From Where You Dream: The Process of Writing Fiction by Robert Olen Butler is a book worth another look

‘Please get out of the habit of saying that you’ve got an idea for a short story. Art does not come from ideas. Art does not come from the mind. Art comes from the place where you dream. Art comes from your unconscious; it comes from the white-hot center of you.” —Robert Olen Butler, From Where You Dream

The best writing craft books transport you. You imagine you’re in a college seminar with an expert creative writing teacher. Unlike typical classrooms, however, these books allow you to work at your own pace.

Such expert teaching by Pulitzer Prize-winner Robert Olen Butler is captured in From Where You Dream: The Process of Writing Fiction, published by Grove Press in 2005.

Tapping into the unconscious, hence the word dream in the book’s title, is one of Butler’s main points. He offers insights into how and when to access your unconscious in the pursuit of art. Butler uses examples from his own, often messy, writing process to illustrate the yeoman work and perseverance required.

“You must … desire to create works of fiction that will endure, that reflect and articulate the deepest truth about the human condition,” Butler says in greeting his students. “I will take your aspirations seriously, and I will demand that you take them seriously.”

If your fiction is good, but not quite resonant or true, Butler’s insights and process tweaks may help you level up. The process won’t be simple or easy. However, the difference might be between creating fiction where you can pick almost any line and find something sensual, telling, and fresh (hint: Gabriel Garcia Marquez) versus writing that just gets the job done.  

For instance, to access the unconscious, Butler recommends journaling for 45 minutes to an hour, especially in the morning, as close to emerging from your dreams as possible. Similarly, journaling before sleep may also prime unconscious consideration.

“But here’s a certain kind of journal that might be useful to you: at the end of the day or beginning of the next day, return to some event of the day that evoked an emotion in you,” Butler says. “Record that event in the journal. But do this only—only—moment to moment through the senses. Absolutely never name an emotion; never start explaining or analyzing or interpreting an emotion…. Such a journal entry will read like a passage in a novel, like the most intense moment-to-moment scene in a novel.”

In discussing story drafts, both his own and those of students, Butler often focuses on the work of evoking emotion in fiction. You’ll better appreciate Butler’s feedback on resisting the urge to include labels or analysis within the writing after reading the drafts yourself. You’ll see what he identifies as working or not, as well as how his feedback may or may not align with yours.

For many, reading others’ rough drafts isn’t a favorite part of writer’s workshops (the type of class the book documents with help from co-author and teacher Janet Burroway). By examining student work, however, Butler’s book “shows” his teaching, instead of just telling. Learning by example often has more staying power than any lecture could.

Robert Olen Butler received the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1993 for his short story collection, A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain, and he continues to write literary novels, short stories, nonfiction, and more. He has decades of experience teaching creative writing, most recently at Florida State University. Butler’s innovations in writing and teaching have included his “Inside Creative Writing” series on YouTube, which invites viewers to look over his shoulder as he writes a new short story.