When The Silence Speaks

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HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN:  So. Happy Saturday. Do you have ten minutes? No matter how you answered--yes, you do.

How many times have you heard someone ask: Where do you get our ideas? How many times have you seen authors wince, then make up some answer?

But I think that’s the most fascinating question ever. Where did Narnia come from? The sonnets? Kinsey Millhone?

The brilliant Randall Silvis has some thoughts about it. And that’s why you will be delighted you spent your ten minutes. And there’ll be more minutes to come as a result.

 

The Silence That Speaks

By Randall Silvis

I don’t particularly like it when I am referred to as a crime writer or a mystery writer. Those words put the emphasis on a novel’s plot, and I don’t write plot-dominant stories. I write stories about the relationships between people, some of whom might be engaged in actions that include murder or another crime.

  Crimes are a great way to put a character under maximum pressure. Under pressure, our true natures are revealed. And only through an examination of our true natures can we (and our fictional characters) grow and evolve. An unexamined life is not worth living or worth reading.

 My goal with the Ryan DeMarco Mystery series is to follow DeMarco on his own spiritual journey through a course of demanding events—whether murder investigations, romantic and other relationships, betrayals, losses, even brushes with death—that will force him to assess not only his true nature but the true nature of reality. He is at an age when human beings do that kind of thing.

 Carl Jung called it the stage of Spirit, the fourth and final stage of life. It is when we realize that our lifetimes of accomplishments and our possessions are not all we are. We are more than that. In this stage we become the observers of our lives and learn to view life from a different perspective. These are the years of wisdom—if, indeed, we are equipped to receive it.

          DeMarco is an inherently compassionate person, but for a long time his thoughts were filled with the noise of anger and guilt that interferes with spiritual development. One of the most important things a person can do for him/herself is to court and cultivate the silence that speaks. In the novel series, with the help of Thomas Huston, Jayme, and his love of nature, DeMarco is learning to listen to that silence. This is also an essential facility for any writer who hopes to produce more than merely escapist stories.

So what is the silence that speaks? None of the world’s scientific geniuses has ever been able to explain how brain chemicals and electrical impulses produce ideas. That’s because they don’t. We know that the physical brain is somehow associated with consciousness—the mind and its infinite creativity—probably as a receiver of some kind, a filter and storage compartment.

 But we also know, from tens of thousands of documented and corroborated personal experiences, that an individual’s consciousness can continue to function (often even more keenly) when the brain is clinically dead. So it is clear that the physical brain does not create ideas or any other facet of what we call consciousness. They originate from the silence that speaks, that vast reservoir of consciousness and creativity that permeates everything.  

Einstein claimed that imagination is the highest human faculty. Max Planck, the father of quantum physics, was among the first contemporary scientists to understand that mind, i.e consciousness, precedes and in fact creates the illusion of matter. J.K. Rowling, during a train ride, experienced a spontaneous flood of imagination that gave birth to the entire Harry Potter opus, the highest-selling fiction series in history. Spiritual masters from the beginning of time have been inspired and guided by knowledge that seemed to come to them out of the silence.

My best ideas have always come to me unbidden during some non-thinking activity, such as meditating, dreaming, washing the dishes, mowing the yard, walking in the woods, taking a shower, or riding my motorcycle. At such times, brain activity is low, especially in the neo-cortex, the reasoning, analyzing part of the brain.

Several studies show that low activity in that region of the brain is associated with heightened states of consciousness. I belief that the state of non-thought Taoists call wu-wei allows us to “hear” inspiring whispers that have no relationship to personal experiences. This is the magic of creative thought. It often possesses some deeper, indescribable quality that will not yield to analysis or logic.

In The Book of Embraces, Uruguayan writer Eduardo Galeano introduced a word for that quality, coined by fisherman along the Colombian coast: sentipensante, the language that speaks the truth, and does so not through thinking, not through analysis and reason, but through feeling. Love, I think, is sentipensante. As is joy. That exultant sense of gratitude and hope bequeathed by a sunrise or a star-filled night. That profound bond between a parent and child that cannot be articulated nor even understood unless one has experienced it.

This is the quality I sense every time the silence speaks. Not just the beauty of cadence and rhythm and image, which I attempt to build into my prose, but the beauty of an inexpressible truth. When Hemingway stated that the job of the writer is to write “one true sentence,” this, I think, was what he meant. From that truth, everything else will follow.

And that’s where DeMarco has landed in Book #3, A Long Way Down. He is learning not to worry so much. Not to feel so guilty about his past or to feel responsible for all of the sadness in the world. And to understand that there is a greater reality of which the physical one is but a fragment.

I can’t wait to see where he ends up in Book #4!

HANK:  So now I will ask you—where  (and when) do you get your ideas?

(and a copy of A Long Way Down to one lucky commenter!)

