Tag: Writing

Friday the 13th, 2007

While considered bad luck by many, I’ve not really found Friday the 13th to be particularly different from any other given Friday… arguably, I’ve had better luck on them than worse (which I suppose goes with my general experience with “luck”… find a 4 leaf clover, fall and skin your knee… walk under a ladder, find a quarter on the sidewalk. Don’t even get me started on my jade pendant). I slept in today, though not as late as some of the past few days, and overall I’m feeling alright.

In my daily spate of rss feeds and blogs, the inestimable Warren Ellis pointed out a fantastic post on M John Harrison’s blog, that’s worth quoting:

Every moment of a science fiction story must represent the triumph of writing over worldbuilding.

Worldbuilding is dull. Worldbuilding literalises the urge to invent. Worldbuilding gives an unneccessary permission for acts of writing (indeed, for acts of reading). Worldbuilding numbs the reader’s ability to fulfil their part of the bargain, because it believes that it has to do everything around here if anything is going to get done.

Above all, worldbuilding is not technically neccessary. It is the great clomping foot of nerdism. It is the attempt to exhaustively survey a place that isn’t there. A good writer would never try to do that, even with a place that is there. It isn’t possible, & if it was the results wouldn’t be readable: they would constitute not a book but the biggest library ever built, a hallowed place of dedication & lifelong study. This gives us a clue to the psychological type of the worldbuilder & the worldbuilder’s victim, & makes us very afraid.

I’m not sure that I entirely agree: while worldbuilding should be by no means the primary function of the story, taking the time to hammer out a core basis for the setting of your story I think can be really rewarding. I must admit that I’m a bit biased in this, in that I like thinking about the esoteric and random elements surrounding a story — how a given civilization functions, the history and struggle that caused that particular world to be formed. It’s easy to become myopic when doing this, absolutely, to start thinking about how a particular tribe in Uganda handles the dry season when your story has nothing to do with that and that knowledge will never even be mentioned. But if you are mindful of this, mindful of the lure of avoiding the story by fleshing out the world (yet another form of procrastination, seductive in its psuedo-productivity), then that elaboration can help tighten and expand your story.

That’s my opinion anyway, and I don’t exactly have any award winning publications to back it up. Unlike M John Harrison.

I kind of agree with him in some ways, though. As soon as the worldbuilding becomes even translucent (let alone opaque), you’ve bored most readers… worldbuilding should be for your own edification and cohesion as the writer. Its role in the story itself should be transparent. (I believe it was Silverberg, and I’m paraphrasing, who commented that Heinlein was one of the few others who managed to ladel on pages of exposition without boring the reader.) I do definitely agree with Mr. Harrison’s thoughts about writing, which he expounds upon here:

The notebook stage is the last time anything of mine sees paper until publication. I like to do lots of operations. Fountain pens and refurbished 1930 Underwood portables don’t cut it; digital management is the appropriate choice. Have you ever noticed how every male novelist you meet at a literary festival wears a linen jacket and is called Tim ? Tim prefers an antique Watermans, maybe his dad owned it. It keeps him pure and returns him to the sinewy prose of the giants who came before us all.

I don’t have any writing pattern. I hate being professional. I don’t write according to a schedule or an output plan; I don’t begin at the beginning and write to the end. Or rather: if I do any of those things I usually have to bin the results. Writing should be fun — absorbing, transporting, intense, whatever. It should ambush you. It should be up there with sex, drugs and irresponsible driving. It shouldn’t have anything to do with research or require a degree in finding out about lipstick colours in 1943. I can’t do it if I’m bored or depressed or feeling unconfident. Once it’s working, I can write anywhere — I’ve done stuff while hanging off an abseil rope on a sea cliff or a highrise building — but not under any conditions. If I’m sitting at my desk I hate to be cold, I hate anyone’s noise except my own. But I like working on a train.

Sounds about right to me. When I’m on a roll, it doesn’t really matter where I am, and if I’m feeling depressed, it’s like pulling teeth to get anything that isn’t simply mopey or angst-ridden out onto the screen or page. I’ve found it easy to get into that rut, and try to be mindful of it, and not letting it overwhelm other things I wish to talk about (if you’ve noticed that my posts sometimes seem varied and veer through topics with remarkable speed, now there’s perhaps a hint as to why… that, or I have the attention span of a goldfish. Maybe a bit of both). With depression, it’s remarkably easy to get stuck on depression and its related trappings, despite the fact that the answer to combatting it is do and be productive and talk about other things.

So, R Stevens linked to SBaGen via Twitter, and I decided to at least find out what the heck he was talking about. Turns out SBaGen is an open source binaural beats generator. If you’re not familiar with the concept, a quick explanation (there are whole books about this, so I definitely recommend looking into it on your own if you’re curious): binaural beats is a method to synchronize and alter your brainwave patterns, ie putting yourself into an alpha or theta (among others) state, for the purposes of meditation, focus, more restful sleep, lucid dreaming, and even (supposedly) out of body experiences. It’s kind of new age-y, but since it’s a free generator, who really cares, it cost you nothing to try it out, and if you decide it’s not worth it, you can delete it easily.

