Patience conquers all

I can’t remember where or when I first came across the saying ‘love conquers all’ but I know the expectation has stalked me for most of my life. I expected that tiny kitten to make a miraculous recovery. It didn’t. I expected my parents would let me keep that sad eyed puppy. They didn’t. I expected to meet the man of my dreams by age 22 and to have the beginnings of a family by at least 24. I didn’t and I didn’t.  I did fall fall in love a number of times and I even experienced the ‘Grand Passion’ a couple of times but it seemed that the more I loved the less likely it was that the object of my affections would love me back.

In my 30′s I did finally meet a gorgeous, clever man who said yes when I jokingly asked him to marry me and we did have one amazing daughter but the ‘death us do part’ clause must have been lost in translation because it became  ‘divorce us do part’ some years later. So I’m no longer convinced that love does conquer all, especially when I see so much unnecessary hatred in the world. To be honest I’m not quite sure what would constitute necessary hatred but I know that hatred of race or religion or sexual orientation is a hate we can do without.

Yet if love is not transforming the world then what’s left? Do we just shrug and throw up our hands in despair?

Not on your nelly! With the wisdom of advanced middle age I’m here to tell you that the one, true, indomitable force in the world is… ta dah… patience! And maybe a soupçon of persistence. [soupçon : just a touch, an itty bitty bit, a hint, a whisper...]

Do you remember the story of the tortoise and the hare? Yes, that’s the one – slow, steady tortoise wins the race while loud, flashy hare snoozes just before the finish line. In many ways we are all wabbits; we all want to get there fast, we want to make it happen now, right this instant or at least within the next five minutes and when we take longer than expected we sulk and have a snooze.

The modern media doesn’t help. Our expectations are always being fueled by the latest wonderkind, the newest overnight sensation, all of whom apparently just skipped their way towards superstardom or mega riches without putting a curl out of place. That is the ideal of success. If you have to work for it or if it takes 20 years to make it big then somehow the achievement is devalued and it definitely isn’t sexy. And we all want sexy, right?

Well, we may all want sexy but the biggest achievements of all owe more to plodding than to sprinting. Did someone wave a magic wand to make the Berlin Wall tumble down? Nope, it took time and patience and persistence. Did Nelson Mandela rid South Africa of Apartheid by machine gunning all the white politicians? Nope, apartheid died a little bit at a time thanks to the patience and persistence of a lot of people whose names will never be known. In 50 years time I hope the same will be said of climate change – that a lot of nameless people working together finally achieved the goal that governments could not.

Plodding people – that is what gets the job done. Plodding and patience and persistence. And those three P’s are just as powerful in the lives of individuals as they are in the life of the global community. Yes there are instances of mad, amazing good luck that seem to come out of nowhere but if you look closely enough you’ll see the good luck is just the tip of ye olde iceberg. Luck can’t work in a vacuum; it has to have something to work on and 99 times out of 100 that something was created by years of patience effort.

Don’t believe me? Well how about the case of my friend Alex Laybourne? Alex is an indie writer who has been juggling a day job, a family he adores and the passion to write.  For years. Alex did all the ‘right things’ in terms of marketing but the success he dreamt about stayed illusive. Until just about a week ago when he was offered a two book contract by a publisher! The offer seemed to come out of the blue but I know that it would never have happened if Alex had not put so much effort into his writing and his marketing. Nonetheless I suspect that in the not too distant future Alex is going to become one of those overnight successes we spoke about earlier. But you and I will know that he worked his butt off before lady luck finally smiled on him. He was patient and he was persistent and he made it over the finish line.

I’m sure that if you scratch below the surface [yes Daud I know, I'm using up my quota of cliches very quickly but it's in a good cause!] you will find a million hard-working overnight successes like Alex. They all earned their good fortune through patience and persistence and so will you. By ‘you’ I mean all the other wonderful indie authors out there. I already know some of you and I’m finding more and more every day. You are funny, brilliant, quirky people who write funny, brilliant and innovative stories. Then you polish those stories until they shine. That takes time and effort and dedication [not to mention a pretty strong grasp of the English language].  And after that you work even harder just to be seen.

