I can remember the moment quite clearly: it was late 2008, and I was driving down 15th street here in Austin, talking on the phone with my agent (yes, I was That Guy that day – for some reason most of my important publishing conversations happened to take place while driving back then). I was just in the finishing stages of signing my first contract with Orbit, and the subject of an “option” arose – an “option” being a fancy legal term for “first dibs,” in this case being first dibs on my third novel.

So this begged the question – did I have any ideas for a third novel?

I was completely new to the publishing world then (and I still am, pretty much), but I knew that I did not want to let any important publishing people down, and I definitely knew I didn’t want to look like a chump and say, “No, no, I have no ideas for a third novel, I am completely fresh out and you are all totally hosed and you should have never hitched your wagon to my star.” So, while sitting at a green light, I wondered what to say.

But the odd thing is, I did have an idea for a novel rattling around in my head.

I had read an article just that day about vaudeville. It had made the curious point that vaudeville was one of the first moments of American mass cultural cross-pollination: the rails opened up all theaters all across the country to touring acts, so people had the first chance to see things they’d never seen before.

And I remember thinking, “How interesting. It’d be fun to write about that.” Specifically, I thought it would be fun to write a little fairy story about vaudeville, one about art, creation, and the nature of perception.

And that, more or less, is what I said. (Though I probably had to pause to shift gears now and again.)

Over three years later, and here we are, with THE TROUPE set to come out in February. It has been quite a ride. But I am incredibly grateful that I happened to read that article, and get myself into the situation of choosing vaudeville as a subject for fantasy.

Because, quite frankly, it is the best thing I’ve ever done. I don’t say such things cavalierly – I really mean it. THE TROUPE makes me prouder than anything else I’ve made. And I hope you’ll find out why.

But I am thankful for choosing vaudeville for a few additional reasons. For one thing, it significantly reduced my workload: vaudeville was one of the most bizarre, surreal, and confounding periods in American entertainment. It did not take much chin-tapping and head-scratching to make the subject interesting; it needed no hooks, no spins; I did not have to find any clever, unusual perspectives from which I could explore this business-slash-culture-slash-artform. If anything, I didn’t know where to start. I had somehow tripped and fallen into an abundance of riches.

But I knew that. I grew up on vaudeville, in a way: when I was a kid, on Sunday mornings we watched Laurel and Hardy, and time and again we watched The Marx Brothers – Duck Soup and A Night at the Opera were favorites. I lived off of tapes and tapes of the old Looney Tunes bits, which are, if you didn’t know, about as vaudevillian as it gets. And of course, which child of the 80’s didn’t watch The Muppet Show? Which, well, is a vaudeville show, of a sort.

In a way, nearly everyone in 20^th and 21^st Century America has grown up on vaudeville. Vaudeville shaped our concept of comedy, the very grammatical structure of humor and performance. We wouldn’t have sketch comedy or standup comedy today if vaudeville hadn’t been the medium and form of entertainment, its circuits touching from coast to cast. We definitely wouldn’t have the movies – after all, the first movie theaters were vaudeville theaters.

(A fun bit of trivia – the east coast vaudeville circuits were the Keith-Albee circuits; the west coast, The Orpheum circuits. The two initially fought over bits and territory, but when movies and radio became the dominant form of entertainment, the old enemies merged into Radio-Keith-Orpheum, which later became, of course, RKO Pictures, which would go on to be owned by the likes of David O. Selznick and Howard Hughes. And none other than Joe Kennedy, pater familias to JFK, briefly owned a controlling portion of the stock during the conversion to a movie studio.)

Vaudeville is ingrained in us. It’s in Youtube. It’s in Saturday Night Live. It’s in Bugs Bunny. It is, really, the first modern form of American entertainment, and here’s why:

1.  It was transient. There’s a reason a lot of the great American novels are road stories: the place is big, and a lot of its heart is just in getting from one place to another. But in the mid-late 19^th Century, the world got a lot smaller for the first time: railroads connected every part of the country, from the sticks to the big cities. Suddenly it became a lot more popular, and a lot more lucrative, for the entertainment to come to you rather than for you to go to the entertainment. And speaking of arrivals…
2.  It was for everyone. In the 19^th Century, the immigrant and working-class populations in America exploded. Cities were bursting at the seams with poor, laboring families trying to scrape by and get decent jobs in factories or at the docks. And these people, like any anyone, wanted entertainment. Vaudeville recognized that, and produced a form of entertainment they would find funny along with anyone else. Which meant…
3.  It was definitely Not High Art. Let’s face it – we, as Americans, are suspicious of any form of entertainment that requires a degree or any amount of education to understand. We’re all about egalitarianism here – we shouldn’t have to make ourselves better to understand what you’re doing. Vaudeville understood that feeling. It wasn’t trying to broaden minds or make us think or see the world in a different way – they were just trying to put asses in seats. Which means…
4.  It was mercenary. Money was the one and only god of the circuits. You could make a great living in vaudeville if you played your cards right, and if you got in good with the booking offices, who essentially ran the circuits. The circuits fought one another over territories, and the actors fought one another over bits (For theft was quite common in vaudeville – one actor discovered the old man in the front row of his shows had been telegraphing the successful jokes to his son in California. The jokes he told that night got retold on the other side of the country in less than five hours.) Theater owners communicated successful acts to the booking offices, who decided where best to use them, and where there’d fit in on the bill – but all of it was decided by the bottom line. But they also had to consider…
5. The subject of ethnicity. I will shock you now – people were not racially sensitive in the 19^th and early 20^th Century, even here in America, one of the most diverse countries on Earth. We are not Sweden, nor are we Japan: we have many, many different types of people here. That, naturally, causes divisions. And vaudeville, being so mercenary, as well as so very aware of the blue-collar nature of its audiences, took advantage of that. It pilloried Jews, Italians, Germans, Blacks, the Irish, you name it, they got mocked in some bit or another. But at the same time, each of these peoples were allowed space on the stage, though sometimes they were allowed to be themselves (like mariachi bands), and sometimes they absolutely weren’t – there was a Jewish duo that made a fortune playing buffoonish German immigrants. And when they were at a place with a prominent German culture, they changed it to whatever ethnicity the crowd was game to mock: Greeks, the Chinese, whatever they needed to do. But they never, ever played as Orthodox Jews. I wonder how much they minded, but I think that they, like most vaudevillians, were out to make a buck, not expand minds. Which is, for better or worse, a very American thing to do. Just check out your local box office for confirmation.

The problem with vaudeville, I could tell, was that there was going to be just too much to write about. There were so many weird acts that I knew I couldn’t use them all. My favorite was Hadji Ali, the famous regurgitator – which was a type of act that involved the actor actually, literally vomiting up unusual items in unusual ways. (Like I said, anything to put asses in seats…)

But vaudeville was not all surreal fantasy. It was a business, and it was discriminatory, and many of its acts were quite racist, if not the very definition of racism. It didn’t just start and end at minstrel shows (many of which had almost nothing to do with race at all, and became a bizarre culture in its own right) – look at Chico and Harpo Marx.

Chico, of course, is the Italian buffoon, loud, blustery, and conniving; and Harpo, with his huge red wig, laborer’s overcoat, and tattered pants, was originally the clownish Irishman, probably originally portrayed as a drunken tramp. Whether or not this was harmless fun, well… That’s a matter of some opinion.

Vaudeville was, in short, human – a human culture seeking to meet a human desire. To forget vaudeville, with all its flaws and complications, would be to forget our own history, to forget ourselves.

But THE TROUPE, at heart, is not solely about vaudeville. It is not even about entertainment. Rather, it is about perception – how people see themselves, others, and the world – and it is the matter of perception that all forms of entertainment hinge upon.

What do you see of yourself in an act? What do you see of others? What does your entertainment say about you?

And, if you sing of the world differently – if your art says the world is something that it isn’t – does the world change with it? Or, perhaps more interestingly, will you change yourself?

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Personally, I’ve always had a touch-and-go relationship with geek culture, if you can believe it. In my family, I’m definitely the geekiest, I’d say. I’m the guy who’s On The Internet All The Time, dredging up obscure memes and silly trends and finding the most bizarre articles to send to people during slow work hours. I’m also the guy who is sometimes unapologetically geeky in my tastes. Yes, I had Hellboy comics on my Christmas list. I also had Avatar: the Last Airbender DVDs, and I asked for Windows 7 so that maybe I can fix my laptop up to play Portal 2. (A pipe dream if ever there was one.)

These tastes are geeky. But if you asked me if I was a geek, I’m not sure I’d say I am.

Part of it is that I’m a coward.

Straight-up. When I was a kid and someone found out I liked Warhammer 40k, I was the one who would cringe and rub the back of my neck and come up with excuses. I never had a fiery defense, nor was I willing to just give my critics the finger. No, I’d mumble something about how I was actually in it because I liked building the models, or maybe just painting them (and how that is less geeky is utterly beyond me). I always had an apology or a qualifier to say no, actually, I was not in this because I’m a dork, I’m in this because of this perfectly valid reason which totally makes sense. (By the way, my excuses were both lies – I was into 40k because I liked reading the stories in the codexes. And the illustrations.)

But there’s a much deeper reason to my reticence to fly the geek banner than shame. I mean, it can’t be shame anymore, not if Patton’s right, and pop culture is geek culture now. We’re all drinking the same Kool-aid. So what’s there to be ashamed of?

There’s a part of Patton’s essay where he says that the otaku culture (and by the way, my God, MS Word thinks “otaku” is a perfectly valid word) is an escape hatch culture. It’s a place you can go that’s outside of the real world, a thought-palace you can retreat to where you can feel safe. This is okay, so long as it’s an escape hatch. A momentary retreat is fine, provided it’s momentary.

But if the thought-palaces have expanded until they house every aspect of our lives, there’s a problem: insularity.