I tried out the Demo, which starts at a 200Hz cycle and slides down to 5Hz over the course of 30 minutes. It’s supposed to theoretically leave you feeling light and energized. I do feel more alert after trying it, though I would like to comment on a few things that happened with it (while I won’t necessarily be posting it on here, I do plan on keeping a journal of my observations as I experiment with this). Notably, a few minutes in, my left thumb abruptly started to feel extremely hot, and my right thumb started to feel cold. Neither was touching anything, and after another few minutes, it largely subsided (which would make sense since different wavelengths are meant to affect you differently, and that frequency changed over that period). Dunno what it all means, but it does leave me curious to find out.

The Role of Writing in Games

[S]ince the games are generally about power, control, and those other primitive things, the stories tend to be so as well. This means they tend to be power fantasies. That’€™s generally considered to be a pretty juvenile sort of story.

The stories in most video games serve the same purpose as calling the uber-checker a “king.”€ It adds an interesting shading to the game, but the game at its core is unchanged, but at real way this what people enjoy, but somethings for football player can be different check this at https://www.sportsmole.co.uk/football/features/stupid-things-footballers-do-with-their-millions_424465.html.

Remember:€“ my background is as a writer, so this actually pisses me off. Story deserves better treatment than that. (Koster 86)

I would be hard pressed to state this thought in a more clear or concise fashion or esports. Put simply, the stories in most games tend to be weak compared to their media counterparts (novels, comic books, movies, television). Over the years, there have been a few exceptional stories that span larger issues, or address the nature of power and control itself; a modest number of games have alternatively succeeded in refining the “€œpower fantasy”€ into a more engaging telling, but the underlying principles have remained the same. Stories are tacked on, extraneous except in providing a context for player empowerment. While certainly not the sole issue, this is a fairly damning point when attempting to defend games as a valid form of creative expression.

So what can be done to improve the situation? The short answer is to hire professional writers. The vast majority of companies currently have their dialogue and story written and developed by the game designers, programmers, and artists themselves, rather than spending the money on a professional writer. Take the hint from the media that have come before: games are not that far different from comics, books, or movies, all of which have had significantly more time to develop techniques to tell a compelling and nuanced story, techniques that are effective across media.
Continue reading “The Role of Writing in Games”

Stacking Saucers

It’s currently 75 degrees and raining large, heavy droplets here in Hanover. I’ve spent a fair amount of time the past few days hanging out here, doing a lot of thinking, and a fair bit of talking along with it. It may not all be coagulated enough to put down in written form, but I’m going to give it a shot, because it’s an important subject. Of course, the subject itself is somewhat amorphous, multifaceted, and subject to interpretation. You could call it living an authentic or genuine life, but I prefer calling it living a passionate life.

As some are aware, I define being a geek as being genuinely interested and engaged by a subject. Theater Geeks, Movie Geeks, Anime Geeks, Book Geeks, these are all valid descriptions, but likewise there are Sports Geeks, Fashion Geeks, Social Geeks (not an oxymoron!), and these are just as valid, though we generally give them other names, like “jock”, “fashion maven”, and “socialite”. It all comes down to the same thing, however: being passionate about a subject and having it interest you so much that you learn all you can about it. It becomes a part of your life. You grok your passion.

Everyone has something that they are passionate about. It can vary wildly, and can even be unexpected to those around you. I’ve met people who are fascinated by the process of sewage treatment and water purification in the same way that I might talk about games. You never know what people are passionate about, and that act of wondering is a way that we can connect with others. A case in point; yesterday, I got to rambling about this topic in front of Collis, and randomly asked the girls at a table nearby what they were passionate about. Once they decided I wasn’t a nut-job (or at least a harmless one), the results were quite fascinating. These were people I’d never spoken with before, and yet when asked to talk about their passions, their eyes lit up and the conversation became animated. That passion for a subject is infectious, it becomes interesting to those around you whether they themselves share that passion or not. This is the power of passion.