To all of you hard-working, dedicated writers I say – be patient! Lady luck may be a bit fickle at the moment but you have all the time in the world. There is no use-by date for creativity. So what if you have to gum your food? So what if you get arthritis in your fingers? Voice recognition software is coming along in leaps and bounds so by the time you can’t type any more you’ll be able to throw away your keyboards and just dictate your stories!  [Note : false teeth might make dictation a bit easier, just a thought].

By now I hope that I have convinced everyone of the power of patience. If any of you still have doubts please contact me after the lecture…um I mean the pep talk… and I’ll box your ears for being slow on the uptake

p.s. I’m open to donations of wine [shiraz or merlot], chocolates [dark only] and meals-on-wheels at any time. Sadly I can’t accept nuts any more, they’re just a bit too hard to chew.

Endings and epiphanies

I write The Book every day so I guess a bit of tunnel-vision is to be expected but even so, suddenly realising that the first draft of book 2 was almost done took me by surprise. That was yesterday and by day’s end it was done. I am now officially miserable, which may explain why I had my earth shattering epiphany today.

Before I explain about the epiphany I should say a few words about The End. For me, the process of  writing a novel is made up of many layers : there’s all the research [fun], then there are all the false starts [not so fun but necessary] and then there is the utter joy of beginning to see the story unfold.

I don’t outline per se. The false starts I mentioned are the closest I get to outlining. They are like the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle set out on the dining room table without a reference picture to tell you what it is that you’re trying to achieve. And then, one day I start to see patterns emerging from those pieces. When enough of those patterns fall into place the journey of discovery begins. This is when I start to tell myself the story. No, this is when I start to live the story. The people and places in the story become so real to me that, while it lasts, I really don’t want to be anywhere else… especially not in the kitchen cooking dinner, or driving down to the bank. As an aside I had to physically go to the bank a few days ago. It’s only 5 minutes from home and I could drive there with my eyes closed yet I was so caught up in my own head space that I went right past the bank… twice. Talk about being on autopilot.

So you see for me the storytelling phase is a great deal like being in love – it consumes me. And then it ends. The characters are still there, the world is still there but I’m no longer a part of either. They now have a life of their own and I go back to being just me. They will still need me for the heavy lifting and cleaning, I may even have to sterilize my scalpel and do some judicious surgery but all of that is just ‘work’. Playtime is over. Hence the misery.

Adding to my woes is the knowledge that once the grunt work is finished I will have to start doing something that truly terrifies me – I will have to publish.

Now I know that for many writers publishing is the end game, it is the holy grail, it is the whole point of writing.  And I do share the desire to be read, really I do. But. The closest I’ve ever come to personally getting something published was a few years ago when I finished a step-by-step ‘How to use internet banking’ guide for customers of bank XX. The bank did not commission this guide. It was something I decided to do after helping many of my clients learn how to use their net banking facility. These clients were baby boomers who were just starting to realise that they were missing out on the whole personal computing revolution. And I have to say that back then most banks had atrocious user interfaces. Anyway…. I sent copies of my guide out to every publisher I could find in Australia. Three showed some interest. One actually looked into the viability of such a guide and all turned me down [partly because the banks showed no interest]. So I know how hard it is to get publishers to bite. And going through all that heartache again scares me. In some ways I think I would rather have a root canal done without anaesthetic.

And then at the start of this year [2012] I discovered that self-publishing was no longer just vanity publishing. Could this be my way out? I began to research and learned that self-publishing is no easier than traditional publishing because it requires the author to become a publicist, marketing guru and saleswoman all in one. Nonetheless, as I stumbled on more and more truly great indie authors who could not get published the traditional way, the idea began to take root.

Today my friends that idea blossomed. I was in the bathroom, a place where I do some of my best thinking, when I started thinking about what I would put on the back of my book – the blurb if you will.  These are the key words that popped into my head : aliens, psychopaths, hermaphrodites, murder, castration and rape as mating.

Gott in himmel! What publisher in his or her right mind would publish something like that? Just last week I was reading about an author who was knocked back for having a dwarf and the mere mention of porn in his novel. I’ve gone gender bender with a vengeance and I expect to be greeted with open arms? In a science fiction market that is already as dead as the dodo…

I tried to tell myself that I had only been true to the biology and that these were aliens after all – weren’t aliens meant to be different? I knew though. I had fallen off my donkey and seen the burning bush and there was no going back. If Vokhtah was ever to see the light of day then there was only one path I could take – Indie or bust.

