When I was about eight or nine years old, my Dad met a pro football player at a PTA meeting (Dad was the school vice-principal) and got his autograph for me.  Now, I wasn't into football and had barely heard of the Green Bay Packers let alone this particular individual.  I may have been a little odd at that age (OK, I'm still a little odd), but even then I found myself wondering why anyone would want to have someone else's signature.  What's the point?  Let's say that my nine year old self met someone really amazing to me like Adam West (the original live-action Batman).  What would I want out of the meeting?  I probably would have been in awe, a bit tongue tied telling him how much I like what he does, eager to hear him speak in person, maybe even shake his hand.  But I wouldn't have asked for his autograph.  

I think I have always realized there's a difference between the creative work and the person behind the creative work.  Talking to someone about how much I admire their work is obviously about the creative work, but asking for an autograph seems to be more about the person than the work.  My life may be enriched by the creative work itself or even discussions about the creative work, but how is my life enriched by possession of a signature?  It's tantamount to saying "your work is so good that it elevates you as a human being."  I don't buy it.  I have never bought it.  As much as I might have admired the incredible nuances of Batman portrayed on our black-and-white TV, I still knew even at that young age, that Adam West was not categorically a better human being than me.

So, yesterday I sent out an "It's been great" email to my co-workers and told them how much I've enjoyed working with them.  Most know that I'm going to the Clarion writer's workshop for the next six weeks before I move on to my next job and several had asked to read the story that will be published in October.  I attached the story to the email for their reading pleasure and hoped they would enjoy it.  About two hours later, a lady that works in our administrative section came into my office with a folder in hand and said rather excitedly as she put it on my desk, "You have to sign this!"  Trying to connect the dots in my head, I assumed there was some kind of out-processing paperwork or other administrative item that needed to be taken care of before my ultimate departure.  I opened the folder and discovered she had printed my story.  She liked it so much that she wanted me to sign it so she could say she "knew me when".

Hey, that felt kind of good!

Oops ... maybe that was the point all along.

I've been reading "From Where You Dream - The Process of Writing Fiction" from Pulitzer Prize-winning author Robert Olen Butler.  What absolutely amazes me about this book is that it's approach to writing is new to me.  All of my other writing books are about writing commercial fiction that sells.  This book is about writing literature (fiction as art rather than entertainment).  I never quite understood the organic makeup of a story as literature before.  But butler's book does a pretty good job of spelling it out.

In a nutshell, literature comes from that white hot place where you dream, not from your head.  The goal is to contact the reader through emotions that are experienced through the senses in one of five ways:

1. A sensual reaction within the body
2. An external sensual response of the body
3. Flashes of the past as images or sense impressions
   
4. Flashes of the future (desires or fears) also as images
5. Sensual selectivity - selection of those few sensual cues out of hundreds present that demonstrate personality and emotion

According to Butler, you know when you are writing from your head when these are present:

• Abstraction (a general quality of characteristic apart from concrete reality)
  
• Generalization
• Summary
• Analysis
• Interpretation

It's the goal of the artist to paint that word picture of those things that the character perceives through their senses in such a way that the reader feels the emotions.  I know that most of my writing is not like this.  Apparently, I write a lot from my head.  Of course most of the published authors out there do as well, so I'm in good company.  But still, I now understand the difference between good storytelling and literature (although there is no reason why literature can't also be a good story).  I would like for my writing to be artistic, but more importantly, I want it to be enjoyable to a broad range of readers.

Butler also has a very interesting process he uses to plan out a story.  It defies any kind of synopsis so you're just going to have to get the book yourself and read it.  It's pretty cool though.