To Dream Strange Things

The job of the writer, said Nathaniel Hawthorne (American writer, 1804-1864, author of The Scarlet Letter and The House of the Seven Gables) should be:

to dream strange things, and make them look like truth.

In his short piece, "The Hall of Fantasy," he imagines entering an "edifice" of the imagination:

It is not at all times that one can gain admittance into this edifice, although most persons enter it at some period or other of their lives; if not in their waking moments, then by the universal passport of a dream.

As he strolls about with a friend, he encounters some fantastic machines:

Here was a machine . . . for the distillation of heat from moonshine; and another for the condensation of morning mist into square blocks of granite. . . . One man exhibited a sort of lens whereby he had succeeded in making sunshine out of a lady's smile; and it was his purpose wholly to irradiate the earth by means of this wonderful invention.

"It is nothing new," said I; "for most of our sunshine comes from
woman's smile already."

"True," answered the inventor; "but my machine will secure a
constant supply for domestic use; whereas hitherto it has been very
precarious."

It is a charming 19th-century excursion into the realm of the writer of fantasy, one who seeks to make granite from mist, who delights in dreams of strange things.

On Revision & Smashing Clay

On www.poets.org, I came across this gem by poet Donald Hall (in a 1994 interview by Martin Lammon, titled "Flying Revision's Flag"):

"Rodin advised young sculptors, when something was not going well, not merely to keep picking at it -- the clay, the plaster -- but to 'drop it on the floor and see what it looks like then.'"

This is great advice for writers. Don't fall in love too much with the shape of initial drafts. Keep looking for ways to shake it up. Consider changing something so drastically that it alters the elemental shape of the work. You might surprise yourself into seeing your own material in an entirely new way.

Stand a story on its head. Have a character do the opposite of what you expect. Move the setting to another location. Change perspective from one character's point of view to another's. And see what happens next.