The Mind of Bryan Lee Peterson

So I was trying to reconnect with Inside, and it was proving so difficult, I took a very extreme step. I’m shocked that I did this myself, that out of a weekend of intense depression, I found a way through.

It started a week ago, and my friend Lena was in town. We were talking about my current situation fairly in-depth, and she mentioned my ex, Nicole. She asked what Nicole was doing now, and if I’d tried to contact her. The answer was I don’t know, and no. While that relationship had inspired “Inside,” it was just a bit of personal history so far removed from my current situation, I wasn’t sure I even participated in it in the first place.

Well, the week went by, and my mood got worse and worse. There was a point during the relationship where I knew it was the best thing that ever happened to me, and now as I look back I agree with that in some ways. The pain that came out of the end (and it wasn’t just the relationship ending that caused pain at the time, there was much more going on at the same moment the relationship ended), brought a lot of growth and inspiration to my writing. As my friend Michael described Inside, it is my first book with very deep and real characters with rich emotional content. For this reason, the relationship probably was the best thing that happened to me.

But now I’m here five tumultuous years later, and I have to reconnect with the material, and things have not settled at all. The difficulties I have faced over the last five years have warn me down and changed who I am. I’d rather not be who I am right now, and I’d like to go back to where I was.

Inside is an intense book, a lot of hate and pain is coming to its pages, a lot of difficult choices and a lot of suffering, but there’s a lot of joy in this opening hundred pages or so, and that joy also came of the relationship with Nicole.

I thought I had to reconnect with the pain, which is the future of the book. Well, everything I tried didn’t reconnect me, so I searched her out. If I saw her, I knew what I’d feel, and I did. I did feel the pain. I hadn’t looked for her in all the time since we split, I absolutely had not, but she was a good painter, and an amazing person. I knew she’d be onto some amazing work these days. I had no intention of contacting her.

But I forgot something. There is joy before the pain, just as there was in this relationship.

But there hasn’t been joy in mine for a long time, I’ve practically forgotten what it feels like, and I think that was what I’d been having trouble connecting with, the joy.

And when I found her, I thought, what the hell? So I sent her a comment on her business on Facebook. Maybe I’ll send her an email, and it will probably be ignored. I told her I always knew she’d do something amazing, and she is. Truly. I miss what we had for that brief time greatly, but I got a little more written in the book, and that was the point of it.

Now if I could reconnect with joy a little bit in my real life, maybe I wouldn’t be such a moody bastard.

So my current work in progress was started five years ago. Life intervened, and still does, so I’ve had to put it down and pick it back up, and I’m looking for the right way back in. Adding to the complications with this, I changed my mind on the scope of this story, deciding on making it much smaller than I had intended, though how well that works out, we’ll see. I’m running about a quarter less while I wanted at least half the length. We’ll figure that one out as we edit.

But editing requires that I get to the end of the book, and I have a long way to go to get there. I’m through maybe 5-10% of the story so far, and really it’s just kicking off.

So how to reconnect? That’s the question. If life has intruded on your story as it did on mine, here’s some ideas to get you back into the story again. I’m not sure on process on this one. Take a look at each step, and consider the order you want to do it in.

I’m blessed with a really good memory, or cursed depending on the day. I remember everything, so finding the facts of the story isn’t really an issue. If it is for you, I hope you took copious notes on your story, have a good outline, your settings are well detailed, and all your character studies are in order. You did do all of that as you developed the story , right?

I’m a fairly immersive researcher as a writer, and so I keep a file of research for each project, This file may contain images, news articles, anything that fits into the story somehow. Thankfully this story is kind of ripped from the headlines (and sometimes the headlines are ripped from it), so there is continuous news to inspire me, and even as I put the story aside, I never stopped finding inspiration, as unfortunate as that is. Much of the inspiration I had for this is of a very bigoted, violent, phobic nature.

The first iPod I got was a 6 gig nano, and I loaded it up with music that fit the themes of “Inside.” well, 6 gigs isn’t enough, not by a long shot, so I got a 30 gb one not long after, and well, that one wasn’t quite enough either. I now have a 160 gb, so I can put on music that isn’t just about the book. So it’s time to make up the playlist again. Listening to it during the day really puts me in a headspace, and from that headspace comes a good flow for writing. Of course, it’s also brutally dark, moody music, not brutal metal, but manic depressive stuff about people hurting each other, and all of this dark input makes me a very dark person.

I have edited what I had. I know, I always say to keep moving forward, don’t go back and edit, you’ll get lost. In this case, it allowed me to review choices, and get into the moment of the story. It is almost like an actor getting back into character. You need to bring it back to the moment, and now that I’ve reached the point of writing forward, I feel in the moment of the story much better than if I had tried to pick up from where I left off. I know the history in all its details, and I’m writing as if it were happening now.

This was definitely the right decision. I’m sure I’d notice errors and gaps if I hadn’t gone back to the beginning. It would be more work in the editing stage, and take longer to get up to speed in the story in terms of pages until I reached flow again.

Of course, going back to the original inspiration is also important. In my case, it’s going back to losing the best relationship I’ve ever had. Right now in the book, we’re in the good parts, so I’m trying to relive the good parts, but I also know what’s coming. This makes me nostalgic for the past in a way that my character will be feeling later on in the book, and I try to relive those experiences. I can remember the feel of her and the taste of her in such detail (remember, my memory is a curse, and she’s haunting me), that its almost real, and I’m close to tears at times remembering. I do want there to be moments of feeling this darkness as the situation is good in the book, and so the duality of feelings is probably dead on what I need.

Of course this makes me moody and reserved, so I’ll take out the writing of this book on all of you. Sorry, but its for a good cause.

So there’s a few ideas. If anybody has any others, I’d love to hear them.

Coming from the flammable hills of Westlake Village CA, I bring you Stories from a hat #2. Sorry for the lateness, traveling for work has kept me busy.

First, haven’t set pen to paper for Stories from a Hat #1, but I know what my story is. Just needs to settle just a little bit on some details, then it will write itself. This week however, I have drawn again, and I think you’ll like it. I know the direction I’m heading with it.

Artificial intelligence

Antarctica

captured super entity

dark fantasy

settlement

As always, if your writing bears fruit on this, send it my way, and I’ll post it.

I know, it’s late. Been a day. You know what I mean. A Day. Actually a good day, but a day nonetheless. Almost got to upload at lunch, but the place I was at, the Wifi took a crap. I think I actually saw it on the can. So here’s my first chance to upload. Here’s an image. Write something about it. The start of a story. Some description. Something. Send it to me by Sunday. I’ll put what you get out up here. Also try writing Stories from a Hat. I may have something for that by Sunday. Story’s in my head, but I’m already booked most of the weekend. Go figure. But here. Now write, dammit.

And I don’t know who to give attribution to. If you know, let me know.