Writer at Large

After helping out my good friend properly motivate her muse to complete the book she had already pre-sold, she turned the tables and challenged me to actually complete a book over the next two months (finishing on October 25th as to give me a week to recuperate before NaNoWriMo 2010.

My muse immediately began belligerently defending her ability to accomplish such a feat. Since then, however, she has gone into denial. Too many ideas, she claims. Not enough time right now, she whines. None of the concepts are really good enough, she protests.

Uh huh.

Today is supposed to be Day One of this grand challenge. If it happens, you can watch it unfold here.

I guess modern artists have always known—or certainly been told by others—that the game is rigged against them. For most of us, our chief desire is to reach an audience that appreciates our work and wishes for us to produce more of it. The path to acquiring and keeping that audience can be a difficult one indeed.

Artists require feedback to know whether they have achieved their goals, reached their audience in the ways that they had intended. This can often be as great a challenge as the creation of the work itself.

I hear from many artists that they are hesitant to submit their work for professional consideration because they fear rejection. I find this a perfectly understandable reaction, for who wants to learn that the creation they have labored on for weeks or months—or even years—has been judged unsuitable for publication?

Most publishers offer their rejection in the form of a vague, legally-acceptable form letter that provides the artist with little useful information as to reason (or reasons) that their work was deemed unsuitable for publication. Was it the writing quality? Narrative style? Uninteresting characters? The purchasing editor was having a bad day?

I understand the rationale that most publishers receive more unsolicited submissions than they can reasonably respond to in a more personal and detailed manner. This has been the accepted practice for decades, but does little service to the artist.

So it comes down to persistence, with the artist repeatedly submitting their work, sometimes with modification and sometimes not, until their work is either finally accept or the artist gives up on that particular piece of work—sometimes permanently.

So, if you can, and your artist friends ask for your opinion of their work, please make at least a small effort to do so. Even terse, brutally honest is better than none at all. More often than not, it just inspires us to try harder.

I once had an instructor at the community college I attended tell me that I was very good at “synthesis”—bringing different things together into a cohesive whole. I find the same to be true of my writing: I believe my best work—certainly my best character interactions—come from the ideas and suggestions of others.

I recognize that most of my characters, particularly many of the main ones, tend to be internally focused. (What a surprise…) Their weaknesses and conflicts are usually confronted more within their minds and thoughts than through their actions and dialogue. For most readers, a little of that can go a very long way.

I am fortunate to associate with people who carry other perspectives, who can imagine characters who are more “out there” in terms of personality and character flaws. Through them, I believe my stories have become more interesting and provided opportunities for character interaction and insight that I do not think I would have achieved alone.

While my Myers-Briggs personality type might be adept at providing all of the information one might desire about the “box”, I consider myself privileged to have friends who are capable and eager to look outside it.

Is it because writing is such a solitary vice that writers struggle so with belief in their own abilities?

It occurred to me while locked in an ego battle with my muse (best summarized as: “I’m tired of writing just to entertain myself”), that while the writing process—or the creation of most art, I suppose—is generally a solitary act, it relies on some level of interaction with an audience to inform the writer whether or not they have succeeded in their intent.

I’m not sure what the right answer is in achieving this. I’ve tried Creative Writing classes, but my experience has been either that most instructors and students are too caught up in what I term the “literary” qualities of stories rather than the fundamentals of just telling a good story. Only one instructor I’ve had so far has even been open to the idea of genre. (One was downright hostile about it.) The few writing groups I’ve tried has tended to turn combative or fizzle out. (Probably due to the nature of writers in general, I suspect.)

I do my best to try to create characters, universes, and situations that can lead to what I hope to interesting stories. They seem interesting to me, but I don’t plan to be the sole purchaser of my own books.

As the method acting saying goes, “What is my motivation?”

To tell a good story: certainly. To have an audience who wants more: definitely.

Maybe that’s enough. Are you out there?

I've been following this discussion for the past week or so: The Publishing Death Spiral.

I'll leave it to you to make your own judgment on the opinions espoused within, but I do find Part Three pretty much dead on. My questions are:

• How long will it take before the inevitable evolution wins out?
• And what happens to authors in the meantime until it does?

(I know there's a lot more questions to be asked, but I thought I'd start with just two...)

"I think we gave it the ability to create its own sense of purpose out of our own human weaknesses, and the drive that compels us to overcome them."

Admiral James T. Kirk, Star Trek: The Motion Picture

If I read "post-9/11 sensibility" in one more book or movie review, I just might scream out loud. In deference to the horrific events of that—and the days that have followed--I would like to say this: We get it. As Q told Picard in "Q Who", "It's not safe out here. It's wondrous, with treasures to satiate desires, both subtle and gross. But it's not for the timid."

I see movies and television series being praised because they are "gritty" and "real". The recent Battlestar Galactica fell into this category. I'll grant that it made for good drama, but as a friend of mine said in one of her comments, "I don't like any of the characters; none of them is anyone I'd want to be friends with, or even live down the block from. And the universe is totally hopeless." While I don't entirely agree with her dramatic assessment, I concur with the sentiment.

When did we lose hope?

I read an article somewhere (I wish I could remember where so I could post a link to it) offering the premise that Star Trek held little relevance in our current world, even with the not-insignificant success of the recent movie. I find this opinion more than a little sad and depressing. One of the things that Star Trek, in any of its incarnations, offered was a message of hope—hope that we would find our way past our global chauvinism and tendencies toward various types of self-destruction to a future of peace and common vision.

I guess my question at the end of this rambling essay is this: Do readers and viewers still want to experience stories of a hopeful future? Or is the new common denominator a collection of vampires, paranoia, and post-apocalyptic despair? If so, I won't be writing about it.

Two days, nine pages. It almost wasn’t much of a challenge. (Note to self: Never, never, ever, say that aloud to the muse.) Actually, the story came together nicely. All the gaps were closed up. The page count was achieved.

From a story perspective, I think it’s all there. I have concerns whether it works as a standalone story (but not overly concerned, as it’s intended in be an episode in an ongoing series, I assume readers would have at least passing familiarity with the characters and existing situations).

I do think at least one additional scene needs to be added that better link the two parallel stories within it. I’m not entirely sure what it is, as so far all of the ones that have come to me feel contrived and forced. I figure I’ll deal with the issue when the time comes to novelize it.

On to the next project . . .