Mullis: Writing stories in invisible ink, advice for a young writer

Inspiration is a fickle thing. It doesn’t strike as often as I wish and isn’t as sticky as I would like, which is why I love the voice recorder on my phone.

I have a traditional recorder for story interviews, but I use the phone one for notes – an idea for a column, a line for a play, a bit of plot for a work of fiction I can’t find the time to work on. I used to carry notebooks, but my short-term memory is poor and my shorthand worse. The phone takes care of both problems and, like most people, I am rarely without it.

When I have time, privacy, and my laptop, I listen and delete.

Over Christmas, I spent some time with my goddaughter. She is the wonderful age of nine, bright and creative. She has a fabulous imagination and a personality that crackles. This fall, she had gotten in trouble for writing about how much she hated math class in her notebook. Her teacher read it, which lead to a phone call home. That must have been some powerful writing.

For her birthday I gave her a journal and invisible ink. I hated math class, too. And I’m a big believer in journals.

I asked her how the invisible ink was working out. She turned on her heels and spread out her arms.

“Fabulous.”

She went on to tell me she was writing stories now. I started writing stories at her age.

Oh, the notebooks and misspelled words! Naturally, I wanted to know everything she was willing to tell me.

Being braver than I was at her age, she let me read her work. There were several stories, a few of which were quite clever. I was proud and wanted madly to encourage her.

We started talking about the journal. She told me having her teacher read her notes was a bad memory – not just bad, “the worst.” I smiled, Lucky child to have that be her worst memory.

I told her we writers had a fix for that. We turned our bad memories into stories. It’s art. It’s therapy. And, when inspiration fails, it’s a necessity.

Most of the columns I’ve written, especially the funny ones, weren’t so funny at the time. Tragedy plus time equals comedy. Much of the fiction I write started with an uncomfortable kernel of truth. The results may look nothing like my experiences, but that’s a writer’s privilege – our invisible ink.

My goddaughter looked unsure, so I started spinning a yarn about a teacher who read a student’s journal and made a wrong assumption, which leads to the student being a suspect in a crime she didn’t commit, which leads the student to investigate what really happened. Before I could finish, my goddaughter started filling in the plot.

Inside 15 minutes we had not just one story but a whole string of stories because of course our teacher had done this before, and there were other children wrongly accused. My goddaughter wanted to start working on her story – don’t we all when we are in the grip of inspiration – but it was almost time for dinner. So, I handed her my phone.

I showed her the recorder and explained about notes. I told her if she recorded it, I would send it to her. Then, when she was ready, she could listen to it.

She took the phone, gave me a grin worth a million dollars, and stormed up the stairs for a few moments of privacy before we ate. That night, I sent it to her.

Recently, while pulling off some notes for myself, I saw her recording. I wanted to press play, but I knew that a writer’s notes are private.

I didn’t listen, but I didn’t delete.

Nicole L.V. Mullis is the author of “A Teacher Named Faith”. Contact her at nlvm.columns@gmail.com.