Alexander Jablokov's Blog, page 23

That which does not destroy us: delivering a novel to the workshop

In my day job, I am a marketing writer. In cartoons like Dilbert, and in much common belief in tech companies, marketing people are blithering idiots who have no idea of what the products do, who the customers are, or even what business they are in.

That hasn't actually been my experience. People actually expect marketing people to know a lot about the business they are writing for. In my case right now, that's a wide range of medical devices, from heart valves to hip implants. So, sometimes people are a little uncomfortable telling me when I have something wrong ("does he really not know that a good market for facet arthroplasty might not develop?") Well, no, I don't. That was just my guess.

But what I say to them when they wonder if I really want to be corrected: "Either you think I'm an idiot, and it's just between us, or you and some thousands of other people think I'm an idiot." There's really no way around it. Unlike most jobs, mine is practiced in the open. By definition, the world sees pretty much everything I produce.

I'm not telling this so that you'll feel sorry for me, or respect me more.  Or both. Paradoxically enough, we do frequently want both of those things simultaneously.

I'm telling you because I just turned in the manuscript of my novel, Timeslip, to my writing workshop, the Cambridge Science Fiction Workshop (CSFW). Finally, someone other than me will read this thing.

The CSFW is a powerful tool. It has a procedure set, a corporate culture, and a long-serving subset of members that makes it effective in uncovering a wide set of shortcomings in a manuscript. Like any workshop, it is a great servant but a terrible master. In my experience, they can only make a book better. Not that every suggestion or even observation is good or pertinent.

And it's done in private. No reader will ever have to experience that poorly motivated character or that impossible use of steam power. Just those brave folks of the CSFW.

It's long past the time when luck had anything to do with it, but I won't mind if you wish me some anyway.

 

In search of a fruitful idea, like the Trinity

In a recent post, I characterized novel ideas as something like fugue subjects, something that can be reversed and transformed and played against itself, in the form of other characters, subplots, locations, etc. If it has that flexibility and extensibility, it can serve as the basis for a novel.

The same is true, I think of a variety of other ideas. Some ideas are fruitful, that is, they lead to other ideas. In another post, I wrote about the writer Ron Carlson's notion that, when writing, you should make sure your narrative choices give you "inventory". You make initial story choices not just on behalf of the plot, but on behalf of the future self that will be writing the rest of the story. You want to keep that person from running out of stuff to use. I've also written about how irritated that person will be if you aren't careful to do that.

In Christian theology, the Trinity plays something of that role (how's that for a dramatic transition?) The Trinity became dominant as a concept, not because it is, in some sense "truer" than, say, Arian monotheism, Monophysite spiritualism, or Nestorian humanism, but because it allowed for an incredibly complex narrative. Someone could always grab some part of that idea and develop an entire theology out of it. As a result, Trinitarian sequels, spin-offs, and fan fiction outcompeted the more closed-off and conclusive narrative notions of other Christological constructs. 

Having explained both post-Nicean theology and novel writing, what can I do next?

I can go in search of a fruitful idea.  I just sent my novel to my workshop, and have new tasks to take on.

The Matt Ridley Prize for Environmental Heresy

I should start this post with my usual boilerplate disclaimer when discussing environmental issues: I live in Cambridge, I ride my bike everywhere, I am concerned about global warming, but more concerned about issues to do with water (both drinking, and the kind that is losing all of its fish).

But I find most of the things people like to propose as ways of solving our problems, like high-speed trains, wind generators, and electric cars, are kind of...silly. There is no way a dollar spent on any of those things generates anything like a dollar's worth of value. They have a vaguely cargo cultish feel to them: useless rituals performed by people who do not understand the real means of production. Wind towers are really just fancy statues of John Frum. These things will bring us Green Cargo.

Well, I started to tell you about how, really, I was one of the great and the good, and now I've gotten all Copenhagen Consensus on you, which just demonstrates my unreliability. You now suspect I am in the pocket of the Heartland Institute.

So, with that preparation, via Knowledge Problem, a notice that the U.K. magazine Spectator has announced the Matt Ridley Prize for Environmental Heresy: a  £8500 prize for the best 1,000 to 2,000 word essay the makes

the most brilliant and rational argument — that uses reason and evidence — to gore a sacred cow of the environmental movement. There are many to choose from: the idea that wind power is good for the climate, or that biofuels are good for the rain forest, or that organic farming is good for the planet, or that climate change is a bigger extinction threat than invasive species, or that the most sustainable thing we can do is de-industrialise.

Over $13,000 by today's exchange rate. That's midlist novel advance-level money!

BTW, now you know why midlist authors are pathetic.

I like Matt Ridley's science journalism, and it's a challenge worth taking up. Entries close June 30, 2012.