Oddly enough this epiphany, as painful as it was, has made me feel better. At least now I know where I’m going. How long it takes me to get there is another story entirely but I’m in no rush. I still have a lot of work to do and who knows, maybe by the time I’m ready to step off that cliff the world of publishing will have changed for the better.

And maybe, just maybe the world of readers will be ready to look through the eyes of an alien. I live in hope.

cheers

Meeks [aka acflory]

 

 

May I introduce… Stephanie Allen Crist

Over the course of the last four months Stephanie and I have been having some amazing email conversations about being writers – what’s involved, what’s needed to succeed, what does it all mean? These conversations taught me a great deal as Stephanie has a background in marketing however it was her vision of what writing truly is that has stayed with me. I was so impressed I asked her if she would do a guest blog on the subject. She said yes

Ladies and gentlemen, may I introduce Stephanie Allen Crist on The Art, Craft, and Business of Self-Publishing.

Self-publishing is easy: You write it, you publish it, and then the readers come.  Or they don’t.  You won’t know which until you try.  The outcome is out of your control.

True, perhaps, but not quite so true so as you might think.  Self-publishing amplifies the dubious nature of the writing life.  You have all the uncertainty of the writing processing, whether you pursue traditional publication or self-publication.  Self-publication also turns you into a business person in a way that traditional publishing does not.  Both are uncertain prospects, but the ways of coping with those sets of uncertainty differ.

You start by writing a novel.  Is the story right?  Are the characters right?  Did you choose the right words?  Did you use enough words?  Did you use too few?  Did you get the pacing right?  Is your theme clear?  Will readers be able to envision your setting?  Are all the scenes necessary and effective?  Did you miss an important scene?  Do your chapter-breaks work?  Does your sub-plot work?  Do you end your story in a satisfying manner?  How is your character arc?  Does your character even have an arc?

Then, you publish your novel.  Now, you’re putting yourself forward: showing what you think, what you feel, what you imagine, what moves you, what ignites your passions.  You reveal something of yourself that, once you share it, you can never quite hide again.  And you don’t know how others are going to take that.  Will they understand you?  Will they care?  Will they be moved and ignited?  Or will it fade into the abyss of “nobody cares?”

Readers come or they don’t.  You make your work available.  You promote it.  Will it sell?  Will readers generate word of mouth?  Will they enjoy it?  Will they want more?

Now, perhaps you’re one of the writers who will see the problem with this scenario.  Perhaps you noticed that, for this undisclosed “you,” the questions got fewer and less intense as the scenario progressed.  Many writers, especially soon-to-be-published writers, focus so much on producing their novel that they don’t really know what to do with it once they’re done.  They turn to self-publishing, because there are no gatekeepers, because there is more potential for profit, because it’s less intimidating, because they have more control, because it’s faster, or because they don’t really understand their options.

There are a lot of good reasons to pursue self-publishing.  Chances are that anyone starting their writing career now—anyone who is in it for the long-haul—will self-publish at some point in their career.  But self-publishing isn’t a default, it’s a decision.  The criterion for this decision has little to do with art or craft.  It’s a business decision.

Writing is an art form.  Writing is a creative way to communicate that goes beyond the individual words in the same way that a painting goes beyond the individual brush strokes.  If you want to succeed, you need to communicate something your readers will enjoy and appreciate.  You can’t just slap something together and expect it to sell.  If you want to build a career, you need to communicate something of value.  Your story has to matter to you, so that it can matter to your readers.

Writing is a craft.  Writing is a set of skills you build and master over time in the same way that photography is a set of skills you build and master over time.  If you want to succeed, quality counts.  Spelling and grammar count.  A suitable, attractive cover counts.  An easy-to-read layout counts.  A story that is structurally sound counts.  Characters that evoke empathy count.  An intriguing plot that entertains the reader counts.  You can’t just rush off a first draft and expect it to sell.  If you want to build a career, you need to produce a novel that doesn’t detract from the story.  You have to invest your time and resources to produce a high-quality product, so that your readers can find your story, purchase it, and then read your story without distractions.

Writing is a business.  Writing is a business that requires an investment and a strategy to earn a return on that investment in the same way that a mom-and-pop shop requires an investment and a strategy to earn a return on that investment.  If you want to succeed, you need a product that people actually want.  You need to be willing to invest your time and your money in producing the best product you can, which will require building your skills and buying the services of those who have the skills you don’t.  It also means that you will need to invest your time and your money in getting the word out to potential readers.  You need to find the right readers and you need to learn how to reach those readers in a way they can appreciate.