Insularity is when you can’t get out of your escape hatch. No, that’s wrong – it’s when you don’t want to get out of your escape hatch. It’s when you’re fine in there, perfectly fine, and you like and pay attention only to things made to go within the escape hatch. Why would you want to go outside, after all? Everything in the escape hatch draws on things you know. Nothing new and difficult and unsettling is allowed in the escape hatch. It’s familiar. It’s good. It’s safe.

That’s insularity. It’s when art is made within the boundaries of a culture because it’s safe and popular, rather than choosing its own boundaries for itself.

And insularity is cowardly. It’s just as cowardly as the twelve-year-old me, tomato-red and sputtering as I tried to explain why I had a lead sculpture of Bilbo fucking Baggins sitting on my shelf. It’s when someone can’t summon up the will to look beyond the boundaries of the comfortable familiar to try and experiment with something new.

In the escape hatch, we’re familiar with such an enormous litany of well-established tastes that all you have to do is reference them one after the other, playing each cherished obscurity like the keys of a xylophone, in order induce the groundswell of support we all so desire. Slap a superhero or a zombie with any underground mythology, like Thundercats or Transformers, and it pretty much writes itself.

Patton thinks that’s cross-pollination. It is, in a way, but it’s within one small field, and it’s among only a handful of flowers. And I don’t think it’s as self-destructive as he presumes. We’re human. We like the familiar. We like the routine. And we don’t like challenge. But that encourages repetition, and sloth, and becomes akin to a terminal patient pressing that morphine button over and over again. It does not engage in the limitless array of culture, and art, and thought that is available in the wide world. And this is what’s necessary to produce a healthy sense of art, of purpose, and of self-awareness.

The escape hatch doesn’t have balance, and it doesn’t have space. There’s not enough room in there to do the really important stuff that we desperately want, and even need. And, to me, that’s discouraging, and even depressing.

That’s why I’ve always been reticent to fly the geek flag. When you commit to one culture and one audience, sometimes it’s like putting a nail through one foot: you’re just going to keep walking around and around in a circle, doing the same thing over and over again, and never getting anywhere.

I was in the escape hatch for most of my life. I lived and died geek culture for years. I don’t know when I got out – and I’m not even sure if I got out, really – but at some point I just plain got tired of it. I stopped reading nothing but fantasy and science fiction novels. I stopped listening to the same music over and over again. And yeah, I even stopped playing video games. I haven’t bought a new video game in about two or three years. I still dip into the escape hatch occasionally, because hey, I still love some of the stuff that’s in there. But it doesn’t define my tastes.

It’s nice outside of the escape hatch. Because there’s really nothing to escape from.

Patton jokingly suggests we destroy the geek culture by burrowing inwards, invoking an endless cycle of solipsism and cultural incest until finally everything turns to ash. I have two problems with that: one is that it’s a lot of work that could be put to something better, and two is a grave fear I have that the cycle might not be endless. What if we’re all okay with regurgitative, derivative art, and remakes, and ironic pastiches? What if we like being trapped within our prisons of artifice and quirk? What if being earnest and new never comes back in style?

My advice is, don’t go in – go out. Not necessarily outside (har har, how I hate that nerd insult), but outside of what you’re comfortable with. Try and find something totally new and bizarre and study it. You’ll be like an explorer, or an adventurer.

And there will always something new to explore. Because it’s a pretty wide and wild world outside of the escape hatch.

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The man himself

But there is one champion of this merriment who’s been slighted by modernity. Just as we determinedly pull all the teeth from fairy tales, removing any trace of murder, sacrifice, and sex, this same enthusiastic censorship has made a victim of Santa Claus. Or, depending on where you are, Father Christmas, Saint Nicholas, Papa Noel, or any number of other seasonal titles.

We all have a general concept of Santa Claus. He is a fat, jolly old man who travels the world on Christmas Eve delivering presents to all the good boys and girls of the world. But this is far from the real Santa, who is forgotten, but not gone. The real Santa – or, perhaps better, the figure who inspired him – is not the commercialized, jovial octogenarian we now see on every can of Coke at the store. Rather, he is a Yule-being of considerable power, and he has his own history that is surprisingly more fantastic and primitive than most would expect. Let’s contrast our current beliefs about Santa with the original.

1. Santa is a jolly old fat man with a big white beard and a red suit.

The Yule King

1.1 Santa is old, certainly. After all, he has been around for several centuries, at least. But he is not simply any jolly old man: one need only look at his beard and robes to realize that originally he was a king, of a sort, much like Clovis or Charles Martel. The “Father” Christmas title is actually inappropriate: he is said to rule over the Yule time, so the correct title would be “Yule King.” As kings have lost their allure over the years, generations have attempted to forget about this aspect of him, but the vestments of his position still persist, in one form or another. Yet the most curious thing is his choice of color: he does not wear purple, the traditional color of royalty, but a bright, visceral red. Reasons for this vary: some historians hold that his robes have been turned red by the fires of his many furnaces (see 3.2), or that the color symbolizes the persistence of life in all its violent glory (see 4.2), even in the depths of winter. There is even some belief that the color refers to his rather grisly and very real past as a king, but this is difficult to determine as the Yule King has not made an appearance on a battlefield since the early 14th century, and even that is not certain.

1.2 Like any medieval king, the Yule King’s right to power comes mostly from force of arms. As such, he is an exceedingly large person, with his height being reported at anywhere from six and a half feet to nine feet (presumably this is hyperbole, but one can never be sure). No record ever describes him as jolly, or jovial, or anything so tame. Rather, he is a fearsome and vigorous figure of no small threat, and though he has a beard, it is not of the fluffy white variety, as is so often depicted (see 2.2).

2. Santa Claus lives in a workshop at the North Pole.

Wayland’s Smithy, which is believed to be similar to the chamber in the mountain

2.1 This is not quite correct. Reports indicate that the Yule King does not live at the North Pole, but rather underneath a frigid mountain that forms the top of the world. It is similar to Olympus, but much starker and with much more brutal weather. And the King does not actually live there, but instead sleeps in an enormous cavern in the very heart of the peak. The nature of the cavern is a subject of some debate: some believe it is like an ornate tomb or dour cenotaph, while others claim it is filled with the statues of the King’s many servants, while others contend that it is filled with gears and machinery (see 3.1 below). Some suggest it is a bit of all of them. This can easily be believed, as the Country in the North (as it is called) is reported to be a very strange and dangerous place; some reckless adventurers who traveled there returned years later full of confusing stories, yet the strangest thing was that they did not seem to have aged a day.

2.2 The Yule King’s beard, oddly enough, is closely linked to his chamber: as he sleeps for the remaining 361 days of the year (see 4.3) the beard continues to grow, eventually filling the entire room and providing much-needed insulation against the bitter winds that swirl throughout the Country in the North. When he wakes, his servants trim it back. The insulation is not actually necessary – the Yule King would sleep anyway – but it ensures that he will be well-rested, putting him in a good mood and making his Yuletide foray much better for everyone. For example, there have been only two known instances of the Yule King killing anyone on his Yuletide foray since his servants started allowing his beard to grow out in 1351.

3. Santa’s workshop builds toys all year long, and he loads up his sleigh on Christmas Eve.

3.1 The idea of Santa’s workshop probably comes from some confusion over the nature of his sleeping chamber. A very popular record says that the snowy peak on his mountain stays frozen throughout the year until the winter solstice approaches. When the light begins to fade from the sky, the snow there does the precise opposite of what you would expect: rather than staying frozen, it is melted by the growing dark. (Some sources indicate that it is melted by a particular blend of starlight, created only when certain constellations are arranged above the mountain, which happens only at the solstice; regardless, the effect is the same.) The melted water then runs down the mountain and is funneled into many carven flutes and passageways, which eventually end in the Yule King’s sleeping chamber.

3.2 The chamber is powered by what is called the Yule Wheel, which is redundant: “yule” generally translates into “wheel,” referring to the wheel of the seasons, so the name “Yule Wheel” actually means the “Wheel Wheel.” Whatever the name, the melted waters from the peak of the mountain drip down and cause the wheel to begin turning, and the wheel is so massive that its turning stokes the many furnaces throughout the King’s chamber, which are maintained by his servants. As the chamber gets hotter and hotter, the Yule King awakes, though due to his extreme bulk this can take most of a day.

3.2.1 It is a matter of some contention as to whether or not the Yule King actually sleeps: some historians believe he is physically dead throughout the year, and is resurrected on the winter solstice. If true, this may account for the Yule King’s longevity, which seems to border on immortality. There is little question in regards to his servants, however: most sources agree that they are either the spirits of his conquered dead, or some other type of Yule-being that he has summoned. In the latter case, they would not truly qualify as undead, having never been alive, but they would be no less an abomination.

3.3 The Yule King does not have a sleigh or reindeer, but rather a large, sturdy goat with obsidian-black antlers and red eyes. It is an uncommonly muscular and frightening specimen, and though history does not indicate whether there were ever such a thing as a “martial goat” or a “war goat,” if there were then the Yule King’s goat would surely qualify. As to the matter of toys, this is patently untrue. Nothing about the Yule King concerns children, and children should not be concerned with the Yule King at all, except possibly to fear him.

4. Once Santa’s sleigh is loaded with toys, he flies around the world, dropping down chimneys to put presents under the Christmas tree of every good child, though he will leave coal or a switch for bad ones.

4.1 As stated in 3.3, the Yule King’s affairs in mortal life do not concern children, at least not directly. The period of January through March is one of extreme danger, when livestock and crop cannot be maintained and starvation is almost unavoidable. Those facing these awful months often slaughter what cattle and pork they have, since they will not be able to feed their animals, and they engage in the last bit of merriment they will see for the season. It is said that all those who slaughter what they have left and begin to feast are engaging in Yuletide, and so are indirectly under the domain of the Yule King.

