P.H. Wilson's Blog: A Face Somewhere Behind the Page

The Creative Process

A thought devolves into an idea and from that the writer spills forth a thousand sentences that never do that fundamental notion even an ounce of justice. How could it? That initial idea was genius. Its brevity a witty reminder that you have skill, but in the end, you used 85,000 words to say things that could be said in 26,000. Who cares you sold 250,000 copies last week under a pseudonym, and your real name gets to play the artsy writer, and no one knows the difference. However, you do, so you spend the next week necking whiskey sodas, vodka rum and whatever mix you can find, maybe a little codeine to take the edge off (which is a lot easier to find legally than most people would assume. ) You barricade yourself in your room and write the most surreal stories, and as you sit there reviewing each sentence (as the palpitations in your chest remind you that death is a certainty in life), you know there is no chance that this work will sell. Not unless you can travel back in time and go back to a period where slapping Dali would be seen as an artistic statement which would result in you getting a round of applause from a series of dilettantes that know nothing of the creative process. However, it is the 21st century and unless you want to be some braggart hipster coasting through Shoreditch on a novel you self-published, but claim some indie label produced it. You need to go back and see what you can salvage. Two glasses of rum later and probably twenty minutes watching a documentary on hip-hop, because hell your brain is so frazzled that at this point staying upright in that discount chair you bought off Taobao is an accomplishment. Somehow your fingers still do their job, but if Stephen King can write complete novels while wasted and Hemingway Ernest could run his entire life with at least two Cuba Libres sitting in his stomach then surely you can edit your story and rebuild it. Though it turns out that piece of literature you just turned out was worthless and then you salvage one sentence from all those words you spent the entire week writing. So next you stare at that one sentence, that initial idea that was genius now a memory that your intoxicated mind has forgotten as it dwells on those nine words that you salvaged as that second Dihydrocodeine tablet dissolves in a belly full of alcohols that are going to be the death of you. Self-loathing creeps in, and you question every artistic endeavour you have ever made. Every painting you have created sits there hanging on the wall mocking you. Every stroke saying this is not abstract art it is simply a person without talent trying desperately to believe that they are something more than a hack clinging to a fading dream that they may make something of themselves other than being a sellout that sells dimestore novels that any idiot can appreciate. Your eyes crack open, and you realise you passed out two hours ago. Drool flows across the laptop that you have been using for far too long, but you are not hipster enough to buy a typewriter. So you take another drink from that whiskey and soda that now has a cigarette butt in it that you do not even remember smoking. You wipe your eyes, and you settle down and rewrite that story. Three hours later and you finally get a chance to reread that story and while that doubt still eats at your heart you feel content enough to go to sleep and as you crawl into bed you hear those damn early-bird neighbours discussing some ridiculous notion that surely no human being could care about and you fall asleep dreaming that one day you will be accepted as a literary genius rather than that hack pseudonym that keeps selling stories you wrote while half asleep in a classroom full of underachievers.

I am doing this wrong.

