Rick Just's Blog, page 241
March 13, 2013
Avoidance as a Writing Strategy
I don’t think I’ve ever suffered from writer’s block. There have certainly been many times--many times to the power of a thousand--when I have not wanted to write. Most of those times I did not write. Was that writer’s block? I don’t think so. That was avoidance. That was being lazy.
Often there are a dozen things I’d rather do than write. I’ve come to accept this over the years, and I’ve even made it into a bit of a strategy. There are times I would rather do a dozen things than paint. There are times I’d rather do another dozen things than sculpt. I have a list of--hard to believe--about a dozen things my better angels (not anjels) would have me doing, because they are creative, lucrative, or non-fattening. My trick is to keep THOSE dozen things in my mind. When I don’t feel like writing, I can turn to a watercolor. When watercolor seems like it is just too much trouble, I can work in wax or pound some copper. When those things aren’t interesting enough, I can always write.
Put another way, which would you rather do, write or mow the lawn? Yes, I know the answer is mow the lawn for many of you. For me, it’s writing. If I can find something else to avoid, something that is boring me this moment, or something I would rather not do when it’s raining, well, there’s always writing to fall back on.
Writing is often a chore. But, you’re not a writer if you don’t write. This little trick helps me when it’s chore time and I really, really should write. Other times, the story grabs hold of me and yanks me into it. That’s when I need no tricks to make the words fly.
Often there are a dozen things I’d rather do than write. I’ve come to accept this over the years, and I’ve even made it into a bit of a strategy. There are times I would rather do a dozen things than paint. There are times I’d rather do another dozen things than sculpt. I have a list of--hard to believe--about a dozen things my better angels (not anjels) would have me doing, because they are creative, lucrative, or non-fattening. My trick is to keep THOSE dozen things in my mind. When I don’t feel like writing, I can turn to a watercolor. When watercolor seems like it is just too much trouble, I can work in wax or pound some copper. When those things aren’t interesting enough, I can always write.
Put another way, which would you rather do, write or mow the lawn? Yes, I know the answer is mow the lawn for many of you. For me, it’s writing. If I can find something else to avoid, something that is boring me this moment, or something I would rather not do when it’s raining, well, there’s always writing to fall back on.
Writing is often a chore. But, you’re not a writer if you don’t write. This little trick helps me when it’s chore time and I really, really should write. Other times, the story grabs hold of me and yanks me into it. That’s when I need no tricks to make the words fly.
March 12, 2013
Harlan the Blogger
Harlan Ellison was a blogger before blogging existed. Most of his writing career predated the Internet, but he still had blogging down cold. Harlan was my hero because of the way he wrote, what he wrote about and, mostly, because he shared himself with the world. It was easy to get to know him because he often gave readers some background on his stories. Inside information. And, he shared his views. Enthusiastically.
He did not hesitate to bite the hand that fed him. His collection of essays about television, a medium for which he frequently wrote, was called The Glass Teat.
Best known, perhaps, for his anthologies Dangerous Visions and Again, Dangerous Visions, Ellison has been a prominent purveyor of speculative fiction for decades. Think Star Trek and Twilight Zone.
As I said, Harlan has long been my hero, and he has been a great influence on my life as a writer. Bear with me, I am not changing subjects.
Another hero of mine was Mabel Bennett Hutchinson, a well known sculptor and watercolorist in California, who happened to be my cousin. Mabel and I were frequent correspondents when she was in her 80s and 90s. We talked about everything from art to politics. I was lucky enough to visit her home a couple of times. It was an art museum in its own right.
Mabel was best known for her exquisite doors, some of which fetch $30,000 today. It turns out she made one for Harlan. I did not know that until after she died. That fact alone made me smile. She had actually met my hero.
Imagine my surprise, then, when Mabel’s niece, whom I regularly correspond with, sent me a clipping about Harlan with a note that said she’d just sent all his letters to Mabel back to him. They were friends, corresponded for many years, and I did not have a clue.
I wish I could have read those letters before she sent them back. I don’t think Harlan would have minded a bit. He was a blogger before there were blogs, after all.
He did not hesitate to bite the hand that fed him. His collection of essays about television, a medium for which he frequently wrote, was called The Glass Teat.
Best known, perhaps, for his anthologies Dangerous Visions and Again, Dangerous Visions, Ellison has been a prominent purveyor of speculative fiction for decades. Think Star Trek and Twilight Zone.
As I said, Harlan has long been my hero, and he has been a great influence on my life as a writer. Bear with me, I am not changing subjects.
