens and our own magical objects with us, so a book of dream symbols would
do me no good whatsoever. What's important is learning your own personal vocabulary. *** I have a mystical side.
It isn't part of my belief system in a curious way. It's not as though I believe certain things are true but, for
instance, the house I live in has a ghost. I am absolutely sure of it. And yet I don't believe in ghosts. I just
know there's this ghost in my house. And the contradiction means nothing to me. I don't care. I don't have to be
logical. When we first moved into this house I would see someone out of the corner of my eye and I was always thinking
to myself, well who is that? But the minute I turned it would be gone. And there was always a closet door that
would be somewhat ajar and the door was very difficult to close. My husband's theory was that it was the cat. But
I swear there was no way the cat could have jimmied a door that was this difficult. Yet I would get to the head
of the stairs and I would think to myself, I'm not going to look to see if the closet door is open. I absolutely
will not look to see if the closet door is open. And inevitably I would have to look and it would be just slightly
open. Which is very fearful. But the ghost is not malevolent. It is sometimes playful. I'll be sitting and working
and I think, oh, Steve's home. You know, I hear him walking around and so I'll call out something, Hi Dear, I'm
up here working, blah, blah, blah. A few minutes later I think, I don't think Steve is home. And I get up and I
go and he's not home. So I don't know who it is walking around my house.
A great caravan of real estate people went through when the house was on the market and later I heard this story.
This woman got to the head of the stairs and felt a presence but she was afraid if she remarked on it to the other
real estate people in the group they would think she was crazy. After the tour was over, and they were emerging
from the house, she turned to a friend and said, did you feel that? And the friend said to her, Oh, the presence
at the top of the stairs? And she went, OH! The hair just went up at the back of her neck. But this is an instance
where my conscious beliefs have nothing to do with my emotional reaction to the world. And I think it's the same
with dreams. It isn't that I neccesarily believe that dreams can be translated point for point into any particular
statement but I know that dreams sometimes have a meaning.
I don't think all dreams have meaning. Sometimes I have dreams that I believe are not mine. I have dreams in which
the images and the landscape and the interior architecture are so alien that I am convinced it is somebody else's
dream material. And those I don't even try to interpret. Often they have no connection to the reality I know. And
I will have a sense of what happened but it is impossible to describe. There is no way to say last night I dreamed
about X because the X is not of this earth. So I have that. I don't know what that's about.
And I have some dreams that I know are trivial. It's like, not every thought we have is profound and significant.
Sometimes we're just shallow and absurd. So I'll think of someone and then I dream of them, or the other way around,
and I know the dream doesn't have any strong message. The emotional dreams are the ones I love.
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