That’s all pretty straightforward. Where I get all ranty and foaming at the mouth is the question of what we do with those passions. How many people are we surrounded by who are enthralled by a subject or topic or medium, but is never willing to take the step outside the safety net to actually pursue that as a profession? We go to college because that’s what we’re supposed to do. We get jobs that we hate because that’s what we’re supposed to do. Our passions are naysayed as too difficult, unattainable, unlivable, not just by those around us, but by ourselves, because we’re so afraid of stretching ourselves outside of complacency. For the most of us, the annoyance of living in the box is outweighed by the pain and fear of breaking out, and being who we want to be. If you have a passion for writing, be a writer. Write every damn day. Read other writing, read about writing, write stories, your thoughts, how your day went, that dream you had, a story, a poem, write about writing, write about reading. Live it, breathe it, embrace your passion, and it will embrace you. If you’re worried about it not being good enough or that it’s hard, or that there isn’t enough time in the day or that you want to watch your favorite television show or you want to go to that party, then ask yourself why you’re worried, and DO something about it. Afraid of the quality? WRITE MORE. Want to watch that show? Write about it, make it a project. It’s not just writing, either, it’s ANY passion. If you want to make art, bleed ink and paint. Don’t relegate it to a wistful sigh and a hobby, MAKE ART. If you aren’t pursuing your passions, then you deserve any unhappiness you receive.

If you think that’s unfair, then I have to ask what you’re so afraid of that you would deny your passion, your potential for the delusion of safety. That’s not contentment, and it’s certainly not happiness; it’s complacency. It is one thing to let that which does not matter slide. This is not such a case, however. It matters. It’s your passion, it’s your interest, it’s a part of your LIFE, and to deny it, to relegate it to the sidelines is denying a part of yourself. I do not see how that could be driven by anything but fear, or some form of self-destruction. Complacency is the antithesis of passion. Care to see what complacency and fear do? Here’s a social experiment for you to do: sit on a bench on a street and look at people. Look them in the eye, and see the reactions. It doesn’t matter if you’re well dressed or in rags, angry looking or with a smile on your face, nine times out of ten, the other individual will look away. Some can be explained away by conversations or other distractions, but that sort of ratio is simply too large to argue away. (For the record, out of roughly 100 people I tried this with last night, only 3 actually acknowledged the eye contact, all others looked away. Your mileage may vary.)

What drives that sort of behavior, that shrinking away from the possibility of contact or acknowledgment? My belief is that we shrink away from contact because we are afraid of having our world view shaken, of being stretched beyond the bounds of whatever box we’ve chosen for ourselves. To communicate with others inherently holds the potential of being challenged, and that scares people. We mitigate this as much as we can by surrounding ourselves with the like-minded, in classes, conferences, workplaces, social gatherings. How often do we just stop and ask someone on the street how they’re doing, what they’re interested in? Why not? Are we afraid that we might be judged? Why does it matter if we are? It’s just someone on the street, there is no illusory status lost from a conversation not panning out. It is, at worst, a missed chance at enrichment and engagement. You have not LOST anything. Those who talk to strangers live the fullest lives.

Annotation: Steering the Craft

Despite being the first book I started reading this month, Steering the Craft was the last that I finished. This is not to speak ill of it, mind you, as it is an excellent book on writing, written with candor, honesty, and expertise. Nor is it long. It IS, however, chock full of exercises of varying length and difficulty, and in trying to do at least some of them, it took longer to complete than I had expected. I’m glad I took the time, however, and I hope to return to the exercises I did not complete in the near future. Ursula LeGuin is easily one of the best science fiction authors in the history of the genre. If science fiction authors were a royal court, she would not just be a dame or duchess — she would be the Queen. And justifiably so. He writing is eloquent and remarkable, and her knowledge of the genre and field of writing in general is awe inspiring. I hope very much to meet her at some point, given that she lives a mere two hours south of me, in Portland, Oregon.

One of the interesting aspects of Steering the Craft is that it is actually a how to book, a book about writing, unlike most of the other writing books I’ve read thus far, which really amount to writer’s memoirs. To top that off, the book is done well, unlike so many other books of its type. It includes a glossary of terms, and an appendix of tips and advice on handling common issues like the lie/lay/lay debacle (it is not simply a matter of laying something down and lying down, there is also the intransitive verb that requires an indirect object, with its own set of rules), and the use of tense. The chapters themselves are insightful, and handle the more substantial aspects of writing well (tense, point of view, rhythm, sentence structure). She does away with many of the more stolid (read: stupid) rules from grammar school, and explains the ones she chooses to keep. Basically, what it comes down to is that any rule can be broken, but if it is broken, it should be broken well, and for a reason.

The book can be used in a variety of ways. Each chapter can stand alone rather well, and can be referenced fairly quickly as a desktop companion. Additionally, it can be used as a textbook for a peer writing group (and one of the appendixes is how to find or start such a group), or simply slogged through individually (what I ended up doing). Because each chapter stands alone, it can be done at whatever pacing necessary, though she recommends trying to spend at least a few days to a week on each chapter. Something else that I find particularly encouraging is that she includes her mailing address, and encourages readers to contact her with opinions on the text, how we found it useful, what could be improved, et cetera. Given her list of achievements, talent, and respect within the field, she could very easily have handed this book down from “on high.” I respect her a great deal for choosing not to do so.

