A Moment with Brian Griggs

If you could go back and redo any one thing in your life, what would it be?

Trust me: time travel is tricky. Go too far in any one direction and you could end up with a Tyrannosaur and a Terminator at a tea party. While the potential for awesomeness is great, it will more times than not end in a loss of life and/or fine china. So even though there are words of mine that I wish were unsaid, fights not picked, one-pound cheeseburgers left uneaten, I realize that we are all part of a bigger story and the best character change can only come through conflict.

Professionally, there are works and submissions that I have sent off too quickly that I wish I could do over. I have revised and revised and yet forgotten to read the thing aloud - a task that I have made years of students do - before sending it off as a finished product. Physician, heal thyself! My own impatience has been my worst nemesis as I watch those ships of opportunity set sail with me still on the shore. And yet these lessons, too, are an integral part of character growth.

In my experience I have found that there are always more opportunities; I need to keep my eyes open no matter how many times failure tempts me to tuck in my head and curl up in a ball. Opportunity will show up again, but probably wearing different clothes.

This is true except in the case of old people.

I have missed a big chunk of the story by not talking with my grandparents when I had the chance. I was always too busy with basketball or band or anything that didn't involve sitting around listening to an old person talk about their life. Now that they're gone, those are opportunities that will never show up again.

When my last grandparent died, I remember driving up to my parents' house after the funeral and hallucinating that my grandma's van was parked in its usual spot for family gatherings. The van had been at her house the last time that she was alive. Had she driven it over after her funeral? I had one more chance to listen to her, to hear about what she had learned in eight decades of life, to tell her that I love her. But the van wasn't there and neither was my chance.

So, what do I do now? Could I redo those missed opportunities with my grandparents? Much like time-traveling Tyrannosaurs, messing with the fabric of life and death itself comes with its own inherent complications. Instead, I grieve and in that grief I am shaped as a character. I grieve and then I tell stories, stories to my daughters about the grandparents who took me camping or taught me how to repair furniture or would generously cook me fifteen pancakes every summer morning despite how crazy that is. As you read about Wendell, Custodian of the Galaxy, in the March issue of Penumbra, know that he is partly inspired by stories of my lovable grandparents - and, you know, a giant intergalactic war with killer robots, but let's not get bogged down with technicalities.

At 6' 9" Brian Griggs is unofficially the world's tallest librarian (the claim was submitted to Guinness in November and is currently being processed). He has also taught English at both the junior high and high school levels.

Brian would love to chat with you about intergalactic wars with killer robots and can be reached on Twitter or on his website.

Advice to Aspiring Writers by Brian Griggs

My advice to aspiring writers in any genre is this:

Write a story that you want to read.

That’s it. Roll credits. Play the theme music. We’re done here.

Except that, much like anything worth doing, there is some work involved in writing an enjoyable story. If you can remember that simple truth, though, everything else has a purpose beyond just making your English teachers/the writing police happy. As I plot, write, revise, edit, pace around my living room like a mad man, and revise some more, I filter it all through if the story is entertaining to me. It makes the effort worth it.

I’ve worked with junior high students for ten years now and the same truth applies: I teach like I would want to be taught and it has brought me years of success. It’s the belief that, deep down, everyone has the same desire to be respected, trusted, and found worthy of something.

What makes writing fun is that you get to mess with all of that. Trust is broken, respect is lost, and worth is ground beneath the boots of life. Pity our characters because, like Catherine Warren said earlier, we can take out our frustrations on them. But skillful authors don’t rest in the role of sadistic warlords bent on personal vengeance.  The effective storyteller invites the reader to want what the main character wants. That’s what really creeps me out over Poe’s “Tell-tale Heart” – I actually want to know what the narrator did. Is there something wrong with me?

Don’t answer that.

I tell my students that a successful story goes beyond grammar and punctuation, although mastery of those skills is like mastery in any other art: the more control you have over your medium, the more likely it is to create what you envision. Sometimes a single sentence will grab my attention and won’t let go. The word choice and structure click. The placement within the greater piece works.

This is where theory comes into application. The actual story creation process looks different for so many people and even for different narratives. I have one story that I wrote on a single legal pad from start to finish late one night, another spread across countless notebooks over time, and then the one found in January’s issue of Penumbra that only came to me when I could envision the imaginative little hero. I heard a sentence of his narration and started typing.

I’ve had the benefit of hosting authors like Ally Carter, Heather Brewer, Mike Lupica, Ridley Pearson, John Flanagan, P.J. Haarsma, Frank Beddor, James Dashner, and Lisa McMann at my school. I don’t list these authors as a humblebrag namedrop, but to share one united word of advice from them: write a story that you would enjoy. And the common step they all say leads to that? Seat time. Sit down and write. Write and then write some more. Write because you like writing. Write to make order out of chaos. Write to inspire and be inspired. Write because you have something to add to the world.

Why are you still reading this? Go write.