I had no intention of posting today, far too much writing on my plate, but I followed a link trail to the following post and I had to share it. Very much related to my post yesterday but incredibly rich with such wonderful information. Enjoy!
http://fozmeadows.wordpress.com/2012/12/08/psa-your-default-narrative-settings-are-not-apolitical/
“What you do makes a difference, and you have to decide what kind of difference you want to make.” — Jane Goodall
If I have learned anything in my life it is that what you do, as an individual, matters. Even refusing a choice is making a choice - the choice to let another (or others) choose for you.
And if I’ve learned anything else, it is that authors and other creative types, by their choice to write, often lead the way to imagining a new way of being in the world. Writers are visionaries, imagineers who paint a new face over the surface of the world, and because they are ‘under cover’ writing ‘fictional’ stories they can explore the toughest of topics often without inviting rancor and anger.
Star Trek is a perfect example. A story of a possible future where humans have outgrown their childish selfish ways, have recognized a higher purpose and the value of allowing people to evolve as they would, through the prime directive. Star Trek taught generations of young people that differences are to be respected and have value within themselves regardless of how primitive or advanced the culture may be. That difference is cool.
Sci-Fi writers have paved the way for science, often predicting the future in their ‘crazy’ imaginings. The Star Trek flip communicator (a.k.a cell phone), voice controlled machines (such as in A Space Odyssey or Jarvis in Iron Man) are now common place in cell phones, computers themselves, Hitchhikers’ Babel fish now resides in Google and similar gadgets, flying cars, laser beams, space travel… you name it, writers dreamed it and scientists invented it.
And it’s not just science. There is a reason why book burning is so common during times of great social control. Books change the way we think, the way we see the world. The Diary of Anne Frank, To Kill a Mockingbird, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, 1984… the list goes on and on. I’ll never forget putting down Childhood’s End and contemplating what that meant to me and my catholic upbringing (I’m an atheist now), or the shaken to the core feeling I experienced reading The Yellow Wallpaper.
We are who we are, in large part, based on what we read. There is no doubt about it, writers change the world.
This came to mind today after reading a blog post from M.E. Kinkade about the challenge female genre writers face in getting reviews. This is certainly not the first time the topic has come up on the interwebs or on my blog (see Holy Tata’s Batman, Where are all the Women?). Aiden Mohr wrote a great article on the topic in his A Personal Challenge: Gender Balance in 2013, the comments are quite telling.
Writers can change the world, but only if their works get the visibility to reach an audience. Again, this is where we, as writers, come in. We all read, probably at least as much as we write, and our decisions on what we read makes a difference. This discussion about gender equality in genre writing is still a discussion because not enough of us have chosen to end it.
This debate could be over today if we all chose to approach our reading with a teeny bit of intention. Regardless of whether you believe discrimination is present or prevalent within the publishing industry, why not be more inclusive in our reading choices, why not open up our authorial demographic?
We can kill this debate completely simply by choosing to expand the repertoire of books we read to include women and authors from different cultural backgrounds than ourselves and by talking about it.
Let’s do what we do as writers and lead the way for the rest of the world.
k.
I feel kinda stupid even writing this blog post. But that is the thing about genius… it is able to illuminate something that another had been completely unable to see until that point. They say when the student is ready the teacher will appear… that may be hokey bullshit but that exact thing seems to have happened to me this past weekend.
You see, I’ve been living secret lives. Several of them in fact. Like most human beings I have varied interests, and for reasons I don’t recall, I’ve been keeping them completely separate from one another, and in the end, separate from me as well.
I have three separate blogs that never reference one another and that are effectively anonymous – I write them under pseudonyms, and then I have my own personal online life where I’ve connected with my immediate friends and family – primarily on Facebook. In all of them I’ve been acting like a secretive comic book character, keeping my hero (um, ok, just maybe just blogging) personalities a deep dark secret hidden from the world and from my friends and family. Treating them as if they each existed in a vacuum, a perfectly isolated silo, my multiple personalities hidden in the infiniteness of the interwebs.
And then I found Justine Musk. I don’t know how exactly, that is one of the amazingly awesome things about the land of Twitter, I simply found myself poking around on her website a few days ago not knowing that lighting was about to strike.
