Soup’s On

Last night didn’t start well.

It began when my wife and I sat down to a new soup recipe from a new cook­book that I was excit­ed to get and use. That soup took me two hours to make, but only about thir­ty sec­onds — after our first spoon­fuls — to exchange looks that mutu­al­ly said, “This is awful.”

Hap­pens.

I found some­thing else to eat and then — by way of solace — went back to work on the new book I had just start­ed that day, try­ing to get a first chap­ter into a shape that would engage a read­er, any reader.

Alas, it was as bad as the soup.

It didn’t, I told myself, start right.

So I went to bed think­ing I need to come up with a good first line. If I can just get that….

There’s a per­sis­tent roman­tic sto­ry about writ­ing that sug­gests that one can dream up — tru­ly dream — a good sto­ry. Alas, I’m not some­one who remem­bers dreams. That said, dream­ing up a sto­ry has hap­pened to me three times over the course of my career. 

The first time it came about short­ly after I wrote the book, Night Jour­neys (1979). It had a decent end­ing, but it was an end­ing that fair­ly begged the ques­tion: The two main char­ac­ters get away free, but what hap­pens to them?

I must have been think­ing hard about this ques­tion, because not long after I went to bed and dreamed up the answer, wak­ing up with vir­tu­al­ly the whole plot of a sequel in my head. In a short time that dream would become Encounter at Eas­t­on (1980) In essence, I fol­lowed my mem­o­ry to write the book.

The sec­ond time this hap­pened was in (2012) and was much more notable. I had, as it were, dis­cov­ered the Eng­lish Mid­dle Ages, and want­ed to find a sto­ry fit­ting that time that I could write about, so I had been read­ing a lot about the period.

Sure enough, one night I dreamed up a sto­ry. Not only did I dream it, but I also (in my dream) broke the tale down into four books, and even had the very last line of the fourth book.

I set about to write the first vol­ume. It became Crispin: The Cross of Lead.

Only when the book won the New­bery did I remem­ber that whole dream and plunged on and wrote two more vol­umes both based on that dream. (Crispin at the Edge of the World, and Crispin, The End of Time.) The fourth vol­ume was begun but then aban­doned by the pub­lish­er. I’d still love to write it, remem­ber­ing as I do, yes, that very last line.

Now all this is pre­lude to the fact that as relat­ed above, last night I went to bed telling myself I need­ed a good open­ing line to my new book.

When I woke this morn­ing at 5:30 I had it.

It’s good to know that when my body gives up, the mind can still churn on.

Then again, maybe it was that bad soup.

Hap­py dreams!