Who are these Strange Creatures?

Who are these strange creatures called writers? Is there one type of person that becomes a writer? Perhaps a screening test so we can weed them out early?

Michael J Straczynski in The Complete Book of Scriptwriting said that writers were born not made. I suspect there may be a strong element of truth in this, but having said that, I think that writers are also made. It's the one profession that can not really be taught, but has to be developed over long years in the saddle.

No doubt this is one arena where the 10,000 hour rule definitely applies. That's the old chestnut that says that to get to the top in any field you need to spend at least 10,000 hours at that profession/craft/sport.

Which reminds me of the old joke: A neurosurgeon and a writer meet at a party. On introducing herself as a writer the neurosurgeon is delighted. He takes a sip of his cocktail and says, 'You know I always wanted to take up writing in my retirement.' The writers nods appreciatively then leans closer, 'You know, that's an incredible co-incidence. I though I might take up neurosurgery in my retirement.'

OK. Enough diversions. Having met quite a few writers now, I would have to say that imagination and creative drive are two traits that they have in common, particularly the imagination part for the speculative fiction writers. But really, that's where the similarity seems to end. At the various workshops, conventions and writer's events that I have attended I have met writers from all walks of life, running the full gamut of personalities. There are the more retiring ones, and maybe they dominate - I'm not sure - but you get all types from rough and ready bruisers to cerebral arty types, irrepressible extroverts to incurable mushrooms. Given the fact that no two writers seem to approach their work in the same way, it should probably come as no surprise.

I have no particular views on the Myers Briggs personality test, it was just the first one I thought of. I did a quick Google on Myers Briggs types and careers, and predictably the result was a little inconclusive. Four quite contrasting types were listed - INTP, ENFJ, INFP, ENFP based on a survey of graduates as likely 'writers'. Actually my quick Google only brought up confusing conclusions (Tolkien was supposed to be an INFP).

How about you? Do you think that writers tend to be of a similar personality type? Are the observed differences just window dressing over the same wounded souls, or are we all truly coming from a different place?

Boys Books and Bandits

Who remembers BIGGLES?

Now there were books, unashamedly action books. There's a fan page on Facebook. And a Biggles entry on Wikipedia.


Continuing the theme of male readers that Dave brought up ...

Apparently struggling male readers (4th grade) respond better to female teachers, according to Science Daily.

"Although boys and girls enter kindergarten with similar performance in reading, by the spring of third grade, boys have lower reading scores, which makes this an opportune time for reading intervention."

Now that is a worry. Boys are disengaging from reading as early as the first few years of primary school. See the article here.

And here we have scholarly article on Understanding the Reluctant Male Reader.

"The O'Doherty report (1995) identified various ways boys were significantly over-represented in special language and reading classes. For example, three times more boys than girls were receiving special assistance in New South Wales' schools for reading. Some researchers account for this discrepancy by identifying and defining behaviours associated with learning difficulties. "

Although they did discover that when boys read they read just as well as girls.

"Boys' performance seems to have been facilitated by the high interest material, while girls comprehended nearly as much of the low interest material as the high. Two possible explanations for this phenomenon present themselves: if reading is seen as sex appropriate for girls and sex inappropriate for boys, boys may require the additional incentive of high interest material. An alternate explanation is that girls may have a greater familiarity with vocabulary. This study seems to indicate that some achievement tests may not provide the type of material that encourages boys to demonstrate their abilities. "

And here is a Huffington Post article Dudes Don't Read: The Book Biz's Self-Fulfilling Prophecy?
He asked if publishers have given up trying to publish and market books that males want to read. He asks:

"Where are the badass young male writers of today? Would Hunter S. Thompson or Kurt Vonnegut or Brett Easton Ellis or Jay McInerney or Alex Garland or Chuck Palahniuk even get book deals if their debut novels were written today? How can we make reading novels -- and writing them -- cool again for guys under thirty?"

Having just spent weeks marking movie treatments by young males aged between 17 and 25, here are my observations.

7 out of 10 young males want to read/see movies about young men who have to battle evil men/monsters, with a band of like minded young men. The higher the kill count the better.

