The Muse

Creative people are different, with different creative processes. We know this. In a community that eschews absolutes and certainties, and intentionally rebels against structure and laws, one of the few constants on which we will agree is that different people have different ways of producing art. However, we also know that some patterns for producing art are more successful than others, so we try to learn from one another, and search for the best methods to merge with our own personalities and styles.

One approach is to assign all creative inspiration to an outlying entity, viewing the artist not as the producer of art, but as a conduit from the creative ether into the real world. This belief is at least as old as ancient Greece, and has adherents in Middle Eastern and far Eastern cultures as well. In most instances it manifests as a religious figure or experience. This entity has gone by many names, including “the Genius,” “the Muse,” “the Awen,” and of course, “the Holy Spirit.” Whatever name assigned, this entity is typically regarded as fickle yet exquisitely powerful, allowing its conduit to produce perfect or near perfect art in the first draft or composition. Unsurprisingly, artists that espouse this belief often construct elaborate rituals through which they hope to invoke the creative spirit, abasing themselves in supplication to a mysterious being in hopes of currying its favor.

Not all creative people ascribe their ability to this unseen force of inspiration. Some view it as a crutch, an excuse for laziness, even a thief that steals the glory of accomplishment from the creator. In my admittedly limited experience, professional creators advise killing the Muse in favor of working on your own terms. It makes sense; professionals are working on a clock. They can’t afford to wait around for inspiration to show up. Professionals have to produce something and fast, otherwise they don’t eat.

Personally, I don’t think I am a professional, or even want to be a professional. I want to be an artist, I want to get it right. I don’t want my work to suffer because I forced it. It is evident, I think, when the Muse has been permitted to work an idea versus creative work produced on a schedule. Mature art is well rounded, cohesive. It flows and it all makes sense, unless it’s supposed to be jarring or senseless. Quick art from a consistent artist is usually at least passable, but not brilliant. I offer Stephen King as an example.

King is one of the most prolific authors in the industry. Other successful wordsmiths take time out to promote their novels and do speaking engagements. King, it seems, just writes. Since 1973, Stephen King has written 54 novels, six non fiction books, and 200 short stories. Some of those narratives are wonderfully crafted, but others are, frankly, terrible. Doesn’t matter, he sells them all based on the consumer’s hope that it will be a good one. It would appear that King does not believe in the Muse, but then he has that “Dark Tower” series. It took 22 years to complete those seven books. The reason is because he wanted to get it right. He could have dashed off a trilogy in two years, could have done all seven in about four years, but they wouldn’t have been what he allowed them to be, and I think most critics and readers agree that the literary world is a better place for his patience.

It’s ok for professionals to churn out whatever they can. They provide reliable entertainment, and I don’t grudge them their meal tickets. I, however, am in the unique and perhaps enviable position of not having to rely on my creativity to feed myself and my family. I can produce at leisure, and hope that in someone’s opinion, my narratives cross that curious boundary from entertainment to art.

Three Year Evaluation

I have just returned from Pikes Peak Writer's Conference 2015 in Colorado Springs. It was a chaotic, amazing three days with some incredible people, and I am physically exhausted.

This Convention marks the three year anniversary since I started this blog, and thus, the documentation of my journey to become a published fiction author. In that period I have not published a book, or hired an editor, or an agent. I haven't even finished a manuscript. In three years I have completed two chapters and edited the others, so now I have five. Five incredible chapters.

Though I haven't achieved any of the goals most aspiring authors set up for themselves, and precious few that I made for myself three years ago, the time has not been entirely wasted. I did get into Mizzou, and I did graduate with a BA in English (emphasis on Creative Fiction). While there, my raw talent as a writer was confirmed and I was given instruction and practice to develop that talent into skill. I learned that I can trust myself on the quality of my own work. Now there are only two things that separate me from finishing First Monday Park, and they are time and discipline.

Family comes first, and toddlers make writing difficult. A simple adult conversation can be an ordeal with the munchkins clamoring for snacks and entertainment while actively spreading said snacks onto the floor and dismantling the furniture for said entertainment. Writing fiction is, for me, a more difficult prospect than talking, which might explain why I am not the greatest conversationalist. However, there are gaps in the day, brief flashes of time between staving off starvation and medicating boo boos with kisses, that I can exploit for the advantage of literary art. I just have to keep the word processor open and the next sentence or two ready. I have no idea how long this should take, but I'm setting a goal for a finished first draft in twelve months. In order to help, I'm going to either find or create a critique group by the end of July.

