If you aren't busy waiting for the Mayans to destroy the planet on 21 December 2012, may I suggest an alternative event? King's Raven, the sequel to The Dragon Ring and second in the Harpers Errant series by Maggie Secara, will be released.
When last we left the Harpers Errant series, I had just completed a cover for The Dragon Ring, based on a sketch by folklorist and amazing author in his own right, Ari Berk. (You can read more about that here.) This time around, though, Ari was working on the release of his own beautiful and magical book 'Nightsong' so I was on my own with the new cover.
Maggie wanted something based on a greenman with a raven or two worked in somehow. In the last book, she had been shooting for a green cover but it didn't work out, so I really wanted to get her a properly green solution for this one.
With some ravens worked in.
Thanks for the most part to my wife the textile artist, my home library has a number of historical embroidery and design books, including this one (below) from a 1532 book of "voidwork" embroidery.
For the timehopping urban fantasy/historical fiction story like this, it was an excellent place to begin. In other words, it was exactly what I needed and yet nothing like what Maggie wanted, so into the Photoshop it went... The 16th century green man looks like a bit of gloomy Gus. Look how long his face is! I wanted something livelier and a bit brighter in the eyes, certainly the King of Faery should be a bit more well fed, not to mention leafier.
In keeping with the 'woodcut' style of the cover illustration Ari and I collaborated on for the first book, I re-drew the green man from the original sketch, adding detail and taking nearly as much away. Several layers of texture and a title block later, we had this:
"While Oberon, immortal king of Faerie, lies under a terrible curse, the artistic spirit in the world is slipping away. The king's Raven would do anything to lift the spell, if only it hadn't also stripped him of his magic and flung him into an iron-bound past with a damaged memory. The only thing that can save them both is sealed inside a riddle wrapped in a puzzle that spans the centuries. Even with the help of an Elizabethan magus, a Victorian spinster, and a mad reporter, can mortal musician Ben Harper find Raven in time to solve the riddle, stop a witch, and restore the creative heart of the world? First he has to find the key." - by Maggie Secara
Every fourth October, my Facebook and Twitter feed are overtaken by people wondering why we don't have a third party in the United States.
The simple answer is that it only occurs to most of us to wonder this once every four years.
The more complex answer is that the United States electorate polarized itself because multi-party voting created chaos too many times and was abandoned over time. Let me repeat that: We had several political parties and we voluntarily abandoned it because it created problems.
Why?
Math.
For presidential elections, the United States operates on a principal of indirect election. Our individual votes are tallied at the state level and then votes are apportioned to the candidates by electors nominated by the state on a basis determined by that state. Every state handles these things differently, but the first candidate to hit 270 electoral votes takes the prize.
As you might remember, this is how Al Gore won the popular vote in 2000 but failed to win the presidency -- George W, Bush won in states that had more electoral votes. The people said one thing, the election went another way.
The electoral college is the reason that a multi-party scenario is a recipe for constitutional chaos, and until the electoral college goes away, this is unlikely to change.
Why?
Math (again).
More specifically, because there's a constitutional mandate in place on how to decide a tie (or no clear victor). In a race divided three ways, the odds of any one candidate having 270 electoral votes are pretty remote, which throws the presidential election into the House of Representatives and the vice presidential election into the Senate*.
Who do you think the House will vote for?
Taking into account the way that electoral votes are apportioned among the states, this can lead to some genuine problems. For one thing, the House of Representatives is not actually proportionally representative and unless the third party has a sizeable presence in the House, there is no clear path to victory for one party in a three-way race. Which makes the idea of fixing the duality of American politics a bit of a hail Mary at the moment.
What can you do about it?
The first step is to think about it more than once every fourth October. A recent poll by Gallup shows that there's hardly a groundswell of support for a third national political party.
The second is to think nationally and act locally. The idea of instituting a third party from the presidency down is mostly foolhardy. The game has to change from the ground up because it's the only way that the math works out. In other words, before a third party president has a chance in a three-way race is if they have voices of their own in the legislature when their inclusion in the Electoral College voting throws the results into the House of Representatives.
The ground game is about getting third party senators and representatives elected before anything can happen at the executive level. Without that, a third party presidential vote won't accomplish anything.
I won't say it's wasted but it is certainly ineffectual.
Why not just eliminate the Electoral College?
The problem with eliminating the Electoral College is that it's not all bad. It mitigates somewhat the ability of the more populated states to impose their will on the rest of the country and vice-versa. Electoral math has played a significant role in balking the rise of a number of candidates like Strom Thurmond, who ran on a segregationist ticket in 1948. Without the Electoral College, regional candidates swing an outsized bat.
Many attempts have been made to modify the American electoral system with mixed results. I encourage you to familiarize yourself with them before taking a whack at it yourself. (It's worth noting that in 1970, even the aforementioned Strom Thurmond voted against a constitutional amendment eliminating the Electoral College, citing its history as a balancing force in divisive national elections.)
American elections are broken in many ways. From the billions in unregulated money being thrown around to the fact that there's no contingency in place for a natural disaster or terrorist attack that interrupts election day. Imagine if Superstorm Sandy struck a week later than it did. What do you think turnout would be like in the northeast then?
Here's a great video from YouTube's Explainer-Of-All-Things CGP Grey that lays things out the whole twisted scenario quite well.
* Deciding the two separately is a hold-over from the time before the 12th Amendment modified US election law to guarantee the president and vice president would be from the same political party. Prior to the passage of the 12th Amendment, the highest vote-getter in the electoral college became president and the second-highest, vice president, regardless of party. Needless to say, this scenario can be awkward to say the least.
**updated 7/12/2016 to include more annotations and correct typos
An Open Memo from the Department of Literary Security To: All Departments & Interested Parties RE: National Novel Writing Month
Once again, I have not been asked to write a pep talk for National Novel Writing Month. I'm sure the post office lost my invitation or accidentally re-routed it to the prime minister of Burundi. Sorry about that, your excellency; I'll get that change of address form sent in at once.