Some parts of the book were more useful to me than others. I already have a fairly strong grasp over point of view, and while I occasionally absent-mindedly slip, a good grasp of tense as well. That said, it was vindicating to hear someone I respect as much as LeGuin declare that there is nothing wrong with using some of the more esoteric tenses (future perfect and past perfect, for instance), if you understand how to use them (which I do — four years of Latin does have SOME uses), and that largely the current avoidance of them stems from many mainstream authors and journalists NOT understanding how to use them properly. Her comments on the use of passive voice was also insightful and directly relevant: I am notorious for using qualifiers and passive voice in my writing, which makes the writing instantly less personal than it otherwise would be. It also makes it seem more “scholarly”, which is where I picked up that particular rut. It’s a vicious circle: we spend 95% of our academic career learning how to write things in an “academic” manner, which then permeates the media through graduates entering the workforce, which spreads it to the rest of the world… leaving so much of the population’s writing dense and impersonal, lacking the ability to truly COMMUNICATE.

A chapter that I found particularly useful for my own writing and myself is the first chapter, “The Sound of Your Writing”. It’s not just a matter of the rhythm, but also a matter of the sounds each word makes, in your mind and out loud. Using strong words, onomatopoeia, alliteration, rhyming, the flavor of what you’re talking about can convey a different effect. Something else I noticed about it, however, is that the nature of the exercise encourages word association, which can lead your story in unexpected directions. Word association is like a backdoor, getting you past that guard-dog we call our self-censor, and can let you be honest in ways that might not have otherwise gotten out. When I did the exercise for chapter one, what had started out as a silly little exercise ended up being a somewhat angst-ridden prose poem, which led me to discover that I still have a lot of angst in me, for better or worse. It made me realize that maybe I’m not handling my depression as well as I thought, because it became clear that I wasn’t DEALING with any of it, just burying it. Now I’m actually trying to take a more proactive stance in dealing with my depression.

Another chapter I really enjoyed was chapter nine, “Indirect Narration, or What Tells”, mainly because it’s a weak point for me. I’ve spent so much of my writing life outlining or creating character sheets and histories and not actually TELLING THE STORY, that I really found the information in the chapter really useful. It discusses ways to work in personality and history (both of the characters and the world) directly into dialogue and narrative, without creating “expository lumps”. I’ve always found my dialogue to be somewhat flat or weak in my writing, and this chapter made me realize that what I need to work on is weaving history into the dialogue. This will smooth out the story, and add a great deal of depth to the dialogue. I’m still not very good at it, but at least I’ve realized a method of improvement and can work on it more. (This is far more useful advice than what Stephen King said about dialogue, namely, you either have an ear for it or you don’t, and no amount of practice will change that.)

This is a remarkable book, and I would definitely recommend it to anyone interested in writing. In particular, I’d recommend it to writing workshops and teachers (in fact, I’m going to email my high school creative writing teacher and suggest it), as so many of the exercises in it are perfect for a workshop environment (LeGuin even marks the ones she feels are particularly suited for workshops). I’m greatly looking forward to returning to the book as the semester goes on, to visit and revisit some of the exercises within it. Like any other artistic endeavor, art is not just a matter of creativity, it is also very much a craft. I’m looking forward to refining mine.

LeGuin, Ursula K. Steering the Craft. Portland: Eighth Mountain Press, 1998.

Annotation: Zen in the Art of Writing

Zen in the Art of Writing is not precisely a book about writing. Rather, it is a book about being passionate about what you do. While there are tips and tricks to writing and writing well, it is rather superfluous to the overall value of the book. In my eyes, where the book is most valuable is in encouraging you to be passionate. We have emotions, and yet so much of our academic lives are spent subjugating those emotions in a misguided attempt at objectivity. It is like a breath of fresh air to not only be told it’s okay to get angry or excited, but to be encouraged to do so.

The book is broken up into several essays, written over several years for various other reasons, collected into one book. As such, there is a bit of repetition in his subject matter (he comments on several of his stories several times through several different essays, often saying almost exactly the same thing), which can largely be forgiven. It really only irks when the points of repetition essentially boil down to some personal horn tooting on the case of the author (which kind of jives with what I’ve heard about Ray, namely that he is a very nice person but not all that modest about his talents). None of the repetition really harms the core of any of the essays, so no harm done, I suppose.

