The Wonderful Land of Uwritopia! (Why do you Write?)

OK. Here is a hypothetical for you. You live in the land Uwritopia. In this land, people with ideas are praised above all others. The storytellers in this land produce their work through a magical process.

The storyteller, once having arrived at their idea, muses on it while servants massage their feet and they sip cocktails with little umbrellas. Once the story is fully formed, the storyteller taps their temple twice, and crooks their little finger in a special (secret) gesture. Immediately that glorious conception - a masterwork - springs to life on the editor's desk - fully formed - and complete in every way. None of this scratching for years to get something that comes half way!

The storyteller's bank account is immediately credited with a generous percentage of the country's GDP (I'm thinking 1% should be fine) - creativity having been recognised as the most vital attribute of Uwritopian society.

Breathing a sigh of replete satisfaction, the writer settles back down to their banana lounge and signals the adoring serving staff for another cocktail.

Does this sound appealing? If it doesn't, then why not? Would you immediately book your ticket to Uwritopia, or would you shudder and grab hold of the nearest heavy object to prevent the smiling ambassadors of Uwritopia (who have been stalking you), getting their manicured clutches on you?

If, like me, you find this image somehow disturbing, what exactly is it that is missing from the picture? Is the experience of writing, the crafting, the striving - is that what you find yourself longing for when confronted by this scenario?

Setting Goals in the Land of the Unknown

One of the frustrating things about writing – or any area of the arts – is the difficulty of being concrete about achieving success. There are any amount of motivational gurus who can fire you up with your unlimited potential and assure you that anything is possible – Anthony Robbins or Christopher Howard to name two. These fellows will happily sell you CD sets that include short hand instructions on how to rewire your brain and change your belief systems (so they claim) and also include various sessions in the way of Goal-Setting Workshops or ‘Strategic Visioning’ exercises. But this is where things get tricky.

When it comes to setting out goals for something like making a business more profitable, or to say learn a new language, there are concrete steps to take that will get you to the chosen goal. They contain elements that are quantifiable. For example, having decided you want to increase profit by a certain percentage, you can go in search of new customers using a range of media. Letter drop-off and business cards might net a 1% response, other forms of advertising might be more effective. But you can quantify all that. Advertising costs a certain amount, you know you need a certain amount of time to write the add etc.

Switch this to writing. If your goal is to get published by GoYouGoodThing Publications, the elements might run as follows: 1)plan book, 2)write book, 3)get feedback on book, 4) re-write book, 5)send book to publisher and 6) get GoYouGoodThing to accept it. Now you can use any goal-setting process on the planet for steps 1) to 5) (lets forget for one moment you spend two years repeating 3)&4)), but once you hit step number 6) – IT IS IMPOSSIBLE TO PLAN.

People like Anthony Robbins or Christopher Howard might waffle on about ‘putting energies out there’ or ‘manifest futures’ or perhaps it’s the attraction principle of The Secret. It seems to me that these people have a lot to gain (i.e book and CD sales) in whipping people up into a state of belief, but in the end the hopeful aspirant is left to pick themselves up of the floor. The fact is getting to the far off future called ‘Publication’ or ‘Successful Publication’ involves the judgement of other people which most writers do not have the ability to influence. This last step – is the land of the Unknown.

Slinging your best efforts into this mysterious zone may yield sporadic success, years of stony silence, or a sudden spectacular success. The result remains unknown. I guess the only thing you can really say for sure is that the likelihood of success goes up the more you sling, and that if you sling nothing into this strange Unknown zone then you can be absolutely sure NOTHING will come back.

So – have I got this all wrong? Can someone give me the formula for 6)? Failing that – how do you cope with the Great Unknown.

Split Personalities

It seems that being a writer requires that you split yourself into all these multiple personalities, most of which have opposite characteristics.

You need to be introspective, happy with your own company (and happy being in your own head) most of the time. How else would you do the necessary hours to get the output you need or increase your skills? This is essential for what is elegantly called the ‘bums on seats’ factor.