Some of my advisers have told me that since writing something that no one asked you to write is the whole point of National Novel Writing Month, it is possible that the lack of invitation is the invitation.
So as the unappointed cruise director of NaNoWriMo, I (un)officially welcome you to November 1st: Congratulations on your decision to write a novel! May God have mercy on your soul. Across the world, ink and electrons are flowing as millions of writers begin their month of literary excess. If you are on-track, as of this writing you should still be in the "first crush" stage of your relationship with that novel. The first blush of love is upon you and you are swept up in the throes of love. All is right with the world. Next week, you will discover that much like any relationship, this new love will require work in order to succeed. As you discover that you have more words behind you than ahead of you, the daily rituals will make things easier and the work will shift to keeping yourself from getting into a rut, taking the flow of words for granted. Never assume that the next page will come on its own; strive for it. Whatever their length, all stories have a natural beginning, middle, and end. The length of your tale may surprise you and the ending may come earlier than you expected. This is the nature of the beast. This is why you must enjoy every step of the journey. Whether you end up with a story the length of Old Man & the Sea*,Great Gatsby**, or Storm of Swords *** is a matter of recognizing the natural conclusion of your tale and taking your hands off the keyboard. Whether you end up with a pile of short stories, two middle-length novels, or an epic that makes your hard drive groan from its bulk, you have accomplished something. You can look back with pride on the journey you've undertaken. Celebrate that. There is no "Right Way" to write a story of any length, but there four things you are about to learn:
1. This is about making stuff up and writing it down. Try all you like to make it more complicated, it really just boils down to this. Just tell us a story.
2. A period of steady progress, even in small increments, will get you where you are going. Even if you write only one page each day for a year, by December you've written a 365 page novel.
3. Writing doesn't make you a novelist, finishing does. An unfinished novel is worth its weight in paper.
4. If you're not finished on November 30th, hit the "Extend Deadline" button. The deadline is imaginary, keep writing until you are done. 50,000 words isn't novel length anyway.
If you are reading this in December, I am sorry you missed it. It was/will be great. There's something to be said for writing while the whole world feels like it's cheering you on, pulling for you to succeed. There aren't many times when a writer can say that. I recommend that everyone try it at the earliest opportunity, but you should remember that there's nothing keeping you from writing your novel in... wait for it... March. Or taking more than a month to do so. I know. Astonishing, isn't it? Good luck and literary wishes from all of us here are the Department of Literary Security.
Regards, etc. Scott W. Perkins
Secretary of Literary Security
(Presidential appointment and congressional confirmation pending)
------ * About 25,000 words ** A little over 50,000 words (your official NaNoWriMo goal). *** A bit over 400,000 words. Aspiring George RR Martins might want to edit that down or cut it into a trilogy until they too have the kind of following he has in order to convince a publisher to print it.
I have been finding it hard to focus as I, along with most of America, wait to hear from friends, family, and colleagues who were in the path of superstorm Sandy. I quickly grew tired of the apparently irresistible term "Frankenstorm" as well as the political candidates and leaders showing us their best and their worst as they either sought political advantage or shut up and did their jobs/got out of the way.
So it was that I -- along with most of the internet -- were primed for a fight when news broke that Disney was buying Lucasfilm in toto and planning three new Star Wars movies.
Cue rending of Star Wars tee shirts and gnashing of nerd teeth.
(Stop that, it's bad for your teeth!)
The rage was palpable on Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, and elsewhere. At one point, the top five subjects being discussed on Twitter were Star Wars or Disney related, pushing the hurricane off the national list. This may or may not have been a bad thing, considering the fact that knee-jerk platitudes don't lower flood waters or light homes.
It was something else to talk about that allowed our existential dread some imaginary place to go and hide. T'were it ever so with Science Fiction. So I sent money to the Red Cross and talked about Star Wars.
I think it might've been better that way...
Full Disclosure: I think this is a Good Thing. Star Wars has new hope. Disney is excellent at managing franchises and is well suited to stage manage the revival of Star Wars just as they did with the Muppets and Marvel.
(Incidentally, I think this means the Mouse has Indiana Jones now too. Next up, Indiana Jones V: The Nathan Fillian reboot? Let's make that happen, Internet!)
Many disagree with me.
While I cannot hope to counter all of the arguments, nor do I disagree with all of them, these are the ones that I had lobbed at me most often yesterday, along with my responses:
This is awful because... It's the worst thing ever!
I can't respond to hyperbole. Give me a reason.
We can't trust Disney with the fate of the franchise!
You mean you trusted Lucas with the fate of the franchise? Really?
They're just buying it to cash in!
Better than a decade of Lucas cashing out. Seriously, take it from someone who had a room full of Star Wars toys, bedding, curtains, and miscellaneous paraphernalia, and has two nephews with even more of it: nothing has happened since 1977 that wasn't profit-driven. When they started introducing ships and characters just to make toys out of them (A-wings and B-wing fighters, anyone?) Sorry to burst your bubble, but movie making is and always has been a business. You weren't really paying attention when you watched Spaceballs, were you?
Now that they have The Muppets, Marvel, Indiana Jones, and Star Wars, they OWN MY CHILDHOOD!
Hard to argue with. If they bought Dungeons & Dragons and my old typewriter, I'd be contractually obligated to wear Mickey Ears at all times. That said, I don't necessarily agree that this is a bad thing if it means the things I loved as a kid remain viable for my nephews to love in turn.
They'll ruin the old movies!
If you've seen Lucas's endless special editions and re-edits and prequels and you are still making this argument... I don't know what to say to you.
The hero was Darth Vader and he's dead, so there's nothing left to make movies about.
Most cogent argument I've heard so far. And I strenuously disagree on several points. First, there are a half hundred post-Jedi novels that argue otherwise. Some of them are quite good. Also, it's an entire universe, you don't think there are other things happening that we can tell stories about?