Another hero of mine was Mabel Bennett Hutchinson, a well known sculptor and watercolorist in California, who happened to be my cousin. Mabel and I were frequent correspondents when she was in her 80s and 90s. We talked about everything from art to politics. I was lucky enough to visit her home a couple of times. It was an art museum in its own right.
Mabel was best known for her exquisite doors, some of which fetch $30,000 today. It turns out she made one for Harlan. I did not know that until after she died. That fact alone made me smile. She had actually met my hero.
Imagine my surprise, then, when Mabel’s niece, whom I regularly correspond with, sent me a clipping about Harlan with a note that said she’d just sent all his letters to Mabel back to him. They were friends, corresponded for many years, and I did not have a clue.
I wish I could have read those letters before she sent them back. I don’t think Harlan would have minded a bit. He was a blogger before there were blogs, after all.
March 11, 2013
Going Home Again
You Can’t go Home Again according to Thomas Wolfe. That has always haunted me. Writers are supposed to have tragic childhoods. The scars are so useful.
My childhood was magical. I lived on a ranch along the Blackfoot River. Not Norman Maclean’s Blackfoot River, the one everyone has heard of. This was my own private river, winding through a valley that was half real and half imagination.
When I was eight or nine my mother would make me a Wonder Bread sandwich, stuff it in a little backpack along with an apple and set me free to wander the valley. My dog and I would visit the Indian writing, as we called the pictographs at the upper end of the valley, or the Jungle, or the lava cliffs, or the river. Wherever we went it was the setting for the movie in my mind. A tree that had fallen across a gully became an airplane. The windbreak strawstack was a train in a Western. The barn roof was the Matterhorn.
My magical world included a fish pond across which we poled a skiff chasing frogs and Finn.
All childhoods end, and this one did abruptly with the death of my father a few days after my eleventh birthday. We left the ranch, a place so essential that we had never named. It was always just The Place.
And still it is. Wolfe was right about the going home. The physical place is still there, but The Place I inhabited is gone. And not gone.
What Wolfe might have known, but never did say, is you can never leave it. That Place you inhabited as a child, good or bad, lives with you forever. If you are lucky, as I am, you can visit it anytime and draw from its slaking well whenever you have that special thirst.
My childhood was magical. I lived on a ranch along the Blackfoot River. Not Norman Maclean’s Blackfoot River, the one everyone has heard of. This was my own private river, winding through a valley that was half real and half imagination.
When I was eight or nine my mother would make me a Wonder Bread sandwich, stuff it in a little backpack along with an apple and set me free to wander the valley. My dog and I would visit the Indian writing, as we called the pictographs at the upper end of the valley, or the Jungle, or the lava cliffs, or the river. Wherever we went it was the setting for the movie in my mind. A tree that had fallen across a gully became an airplane. The windbreak strawstack was a train in a Western. The barn roof was the Matterhorn.
My magical world included a fish pond across which we poled a skiff chasing frogs and Finn.
All childhoods end, and this one did abruptly with the death of my father a few days after my eleventh birthday. We left the ranch, a place so essential that we had never named. It was always just The Place.
And still it is. Wolfe was right about the going home. The physical place is still there, but The Place I inhabited is gone. And not gone.
What Wolfe might have known, but never did say, is you can never leave it. That Place you inhabited as a child, good or bad, lives with you forever. If you are lucky, as I am, you can visit it anytime and draw from its slaking well whenever you have that special thirst.
March 10, 2013
Flight Behavior
I did a little traveling the last few days, which gave me a chance to finish listening to Flight Behavior by Barbara Kingsolver. It is not my purpose to write book reviews by other authors in this book blog, but neither will I ignore what I am reading.
Flight Behavior is a marvelous book on so many levels. It is a cautionary tale about climate change. It is an examination of the way an accident of birth can hold back a great mind. It is as good as anything I have read about marriage.
Kingsolver’s character development is excellent. Most of her characters are just scraping by in small town Appalachia. What they do and what they say is often hilarious, but she never crosses the line into making fun of them for their situation and their beliefs. She seems to love and understand these people, even as she disagrees with them. She goes out of her way to show us why their beliefs are, in their way of thinking, logical; even necessary.
Dellarrobia, her protagonist, comes of age about 15 years late. Her intelligence and spirit stunted by surroundings she could not imagine escaping, blossom with a crisis of butterflies. We learn about her species--the hard scrabble Appalachian--as she learns about Monarchs. The world of both species is upturned. The choices are not simple for either. There is a lot of despair here, but at least a little hope, about as substantial as a butterfly.
Kingsolver chose to narrate her own book. That’s not always a good choice for an author. I don’t think I’d do it, even with many years experience in narration and broadcasting. It works for Kingsolver, though. She’s a talented narrator who uses well her intimate knowledge of how her character’s speech should sound.
