King's Rules

I'm going to be honest here: I'm getting close to full of reading 'writing rules' on blogs, forums, articles and such. It's not that I feel like I'm so superior, so skilled, so AWESOME that I don't need the advice; it's just that I think I've gotten to the point where I've found what works for me, and I'm pretty happy with it. I'm always looking for ways to improve, but I find now I'm more interested in reading about someone's process rather than their rules, if you see the difference.

But then I saw a link to this article: Stephen King's Top 20 Rules for Writers. Well, it's Stephen King, so I've got to check it out. I'm a fan, after all, and whether you like what he does or not, you've got to respect the man. He's got one hell of a track record. When someone as prolific as King, who's sold as many books as King, puts out 'rules,' you read 'em, even if you've had it up to here with 'rules.' Even when you've come to believe the fundamental rule of writing comes down to "Do whatever works," you read.

So, I surfed on over to the article, not ready to swallow it, lock, stock and barrel, but interested in seeing what the man had to say…and I was disappointed. I expected an article written by King. At the very least, I expected an interview in which he dispensed his advice. Instead, the writer pulled tidbits out of King's On Writing and presented them as rules. Twenty of them, supported (mostly) by quotes from the book. Now, King can be as overbearing as anyone who has found success with a particular method, but if you go back and read On Writing, you'll find relatively little that's put down as hard and fast rules. In this article, some of King's 'rules' look pretty ridiculous. Quotes out of context always do.

Here's an example from the article:

10. You have three months. "The first draft of a book—even a long one—should take no more than three months, the length of a season."

Wow. As a 6- to 8-month guy, that's a little depressing. But, wait! I dug out my copy of "On Writing" and started reading. Here's what King actually said: "Still, I believe the first draft of a book--even a long one--should take no more than three months, the length of a season. Any longer and--for me, at least--the story begins to take on an odd, foreign feel, like a dispatch from the Romanian Department of Public Affairs, or something broadcast on high-band shortwave during a period of severe sunspot activity."

Pretty different in the full context, isn't it? Note how King uses the em dashes to emphasize what happens when it takes longer than three months to write a draft. It takes this out of the realm of "rule" and turns it into "advice." The writer of the article happily turns advice into rules. Like #11:

 11. There are two secrets to success. "I stayed physical[sic] healthy, and I stayed married."

There's all kinds of things wrong with that as a 'rule'--unmarried people can't write? Sick people can't write? Huh? But this came from the paragraphs immediately following what was turned into rule 10. King mentioned how he's asked the question (what's the secret to your success?). The answer given "makes the question go away", but has an element of truth to it. An element of truth is hardly a rule.

The article is full of things like this, which is too bad. Presented this way, King comes off looking just as dogmatic as any professor of writing who tries to force you to outline (in this case, however, King 'forces' you to wing it), or to conform to this structure or that. And, yes, King has his moments. The reality of On Writing, however, is that King encourages readers to write. He dispenses advice based on his experience, and mostly doesn't present them as ironclad rules. The text is full of disclaimers like the "for me" above, and his 'rules' ultimately come down to three things: 

1. You must read a lot, and write a lot.

2. Writing is hard work--don't wait for the muse. 

3. Tell the truth. 

That's really it in a nutshell right there. 

So, what's the point of all this? I suppose it's this: we need to stop worrying about what everyone else says and figure it out for ourselves. Find the way that works for you. It might be King's way. Or my way. More likely, it will have elements of other people's methods mixed in proportions that are all your own. Then, when you figure it out, tell us all so we can try to figure it out for ourselves.

I may have used this before, but I'll leave you with this bit of 'writing advice' from the geniuses of Monty Python. Have a great weekend, all.

Still The Same

First, some music, taking you way back to 1978....

 

 

Wow, I haven't been into Bob Seger since…well, I've never really been into him all that much; I liked few of his songs when I was younger, but it didn’t take long for songs like Betty Lou’s Getting Out Tonight or Her Strut to lose their appeal, and don't get me started on Old Time Rock and Roll. If I see one more Risky Business, Tom Cruise-dancing-in-his-underwear parody, I might pop a blood vessel in my brain. Still, there are a couple of Seger songs that are not Automatic Dial Turners (heh, showing my age. I guess that would be ‘button pusher’, not dial turner these days), and this one is not inappropriate given the subject matter.

On a fairly regular basis, people throw out on forums and blogs the dread question, "What motivates you to write?"  This is most typically asked when they’re feeling particularly down about things, or have hit the ‘saggy middle’ of their work. My answer has pretty much always been the same, and I did a post about this once before. Since didn’t label that post, I can’t find it now, so I’ll summarize: My motivation is that I want you to read what I write, and I want you to buy what I write. The only way for that to happen is for me to keep writing, to get it done, and make it good. That hasn't changed from the first time I wrote it, and it still hasn't changed. It's still the same.

What's also still the same, however, is the problem I have reading my writing. A few weeks back I received a critique on Barton's Women from one of my valued crit partners. It took me a good twenty-four hours to work up the nerve to do more than skim the e-mail through squinty eyes (yeah, it makes no sense, but that’s how I always look at those critiques--through squinty eyes or kind of sidelong, or sometimes both). Now, there were some very, very nice things said, and the things cited as issues were all fair and, if when worked on by me, will make this manuscript even better. Now it’s up to me. It’s time to read it again, make more notes, and do some rewriting. And yet….