Also, no matter what Lucas tells you, Vader wasn't the hero, he was the protagonist. There's a difference. Luke was the hero of episodes IV - VI and Ben Kenobi was the hero of episodes II and III. Episode I was a figment of your imagination. (Waves hand)
They'll have no respect for the franchise!
Remember how much it sucked when Disney bought Marvel and gave us almost a dozen awesome super hero movies, culminating in The Avengers? Gosh, that was awful, wasn't it?
They'll make it (shudder) cute!
Everyone wearing a "Wookie the Chew" tee shirt or who shared a link or image from James Hance's site has to sit down now. I think that might be everyone. If there's anyone left, please remember that you are defending the aesthetic honor of the man who gave us Ewoks and Jar Jar Binks.
Seriously, though, go buy yourself a Wookie the Chew tee shirt. That guy is aces.
But now there will be Mickey-themed Star Wars everything!
I took this photo two years ago. Your argument is invalid.
Here’s my prediction: There will be three new Star Wars movies. They will not be as good as the ones we saw as kids. That’s not really possible because those movies aren’t as good as the ones we saw as kids anymore either. (Looking at you, George.)
Because Disney is pretty good at franchise management, they will more than likely be competently written and directed. They will at least have dialogue that doesn't make your hair melt. They will have stories that kinda, sorta make sense. They might even be quotable. They will sell lots of new toys and there will be more rides at the theme parks.
We will survive. So will Star Wars.
We will probably pay our money to go see them for the novelty of seeing well-written, competently-directed Star Wars movies in the modern era. Lucas will finally have to stop screwing around with (and screwing up) the old movies. If nothing else, and if only because the Mouse never turned down a chance to sell us something, we will probably finally get to see the original theatrical releases on Blue Ray might finally see a re-release of the original theatrical movies on Blue Ray (if they can negotiate a deal with Fox, which holds the distribution rights in perpetuity).
In all, it sounds like a good thing to me.
In the meantime, there was this a hurricane that came ashore and punched in America's most populous region in the teeth. People are homeless, cold, and it will take time and money and a national effort to clean up and recover.
The people of the East Coast don't need our tweets as much as our more concrete efforts to help. Here is an excellent list of organizations that are already on the ground in the hurricane zone, helping our fellow countrymen put the pieces back together.
For all those who are warming up to run the NaNoWriMo marathon, here's my annual list of 10 things that I personally try to keep in mind as I turn the idea I scribbled on a napkin into that thing we call a book.
There are ten of them, which makes a handy size for a list.
Ten Tips to Get From Idea to Finished Novel 1. Be interested in your story.
Writing a novel is a relationship between you and a story. Before you spend hundreds of hours sitting in a chair stringing words together to tell that story, you'd better darn well be sure it's worth the commitment or it will all end in tears.
2. Feed your brain.
Your brain generates stories from the stuff you cram in there. Give it the fodder it needs to make new and interesting stories and well fleshed-out characters. Ask questions. Pay attention to the world around you. Everything is research. Pay attention. Take notes and snapshots. You never know when you'll need that story about the kid who accidentally ordered a Harrier fighter jet on eBay, or the chap that put lasers on sharks just to prove he could.
3. Ideas are not sacred.
Don't get so attached to an idea that you're unwilling to allow it to evolve. A story idea is less like the directions from a GPS and more like finding your way through a new city with written directions scrawled on the back of a coffee-stained napkin.
4. Write now; edit later.
On the first draft, it's your job to put your butt in the chair and put the story on the page. The chair is the only part that's optional. Editing is inevitable, but it is a stage of its own that can wait until later. Your initial goal is to get the story out of your head; everything else follows that.
5. Take small bites.
A big idea can choke you if you try to eat it all at once. A big idea can choke you if you try to eat it all at once. Writing anything that's as large and complex as the average novel is a lot like the old adage about eating an elephant: Start at one end and take it one bite at a time.
6. Make stuff up.
Research can be an addictive drug. It's easy to get so wrapped up in the intriguing minutiae of your subject matter that you forget to write a book about it. If it ever gets shelved in a library or bookstore, your novel will be in the fiction section, this gives you license to fake it... within reason, of course.
7. Be a story hoarder.
Never throw anything away. Not everything you create while writing will fit the story you're working on. Hang on to those tidbits and trimmings for later use in this or another story. Some of my favorite odd moments become short stories, the rest go back in the hopper for the next go-round.
8. Step away from the television and/or the Internet.
That might sound odd coming from me, but these mediums are specifically designed to catch your attention and hold it. I've recently begun doing my writing on a computer that is isolated from the internet to combat this. My writing output tripled when we got rid of TV and as a bonus we saved a lot of money each month.
9. Use your own words.
Write with the vocabulary you have. Put away the thesaurus, it's just slowing you down and making you feel self-conscious. Finding your authorial "voice" is about telling the story the way you tell it, not the way Roget would tell it. Let your vocabulary grow organically on its own and in a way that is unique to you as you research and read. Language is a fragile thing and it will break if you try to force it.
10. Finish.
Writing may make you a writer, but only finishing will make you a novelist. You have to finish the story, even if you have to keep writing into December and January. The inability to write a complete novel in a month doesn't make you a bad writer. Quite the contrary, in fact. 50,000 words isn't a complete novel anyway. An unfinished novel is worth its weight in paper. Keep going until you get to type "The End".
It pains me somewhat that I can't finish that list with the words "And it's as simple as that". It's not simple. It's work, this thing that we do. And if you learn nothing else from participating in NaNoWriMo, it should be that.
Writing is hard. Breathing life into the inanimate is supposed to be hard. Don't beat yourself up when you find that it isn't easy.