Flight Behavior is a marvelous book on so many levels. It is a cautionary tale about climate change. It is an examination of the way an accident of birth can hold back a great mind. It is as good as anything I have read about marriage.
Kingsolver’s character development is excellent. Most of her characters are just scraping by in small town Appalachia. What they do and what they say is often hilarious, but she never crosses the line into making fun of them for their situation and their beliefs. She seems to love and understand these people, even as she disagrees with them. She goes out of her way to show us why their beliefs are, in their way of thinking, logical; even necessary.
Dellarrobia, her protagonist, comes of age about 15 years late. Her intelligence and spirit stunted by surroundings she could not imagine escaping, blossom with a crisis of butterflies. We learn about her species--the hard scrabble Appalachian--as she learns about Monarchs. The world of both species is upturned. The choices are not simple for either. There is a lot of despair here, but at least a little hope, about as substantial as a butterfly.
Kingsolver chose to narrate her own book. That’s not always a good choice for an author. I don’t think I’d do it, even with many years experience in narration and broadcasting. It works for Kingsolver, though. She’s a talented narrator who uses well her intimate knowledge of how her character’s speech should sound.
March 9, 2013
Scavengers
I’ve been reading Flight Behavior by Barbara Kingsolver. I was probably attracted to the book by its title, given that I am struggling to accurately describe the unique method of flying that my main characters use.
Kingsolver gave me no help, there. But she did remind me that butterflies exist. I had been thinking about them for some time. The sky of my anjel world seemed a little barren to me. In this stage of the draft there are only a couple types of waterfowl and one kind of scavenger bird that share the air with anjels. I have now started to write in something like butterflies and a cleaning bird.
We think of butterflies as beautiful pollinators, when we think about them at all. I thought there might be a role for them as scavengers. I Googled scavenger butterflies and was not surprised to find several recent references to this type of behavior on the planet we call Earth.
So, now I’m having some fun playing beauty against disgust. We tend not to admire our scavengers. Think of vultures and hyenas. Yet, they do perhaps the most necessary job on the planet. In the American West, where I live, one of the most common scavengers we encounter is the magpie. I have never understood why they are so reviled. They are gorgeous, intelligent birds, just going about their business.
Does scavenging play a large role in how we see magpies? Bald eagles are scavengers, too, but we tend to think of them as noble creatures. Maybe magpies are downgraded because we see them doing their work on the side of the road. Eagles are not typically so bold. Besides, they prefer fish, a critter that only rarely succumbs to passing autos.
Butterflies, or their anjel planet analog, have the advantage of hiding their scavenging work with their delicate selves. Their colorful swarms are much easier to look at than the carcasses they cover. Death is always just behind the curtain, but it is easier to take if the curtain is beautiful.
Kingsolver gave me no help, there. But she did remind me that butterflies exist. I had been thinking about them for some time. The sky of my anjel world seemed a little barren to me. In this stage of the draft there are only a couple types of waterfowl and one kind of scavenger bird that share the air with anjels. I have now started to write in something like butterflies and a cleaning bird.
We think of butterflies as beautiful pollinators, when we think about them at all. I thought there might be a role for them as scavengers. I Googled scavenger butterflies and was not surprised to find several recent references to this type of behavior on the planet we call Earth.
So, now I’m having some fun playing beauty against disgust. We tend not to admire our scavengers. Think of vultures and hyenas. Yet, they do perhaps the most necessary job on the planet. In the American West, where I live, one of the most common scavengers we encounter is the magpie. I have never understood why they are so reviled. They are gorgeous, intelligent birds, just going about their business.
Does scavenging play a large role in how we see magpies? Bald eagles are scavengers, too, but we tend to think of them as noble creatures. Maybe magpies are downgraded because we see them doing their work on the side of the road. Eagles are not typically so bold. Besides, they prefer fish, a critter that only rarely succumbs to passing autos.
Butterflies, or their anjel planet analog, have the advantage of hiding their scavenging work with their delicate selves. Their colorful swarms are much easier to look at than the carcasses they cover. Death is always just behind the curtain, but it is easier to take if the curtain is beautiful.
March 8, 2013
A Word About Wizards
And today, a word about wizards. No, not the seemingly magic-dispensing kind that live in my Wizards Trilogy. I want to take a moment to thank the wizards at Google for making it possible for me to keep writing through some technical issues.
This past weekend I was trying to upgrade my computer system so that I could run Adobe Premiere. I want to be able to do a little freelance video work. In the process of doing that, I fried something. The jury is still out on what that might have been, but it turned my computer into a brick. I don’t do yellow tablets, so I was screwed. Or, I thought I was.