A Long Way Down 

      --NOW From Poisoned Pen Press/Sourcebooks

Just when you think you’ve reached the bottom... Ryan DeMarco would rather not go home. Not now, maybe not ever. But when his estranged wife attempts suicide, he has no choice but to return to western Pennsylvania, and all the memories that wait for him there. Unfortunately, it’s not only ghosts from the past waiting to greet DeMarco upon his return. An old high school classmate has risen through the ranks to become a county sheriff, and he is desperate for help investigating a series of murders that might tie into a cold case from his and DeMarco’s school days. DeMarco and his new love, Jayme, agree to join the team working on the case. But it’s not easy for DeMarco to be walking the streets of his troubled past, and the deeper he and Jayme dig into the disturbing murders the less likely it is that either one of them will escape the devastation. 

 Randall Silvis is the internationally acclaimed author of eighteen books. His sixteen novels, one story collection and one book of narrative nonfiction have appeared on Best of the Year lists from the New York Times, the Toronto Globe & Mail, SfSite.com, and the International Association of Crime Writers, as well as on several Editor’s and Booksellers’ Pick lists. His work has been hailed as “masterful” by the New York Times Book Review as well as Publishers Weekly, Booklist, Mystery Scene magazine, and others. His new Suspense novel, A Long Way Down, will be published by Sourcebooks/Poisoned Press) in June 2019. 
 Also a prize-winning playwright, produced screenwriter, and prolific essayist, Silvis was the first Pennsylvanian to win the prestigious Drue Heinz Literature Prize, whose final judge was Joyce Carol Oates. Twice nominated for a Pushcart Prize for his short fiction, Silvis was also a two-time Hammett Prize finalist for his crime novels An Occasional Hell and Two Days Gone. His magical realism novel In A Town Called Mundomuerto was named a Top Ten Fantasy Novel of the Year by the editors of SF Site magazine. Two Days Gone and Only the Rain were both Amazon #1 Bestsellers.
    The recipient of two National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellowships, a Fulbright Senior Scholar Research Award, and six writing fellowships from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts for his fiction, drama, and screenwriting, Silvis  was awarded an honorary Doctor of Letters degree from Indiana University of Pennsylvania for “a sustained record of distinguished literary achievement.” 
A multi-genre writer, Silvis' fiction has been marketed as literary, magic realism, mystery, thriller, and psychological suspense. His creative nonfiction ranges from personal essays to biography, history, and nature writing, and he was a contributing writer of cover and feature stories for the Discovery Channel magazines. Silvis has taught creative writing at the undergraduate and graduate levels for the past thirty years, including stints as the writer-in-residence at Mercyhurst College and the Ohio State University. He co-hosts the podcast The Writer’s Hangout atwww.thewritershangout.com.  

Strangers on A Plane

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: Usually when you call something  “an airplane book” it means a book  that’s perfect reading for an airplane—riveting and distracting and compelling.

(Yes, I know it could also be about airplanes, or whatever. But go with me here.)

I love airplane books. And I love seeing what everyone else is reading on airplanes. (Lots of people still read book-books, my survey shows. Especially when there are no plugs on the plane.)

But this perfect airplane book, THE DEAD GIRL IN 2A, takes place on an airplane. Not completely, but the opening premise is so chilling that it’ll make you take a second look at the person sitting beside you.

Listen to this:

Jack Buchanan knows the woman sitting next to him on his business flight to Denver―he just can't figure out how he knows her. Clara Stowe isn't in Jake's line of work and didn't go to college with him. They have nearly nothing in common apart from a deep and shared certainty that they've met before. As their airplane conversation deepens, both struggle to figure out what circumstances could have possibly brought them together. Then, in a revelation that sends Jake reeling, Clara admits she's traveling to the Colorado mountains to kill herself, and she disappears into the crowded airport immediately after landing.

AHHH!  What would you do?  Carter Wilson, the author, didn’t start out to be a novelist.   What got him there? Boredom.

And then—something else. Something that applies to all of our lives.

"Not Enough Time" Is a Myth!

by Carter Wilson

 As a bestselling author of six psychological suspense novels who also has a full-time job and family, I'm frequently asked, "how to you find the time to write?" I used to answer this vaguely, like I was some kind of superhuman who didn't know how to explain their innate powers. But it didn't take long to realize I wasn't special. I wasn't doing anything that anyone else isn't capable of. I was merely making choices that allowed me to do the things that made me happiest.

True, there are only twenty-four hours in a day. But that only matters if you choose to define your life as a series of days. But what if, rather than defining your life through time, you defined it though passion? Through the things that made you happy rather than the things you felt you had to do? What would that look like?

I have a formula for all this, and it doesn't factor in time as a variable at all. It's this:

PASSION + COMMITMENT = HAPPINESS

I didn't start writing until I was thirty-three, and, having no formal education in in the field, had no idea what I was doing. My writing career began on a single day when, in order to stave off boredom at a continuing-education class, I began writing a story. I wrote that story for two hours in the class, went home, then decided I had more to say. Three months later I had a 400-page manuscript. I remember writing that last line, sitting back, and thinking, what just happened? Is this what I'm supposed to be doing with my life? And, the biggest question of them all: now what?