However you choose to proceed and whether you reach November 30th with 50,000 words in the kitty or not, you will have learned something, maybe even accomplished something. I will be here on the sidelines, waving a banner and cheering you on. Revel in the words you are putting on the page. Try something that scares you. Read the things being shared by your compatriots if you can find the time. Celebrate the writing. Have fun.
Just remember, the deadline is imaginary, the prizes are fake, but the book you are trying to write can be real.
Yes, I'm giving advice about advice again. The thunder of approaching typewriters heralds the word avalanche known as NaNoWriMo and the explosion of writing advice posts on every site that even pretends to cater to writers.
I've been fighting a particularly nasty chest cold recently, so about all I've been up for is reading and sorting through the books on my shelves. The unfortunate fact is that my library has as many books stacked on the floors as it does on the shelves. Which means (gulp) culling the herd.* I'm sorry, but some of you will just have to go. Don't worry, we'll find new homes for you in the country where you can gambol and play...
In case it hasn't become clear in the past, there are a lot of books on my shelves about the craft of writing and what purport to be maps showing shortcuts through the labyrinth of publishing. Some of them are timeless. Tomes of inspiration that will never die. However, many, if not most of them are well past their expiration date.
Some of them expired before they hit the shelf. It's just that kind of industry these days.
It seems that almost every author of note from Norman Mailer to Ray Bradbury to Stephen King, eventually writes a memoir of the craft, which tracks their rise from being 'That weird kid**' to a giant in a world of words. Nearly all of these books are split about evenly between memoir and advice for new writers.
We like to think that if we follow in the footsteps of the great and the good, that we too can apply their formula and achieve success. That's certainly the conceit of most writing guides. The problem is that the industry that spat out most of the greats either no longer exists or is teetering on the brink of extinction.
As I face the decision on which of these many books to keep and which to discard, in the end it will come down -- as it always does -- to the writing. Unless you have a time machine handy, business and publishing advice from even as late as the 1990's and early 00's is essentially useless. Only the writing advice is timeless.
This is a theme I return to time and again. Just the other day, I talked about how much I liked Neil Gaiman's list of writing rules because it focused almost entirely on the writing. In order to be a writer, Gaiman tells us, you have to write something, and you have to keep writing it until it's finished. This is important because that's the only advice that will outlast the expiration date of all other advice.
Unless it's also a compelling memoir and worth keeping for that fact alone, any writing guide that doesn't boil down to this very simple concept goes in the Goodwill pile.
---- * I would like to apologize in advance to anyone in the Puget Sound region who is startled by the whoop of joy originating from my wife's location wherever she happens to be when she reads that sentence. ** As much as I try to keep away from the idea that there's some sort of universal "writer lifestyle" that we all should aspire to, there's a nearly insurmountable pile of evidence that writers tend to arise from the ranks of "that weird kid".
Open Memo from the Department of Literary Security
To: All Departments & Interested Parties
RE: Literary Alert Level Tango
We have been monitoring internet traffic on sites frequented by wordsmiths, and literary agents provacateurs from the Office of Letters & Light and are reporting an uptick in chatter related to writing nonstop for a month and the hoarding of items related to same.
We can only conclude that a Significant Word-Count Event (SWCE) is imminent.
Pending a presidential declaration of a state of emergency (The White House and FEMA is not returning our calls as of this writing) all writers are advised to shelter in place or seek out the nearest library or coffee shop.
During the last SWCE, over 3 billion words erupted from the nation's writers and worldwide shortages of coffee, pastries, and adjectives were reported.
This is not a drill.
During moments of extreme literary unrest, the department advises that it can take up to thirty (30) days for emergency supplies to reach affected areas. All writers are advised to stock up on necessary supplies and foodstuffs sufficient to sustain life and word counts unaided for thirty (30) days without resupply.
Our experts have prepared the following list of suggested supplies for all writers:
A comfy place to sit or stand in a place conducive to surviving 30 unbroken days of writing.
Coffee, tea, hot cocoa, or coffee.
Sustainable levels of baked goods.
Vegetables for when you are feeling guilty for trying to survive entirely on items 2 and 3.
Writing implements to fit your age, milieu, or chosen level of pretense.
Ink for pens, printers, copiers, goose quills (see item #5).
Phone numbers of out-of-area contacts willing to take late-night phone calls when you are stuck, overwhelmed, or procrastinating.
A padlock to secure the off-switch for the internet for most of the duration of the emergency.
A supportive and/or tolerant spouse, family member, roommate, significant other, good friend, complete stranger you thought you knew but turned out you didn't but who gives surprisingly good advice on dialogue.
A sense of humor.
Additional items, medications, &c. may be added as needed for the individual. Good luck and may the spirit of those who came before guide you in this time of trial.
The department will monitor the situation and report developments via the usual channels as events warrant.
See you in December.
Regards, etc.
Scott W. Perkins
Secretary of Literary Security
(Presidential appointment and congressional confirmation pending)
It is not too much to say that I really like The Hobbit. Somewhere in my house is my original copy of the book. A ratty paperback that is water-warped and ragged from being carried to school in opposition of parental threats, stolen and kicked around by bullies on a playground, and tossed in countless garbage cans by teachers who thought they knew better about literature. (Yes, really.) It was even dropped in the Colorado River at the bottom of the Grand Canyon and baked dry in the hot Arizona sun. The spine has long ago been replaced by duct tape and there are over forty tick marks on the inside of the back cover, a younger self's record of reading Tolkien's story of a mousy man turned hero.
This is not about the upcoming movies or even about the book. This is about the stories that consume us and the strange neurochemistry of storytelling.
On a recent episode of Mythbusters (currently available for watching online), where the team did some interesting experiments with an FMRI, seeking to understand whether or not we really only use 10% of our brain. They hooked one of the team up to various machines and had him do math problems and puzzles and tell stories. Nothing they did fired more parts of the brain at once than telling a story.
I wish they had measured while reading a story, but there's only so much you can fit into the time constraints of a TV show.