I work on Google Drive. It makes everything I do available to me in the cloud wherever I am. I could access my work from my Chromebook, but typing on a flat keyboard is extremely annoying to me. Then it occurred to me that the wizards at Logitech had made at tiny USB interface device for my wireless keyboard and mouse. I didn’t have my computer anymore, but I did have my wavy, natural keyboard and mouse. I plugged the USB module into the back of my Chromebook and, tada, it just worked. The screen is about 1/4 the size of my desktop screen, but I’m writing! Wait. No, I’m not. I’m blogging. And now, back to our story...
This past weekend I was trying to upgrade my computer system so that I could run Adobe Premiere. I want to be able to do a little freelance video work. In the process of doing that, I fried something. The jury is still out on what that might have been, but it turned my computer into a brick. I don’t do yellow tablets, so I was screwed. Or, I thought I was.
I work on Google Drive. It makes everything I do available to me in the cloud wherever I am. I could access my work from my Chromebook, but typing on a flat keyboard is extremely annoying to me. Then it occurred to me that the wizards at Logitech had made at tiny USB interface device for my wireless keyboard and mouse. I didn’t have my computer anymore, but I did have my wavy, natural keyboard and mouse. I plugged the USB module into the back of my Chromebook and, tada, it just worked. The screen is about 1/4 the size of my desktop screen, but I’m writing! Wait. No, I’m not. I’m blogging. And now, back to our story...
March 5, 2013
Weight Loss for Writers
It is my understanding that most writers tell their story lavishly, at first, spending words like they had no credit limit. For them, writing is a weight loss program. They go back with a scalpel and excise the extravagance until only the leanest story is left.
I write leanly to begin with. On the second and subsequent reads I usually find a few words that I can slice away without affecting meaning. On nearly every read of every section I find some little tweak to make.
My major rewrite, though, is when I go back through the story after I complete the first draft and add in what I have missed. As I go along, the story will build on itself and I will find that I need to go back earlier in the book to include an explanation or flesh out a story line. I may even add a minor character and it is not uncommon at all for me to add scenes to the story that I realized somewhere toward the end must exist in order for a reader to understand the world she is reading about.
Again, this is where an editor really earns their keep. After I have read some passages 20 or 30 times, and the whole book six or seven times, the story is so internalized for me that it is difficult to remember what is on the page and what is still stuck in some corner of my mind. My editor lets me know when there is a break in continuity. It is not my favorite thing to hear that I have left something out or explained something poorly. Better to hear it from an editor, though, than from a reader.
March 4, 2013
Imaginary Death
I’ve heard it said that all books are about death. I suppose there is something to that, if you consider that they are also conversely about life. Life and its end are what we have. That is the sum of our certainty. It is from this that all tragedy, all comedy, all art springs. We celebrate life all the more because we know that death is in our future.
And, here’s where religion steps in. Since we cannot remember a time when we were not alive, it is nearly impossible for us to grasp a future so rude that it needs us not at all. We seek explanation, reassurance and hope. Maybe we will live again. Or maybe we will live some reflected life in the memories of others.
Anjels (working title) is about a common human belief about death and its impermanence. It envisions a fairly simple culture clinging to a primitive belief about reincarnation. That the anjels misunderstand so much about their physical lives will lead at least one character to question their beliefs about the metaphysical. As with most of us, this questioning is brought about by a proximate death.
I am writing that scene today, or at least I think I am. Sometimes it takes longer to get to some particular plot point than I think it will.
Writing about the death of a loved one--even one loved by a character you have created--is always difficult. Inevitably it becomes, at least in part, a reliving of deaths you have known in your own life. In writing about death in a world of winged creatures, how can I not remember the five of my friends and family who have fallen from the sky?
This imaginary death will not resemble those in its particulars. Its aftermath will be familiar to us all, though. Maybe that is why it has been said that all books are about death. No matter how our lives differ from one another, we have this one thing in common. This thing that repels and compels us. This end to what we know.
And, here’s where religion steps in. Since we cannot remember a time when we were not alive, it is nearly impossible for us to grasp a future so rude that it needs us not at all. We seek explanation, reassurance and hope. Maybe we will live again. Or maybe we will live some reflected life in the memories of others.
Anjels (working title) is about a common human belief about death and its impermanence. It envisions a fairly simple culture clinging to a primitive belief about reincarnation. That the anjels misunderstand so much about their physical lives will lead at least one character to question their beliefs about the metaphysical. As with most of us, this questioning is brought about by a proximate death.
I am writing that scene today, or at least I think I am. Sometimes it takes longer to get to some particular plot point than I think it will.