I thought about responding to each of the essays, but decided it would be more fun and rewarding to point out the parts that really struck me. In the essay “On the Shoulders of Giants”, Bradbury talks about the Science Fiction Explosion:

[…]and placed a gentle bomb on teacher’s desk. Instead of an apple it was Asimov.
“What’s that?” the teacher asked, suspiciously.
“Try it. It’s good for you,” said the students.
“No thanks.”
“Try it,” said the students. “Read the first page. If you don’t like it, stop.” And the clever students turned and went away.
The teachers (and the librarians, later) put off reading, kept the book around the house for a few weeks and then, late one night, tried the first paragraph.
And the bomb exploded.
They not only read the first but the second paragraph, the second and third pages, the fourth and fifth chapters.
“My God!” they cried, almost in unison, “these damned books are about something!”
“Good Lord!” they cried, reading a second book, “there are Ideas here!”
“Holy Smoke!” they babbled, on their way through Clarke, heading into Heinlein, emerging from Sturgeon, “these books are — ugly word — relevant!”
“Yes!” shouted the chorus of kids starving in the yard. “Oh my, yes!”
And the teachers began to teach, and discovered an amazing thing:
Students who had never wanted to read before suddenly were galvanized, pulled up their socks, and began to read and quote Ursula LeGuin. Kids who had never read so much as one pirate’s obituary in their lives were suddenly turning pages with their tongues, ravening for more. (Bradbury 102-103)

This piece right here is precisely what I’m talking about when I say that Bradbury’s writing is passionate and bordering poetic. It also strikes a very strong chord with me, on many levels. For one thing, I was one of those kids growing up, but in a later wave with a different fight on their hands. I had the side of the teachers now, and instead I was up against the other students, trying to convince them to just try it, and if they didn’t like it, they could throw the book in my face. I can count the number who actually took me up on my suggestions on one hand. A different but related chord is that the essay explains and encapsulates my feelings about science fiction so well. Science Fiction in so many ways should have stuck with an earlier moniker: Speculative Fiction. The genre is filled with ideas and notions and questions and ideals, some of which become reality, but that’s really superfluous to the nature of the genre. It’s the IDEAS that are important. And, for me at least, it is the challenge of Humanity.

The next most striking and invaluable essay for me was the title essay: “Zen in the Art of Writing”. It is one of his more straightforward essays, dealing with a (somewhat) more technical part of writing, namely how to do it. The entire essay can be summed up in one line: “WORK – RELAXATION – DON’T THINK – FURTHER RELAXATION” (Bradbury 144). The rest of the essay just explains that statement. What it comes down to is this: writing is WORK, don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. There is craft in addition to art, and that is the structure of writing, and the act of writing itself. That said, if you are stressed out, your work will be stressed as well — it will not flow, and it will not be nearly as honest as you likely want. Likewise, if you let yourself think about what you are writing, you censor yourself: get it OUT THERE, you can always censor it later — chances are, once it’s out, you’ll be glad it is, no matter what your censor tells you when you’re writing it. Which brings us back to relaxation: ideas are from a deep part of your mind, and it takes being relaxed and receptive to get them to the surface. It’s where the “Zen” in the title becomes slightly less of just a turn of phrase. A major principle of Zen is an acceptance and receptiveness to one’s surroundings. Writing is very Zen.

The third and final essay I’m going to write about is “How to Keep and Feed a Muse”. There is always talk about a “writer’s muse”, talk that never seems to get anywhere, mostly involving some people arguing against any outside source, and others citing divine inspiration. Personally, I’m somewhere in the middle. Bradbury seems more in the camp of citing the Muse as our subconscious. There’s nothing wrong with this, and the essay is very valid regardless of which “camp” you belong to. It is worth noting that in either camp, there is the agreement that a muse must be fed. It needs experiences to grow from and work with, and life is its food of choice. It must also have an outlet, however: whether the work is good or not or feels particularly inspired or not, you need to write to keep a muse. Or paint, or sculpt, or any other creative medium — take your pick, the fact remains the same: if you are not willing to let the muse speak through you, then the muse will stop trying to. Of this I am absolutely certain, speaking from first-hand experience. You don’t even realize how important the interplay between yourself and your muse IS until it’s gone, whether through abuse, or neglect.

Zen in the Art of Writing is definitely worth reading. I would recommend happily (and have) to anyone willing to spend the few hours necessary to read it (it is not precisely long, weighing in at 176 pages in trade paperback size… I read it in less than a day). Those looking for a how-to book on writing should look elsewhere… and then come back when their priorities are in order. After all, what is the point in knowing how to write if you have nothing to say?

Bradbury, Ray. Zen in the Art of Writing. Santa Barbara: Joshua Odell Editions, 1994.

Annotation: Sometimes the Magic Works

Before getting into the meat of the actual book, I thought this might be a good spot to point out an observation I’ve discovered in the books on writing that I’ve read so far. It may not be a requirement to be egotistical to be a successful professional writer, but it certainly seems to help. Perhaps it is because they spend so much time pretending to be or writing about someone else, but it seems like any opportunity where it MIGHT be appropriate to talk about themselves, they do so, often in the most self-aggrandizing fashion they can. This isn’t just an observation from the books on writing I’ve read thus far, it’s also from meeting various authors at conventions. (I should, however, mention that there are definitely many exceptions to this notion… it just doesn’t feel like it, sometimes.) I’m not trying to single Terry out, either. He is no worse (and in many ways better) than a lot of others I’ve had the chance to read or talk to. Honestly, I think my frustration just stems from reading a chain of these books, and Mr. Brooks is really nothing more than the proverbial straw.