Thankfully, we don't have to rely on the Mythbusters for all of our scientific data about brain activity and stories. At Michigan State University, there's a project underway to understand the state of mind that leads me and others to get immersed in that world of words, that book that I read differently than all others before it, and possibly since. It's about what it is about some books that so grab us that we Read Them Differently.
There are some books that just suck you in to their worlds. Some characters that come to us at a crucial time in our development as people and consume us whole. In one big literary gulp, we go down the word gullet, the opinions of teachers, parents, and peers be damned. For me it was the Hobbit and for others Pride & Prejudice, but whatever your poison, be it Harry Potter or Twilight, the effect is the same.
Recently, researchers have been trying to pinpoint how this works, when and how the story can overtake everything else by monitoring the brain activity of people as they read. And while they have learned a thing or two about the immersive nature of a great book, the most interesting things they've found -- as least for me -- is about the obsessive nature of the reader and the way that a brain falls into a story and doesn't want to come out.
We should all be so lucky as to tell that kind of story.
Here's an interview with Michigan State Professor Natalie Phillips, who is a bit obsessive about Jane Austen via NPR.
It is almost November and you know what that means: Writing advice season is about to begin. It seems to get here earlier every year. The stores are already stocking up with new keyboards and copies of Bird by Bird. The interwebs are humming with tweets tagged #amwriting and Pinterest boards are filling up with pictures of typewriters and inspirational quotes, some of which I created.
And the lists. Oh my goodness, the lists!
This morning, a friend sent me a link to Neil Gaiman's "8 Rules of writing" over at the Brainpickings blog. I read them because I can't resist that sort of thing, and he entered my brain and wandered the halls, flipping light switches, sliding down stair railings, and poking through the cupboards until he came to the boiler room where all the rest of the "Rules of Writing" have been camping out.
I hear there's a great poker game down there on Sunday nights, but they don't invite me.
Writing advice in list form may or may not have begun with Elmore Leonard's famous piece in the New York Times, but he heralded the explosion of such lists.
You would not believe how many lists there are in that tiny room. I'm not even sure myself. Most of them have more to do with surviving life as a writer than how to put words on a page, which is part of what makes Neil's list so commendable -- every item on the list is about writing. Neil's entire list boils down to "Why are you looking for permission from me? Get out there and write something!"
Not all of them do, which is a problem in my view.
For one thing, lists are deceptive, slippery little beasts. Reading them feels like learning, as though by following the steps of other more successful writers their success will rub off on us. And creating them feels good and making tick marks next to the items is weirdly addictive. We all make to-do lists sometimes just to have the satisfaction of checking things off. I do it all the time and so do you.
Yes you do; don't lie to a blog post.
Everyone does it. Why? Because it gives us the strange illusion of accomplishing something whether we have or not. And writers make it worse because we are so prone to doing the same thing with other people's lists!
Who else does that?
And that is the danger of the many and multiplying lists, even those by authors we like or admire. Reading about writing gives us a false sense of accomplishment. Much like research and blogging, it can give us something to do instead of writing that still feels like we're accomplishing something. I hear people around me pitch list-making as an organizational tool, but I suspect that for most writers at least it's really a procrastination tool.
Which plays handily into the internet's twofold mission to facilitate list-making and disseminate pornography. Procrastination and self-gratification.
At risk of undercutting my own point, I will close with a list of my own.
SCOTT'S THREE RULES FOR WRITING A NOVEL
1. Apply butt to chair.
2. Apply words to page.
3. The chair is optional.
Whether you are trying NaNoWriMo for the first time, or if you're on your tenth novel, that's all you need. I've said this several times here and elsewhere, but it bears repeating: any list or advice book that does not boil down to "Writers aren't writers if they don't write something" is bad advice on the face of it.
Lots of things have been happening recently, not least of all a two-month experiment into whether or not cutting off all caffeine would improve my body's ability to sleep through the night. It did not work. Coffee doesn't cause my insomnia. Anyone who still thinks so is welcome to shut up about it. And while I'm not saying that there's definitive proof that the decaffeination had anything to do with my inability to blog; your conclusions are yours to draw. Because it totally had everything to do with my inability to get as much writing done during my still-extended days. It's bad enough to be awake for 20-22 hours a day; being decaffeinated the whole time is intolerable. Now that I am once again properly caffeinated, I feel it is time to announce my new project...
The Renaissance Artisan
This month, I launched a new project that has been eating up all of my limited attention span: School of the Renaissance Artisanis a non-fiction blogging/video/book project that unites my love of history with my love of making neat things.
"Cooking is a craft, I like to think, and a good cook is a craftsman -- not an artist. There's nothing wrong with that: the great cathedrals of Europe were built by craftsmen -- though not designed by them. Practicing your craft in expert fashion is noble, honorable and satisfying."
- Anthony Bourdain, Kitchen Confidential
That quote popped out at me as I was recently re-reading Bourdain's book. The recent rise of the Maker Movement has revived the ethos of working with your hands, of -- as the name implies -- making the things that you use. It has revived the aesthetic of craft and elevated it beyond Aunt Susie's pom-pom animals and building forts with Popsicle sticks. Man, I miss building forts out of Popsicle sticks. Bourdain is right. The quote above comes in the middle of a paean for a workmanlike approach to food, a lengthy rant against the American and European idea that everyone who works in food or paint or wood should be an artist or they are somehow inadequate.
I am an artist. I went to art school just to be sure. But I come from a long line of craftsmen and I wanted to take a moment to turn the clock back to a time when the maker movement wasn't a curious spike in pop culture, but The Way Things Are. The high point of this was, of course, the renaissance.
I think we forget that the renaissance wasn't just artists and soldiers and kings and popes, but a groundswell of normal, ordinary people advancing their lot generation by generation, building themselves up through the sweat of their own brows and the callouses of their own hands and, for better or worse, creating the modern world.
