THE VOICES IN MY HEAD

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THE VOICES IN MY HEAD

How I became a writer and let the voices in my head work for me.

I recently happened upon a meme in one of my author’s groups on Facebook. The message, “I’m a writer. I make the voices in my head work for me,” resonated with me. I’m often asked how I managed to write a 105,000-word novel in such a short time (my first draft took 3 months) and I can’t explain it other than to say that it simply tumbled from my mind—word vomit, so to speak—from voices working for me inside my head. “Bizarre,” you might say. You have no idea, dear Reader. Allow me to lift the veil and reveal how I became a writer, and how I let the voices inside my head work for me.

There is a critical scene in one of Stephen King’s novels, The Dark Half, where the frustrated, alcoholic protagonist (an author with a killer case of writer’s block) becomes possessed by an evil entity: his own unborn twin whom he had absorbed in utero. (This is Stephen King, the king of paranormal fiction, folks, so bear with me.) The spirit of the evil twin embodies the author’s pseudonym, and, unlike his host, writes prolifically and with evil consequences, killing people and leaving behind (you guessed it) the poor, innocent writer’s fingerprints. One scene is branded into my brain; the one where the writer’s hand—possessed by the evil one—starts scribbling uncontrollably on the page, while the dumbfounded author looks on with horror.

I have suffered from writer’s block my entire life. I first tried my hand at fiction at the age of twelve or thirteen, the kind of bodice-ripping slush that was most likely a side effect of my burgeoning sexual awakening. At school, I excelled in creative expression, writing dramatic, verbose essays and history papers worthy of a Romanov saga. In college, I did a deep dive through Shakespeare and Chaucer, and Proust and Baudelaire, hoping that some of the creative genius would rub off on me. But other than a wordy Honors-French dissertation debating the personal, psychological interjection of Jean de la Fontaine into his animal fables, I could not create anything original. My mind was clogged.

Following graduation, there came that awkward period in every 20-something-year-old’s life—at least for graduates of a Bachelor in the Arts—where they roam indiscriminately, scrounging for a job that commonly ends up not resembling their field of study in the least: restaurant server, office assistant, au pair in the Loire Valley, France, or TEFL teacher in the Netherlands, teaching French businessmen the art of pronouncing the “th”-sound … without spitting in the instructor’s (my) face.

My first “real” job was in the mid-1990s as an unpaid intern at a trendy, new magazine in Santa Monica, California. It was the closest I had ever come to my elusive dream of being a writer. I was surrounded by them—bonafide writers—while I did the grunt work for the first few months: fetched coffee, managed appointments for the Editor in Chief, harassed reporters behind on their deadlines, and proofread others’ articles … all whilst craving to do my own writing. My big break, if you can call it that, came one morning when I walked into an office hive of anxiety: the moody travel editor on staff had quit overnight in a huff and the magazine was about to go into print … without its monthly travel section geared towards young, entertainment-industry Angelenos with money to burn. I still remember the Editor in Chief eyeing every senior, salaried journalist around the conference table with a look of desperation. I remember even more vividly when her gaze settled on me.

“You!” (I don’t think she remembered my name.) “You’re from Africa,” she said. “You’ve lived in Europe. Can you write something and have it on my desk by tomorrow morning?” My knee-jerk thought (minus the expletives) was “Huh?-not-on-your-life-no-I-can’t-I-don't-know-how-I-don't-have-enough-time-are-you-freakin-kidding-me?” Or something like that, to the tune of Imposter Syndrome in D-minor. Instead, the words that tumbled from my lips were, “Of course. No problem!” Casual and cool as a cucumber before it’s submerged in pickle brine. A travel column from scratch in a few hours? Pfff! For wealthy hipsters way out of my league? You betcha!

It was hell; I stayed through the night, propped up by stale pastries and vile office coffee, and whipped up a frothy, exotic trip across the African continent on the luxurious, Agatha Christy-like Rovos Rail. I had never done the trip myself, but it was an itinerary I knew would blow the minds of spoilt, self-important types who dreamed of outdoing their friends and colleagues. And just like that, I became the new Associate Travel Editor for the magazine. At last, I was a (measly) paid, PRESS-badge-brandishing writer. And write I did—travel editorials, mostly, but also a few interviews of young, breakout celebrities, foreign movie reviews, and (later) restaurant reviews. I was wined and dined by fancy hotel chains across the country, and even went to an Oscars after-party representing the magazine, wearing a discount-store taffeta skirt that cost $15. (It was right after Sharon Stone had infamously worn a white Gap T-shirt with a voluminous skirt to the Oscars, so I felt en vogue.)