The other 3 out of 10 young men are incurable romantics and write about falling in love.

I guess there would have to be some romantic males out there, or the human race would never have survived. And, conversely, we need the other 7 out of 10 males to fight off the saber tooth tigers.

Maybe what writers need to give the young male reader is the same wish fulfilment that a romance gives a female, a high kill count, the respect of his fellow men and a machine gun that never needs reloading.

Luckily I'm married to one of the romantics. So, do you think my estimate is accurate?

Teachers who inspire us!

In Australia last weekend was a long weekend. I spent the Saturday at my daughter's school (she's a student teacher) helping her clean her classroom/office. She is a specialist music teacher so she gets a little office to teach her students in. It's a lovely room, in that it has air conditioning and a new view of the oval. But it is boring with standard carpet, standard desk, standard windows and standard pale green painted walls.

So, once we'd cleaned it, we went to Spotlight (material and craft store) to do up the room. We bought pale blue chiffon for the windows. Rainbow chiffon to make a fabric rainbow, sparkly butterflies to put on the walls and curtains, stickers of birds and flowers for the walls and stick-on little green frogs to hide in corners and give the boy students a thrill. She rang me this evening to say that the kids loved the class room!

All this is leading up to how important teachers are. They can turn a fascinating subject into a chore or they can inspire us. When I was in school, every Friday afternoon we had to write a composition (essay). The teacher would give us a topic and we would write a story. I LOVED this and looked forward to Friday afternoons. No matter how staid and boring the topic, I always found a way to turn it into something interesting. Aliens taking over the world? Sure, why not? Kidnapped by a space ship? Sure, I can do that.

And every Monday I would get my marks back. Not one word about the story, just an irritated admonishment to spell the words correctly or I would never get anywhere in life, with a list of spelling words I had to write out ten times.

Contrary to my teachers' warning, I went on to write and be published!

So did you have any teachers who inspired you to be creative?

Transplanted and hungry for history.

Growing up in Australia in the 1960s and 70s my grandparents still spoke of the Old Country. Their grandparents had come out to Australia to make a better life for their families. The women of my family still baked hot Christmas Dinners with plum pudding. meals which were more suited to wintery English weather, than 104 degree summer days with 95% humidity.

The books I read reflected a European world view. Yet, when I looked around I lived in a seaside town surrounded by Australian bush. Our houses were built of fibro on ground cleared last year, or ten years ago. An old building was 50 years old. In Brisbane the oldest building still standing is the Old Windmill (1823, built by convict labour).

What we lacked was history. (I won't get into the Aboriginal culture because the ownership of mythology is a very touchy subject to indigenous people and when I was growing up we were told nothing about indigenous Australians).

I read stories about King Arthur, but I lived in a very young country. I was hungry for anything that had history and beauty and depth to it. I don't know if other European Australians felt this lack. The most exciting thing to me when I finally went to the UK, was to walk where people had walked for hundreds, even thousands of years. I had grown up reading so many stories set in England that I felt like I was coming home.

I think the reason I loved fantasy was because it grew out of European mythology. It has this sense of majestic beauty that comes from shared history. (I loved SF because it asked, what next, and I didn't see anything odd about loving two such opposite concepts. Where we come from is equally as important as where we are going).


As a child, if I could have found a ruin like this one from Ireland, I would have been in heaven.

I am curious. Do people who grew up in the US have this same sense of missing something? (I know the European settlers in the US have a history which is about twice as old as Australia, but compared to Europe, the US is still very young. Again not touching on indigenous people).

Did you grow up with stories of the Old Country? Did you long for something more permanent than shifting sea side sand and fibro beach houses? Did you read books set in Europe so that you felt like a citizen of the world, rather than a citizen of a particular country? Is this shared history something that is more important to writers, than non writers?

E-books, Pirates and Writers

There's an interesting article here on writers and pirated books.

At one end of the spectrum you have people like Harlan Ellison, who pursues literary pirates with avengeance. At the other end you have Cory Doctorow, who defeats the pirates by offering free digital versions of his books, when they come out.

I love his quote. 'I really feel like my problem isn't piracy, it's obscurity!'