School of the Renaissance Artisan will be an in-depth exploration of the trades and crafts of the 16th century. A close look by someone who is not an historian at what it really mean to be an actual 'renaissance man'. Not a Davinci or a Michelangelo, but a 'Bill, the man who fixes the roof when it rains' or 'Jack, the guy that bakes the bread at the market'.
For one year (January - December 2013), I'm going to use the framework of the 54 livery companies that had royal charters in 16th century England to explore the crafts and lives of the men who made the renaissance. I'm going to do this by making the most of my contacts in the renaissance faire and reenactment communities, drawing out of the shadows the people who are keeping alive the arts and crafts of the 16th century.People keeping alive crafts and skills that would die out completely were it not for them. And if by failing miserably at my attempts to learn these crafts brings attention to their superior craftsmanship, so much the better.
So I invite you to please join me here as I take you with me back to school in a possibly impossible attempt to become an honest-to-God renaissance man.
As I go I will blog my efforts (I've already started, actually) and share with you the resources I'm using, the things that inspire me, and the people who are helping me. Along the way, we will build a sort of virtual library of historical source material and present-day experts that will aid and abet reenactors and "makers" who want to learn a new craft and, of course, any writer who wants to write an historical novel set in this time period. If nothing else, I invite you to watch me fail in a spectacular and possibly amusing manner. This will be a multi-media enterprise, including the blog, a YouTube channel called The Rest of the Renaissance and possibly tapping into other venues for sharing information as well with the hope of eventually turning it all into a book. Possibly even a hypertext eBook with embedded links to the videos and other interactive materials. This is going to be fun. I hope you will come and play along.
I don't know if I will post this, but I had to write it for the same reason that I write anything: because things build up in my head and I can't do anything else until I've let them out. It's how I cope with a world that often befuddles me.
Close your eyes and picture a nerd in your head. Seriously. Close your eyes and think about "Nerds" for a minute. Summon a mental image that embodies the essence of Nerd Kind.
Got it?
What was your mental image? Did you picture Bill Gates? The guys from Big Bang Theory? Or maybe Anthony Daniels from Revenge of the Nerds? Awkward, brainy-but-socially-stunted men with questionable hygiene and tape on his glasses suffering under the knuckles of the school jocks...
Me, basically?
Congratulations if you imagined Felicia Day. You are ahead of the curve if you did. When I was a kid, nerds and geeks were synonymous, and they did not as a general rule look like Felicia Day (at least none of the ones I knew did) but we'll get back to Ms. Day in a minute.
When I close my eyes and picture a nerd, I picture myself. At around the age of 12 or 13, usually, but any age will do. Bespectacled, awkward, desperate to fit in. Talking to my peers with the ineptitude of a foreigner speaking a language with which he is only passingly familiar, always a page behind in the guidebook and wearing the local garb like it's a Halloween costume.
This is going to sound dark, and it was. And it might not jive with the stories I usually tell of a childhood out of an Archie comic if it had been ghostwritten by Ray Bradbury. Those stories are true and so is this: No true story is entirely light or entirely dark. It's mostly a matter of what bits you choose to leave out. Humor, as is often the case, has been a defense mechanism of mine for as long as I can remember.
I was a nerd before anyone thought it was okay. I was tormented and sometimes quite literally tortured by bullies under the uncaring gaze of teachers -- mostly gym teachers. Once, after I had been bodily picked up and slammed down on a larger boy's knee as one might when trying to break a stick, cracking two of my ribs, the gym teacher who had watched it happen ordered me to get up out of the dirt and run laps for the sin of being an asthmatic wimp who would rather read a book than toss a football. I managed a quarter of a mile out of shear fear of punishment before saying "screw this" and stumbling off to the nurse's office without permission.
What I remember most is that I got in trouble and he did not.
That sort of thing happened over and over again. From the relatively innocent glasses getting stolen and thrown in a toilet to my head getting stomped or my testicles randomly punched. From early on, classmates singled me out as someone they could make cry if they were heartless enough. These memories are rife with adults standing by, ignoring what was happening, apparently under the impression that getting my ass kicked on a regular basis would build character.
I don't know if it built character. It might have made me stubborn or I might've been born that way. I do know that it built, deep in my heart of hearts, a deeply-embedded suspicion of authority. So congratulations for that.
I was told that if I just wouldn't cry, they would leave me alone. That turned out not to be true. I was told again and again to ignore them and they would stop. That wasn't true either. I ignored them so well that I developed the ability to become vacant -- to retreat so far inside myself that it was as if my body was a costume and I was simply pretending to be Scott. Which is a handy thing when the other kids view kicking you in the crotch as a hobby.
Being smart or talented didn't seem to matter once you walked out of the classroom and into the halls or onto the gym floor where might made right.
I was uncoordinated and I was (and remain) almost painfully thin. If I sit still for too long, the pressure on unprotected arteries will put my extremities to sleep. I have historically had very little meat on my bones or the ability to acquire it, much to the frustration of the same gym teachers that thought what I really needed was more laps, more weight lifting, more basketballs to the face. More time to suck it up, wipe the blood off my face and get back to moving a ball from one end of a pointless expanse of grass to the other end of the same pointless expanse of grass.
If a foreign government did half of the things that happened to me to an American soldier, the United States would bomb them back to the stone age on principle.
My parents helped as much as they could. God bless them, they tried and I wasn't an easy child at the best of times. They were as understanding as two adults can be who have no idea what I was going through because I wouldn't tell them most of it. It wasn't fair to them, but I was a kid, what did I know of fair? Very little of my experience of life outside of the house was about what was fair.
Talking was too painful anyway. Far easier to escape to my room and bury myself in books -- escape into fantasy.
I spent nights and weekends in basements with like-minded friends, rolling dice and sending characters with more impressive attributes than my own down dark dungeon hallways. I gravitated toward bards because what I really dreamt of wasn't strength, but charisma. I yearned not to punish the monsters that tormented me day in and day out, but to communicate with them. To somehow get across to them that I was human too.
