The premise of my new novel is really dumb—a vampire is convinced that the world is a simulation, and goes looking for the truth. And that’s not the end of the stupidity. You don’t know this yet, dear reader, friend companion, but the novel gets way dumber. You have no idea how many inane concepts I’m going to throw at you in the coming weeks.
This is directly in line with my artistic principles. I think there's a lot of power in silly ideas. First of all, they often turn out better than you might expect. Consider this famous poem, in which the poet compares her father to a Nazi, and uses onomatopoeias like “achoo.” Ridiculous! Or this movie, where a newscaster lives the same day over and over again, until he can open his heart and learn the power of love. Preposterous! Often, as it turns out, what seems like a silly idea at first is, in fact, an unexpected juxtaposition.
But sometimes, silly ideas are just silly. Like my first book, which is a sports memoir about a sport I'm bad at—the sport of chess, which is thoroughly boring to read about. That was a silly idea.
Which was amazingly liberating, because once you’re writing something that’s so clearly ill-conceived, you’re already doing something that you’re not supposed to do. This puts you in an invigorating mindset where you’re more likely to fuck around and create whatever you want to. Everything is already ruined, so you can scrawl vulgar graffiti across the ruins, with no notable consequences.
Nobody could tell me that a paragraph about sesame soy milk didn’t belong in my chess memoir, because there are no rules about chess memoirs. Nobody could tell Sylvia Plath that nursery rhymes didn’t belong in her autobiographical Nazi-themed poem named Daddy, for the same reason.
The most banal, awful art always feels like it was made because someone felt like it was supposed to exist, based on some standard imported from polite society. You know, like Green Book, the movie where, through a heartwarming and yet challenging journey, a gay black man and a stereotypical Italian tough reach mutual understanding. It was the least challenging possible take on the hottest issues of the day, guaranteed to soothe modern sensibilities, smoothed of any moral ambiguity whatsoever. The only challenging thing about it was that it challenged Viggo Mortensen to say lines like ‘fugghedaboudit’ with heart. Of course it won Best Picture—it was safe, lukewarm, fun for the whole docile family. It was the least silly film imaginable. It was only silly in its sheer level of banality.
This isn’t to say that all good ideas are silly. Many are not. Stoner is my favorite novel, and it's deeply serious. I would never recommend that a creative person restrict themselves to silliness. What I might say, though, is that you should try playing in that realm, and see what it unlocks. Maybe the segue to the punchline of your thriller should involve a fart joke. Perhaps a side character in your next story could be a talking frog, whose speaking abilities are only briefly discussed. Maybe you'll find that there are creative registers in your head that stayed dormant while you tried to remain serious. Maybe you’ll find, down the line, that a moment of frivolity can make a painful scene even more crushing. (It can.)
Once and awhile I do group workshops, and I have an exercise that always works. You can have it if you want to. You could probably put it in some corporate creativity seminar you were billing $1000/hr for. Here is the exercise: in 10 minutes, write 300 words concerning your favorite pizza, as well as anything else you'd like to put in there. Maybe a memory of pizza, maybe a description of the circumstances in which you enjoyed it, or a tribute to the person you ate it with. No other restrictions.
This gets good writing out of almost anyone. The first reason is the time limit. Time limits on a first draft are always good. But the second reason is, the moment pizza is a featured subject, nobody is concerned with creating great literature anymore. No authoritative, enterprising-defining corporate memos will be created. This leaves no reason for the participants to stop being themselves. Nobody will feel the urge to be pretentious. And suddenly you find out that basically everyone, left to their own devices, stripped of the super-ego, can produce something unexpectedly vital.
The trick is learning to stay in pizza mode permanently, or at least to have it in your permanent armamentarium. To always be open to the full range of emotional and artistic possibilities, rather than writing within the lines that are dictated by your anxiety. I have not yet mastered this fully. I’m close, but sometimes, maybe one day a week, I still feel that I’m a Respectable Author, who has to write respectable things. I hope that, by the time the sexually frustrated vampire reaches the center of the simulated universe, I’ll be disabused of this illusion for good.
My favorite pizza is not about the pizza itself but the experience of the day I had and what the pizza means to me. I recall the best day being semi-buzzed, walking down Bleeker st in NYC and chomping down on a deliciously steaming hot pizza from Percy's in all it's $1 glory. .... So I guess your writing prompt does make sense. BC honestly I thought about the experience that brought up an emotional response to me... p.s. your novel sounds incredible!
I'm going to give that pizza exercise a try!