I know I am supposed to be flogging you material and telling you the new book is coming soon and that it is accessible to all audiences， but the reality is that it is in 中文 and while it is accessible you are not likely going to read it until it is translated into English.
This post is supposed to be about something relatable like something to do with a social media service I do not use, and we are supposed to laugh at its generic nature and how we are all the same, but I cannot do that. I am not even sure why anyone would, except for money.
Which leaves me asking what do you do when you are niche? And I do not mean the "Oh. Nobody appreciates my genius. All those successful people are sell outs or garbage." kind. I mean actually niche. Like I am middle of the road writer who likes to discuss weird things and point out the idiosyncrasy of humanity.
What am I suppose to do with that? We all know that it is not marketable, but it is who I am. It is who I have always been, and I am now too old to think it is a phase. I am an asshole who drinks whiskey and soda, paints cryptic pieces and writes things that he wishes were more profound than they probably are. Does that make me the artist, the hack, or the hipster? I for one am unsure.
So if this is the case why do I keep going? Why do I bother spending all this money all this time and effort on producing a mediocre product that is going only ever to be sold in a niche market, if it is sold at all? Is it because I have faith in the concept of art? No. I have no confidence in such a subject, art could burn and rot for all I care. I would still keep producing my pieces. Hell I know I would keep producing my pieces if no one ever bought them, so why do I do it? What kind of compulsion is it? Why do I have this undeniable urge to create new things? Why won't it cease why do I have to make things? Why can I not be like everyone else and consume or destroy things? What is this predilection with creating and why can I not shut my mouth when it comes to an open forum where I am supposed to be schilling goods but instead criticise everything about the industry. This does not benefit me in any form and ultimately keeps me working a second job so that I can keep the power on for my creative endeavours. Yet here I am ranting again in one of my musings and in no way is this going to benefit me. Hell if I had half a brain at this point, I would write an erotic romance and happily throw out a tawdry novel every so often solely to allow myself the chance to write for a living, but I do not. Instead, I push further along with my crazy novels about an insane horror/romance/fantasy/ neo-noir/thriller/play that involves immortals and god. I do not need an agent to tell me that is a bad pitch or that I am not going to sell, yet I cannot fight the need I have to write such things. To push the boundaries. So it leaves me to realise I am doing this wrong, but I am supposed to do it wrong. I know not why, just that I am supposed to do it wrong as that is who I am and my purpose as a writer.
Even if I probably would have been better staying inside my mother, never to be born amongst this world.

Reality but a distant dream

You live your life as if its real.

Cohen was right as bizarre as it seems. There is no such thing as reality, only a perception that we take advantage of and the mediums that we call our last vestiges of escape are as fictional as they have ever been yet with every step towards our knowledge of how fake things are we are told that they are even more real than ever. Reality TV, game shows, talks shows, nonfiction books, news, political statements, causes, wars and economies. Everything is a farce, a fiction used to control the mind and how I wish this were some conspiracy theory level nonsense, but sadly it is only the musings of a man who has lived on four continents and witnessed multiple regimes and political ideologies.
Communism, democracy, all shades of the same. I would choose to be an anarchist if that notion were not hijacked by those who are seeking nothing more than chaos and destruction.
What does that mean to the writer? The writer who has dreamed of capturing human emotion in its purest form. What is there to catch? Moreover, even if one were capable of such things would anyone read it? Would anyone want to? Alternatively, is it better to form emotions that are expected? Tried and true methods of lying to ourselves just so that we can stay alive for a moment and not bleed out in the insanity that is existence. Absurdism is reality, but why must we all seem to fear this Sisyphean fate? Why is it so fearful to know that we are pushing that boulder back up the hill only so that may roll back down? Why do we need that second world and a love that cannot be? Why is reality a truth that we dare not speak and we choose this lie for eternity?
Lastly what good is a writer, one who wishes to document the notion of existence if they are more concerned with a sale and to perpetuate a formula that equals a deal rather than pushing the craft, the art, the idea of humanity to its next level? A level where reality is not a thing to be feared.

To be cliche or not cliche, was never the question.

When did we sell them for content and artists for content providers? Our souls now desecrated by insane vigils that leave us mumbling incoherently as thousands march for fame. Photos of food and mindless messages begging for likes all for a taste of celebrity. This never-ending search for an expanding audience, so that we may slip into a world of luxury. Were we artists ever deserving of our status as radicals or has this always been the way? This clawing reproach this mental fatigue and wanton lust for a copper coin or digital tick to mark us as established, a reality we whitewashed through the jaded lense of history.
The avant-garde a soulless entity meant to sell merchandise through the back door. Were our idols genuinely sublime geniuses or do we only wish them to be? Why can we not accept Hemingway Ernest 's fish as a fish, is it because we need it to be more? If there is not some depth. Some sort of heft to the work will we finally take those jade prisms from our eyes and see that there are so few artists in our history. That there has only been a handful of masters and the rest have been and always will be no more than content creators not willing to explain their works in-depth because like a magic trick you already know it is not real and if they let the truth slip that wonderment and magic they present will be left wallowing in a pile of misaligned words and fake promises.
So do I accept this reality and turn myself from an idealist who is burying himself under some concept that never existed and has only ever been a means to sell a subculture. Or do I sell the notion of artistry and stumble down the path of content provider looking solely to fill another humans mind for a few hours and leave it no better off than when I found it.
Simply put is it better to be plain rice pretending to a three-course meal or sugary candy trying to convince you that diets are a construct of those who wish to control you?
Or is it better to set out upon the path of least discovery and create like no one is watching or ever will? Is it better to bury the soul in the art it adores and let it rot on the sandy shores of creation?
I have no answers to any of this because the reality of it all is no writer ever has a solution they only have a lie that they so desperately wish to sell you.

