Zora Heale Hurston reading.I was listening to THE NEW YORKER website, where writers read short stories by other writers. Joyce Carol Oates read a story by Eudora Welty "Where is This Voice Coming From." The story was written almost immediately after Evers assassination in 1963 (by Byron De La Beckwith.) Welty said that the voice got into her head within hours of the shooting and she wrote the story almost in a fugue state.
The "killer" in Welty's story was not very different from the man caught. In fact, THE NEW YORKER was concerned about the similarities when they published it.
This happened to me just once and the voice was also that of a criminal. I wrote the story while my husband was away. There was no one to interrupt the flow of details that I have almost no memory of writing. .
Has it ever happened to you? Do you have a story you have little memory of writing because your hand or head was guided by such a voice? Or perhaps it happens to you all the time?
9 comments:
I've never been at the point where I don;t remember writing, but I've had a couple of short stories come to me as a voice and an idea, nothing else, and I just let the voice run with it. The first was good enough to make Thuglit's next collection, and the second, a flash piece, I had a lot of fun writing, even if nothing happens with it.
No, I've never had that happen. I've written stories in what I call white heat but usually my memory for them is almost photographic rather than missing.
Not yet here, either. I've dreamed a whole story, but never been in a waking trance (as opposed to a "zone" when the words came easily).
I guess the focus is so acute that you remember it in perfect detail or scourge it, in my case.
The zone is more of a rhythym, I think. Whereas this is something else. Only happened once. Usually I am scrambling.
I'll have to go the The New Yorker website. I love to listen to authors read aloud.
In writing poetry at times, I have no memory of establishing point, rhythm and flow but it is there when the piece is completed...the shorts on the other hand the first few words come and then into the zone go I.
I know what you mean, Patti. When I have the house to myself with no interruptions, I'll suddenly look at the clock and realize I've been writing non-stop for hours. When I go back to read and edit, I find bits and pieces that I didn't realize I'd written but are the heart of the story. I love getting into that zone of being inside the character's head. Those are always the best stories.
Although with that one story, I almost can't claim ownership. Kind of scary.
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