I proceeded to learn the publishing industry, mostly through Google. What do I do with a completed novel? Find an agent. How do I do that? Write query letters. And so on. After seventy or so rejections I landed that agent. She shipped my book around to all the publishing houses, where it took about a year to be soundly rejected.

That last rejection represented an inflection point in my life. Two years earlier, I never would have conceived that I'd soon be writing a novel, landing an agent, and having my book rejected by all the publishing houses. With that final rejection, it was the time to define exactly what this life path was. Give it a name. Was this a whim, or was this a passion? Did writing make me happy?

Yes, I decided. It did.

So I found the time around my already busy life to write a second novel, which took a year to finish and another year to be rejected. As did books three and four. Finally, roughly eight years after that day in the classroom where I began my first story, I landed my first publishing deal with that fifth book. Since then, I've had four other novels published, a sixth releasing this July, have won numerous awards and have even hit the USA Today bestsellers list. And yet, I still have that full-time job. I've still managed to raise two wonderful if-slightly-deranged kids. I still spend cherished quality time with Jessica, my partner. I still manage to log 250 workouts a year.

It's not a miracle. It's not some secret time-management technique. I do all those things because I have a passion for them all. I love writing, my job, my kids, Jessica, and exercise. Make the things you are passionate for your priority, and the rest will slip away. And there's this added benefit: focusing on things that make you happy will naturally result in spending less time on things that don't. For me, those things include obsessing over the news, wasting hours on social media, and reading books or watching shows with which I'm not fully engaged.

When people say, "I don't have the time," it's usually just an excuse. What they really mean is they don't want to prioritize something into their life because it's less important to them than other things. Sure, sometimes there's literally not enough time to do something even if you love it (like writing a book in a week), but if you really wanted to do something, like master the guitar, you could do it. It could take years, but that doesn't matter. Define your life through passion, not time.

Yes, my days are full. I get up at 5am, work out, write, get the kids to school, go to work, come home, write some more, spend quality time with my family, and then I'm in bed around 10pm. I can't write a novel in three months anymore; it takes a year.

Which leads me to the second part of the equation. Commitment. You can be passionate all you want about something, but if you don't throw yourself fully into something, the happiness you seek around that thing will never be fully realized. Many instances when I sit down to write, there is no muse guiding me. No sense of losing time as my fingers take control of my brain and the story magically unfolds. Lots of times writing sucks, feeling more like a low-level data-entry job than crafting a piece of creative fiction. But I have to sit in that chair every day, seven days a week, because for all the times it's not fun, I know I'm an overall happier person for it.

Next time you actually use the phrase, "I don't have any time," catch yourself and think about what it is you really mean. Do you not have the time, or do you not have the passion? Asking yourself that simple question might reshape how you view what it means to be happy.

Passion plus commitment equals happiness. It can be that easy.

  

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: Yup, I so agree! But I still wonder about the person sitting next to me on the plane. And all the stories flying with me. Stories I’ll never know.

Did you ever meet someone life-changing on a plane?

And a copy of THE DEAD GIRL IN 2A to one lucky commenter!

THE DEAD GIRL IN 2A

   coming July 2 from Sourcebooks

Jake Buchanan knows the woman sitting next to him on his business flight to Denver—he just can’t figure out how he knows her. Clara Stowe isn’t in Jake’s line of work and didn’t go to college with him. They have nearly nothing in common apart from a deep and shared certainty that they’ve met before. Despite their best efforts over a probing conversation, both struggle to figure out what circumstances could possibly have brought them together. Then, in a revelation that sends Jake reeling, Clara admits she’s traveling to the Colorado mountains to kill herself, and disappears into the crowded airport immediately after landing. 

The Dead Girl in 2A is the story of what happens to Jake and Clara after they get off that plane, and the manipulative figure who has brought them together decades after they first met. Intensely creepy, beautifully written, and full of Carter Wilson’s signature whom-can-you-trust paranoia, this is a psychological thriller unlike any you’ve read before.

ABOUT CARTER WILSON

USA Today and #1 Denver Post bestselling author Carter Wilson explores the depths of psychological tension and paranoia in his dark, domestic thrillers. Carter is a two-time winner of the Colorado Book Award and his novels have received multiple starred reviews from Publishers Weekly, Booklist, and Library Journal. Carter’s bestselling, critically acclaimed standalone thrillers include MISTER TENDER’S GIRL; REVELATION; THE COMFORT OF BLACK; THE BOY IN THE WOODS; and FINAL CROSSING. He has also contributed short fiction to various publications, and most notably was featured in the R.L. Stine young-adult anthology, Scream and Scream Again. Born in New Mexico, Carter now lives outside of Boulder, Colorado in a Victorian house that is spooky but isn’t haunted…yet.