Breakfast with Stairway Press: Bryn Greenwood on Trolls, Ink-stained Sheets, and Writing in the Dark

By - August 23, 2013

It's 7:00 a.m., and it's time to bring in a slightly different genre. I'm happy to introduce our net guest poster, author Bryn Greenwood!  Don't forget to check out the bottom of this post to learn how to enter to win Bryn's giveaway as well as an additional giveaway from your friendly neighborhood blog-a-thon host--me!  One more quick note:

 

Now, take it away, Bryn, with "On Trolls, Ink-stained Sheets, and Writing in the Dark"!

True story: I once woke to find that my right hand and half my pillow case were stained black. After the initial panic about aliens infecting me with their mind-controlling black oil passed(this was the X-Files era), I realized it was ink from my favorite fountain pen. Then I went into the bathroom and discovered that the left side of my face was similarly ink-stained. Reconstructing the mishap was easy enough. At some point in the night, I’d woken up with a brilliant idea for a story and reached for my journal. After scribbling down the details I’d managed to retain from my dream, I must have fallen back to sleep without putting the cap on the pen. Cue the ink deluge.

What was the payoff for a ruined pillow case and two days of fielding questions about my discolored face and hand? An entire night of convoluted dreaming distilled into these three sentences:

Engineer develops machine that controls what people want. Govt agent sent to infiltrate and seduces the engineer’s daughter. Is the machine controlling the agent’s desires now or does he really love her?

Those scrawled lines represented a whole novel, one I walked through from start to finish while I was asleep. I would post a snapshot of that page from my journal, but you wouldn’t be able to decipher it. Sometimes even I can’t figure out what I was trying to write.That’s the risk of writing in the dark when half asleep. Other times I can make out the words, but the idea that spawned them has vanished into the night air. Occasionally, I get lucky, and my late night notes are both legible and useful to the telling of a story.

Some writers are planners. They have outlines and spreadsheets and elaborate graphs and scheduled writing times. I have none of these things. I have never successfully outlined anything, not even my thesis for my master’s degree. It’s not unusual for me to have no idea what’s going to happen in a story until I write the next chapter. While it’s an exciting process, it’s also a little exhausting. If I suddenly realize what’s going to happen next, I have to write it down in that moment, or it will disappear.

Being unable to plan my stories, I must make do with what I have: a brain that can visualize an entire novel in a night of dreaming. It is also a brain that will ceaselessly attempt to take four random, mismatched ideas and fit them together into a cohesive whole. Or a mostly cohesive whole. This is how my forthcoming novel, Lie Lay Lain was born. It started with the news story of Rilya Wilson, who went missing out of foster care in Florida. Then there is an events planner who witnesses a hit and run, and makes a promise to a dying woman. Add to that a church secretary who hates lies, but whose mother is a pathological liar. Later I topped it off with a paramedic who survived Hurricane Katrina, and is now living under a stolen identity. I started the novel in 2003, not long after Rilya was discovered missing. At the time, I had no idea what the story would be. I just knew that the story haunted me and I needed to talk about it in some way. For the first three years, I was actually working on three separate novels: the events planner and a missing girl, the church secretary and her lying mother, and a paramedic trying to come to terms with what he’s done to survive.

Imagine me for three years, chipping away at these three novels, gaining words slowly because I didn’t know where the stories were headed. Then one night, while I was asleep, my brain figured out how the puzzle pieces fit together. I woke in the morning to a single novel. I still had a long way to go, and another fifty thousand words to write, but the different elements were all working together.

In college, my friends and I referred to this process as The Paper Troll. Staring down a writing assignment, I often did insane amounts of research and slept far more than a college student with menacing deadlines should. After weeks of reading and sleeping, I would fall to writing in a frenzy. Eventually, I would greet the dawn with a finished essay. As I proofread the paper the next day, I often came across vast swaths of prose that I did not remember writing. On a few occasions, I found that I remembered nothing about the essay, as though a little troll had come in the night, while I slept, and written thirty pages on Spenser’s The Faerie Queene.

Because of this, my early morning ritual involves going over all the bits and pieces of my dreams. Before coffee, before my shower, before the morning dog walk, I have to start the day by checking to see what has filtered into my conscious mind from sleep. Everything else can wait.

 

***Bryn is giving away a signed copy of Last Will to one lucky commenter on this post, as well as an advanced, uncorrected proof of her upcoming book Lie Lay Lain to another commenter. So, make sure to leave a comment!***

ABOUT BRYN:  Bryn Greenwood grew up in the mean streets of Hugoton, Kansas. Somewhere in there, she got a BA in English, a BA in French Literature, and an MA in Writing.  Faced with the terrifying prospect of a PhD or reality, she chose reality and took a teaching job in Japan. After that came a number of years wandering in the desert. Well, in Florida anyway. Then came a few years teaching at community colleges, and several more working at non-profits, before she returned to Kansas. She is the author of two literary novels: LAST WILL and the forthcoming LIE LAY LAIN. Find out more at www.bryngreenwood.com.

 

With An Additional Giveaway From

COLBY MARSHALL

 

***Another lucky commenter on this post will win a colbymarshall.com T-shirt!***

 

Comment for your chance to win both Bryn's and Colby's giveaways!

 

What's your morning ritual?