Dear God WHY?

I recently became acquainted with the latest “literary” rage “Fifty Shades of Gray,” and I’ve been wondering why such horrible word vomit could become so popular. I also heard a particularly obnoxious song just a little while ago, and questioned why such abominable chord puke could be that commercially successful. Finally, after some extensive consideration (five minutes), I think I have the answer.

Popularity is about universal appeal. Specificity is the enemy. You want to be accessible to as many people as possible, because you want all of those people to make their wallets accessible to you. That means that you want to target the average person, and what is the average person into? Nothing.

Please, please do not misunderstand me here. I am not calling you “sheeple” or railing about the unwashed masses, the Wal-mart generation or the proletariat. I am saying that there is not an average interest. Think about the things that people get into, the things your friends consider themselves experts on and connoisseurs of; college football, for instance, or maybe computer coding. Some people are all about gourmet food or vintage sports cars or legos, some are into paintball or ballet, first person shooters, horses, motorcycles , shoes, crotchet, WWII, their neighbor Ashley, dogs, politics, fitness, the list goes on. The point is, the average person has something that they love to geek out about, but the other average people don’t understand.

I am a story person. I think about plot and character and setting. I devour books, I love tv shows, I immerse myself in movies. I pay attention to the kinds of things in stories that the average person doesn’t notice, like cinematography, character continuity, the subtleties of pacing and prose. This is why “Twilight” and its bastard offspring “Fifty Shades” infuriate me. They are horrible books, I can see that as plain as day. There are so much better stories out there, can’t you see? Why are you guzzling grape juice from a box, I have a 1993 Chianti right here?! Why are you listening to that pop trash? It’s just four chords and an infectious hook, if you were really into music you would listen to classic rock, or blues, or Chopin, or Mozart.

The average person doesn’t care about good music, or good stories, or good wine. They can't be bothered to find out what the good stuff is, and since he doesn’t know any better, he'll consume whatever is merely adequate, or sometimes even downright despicable, without batting an eye. It doesn’t matter if the thing is good or bad, it just has to be interesting."Is this what everyone is talking about?" he thinks, "Huh, I guess that's pretty cool," and after dabbling in the field that he's only mildly interested in, he goes back to the thing he obsesses over.

This isn’t to say that “popular” equals “bad.” “The Hunger Games” is both popular and amazing in the story telling department, as is the “Song of Ice and Fire” series. But it does make me sad to know that in the real world skill doesn’t necessarily equal success, either. Collins and Martin labored for years with their writing, honing their craft and collecting rejection slips like they were Pez dispensers. Finally, their struggle and sacrifice paid off when the market recognized and blessed them, along with the likes of Stephenie Meyer and E.L. James.

There are two lessons in this. The first is that yes, if your Lord of the Rings ripoff with catgirl hookers and exploding walnuts happens to be what the public wants, it won’t matter if you can write or not. Finish your novel, you too can be an overnight millionaire. The second lesson, on the other hand, is more uplifting. It’s an important lesson that will help you be a better person, and that you should never forget. I just wish I knew what it was.

Character Development

One of the things that I find most challenging about writing fiction is creating realistic conversations. When you read a story, the author tells you what is going on while you shut up and listen, and he has to make you comfortable with being completely powerless to influence the direction of the narrative. Authors do this by making it seem as if you are an outside listener eavesdropping on two (or more) character’s dialogue, when in reality you are a reader of one person’s monologue.

Making it appear that two people are interacting with one another while I am one person essentially talking to myself is exactly as hard as it sounds. I have one identity, precisely one scope of experience. Granted, I have had a moderately full and interesting life up to this point, but for every one aspect of life that I have suffered or enjoyed, there are thousands that I have missed out on. I can never know what it is like to be black, to be a woman, to be a West Virginian coal miner in the 1870’s that just lost his best friend to union violence. I have to imagine what those things would be like, and that takes a lot of work.

Creating a whole new imaginary psyche and crawling inside isn’t the hard part, though. The hard part comes when I create two imaginary psyches and jump from head to head as they converse with one another. I must constantly remind myself that person A is not person B. She does not have the same history, priorities, or reactions as her counterpart and neither of them have the same identities as me, the author. They are not necessarily interested in the same things that I am interested in, so they are forever wandering off to places that I did not plan for them to go.

I know. Technically I am the author, the puppet master, the veritable god of the literary universe that I create. My characters can do nothing without my consent, nay, without my command. However, my power trip gets rudely delayed when I realize that I am here to serve you, the reader, thus my characters are also here to serve you by proxy. This is your story, and you want to feel as if the people populating it are unique, vibrant, thinking individuals instead of the automatons that they are, so I have to give my utmost in creating a believable illusion. Besides, I am happy to let my characters do what they want, so long as it keeps the plot moving. The hardest part of writing is also the most fun part; characters telling a story better than the one I had dreamed up.