4.2 The Yule King, attracted by the recent sacrifice, will visit his followers in their sleep, reach into his copper fleischkasten, and, rather than toys, will produce salted meats and clay jugs of a very stout, potent ale. With these presents, the family that has engaged in Yuletide now has a marginally better chance of surviving the oncoming winter. These gifts have not changed since the Yule King’s first appearance sometime in the 10th Century. While these gifts are not considered appropriate in our modern times, it is generally agreed there are no adverse effects for a child imbibing the Yule King’s gift-ale, and many parents had positive things to say about its soporific effects.

4.2.1 Some claim that the Yule King visits the Yuletide festivals expecting some treat or favor of his own, like any other partygoer. As such, there are stories of merry-makers leaving packages of sweetmeats and spiced wines outside of their doors at night. Others, adhering to the more savage tales about the King, will make a bowl out of a pig’s skull and place the kidneys and liver within it and set it on a low fire at the end of the night. Whichever you believe, it seems unlikely that the Yule King would be very pleased by cookies or biscuits.

4.3 In addition, the Yule King does not visit only on one night. Traditionally, he will visit for every night that the feast continues. This is normally about three days, though in 1357 one village attempted to extend the King’s gifts for as long as possible, serving very small portions once a night and hoarding his salted meats and ales. The King, being no fool, did not react well. (See 2.3 above.)

4.4 It is unknown where the stories of chimneys, coal, and switches come from. There is no record of the Yule King ever having an issue with using the door. And while it would seem obvious that the coal and chimney have some connection to the Yule King’s many furnaces and machineries, there have been no sources confirming this. Concerning the switches, many interpret their meaning as metaphorical: those who have not engaged in Yuletide will not be visited by the Yule King, and so will no doubt feel the icy branches of winter on their backs. As for his standards of good and bad, it’s likely that the Yule King, having once been a medieval general, has moralities and philosophies wildly different from our own. Accounts of his appearances in Norse records are exceedingly vicious, often detailing his exuberance for torture and violence, but that was the norm in those primitive times, so he must be excused.

There is much more to the history of the Yule King – his participation in certain mortal wars, the ongoing feud he held with Boreas, the North Wind, or the disaster in 1421 when his servants broke out of the mountain and claimed a sizeable amount of Siberia as their own kingdom, for example – but this general overview should help anyone understand how our perception of him has changed.

However, there are bound to be some questions.

This Santa doesn’t seem very nice. Why does he deliver presents at all?

There are several ideas explaining this. One story tells that when Christianity and the Mother Church spread northwards, it naturally brought its chief antagonist with it, trying to dissuade the converted. (One can see that Lucifer makes increasingly common appearances in European history starting around 800 A.D., and ending sometime in the late 17th Century.) The Yule King, who after all was not a compassionate sort, was not much inclined to submit to Christianity’s peaceful teachings. Lucifer, seeing the chance to earn the favor of such a powerful king, attempted to win him over; but the Yule King resisted him as well, and Lucifer cursed him with frozen sleep for his stubbornness. But the King had suspected such a maneuver, and set safeguards in place that would allow him to aid his people even in this state. Thus he is only allowed to awake once a year, and, being a good king (though not a nice king), he tries to make the most of it.

Others say that this is all a lot of hogwash, and the King’s business is his own and not for us to know.

I thought Saint Nicholas was Christian.

Saint Nicholas is Christian, yes. The Yule King is not. As centuries go by, many traditions and beliefs tend to be adopted by another. Such is the case with the Yule King.

I celebrate Christmas, and I’ve never been visited by the Yule King.

Unless you have slaughtered all of your livestock on the solstice, it’s unlikely that the Yule King would bother to visit you. We have heated barns now, so our farmlands are not dampened by blood every winter’s solstice.

However, there is one account of the Yule King appearing in northern Michigan in 1911, when one desperate farmer killed his last sow on December 23rd. The next morning, he told local townsfolk that the previous evening an extremely large, terrifying man dressed in red had strode out of the woods and joined him before his fireplace. The stranger had given him beer and salted meats, and (though he spoke an incomprehensible language) he seemed to encourage the poor farmer, telling him not to lose hope, before disappearing in the morning. The farmer’s neighbors thought him mad, but his farm survived the winter, and indeed flourished in the spring, though they decided this had to be coincidence.

Well, the Yule King might not have visited me, but I did get presents from Santa this year. How do you explain that?

It’s your parents, obviously. There is no Santa Claus. Didn’t you know?

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But it seems these days that fewer and fewer writers are giving thought to one of the most invaluable tools of all: their workplace. Any craft requires a station; the carpenter has his workshop, and the painter his studio, so the writer must also have a place of creation, a peaceful sanctuary that allows mental abilities the room for action.

My own workplace is a great example of what any writer needs to get through the day-to-day toil of attempting literature. Come with me, and I’ll guide you through its many components, detailing how each article lends itself to my work. Follow my advice, and perhaps you too can create your own literary asylum, one that will help you survive both in the writing world and the physical one, protecting you against the many foes your writing will doubtlessly enrage.

Let’s begin simply. The first thing any good, dependable workplace needs is a sturdy roof. You see, when I was a boy my grandfather would always tell me: “Christopher, son, if there’s one thing you’ve always got to watch out for, it’s the sky. The sky is where the sun lives, and sometimes things come out of it, like rain, and birds. You should always fear the sky, my boy, always.” And I’d say, “My name’s not Christopher,” and then old grandfather would burst into tears and lock himself in the bathroom, just like he did every morning.

But what he said is true: you are going to want to have something between you and the sky, preferably at all times. Observe:

As you can see, I have a very splendid roof, but don’t despair; not every workspace requires a roof as splendid as mine. Why, a piece of cardboard, or a bridge, or even a chain-link fence covered in leaves and animal skins can work just as well. I think Hemingway used that last one.

But a roof won’t be enough for your literary sanctuary. You’ll also need a door.

Doors are important, because as a writer people are going to come at you in the night. You can try and barter with them, I guess, but in my experience not many of them speak English. A good door is a better solution, I think. I’d advise anyone who’s considering a literary career to have one, or maybe several in a row, like in a bank vault, but I can’t figure out how that would work just yet. Maybe there would be pulleys? Someone get on this, and let me know what you come up with.

But a door by itself isn’t good enough. Anyone can just go up and open it. That’s why every writer needs a lock.

Many people will tell you to buy a lock in a store, but that’s silly. Most of the people who try to break into your workplace are looking for food or a place to sleep in safety, or maybe they want to kiss you on the mouth and you don’t want them to do that. These are simple needs, and so require a simple deterrent. Here you can see that I’ve used my lithe, masculine hands to twist a common clothes-hanger into an efficient locking mechanism. You may worry about ruining a perfectly good hanger, but I wouldn’t – most writers, like me, are unable to afford any clothes beyond the ones they’re wearing, which makes any hanger unnecessary.

And here we have my work desk. In the center you can see my writing-machine. It works pretty okay. As you can tell, I’ve loaded it with common newspaper. This is an efficient choice because many newspapers are already covered in words, so hurray! less work for me. Sometimes my editor complains because the words on the paper aren’t the ones he wants to read, or they don’t make any sense, but what’s that guy going to do about it, he’s in a wheelchair. (EDITOR’S NOTE: We have no idea who he is referring to here.)

Now, I bet you think the writing-machine is the most important part of the workplace. Don’t you? Don’t you? You’re such a stupid person, I don’t know why I even bother. No, the most important tool any writer can include is a series of sturdy buckets.

Buckets are basically the best. They’re the most important tool a writer can ever have, even more important than any actual writing tools. If a bucket is rightside up, you can place things in it. If it’s upside-down, you can put things on top of it, or use it for a musical instrument. If you have enough dough, you can also use an upside-down bucket as a cookie cutter for extraordinarily large cookies, I guess, if you want, though I don’t know why you would.

Let’s take a look at some of my buckets:

Here’s my bucket of yams. Yams are a great food for literary folk. They don’t go bad quickly, and they come right out of the ground, so you know they’re trustworthy. Sometimes looking at the long, skinny yams makes me feel all funny inside, but overall yams get a thumbs up from me, as a writer.

Here’s my bucket of hair. I always like to shop local, so a good part of it is mine.

I forget what this bucket is for.

This is my dream-board. Each day I look at the dream-board and imagine what the people’s faces are like. Sometimes they’re happy with me, but most of the time they aren’t, especially after what happened on the bus last Thursday, even though that old lady had it coming. But overall the dream-board people are like the police – they just don’t listen.

Here’s my window. I use it to make sure the world’s still going on outside. It usually is, most of the time.

This is my crowbar, which is pretty handy for killing raccoons. I know what you’re thinking: you’re envious of me because raccoon meat is some of the most prized meat in the world. Well, friend, you’ve bought into an urban myth – raccoon meat is actually riddled with terrible parasites. I only kill raccoons in defense, or to show dominance to whoever might be watching, or maybe just because it’s Thursday.

This is my flashlight. It’s not very good, though – it only lights things up for, like, a second or two. But like many writers I’m too poor to afford a better flashlight, and fire just confuses me. How does that stuff work, anyway? Like magnets, scientists are still figuring it out.

This is my pillow. You can put delicate things on it, like an egg or a small bag of delicate things, or you can use it to muffle screams. (Yours or whoever’s.) I wouldn’t use pillows for sleeping, though, because like raccoon meat they’re infested with terrible parasites that would really like to be inside you, and that’s the pits.

This is the box I keep the god in. He didn’t like me taking pictures, but we talked it out. This is another great rule of writing: make sure to reasonably talk out all your problems. Another great rule is to never trust anything a god says, especially if you have them trapped in a box against their will. They’re pretty sneaky, and they don’t forget.

