Carolyn Hunter
“The T. A. Barron Podcast.”

T. A. Barron
Today we will take a deep dive into the turquoise waters of creativity. Here we are in my writing room, ready to talk about the creative process.

Carolyn Hunter
I do feel a special kind of energy in here. And as an aspiring author myself, I have to say I’m super excited about today’s episode. T. A., You’ve written 32 books. Did you write them all in this room?

T. A. Barron
Most of them, yes. And by the way, 32 is a rather special number because it’s not only the number of my books out there, it’s the number of rejections I got on my very first manuscript.

Carolyn Hunter
Well, that gives me hope. [Laughter] Maybe you can tell us a little bit about those rejections later on.

T. A. Barron
Sure. As long as I’m talking about them in the past tense, I’m happy to do that. [Laughter] But for now, let me just say that I believe the key is to remember what you love about what you’re writing, and then persevere.

Carolyn Hunter
Tell us more.

T. A. Barron
Let me go back to that metaphor of the deep dive, because I really chose that mindfully. That’s how it feels. When I’m in this room working on a story, I feel like I’m first just touching the surface of the water with my toes. Then I get in up to my ankles and then my knees and then up to my armpits. And then I dive in, and I go deeper and deeper into these mysterious, sometimes dimly lit, sometimes totally dark waters. And as I’m going deeper, the subconscious opens up, my emotional touchstones become clear, characters come alive and speak, and if I listen well enough, they just might tell me their deepest innermost secrets.

Carolyn Hunter
Wow, that’s a magical process.

T. A. Barron
Yeah, it really is. And by the way, I still don’t understand it after all of these years. All I know is what helps it happen. Before we go back to that deep dive, let me toss out another metaphor. Sometimes when I’m in the process, it helps to remember why I’m doing it, what it’s about, what the goal is. And so, it helps me to think about stories that I’m working on as little boats that I’m spending time crafting until they are finally ship worthy and ready to sail. And then when that time happens, which might be a year and a half or two years, I lovingly set those boats free out on the great ocean that connects all people, all people, across distances and cultures and languages and times. That’s my goal. So those story boats ultimately will sail away and have their own journeys, their own adventures touching the lives of people on faraway shores, people I know I’ll never meet. And although I don’t know where those boats have landed, I really hope that they have brought something meaningful along with them, a new idea or a good reason for hope or an insight or maybe a small source of inspiration.

Carolyn Hunter
So if I was sitting down to write my first story, what advice would you have for me?

T. A. Barron
Let me start by sharing with you some advice I got from a wonderful writer named Madeleine L’Engle.

Carolyn Hunter
She wrote A Wrinkle in Time, right?

T. A. Barron
Yes. And that book is beloved around the world for very good reasons.

Carolyn Hunter
How did you meet her?

T. A. Barron
That’s actually a really good story. But how about we save it for a future episode?

Carolyn Hunter
Aw.

T. A. Barron
And I’m happy to say she was also a dear, wonderful friend and a mentor.

Carolyn Hunter
Awesome.

T. A. Barron
Well, one night when I was struggling very much with book number one, the one called Heartlight, she had me over for dinner and was quizzing me about it and then interrupted me at one point and said, “Tom, did you know there are three essential rules for writing the perfect novel?” And I said, “What? Tell me, what are they?” And she took a deep breath and answered, “Unfortunately, nobody knows what they are.” [Laughter] So honestly, everything I know about writing is summed up in that story. I still don’t know what they are. But, if you press me, I could share a few rules, maybe two or three that I do think apply.

The first would be that writing is both incredibly hard and stressful and incredibly meaningful and joyful at the same time. Now, I’ve had a lot of different jobs, and they range from teaching school to running a business to being a wilderness guide. And none of them have made me work harder than writing. At the same time, none of them have given me a deeper, more lasting joy, than writing.

Carolyn Hunter
I can totally relate to that. Now what’s the second rule?

T. A. Barron
The second rule is that talent is nice, but discipline is essential. You really have to sit down and go to work. This is a craft, and the only way you get better is by doing it. But because you’re trying to engage both sides of your brain, the conscious and the subconscious, the logical and the dreaming self, in the creative process, you have to sit down and go for it. Sometimes I’m up here in my writing room working on a chapter for several days and can’t get a single good sentence, not one. And then suddenly, that next night or the next morning, it all suddenly happens. And I wake up at 3:00 a.m. and I know what I need to say and how to say it. And I go right to work, and I can’t write fast enough. That’s the miracle of it. And that’s when the creative process is magical. But I know that none of that magic would have happened if I hadn’t gone through the agony of the several days before that.

Carolyn Hunter
So you’ve earned the satisfaction of that complete page. So what’s the third rule?

