Altered States

Every now and then in the arts (some arts more than others), you see artists who swear that they are more creative under the influence of drugs then while 'straight'. Favorites range from the psychedelics enjoyed by visual artists to the headbanger's cocktail of speed and alcohol (Motorhead). Reading Stephen King's On Writing, he mentions that he could not even remember writing some of his books he was that high - I think Misery comes to mind (he speculates the writer in the story was actually himself, held prisoner by his addiction). Its not just illegal drugs either. David Gemmell once related how he had tried to give up smoking, but looked at what he was writing, realized it was crap then started smoking again. In the end he died of heart failure at 57, and I guess the smoking would have had no small part in his untimely death.

I have always been suspicious of these claims, and I guess I have come out pretty much strongly on the other side of the argument -- that you will be more creative the more healthy and drug FREE you are. I think what often happens is that artists will be such long term users that they become functional addicts, and when they try to quit they actually do find their performance dropping. But this is just a short-term effect. If they persevere they will find themselves more creative than ever.

One of the odd things I do is read musician's autobiographies. A recent one was Eric Clapton. In it he rattles off a series of famous recordings and concert events where he was completely off his head either on dope (heroin) or alcohol or both. Even as an Eric Clapton fan some of his playing on these latter records sounded like shite to me. Not saying I did not enjoy them, just that I got so frustrated he could not lift his game. When I hear something like that, I can't help but feel cheated. How much damn better could that guy have been if he wasn't hiding in a bottle?

So what do you think? Is there some truth to the assertion that drugs enhance creativity? Or is that just the seductive reasoning of an addict?

I am the ball

Instead of the thoughtful, considered, and probably somewhat scatological piece I was going to write today, I'm writing shameless fangirly squeeing. This is because Unseen Academicals, PTerry's latest novel, was in my mailbox today. Dragon's Ring was there too, but... Sorry Dave. One book a night is the limit if I want to be able to function the next day, and PTerry won. I'll have to do the fangirl squee over Dragon's Ring later.

As usual, I emerge from a Pratchett book caught between awe and despair. Awe should be self-evident. Despair because I will never, ever be able to write a measurable fraction of that well. In what appears on the surface to be a book about the wizards of the Unseen University having to play a game of football (soccer to those of us who think of football as involving an elliptical ball and a lot of legitimate physical contact) there's a tour through a human nature and how effectively and securely we make our own hells - as well as how every single one of us can escape them.

There's a lot more than that, of course. This is PTerry.

The title? That's a direct quote from the book - and it sums up something we tend to forget. In a game of football (any sort of football) the ball is the most important part, and it becomes in a sense the spirit of the game. That spirit becomes part of our culture and our souls, whether the ball is a ball or something else, and whether the game is football, soccer, cricket, baseball, basketball... Keep your eye on the ball. Out of left field. Outfielders. Goals. Sports are, as Pratchett says, about everything except the sport.

I'm going to leave off with two things, a quote from the book, and a question.

"Forgiveness is the name of Pastor Oats's double-headed battle-axe."

What else - books, movies, whatever - absolutely nails some part of human nature without preaching a sermon? My first (non-PTerry) vote goes to Dave's Rats Bats & Vats and the sequels for reasons that ought to be obvious.

Trouble By Any Other Name

As I hinted in my answer to Dave’s Monday post, names of characters assume a disproportionate importance to me. I don’t know if anyone else is bedeviled with this problem, but I can’t seem to write a character at all until his name is right. The voice won’t come into focus until I know to whom it belongs.

Now on the outside it looks like a very weird ideosyncrasy. I mean, as good old Will of the shaking lance told us, a Rose by any other name would smell as sweet. In real life, I’m fairly sure we’ve all met the equivalent of Prudebunny Pussicat who was hell on wheels. It is a well known fact – though its so well known it could be used in naming characters, frankly – that if you name a kid Grace she will trip on her own two feet all day, a Joy will be a sourpuss and I’m fairly sure all the young men now named Storm or Blaze will turn out mild-mannered milquetoasts. Heck if you want to be assured of a go-getter as a son name him – as one of my mother’s friends was – Amavel (in Portuguese, non literal, it means "mild mannered.")

So why does it assume such a disproportionate importance in characters? I don’t know. Perhaps it is one of those instances in which life does not have to be plausible, but fiction does. Or perhaps it’s the newly-hatched duck syndrome. As I get tired of preaching to new writers, it’s very nice that you want to start your book with this incidental never-again-seen character, but your reader, like a newly hatched duckling, will attach to it and be very upset when he’s not the main character. In the same way, when we get introduced to someone in real life, we’re not bound to the name only. If Amavel has a roguish twinkle in his eye, we’ll know better than take him at his name-value.