This is my bucket of hair again. I’m really proud of it, I just can’t help showing it off, I’m sorry.

This is my can of crickets. They help me sleep at night, so then I can write better the next day. When they really get going they sound like many women talking quietly in a small room, only the crickets don’t tell horrible lies.

And that pretty much sums it up. Now, I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking: “Christopher! This is so much complicated stuff! How will a poor, unimaginative dolt like myself ever manage to collect all of this incredibly specialized material?”

And to that I say: I told you my name isn’t Christopher, old man, and don’t look me in the eye, I told you I hate it when you look me in the fucking eye! But more specifically, there is a silver lining at the end of this tunnel. What’s that? Why, it’s the writing, of course! Yes, the writing. How could you forget the writing? You’re so worthless, no one could ever love you.

Let’s take a look at the product of all of this careful planning, the child birthed in these calming surroundings – my novel! It’s still in development, but I think it’s coming along splendidly:

And that reminds me of a special little writer’s tip: make sure to keep your work in progress sleeping in a box of earth. You don’t want them waking up on you and getting away or, worse, scheming with any gods you keep in any boxes. For that sake of all that’s good and holy, you definitely don’t want that.

And that’s all. I can’t imagine any writer needing anything more than the bounty of ideas I’ve laid out here. With these simple tools, you should be able to fashion a dark, dank, womb-like structure of your own for you to burrow into and curl up in, mewling like a dying raccoon, and then you can allow your brain to wander in relative safety. Feel free to use your writing paradise for purposes beyond writing, too – why, you could use it to cry in safety, write letters to the government, or recover from multiple stab wounds. Now get going, young writers! Start collecting all the hair you’d ever need, and pulling yams from the soft, sensuous earth! The future awaits!

…just make sure to stay out of my fucking stuff.

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This is usually trouble.

I’ve been thinking, as you can see below, about the Franzen issue, and the implications it holds for genre fans, or anyone who considers themselves outside of the mainstream literary spectrum.

I’ve also been thinking about this post by Niall Alexander, which caused a bit of a furor yesterday, as well as this post by Vagabondage press. It highlights an interesting conflict, a sort of very-uncoordinated Sharks and Jets street-rumble that just keeps on keepin’ on.

I will, for the sake of argument, generalize very, very, very terribly here, and say that it is common for genre fans to hold some disdain for literary works. This may be for a lot of reasons, but the words I hear used a lot are “boring,” “stuffy,” and “pretentious.” This may very well be the case. (I have not read much Franzen, for example, but I did read an excerpt of “Freedom” and was not particularly impressed.)

At the same time, however, genre fans paradoxically wish to reap the same amount of critical and establishment respect that’s given to these literary works. We, as lovers of a genre, Wish To Be Taken Seriously. How many times have we said that our fantasy/sci-fi/speculative-fiction/graphic novels are not just for juveniles, and in fact are works of art? (On the other side, literary authors are probably astounded by the amount of fan adoration genre authors get, and would possibly [though they would not want to admit it] kill for a chunk of their sales.)

Since the word “genre” is so commonly used in all of these discussions, the issue seems to be one of categorization. What is this, or that? How do we know? And what are the standards for judging it?

This all boils down to a viewpoint I’ve held for a very long time, which is that the current genre marketing system separates by two standards: content vs. execution.

Think about it. What are literary novels about? What do they usually focus on? What subject do the majority of them revolve around? I find that there is no common theme, no re-examination or re-imagining of the same subject matter. Literary novels can be about nearly anything. The content of a literary novel does not matter as much as the execution, that being prose, narrative, thematic and character development, and the use of scenes or descriptions to invert, subvert, or mirror previous instances in the story. These are the standards that qualify a book as “literary.” This attention to execution can make these very same works difficult or even “dense,” and perhaps require more thought than a standard straight narrative. As always, this will vary on the author and the reader.

But genre, well… That’s different. The content of any given genre work – be it chicklit, epic fantasy, science fiction, murder mystery, espionage, etc – can usually be depended on, to a moderate degree. It says it right there in the genre name. You have a good idea of what you’re getting when you buy the book. Conversely, the presence of a certain subject – say, magic – will immediately qualify a book as fantasy, regardless of how good the execution is. I believe I’ll quote Terry Pratchett here, who expressed the same sentiment in a much more amusing way:

Now fantasy — that’s the horse turd in the bucket of wine! If you have one bucket of horse turds and one bucket of wine, put one horse turd in the bucket of wine and now you have two buckets of horse turds. But if you pour some of the wine into the bucket of horse turds, it’s still a bucket of horse turds. Any recognizable fantasy element introduced into an otherwise innocent novel turns that novel into a fantasy. Isn’t it interesting, how it’s so one-way?

(Note: finding this quote required me to google “terry pratchett” and “horse turds.” I was very relieved to see this was the first return.)

So, in a very broad sense, we now have two camps that have been arbitrarily separated. One is mostly concerned with what the book is about, the other is concerned with how it is about it. Each camp gets balkanized to the degree that they have their own critics, magazines, fans, and culture.

The tendency, I think, is that both camps may tend to radicalize themselves in order to be admired among their individual faction. (Again, I am horribly, awfully, detestably generalizing here.) It’s much like a political primary – you express the most absolute version of the quality admired by your party in order to ensure favor. So one gravitates toward focusing on nothing but execution, and the other focuses on nothing but content.

As Vonnegut put it, literature often tends to “disappear up its own asshole.”

To anyone who likes both camps, like myself, this state feels unsatisfactory. A story’s contents, no matter how cool, imaginative, and fascinating, does not necessarily render that story good. It must also be told well. To quote Jeff Vandermeer, who’s recently weighed in on the issue:

I do worry about one thing in particular: too many genre works where, at the paragraph or sentence level, the book is dead. Which is to say, I see sentences doing only one thing, paragraphs with generic description, and in general the equivalent of a vast kill-off of all of the things that happen at the micro-level that make fiction come alive.

Similarly, even the most blistering and beautiful prose and insightful and innovative techniques will not make a book readable if the subject is as boring as ditchwater. I know Don DeLillo is a critical and cultural darling, but that doesn’t mean I found “Underworld” compelling enough to finish the remaining 400 pages or (the more intimidating task) lug it around with me any further.

There has to be moderation somehow, a happy medium somewhere. I consider Michael Chabon possibly one of the greatest heralds of How Things Could Be: sparkling, crackling writing combined with brilliant, fun plots and fantastic worlds. John le Carre, who is often tossed onto the Tom Clancyish “international intrigue and espionage” pile, features some of the most poignant and subtle characterization put on page in the last thirty years. And if you can count all the allusions in Neil Gaiman’s “Sandman,” I’m pretty sure you get a degree, or at least a chicken dinner free-of-charge.

But, unfortunately, there have been attempts in the past to introduce brilliant, poetic storytelling to genre subjects, and the entirely wrong lesson has been learned.

The most obvious example is Alan Moore’s “Watchmen.” We all know it as the graphic novel that changed graphic novels. It evinced innovative, breath-taking narrative techniques and absolutely devastating characterization. Its themes and suggestions had enough depth to make a literary novelist positively green with envy. People sat up and took notice. Suddenly, comic books could tell a different kind of story.

But what sort of stories were the result? Did they feature such astounding storytelling? Such thoughtful layering of scenes and action? No. Instead, the new stories focused not on the execution, but on the content – spectacular violence, flawed (if not sociopathic) superheroes, sex, and swearing. We got the New Gritty Age of comics, to Moore’s own dismay. Rather than fostering experimentalism, we were given comics full of castration and cartoonish violence, and a protagonist who ended the story by giving the audience the finger and saying, “This is me fucking you in the ass.” And these stories were wildly successful, even lauded as the best of the best of the graphic novel world, even though they fell well short of the standard set by Moore. If I were to hand one of these books to a critic and tell them it was the current best in comics, I would not be surprised to be met with a scornful laugh.

This was mimetic in content. Not execution. Moore eventually stated that he wished he’d never written Watchmen at all.

I can see why it’s unlikely that anyone would attempt to bridge the two camps. It’s all too possible that you’d be too literary for the genre folk, and genre enough so that the literary establishment wouldn’t touch you with a ten-foot pole. (After all, it’s well known that the genre camp is replete with cooties.) But we’ll have to see what will happen. Susana Clarke produced what I believe will be thought of as one of the greatest fantasy novels of our time, and, interestingly enough, when I went to buy it I searched the fantasy shelves but came up empty. I was directed by a store clerk to the mainstream fiction section, and there it sat, next to all the other literary and mainstream novels. Even though it features wizard kings, fairies, and the walking dead.

I wonder what that says about the future? I’m not sure.  But maybe we’ll eventually stop seeing the grudging praise, “Good… for a genre book.”

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More to the point, I think that any attempt to label any medium (or substance, or tool) as validating or invalidating its product as art is flawed from the start. Art’s an inherently subjective and personal thing. We’re all hearing different frequencies. While one person might listen to a stool scraping across a linoleum floor and hear only an irritating whine, another might hear a lonely moan that’s reminiscent of a car’s brakes on a night street.

Some may wonder why this is worth discussing here at the Orbit blog. After all, we make mostly books here, not games. But it’s my feeling that any scrutiny of the nature of art or, more pertinently, the storytelling method, should be brought into light no matter what the medium. And I have a hunch that this probably appeals to a sizeable demographic here. I mean, if you’re reading this blog, you obviously show some internetty disposition, and since it’s this blog in particular, I can safely assume that you probably enjoy science fiction or fantasy. Given these assumptions, there’s a reasonable chance that you are, have been, or might well one day be a gamer. And besides, it’s this same line of thinking that leads people to disregard fantasy and science fiction as worth any serious thought.