In the tradition of other books of its ilk (such as On Writing and Bird by Bird), Sometimes the Magic Works is more a memoir of a writer than it is a book on writing. There is a lot to be said for this style of book. The subject material is kept interesting and engaging through personal anecdotes, and their autobiographical story is inherently encouraging (no one lives a charmed life, after all). The drawback, of course, being that it is more up to the reader to glean the useful information out of the text than it would be with more cut and dry books on writing. By and large, I think that tradeoff is a worthwhile one.

Sometimes the Magic Works is broken into separate chapters that largely work as self-contained essays (there is the occasional reference to an earlier chapter’s comments, but otherwise are encapsulated nicely). The reading was informal and amusing, making for a quick read. Rather than break it down chronologically, Brooks breaks up the book according to the subject he’s talking about. For instance, one of the early chapters is called “Luck”, which discusses when his first novel was accepted, by none other than Lester Del Rey, who personally took him under his wing and made the book (The Sword of Shannara) the flagship fantasy novel under the fledgling Del Rey imprint. Had his submission been a few weeks earlier or later, that flagship role would have gone to a different author, and we may have never heard of Terry Brooks at all. That is a prime example of Luck, with a capital “L”. There is no amount of planning or skill that can account for fortuitous timing. (The encouraging flipside of this story: it points out that these sorts of lucky breaks DO happen, fate will help you, but you have to do a little legwork as well, like writing a good book and submitting it.)

Another chapter that was interesting to read was called “It’s Not About You”. This chapter talked about his very first book signing, sitting next to the esteemed A.J. Budrys, a well known and respected veteran author. He’d had these grand dreams of how book signings would be… which were promptly squashed thoroughly by the reality of the signing: he didn’t sell or sign a single book the entire day. This was a pretty humbling experience for him, and made Terry really reassess his idea of what book signings were about. What he decided ultimately was that book signings are about making a connection with your readers (or potential readers). It’s not about being adored, or having swarms of fans around, hanging on your every word. It’s about talking with another person and making a connection with them that they (and hopefully yourself as well) will remember later. I can really get behind this idea. It is a far more rewarding experience, in my opinion, than it would be to sit around acting like an ass because you think everyone there is a fanboy.

On the topic of actual writing, it was nice to get an alternative viewpoint to the other authors I’ve read: neither King and Goldberg don’t use outlines for their writing, but Brooks swears by them. His stance is this: because of outlining the story, plot, characters, and locations before writing the actual story, he is able to keep his first draft far more cohesive than other authors. Generally speaking, he is able to write one draft, do one rewrite, and be ready for publication. Other authors end up doing rewrite after rewrite trying to wrap up their story. He does mention, however, (and if he hadn’t, I would have) that it comes down to figuring out what style works best for you, as there are plenty of successful authors in both camps (and even some in between).

Overall, I found this an enjoyable book, and reasonably insightful and informative. I’d definitely recommend it to anyone interested in learning more about Terry Brooks or fiction writing in general. I would say it is a worthwhile addition to the “writer’s memoir” genre.

Brooks, Terry. Sometimes the Magic Works. New York: Del Rey, 2003.

Annotation: On Writing

Stephen King is not exactly what one would call an “obscure” writer. In fact, you walked down the street, any street, and asked random people who came to mind when asked for a modern author, chances are fairly high that a pretty large number will mention Mr. King. Some rave about his work, others think he’s a hack, but either way, he most decidedly someone who knows how to write, and whom people will listen to about writing. It’s fitting, then, that he chose to make his memoir about writing.

King makes a point at the very beginning of the book of pointing out that he has tried to strip away the bullshit, leaving just useful (or at least anecdotal) information. I applaud his efforts, and feel that he largely succeeded: it reads both fast and well, with very little getting dragged out beyond what is necessary to convey his point.

The book is broken into several sections, starting with a personal memoir of his childhood and early writing career, basically spelling out how he came to be who and how he is. This was amusing and insightful to read, as well as vaguely validating concerning my own life: in terms of creative impulses and literary origins, we have a lot in common. For instance, as junior-high children, he and his brother created their own newspaper (“Dave’s Rag” named after his brother David), which they sold among family, neighbors, and classmates. As a sixth grader, I was involved in a similar endeavor (though entirely on my own), writing a book review newsletter that I sold for a dime to classmates, until the school shut me down (I was not using any of their resources, and privately the teachers appreciated the effort, but there was a policy of not selling non-school related things in school).