On the page, though, no matter how much you describe the character, the name gives us a hint to what he is. And unless you make it a point early on of pointing out that he is ironically named, people will think you mean it.

I first ran into this with Nigel Oldhall, who was a secondary character in Heart of Light. For a secondary character, and given his attitude, I wanted staid and somewhat wet. I didn’t realize that making him the hero of the third book would drive me insane and I’d be dragging "Nigel" up and down the page. (I asked, but the editor wouldn’t let me give him a more colorful pseudonym.)

I ran into this headlong with the sequel to Darkship Thieves, in which took secondary character Etienne Boulanger (let alone that given my issues with double letters he was often Etiene or Ettiene) and made him main character. It just wouldn’t work. In the first book I wanted an every-man sort of name at least in the planning process and he wasn’t central enough for the name to bother me. But dragging an Etienne through the book was impossible. So, with the editor’s consent – and going back to the first book before it’s typeset – he’s been renamed Simon St. Cyr. Why this works better I don’t know, but it makes the character immediately live for me. The St. Cyr, btw, was at his insistence. I have NO clue why. (I had a similar issue with Draw One In The Dark in which I tried to name Kyrie Kris and Krissy and Katy and Kelly, but nothing would work till I named her what she thought she was called "Kyrie Grace". The fact that this was the name of the newborn daughter of a friend made no difference at all to the character.)
I confess to making extensive use of www.behindthename.com, though mostly I just skip through the desired pages until a name "clicks" with what the character.

So, why do you think this is? Are there any characters you think would change completely with different names? Would Pride and Prejudice work just as well if Mr. Bingley and Mr. Darcy’s names were reversed? Why not?

Craft of Writing

I've been writing on and off since I was in my early twenties, trying to make sense of the craft of writing. Yet, I still get excited when my mind makes one of those leaps of understanding.

I think of the craft of writing a great puzzle that fascinates me and I'm constantly trying to unravel it. With every book I read and every movie I see, I’m studying narrative drive and characterisation, looking for flaws in logic and world building and cheering, when I see something that makes me sit up and go, WOW.

That means I love finding interesting articles on the writing craft.
Here's an article on Scene Structure, by Jacqueline Litchenberg. And here's an article on story structure, by Joe Narrise.

When did you last have a light bulb moment about the craft of writing?

SuperGlue on the toilet seat

....Or you will not move from this place without acetone or surgery or possibly both.

It’s been my problem (metaphorically speaking, so far) with various books. And they -- and I -- might still be in that place had it not been for intervention. For me, at least problem occurs if and when I feel the book is... um... in the toilet.

And many of the same practical solutions apply. For me at least, being stuck is usually a sign that the inner editor is unhappy. He does not see _why_ the characters -- who are well developed individuals with lives and minds of their own would even contemplate going on with this ridiculous charade-of-a-plot. You are stuck there, you total plonker, until you do something about it (and in future make sure you examine the situation before you stick).

The first step is to call for help. If I’m co-authoring that’s easy enough and Eric is good plot structure. I’ve found this is -in my case - my subconscious telling me something is wrong and missing. It’s often (from close up) very hard to see. Wood from the trees stuff, if you know what I mean. You - the author - know what is going on, you know the background, you know where it’s all going. That ‘this is confusing’ and ‘huh?’from another reader have been great at helping to choose the direction to pull free. Sometimes it’s as simple as inserting another point of veiw.

If that fails, or only helps a little by showing the problem but not what to about it: The second step is apply acetone. And the acetone of story writing is stuff called whyo which is gathered by unscrupulous dealers from small children who exude the stuff every time they open their little mouths. If they take too much the children are doomed to become non-reading-square-eyes, but, despite its rather unsavoury origins it is of vast value to me anyway. Because being stuck very often means I have failed to establish sufficient motive for the character to take the actions required for the plot. Asking why (and sometimes hows and whats) the character will take the steps in the direction I want them to go, often means that I need to go back and insert these motivations... and hey presto, I’m free.

But sometimes that doesn’t even work. On a couple of occasions -- and it is usually quite specific -- the way forward is surgery. This can be minor or drastic. But it usually means at a decision point in the story a little earlier, you took your character/s down the wrong path. Cut. Move off down the other tangent. (And this is usually accompanied by a feeling of freedom and relief, as well as considerable pain at losing what could be some good prose.)

The final possibility is just to pull the seat off and move on to get help. Seriously. Just jump ahead to a scene where you are free again. Very often the intermediate bit will resolve itself.

Ok - anyone else got any other suggestions to free the stuck writer? Back off with that dynamite, Bob!

