Writing Realities Part 1 – Drew Fisher

My name is Drew Fisher. I came to planet Earth, this time, in 1958, the last year of the “post war baby boom.” This was the year of Barbie, the hula hoop, the first US satellite launches and the formation of NASA, the post-Korean War recession, the Lituya Bay (SE Alaska) mega-tsunami, the first nuclear powered naval vessel, the USS Nautilus, Elvis in the US Army, an Academy Award to the film, The Bridge on the River Kwai, publication of Vladimir Nabokov’s controversial novel, Lolita, “Volare” and Ricky Nelson topping the music scene, and the formation of the John Birch Society. I was born in the summer that brought us Prince, Rick Santorum, Annette Bening, Kevin Bacon, Kate Bush, Madonna, Michael Jackson, Tim Burton, Jeff Foxworthy, and Neil DeGrasse Tyson.

I was born into a bloodline of relatively affluent families in the affluent suburb of Grosse Pointe, Michigan. My parents’ families had both had significant and prominent roles in both the proliferation of the US and world automobile industries as well as in the success of the US military in World War II. As a young boy I became aware of the discrepancies between the so-called “haves” and “have nots” as the 1967 race riots in Detroit occurred only a couple of miles from my home. This rather rude awakening from my heretofore “blissful” childhood of ignorance and innocence led me to begin questioning my “right” to all of the privileges and rights that my circumstances of birth afforded me. Thus began a lifelong pursuit of “just desserts”—i.e. receiving what was due to me, what I had earned, not what was given me by luck of my family, sex, race, and nationality.

Raised in a family with strong Roman Catholic ties on both sides, I was fortunate to have had two open-minded, rather “permissive” parents (under the spell of the 1958 edition of Dr. Spock’s The Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care as well as the recent events leading up to the Vatican II pronouncements). Thus, I was given ample leeway to seek out and choose my own values and spirituality—with the unexpected outcome of my Beatles-loving mother being the repository of some of the most informative and transformational books of my early adulthood!

A liberal arts college education allowed me exposure to some of the world’s “classics” as well as quite a little travel around our fair country and in Western Europe. As I entered the working world as an elementary education classroom teacher, I was concurrently exploring writing and holistic self-care as a both witness and active participant. Very early in my explorations I realized that I had an innate attraction to stories with messianic heroes. In film and literature as well as in my own writings, I found the flow of “spiritual” information to be flowing through me, energizing me, causing a rapid and regular molting and metamorphosis in order to accommodate the expansion of my beliefs and values. Throughout my “awakened” life, it seems that every book that “fell into my lap” and every story that I wrote seemed to offer a cathartic peeling away of old layers and constructs of belief and understanding, leaving me refreshingly open and receptive to “new” ideas and new constructs.

The authors in the Amazon best seller group for Visionary and Metaphysical fiction have all been long friends and companions of mine: I remember pouring through books and stories by or about Herman Hesse and Thomas Mann, Dostoevsky and Tolstoy, Peter Kropotkin and Emma Goldman, Vinoba Bhave and Mohandas Gandhi, Carlos Castenada and Jack Kerouac, Richard Bach and Dan Millman, Tom Robbins and John Robbins, Gerald Jampolsky and Wayne Dyer, Roger Woolger and Brian Weiss, Cyril Scott and Elisabeth Haich, Deepak Chopra and Gary Zukov, Frank Herbert and Robert Heinlein, James van Praagh and Douglas Baker, Carl Jung and Joseph Campbell, Thomas á Kempis and Emmett Fox, Thomas Merton and Thomas Keating, The Upanishads and The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying, Stephen Wolinsky and Michael Talbot,  Joan Borysenko and Andrew Weil, Jean Shinoda Bolen and Jean Liedloff, James Redfield and Shirley McLaine, Parahamansa Yogananda and Alan Watts, Neale Donald Walsch and Michael Newton, Mitch Albom and Paul Coelho, even Sylvia Brown and John Edwards.

After Deepak, Neale Donald Walsch, Stephen Wolinsky, and Michael Newton, I had reached a saturation point: I came to the realization that I was moving beyond teachers, that all I had to learn was available to me in and through me, that every one, every thing, every event, was equally viable as teacher, as food for thought and growth. A meditation practice led to a practice in massage and bodywork. My personal training in an energetic form of massage and bodywork called Esoteric Healing led me to a very active pursuit of past-life and life-between-life therapies. My personal experiences were providing more than the fuel necessary to continue my self-cathartic writing pursuits. And then the recent discovery of the Internet led me to the world of podcasting and radio. But then my wife finally kicked me in the butt and told me that it was time that I shared my ideas, my “wisdom,” with the world. So, on December 26, 2016, I sat down to write.

I had not been writing any fiction for more than ten years, yet it quickly became evident that a fictitious story would provide the adequate vehicle for my ideas to become shared. Within five days, I had been able to realize that several “stories” I had been wanting to tell for some time were easing their way into a weave within the writing that I was doing.

The process I used to write these books was also quite astonishing. In the space of about 130 days I was finished with the third round of drafts of all three books. The method that became my daily practice involved sitting down with my good ol’ Bic ballpoint blue ink pens and my pads of yellow legal paper with an idea for a chapter. As soon as my pen would hit the paper, the words would pour out of me. I would not quit until a chapter was finished. When I reached the end of a writing session I was often sweaty, in tears, and elated, though adrenaline exhausted. The twists and turns, character appearances and dialogue flows were always a total surprise to me.

Though I would sit down each time with a starting point and perhaps rudimentary idea of where the story was heading, there are many, many ideas, passages, plot twists, and character events in my story that were completely unplanned and totally unforeseen. Not quite the “channeled” effort that I had experienced in 1985 when I wrote my first novel at the behest—no, demand—of the story’s characters. (They had awakened me at 12:30 a.m. one night, with their complete story—dialogue, scenes and all—ready, just waiting for me to put onto paper.) This time the story came from my ideas, but the verbal delivery mechanism was not all “me.” I call it “jazz writing” because the flood of totally unplanned and “improvised” verbiage and content that comes flowing through me to land onto those yellow pads of paper is similar to musical improvisation: the basic structure and foundation are planned, the extemporaneous expression is “inspired.”

This is the first of two parts to  this article. For Part 2, click here.

About the author

Drew Fisher was born into a so-called blue blood family—though of the nouveau riche kind—but never felt comfortable with or deserving of the privileges that came with such a start. Educated in the liberal arts, he traveled the Continent and the States, chose classroom teaching (elementary education) as his initial vocation (for 8 years) before realizing that he really wanted to be a dad. Drew has always questioned accepted norms and social patterns, pursued alternative life and values while writing about his favorite topics: love, spirituality, and human potential; education, values, and social reform. After leaving teaching, he worked in a bakery where met the future mother of his two daughters. She convinced him to give massage therapy and bodywork a try as his next career choice. 24 years later, Drew is a Wisconsin-based massage therapist, organic produce farmer, music radio show host, author of a trilogy of visionary fiction, and husband to the most amazing woman on the planet.

Drew’s visionary fiction trilogy can be found here:

• Book 1: Brig-Wallis Preparatory School for Boys
• Book 2: The Heirs of Osiris
• Book 3: The Triumph of Osiris

Visit Drew’s website here: theosirisplan.blogspot.co.uk