Together, the art, craft, and business of writing mean that sometimes you have to make hard choices for the future of your career.  For example, you may have to choose to put that story you really want to write on the backburner, because you know you lack the skills to pull it off.  You may have to choose to write a less ambitious story you know you can pull off, because it will help you build the skills necessary to tell the story that burns inside of you.  Or, instead of investing in yet another writing conference that will fulfill your need to socialize with other writers, you may have to choose to invest in a copyeditor who can help you clean up your manuscript.  There are a lot of choices out there, and the decisions you make now will influence how successful you are in the future.

Self-publishing is a wonderful opportunity for writers, but it’s only as much of an opportunity as you make it.  Be the artist, the craftsperson, and the businessperson your writing deserves.  Your future readers will thank you.

To be critiqued or not to be critiqued (apologies to the Bard)

I had a nice little post drafted last night. It was going to be about the craft of writing but when I awoke this morning I found that my subconscious had been busy on a related subject – critiquing. Now critiquing is a subject I know very little about but what I do know has me worried, worried enough to throw my draft out the window.

This all started when I stumbled across a website called Bookcounty. This site gives writers the opportunity to have their work critiqued in exchange for critiquing the work of others. In essence critiquing is like giving feedback on technical issues such as ‘pace’ and ‘voice’ and is said to be invaluable for all writers but most especially for new ones.

So why am I worried? Because I began reading the first ten chapters of a book called ‘Pathfinder : Lost’ on Bookcountry and found it to be wonderful. Confused? Read on. Pathfinder is a story with the scope and depth of ‘Dune’ written in flowing, clean prose [bar the odd typo] with characters so real they almost jump off the page.  It is the kind of science fiction I love to read and most definitely the kind that I would love to write, yet it was given only 3.5 stars. How could this be right? And on a personal, selfish note, what chance did my own much poorer writing have if this story was only ‘average’?

I was shaken, I have to admit it. Very shaken. And so I set out to discover why a story I considered to be so very good had been canned by other critiquers. Yes I know I just made up a word but it’s very early in the morning and I haven’t had my second hit of caffeine yet so be gentle.

I found 10 reviews/critiques and began reading. Most echoed my reactions but one, by another writer who clearly felt himself to be an authority on the subject, was harsh. As I read through this critique my eyebrows kept going up and up as I tried to reconcile what he was saying with the story I had just read. Some of the criticisms were against features of the writing  that I most liked while others implied that the author of Pathfinder – Hudson MacHeath – did not know the first thing about the craft of writing.

By this stage I was bristling like a porcupine bailed up by a pack of savage chihuahuas. And then I found it, the clue that put the whole critique into perspective. It was hidden in the words  ‘we writers’. These select, elite few clearly included the reviewer but did not include the neophyte Hudson MacHeath. Ah hah…

Now to be fair to this ‘we writers’ twerp, the version of Pathfinder I read is not the one he first reviewed close to a year ago – this version apparently includes some restructuring and editing. Nonetheless I find it hard to believe that the story is fundamentally different to the original because the prose is just too good, too mature.   So I am left with the conclusion that the ‘we writers’ person either did not know what he was talking about or was a jealous prick. I very much suspect he was and probably still is the latter.

Most of the writers I have met online in the last four months have been good people who are supportive of each other and critique gently but the digital world also has an underbelly from which dark and slimy things can emerge. Professional jealousy, self-importance and its mirror image, low-self esteem are human traits but that is no excuse – they are still dark and slimy and when they are validated by the word ‘critique’ they can lead to a very nasty form of intellectual bullying.

A real critique is objective and is motivated by a genuine desire to help polish someone else’s work. It is an act of generosity. Intellectual bullying however is simply a way of making yourself look good at the expense of someone else. This ‘we writers’ person did not succeed in disheartening Hudson MacHeath but with a more fragile writer he could well have done so. And yes, I am thinking of myself here.  I know I need to develop the hide of a rhinoceros when it comes to my writing but I am nowhere near that level of self confidence yet, so had I been on the receiving end of that critique I know I would have been devastated, perhaps to the point of giving up entirely. I’m not a coward but I do take criticism seriously so I will think long and hard about ever submitting my work to Bookcountry.

