The Triumph of Instinct

Time to tune in to the soundtrack of spring. Crows, robins, turbulent waters, wind, dogs -- there's sound everywhere silence once reigned. Instinct churns all of it. When writers listen to their instincts it will also tell them where to find the real story.

Some writers create characters that embody instinct. In great novels like The Girl Who Played with Fire, Lisbeth Salander is able to survive a million threats to her life because her instincts are as sharp as those of any animal. Rape, gunfire, police manhunts, technology -- nothing actually overpowers her highly developed gut knowledge of the true threats in life. She also has a well developed sense of morality that underlies her sometimes violent approach to justice.

E.M. Forster speaks to the alchemical process that pushes writers to hear their instinctive voices and incorporate them into great fiction. He says, "What can we say about the creative state? In it a man is taken out of himself. He lets down as it were a bucket into his subcionsious and draws up something which is normally beyond his reach. He mixes this thing with his normal experiences and out of the mixture he makes a work of art...And when the process is over, when the novel is complete,....he will wonder how on earth he did it."

When your gut pushes you toward a story, follow it. For months, I had notes for a story on Egyptian filmmaking waiting for me to turn it into something. About two weeks ago, I was overcome with this idea that the time to write the story was on that day. I wrote it, found an interested publisher and wrote it out as fast as I could. The next day, Hosni Mubarak and his sons were taken into detention for questioning on charges of corruption and abuse of power. It gave me a lot of satisfaction to hear the story break on the news the day after I turned in my final draft. If only my instincts were that accurate for all aspects of life -- today I'd be writing from Paris instead of the Poconos.