T. A. Barron
The third rule would be, write from your passions. Not, by the way, write what you know, which is an oft heard bit of advice given to aspiring writers. I’ve never thought that’s good advice. I think what you need to do is write what you feel, not what you know, because that passion will give you the energy you need to explore, to dive deeper into this lagoon, to feel the emotions, to come to know characters you’ve never met before, who are aspects of your own self, exploring lands and worlds that you’ve never been to but can conceive. And all of those things require passion. And believe me, if you feel that genuine passion, so will your readers.

Carolyn Hunter
Yes.

T. A. Barron
It will come through. It will flow over them like a waterfall. And while we’re at this, let me add one more important rule for any writer, and that is don’t take any advice about writing from another writer.

Carolyn Hunter
[Laughter] Oh, my goodness.

T. A. Barron
Sorry. But it is true.

Carolyn Hunter
Okay, so I know I have to just sit down and start writing and get into that dreamlike state, but how does a writer mix a little bit of what they know with the imagination?

T. A. Barron
Well, I think first, let’s remember what a creative artist does. The job of a writer or a painter or a musician, I think, is to see and describe some aspect of human experience and to see it freshly in a new way that inspires others to see it in a different way as well. Let me, for example, tell you about a painting that I have down in our kitchen that was given to me by the wonderful children’s book artist and writer Eric Carle. Eric was a marvelous, generous, spirited man. And on my birthday a few years ago, he gave me this picture he had created of a farmhouse. There’s animals all around and people as well. And there’s one man on a ladder climbing up higher than the house toward the sky, painting a rainbow in the sky. And I’ve always thought, that’s what we do as artists. We take the material that’s all around us and add something new, a new perspective, a new color, or even a new rainbow.

But to get back to your question, before any of this can happen, we need to notice. We need to really notice the world around us. I think it’s crucial to the writer’s job to pay attention to what’s going on around us outside and also what’s going on inside of ourselves. That paying attention gives us awareness and sensitivity and also a lot of material. And I would also add that it’s important to notice with some caring involved. As Mary Oliver wonderfully said, “Attention is the beginning of devotion.” And I believe that.

Carolyn Hunter
That’s really nice.

T. A. Barron
Here’s another way to put this, and it might surprise you, since it comes from someone who writes about these wildly imaginary places and characters. My very best ideas come from real life. That’s because our lives are full of amazing material everywhere, if we notice it. And then, if we just add a drop of imagination, well, anything, literally anything, is possible. Plus, when you notice the world deeply, with all your senses being as fully present as you can be, it gives you an invitation to live more fully, to be more alive. What a gift. What a blessing that is.

Carolyn Hunter
Yes. And that just comes with the job.

T. A. Barron
Look, I write a whole lot of different kinds of stories, and the only thing that binds them, truly, is they are all a story I would like to read. But whether it’s an epic fantasy adventure where the universe is at stake, or a nonfiction book about heroic and inspiring young people, or maybe a shorter tale for children, one of my nature books that’s just an excuse for a good hike. Whatever the book is, it always began with noticing. And that’s really my point. If you truly take in the world around you, open up all of your senses, your heart as well as your mind, and be as fully present as possible, you will have an eternal wellspring of material. And you’ll also have that added depth and richness in life.

Carolyn Hunter
So, say I’m living my life and trying to pay as much attention as possible to everything around me and feeling everything I can, I’ve sat down at my writing desk and begun to dive into the creative process. What are the most important elements in a story?

T. A. Barron
Well, it’s different for every writer, but for me, I’ll tell you, there are three essential elements I have to have, for any story. I need to have a character I love, a place I want to visit, and an idea I need to contemplate. Those three are crucial. And let me just also add, they don’t just appear, they need work. In fact, as mysterious as the writing process is still to me, one thing for sure that I can tell you is it requires discipline, and you have to stay with it. That’s why I write no less than eight or nine complete rewrites of my books before they’re done, and all kinds of little tweakings and rethinkings of phrases or paragraphs or pages or chapters as well. So, I work it, I work it, I work it, to try and understand character and place and idea. And ultimately, they really become more and more authentic and more and more real.

The only exception of this is those rare and miraculous moments when a passage just appears and flows perfectly right through me, like the deep roots chapter in The Ancient One did. It just appeared, and literally I was sitting in a Redwood grove leaning against one of those massive creatures, and that chapter just came through just as if the tree was speaking to me. But that’s so rare. [Laughter] I wish I could tell you otherwise. It really requires work most of the time. On a character, what I do to get going is to do a little biographical sketch of all my key characters. Two, three, five pages. And I start with the obvious things like, what do they look like? What do they sound like? What do they dress like? What is their position in their community, their society? And then I go deeper and ask, what are their hopes, their dreams, their fears? And ultimately, I begin to hear somewhere in their breathing, their voice. And as I’ve said before, I always save to the very end, the question that to me is most revealing, what is your secret? And that’s a marvelous place to be, because from then on, I am conversing with that character. And by the way, he or she may just say, “You’ve got me doing such and such in the outline that you wrote up six months ago. But that’s idiotic, I would never do that, ever. Not in this universe. So this is what I’d like to do.” And for goodness sake, you have to listen to that character, as a writer, and go where they want to go, because then they really are authentic and they’ll lift off the page and come alive for you as well as for your reader.