Creativity/Neo-Renaissance/Artistic Crossfit

I am an ardent advocate of not drifting down the path of chaining yourself to your desk and mass-producing 2,000 words a day, because ultimately all that is occurring is the infinite monkey theorem (great name for a band or a satirical/dystopian novel) and that to me seems like the last thing a writer should be trying to accomplish. Why, you might ask? Well, if constantly bashing on your keyboard to create a large quantity of text that you then edit into something better is the goal, then you are stating that a computer can do your job or at very least the writer is redundant and I can use a computer running an algorithm to bash out several strings of junk and then use the editor to make something substantial appear. Which is what Phillip Parker is said to do. Now if we are honest with ourselves that is highly likely what most editors think already and it makes writers appear less like artists or craftsman and instead become a symbol for corporations the world over.
This does not sound that inviting a premise, does it? So, who is recommending this to us? It tends to be authors that mass-produce, such as Barbara Cartland, James Patterson and Stephen King, (full disclosure, King is where I cut my teeth, so he will always be a source of inspiration for me, which in turn means it is much harder for me to see the faults of his works.) they tell us that this is the way to do it, because it works for them, but let us bring it back to creativity. How many of their works are truly creative and how many of them are paint by number trope fillers? Or what about the 10,000 hour theory, which is novel (does that count as a pun, if so I am sorry), but I mean can we be honest with ourselves here, we are hailing "practice makes us better at something, rather than not practicing at all." We figured this out centuries ago with artisans and we have quotes such as "Skill without imagination is craftsmanship and gives us many useful objects such as wickerwork picnic baskets. Imagination without skill gives us modern art." This rather sardonic quote comes from Tom Stoppard, the author behind Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead. It is this quote that stirred a thought in me and I know that this is dangerous and quite a preposterous notion, but either way it came. What if instead of doing something as crazy as bashing your head against a wall. Staring vacantly at the brick work across the street, hoping for some modicum of inspiration, while you bash out the next 2,000 words. What if we started some form of artistic crossfit as it were. That way we can prevent our minds from stagnating and turning into something that is admittedly beneficial for a single author, but highly negative for the craft as a whole. So instead of 2,000 words a day, which is great for honing the craftsmanship side of us, what if we then had to delve into another art that we are not skilled in, we would then need to rely on creativity to enhance our works rather than the the methodical approach we have to our writing. This way we are creating a better breeding ground for our art and stopping ourselves from drifting too far to either side of the artistic spectrum. Which in turn stops us from becoming cannon fodder for algorithms and computer generated adequacy.
In terms of supplementing your artistic outlet, I do think that this is the one thing most authors do not make a comment about, but people like Stephen King also are members in a band and while I imagine he is adequate in this pursuit. I would also imagine that this artistic playtime allows his mind to drift into the realm of the creative without the constraints of his regiment. Second to this fact if we look back at least to the most artistic period of western history the greats all dabbled in multiple disciplines and the time before that the Greeks and Romans we found that they tended to the same. Which tells us the closer we get to some unified field we watch the greats fade away and leave us with carbon copies, so dear writers stop chaining yourself to your desk and make sure that you delve into the arts. Immerse yourself in art for art sake, because if you read those useless how to write books they all say the same thing you have no chance of selling more than a handful of copies. If that is true then we should be trying to open the few minds we do reach.