I discussed this with a friend who’s a video game developer over the weekend. He quickly pointed out how slippery of a term “art” is; he chose to define it as something that’s, in essence, not necessary. It did not go beyond that, he said. There is no overwhelming prerogative to paint a painting, or to write a story. It’s not as necessary as fixing a car or having a meal. You didn’t have to do it at all, but still you did it. If you had to do it, what you did isn’t art.

There’s a second supposition that’s pretty predominant, which is that true art needs no reason: it validates itself. The motivations behind its creation are mysterious even to those who made it. This is pretty much in line with the above statement, in that there’s not a quantifiable necessity for art of any kind.

Of course, this idea of “true art” is suspect. We forget that quite a bit of the Renaissance was commissioned by extraordinarily wealthy men, and was not created out of some sublime, internal desire in the artist. Many of the great works of classical music were commissioned as well. I doubt if any people, excepting a few extremists, would claim that these are not true art, even if they were part of a significant financial transaction.

But forgetting all the patrons who’ve basically bought and sold art like any other product, and possibly with about as much sincerity, I think there is some validity to the statement about necessity. Even if you are a commissioned artist, and put your talents out into the marketplace, there is still great difficulty in explaining why you were commissioned at all, and why the buyer felt such a procurement was necessary, or even why you entered this line of work. Even more mysterious are the occasions where a commissioned artist goes well beyond the expectations of his patron or employer, and works to satisfy some internal standard that’s independent of their agreement.

Being that art is such a mysterious, strange thing with so few constant, quantifiable characteristics, it’s foolish to say one thing is art, while another isn’t. There is no lofty standard of art that can be denied to any medium. To do so is arbitrary and subjective, and sometimes even a little childish.

The real issue here, I think, is not whether video games are art, but whether they’re a new and different medium that, so far, has only been accessed by a very young generation. This is obviously the case, to me. And, like all new mediums that have arisen in the world, it has those who decry it as false, silly, puerile, or a sign of the fading times.

When it first arrived, the novel was considered a base form, a silly distraction for silly women. Television was (and still to an extent is) thought of mostly as the idiot box, or the boob tube, and incapable of approaching anything like subtlety or deep storytelling. Many of the Old Guard are still deeply suspicious of graphic novels and comic books. Even cinema, the passion of the man inciting this argument, was originally viewed with great mistrust. There was controversy over jazz and the blues, and there still is over rap. And Jesus Christ, do you remember when Dylan went electric?

Video games are already art. There’s self-expression and attention to detail in even some of the most mercenary games. I don’t think many would see Ico as a silly diversion for young boys. There are many young kids who (13 year old SPOILERS ahead) will never forget when Aerith died in Final Fantasy VII. (Steven Spielberg once said he’d consider games art when someone can say, “I cried at level 7.” That already happened back in 1997, Steven.) When my friend played Knights of the Old Republic, his roommates and their friends sat around watching, not playing, because it was just as involving as any TV show or movie. And Bioshock was one of the first to use the simple goal-orientation of most video games as a part of the narrative: the reason the player has to mindlessly fulfill each objective is because they have no free will.

I can recall playing Deus Ex as a kid, and being surprised at how it explored things as complex as Hegelian philosophy, personal and social responsibility, and even the goddamn Übermensch, all in a gritty, very-realized, and utterly sprawling world. Most surprisingly, the player could interpret any of these themes in game, and react to them how they felt, and change the story. I discussed it later with my mother, saying that its ambitions and themes approached a novel at times, and that possibly, one day, video games could be used for serious storytelling.

She very much came down against that, at the time. (I will probably hear about this later.) She pointed out that a novel utilizes the audience’s imagination more than any video game could, and leaves so much up to interpretation. It can encompass huge, esoteric, arcing stories, but still have time for the smallest details. You can reread a novel and find more and more each time. That’s what makes it great, what makes it literature. And video games will never be able to do that, she said.

But, of course, movies can’t do that, either. Movies present a fixed image with a fixed sound. The appearances and movements of the characters are not left up to one’s imagination. And your viewpoint is static, generally only able to see the story from one angle at a time, and you’re unable to access the thoughts and feelings of the characters. It’s a dead form, as it’s the same each time you play it. You might just have bigger speakers, or HD the next time around.

But is anyone going to say that movies can’t be art? Today they may even be the dominant method of entertainment, the only contestant being television, which features many of the same strictures.

What it comes down to is that different mediums have different strengths and weaknesses. Novels and the written word have immersion and imagination and interpretation on their side, but they lack immediacy, and force the reader to work quite a bit. Movies, on the other hand, are passive entertainment, but feature a combination of many great arts, from soundtrack composition to ambient noise creation, to realized visual wonders and cinematography. They have immediacy, even if what you are immediately experiencing is fixed, and so will always be the same again and again. And television has a much larger canvas to paint with than movies, being able to follow characters down rabbit holes and explore long, detailed storyarcs that can take a whole year or even more to tell. But, like novels, this requires audience commitment and work, and the producers often have considerably smaller budgets than movies. I find it to be less of a “dead” art than movies, since so much can change over a season or through a series, but it is still somewhat dead.

And then there are video games. I’m generally biased in favor of role playing games, since those are the ones that  attempt to integrate storytelling structure into its gameplay. I tend to think that this genre of gaming is most likely to convince people that games are art. Let’s discuss their strengths here:

These video games have immediacy, of a sort. The audience is immediately thrust into whatever world the game is set in, and you can immediately see the story unfolding before you. However, the story won’t be summed up in one hour, or two, or even three. Many games take fifteen plus hours of gameplay to be resolved, or more, if the player wishes. That’s a serious commitment for the audience.

And let’s not forget that this story is interactive, and forces the character to make choices and take action. It won’t proceed if you don’t do anything. So, it’s not completely passive entertainment, like the movies, but it is not as active as reading a story, and creating the setting and the characters in your head.

Games also have the visual and sonic strengths of movies and television (anyone who says the Morrowind theme isn’t as good as or better than most movie themes is not someone you should want to know), but the player can experience them from any angle, and interfere whenever he or she wants, possibly setting off a chain of different reactions.

So there’s replayability there. I can’t count the number of times I’ve replayed Deus Ex, or Bioshock, and should I get it, I’m sure I’ll play Arkham Asylum countless times. They all have fully-realized worlds with a deep, involving story that the player can approach from many different angles. As with Deus Ex, you can interpret and react to themes and ideas in-world.

These are the same tools and attractions that movies, television, and fiction regularly use to their advantage; they’re simply in new forms that require a new kind of audience. Some will not get it. Like I said, there are frequencies some can hear that others can’t. Some just can’t understand the potential depth that comes from assuming a persona in a fictional world. And this, the single-player RPG, is just one of a variety of gaming genres. We are capable of more.

There is a bottom line to all this that I’m excluding here: gameplay. Most game developers focus on gameplay first, story second. So that is a bit of a hit against them as art, since something that’s merely interesting gameplay is, on the whole, akin to a game of hopscotch: it’s an entertaining diversion, but I’m not sure if it’s art. It can sell copies for sure, though. But it’s when the developers go beyond, and include all the unnecessary and artistic things like labyrinthine worlds, complicated choices, involving dialogue, and meaningful stories that they begin to approach other forms of art, or perhaps the perfection of their medium. But that’s a biased judgment. Since I make stories, I like it when my games have them, too.

And if we’re going to mark videogames down because the majority of them don’t focus on story, then we can go ahead and mark down most television, movies, and maybe even books. Because a hell of a lot of them don’t seem to focus on any of that, either.

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Hi Philip,

Thanks for the kind words about Mr. Shivers! I’ve been thinking about what you’ve said, though, especially in regards to only SFF writers doing worldbuilding, and I find I don’t entirely agree.

There’s a common distinction there between novels about real things – or at the very least plausible things – that can happen in this world that we’re vaguely familiar with, and then there’s the other kind of novel, where it’s about totally impossible things that could never ever happen. These might include spaceships, or unicorns, or time travel, or even triple-breasted whores with erogenous zones several miles in diameter. I find I don’t entirely like that distinction. It feels a bit pat.

I don’t have an issue with defining the fantastical as involving elements that are mostly impossible. That’s all well and good. But if that’s so, then all novels are fantasy, as they very clearly take place in an impossible world, and they make no bones about it, right up front. The things that happen in them are not anything like normal life.

The most flagrant (and perhaps a somewhat niggling) example is dialogue: haven’t you noticed that in most novels, even the stupidest character is usually marvelously articulate? No “ehms” and “ahs” or searching for the right word, for no reason beyond that the character can’t think of it? And everyone always hears what’s been said, unless it was necessary for the story. No one ever frowns and says, “What’s that?” or “What did you say?” or “Who?” Everyone pays attention to everyone else at all times and shows immaculate hearing and articulation. This is generally constant, no matter what genre you’re writing in, though there are notable exceptions.

That’s a small example, but fiction writers of any kind constantly use tools and methods that divorce their worlds from the world of reality. They can say their stories are realistic, that their worlds are based on reality, but reality is not a story. It’s not story-shaped. It doesn’t fit easily into, I don’t know, the narrative construct or whatever. Real life doesn’t give you closure or insight or drama nearly as much as we’d like it to. So we’ve made up little fantasy worlds where it does give us that. The few stories that don’t give us that closure usually get some extreme reactions. Like the ending of No Country for Old Men. It intentionally did not provide closure or comeuppance, and avoided any suggestion of there being a balance to the world, and, well, that pissed more than a few people off.

I agree that there’s a lot more observing and fact-checking and research involved when writing about something taking place in our reality. But the second you apply a narrative to it and begin to superimpose a structure and describe things from a specific point of view, it stops being reality, and starts being its own thing, its own insular world with its own ambiance and its own rules, totally removed from our own. No one can tell me The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Klay or The Big Sleep or Suttree take place in a world even remotely resembling ours. No one acts or talks like that, and each one uses words and characters and perspectives to explore a place totally impossible here. I often wished I lived in some of those realities. But, sadly, they don’t exist.

