Caleb Fox

Yesterday morning came the male rain. That’s what our hundreds of Navajo neighbors call it. It’s a hard rain blasted at us by thunder and lightning. It pounds the earth and gouges out gullies. A couple of hours of it can make deep zigzags in the yard. Sometimes hail rat-a-tats on the roof.

Later that day came the female rain, a soft, gentle moisture that strokes the soil and the plants.

As the Navajos see it, we need both forms of rain, one for insemination, one for growing.

I started that day in the doldrums. I’d had some days of frustration with wanting to start writing (this will be the third title in my fantasy Spirit Flight series), and feeling a little off. When the male rains came, I drew the cool, moist air into my lungs and suddenly thought, I can write. NOW, I said to myself. GO!

The afternoon brought me five new-born pages. Are they terrific? Doesn’t matter. They are the first cells of what will one day feel to me like a living being. As I wrote, the female rains drifted down.

I remarked to myself, later, that the writer in me is able somehow to heal the man. He can change woes to joy, frustration to fun.

How odd. Who are these two people who live inside me, and which of them is real? Though the stories sometimes seem to come from some power outside, they probably don’t. They come from the guy who knows how to make contact with creative energy and by doing that, incidentally, saves my life. Wonderfully, the person I need most lives inside me.

He's always there, but sometimes silent. How to get him to come forth? For me one way is a moment of opening to the earth--a short walk, a moment standing in rain, or watching winds whip the clouds. The quickest way, though, is just to begin writing. Before long my partner joins in the fun.

I want to spend all my days with that creator fellow. Bye bye, sad guy.

So I'll write every day. Play music every day. Keep my friend close.

Where do your stories come from?

As an artist or member of the audience, do you get any help from the critics? I don't, but how about you?

I used to review music (and later theater, movies, and books) for the big Los Angeles newspapers. After years of writing criticism on and off, I made friends with one of the great and celebrated concerts pianists of our time. On a river trip, I asked him whether he'd ever learned anything from a review. (Mind you, one of these reviewers was me.) He answered in one word: "No."

I thought about my own writing and concluded, "Me neither."

I left doing criticism behind because I was tired of commenting while other people were doing. I felt like the guys who went to the senior prom, leaned against the nearest wall, and made wisecracks about the dancing styles of their buddies. BUT WHO GOT TO TOUCH THE GIRL?

I wanted to do, not talk.

I admit that I remember negative reviews (fortunately very few). But whether the review is positive or the opposite, I try to give a quick smile or frown, remind myself of the source, and forget them.

--caleb fox

WHY FICTION?

People often tell me, with a note of pride, "I only read non-fiction." I wish the tone was sadness and disappointment.

Information about the world is useful. It allows us to drive where we want to go, shop intelligently, find treatment for our ailments, and a billion of other handy things. Yet it's mostly about the outer world. Even a memoir is limited to what is or was, rather than what we can dream.

A well-done novel is a dazzling dream. John Fowles (THE FRENCH LIEUTENANT'S WOMAN) wrote that a novel is a way of telling others how it feels to be a human being and walk the earth in your time. It is, and that's a lot. Notice that Fowles speaks of revealing a world that is ultimately inner, the writer’s most fundamental feelings about himself and the world.

But a novel is even more--an act of imagination, preferably as audacious as possible. It is a grand flourish of creative play. The great reward it offers readers, on the highest level, is the joy of mental frolicking and cavorting. It is to non-fiction what dance is to walking.

Also, a novel shows, with amazing intimacy, an inner world. 'This is what I think is fun. This is what I fear. This is what I love.' No compilation of facts, whether a medical chart in the doctor’s office or a profile in the NEW YORK TIMES, could be so revealing, or make the reader EXPERIENCE another human being's mind and life.

If Johnny reads only non-fiction, he will be a very dull boy.

--Caleb Fox