She has a series of posts about platform building that are unlike any I’ve read before. Her focus is on building your own manifesto (or manifesta as she terms it) about who you are and what you are trying to achieve. She talks not at all about marketing or SEO or any of the rest of that in these posts, rather, they are all about sharing YOU, or un-marketing. As she puts it ”It’s not enough to know how to say it. You have to have something to say.”
All of those varied interests are what make you you, and they are what give you something to say. That’s your angle. They are what make you interesting, and they are what will ultimately connect you to readers and allow them to feel they know you in some way. And, it gives you an avenue to explore all of your great goals in life instead of just one. It does not need to be only about your writing (or whatever your site is about), instead, it can be about changing the world in some small way by allowing you to explore all of your goals while simultaneously connecting with your readers in unexpected ways.
All of a sudden it dawned on me that I have been diluting my platform by keeping such artificial separation between my various me’s. Maybe, even, I’ve been diluting me. The connections I was making over there never paid off over here because of the great wall of me I’d built between them.
I have a new strategy now. An integrated platform where I can expose myself share all of me with my minions all the wonderful folks out here on the interwebs. I’ve re-written my ‘about’ page to be more inclusive and am in the process of connecting the dots between me’s. And I have to say, it is already paying off in unexpected ways.
Yesterday as I was doing some reading for one of my classes (an article titled “Organizational Change and Managerial Sensemaking: Working Through Paradox”) I came up with 13 (yes, THIRTEEN) blog posts related to writing and the challenges of being a writer. THAT is the power of an integrated platform people. If I needed a sign that this was the right thing to do (besides the ringing of truth in my ears) this was most definitely it.
k.
Check out Justine’s posts on creating a manifesta at the following three links:
Why writing a Manifesta can Help You Develop a Creative Vision and Ultimately Sell More Books.
How to Write a Creative Manifesto
The Secret Ingredients to a Strong Author Platform
I recently stumbled on this great post from Mythic Scribes about the compelling nature of imperfect characters. They list seven of what they feel are the best flawed characters in fantasy literature… and I must admit it is a great list!
It is a bit disheartening, though, to be a part of the majority in that am a total fan of Tyrion Lannister. :)
Some of my favorites are also Althea Vestrit in Robin Hobbs’ Mad Ship books, Kvothe in Name of the Wind, Spike from Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and Cara from the Sword of Truth books.
Who are your favorites?
MWBB Winner
This was my entry for week 9 Mid Week Blues Buster. It was silly fun to write.
Strange Eternity
The fact I’d gotten here after smoking some crazy shit from a strange asian dude and being sucked black-hole-style into a door located in my left eyeball should have been a sign. But hell, I thought it was part of the trip. Seriously, inter-dimensional time portal bars just doesn’t exist in the real world, how could I have known?
Except they do. I’ve been there.
The bartender was a tall black man with dreads that were actually tentacles he could control like arms. Dude, you have not lived until you’ve seen a tentacle-headed bartender serving drinks so fast you can barely see them mixing. No one waited for a refill at the Strange Cafe.
There were tables on the ceiling, green fire crackling in every corner, a band that played their own bodies… seriously, the drummer sat on stage with hands that were cymbals and knee caps grown into bongo’s being bonged by ‘hands’ that grew out of his man-boobs. The bass player stretched his toe into an instrument seven feet tall and played it using his johnson. Best damn music I’ve ever heard. I couldn’t stop dancing.
No. Seriously. I couldn’t stop. I danced until I had blisters on my heels, my legs were in agony and my knees screamed pain. I felt like I’d been stretched and crushed in one of those medieval torture devices, my cheeks sewn into a richter mortis smile. A nice lady covered in iridescent blue scaling took pity on me and intervened. She started to get amorous but when a questing trunk emerged from her belly button and began fiddling around my back door I suddenly remembered Lucy and begged off because I was a married man.
When I finally stumbled out the front door the sun was high in the sky and I was ready to sleep for a month and tell Lucy about the crazy trip I had. But our campsite was nowhere to be found and nothing looked right. We’d been camping here for years, I knew this area like the back of my hand, but it was like every mole, follicle and line had been rearranged. A strangers hand.
The trees were taller than I remembered. The air smelled deliciously clean. I stumbled to the dirt road that led to the campsite but there was no road. I walked to the overlook where we’d spend our evenings watching the sun set and stared in slack jawed amazement. None of the stuff that should have been there was there.