One of the most moving bits in the personal memoir portion of the book for me would have to be when he was talking about the call he got when Carrie’s paperback rights sold. He and his wife were living in a beat-up, roach infested apartment, scrambling to make ends meat. His editor called him, and told him that the rights to Carrie had sold for $400,000 dollars. His wife was out of town and Stephen had no way to contact her about it, and spent the afternoon pacing around waiting for her to get home… when she did, he told her. She just looked around the shithole of an apartment and started crying. That’s a pretty intense little bit of humanity. Both Stephen and his wife Tabitha were college educated, but from poor working class families. Quite literally, it’s like being given a golden ticket out of the hard life. It’s not enough to retire on, no, but it’s enough to get out of the hard place they were in. I know it’s a rare thing to get that much money for book rights, but it really does leave this gem of hope for anyone who wants to be a writer.

The next portion of On Writing is called “What Writing Is”, and is really about just that. The section is short, just a chapter long. What it comes down to for Stephen, and I largely agree with this assessment, is that writing is a form of telepathy. It is a meeting of minds: the writer’s and the reader’s, at least if it’s done well. It’s not a matter of describing every detail (that really does nothing more than bog down this mental communication), but sharing enough that there is a shared picture in the minds of everyone involved: the reader, the writer, the characters in the story. He closes this section with a pleading request that we take writing seriously, which I second. Something worth clarifying here: I’m not talking about writers being taken seriously — too often, they are taken TOO seriously, in fact. Nor am I talking about what is written being taken seriously — I somehow doubt Douglas Adams wanted Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy to be treated as a serious tome. What I (and Stephen) am talking about is taking the act of writing seriously. If you aren’t willing to commit yourself to the task of writing, then don’t do it. Go read a book, play a game, watch a movie, do anything else, but don’t waste your time and ours by going in and writing half-assedly.

The third section of the book is called “Toolbox”, and discusses the writer’s toolbox, at length. The metaphor of a multi-layered toolbox is a good one: you keep your key tools at the top, and open deeper when you need to. Vocabulary and grammar are the two biggest tools at the top: looking for themes within your writing, something the author suggests leaving until your first draft is DONE, is further down. This may be less true for plot-driven pieces, but his work is largely situational. He does not outline, just comes up with a situation, creates the basic skeleton of some characters, and sees what develops where and when. It’s an interesting concept, and one that I don’t see suggested often enough. So many books on writing talk steadily about the need for outlining, and pre-planning in varying amounts (but rarely no planning at all). This isn’t something that should need validation (ie, hand-holding), but it is still nice to actually have a successful writer say “Don’t worry about it, just let it go where it goes.”

I found the ranting King does in the Toolbox section hilarious but spot-on. He discusses several of his pet peeves such as adverbs, passive verbs, and cliché metaphors and similies. Of course, after all the rants and arguments against them, King does point out that he is vaguely hypocritical about this. He tries to catch these things, but sometimes stuff just slips through. But really, I think that’s kind of the point. In my opinion, it’s not that these things should be actually shunned, but that they are things that if used too much, they become painful. Unless you have angelic levels of restraint and a DEEP understanding of the English language, it’s best to avoid them simply so that when they DO appear (and they will), they’ll be used in moderation.

The fourth portion of On Writing is the title section. It is a strange mishmash of personal curmudgeonly diatribe and remarkably useful and sage writing advice. His discussion of the use and development of theme was remarkably insightful, as was his diatribe about getting over ourselves about trying to pretend that we live in a vacuum as writers. In so many other artforms, especially when learning, it is expected that you will try to emulate the style or even composition of prior artists. But in writing, there is this myth and fear that writing “in the style of” another author is plagiarism. It’s bullshit, and if you stop to think about it for even a moment it’s obviously bullshit, but that doesn’t stop us from having that initial gut feeling that we have to fight to overcome. I’m as guilty as the next person about this one… I used to get so upset, feeling like I was “ripping off” some of my favorite authors, and only realized much later that there was nothing wrong with what I was doing. It is part of developing your own voice, if nothing else.

The final section of the book was about recovering and returning to writing after a near fatal accident the author was in during the summer of 1999. It’s a pretty intense piece of writing, deeply personal and yet filled with fact-finding and observations. In all of it, I’d say the part that most impacted me was when he was talking about his intial recovery:

I entered the hospital on June nineteenth. Around the twenty-fifth I got up for the first time, staggering three steps to a commode, where I sat with my hospital johnny in my lap and my head down, trying not to weep and failing. You try to tell yourself that you’ve been lucky, most incredibly lucky, and usually that works because it’s true. Sometimes it doesn’t work, that’s all. Then you cry. (King 263)

What was really heartening about the whole ordeal is just how supportive his wife was throughout all of it. When the author decided he needed to get back to work, Tabitha backed him up, setting up a workspace where he would have access in his wheelchair, and then staying within earshot but not in the way while he tried writing (this was a period of time that due to his injuries, even being upright for more than 45 minutes at a time caused him serious searing pain). This sort of support is way more valuable in my eyes than any amount of accolades. It’s a real show of trust.

Overall, I’d definitely recommend this book, without qualification. Regardless of whether you are a Stephen King fan or not, or whether you are interested in writing or not, it was an enjoyable book, and worth the time to read.