Who am I kidding? I will never submit my work to people like ‘we writers’! Editors, especially good ones, are not cheap but they are worth every cent they charge because they know what they are talking about and are not likely to put writers down just to stroke their own egos. This is one benefit to having a professional editor that no-one seems to mention yet in some ways it is the most important reason of all. Critiquing groups cost nothing but as the saying goes ‘you get what you pay for’. Phew… I am so glad I discovered this.

My thanks to all those who have given me the benefit of the doubt on this post – I really did need to work through this issue and sometimes writing is the only way I can clarify things for myself. As for ‘we writers’,  all I can say is ‘take your ego and put it where the sun don’t shine’. To Hudson MacHeath I’d like to say ‘please finish your wonderful book because I want to find out what happens!’

Cheers all!

Villains – what is it that makes them so sexy?

I was reading an excellent post by Alex Laybourne today in which he asked who we [writers] preferred to write about – heroes or villains.

My immediate response was ‘villains of course!” And then I started wondering why that reaction had been so instant. That lead to thoughts about villains in books that I had read or in movies I had seen. Almost without fail the most interesting characters were always the villains. Why?

In movies, villains are often portrayed as hunky guys oozing danger and sex appeal in equal measure so the attraction is not hard to understand but why does the same thing happen in so many books as well? After all, the author may describe a villain as ‘handsome’ but handsome is just a word and does not have the impact of a three-quarter profile in a close-up. Besides, in books it’s usually the personality that I find myself attracted to anyway.

I’ll admit that for quite a long time I thought there was something a little bit wrong with me until I started talking to other women about this bad-boy phenomenon and discovered that I was not alone. And it’s not something restricted to my generation either –  no.1 daughter is the same and when we first started playing rpg’s together guess who got our attention? Was it Cloud from Final Fantasy 7? Hah! Of course not. How could that angsty namby pamby compete with Sephiroth? I mean come on… even as a pixelated animation that long silver hair was just….

Ahem. I think I’ve made my point. There is something about a good villain that is exciting and yes, sexy and has as much to do with how quickly we turn the pages as any empathy we may feel for the hero of the piece.

Now I need to make a very important point here. When I talk about sexy villains I am NOT talking about romance novel villains. Or heroes.  I am talking about characters in science fiction novels and fantasies and thrillers and, of course, who dunnits. These villains are not out to seduce anyone yet so often they end up being seductive anyway. Why is that?

The only answer I can think of is that the author subconsciously projected that element of seductiveness without knowing that he/she was doing so. Furthermore I think that this element of seductiveness has something to do with the cold, calculating exercise of power. And success. No matter how cold or calculating a villain may be if he is an incompetent bungler then sex appeal goes flying out the window.  And he can’t whinge or whine either – that’s another huge turn-off.

So what the hell is it about villains?  I do have some suspicions but rather than launching into some long analysis that will probably end up being painfully boring I’m going to end this post with a book, a villain, a question and a challenge.

The book : Otherland

The villain : Dread

The question : Did you find Dread as compelling as I did?

The challenge : Name your favourite villain [and the book he/she appeared in] and say why in 500 words or less [preferably less!]

May the power of the pen be with us

 

The joys of procrastination

Following links in posts and other people’s blogs can lead to interesting destinations and ‘Cat Waxing – 101′ opened my eyes to a whole world of metaphor I’d previously missed [apparently 'cat waxing' is a metaphor for procrastination. ..].

Vokhtah - the planet

As none of my cats showed the slightest inclination to get a bikini wax I was thrown back on my own resources and came up with the image on the left.

Yes, I know it’s pretty awful but like all the images I create on Corel Draw 4 it’s only meant to help me visualize the world of Vokhtah. If I ever finish the story [two books and counting] I am going to look for a talented cartographer and/or illustrator to turn these visual notes into something more appealing.

Hideous graphics aside though, these visual notes do help me stay in touch with the story even when, as now, I’m feeling less than inspired when it comes to words. It’s not that I don’t know where to take the story from here, I do and that is the problem. Filling in the missing chapters is making me feel as if I’m in limbo because the story requires neither creativity [i.e. working out where is the story going] nor problem solving [i.e. working out how to edit/restructure to make it better].  It’s just work.