Carolyn Hunter
Well, now I understand more about making a character come alive, but what about a place?

T. A. Barron
Places are, in a wondrous way, another form of character. That’s really how I think about them. They’re not just a backdrop, not just a setting for a story. They are a kind of character. That’s right. So, the Isle of Fincayra, or the magical world of Atlantis or The Great Tree of Avalon, all of these immense places that are imaginary all have to feel true. Put it in a different way, these places have moods and storms and histories and complexities and paradoxes and mysteries and dark sides and light sides, just like a human character. And when you really get into a place, even a magical place, indeed, I would say especially a magical place, you really have to understand the personality of that place so that it would feel totally, completely true to a reader, even if the rules are different than in our world. And that’s what makes it exciting.

Carolyn Hunter
Definitely.

T. A. Barron
This is why I think of fantasy as a kind of bent mirror. It’s holding a mirror up to our world, but because it’s bent, it’s changing our perspective on things, and it raises the definition of certain things, problems, challenges, issues, crises. And then it diminishes all the rest. That’s why fantasy can be so illuminating and also just so much fun.

Carolyn Hunter
So much fun.

T. A. Barron
Key to this process is details. Just like in describing a human character or a non-human character, in describing a place, the details are key. I want to enliven all of the senses of my readers, so they feel like they are really, truly, there on the Isle of Fincayra, that place where young Merlin washes ashore and has all those great adventures of becoming a wizard. If he can survive, that is. Well, that’s a unique place, Fincayra. It’s a bridge between the mortal world, our world, and the spirit realm. And it’s surrounded by a living mist, it has all kinds of backstories woven into it. That is the place that I needed to truly bring to life.

Carolyn Hunter
And you did that. So many of us feel like we were there.

T. A. Barron
And I hope you’ll come back.

Carolyn Hunter
Oh, I will.

T. A. Barron
And one more thing I’d like to share about place. When I finally know this place well enough that it feels like a destination resort for my imagination and others, then I draw a map. Drawing the map is a very special moment. It’s analogous to hearing the voice of a character. When I sit down to draw that map with my pen and inks and charcoal pencils and have the great fun of truly crafting it, at this point, I know that place well enough that it’s not really like drawing a map. It’s like painting a portrait. A portrait of a friend. You could say, and this applies to both imaginary characters and imaginary places, that the best fantasy must be true. Even though it’s imaginary, it has to have an integrity, it has to have an authenticity, and it has to have details that really fit together. Put a little differently, some people quote Coleridge the poet. That fantasy and fiction creates a quote, “a willing suspension of disbelief.” End quote. I’m sure you’ve heard that quote. Now, Coleridge was a terrific poet, but I have never agreed with that formulation. Why? Because it doesn’t go nearly far enough. All those words feel wrong to me. In the best fantasy, there is nothing willful about it. It’s not a willful conscious choice, and there’s no suspension. We are just in the story. We are there. We’re walking on that imaginary place or flying through its sky or swimming through its waters. And far from disbelief, it is all about creating belief. It’s a much more active process. My job as a writer is to win real belief from intelligent readers. That’s the goal. And it’s a higher bar than what Coleridge said.

Carolyn Hunter
So you’ve talked about two of the essential elements, character and place. But what about idea?

T. A. Barron
What I’m really searching for here is that wonderful treasure that is carried by the story boat. What is it that is in the hold of that boat? And for me, it’s often in the form of a question. It’s a question like, what difference can one life, one person, really make? Or how are we actually connected across time and distance and language and culture, and also across species? People have always wrapped questions like that into stories. And the stories that really touch us deeply, the ones that endure, carry that extra treasure of a deep, thoughtful question. Those questions and big ideas connect us all to each other, as well as to the world around us and our fellow creatures. And also, this miraculous planet of ours, so beautiful and so beleaguered, our home that supports all life.

Carolyn Hunter
All of these tools are so helpful. I can’t wait to talk more about this.

T. A. Barron
Great. Let’s continue this conversation about the creative process next episode. In particular, we’ll focus on how we can engage both sides of our brain so that our creativity really flows.

Carolyn Hunter
Awesome.

T. A. Barron
To everyone out there. Let me just say thank you so much for joining us for “Magic & Mountains.” We’ll see you next week. And in the meantime, may you have magical days.

Carolyn Hunter
We hope you enjoyed this week’s episode of “Magic & Mountains: The T. A. Barron Podcast.” Don’t forget to subscribe, leave a five-star review, and share this podcast with your family and friends. For more information and to find all of T. A.’s books, visit TABarron.com. Have a magical week.