Oh BTW - Amazon is shipping DRAGON'S RING. There is no SuperGlue in it at all.

Writers Workshop Follow-up

In my last post, I mentioned that our own Sarah Hoyt had been in town to conduct a writers workshop. Not only was Sarah her usual entertaining self, but she imparted some great information. Most important of all, she made those who attended think about what it means to be a writer and how far it goes beyond just sitting butt in chair and writing. We're writers, publicists, mail clerks, accountants and chief cook and bottle washers to name a few. However, as Sarah pointed out, one of the most important things we have to do is know who our market is when we're writing a book, not only with regard to what agent or publisher we're trying to "sell" it to but also with regard to who our reading public will be.

Needless to say, that got everyone thinking, most especially those who are writing for the juvenile and young adult readers. In discussions between sessions, the conversation continued, usually between the workshop participants. One thought the only difference was the language used in the books. Another felt that you had to write the situations in a more simplistic style, not only using less challenging vocabulary but also a simpler sentence structure etc., and then a third felt you should only tackle the really difficult social/ethical/moral situations in books set for the "young adult" readers.

What made me think about this particular topic again was a conversation I had at dinner with several librarians the other night. One works at a junior high school library. The other two at the local library in the children's and youth section. We'd been discussing some of the books that have come out over the last few years and the increasing numbers of junior high and high school kids who are reading for pleasure -- and how the summer reading lists have, for years, done their best to derail this whether those putting together the lists mean to or not.

By way of illustration, when my son was entering the sixth grade, he was given a list of fifteen or so books, of which he had to read twelve. The topics of the books, all of which were fiction, ran from drug abuse to abandonment to rape and incest to sports and vacation fun. Well, needless to say, since reading had been used as a punishment by a teacher several years before and my son still had not rediscovered the joy of reading he'd felt before then, we chose to read the "lighter" books first. The problem came when we had to choose one last book to complete the required number. The book we chose seemed innocent enough. From the cover illustration to the inside flap description and even the on-line reviews, it appeared to be nothing more than a nice little gothic ghost story. Perfect for a boy about to go into the sixth grade. Right?

WRONG! Most of the book was exactly that. The author lulled you in with an easy style and lush descriptions that appealed not only to my son but to me. Then, without warning, she yanked the rug out from under you and yelled "Gotcha!". The nice ghost story suddenly had a very graphic attempted rape scene followed by an equally graphic murder scene. There was no rhyme or reason for it being there, and most certainly not for it to be as graphic as it was. For those twenty pages or so, the author forgot her audience and went from writing for middle schoolers to high schoolers and adults.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not advocating denying that bad things happen to people in books written for middle schoolers. What I am advocating is that we keep in mind who we're writing for and write appropriately. Just as I wouldn't expect an author trying to sell an inspirational novel to fill it with f-bombs, I don't expect an author writing for middle schoolers or younger to put in graphic sex scenes or more graphic violence. The key is, read the market. See what is on library and bookstore shelves for that age group. That is part of the research we have to do as authors.

How important do you think it is that authors tackle the "issues" of the day? For you parents out there, do you want the summer reading lists to be filled with books dealing with nothing but the "social issues" or should there be a mix of the "socially relevant" books and those that are just "fun" reads?

Declining Industry

Jim Baen always used to say that we worked in a declining industry, writing fiction that is, and it is a fact that the purchasing of novels has been in steady decline for some time, at least in the English-speaking world. So what future is there for the would be novelist.

I would like to drift off subject before coming back to the point. Lily Allen, with the certainty of youth, recently created a stir in the UK by publishing a diatribe against file sharers as destroying British Music by making life harder for new artists. Her argument fell apart somewhat when it turned out that Allen had pirated clips from other artists to use in her mix tapes. Ah well.

The music industry is a modern creation that arose because of new technology. Prior to recording technology, there were musicians and audiences. Technology allowed fewer and fewer musicians to make greater and greater revenues. That is how mass media works. It also created a whole new inustry of suits who were essentially parasitic on music. Now technology is destroying the music industry because computers work by making copies, infinite copies. Music is not being destroyed. It is simply returning to musicians playing to live audiences.


The novel industry has undergone a similar, if slower, trajectory. The printing press and globalisation have allowed fewer and fewer authors to make higher and higher revenues. The same Dan Brown novel is on sale at every damn airport and beach hut in the world, and yet overall sales decline.

So the question remains, does the decline in the fiction publishing industry herald the end of fiction or are we merely entering a new way to tell stories through digital media?

John

The pic, incidentally, is of Royal Holloway College, London University, in the spring of this year.