I-70 should have been visible far to the east, but wasn’t. Instead of interstate there was an uninterrupted expanse of forest. In fact, was all I could see, forest. Nothing but trees in every direction. There were never this many trees before. The only place on the entire planet forested like this was the Amazon for fucks sake. But there it was stretching before me, undeniable in its vast solidity.
I stumbled back to toward the bar thinking this was an elaborate hoax put on by my friends. They’d never let me live this one down. My foot caught on something and I fell to the ground banging my shin. I looked down and saw a signpost. Old and barely legible. I cleared away the forest debris and felt shock sink to my bones.
Stu Jackson rests somewhere in these woods, lost July 2013. Well lived, well loved, well missed. ~2043
July 2013 was the camping trip they were on right now. He continued to the bar, fuming at his friends, they had taken this too far. Ha ha, funny, assholes.
He stumbled up the steps of the cafe and was stopped by a large sign he’d not seen when he came here last night.
Be ye warned, time does not travel the same in all places. One minute at Strange Cafe and a decade may pass at home. Please check the time table for your zone in advance! Strange is not responsible for lost decades or eternities! Enter at your own risk.
Fuck.
The classes I am taking for my MS are taking up far more of my time than I anticipated. When I first set out on this journey I thought I’d have plenty of time to write and to do my school work. But taking double the typical recommended coursework for an MS, it turns out, takes quite a lot of time!
My writing has taken the hit. I was making excellent progress on the WIP early this year, but over the last two months I have barely touched it. I am forced to ask myself why. Why is it the writing that takes the hit?
I was reading a chapter in my text yesterday that really struck me. It is a book on behavior and motivation and they were discussing using observation to identify what motivates people. Oftentimes people don’t really know what motivates them, most of us don’t give it a whole lot of thought. But observing what people do when they have a choice can tell us a lot about what drives them, about what they love.
I felt my body ring as if I were a struck bell. If someone had taken a picture of me at that exact moment it would have captures stun lines radiating out from my body like the Wiley Coyote after being struck with an anvil.
When given a choice, people do the thing that means the most to them, that they find most rewarding. Now, clearly, I am paying tuition and I need to attend class, do homework, and get a good grade or I’d be wasting my money. But, as an example, on Friday night instead of joining @frinightwrites for their Friday evening writing challenge #writeclub I head out with friends. Or I plop onto the sofa for a movie. Or whatever. The point is, I don’t write.
What does that say about my desire to be a writer? Is it only skin deep? Do I like the idea of being a writer but not the reality of it? I certainly would not be the first person for whom this was true. But I love the process of writing, I get such joy out of sitting at a keyboard while a story spins out of me and onto the blank page. The days I do write I am always in a great mood and have such a feeling of accomplishment.
So what does it all mean then? I have no idea. I need to tease this out more. Figuring out our own fucked up psychology is always so much harder that ‘diagnosing’ others’. :)
Happy Writing,
K.
Writers Digest had an excellent post today covering how to build healthy relationships with your readers. I really enjoyed the post and felt it had real value to all sorts of interactions, particularly with social media.
It is so easy to jot a quick comment, like a page, favorite a tweet, that I think many of us do it (or don’t do it) without giving it a seconds consideration for quality or merit. As if our opinion is the One to Rule Them All. We throw ‘stuff’ out into the E-verse and feel pleased when folks respond but often don’t feel the need to respond back.
It feels damned old fashioned, but I guess what I’m saying, is that common courtesy seems to have vanished from the realm of the interwebs. It is dearly endangered if not completely extinct. I am not a traditionalist by any means, but I do think there is value in some certain ways of doing things, and this is one of them.
Take a read at the link above, what do you think?
K.
Kristen Lamb has a great post up today on the role of obsession in writing (or in any other new endeavor). I think she has hit the nail right on the head in this post. While obsession can clearly be a negative if taken too far, it is also what separates the wheat from the chaff when trying to do something new and different.
Writing, in particular, is hard. You shut yourself up somewhere, drown yourself in the creative flow in your head, and hope something magical makes it out onto the page. Then you let people read it and ask them to critique it and then go back and hack and slash it. Rinse and repeat. Talk about taking a beating. Maybe we are all a bit masochistic too!
No one can make it through this process without a touch of obsession. What else will keep you going when all of life’s demands try getting in the way, or when you receive rejections or fail to win that contest. If any job demands a person to be internally motivated it is writing. No immediate gratification here. Unless you find great satisfaction in the art of imperfect creation that generally only you see day to day.