Annotation: Writing Down the Bones

I think it is worth mentioning, at least in passing, the similarities between what is discussed in Writing Down the Bones and what is brought up in Art & Fear. This is by no means a bad thing, as the similarities focus around a very important message: get out of your own damn way and let yourself be the creative person you truly are. When congealed down to a single statement like that, it may seem a little hokey, a bit like something a motivational speaker would say, but it is absolutely true: the biggest limitation in our creative growth is our fear of being creative. The sooner we realize this and stop being so self-critical (to the point of paralysis, in some cases), the sooner we will become what we hope to be.

The structure of Writing Down the Bones is simple and more useful through its simplicity. Rather than building upon each prior chapter in a linear fashion, this book can largely be read in any order you want. This is intentional, a design used to allow these brief (2-5 page) essays to be used on an individually encapsulated fashion, like a reference book. I really enjoyed this style of writing, at least partially because it kept any thought or message the author was trying to convey encapsulated into a small body of text. This really helps keep the “literary mental masturbation” to a bare minimum: in a five page essay, there is much less room for the sort of hoop-jumping and fluffing that occurs in most writing of this type.

One concept that Ms. Goldberg brought up repeatedly was the use of regular journaling as a technique to both get the creative juices flowing as well as to get you used to the concept of generating output every day, even if it is never seen by anyone else (or even if it’s material you don’t WANT anyone else to see). It gets the crud at the surface of the mind out of the way, allowing your deeper creative self room to express itself. Generally speaking, I agree with her: streaming consciousness is all well and good, but the “good” stuff is when we progress past that into the streaming unconscious. I disagree with her to some extent, however, concerning how much she uses that period almost entirely as warm-up, delineating it from any other writing she chooses to do that day. This disagreement, however, is roughly akin to whether milk chocolate or dark chocolate is best: both are good and perfectly valid choices, and which is preferred is entirely a matter of taste.

Something we are in complete agreement about, however, is the need (almost requirement) for passion. What makes a writer — or any artist, for that matter — good is the ability to see even the most mundane, ignored aspects of life in a passionate manner. Red wheelbarrows are glazed with rainwater all over the world, but it took William Carlos Williams to notice and appreciate it enough to write about one. Long before anyone suggested this to me, I was declaring to anyone who would listen how important the little moments were to me. I live for them, and cherish them so much. I feel emptier when I haven’t noticed any of these moments in a while, and I feel enriched every time I do catch it. The next step, a step I used to take but for some reason have become too timid to do now, is write about these moments.

Which brings us to the another subject Goldberg wrote about: validation. I used to write about the moments I had experienced, but did not receive any validation from my peers about what I was sharing. Most of the time, the most I could get out of anyone was “It’s good, I just don’t know what to say.” Finally, I just stopped writing, because I felt like I was ripping my heart out in my writing only to find out that no one was willing to take it. (I am aware that this is largely whining, crying over spilled milk, but that’s part and parcel with this subject: it is easy to get into this cycle of feeling under appreciated and then refusing to believe if even when you ARE appreciated or validated.) This, of course, is just another way we block ourselves: we should be writing for ourselves, not writing to be validated by our peers. By seeking validation, all we do is set ourselves up for disappointment, because a lot of the time, it simply won’t happen.

The final subject I want to bring up specifically from Writing Down the Bones (though not the final subject of the book) is that of coffee shops, restaurants, and other public spaces to write. Some people need their dens to write in, they need it quiet (or with their choice of music playing), and the door closed away from the world. Others — like myself, apparently, as well as the author — need public spaces. Borrowing a term from Ray Oldenburg, third spaces, places that are neither home nor work that serves a social function. Especially as an introvert, these spaces (generally coffee shops, personally) create a sort of insular bubble where there is activity around you, but that you are not required to participate in. I find this environment extremely motivating, and end up writing easily three times as much as I do at home (it took me over a day to write the first paragraph of this essay at home. I have written the entire rest of the essay in a little over an hour sitting in a Barnes & Noble Café). Some of her suggestions about new third spaces have a lot of promise, which I plan to look into at some point in the not too distant future (restaurants, for instance). Some might call third spaces a crutch, and that I should be able to write ANYWHERE. They may be right, but frankly I don’t really care. It is worth it to me to spend the $1-5 a session buying coffee, tea, or juice in exchange for the amount of creative output I gain over sitting at home for free. I’m inclined to believe that Goldberg would agree.

Overall, I really enjoyed reading Writing Down the Bones, and would definitely recommend it to anyone who wants to write (or to a lesser extent, create any sort of art). I finished the book very quickly, which is more a testament to the writing in the book than it is to the length. Originally, I was considering just borrowing this book from the library, but after reading it, I am glad to be able to have it on my shelf.

Goldberg, Natalie. Writing Down the Bones. Boston: Shambala Publications, 1986.