Because I don't think most of them believed that I was.
What does this painful reminiscence have to do with anything?
It's to underline the fact that when I tell you I, by God, earned my nerd glasses and if anyone has the right to be a got-here-first, these-damn-kids-have-it-too-easy, nerdmudgeon, it's me.
But I can't.
I didn't endure all that only to force those who came after me to go through it too. That's insane.
While I was in the trenches, up to my ears in a fight against an enemy that had no idea they were losing, somewhere, out beyond the schoolyard, the heroes of nerd kind were inventing the personal computer, creating video games, piecing together the internet, and conquering the world on my behalf.
If it was a war, then we won. Comics, computers, games, books... The things that got me beat up are the things that now define our culture. Our President is a nerd. There's a picture of him posing in the Oval Office with Nichelle Nichols, the lady that played Uhura in the original Star Trek. He's throwing the Vulcan salute which is the closest thing nerds have to a gang sign.
Nerds rule.
Literally.
Which brings us full circle. Now that we have the upper hand, will the Nerd World Order rule benevolently? Or is it time for us, in turn, to give as good as we got? Are we to now become the closed clique against which the outsiders run headlong in hope of belonging?
Recently there was this piece at CNN.com by one Jon Peacock titled "Booth Babes Need Not Apply", which implies that we should go exactly that route. Peacock was apparently set off by the influx of girls pretending to be nerds so they can dress up and go to Comicon. You see, being a nerd is cool now so everyone wants a piece of the action. Pretty girls that were never seen in those dank basements are popping up at Comicon and other conventions dressed like Lara Croft and Catwoman and Princess Leia and "sexy insert noun here". Peacock implies that these pretenders can be discerned from the "real" nerd girls by dint of being too sexy. By making him feel uncomfortable and drawing attention away from the nerdiness of the event with their feminine wiles.
Peacock's rant struck me and many others as inherently sexist. It also resonated deeply with some part of me that I am ashamed to admit exists. The part of me that was snubbed by the pretty girls that saw me as sub-human.
They're too pretty to be real nerds. They never suffered like I did, how could they?
Even I found myself thinking that and I damn well know better.
My wife is, hands-down, one of the smartest people I've ever met and a mechanical engineer to boot. Told from an early age that she would never be good at math because she was a girl. She is also the prettiest girl I've ever met and a nerd at the same time. She hid her grades from her classmates so they wouldn't know she was the one who blew the curve in physics class and was told by fellow engineering students and professors alike that she didn't belong in engineering because of her looks and gender.
Those men who said those things were wrong; no one had more business being there than she did. Who were they to tell a brilliant, articulate woman what she could or could not accomplish because of her gender?
And who are we to do the same to any woman in any other sphere?
Did we all really suffer through the travails of growing up nerdy just to perpetuate that horror on the next generation? Are we truly going to demand that others endure that hellish existence before we let them play our particular reindeer games?
Or did we claw our way to the top of the societal heap so that no one else ever had to go through that again? To win the right for everyone to pursue their interests and enthusiasms as suits their whims?
The truth is, we've created a world where everyone is a nerd, or can be if they put their minds to it. Felicia Day is a mogul of internet video, in the vangard of the new entertainment, built on the uber-nerdy and self-referential gamer comedy "The Guild". Steampunk has rewritten fashion and film. The Maker movement is generating real inventions and real revenue for the creators. Comic books are the film industry right now.
And if it's really a nerd world, then that makes all of us nerds. No glasses or pocket protector, or background as a bullied minority required. We went through it so you wouldn't have to.
Sure, we're "the ones who are cool" but that means we get to define what that means this time. Playing 'we got here first and you're too late to play this game' is nothing but rank hipsterism.
Postscript: Peacock's rant launched a thousand blog posts in response, but the one that most resonates with me is this one by John Scalzi, once and future king of the nerds, who dismantles not only Peacock's standing as someone who can decide who has nerd cred or doesn't, but everyone else's.
Computers. They make our lives easier, except when they don't, and recent computer problems have made me spend some time working on my penmanship and reflecting on the nature of time: I only have so much of it to devote to this endeavor, and doing this thing the old-fashioned way is aggravatingly slow.
Apologies to my readers, but my writing time has been somewhat curtailed of late. When given a choice between writing stories or writing blog posts, I choose the stories every time. And it's been a choice I've had to make with special delicacy lately due to the untimely demise of my laptop.
It's hard to upload a page of a legal pad to my blog. It's not impossible, mind you, but the two technologies are not compatible without a special adapter and that special adapter is me.
But I do not alone beweep my outcast state because I am re-learning a valuable lesson about the value of my writing time.
On the day Ray Bradbury died, I was sitting at a computer loaned to me by a college library. This is important because Mr. Bradbury, you see, didn't own a typewriter when he started out. He rented one in the basement of UCLA's Powell Library for $.10 per half hour. Fahrenheit 451 famously cost him $9.80 to write.
A bargain by any measure.
But think about that. If you've never used a typewriter to write anything of length, I invite you to go do so and come back to marvel with me at the economy of this claim. One of the great works of American Letters took less than 49 hours to complete. That's a groundbreaking novel (originally published as a serial in Playboy) written in 6 and a half standard work days. All because its author was counting his dimes.
How many dimes did you spend on your last story?
I understand that there's infinite variety in writing styles and there's no such thing as a correct answer to "How long does it take to write a good book?" As with any art, it takes as long as it takes.
But if your computer charged you a fee for every half hour you spent, how much faster would you write? If you're like me, you would write so much faster it would make your head spin. Because one of the problems with writing on a computer is all the many other things you can do with a computer. If you were paying for the time on the computer, how much less time would you spend looking at cute pictures of kittens and poking your friends on Facebook?
How much farther would $9.80 get you on a typewriter versus an internet-enabled laptop?