Real Fiction

The book that I am writing is heavily inspired by Plato’s idea of Forms. Given the subject matter, it would be downright hypocritical of me to not do some thought exploration on what books and stories are; specifically fiction.

Real fiction is entertaining. There’s a whole host of authors, artists, and all around snobs who are both smarter than me and disagree, but I stand by my statement. As a reader, I am devoting a significant portion of my free time to read lies. That’s right, lies. If I’m going to read about something that never happened I’d better not be bored while I’m doing it. This isn’t to say that the story needs to make me happy. Make me sad, make me angry, make me laugh, but for the love of Gutenberg, don’t make me indifferent.

Real fiction makes you think. The best fiction makes you think differently than you did before (unless you already had perfect understanding of the world around you). Entertainment is great, but something has to be happening to the ethos at the same time as the pathos. Everyone laughs when they read Douglas Adams’ “Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy,” but if you view the world exactly the same way as you did before you read the book, then you are either Douglas Adams’ clone or you weren’t paying attention.

As with anything, however, there is a balance that must be struck. Real fiction is not preachy. Preachiness is for non-fiction. The ideas that fiction presents should seep into your brain and marinate for a while, not hit you in the face.

Finally, real fiction is packaged neatly. I’m a picky reader. I like my authors to have a bigger vocabulary than me. I hope they don’t abuse the word “irony.” I want the prose to fluid, and the cadence to be entrancing. I want to be fully immersed in the story with steady pacing, dramatic character arcs and memorable, dangerous villains. I want to get so caught up in the story that I forget that I’m reading, that I lose track of time, that I have to take the book with me into the bathroom because I simultaneously have to pee and know what happens next.

Lacking any of these elements, fiction is lame. Without entertainment you get “Moby Dick,” an incredible story that no one reads unless they are forced to by sadistic English teachers. You read the Cliff’s notes, maybe the wiki page, and write a report that is exactly uninspiring as you found the book to be. Without the polish, readers will not be satisfied. Polish is that simple, difficult, time consuming ingredient that carries a mediocre novel into brilliance. Without deeper meaning you get the hundreds of thriller novels that grace Barnes and Nobel's new fiction rack. There’s nothing particularly wrong with these. They are page turning reads written by career authors, they might even be on the venerated NYT best seller list, but they are inherently replaceable. No one will have a reason to read them a second time, and most importantly, those sadistic English teachers won’t make it required reading, making the piece timeless.

I am uninterested in writing anything less than real fiction.

Productivity

“You must write.”- Heinlein’s Rules for writing, Rule One.

“How can you edit that which has not been written?”- Aaron Ritchey

I got a lot of conflicting advice during the writer’s conference, but one of the things that everyone seemed to agree on concerned Heinlein’s first rule for writing. It’s sublime in its simplicity, but authors agree that this is the biggest stumbling block for new writers. How many times have you heard the words, “I’m writing a novel,” and it was a true statement? My guess is never. At the time, that person was talking about writing a novel, which is not the same thing. Not even close. That’s why I heard this advice repeated in so many forms over so many lectures from so many people; shut up and write. Don’t do the laundry, don’t read, don’t check out Facebook, and don’t spend all of your time in critique groups, research, and all of the other peripherals and trim that go along with writing. Just. Write.

I have a problem with that. Though I think that I understand that idea, and even agree with it on principle, this approach just doesn’t seem to work for me. Sure, I can put words on a page any time you ask, but sometimes those words aren’t any good, and there’s nothing I can do to change that.

“Well, what about editing?” I pretend to hear you ask. "Can't you just throw some words up there and fix it later?" I’m all about editing, of course. “There is no good writing, only good re-writing” as old Hemingway used to say, but I have written enough college essays, bad fan fiction, recreational scrawlings and emails to know when to edit, and when my work is irredeemable. It’s not that I want to be a diva about this, but inspiration is a wild beast that I have yet to tame. Sometimes creativity flows like a torrent. Once I spat out over a thousand words and spent less than ten minutes editing them. It became the one piece that I have published. Just two days ago I jotted down a childhood memory on a scrap of paper with a pen, and it was comedy gold. Other times, though, the words simply do not come. I’ve spent hours pecking out sentences, rearranging structure, and playing with commas and conjunctions, and all I produce is wooden dialogue and clumsy narration. Those are the times when I do the laundry.

In that same vein, sometimes that laundry needs to be done. I’m not a career novelist, but a house-husband and soon to be full time dad and part time college student. I have the lawn to mow, the kitchen to clean, floors to sweep, meals to plan and cook and groceries to purchase, and that's just today. I’m typing this post from the customer lounge at a mechanic shop because my car broke. In a few months I’ll have diapers and spit up and all of the other lovely stuff that accompanies infants; essential stuff that takes time to do. I have responsibilities that supersede writing, which makes it that much more frustrating when I do have the time and I hit a mental block.