Yet at the same time you need to be an extrovert that thrives on personal interactions – getting out to conventions, networking effortlessly, confident at public speaking – enabling you to find those leads you need, and convince key people that you really do have something to sell, and to differentiate yourself from all the other writers that are only names on a submission.

When it comes to your own work, you have to be passionate and sensitive. You have to be so secure that you can let yourself free, let your creative energies boil in whatever direction you want.

Yet at the same time, you need to be able to approach feedback and critique on your work with a professional emotional distance that enables you to be ruthless, otherwise you will never be able to ‘kill all your babies’.

Its like those personality wheels – where the average person has ‘dips’ in some areas and ‘peaks’ in others. Well it seems the writer needs to be a superhuman self-developer, taking all those dips and pushing them up into peaks.

So - how do you handle all these split personalities? Do you get them to take it in turns? Did you have to turn yourself inside out to develop all these? Or did you have all these split personalities to begin with?

What is Characterization?

This is a question that has often baffled me. And it's not a trivial question. If you and your potential editor don’t agree on what good characterization is, then the relationship ends before it begins with the manuscript in the discard pile.

I have my own ideas about characterization. I like to see emotional depth, what matters to the character, some idea of what their personality is like and how they might go about getting what they want or overcoming their problem, all blended with the right amount of backstory. All this is best revealed gradually through the actions of the character and the events of the plot.

But for me this stuff is ‘internal’.

For others good characterization is ‘external’. They like to see particular actions or mannerisms in a character that can be readily recognized – and are often repeated ad nauseum through the story. From Harry Potter think of Hermione Granger’s ‘bushy hair’ or Hagrid’s large bulk. It seems like every single time these characters appear there is a reference to the 'key characteristic'. If I read another dark fantasy character who can't be separated from their cigarette, I think I'll choke. If subtle enough, I guess it works as a subconscious cue.

One of the reasons I stopped reading the Wheel of Time series was I got so sick of this. How many times can Nynaeve al’Meara pull her damn braid? Especially when nothing else was happening except a self-perpetuating word-mill of dialogue? I’d rather know more about what makes her tick.

I think a little bit of the external things can be an excellent part of the mix, but when this is supplied as the major component of characterization I start to get annoyed.

There is a lot in this though – it really appears to be a divide in the way writers approach the work (and how editors interpret it). Maybe its even deeper than that, maybe it’s a personality divide.

I was watching a local television program – the Tuesday Book Club – where various local literary luminaries wax lyrical about three or four books, each giving their considered opinion. Even these quite established and successful writers could not agree on this one. One of them was seriously bagging one of the books, criticizing what, in his opinion, was a very superficial characterization for the above reasons, while another could not give it higher praise in the same arena.

What’s going on? Please enlighten me!

Happy New Year!!! & Writing Biorhythms

Happy New Year to One and All!!!

I hope 2010 finds you all happy and well (and not too hungover).

Well, I thought this would be a pretty apt topic, especially for me at the moment. As much as I delude myself, well - I need to take a break from writing every now and then.

I know this flies in the face of the established wisdom, which says you should write every day, but I guess like everything else its pretty individual. I liken it to my guitar playing. There is an established school of wisdom there too, which also maintains that you should practice every day. But I find - although I can be incredibly dim forming some types of memory - I have a fantastic physical pattern memory. I can put the guitar down for months, then pick it up and the technique and fluidity will still be there like I played only two days ago.

I like to let the discipline go for a while and let my mind go 'fallow'. I try to fuel my imagination and my literary hunger. In some vague way I am aware of building up a store of some type of vital emotional energy. I know I'll be back into it when the time comes.

How about you? Do you write every day come what may? What's your writing biorhthym?

PS: The photo is me on a walking trail in Lamington National Park, one of our Heritage Listed local wonders. My son Aedan is in the left background.