Just because people have ties and suits and live in a somewhat-recognizable California or whatever doesn’t mean it’s our world. The world of the story exists only within the mind of the writer, and is then packaged into little words on the page, which is then unpackaged and reconstructed by the reader. Regardless of whether or not what the writer imagines is what the readers recreates, it’s not our world. And just because it’s less fantastic than the worlds with elves and triple-breasted whores, it doesn’t mean it’s not fantasy.

So, to me, worldbuilding takes place for any kind of fiction. That’s what fiction is, the creation of a reality or a story that’s not taking place or ever took place, and so is not our own. You can include details and research, and that can lend the story verisimilitude, but that very word is defined as “the appearance of truth.” But the story is still itself not true, no matter how much research you do into tax law, the stages of thyroid cancer, or the history of the condom.

If anything, writers seeking to establish that verisimilitude have more work to do than writers composing “fantastical” worlds; reality itself is an obstacle to them, and they have to write around it. Research is often done just as much to avoid blind spots and correct mistakes as it is to find usable material. God knows I’ve made a few errors in my brief time as a writer.

I chose the Great Depression not just because it was convenient, as everything was pretty much shit for everyone then, but because the mere mention of its name summons up a world in the reader’s head with plenty of established details. You mentioned Robert Johnson selling his soul at the crossroads; others will picture overloaded Zephyrs or red ashen fields or the photographs of Dorothea Lange. The Grapes of Wrath keeps getting mentioned in reviews, for example. These all work alongside my story. We all have a preconception of the Great Depression, a series of images and stories rattling around in our collective subconscious. It provided a big playground for me to tear up, to do flips off the monkeybars or kick holes in the slide, or spraypaint colors no one expected.

But is that preconceived image of the Great Depression realistic? Is it the “real” Great Depression? Probably not. They’re free-floating images and stories, unconnected to any specific date or place.

I didn’t set my story in the Great Depression. I set it in the idea of it, the one we all have. Almost in the dream-version of the Great Depression. The historical details, really, are just details. They’re interesting and necessary, to a certain extent, but the bones of the backdrop, and maybe even the story itself, are already waiting in your head.

I did a fair amount of research for the novel, some of it useful, some of it not. I started on a book about the history of the Works Progress Administration, which was totally unnecessary as it soon became apparent that my story took place in parts of the country that had no development at all. I found a local library’s online compendium of letters hobos had sent home to their families (now taken down), which was extraordinarily useful, but again, mostly for details – how trainmen worked, how likely it was to ride a train and get your ass kicked, etc. I knew that the stories of my characters would be totally different from something a normal hobo would experience. It’d be a story of a world that had never been created yet.

I’m fascinated by your question about which worlds we build, and why, though. So often do we cut up our own world and plant these amputated parts in new locations with new rules, and see what grows. A little genocide, some Grecian city-states, suggest the question of citizenship, add a bit about the morality of adventurous thinking… And we see what we can get. I don’t think it necessarily has to be scary; The Book of the New Sun (which has a lot of pertinence to what we’re discussing here) presents a future that features many strange and beautiful wonders, alongside a few terrors. But our own world is scary, though, and sometimes beautiful, often depending on sheer chance.

It makes me think that all worldbuilding, even though all the worlds we create are fantasy or fictional, is done in reaction to our own world. The worlds we make are versions, perversions, inversions, and subversions of this one, shadow worlds running alongside our own. In a weird way, they’re all based on reality, though the relationship is sometimes tenuous, or even tortuous. They can rebel against our world, say, by creating a world in which women have the right to extend or terminate a marriage contract every four years, but the very contours of that imagined place reflect or contrast this one. It’s all based on reality, but where it goes from there is anyone’s guess.

Well. That was a lot of typing and a lot of assertions. I’m all asserted out.

Robert

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I used to think that a story was just a chain of events, arranged and presented in a manner meant to be interesting to the reader. This was back when my thinking process was pretty rudimentary. I still thought No Fear shirts were cool, for example. My concept of stories was limited mostly to “How does A get from point B to point C?” I pretty much thought of them as a math problem, but with interesting setpieces and maybe, if I was lucky, some sex.

But at some point in time this changed.

Eventually I started to realize that some stories seemed truer than most. Some stories, even though they were patently fiction, felt real. I kept coming back to these as a kid, trying to see what made them what they were. It was like they had found a pattern somewhere in the world. Like they had blown away dust to reveal a groove in the earth itself, part of a larger, tracing architecture laid out under the sky. It was like the stories were always there, like they were passageways leading to that strange pattern that felt so true, so ingrained in everything. I just had to take the time to follow them down.

There were two things I realized about the patterns the stories somehow revealed. One was that the patterns were not at all alike. In fact, many seemed to directly contradict the others. This was somewhat frustrating, since they all, to at least some degree, felt true. How this worked confused me.

The other thing was that not everyone saw the patterns.

This was a blow to me. My first experience that I can recall with this was at the age of ten, when I read Danny, the Champion of the World by Roald Dahl, and then found my best friend was going to do a report on it in class. I was excited, since I’d found the book exhilarating. There was a transient, magic glory to the world and life Dahl explored in the story. But my best friend gave a cursory, trite summary of the book, summing it up as “a hunting story,” when in fact it was about the growth of a young boy and his poacher father, and how the clever, lower-class folk manage to put one over on a tyrannical, wealthy merchant. It eventually became apparent that he hadn’t even finished the book, and he’d lied about it in class for the book report. I later asked why, and he said that he found the book “boring.”

I had to sit down for a moment after hearing that.

It’s taken me a while to figure out why stories work for some people, whereas for others they don’t work at all. I still haven’t got it completely, but I think I can suggest two things about it.

One is that stories explore a cross-section of the world, not the world as a whole. Like the lives of people, stories are limited. Even if they try and break out of their boundaries, still more boundaries remain. In a way, they’re like shining a flashlight through the rain in the dark – they can only reveal the rain in that section of the sky, and no more. If you can find patterns within that cross-section of the sky, then that is good and beautiful, but they still remain only within that wide swath of water, and go no further. People who have not seen that cross-section of the world will not be interested in it. It’s describing an aspect of existence that may as well not exist to them.

This doesn’t mean that if you aren’t a poacher you won’t enjoy Danny, Champion of the World. When I’m speaking about cross-sections here, I’m speaking in very big terms. In regards to that story, it will speak strongest to those who have experienced rootlessness, anxiety, and that dreadful doubt that gnaws at children when they’re no longer certain their parents know best. Those who haven’t experienced those things, or haven’t experienced them to the degree described in the story, will likely not be as amenable to it.

This is probably why some stories, while all feeling very true, will often contradict one another. They are describing paths and lives that are completely different. In a lot of ways, they are describing different worlds.

The second thing I’m beginning to suspect is that stories broadcast what they’ve learned about that pattern, and I think each one does so on a certain frequency. They’ve taken all the evidence and the datum and arranged it so that it makes sense, and now they just have to send it out. Most stories broadcast at a medium frequency, so that most people can receive it. Some do it at a very high frequency, and so can only be heard by a select few receivers. Some do it at a very, very low frequency, and so can be detected by some, but only in the background, in an unnerving, crawling way.

Everyone can receive at least some kind of stories. But everyone is also deaf to some frequencies, too. There are simply some stories you will never, ever hear, and never, ever understand. Imagine walking into a room and seeing a group of people crowded around a radio, smiling and nodding at one another, and maybe oohing or aahing, as though something marvelous has just happened. You’ll look at the radio, and see that it is on, but nothing seems to be coming from it. The room is silent. And yet these people are having the time of their lives, feverishly discussing things as though they are brilliant, but to you they don’t even exist.

If you’re smart, you’ll just nod your head and move on. If you’re not, you’ll tell them that it’s nothing, that they’re fools, and that this is obviously just a waste of their time and they should flip over to this station that you like, because it’s actually playing something.

This will probably not get a good reaction from them. Why should it? To them, it’s perfectly plain that you don’t know what you’re talking about.

As you can hopefully see what I’m explaining here, stories are tricky things just when you’re on the receiving end.

It gets much trickier when you start trying to make them. It’s like trying to build a telescope from just seeing some magnified pictures of the stars.

It’s taken me a long time, but I think I’m beginning to understand it now. I’m not entirely sure how, though. Some of the understanding has been intuitive, happening in the corners and crevices of my head where I never go. Some of it has been more dialectic, identifying parts that contrast and don’t lead into one another, and those that do. And some of it has been superficial, just trying to figure out how fucking future perfect works in a section that’s mainly past continuous.

But I can say for certain that stories are like organic machines, building themselves by some sort of blind guidance, with interlocking parts and strange physics and methods of energy use I can barely control.

I can also say that stories are mirrors of a wide expanse, and some parts are concave while others are convex, and some parts are rough and pebbled while others are smooth and very, very cold.

I can also say that stories are like chisels, given to the reader to chip away at existence and explain the random events pouring around them, paring years down until understandable truths remain.

I can also say that stories are like maps of the world, explaining the pitfalls and the peaks, showing you the many roads you can take, and where they will lead you if you essay on.

I can say that stories are windows looking out on strange vistas, and sometimes they have glass, which is sometimes of many colors, and sometimes they have no glass at all. Sometimes they look out on a battle. Other times they look out on a large field with many dogs romping about. And still other times they show you a brick wall.

I can say that stories are fractal, expanding as you go further in, or infundibular in both directions.

I can say that some stories go from point A to point B, whereas others seem totally unaware of the alphabet at all.

I can say that the more I learn about stories, the less I know what they are. The narrative construct is one of our greatest and most mysterious tools, and I often doubt if we wield it as much as it wields us.