And yet, though 3+ weeks have passed, I find myself really struggling to crack the manuscript open and start the process. It's not because I hate the manuscript--quite the contrary, I think it's good. Unlike the name I’ve given to this blog, and my general approach to so much in life, I think Barton’s Women is good. Get-an-agent good. Hook-an-editor good. I’ll be honest, when I was writing the first draft, I didn’t love it as much as Parallel Lives, but I’ve believed for quite some time that this has much more potential for commercial appeal. (I could be deluding myself, of course, but I don't think I am on this one). It's also not because I don't like the work of revising. Quite the contrary. While revising doesn't necessarily match the exhilaration that can come with whirlwind drafting, the act of crafting brings a different sort of satisfaction. I like watching word counts expand and contract. I like the feeling of knowing I just sanded off the rough edges from a scene and have made it smooth and not likely to give splinters when you run your hand over it. There’s drafting, which to me is more of a rush, and crafting, which is a

slower sort of satisfaction.

The simple truth is, I just really hate reading my writing. Part of it is simple fear that another read is going to smash my dreams of agents and editors, of book deals and readers. It’s embarrassing, somehow, in a way I can’t explain. When I got my copy of Summer’s Double Edge, I read every story in the book (they’re quite good, by the way)--except my own. I looked at it, and reveled in my title and name in print, but I didn’t read it. I can’t. Even though I think that story’s good (and it was a lot of fun to write), and it’s been deemed worthy by an editor and been positively received by folks who’ve read it, I don’t want to read it.

I know, I know, you’re saying, “Get over yourself already.” I will. In fact, I have a half hour to spare in my day today, and I have the first 50 or so pages printed out, so it looks like it’s time. Just let me make some coffee first (hah ha, kidding!). Thanks for reading, and have a great weekend.

A Lesson From Looper

Last weekend, I finally got to see the movie, Looper.

This was a movie I wanted to see from the instant last summer I saw the teaser on television (and this will tell you what's on my mind lately: when I wrote that line, I wrote 'query' instead of trailer).




The concept is fantastic. Men recruited in the present (which itself is about thirty years in our future) to assassinate men from the further future. The targets arrive at a predetermined time and location, where the 'loopers' (killers) shoot them and dispose of the body. At some point, however, the loopers themselves are deemed unnecessary, and you get to kill your future self. Mind blown.

Time travel stuff fascinates me, but it also has the potential to overwhelm a story, and can lead to all kinds of complications. I suspect J.K. Rowling may have gotten rid of the Time Turner from the Harry Potter series after finding herself with a device that could have been too powerful, too complicated to explain, and too easy to use as a way to get Harry and company in (and especially out) of trouble.

But here's how they dealt with time travel in Looper:

Abe (the man sent back in time by organized crime to run the Loopers): "All this time travel crap, it fries your brain like an egg."

Old Joe: "I don't want to talk about time travel because if we start talking about it then we're going to be here all day talking about it, making diagrams with straws."

Hah. I love it. The movie just presents time travel as an established fact and ignores trying to explain how it actually works. The simple truth is, none of the characters need to know how it works, thus we don't need to know how it works, either. And instead of getting lost in all that wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey stuff, we can focus on the story, which is really NOT about time travel. Well played, Rian Johnson. Well played, indeed.

Emotion on the Wane?

Saturday morning I sat, bleary-eyed, at my computer, a cup of coffee close at hand. I saw a tiny headline that woke me up quicker than the coffee: "Is literature losing emotion?"  The article quoted a recent study (http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0059030) which seems to think so.

The researchers examined books published between 1900 and 2000, using a text analysis tool that looked for 'content' words that expressed emotion in six categories: Anger, disgust, fear, joy, sadness, and surprise. There's a lot of deciphering in the 'methods' section of their paper, but the long and the short of it: emotion in literature is on the decline. The study claims a steady decline, with a two brief bumps, one in the late 1920s, another the early 1940s*, then dropping, dropping, dropping, with a slight upturn beginning in the 80s (the authors point out the biggest upturn has been with words indicative of 'fear', interestingly).

There are a lot of potential flaws with this research, and the Slate summary points out what looks an awful lot like confirmation bias. The study's authors claim they are accounting for changes in language and word use, though we don't know what words are used to indicate what emotions. Neither article really delves deep into what this means, whether it's a reflection of our times, or something else. Personally, I wonder if it comes down to authors working harder at 'showing', not 'telling'.

Someone commenting on the Slate article mentioned Raymond Carver, blaming him for stories that "focus on the dull & somewhat depersonalized stories of average people…all written with a heavy nod toward the language police & topped off w/, at this point, an enormous dollop of contemporary cliché." Ouch! I haven't read huge amounts of Carver's work, but what I've found is his work is packed with emotion, but the emotion is in the tone that permeates the entire piece, a mood he sets without using obvious content words. A skilled writer can do this without heavy use of emotion words. In fact, I would bet you can create a piece that's dark and depressing while stuffing it full of words that would indicate the opposite. Hmm. If I were a contest and challenge sort of guy, I might suggest you do that. What the hell, do it anyway, on your own, have fun with it.

I haven't found recent literature to be lacking emotion, have you? I do think writers are working harder at conveying emotion with less use of 'emotional' words. What do you all think of this? Have you found books becoming less emotional? Do you find a major difference between old books and new?

Thanks for stopping, have a great weekend.