One of the things I do to circumvent the creative doldrums is maintain multiple writing projects. If I can’t make any progress on one, maybe I can get some traction with the other. Another trick is to simply keep the file open on my computer and steal a few sentences here and there. Each word written now is on that doesn’t have to be written later, and they can add up. Third, if I know there might be some time to sneak in some writing while on my errands, I go ahead and bring the laptop. Even if you show up to the dentist’s on time, for example, they might have you in the waiting room for an extra 20 minutes while he (or she, we don’t want to be sexist) finishes up with the last vic- I mean patient. I’ve been here at the mechanic’s for over four hours, and gotten quite a bit of writing done.

Hopefully, all of these will help me to get my book finished within this decade.

Pike's Peak Writer's Conference

As a first step toward becoming a published author, my wife sent me to the Pikes Peak Writer's Conference, from the 19th to the 22nd of April. It was on the first day, Thursday, that I was stretching in the hallway in between classes when I heard a conversation between two apparently published persons. Being the polite, subtle guy that I am, I first eavesdropped and then inserted myself into the conversation. One of them turned out to be one Ronald Cree, perhaps one of the friendliest people I have had the pleasure to meet. It was the best thing that could have happened to me that day. Before I knew it Ron was inviting me to dinner and introducing me to everyone he thought I should know including (but not limited to) Brandon and Bryan, Hilari Bell, Nar Williams, and a vampiress named Julia. Throughout the conference I also got to meet and talk at length with several other literary artists on my own.

Being a normal human being, I'm usually not sure what it is that I should say to a person when I first meet them (um, nice shoes?), but at a writer's conference the ice breaker is easy. Just ask "What do you write?" and that's enough to make most authors gush about their work for the next fifteen minutes, minimum. I am no exception, and turnabout is fair play. Thus it was that I talked at length about the project that I am working on, and I got a lot of great advice for it. The consistent consensus, from multiple published, experienced, career authors was simple; my project is not publishable.

Non viable.

Lacking appeal to editors and agents alike.

However, that is not all that I learned about my book.  Consistent consensus from multiple, experienced readers was something close to universal interest. In fact Aron Ritchey told me, "This is terrible advice, but if I were you I'd finish the book." The reasoning is simple. Most authors do not publish their first manuscript. Mystery/thriller author Jeffery Deaver admitted that his first two manuscripts were terrible. Horror master extraordinaire Stephen King was a notorious collector of rejection letters before selling his first novel. Before joining Keven Anderson's critique group, hopefuls were required to provide a minimum of five rejection slips. In short, I should finish my book because a first manuscript is a learning experience, and almost guaranteed to fail. That, and I think they want to see how my story turns out.

I'm listening to Aaron and finishing the manuscript. I'll pitch it for a while and see how many rejections I can pile up, perhaps gaining a little street cred on the writer's circuit. As soon as I'm finished I'll start another, of course, but I know I'll always have a special place in my heart for my first book. See, the concept wasn't rebuffed because my prose is wonky, or the ideas too esoteric, or the plot boring. It was rebuffed because it is a book about kids, but the concepts and delivery are probably too advanced for juvenile readers, and everyone knows that adults don't read books about kids. And it's too ambitious.

Pitch This

"A young man with literary ambition sets out to become a published writer. He must overcome procrastination, stunted creativity, an uncomfortable chair, and self doubt to fulfill his dream."

There's an awkward silence. My imaginary would be agent stares blankly for a good five seconds before she realizes that I'm finished. She's not sure what to do with this.

"So does he?" she asks, leading me along. "Become a published writer, I mean?"

"Well, in your case this is kind of like one of those choose your own adventure stories. It's up to you, really."

Her expression is a heterogeneous mix of doubt that she heard me correctly, and incredulous horror in knowing that she did. "Well," she eventually speaks,  "I understand your hopes and I wish you luck but, well, I guess I'm a villain in this story."

___

I'm glad I don't have to pitch this story. This is the beginning right here, but I'm not certain about the middle or the end. I don't know about the character arc, I'm not sure about the plot, and I am completely in the dark about the ending. Truthfully, I don't even know where my protagonist's motivation comes from. Is it the fame, the money, his inner demons forcing his fingers to the keyboard? I don't know. I hope it all gets resolved, otherwise the readers won't be satisfied.

On the bright side, they always said in English class that a story isn't about the destination, but the journey. No matter where my story ends up I'm blogging it here. You can celebrate my triumphs, revel in my humiliation, or simply look on in voyeuristic pleasure as I struggle to write a novel and get it into print.

Here's to success, no matter how it's defined.