My first novel, Mr. Shivers, comes out this week. I often think about what kind of story it is. The cross-section of the world it describes, I think, is one of grim survival, of conceptualizing the world as a fluttering flame in a world of darkness, and also as a state of constant flux and flow. Its frequency, I think, is a very low one – a deep rumbling, like that of an earthquake happening in the distance, one some will feel in their bones while others will hardly notice at all. And if it is a mirror, I’m not sure if it’s bent and warped to distort the viewer, or if it’s angled in such a way that they see parts of themselves that were always there at the backs of them, but have so far gone unnoticed. They are probably not the parts the viewer would like to focus on, but they need to know the parts are there.

Some people, I know very well, will not hear the frequency my story broadcasts on, nor will they understand (or perhaps want to understand) anything about survival in that world, and the all-too-close relationship between life and death. And yet for others it is already proving to be a precious secret. These, I know, are the people I wrote it for.

What I wrote, and how I wrote it, and why, remains a mystery for me. I don’t think I will ever really understand it. Maybe I don’t especially want to.

Perhaps I am following that strange architecture I first felt when I read a “true” story, those grooves in the earth tracing across the ground.

Sometimes I think I should explore them more. I wonder where they will lead.

Maybe I could even write a story about it.

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Faith and doubt are funny things. Like us, they behave differently as we grow older. They grow weaker or stronger, and begin obeying new rules as we come to know the world. The rituals and faiths we knew as children both gain and lose significance as the path behind us grows longer. At no other time do we become more keenly aware of this than during the holidays, when every moment is laden with childhood memories of impossible belief, and some moments feel like shadows of lost treasures. We are not who we once were, and the beliefs of our pasts are no longer wholly with us, no matter how much we may wish otherwise.

I’ve heard many friends mention this crisis, however elliptically. I’ve never personally experienced it, since faith and doubt stop mattering at all when faced with simple fact. Which is what I’ve personally experienced.

This is why I always try and tell people who are having these problems that it’s easiest to simply find a god. After that, you can just stop worrying about it.

At this suggestion, they usually try and awkwardly end the conversation or change the subject. I can understand that. I tell them that what I’m trying to impart isn’t any sort of spiritual enlightenment, nor am I trying to convert them. What I’m trying to do is just provide a field guide of sorts, like for birdwatching. Look for the signs and you’ll spot them out there, I tell them, and then you’ll find yourself worrying a lot less.

But they don’t listen. And that’s all right. I can’t blame them. But I thought it’d be best if I try and let you all know some helpful hints and tips to encountering a deity. I can’t say which one you’ll find – and there’s not just one, in fact there seems to be rather a lot – but whichever god you happen to find, you’ll certainly never forget it.

I never have, at least.

The first one I found is probably a good example. It was long ago, when I was still drinking quite a bit, and never thought I’d have property or prospects, or a concern beyond the next paycheck. I’d spend about every other weekday in some bar or another, wandering among pubs and holes-in-the-walls and rundown diners, seeing the same faces, sharing the same greetings and stories. It was a fog of a life where I was unable to see much beyond the next day or so.

Then one day I was told of a place I absolutely had to swing by. Everyone was going there, I was told. It was a place I had to see, out on the edge of town, a place called Milligan’s.

One day I did swing by, and found that for once the rumors were true. Everyone did seem to be at Milligan’s. Everyone and their brother and sister and their aunt. The place was absolutely packed, the crowd spilling out into the parking lot, and I couldn’t see why. It didn’t seem all that special. It was a big, leaning, ramshackle place, an old home that’d been converted to an inn and then into a bar. A faded painting purporting to be of the eponymous Milligan hung above the door with the name in white lettering below. The neighborhood around was nothing to speak of – it was out of the way and there were no other restaurants or bars around. But even as I watched, more people tried to shove themselves into the house, and I couldn’t understand it.

So this is the first tip for finding a god: there will be people. Lots of them. People where there should be none. You know how prophets always find a god while wandering out in the desert? It’s likely it went out there to try and find some quiet, but the pull was too strong, and someone came following. We’re drawn to them, you see, like lightning to the pole.

I went in, and soon found myself wondering why the crowd had to be outside at all. The place was absolutely cavernous inside. It felt like the inside of a mansion. The bar was as long as a battleship, and there were old wooden balconies lining the second floor. As I wandered in I saw many of the faces I’d seen before in my jaunts around the bars and clubs of the city, but they were different – they did not seem so slow and lost now. They seemed cleaner, happier. Sparkling, even.

I hustled up to the bar and got myself a drink and sat down. I chatted with whoever was on my left or right, and they happily obliged. While we spoke I wondered why they seemed to grin so much, but around the second drink I began to feel the same thing they were obviously feeling, and I knew it wasn’t the alcohol that was doing it. It took me a while to figure it out, and it was checking my watch that did it. The first time I checked it was 8:37 PM, but then when I checked an hour later – at least I could have sworn it was an hour later – it was 8:49.

This is the second thing to keep in mind: time does not work the same way around a god. The world moves slower, and – in my experience, at least – the minutes pass with a sense of pleasant warmth. I’ve tried to find substances or experiences that emulate that same warmth, but I’ve had no luck so far. To my regret.

I came back again and again to Milligan’s, and the long drive (and expensive taxi rides home) soon felt like small sacrifice in the face of visiting my favorite bar. Over the weeks, I came to be acquainted with Dunclan, the owner and frequent bartender. He was a short, pot-bellied man whose hard shoulders spoke of wiry strength, and he watched the world through cold, calm eyes that never smiled, or really ever did anything at all. They were set in his hard, lined face like pools of ice, and though we shared smiles and compliments, he was forever inscrutable to me.

Once I asked him how he’d managed to make Milligan’s such a roaring success. Other restaurant and bar owners would surely kill for the secret, I said. But he simply smiled and told me, “The only thing anyone needs is to constantly remember that commerce comes above all. I’m not providing a home, or a living room. I’m running a business. And doing a good job in the hospitality business means making people happy and comfortable so they keep coming back. If you do that, by whatever means necessary, then you’ve got a success on your hands.”

I later asked if he’d be willing to offer me a few specifics, and he gave me some – he pointed out how different sections of the bar were lit and explained why, how the balconies were arranged and decorated, how he had the music and the tables set up to direct traffic, and why he had the drink specials scheduled the way he did. And though these were valid points, they never seemed like the full truth to me.

I often wondered about the truth as I kept coming back. I began trying to look at the specifics he’d pointed out, like how he’d arranged his bar and so on, and as I did I noticed some odd things – besides the picture hanging outside the bar, there were no images of people or animals hanging on the walls inside Milligan’s. No photos, no posters, no advertisements. And no televisions. There were plenty of advertisements featuring words and landscapes, but no faces, and no creatures of any kind. I was surprised that I’d never noticed it before.

This is the third thing about a god: they don’t work well if images of other beings are being observed around them. It doesn’t even matter if the god in question knows it’s going on, or even cares. If there’s attention being diverted to something or someone else, it weakens them, or screws up whatever mojo they have running. And if they’re strong enough, those images will be removed. So, look for curiously blank walls, or photographs that have been strangely faded around the faces of its subjects.

There were other things I noticed at Milligan’s that surprised me, especially in how I’d never noticed them before. Chief among them was how there were no games there. No arcade games, no foosball, no pool, no airhockey. Not even darts. None of the usual diversions at all. I wondered why for some time, until I sat at a table next to a girl who was playing solitaire while she waited for her friends to arrive. She was about halfway through it and had come to a dead standstill, having missed some previous play that would have opened up the game to her, and she was pretty much stumped. She sat looking at the cards for some time, and then reshuffled the deck and tried again. Yet this time, everything was different. Every time she drew a card, it was the exact card she needed. She laughed out loud as she slapped them down, one after the other, wondering how something as simple as a shuffle could have changed anything. When she laid down the last card, completing the game, she punched the air in victory, but then faltered when she noticed something odd about it – some of the cards she’d drawn had already been drawn. Unless our eyes deceived us, she’d drawn three aces of spades, two Jacks of hearts, and seven twos of various suits.

At that Dunclan sidled over and quietly but sternly told the girl that they did not allow cards in Milligan’s, thank you very much. They knew it was an eccentric rule but it was one they’d revered since the original owner had started the bar, and he had not cared for games of any kind, and if she so desired then she could take the card game elsewhere. Which she quickly did.

This is the fourth thing: when a god is around, chance and luck go right out the window. A man can flip a coin five hundred times and get heads each flip when a god is nearby. Their very presence interrupts every rule the known world works by, and this becomes particularly noticeable when games of chance are involved.

I kept coming back to Milligan’s over the coming months, noticing these constant anomalies and vaguely wondering about them. I didn’t think much on them, as I was so caught up in the companionship and good cheer I could always find at the place. But then one December night, not like the ones upon us now, it happened.

I’d been waiting on Dunclan to fill an order, but he’d gone through the old wooden door behind the corner of the bar to get another keg started. Then as I stood waiting a nearby man who’d been drinking for some time stumbled and knocked over an entire table of glasses. Pints and mugs tumbled to the floor, sending dregs of beer cascading everywhere. Several of them smashed, and the din the bar quieted briefly as people turned to look. Then they laughed or gave a quiet ooh as they saw the full scope of the destruction.

Dunclan came hurtling back up. When he saw the overturned glasses his shoulders stooped and he gave a weary sigh. “These fucking people,” he muttered, and then grabbed a handful of rags and rounded the bar to help.

I watched, smiling a little. But then I felt a strange breeze ruffling through my hair, and the smile slowly left.

I turned to look in the direction of the breeze, and found it was coming from the door, which Dunclan had forgotten to shut all the way. The stairs behind it were dark, and I could not see much there. But a breeze was definitely wafting through that crack in the door, one that smelled somehow familiar to me. It smelled of perfume and summer fields and the rich promise of fruit and berries fermenting on the forest floor, of lavender and fresh hay, and somehow it even had the vague, almost nonexistent scent of a cold, clean brook.

