The Bazaar of Bad Dreams

Where do you get your ideas and Where did this idea come from are different questions. The first is unanswerable, so I make a joke of it and say I get them from a little Used Idea Shop in Utica. The second is sometimes answerable, but in a surprising number of cases, it’s not, because stories are like dreams. Everything is deliciously clear while the process is ongoing, but all that remains when the story’s finished are a few fading traces. I sometimes think a book of short stories is actually a kind of oneiric diary, a way of catching subconscious images before they can fade away. Here is a case in point. I don’t remember how I got the idea for ‘Under the Weather,’ or how long it took, or even where I wrote it.

What I do remember is that it’s one of the very few stories I’ve written where the end was clear, which meant the story had to be built carefully to get there. I know that some writers prefer working with the end in sight (John Irving once told me he begins a novel by writing the last line), but I don’t care for it. As a rule I like the ending to take care of itself, feeling that if I don’t know how things come out, the reader won’t either. Fortunately for me, this is one of those tales where it’s okay for the reader to be one step ahead of the narrator.