The Fiction Writer’s Stanislavski

There will be rain in the story.

A series of voices. Birds. Maybe

a character the brightness of a star

you don’t know is actually a planet—

as in, this character, who you love

to write, who somehow manages

to fuse pain with sorrow and wonder.

The story will require a montage

of coastline. A lone car. Maybe a city

disappearing in fog. Maybe a city

disappearing into what you dream

when you fall asleep far away

from her shoulder. Stop now.

Pay attention to what is going on

outside. You are always looking

inside the cavity you call a heart.

What’s left there for you

to discover? She is a ghost now

standing on a rooftop in the mist.

She is asking how it can be

you don’t know where you are

in the story. Or in the world.

Listen. There are millions of hearts

housed in bone and driven by blood

humming in the city around her.

Each heart has suffered its own

losses. Remember, the city

is a burned animal with a will

to survive. Some well-meaning

people caught the city, tagged it,

fed it, checked its vitals. Someday

soon, they will release it back

to the wild. She tells you, this

is where you are in the story.

And this is when she says, repeat

after me—there is no character,

only me. And I don’t know if it’s true

or not, but it blurs into questions

of what and why and how, as in

I’m driving into the damaged city

I love, and I am staring into the night.

Looking at planets, the ghost dust of stars.