There's no right answer to this. The internet is blessing and curse. A digital circus that is hard to ignore, but also a bottomless cup of stories from which to drink. I think it boils down to whether you want to write stories or put on digital clown makeup and take the center ring.
As Robert Lynn Aspirin said in the forward to one of his books: "There are fast writers and there are slow writers, I'm a half-fast writer." I, for one, have been on an unintentional journey between the the land of fast and the land of half-fast.
At risk of plundering the pun, I don't want to be a half-fast writer. I don't want to be a half-assed writer either.
In the past couple of months while this blog has been limping along in the shadow of my inattention, I have spent less time writing and written more than I would have otherwise. I have filled several notebooks with story ideas and notes and snippets of text. I've re-edited a book I'd long ago thought worthy of abandoning into something sleeker and more worthy of a reader's time.
The simple fact is that writing is a business, so even though I don't have an hourly wage as a writer, I am very much paying for every minute spent at the keyboard. If you're going to be your own employee, be a productive one. I would never treat my hourly employer this way; why treat myself like that?
Ray Bradbury was infamously curmudgeonly about the internet. He hated it like my cat hates baths. I dis agree with him on that point. I think it's an inexhaustible well of words and enthusiasm. An entire virtual world built entirely out of ideas. But he has a point nonetheless; and though my computer ills are now past, I think I'll remember how good it felt to just sit and put words on a page.
In the end, it's your dime.
Thanks for all your stories, Ray. You left us with a lifetime supply of new worlds to explore. You legitimized the business of writing dreams. And you have left us with some incredibly big shoes to fill. Rest in Peace. We'll take it from here.
"If you don’t know it’s impossible, it’s easier to do. And because nobody’s done it before, they haven’t made up rules to stop anyone doing that again." ~Neil Gaiman
I don't have many heroes, and I get the feeling that Neil would be intensely uncomfortable wearing that hat, so I won't he's one of them. Except that he is. Just don't tell him.
There's a transcript floating around, but it's not 100% accurate and I prefer to let the man's words and delivery stand on its own.
Wiser and more accurate words about a life pursuing the arts, you would be hard-pressed to write or speak.
This morning, I found out that some brilliant and/or daft people mounted a laser on a shark just to prove that they could. I rushed over here with every intention of telling you all about how I was right and we really are living in the future. I mean, flying cars are all well and good, but after laser sharks, everything else is just gravy, right?
And then my inner geek became my outer geek and I said: "Heh. Dude... Laser Shark!"
Talk about a gift that just keeps on giving; you could do almost anything with a premise like that. Almost any story can be grafted on. Science fiction? Of course; c'mon, that writes itself. How about something hard... Military Fiction: The brave men and women in uniform who labor shoulder-to-should to bring together the ultimate weapon, lasers and sharks! Techno-thriller: Terrorists (there are always terrorists) hijack the laser sharks and threaten to loose them upon an unsuspecting world. Mystery: A body washes up on a desolate stretch of the Australian coast, burned and bitten beyond recognition. Was it murder? What could possibly have committed such a heinous act? Spy Thriller: A foreign power is developing a secret weapon at their base beneath a volcanic island. Romance: A handsome marine biologist meets a winsome laser engineer with a dreadful secret. Steampunk: Aetheric amplification of Sol's brilliant light reaps unexpected rewards in the submarine base of the nefarious Doctor Villainous Deeds!
The list goes on and on and on. Ideas tumbling over ideas in a rush to get their hands on a real-live laser shark. And it occurred to me that this week, of all weeks, was the perfect opportunity to talk about where ideas come from.
Are they delivered to me by Laser Sharks?
Sadly, no.
I started thinking about this when thriller writer Joseph Finder said this:
Then, he said this:
And got me thinking about just how fertile is the daily news crawl that crosses my screen. Not just for things like digital organ thieves and shark-mounted lasers. Take that same Facebook-borne logic leap that Joe was talking about and graft on a story about an MI-6 codebreaker found locked in a bag in his locked apartment and you have the material for quite a thrill ride.
How about a conservator in the rare book room at Brown University that found an engraving signed by Paul Revere stuck in a medical book? How did it get there? Who put it there? Were they hiding it from someone? Historical fiction, thriller, romance, the world's your oyster with a core story like that. And how about a 400 year old map that was found to have a fortress marked in invisible ink that could lead to a lost city in West Virginia? Really! Where can't you go with a lead like that?
That reminds me, there's a GIANT statue of Anubis, the Egyptian god of tombs, being carted around Seattle like a parade float. That's either a horror story, the next Indiana Jones movie, or a lawsuit waiting to happen. Maybe all three.
Speaking of lawsuits, I found out this week that space lawyers are apparently a real thing. My high school career councilor really dropped the ball on that one. But you want a comedic legal thriller? Fine. A bear fell out of a tree and led to a lawsuit that could literally change the face of copyright law in America. yes, really.
So where do I get my ideas? I pay attention. Because in the end, it's not coffee, or my favorite pen, or a special table at the coffee shop, or mystical muse that brings me my stories. It's not even the friends and news sites that dropped those leads into my inbox. I bring me my stories. I get them by paying attention, by collecting all the various bits of the history that came before me and the world around me right now. And I find the bits that fit together but don't fit with anything else. And the glory of this weird enterprise of writing is that anyone else can take in the same elements from the same news items and they will create entirely different stories from the same ingredients.
So that's it. And the next person who asks me where I get my ideas gets poked in the eye. Seriously. Safety glasses are advised. Don't worry, you can get a new bionic eye to replace it. Because this is the future we're living in.
Oh, and I'd stay out of the water until the batteries on that laser run dry.
When last we left the Harpers Errant series, I had just completed a cover for The Dragon Ring, based on a sketch by folklorist and amazing author in his own right, Ari Berk. (You can read more about that here.) This time around, though, Ari was working on the release of his own beautiful and magical book 'Nightsong' so I was on my own with the new cover..jpg)