When the need to wax the cat becomes completely overpowering I go out and commit genocide on weeds or stagger around with very big rocks or … clean the house.

-sigh- I hate to say this but I really do feel a bout of dusting coming on. Maybe if I call it Autumn Cleaning I won’t feel so guilty. Bah. Who am I kidding? It’s not even autumn yet.

Indie authors – the good, the bad and the ugly

Print On Demand [POD], ebook technology and Amazon have birthed a new phenomenon in the world of books – the indie author. Suddenly everyone who ever had an interesting idea or felt they had a story to tell has become an author… because they can. They do not need the traditional gatekeepers – the publishing houses – anymore. The orderly world of print has become a wild, wild west with words at the ready.

Not since the invention of the printing press has the world seen such a state of flux. The world of books is changing at an incredible rate and will continue to do so for some time to come. For readers this means that we have more choices than ever before and they cost less than a cup of coffee. Because of this we can dip and discard without feeling that we have blown the week’s budget on a lemon of a book. This is incredibly liberating and I for one am all for it. Since getting my ebook device I have discovered four new, good authors in three weeks and all for the combined price I would have paid for just one book in the past. I feel as if I’m part of a history making event and I love the sense of limitless possibilities that implies. I would not turn back the clock even if I could.

But such freedom has drawbacks as well. Technology has opened up  new frontiers but, like the wild, wild west, those frontiers now have no guardians. There are no sheriffs in tall white hats dragging the bad guys off the streets. Worse still the bad guys don’t wear hats either, so every time I take a chance on a new author I do so at my peril.

Now I’ve already said that price is not much of a consideration any more and that is true, however wasted time is still an issue. If I have to dip and discard nine books before I find one worth reading then I have wasted some of my limited and therefore precious reading time. I have also spent 9/10th of that time being frustrated.  And that is bad. Bad for me and bad for this new era because every not-good book chips away at my confidence in the rest of the books [and authors] out there.

No two people will ever completely agree about what constitutes a ‘good’ book so I’m not even going to try to define it. I will however give my definitions of the ‘bad’ and the ‘ugly’. To me an ugly book is one that has been dashed off, possibly by a very sincere, nice person, and then rushed into publication without even basic editing. These books are literally choked with typos, spelling mistakes, horrible punctuation, contradictions and the kind of grammar that would be poor if spoken aloud and absolutely awful when written down. Two pages of this and I just can’t keep reading, no matter how interesting the story might eventually become. These basic faults are the uglies and they stop the duckling from ever becoming a swan.

Bad is different. Bad can be quite well written in terms of the basics of language [see uglies above] but falls down in style. By  my definition, style is not the same as the author’s ‘voice’ which is always unique. Rather it involves having a master craftsman’s knowledge of the power and the limitations of the written word. A short story I recently read is a great example of these limitations. The author of this short story clearly wanted it to be punchy and funny but he wrote it as if he was telling the tale to his mates over a beer at the pub. It could have been funny but wasn’t. Why? Because his words could not convey the body language, spoken pauses, -nudge, nudge, wink, wink- facial expressions that would have been part and parcel of the verbal telling.  Without all those intangibles the written story was lifeless.

On the other end of the scale are the examples of the authors who do know the power of the written word but do not know how to exercise restraint. Just because you can write a sentence with multiple clauses does not mean that you have to do so. Sometimes simple sentences can be far more powerful than complex ones. Similarly, obscure vocabulary and screeds of flowery descriptions may illustrate an author’s breadth of knowledge but they rarely succeed in drawing the reader into the mood of the story. These faults can be overlooked if the story is very, very good but those kind of stories are rare. So far I have read one that was good enough to keep me reading and another two that were just too unpleasant to finish.

Back when we had traditional publishers acting like sheriffs,  most of these books would never have seen the light of an LED screen. Some few would have been sent to editors to be massaged into shape before printing but they would have been the exceptions rather than the rule. Now we just have a level playing field littered with the bodies of those who thought first, or even second draft quality was good enough. It never is. Sorry.

In time I hope that this new frontier of publishing will develop an infrastructure of reputable editors, designers, proof-readers and printers to help authors polish their work before publishing.  Once that happens we may know which authors are wearing the white hats and which the black. Until then we will just have to take our chances with the good, the bad and the ugly.