Don't wish me luck, I don't need it. Wish me an artificially high threshold for distraction as it affects my emotional composure, because I will need a lot of that.

Create Art

I don't create art any more. I do things, useful things.  I meal plan, grocery shop, and cook. I wash, dry, fold, and put away clothes. I take kids potty and help sort out their problems, and I clean a lot, but I don't create art. Heck, I don't even blog anymore.

My peak period of art creation was in college, where I had requirements and deadlines. Even then I didn't finish anything publishable. Now my creative production is on hiatus for an undetermined period of time while I raise kids from the newborn to toddler stage. I plan on coming back, and I plan on finishing something. I plan on it being amazing, and I will feel proud of myself for bringing something beautiful and perhaps insightful into existence. While I wait for the day when I may create once more, I am restricted to consuming art.

I don't mean to complain. I like to consume art. I can't legitimately claim to be good at it; I like art/narrative to be entertaining and edifying in some way, and true aficionados seem to gravitate toward boring, yet angsty narratives in which protagonists psychologically implode around their own bad decisions. I also like the ability to comprehend the deeper message embedded in the narrative without having previously read every single thing the author has read in order to get their umpteen obscure references. Yes, I am aware that this sometimes IS the deeper message; with our own unique experiences and lenses of understanding, we are given to differing interpretations of the same exposures and are thus isolated from our fellow man and all of that. I get it. I even agree with it. I still don't think you are justified in exacerbating the problem by intentionally participating in the miscommunication, which apparently means that I really don't get it, so I am bad at consuming narrative. That's ok, you don't have to be good at something to enjoy doing it.

Honestly, I could get away without producing literature ever again. Every time I go to the library, every single time, my head spins a little at the sight of all those books. Gargantuan rooms stuffed with shelves stuffed with hundreds of thousands of books, so many that I could not read half of them even if I tried. What is this arrogance suggesting that I need to add my own voice to the tumult? Some of those are not great books, granted. Some of them are pretty terrible, so let's not even talk about those. Let's just consider the books that a lot of other people have already read and agree are pretty great. Let's start with Homer, Euripides, and Virgil, then move through Dante, Chaucer, and let's not forget the Green Knight Poet and whatever bard it was that penned Beowulf, which reminds me of THE Bard. We'd have to include Dumas, Byron, Keats, Dickens, Bronte, Carroll, Austen, Twain, Stoker, Shelley, Melville, Conrad, and Hugo, and of course the Russians Dostoevsky, Tolstoy and Gogol, to name a few. Crap, I forgot Wells, Verne, and Stevenson, and we haven't even gotten into the 20th century which includes Tolkien, Lewis, Lee, Wolf, Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Steinbeck, Burgess, Joyce, Salinger, Carver, Adams, and Orwell, and then there are the authors who are still living, such as Rowling, Rushdie, Lee, Niffenegger, Greene, Oates, Prolix, Collins, King, and I think I've made my point. There are too many good books for a single person to read in one lifetime, not with reasonable expectations, anyway. By writing a book, I am asking people to read my work instead of Poe, or White, or Golding. I'm saying I'm a better use of time. It seems like unmitigated selfishness and hubris to presume to even attempt at inserting myself into the literary riot.

But I want to try.

But I'm scarred to try.

It's not only the good literature that is already in the wind. It's my own deteriorating skills. I used to be pretty good at writing fiction. Exactly how good is impossible to know, but I was good enough to excite my instructors. Good enough to sink my readers into what John Gardner described as "the dream," good enough to get my admittedly captive audience to listen to my point of view and ask for more. That was when I was practicing, when I had an experienced, trained instructor and a few inexperienced peers combing through my work, looking for flaws, looking for weaknesses. That was before my kids were toddlers, when I could afford a little time to daydream about orcs and fairies and portals that let me slip into new worlds unexplored by Lindgren, or Barrie, or anyone else. Now I'm too busy to get lost in the frivolous musings that fueled my ambition. I wouldn't change my life right now, even if I knew for certain that it were the death of my literary opportunities, but I hope that it isn't. I hope I get my own shot at immortality, and I hope that when that time comes, I can make the most of it.