So don’t be too tough on your inner obsessive. That might be all that keeps you moving when things get tough.
Happy writing,
K.
This was last weeks submission to the Mid-Week Blues Buster, it won second place, which is very exciting!
You’ve been flashed.
The Cockerel
I feel bad about it. Really, I do. But it just couldn’t be helped. I loved her first, you see, and everything was great until he came along.
I’d loved her from the moment I laid eyes on her. Long black hair so thick I could almost vanish inside of it. I loved the way it looked fanned out around us as we lay in bed after we finally got together. I was in seventh heaven in those days, never believing anything could change how great we were together.
But then it did. I don’t understand why. She never gave any indication of why. We woke that fateful morning, we cuddled, stretched, yawned and purred as we always did. She went out, which happens often, but she brought someone back with her that day and nothing was the same after that. From that point on I had to share. I got half the lovin I was used to and my share of the couch went from 1/2 to 1/3.
So you see, I had to kill him. There was no other way. I planned it so carefully, and pulled it off without a hitch. I hid the body, dragging it out into the backyard and dragging it deep into the thick shrub at the back of the yard. I even cleaned up all the tufts of fur I’d yanked out during the fight, not that it was much of a fight. Damn fool never saw it coming, he was dead almost before he even realized he was under attack.
I’d figured once I got rid of the upstart things would return to normal and that first night everything did. She mentioned him once or twice but showed only mild concern. But then she became increasingly agitated and worried. To my frustration she spent most of the following day and evening out looking for him, calling his name and shaking the treat bag to coax him back to her. I should have known it wouldn’t stop there.
When she pulled out the charm I knew I was in trouble. But goddamn if I didn’t forget just how special my girl was. She had powers, witchy powers, and she was hell bent on finding him. And I knew she would. And then she’d come looking for me. There was only one thing I knew that could protect me from witchcraft, and that brings me to the here and now.
I can hear her hungry panting and the soft pad of her bare feet as she aproaches. I can smell her too, the stink of the devil on her, the scent of murder. She aims to kill me just like I killed him. I’m huddled under the coop, both the cockerel’s eyes held gently on my tongue, spit dripping down my chin because I’m too afraid to swallow. Without those eyes I am lost.
I can see her feet. All the hair on my body stretches upright as she begins chanting. I’ve been her familiar for years, but I don’t know the language of spellcraft. I pray the stories about cockerel eyes protecting against witchcraft are true.
Her hands drop down near her feet and one black eye appears, staring through me as the chanting becomes increasingly feverish. My heart is pounding, like to leap out my chest.
A brilliant flash of light exploded in my face and when it cleared I was relieved to find I was still breathing. But things looked weird. Everything seemed dramatically bigger than it had before.
“Have fun mousie mousie.” Her voice was husky and clipped. “I’ll bring a new cat tomorrow. Enjoy the time you have left.”
I looked down and where I used to have black furred paws I saw tiny naked feet. The stories had not been true after-all, I had loved her, been by her side for all those years, and that bitch turned me into a fucking mouse.
I looked up at the now enormous corpse of the young cock, it’s empty eye sockets seeming to glare at me accusingly. “Damn your eyes!” I wanted to scream in rage but the only sound was an angry sounding squeak.
I am a big fan of Patrick Rothfuss, his books and, as it turns out, his blog. He’s just as good at the damn blogging as he is at writing! If you have not visited, you must do so now. You can find him at www.blog.patrickrothfuss.com.
Today he wrote,
But that’s not how it works. Writing can be communication. But most of the time, writing is a generative process. The story comes into being as it’s being written. It’s about discovery. Assuming you have to know what happens before you sit down to write is a rookie mistake.
and it really struck me as true. Now, I am absolutely an outliner. I give a lot of thought up front to who my characters are, what kinds of torture they will need to endure to turn them into the people I want them to be, what types of obstacles they’ll face and so on. Going in, I have a fairly good idea of what the story will be.
But no matter how much thought I put into it up front, it always evolves and changes as I write. As the characters grow and flesh out underneath my typing fingers nuances I had not thought of and never expected begin to poke out of the murk and take shape. I often feel like an archaeologist who’s discovered something super cool on the surface, only to find as they excavate that they’ve discovered something epic.
I love it when this happens. It is one of my favorite things about creativity.
What is this process like for you? Do you discover the story as you go? Or do you find your story follows your initial outline with minimal deviation?