This is the fifth thing: all gods have a smell. They will smell like a variety of things, and some may smell unpleasant. But no matter what, the scent will always seem familiar to you.

I stared at the dark crack. It somehow seemed to beckon to me. I was about to look away, and ignore it, as it was Dunclan’s business and none of my own. But then I heard a noise.

Something behind the door was singing. A high, sad song, with no words that I could tell. It sounded strange and beautiful, like cold wind whipping through old canyons. And it seemed like it was singing just for me.

I turned back to look at Dunclan. He was busy mopping up the floor. I stood, walked backwards towards the door as I watched the rest of the bar, and then turned and walked through.

The stairs behind the door were old and creaky and dusty, and so dark I could barely see anything at all. As I walked they groaned loudly, and when they did the singing below faded and stopped. I was not sure if I should continue, but I kept on.

The stairs led to the cellar of the bar. It was as spacious as the bar itself, and was lit by basement windows at the top of the walls which allowed faint starlight into the dark. The floor was smooth concrete, and all along the walls were cases of bottles and dozens of kegs, boxes of napkins and coasters, and in some places I saw where the absent televisions and posters of people had gotten to – they lay stacked in the corner, gathering dust.

I wandered deeper into the cellar, looking for whatever had made that strange sound. I expected to see someone standing down there, waiting for me, but I could find no one, though the scent of hay and summer fields grew stronger.

I almost gave up. But then I saw something in the furthest corner of the cellar. Something on the floor.

At first they looked like severed limbs, somehow. A foot and a shoulder and maybe an elbow, cut off from someone and lying there on the cement, next to a grate in the floor. But as I stepped closer I saw that they were not cut off at all – they were still attached to someone. Someone trapped in the cement, as though it had been poured around them and awkwardly frozen them in place, with only parts of them piercing the surface.

I stared at the figure trapped in the floor. The toes of the foot twitched slightly. Then I realized I heard a hushed breathing, and it seemed to be coming from the grate set in the cement. I swallowed and realized that the grate was positioned just where the person’s head would be.

I walked to the grate and looked into it. It looked in on a shaft set into the cement, and somewhere down the shaft I could see a head of some kind, but it was turned away from me and I could not see a face, not in those shadows. I could tell by the way that it was moving that the person was still alive, and breathing, and unless I was mistaken they were weeping.

I sank to my knees before the grate, and as I did the thing trapped in the cement began to sing again, that high, sad, wordless song I’d heard before. But I could almost understand it now – it sang of horrible sorrow, of years of being trapped in the dark, unable to move and barely able to breathe. It sang of decades of abuse for the purposes of power and greed, and it wondered if the world it once knew was still the way it remembered, or if the sights and tastes and smells it could recall were only dreams, delusions it’d created to survive its imprisonment.

As I listened to the song I began weeping as well, kneeling there in that starlit basement as hundreds of people caroused over our heads. They did not know what had drawn them here, and why. They did not know this horrible violation just below their feet.

That is the sixth and final thing: what a god feels, you feel. Its emotions are broadcast at a frequency you just can’t ignore. Sometimes it hurts just to see them.

Suddenly the singing stopped, and I saw someone standing off to the side. I looked and saw it was Dunclan, and he carried an old bat in his hands and his cold eyes were lit with an awful fury.

“You little nosy shit,” he said softly. “You just couldn’t stop wondering, could you.”

I tried to say something, but before I could he darted forward and the bat came down on my shoulder. I gagged in pain, and before I could even take a breath the bat came down again, this time on my head, and the basement blinkered out for me for a moment. Everything grew hazy and muted. Suddenly I was on the floor, and I saw he was still swinging the bat and knew there was pain somewhere within me, but I could not tell how much or even where.

Finally Dunclan let me be. He staggered away, breathing hard, and let the bat fall from his hands to clatter to the floor. Then he walked to the thing in the cement, and even though my senses were failing I heard him say, “I know what this is. You brought him here, didn’t you. Like you brought all the others. But you wanted just him to see.”

He dropped to his knees, just as I had before. “You fucking thing,” he whispered to it through the grate. “If I’d known what trouble you’d be I’d have figured out how to cut your throat ages ago.”

As if in answer, the singing returned. Soft and high, long, sad notes. Dunclan shook his head, and I saw tears were upon his cheeks.

“Don’t you do that,” he said to it, almost pleadingly. “Don’t you do that. Don’t you make me cry. I won’t have you making me cry.” Then he bowed forward and laid his head on the grate, speaking softly to the thing in the dark, asking it to stop, and maybe asking it for forgiveness. And then things faded for me.

When I awoke I was in an emergency room. The police were there. They told me I’d been found on the side of the street downtown, and I’d suffered a serious concussion along with some fractured ribs. They asked me, somewhat halfheartedly, if I could remember what had happened, or who had done this to me, or why.

I thought about it, and after a while I said no. I could not remember anything. After all, I told myself, it was unlikely if pressing charges would do anything. Dunclan was living quite the charmed life, due to what he had trapped in the basement.

I never went back to Milligan’s, though I understood it was still thriving. In later days I often felt somewhat empty, as though losing that occasional presence I’d felt in the bar meant losing a part of me, losing a light that had made the days more bearable. But I could not go back for that. Not if it was being used for such mean, petty reasons.

Maybe that’s the seventh thing. Maybe we need gods for our own little self-serving purposes. To make the next day feel better, or the next hour, or week. I can’t say. I get by as it is, just running into them occasionally, seeing them do their thing, and then moving on. Losing them and their odd moments as the world streams by me. It’s easier that way.

I used to wonder what could have been done. If I could have helped that thing I’d found imprisoned. But it’s like I said, you stop wondering and worrying about a lot when you finally encounter a god, no matter what condition it’s in. Some things are just beyond you, and you just have to get used to it.

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The first step is waking up. Your body will take care of this, usually. Sometimes a passing stranger will also help, nudging you with their toe and trying to force you out from underneath the bus bench where you’ve been sleeping. It just depends on the day, really.

Once you are awake, examine the palms of your hands. The tattoos that you have upon them will have changed in the night, as they always do. Don’t worry about the tattoos – they’re very clearly written in Bookman Old Style and are easily readable, and you never feel them changing in the night.

On the left palm will be a time and a date, and upon the right will be an address. I suggest you familiarize yourself with a variety of postal codes so you can identify which state or country the address is in. This will save a lot of time down the road.

Next, you will need to travel towards the destination written on the palm of your right hand. I prefer bus, but you can drive yourself or walk or fly if you like. Don’t worry about being late – They’ve taken traveling into account, and you should have plenty of time to get there.

You will always be there at the right time. They know what They’re doing, you see.

The destination is almost always the same, no matter where it is. It is an old motel with full vacancy. Sometimes it will be made of wood. Sometimes it will be cinderblock. Sometimes it will made of cement or even grass, sometimes it will smell like cigarettes and camphor, sometimes it will have carpet and sometimes it will have wooden floors.

These are details. It is the same place.
 
Approach the old man at the front desk. (There is always an old man at the front desk.) Tell him you have come from the horizon, east and west, above and below, and you have come for a room.

Language will not be a barrier. But he will always be upset to hear you say this. Be ready – he may shout or scream at you or even cry.

Eventually he will ask you three questions. They may be very strange. You must answer them as best as you can. Do not lie – he will know if you do, and delay you.

Once you have answered the questions, he will provide you with a key in a small wooden box, and open up a door in the back. Leave the old man behind, go through the door, and continue down the hall until you come to the next door. Open the door with the key (the key will feel hot in your hand), and walk into the room.
 
It will be a moderately large room. Now you must stand in each corner of this room and then, facing inward, you must spit upon the ground.

You will see that each spit moves as it falls, as though magnetically drawn. Note where it falls.

(You can also do this with a cup of water – spilling it on the ground and seeing where it flows works well. But sometimes I do not have a cup of water, and so I recommend the spit.)

Once you see where it keeps wanting to fall, go to that area and pull up the floor. If it is carpet it will be easy enough. If it is wood, you will have to pry up the planks.

It is never stone. Stone would be bad, but They know what They’re doing.

Underneath the floor will be a trap door. It will be small, and black, and made of metal with a golden handle. Once it is exposed, you must wait. Wait, and do not go far.
 
Do not sleep. You must not miss what is about to happen.

When the hour that is inscribed upon your left palm comes, the golden handle will click and clank, and the trap door will be unlocked.

Go through the trap door. There will be an iron spiral staircase down, hanging in the darkness. It will be difficult to see, and there will be no walls, so tread carefully.

I do not know what is beyond the staircase. I have looked but never seen. And I know I do not want to go far into the darkness.

At the bottom of the staircase will be a small wooden desk, a chair, and an oil lantern. The lantern will be lit. It is the only thing you can see at the bottom of the staircase. On the desk next to the lantern will be a typewriter. And next to the typewriter will be a small crystal bottle.

Written on the bottle will be the word: DRINK.

You must drink what is in the bottle. It will not taste very good, but you must.

Then you must sit in the chair, and face the typewriter. You will feel a tingling in your hands. When the tingling becomes overwhelming, you will have to place your hands on the typewriter keys.

You have no choice. Your hands will want to go there. But upon touching the keys, things will go dark, and you will sleep.

When you next wake up, wherever it may be, you will see that the tattoos upon your hands have changed again, and it is time to travel once more. Check the leather sack hanging from your shoulder – you will find what you have written inside.  Read it if you like. You will have no memory of having written it, and it will probably not make sense to you.

It never does to me.

You will have to do this several times before the writing is completed. Then you move on to the next thing. And the thing after that, and the thing after that, and the thing after that.

This may not be how everyone writes, but it’s always worked for me.

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