Writing about the death of a loved one--even one loved by a character you have created--is always difficult. Inevitably it becomes, at least in part, a reliving of deaths you have known in your own life. In writing about death in a world of winged creatures, how can I not remember the five of my friends and family who have fallen from the sky?
This imaginary death will not resemble those in its particulars. Its aftermath will be familiar to us all, though. Maybe that is why it has been said that all books are about death. No matter how our lives differ from one another, we have this one thing in common. This thing that repels and compels us. This end to what we know.
March 3, 2013
Educating Anjels
One of the major themes of the book I’m writing is passing on knowledge from generation to generation. In the novel that becomes an unhealthy obsession that stunts the growth of the people who participate in it. In reality, though, it is the most important thing we do.
Most often we think of this passing on of knowledge as education. But I don't think we always realize what we're doing when we educate. We are making the tribal memory of the human race available to newly minted people. Because we have been able to pass stories along, then save images on rocks, then create an alphabet, then, and then and then, until we have computers and the Internet and beyond; because we can pass that knowledge on, people do not have to be blank slates learning everything again that has been learned a trillion times before.
There is no reason to believe that people who lived 10,000 years ago were less intelligent than we are today. And yet, they did not fly around in airplanes. Why is that? It is because passing on knowledge through storytelling has severe limitations. If you want proof of that, play the childhood game of telephone a time or two.
Once alphabets and writing were invented, and technologies came along to preserve the thoughts and experiments of our forebears, knowledge increased exponentially. The speed of that tsunami is picking up every day. And now, the singularity may actually happen in the lifetimes of people around us today.
Most often we think of this passing on of knowledge as education. But I don't think we always realize what we're doing when we educate. We are making the tribal memory of the human race available to newly minted people. Because we have been able to pass stories along, then save images on rocks, then create an alphabet, then, and then and then, until we have computers and the Internet and beyond; because we can pass that knowledge on, people do not have to be blank slates learning everything again that has been learned a trillion times before.
There is no reason to believe that people who lived 10,000 years ago were less intelligent than we are today. And yet, they did not fly around in airplanes. Why is that? It is because passing on knowledge through storytelling has severe limitations. If you want proof of that, play the childhood game of telephone a time or two.
Once alphabets and writing were invented, and technologies came along to preserve the thoughts and experiments of our forebears, knowledge increased exponentially. The speed of that tsunami is picking up every day. And now, the singularity may actually happen in the lifetimes of people around us today.
March 2, 2013
Always Avoid Annoying Alliteration
Alliteration is a useful mnemonic device, especially in poetry. It helps you remember a line, as does rhyme. English is a rhyme poor language. Just think of lonely, friendless orange. Oh, there are the oblique rhymes for that famous word, but who wants to write a love poem about mange? Or orange, for that matter.
I am not writing poetry so I do not intentionally rhyme. Modern poetry makes much less use of it, anyway. Accidental rhymes are fairly rare. One quick read of a line or two and an accidental rhyme stands out like a mime in organized crime. Rhymes are easy to spot and easy to kill. Alliteration happens by accident more frequently than it happens on purpose.
Alliteration adds to a story like spice adds to stew. Too much makes it intolerable. The trick is, “too much” is in the ear of the annoyed.
As mentioned earlier in this blog I have intentionally set myself up in some boxes with this current book. The alliteration box is not one I intentionally created, but it does exist. As I said, alliteration is easy and often accidental. Add to that characters who fly, characters who have fur, characters called phlox and a character named Fox and you have a flurry of furry flying phlox in a fury about Fox.
I am constantly examining and reexamining alliteration in this book. I kill a lot of it, but sometimes it is so sweet it simply must stay.
Did I mention that everyone needs an editor?
I am not writing poetry so I do not intentionally rhyme. Modern poetry makes much less use of it, anyway. Accidental rhymes are fairly rare. One quick read of a line or two and an accidental rhyme stands out like a mime in organized crime. Rhymes are easy to spot and easy to kill. Alliteration happens by accident more frequently than it happens on purpose.
Alliteration adds to a story like spice adds to stew. Too much makes it intolerable. The trick is, “too much” is in the ear of the annoyed.
As mentioned earlier in this blog I have intentionally set myself up in some boxes with this current book. The alliteration box is not one I intentionally created, but it does exist. As I said, alliteration is easy and often accidental. Add to that characters who fly, characters who have fur, characters called phlox and a character named Fox and you have a flurry of furry flying phlox in a fury about Fox.
I am constantly examining and reexamining alliteration in this book. I kill a lot of it, but sometimes it is so sweet it simply must stay.
Did I mention that everyone needs an editor?