I wrote a lot during my two years as a journalist … but nothing of my own creation; nothing that made my pulse quicken. And not for lack of trying. Over the twenty-odd years since then, there have been several false starts: a few short stories with twisty plots, a dystopian young-adult novel that is still swirling in my undertow, and a non-fiction book with tips and games to stimulate young children to be critical thinkers. But try as I might, my creative mind would grow flaccid a few chapters in, and the brilliant ideas and motivation I had up front would deflate and collapse inwards like a pool float with a leak. With farting sounds to boot.

Then, a couple of years ago, two pivotal and highly contradictory things happened simultaneously: Freedom (I became an empty nester) and Restriction (I, along with the entire global population, was forced into isolation due to a global pandemic). For some reason, those two overlapping realities fired up a renaissance in me, a creative rebirth of epic proportions. I joined several Zoom-based discussion groups with my band of brilliant museum colleagues. I signed up for online classes to improve my German through a local community college. And I registered for a post-graduate course, Art Crime & Law, through Sotheby’s auction house in London. By then I was already working as a free-lance art researcher and translator for the private heir of a Nazi-looted art fortune and fascinated by the dark underbelly of Art Crime: looting, forgery, art heists, and the use of stolen art as collateral for drug deals on the black market.

Fired up, I searched for additional courses and found a program that embedded its participants for three months in Italy to study Global Art Crime. I practically drooled onto my keyboard but, tragically, the course was canceled that year (2020) due to Covid. Instead, I devoured the curriculum at home. One segment struck a major chord (and seeded the idea for my novel, HEIST OF THE OLYMPIANS): a day trip to an acclaimed museum in Rome, where participants would attend a conference with museum leadership and security heads and be tasked to brainstorm how they would rob the museum if they were an art thief. (I learned later that this kind of think tank to brainstorm potential security flaws is a common problem-solving tactic used by many museums and corporate entities.)

I was fascinated with this concept: how would I steal art from a museum? What tactics would I employ? What tools would I use, and which alibis would I put into place? How would I evade the Law? And most importantly, why would I do such a foolish thing in the first place? It was a veritable playground for my mind; permission to think like a criminal. And so, dear Reader, it started ... with a scrape of creative flint to rock, a spark that lit a flame in my mind, and grew into a roaring firestorm of voices I couldn’t ignore. I had to respond. But even before I put pen to paper (or, rather, booted up my laptop), I worried that I would run out of steam the same way I had many times before. I decided to try a technique I had read about that recommended I sit down and force myself to write a minimum of 300 words a day, no matter how hard it was. No matter how bad the prose. So, on day one, I sat down ready to wring 300 words from my constipated mind and, much to my surprise, ended up writing more than ten times that much ... till darkness fell. As if an evil twin/pseudonym/alter ego had taken over my hands and would not stop typing.

It was as if a faucet had opened, dear Reader, and it was pouring out ideas so fast that my fingers could not keep up at times, forcing me to create a kind of shorthand, with gaps to fill in later during round two. I expected it to be a one-off phenomenon; it was me, remember? She of the brilliant, creative plots … that failed to launch. But the word vomit continued every time I sat down to write; it simply poured from my mind, through my fingertips, onto the keyboard. Whole chapters at a time. The voices in my head were working overtime, killing it, and revealing their personalities and quirks through me. Some spoke with accents and others displayed nervous tics; some whispered and others cursed with vigor. Most had psychological trauma informing their actions. At times, it was a little scary, as if I were floating above myself, watching the work being done below. The involuntary process reminded me of something Ernest Hemingway once said: “There’s nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.”

I was hemorrhaging.

Some nights, I would go to sleep with a dilemma, wondering how to bridge two disparate scenes or how to outsmart a global museum’s security system … and I would wake in the pre-dawn hours—those precious moments of Hypnagogia (half-wake/half-sleep) before the alarm clock goes off—with detailed solutions playing like cinematic movie reels in my head. (It's not just me; researchers have discovered that REM sleep can enhance creative problem-solving and help some dreamers "rehearse" certain situations they are preoccupied with.) I would sit up in bed, my eyes still crusted with sleep, and frantically jot down the night’s interactive dreaming in the Notes app on my iPhone, racing against full wakefulness. Lest I forget. Lest those brilliant twists and turns melt back into obscurity. I guess you can say I wrote much of my 386-page novel in my sleep. Subconsciously. Unconsciously.

And, while I'm still seeking an agent for the product of my telepathic writing, my debut novel, HEIST OF THE OLYMPIANS, I’m proud to say that I have already started plotting a follow-up novel. It’s still in the preliminary stages of bullet points and rough outlines, but sure enough, I find myself yet again waking in early-morning darkness with vivid scenes and exciting plot twists bulging against my frontal lobe, the voices insistent, demanding to be heard. But rest assured, dear Reader, as in Stephen King’s The Dark Half, despite allowing those voices to work for me, to wake me before dawn, twisting my arm, and manipulating my hands … it is ultimately my fingerprints left behind on the keyboard keys.

And I can't wait for you to meet them: those beautiful, crazy, broken voices inside my head.

THE END