I have waited for my imagination to perk up and decide it was time to explore new worlds that exist somewhere between my ears. What I realized today is that it doesn’t work like that. My imagination, that is. Storytelling consists of more than me sitting in front of the computer and pounding out words, like squeezing blood from a rock, forcing myself to write every day. Storytelling (or musing writing, for that matter) is a process in which the actual writing is only a small part of the whole.

I stole many of the ideas in this musing from this article, which talks about the writing process. Finding a link to this article today was a bit serendipitous because incomplete versions of these ideas have floated around my head for many months. Last night, in fact, Doolies reminded me of one aspect: my promise to research my storytelling. It came up after I complained (yet again) about not being able to tell a story. She asked me how I expected to write anything if I didn’t learn enough to say something interesting. My head, she reminded me, only contained what I have seen or remembered, and since, she continued flippantly, I have exhausted all my memories, I have run out of things to say, and I need to find new ones to fill in the blanks. At the time, I responded with the excuse that I didn’t know how to research, that I was bad at it. Perhaps. But it’s just that: an excuse.

Even before that conversation, earlier in the evening, I finished watching “Finding Neverland,” in which the author of “Peter Pan” used his relationship with four boys as the basis for his play. The author, J.M. Barrie, spent much of his days wandering the parks of London in search of experiences and ideas, which he wrote in his notebook before applying a small number of those ideas to his plays.

But it wasn’t until I read the article that the ideas coalesced and I began to see what I’ve been missing. As it turns out, many steps must occur before turning words. There must be an idea, a collection for the idea, and an understanding about the idea before there is any hope of adapting that idea into a story. While I usually find ideas, I rarely spend the time collecting the thoughts, images, and characters that will support the story idea. I tend to jump into the idea and hope to create the images on the fly to keep the story afloat. I never can, of course, and I end up disappointed and with not enough to work with in the redrafting process.

To throw out an analogy (something I’m terrible at but enjoy doing), writing is like photography in that the photographer takes what is around her and finds a way to capture (or combine) the images to represent something she is thinking or feeling. The design and art of photography comes in the selection process. A photographer may snap thousands of photographs, and select only one to share with her audience. Writing works the same way. The words, stories, characters, plots, everything exists before a writer sits down at a page. The writer doesn’t create anything, she finds what’s already there and captures and manipulates what already exists in her head in interesting ways. There’s that saying that fact is stranger than fiction. It’s not true, of course, since many fictions are those strange facts manipulated to make them stranger.

Part of the collection involves watching. As I’ve said before, I’m a voyeur, and this is a good thing. I need to voyeur more often and record what I see. It doesn’t matter if I will use any of it—a fact that separates experienced writers from inexperienced ones: the inexperienced ones use everything they write (no cutting of their “little darlings”). I need to become more of a chronicler. There are so many stories and characters that I pass every day, each waiting for me to cast my rod and reel them in.

That’s not to say that I will write stories based solely on what I see. All of the ideas I catch are just starting points for the storytelling, hooks into the characters and their lives. Everything I’ve written I have based loosely on what I’ve observed or heard. If you point to any part in any of my stories, I can identify for you the time and place for the experience or image. I’ve obscured many of them in the process of writing, of course, usually to make them more interesting or fit within the bounds of the story I found myself telling. But they’re all there: real experiences transformed into words.

For too long, I’ve found myself wandered the streets with my head down, not looking for inspiration or experiences. There have been times where I have kept my Moleskine close, yanking it out every three steps to record a feeling, an image, an eavesdrop. But most of the time, I’ve gone through life not observing, but only pretending to observe. I’m going to change that now. Every moment is an opportunity for a story, a chance to record my observations and perhaps down the road turn it into something interesting, something profound. After all this time, to return to where I started, to my little black notebook and my recordation of events around me, it would be disconcerting, if it were not so silly.

That’s not to say that the writing has only two parts. I’ve avoided an important third part lately, namely, redrafting and editing. I’ve contented myself with writing and posting, leaving myself little time to chew my words and find meaning. You might notice that this musing is a bit better than the usual crap I have been posting—I’m not saying it’s Shakespearean or anything, all I’m saying is that you might notice a slight improvement (or not—some people may even find this post less coherent, colder and less interesting). I’ve tried to apply this process called “editing” to it. It’s supposed to make these things easier and more interesting to read.

There’s a world of thinking and planning that I’ve been skipping over, and I will try to rectify this in the coming weeks. It’s getting late, and while I’m still not happy with the editing of this musing, I realize that writing 2,000 words, and editing them in a single day is almost an impossible task, especially when I throw in the full day of work (not to mention not enough sleep).

I keep coming up with all these rules (and goals and Goals). I need to make a large poster and read it every day to remind myself of what I’m trying to do with this writing, and how I intend to do it. This writing should not be about consternating and complaining—it’s about (to use another poor analogy) creating a collage, cutting some of the pictures from life, touching them up, and presenting them rearranged to tell a story. As the artist, I identify the pieces and manipulate them until they fit together into the story, as the painter manipulates the paint to fit together on the canvas.

My father’s hobby was making collages. He would cut photographs from magazines, and keep the photographs in catalogued folders in his filing cabinet. To create a collage, he would select the photographs and lay them out next to the matting. He then carefully placed the photographs, rearranging and cutting them to fit the matting. I occasionally watched him as he created a collage. He sometimes let me arrange the photographs. After I placed them in what I thought was nice—mainly, the photographs filled all the spaces in the matting—he would thank me, and then go about moving them to the places he felt they belonged. He was creating art in his collages, taking other people’s photography, and putting it together in a form that he appreciated. He was sharing his design sense through this art, trying to communicate something he felt or thought.

Writing should not be different. I thought I was strange because the stories did not come from my brain baked. I didn’t mind my bad writing, at least in the initial draft, but I was always disappointed in my story, feeling that real writers had a good grasp on story, and I could never be a good writer because I didn’t have any stories to share. I don’t think that’s true anymore. I don’t have good stories because I’m not living for the stories. I’m not examining everything and recording moments that interest me. I need to start collecting folders, so when it’s time to create my collage, I will have the images necessary to glue together. An author captures more than creates. It’s my million monkeys’ theory where I am the evaluator. I find what is good and declare it a success.

I’m drawing to the end of today’s musing. I’ll pad this last paragraph to get to the Goal. As I keep claiming, I wrote today’s musing differently. I did want to convey something, and I know I came up short. I use these musings not to share with others what I’m learning, but to reinforce it in myself. How do I know it exists unless someone experiences it? Tree in the forest, yadda, yadda, yadda. Whether any of this will turn into anything still remains to be seen. I’ll try to get back to recording inspiration and interesting moments. It’s hard work to do it, but the pay off, as I see it, can be incredible.

Do you see what a little reading on writing can do for me? It’s a dangerous thing. I have an entire week of experiences to draw on, and draw I will.