EDIT
I don't want to give the impression that I hate my life, or imply that the obstacles preventing me from writing are someone's fault. I fully expect this to be a simple life stage where I am too busy to write the way I want to write. If I wanted it enough I would do it, but for the moment there are things that I want more.

The B Team

Narratives come in multiple forms. First was oratory, or spoken word, which invited the accompaniment of gestures and multiple performers and became the play. Since spoken word was typically set in verse to aid the performer in remembering extended narratives, both monologues and plays, such as "The Iliad" and "Romeo and Juliette," respectively, are performed in poetry. Later, Gutenberg wrecked everybody's world with a way to quickly, cheaply produce written material. This sudden influx of literature helped increase literacy, and narratives could be permanently, or at least semi-permanently, recorded on paper. Without the need to remember every line, story tellers were freed from verse and could deliver narratives in prose. Thus, the novel was born.

Novels and short stories made their debut in the 18th century, and became the narrative of choice for the next two centuries. Though plays can sometimes better capture emotion and pleasantly surprise the audience with slight variations of delivery, they can also disappoint with poor delivery. The nature of performance also restricts the audience to the theater's schedule. Finally, plays are limited with the number and complexity of settings they can have in any given narrative. Novels, however, are a team effort between the author and the reader. When a reader finds an author they like, the two can produce experiences that are consistently satisfactory. Novels can feature settings that are limitless in both number and outrageous imagination, enriching old genres and enabling the advent of new ones, such as sci-fi. Perhaps most importantly, however, novels can be consumed on the reader's terms. You don't have to go to a specific location at a specific time to read. You can take a break whenever you want, skip the boring parts, and reread the complex or good parts. Unlike a play audience, a reader is in control of their entertainment. Whether a novel is the best way to deliver narrative is open for heated debate, but for these reasons it became the preferred method for consuming narrative.

Then technology struck again.

First it was just grainy, monochromatic stills. Then someone wanted to know if a galloping horse ever had all four hooves in the air at once, so instead of asking the Mongols (who could have told them, "not unless you specifically train them to do that, so you can accurately fire a bow from horseback), he invented motion picture. Then someone thought motion picture would be a great way to communicate narrative. Then came the talkies, and the actor's guilds, and the screenwriter's guilds, and novels found themselves supplanted by film as the narrative consumption method of choice. Film has most of the benefits of a play, in that they take absolutely no work on the part of the audience and can consequently produce an experience beyond the ability of the audience. With blu-ray and streaming services, film also has the advantages of a book in that it is under complete control of the consumer. Smartphones add portability to the list of advantages enjoyed by film. The consumer price of a new movie is pretty much the same as a hardcover book. With expanded budgets and CGI, film can produce the most extensive and elaborate settings with unmatched time efficiency, helping to reduce narrative consumption from a few days to a couple of hours.We are losing reasons to read and increasingly prefer to watch instead. The reign of the Author is over. Long live the Director.

Novelists have one salvation in the form of the eBook. In the past, publishers had to gamble. Underestimating the popularity of a book could be bad, overestimating could be worse. Crates of unsold paperbacks have been shredded and burned, as a novel the house thought would be well received instead falls flat. EBooks, however, eliminate the risk. No printing or shipping costs, just some formatting and you're done. Limitless copies can be produced and distributed for practically nothing, which means the sale of each eBook is pretty much just sweet, sweet profit to be split between the author and publisher. The result is that a plethora of books are available for just 99 cents a pop, and some of them might even be kind of good. EBooks from proven authors, who demand a little better compensation and merit some promotional consideration, can sell for $5 to $15. Any way you slice it, an eBook is cheaper than a trip to the cinema or a blu-ray, meaning authors can continue to be relevant in the present and future.

Still, we are not everybody's favorite. There are some who recognize the value of reading as opposed to film, but most people know that if a narrative is good enough it will be remade into film and they will just watch it then. In our current market, books alone are not sufficient to be culturally relevant.