Criticism

I know, it is ironic, or moronic, to discuss criticisms on a website that is devoted to criticisms, but if one delved only into the world of the sensible, then one certainly would not exist, because as we all know existence is absurd.

That said, I know that I am a harsh critic in terms of most things, but are my criticisms valid. This is a notion that continually plagues me, while these feelings, ideas and opinions are my own that in of itself does not actually mean anything. They are simply an amalgamation of experiences coupled with impulses shooting across a brain that I as a human being assume is rational and intelligent, but that does not make it so. If that is the case, humans need to create an actual system of rating or criticizing things. I have always felt this way, but it was after reading Translation Criticism- Potentials and Limitations: Categories and Criteria for Translation Quality Assessment by Katharina Reiss that I really started to wonder about the entire concept of criticism and while generic criticism on a website like this is flawed at best. It is the professional critics that I have a deeper issue with and I have gone on record, when i was a much younger person, as saying professional critics are no more than 5th graders doing a book report and while retrospectively it does feel harsh and sounds like the kind of bitter remark that a writer who under a different pseudonym received some unflattering reviews, there is still some truth in it.

What qualifies a critic? In the old days they were simply journalists with almost no experience in their field, they were given a column to fill and fill it they did. They have given us odd systems such as thumbs, which is completely lacking nuance or logic and must have been designed with the most unintelligent viewers or readers in mind. There is that horrible 5 star which is also completely out of touch and is used more in the film and book industry when you are trying to prevent the releases from losing their selling power. I mean honestly 3 stars sounds ok but let us put that into a more modern out of 100 score and that means that score sits somewhere between 60 and 79. That is not an acceptable measure outside of having the ability to obscure garbage as something decent, which is what it is meant to do and that is why establishments that tend to use the star system are ones that have a high volume of garbage streaming in. Netflix (which has decent programs, but more garbage), hotels, so many seedy by the hour establishments out there. Medicaid and medicare systems, nursing homes, professional wrestling and out of touch film critics all use this system, because it is simple enough for an idiot to understand and vague enough to hide the trash. Modern film critics and systems IMDB, Rotten Tomatoes, Metacritic all use the one hundred system which gives some nuance to things and in this day and age we should expect our book critics to provide the same, there should be a metacritic section for novels, because I do not have the time to read every critic's 700-1000 word essay on why the author's "relentless flamboyance left me a little cold" that is a shout out to you Cal Revely-Calder. I mean reading all the critics reviews for a single book is akin to reading War and Peace and half of The Brothers Karamazov that is senseless, so I say write your local critic in your newspaper and tell them you want a decent rating system that actually reflects the work not simply a long essay that boils down to it is not as good as their first book.

Ignorance is bliss

Last night I was watching Stalker, which by the way is a beautiful film as long as you are OK with art movies with slow pacing, and I could not help but continuously contemplate the "writer's" words.

A man writes because he is tormented, because he doubts. He needs to constantly prove to himself and the others that he's worth something.

A brutal statement, but it is an undeniable truth that clings to the writer's soul. We are constantly searching for something more, something that says we are worth a damn in this world. That all this time spent alone in this chaotic state that dwells between our ears is worth it and in an almost perverse sense we need that validation from others. Think about that, we lock ourselves up away from the rest of the world, we dance with our inner-demons through self-destructive means solely to get a therapeutic release and ultimately validation from an outside world that we have chosen to ignore. What does that say about us?

You put your soul in it, you put your heart in it – they will devour both the soul and the heart. You extract the baseness out of the soul – they devour the baseness. All to the last of them are literate; every one of them has a sensory hunger. And all of them flock around: journalists, editors, critics, some uninterruptible women. And everyone demands: “Give! Give!..” What, hell with it, am I for a writer, if I hate to write? If for me it is a torture, an illness-like, shameful occupation, something like haemorrhoids. And I did think earlier that somebody becomes better because of my books. But nobody needs me! I will croak, and in two days they will forget me and begin devouring somebody else. For I wanted to remake them, but I myself was remade! In their own image. Earlier the future was only a continuation of the present, and all the changes loomed somewhere behind the horizons. And now the future became one with the present. Are they ready for that? They do not wish to know anything! They only devour!