Good intentions, bad writing

All fiction contains a seed of truth and sometimes that truth can inspire deep thought in the reader. That is good. Sometimes authors write fiction with the specific intention of bringing out a truth and making readers think. That can work as well, but only if the fictional part of the story is allowed to dictate when, where and how the truth emerges. And then there are times when an author is so fixated on the truth that he/she uses the story as nothing more than a limp carrot.

I recently bought a book that falls into the ‘limp carrot’ category. It was well written in terms of basic requirements such as spelling, punctuation, grammar, structure etc but it missed the mark completely in terms of story.

The author of this unnamed book clearly knew the theory – tell a great truth through the eyes of a fictional character – but he/she obviously cared more for the truth than the character. [To avoid tying myself into knots here I am going to call this character John.] Because the author did not really care about John, the inevitable result was that I did not care about John either and because I did not care I could not empathize. I read the words of pain and suffering but they struck no chord; I could have been reading a shopping list for all the impact they made.

And here is where the truly sad part comes in. Despite being highly sympathetic to the ‘truth’ the author was trying to reveal, my complete lack of empathy with John diminished my sympathy for the ‘truth’ as well. And that made me feel terrible, so terrible in fact that I simply could not get past chapter 2.  I did try, a number of times because I hate leaving anything unfinished, but I simply could not do it. And that has made me angry enough to write this scathing non-review.

Please people! If you write fiction then please, please, please understand that the story and the characters must come first otherwise you give your readers no reason to CARE. And if we cannot care then your truths will wither and die.

<<end rant>>

Creativity – the elephant in the room

As a writer, creativity is important to me because without it I would have nothing to say, nothing to write about, however I truly believe that creativity is rather over-rated and the emphasis placed on it is misguided.

To me, creativity is just the spark that ignites a process that may or may not result in the birth of something new. That something could be a piece of music, a painting, a story … or a new theory in the sciences. Yes, I include scientific theories as well as the arts because innovation in any form requires both imagination and the ability to think outside the box. It also requires hardwork, self-discipline, oodles of dedication and the courage to persist in the face of repeated setbacks. Elevating ‘creativity’ above all the other necessary ingredients is like trying to bake a cake with nothing but eggs. If you’re lucky you may end up with an omelette but you sure as hell won’t be eating sponge cake.

And let’s not forget those pesky tools of the trade. Just as cabinet makers need to know how to use hammers, chisels and saws, writers need to know how to spell, punctuate and write grammatically. These are not optional extras!  As a writer I may choose to mangle the language in order to give a character a certain kind of voice, or to create a mood etc but god help me if I do so unintentionally!

Style is another misused tool. Poetic licence should never be invoked to cover up poor writing. Styles in writing have changed a great deal since the time of Dickens but we can still tell good prose from bad. How? By looking at how well it does what it is meant to do. If it captures the reader’s attention and holds it from start to finish without any ‘what the..?’ moments then it is good prose. It may not be great prose but it is good nonetheless because it is doing the job of conveying the content without intruding.  It is neither bloated nor awkward and it rarely needs to be skimmed because none of it is superfluous. And good prose never makes you re-read a passage to tease meaning out of a sentences groaning with clauses.

What then is great prose?

To me, great prose is good prose that also happens to be lyrical and evocative,  or just plain beautiful. ‘A Postillion Struck by Lightning’ by the late Dirk Bogarde is one of those rare books that exemplify what great contemporary prose should be. I rarely read biographies much less autobiographies but… let’s just say that I made an exception for Dirk Bogarde the actor and fell in love with Dirk Bogarde the writer. The story he told was quite ordinary – I’m sure countless children of his day would have had similar experiences -  yet he made it special because he told it so well.

“The sun had been up only a little while and beside me, close to my face, so that it was actually all blurry and looked like an eagle, was a burnet-moth on a bit of grass, feeling the sun and waiting for the dusk to come.”

This complicated sentence should not work yet it does because the punctuation is perfect, as is the flow of imagery from boy lying in the grass to moth being watched by boy. It conjures images familiar from our own childhoods. And the creativity lies not in the content but in the telling.

I believe great prose can lift any content, even if it is not particularly imaginative or ‘creative’ but even the best content cannot make a book enjoyable if we are forever tripping over the writer’s more mundane inadequacies. So let the creativity take care of itself and focus on the telling. You may be surprised by how good the finished product becomes.