My friend Eddie has told me something very helpful that he and his friend Holly have developed. They first learned about it from the don Juan books by Carlos Castaneda. It is about stalkers and dreamers. Four years ago, when Eddie first told me about it, it sounded dumb. Stalker-and-dreamer is a tricky issue. If it's not explained well, it can sound as superficial as "Oh, you're a Capricorn! You must be real grounded." It can be another surface way to categorize and generalize our world. I know. I once talked about stalker-and-dreamer in a writing class, and I saw people's eyes glaze over in a thin tolerance.

　　So it is better to start right off with an example: Eddie's two sons. Joey, the older one, is a stalker, and Matt, the younger, is a dreamer.

　　When Joey was ready to learn how to ride a two-wheeler, Eddie took him out to show him how he could use the curb for leverage to get on the bike, how to steer with the handle-

　　bars, how to pedal to keep going. They practiced. Joey followed the instructions, and within a short while he could

　　ride a bike.

　　Two years later, it was Man's turn to team. Since Eddie had been so successful with Joey, he thought he would repeat the same procedure with Matthew. He brought Matthew and

　　the bike over to the curb.

　　He looked down at Man's feet. "Hey, Matt, go in and put on some sneakers. You shouldn't ride with rubber thongs."

　　"No, I want to wear 'em." Man was insistent; he had his own style. Eddie gave in. Then Eddie continued to explain bike riding. Matthew half listened and then wanted to do it his own way. After a skirmish, Eddie gave up, went in the house, and left Matt to his own devices. Twenty minutes later, Eddie came out to check up on Matt. Matt was nowhere to be seen. Eddie turned the corner down the street and saw Matthew in the middle of the road, jumping up and down on his pink bike that was lying on its side in the middle of the road. He was mad at the bike for preventing him from riding it. He thought the bike was at fault. But over the next few months, Matt, in his own way, did learn to ride.

　　Matthew is a dreamer. Being able to ride the bike was a great victory for him, and his life was changed. He learned from the inside out. Dreamers go by an inward vision. Often

　　they have to figure it out themselves.

　　Because Joey is a stalker, he was able to learn from exterior signals. Like a hunter, he watched, listened, and was atten-tive. Stalkers deal with the world more by perception, by looking at the outside world. Joey got his information about bike riding from Eddie's instructions, from seeing the dimen-sions of the bike, the road. When he began to ride, it confirmed what he understood. It gave him confidence but did not integrally change him, as it changed Matt.

　　American society is a stalker society. Dreamers in our society often feel like victims or develop stalker characteristics to survive.

　　My friend Bob and I were in Rocket Billiards in downtown Saint Paul. We were going to shoot pool. He had played a lot; I had played very little. After a few minutes, he began to explain to me how to hold the pool cue. He wasn't conde-scending. I knew he meant well and I actually wanted to understand what he said, but it was almost as if I became dyslexic. His words wouldn't penetrate my brain. I tried to, but I couldn't hear what he said. I thought to myself, "Here you are getting stubborn again."

　　Finally, I said, "Bob, let me just play. I'll figure it out by doing it." He nodded, stepped back, and sat on a tall stool. I played a whole table by myself, and I became comfortable. Every once in a while, Bob suggested an angle I should hit from and it was helpful and I appreciated it.

　　In the past, in situations like this, I thought I was resistant to learning new things. Now I understand that I learndiffer-ently. I am a dreamer. I have to dive in and then look up through wet eyes and ask after many tries, "Oh, you mean you do the breast stroke on your stomach? Oh, I see. I've been trying it on my back."

　　I tell you this because it pertains to writing. Recently I met my friend Frances for the afternoon to write. She showed me a flier advertising a writing workshop to teach plot, not only plot, but subplot and the development of character. She had just begun to write a novel.

　　She asked, "Do you think I should take this?"

　　I scrunched up my face. "Do you think you'll learn any-thing from it?"

　　Some people learn from outside instruction; some don't. I know people who diagram their novels before they write them

　　or who do extensive, conscious work on their characters before they even begin. This is good. Some beautiful novels have been written this way. It is not my way. We have to come to trust our way and not think we should do it another way.

　　I was at a writer's conference in Bemidji, Minnesota. Several of the writers said they could never have written their novels without the help of the writers' groups they belonged to where weekly they could bring in sections to read and get comments. I thought of myself out on the mesa in Taos, thrashing away alone on Banana Rose. I began to say to myself, "You see what an idiot you are. You need a group!" Then I stopped myself. I realized something. "No, Nat, it is not your way." I needed to go as far as I could alone, to discover what I had in me and not be influenced too early. Instead of being helpful, suggestions too early would switch on my critic. "You see, Nat, you're doing it all wrong. Just quit." And that's what I would have done.

　　Ron Carlson, author of The News of the World (Penguin Books, 1988), who was also at the Bemidji writer's conference, said that if someone is writing a short story, he can help them, but when he hears that someone is beginning a novel, he just waves as though from a long distance off and calls out, "Good luck." There's nothing else to do. A novel is a long journey; take along any of the moves you've got for help.