That statement brings up three notions within me.
The first:
Are we altering the world or is the world altering us? From the moment the audience consumes our work and reinterprets it, have they then changed our own perception of what our art is? If we do not remain flexible and malleable with our own works are we but rigid dinosaurs set to rot away as the world moves on?
The second:
Since we first set ink to paper, have writers been more about the consumption than the art and have we only caused the cycle to speed up through the years to the point where it is now better to be a writer who produces 50 works of no true literary or cultural significance rather than a person who toils over the human condition through a series of maybe 5 novels and to that end is the Nobel prize now nothing more than a reminder of what we as writers could have been while the Amazon bestseller list is what we have become.
And third:
You meet writers who loathe their craft, yet are compelled to do it and you meet those who love it. Have you ever noticed the type of material each produces? Are those that produce corner store romance novels ultimately happier than those who produce heady thinking pieces? If so, does that not imply that ignorance is bliss and that bliss is ignorance.

The Anti-novel

Wiki definition:
The anti-novel usually fragments and distorts the experience of its characters, presenting events outside of chronological order and attempting to disrupt the idea of characters with unified and stable personalities. Some principal features of anti-novels include lack of obvious plot, minimal development of character, variations in time sequence, experiments with vocabulary and syntax, and alternative endings and beginnings.
Extreme features may include detachable or blank pages, drawings, and hieroglyphics.

Blog Post:
The anti-novel as a concept has been one that has interested me since my teens, as I plowed through story after story I started to find it was all starting to become all too predictable, movies as well. At first I raged against those artists believing that they were simply hacks as is often the cry of the author that barely understands literature, but as I progressed and studied the craft I saw that they were not hacks. I saw that literature is the issue, so my next obvious progression was to delve into the work's of the surrealists, the absurdists and the crazy. What I found were the anti-novels I was looking for, but like many things in the art world the separation between mainstream and artistic dalliances left an incomplete Venn diagram. I, big headed as always, felt that I could fill that void. What if I could write an anti-novel that was also a piece of commercial fiction? In fairness I did, but the issue remains is it truly an anti-novel if no one notices it or does it ultimately not matter if they see the design? Is this why we authors are stuck making a choice. We can choose to either be Stephen King or James Joyce, but we cannot be both and as that is highly likely the case can I really blame anyone who decides to choose a profit over literary creativity. For what can you create if you have already been dead for six months from starvation.

Darkness

A trillion lights shall die
And what cosmic nuances did bloom
Shall falter at your side
For where n the cosmos do souls go to rest?
And what of rest?
Shall a karmic wheel spin for eternity
Or shall a mass grave of darkened misgivings hold true
Life you shallow beast
Have stolen my mind and my refuge
You have given rise to a world I shall lose
To what end does this farce come to be
Or this just a taste
Of darkness's eternity

Meaning

How can art have meaning when existence does not? How can we cling to interpretation when we know by the sheer definition of the word that we are wrong? If we cannot see the deeper meaning in an artist's work are we then allowed to criticise? Is it their fault for us not understanding or is it our own for not having an open enough mind? Is the seemingly inherent pretentiousness found in artists only a ruse for stories and pieces that are actually void of meaning, yet claimed to delve into the depths of the soul?
These are the questions I asked myself when I wrote The Koalemos Initiative. Now I know if you have read it you are probably going how the hell does that generic thriller have anything to do with those questions you posed and sadly for the moment you will have to take my word for it, as it is far too early in that works lifespan for me to begin deconstructing it, but long story short as it were. TKI is an anti-novel. it is a philosophical piece that just so happens to have a thriller stuffed in the middle of it, but it is most certainly not that and now as I sit back and watch others judge my work it is not the criticisms that bother me as only the weakest amongst us cling to the hope that our work or ourselves will be universally liked, no, my issue is did I do my work justice are my intentions and the deeper meanings easy enough to find or I have created my very own Ray Bradbury moment,