The Greatest of Them All

“The Greatest of Them All” That title was not what it seems. It was cynicism and sarcasm mixed with spittle as I prepared to dismantle one of the most revered writers of our time. Sorry, I’ve read him but I just don’t get him. I drown in his pages of purple prose long before a point has been made or a real event occurs. But as I wrote my carefully crafted take-down I began to wonder what’s my point? Insane jealousy? You’ve never heard of me but I guarantee you’ve heard of him. Nevertheless I did eventually finish my essay, I mean blog entry. Unlike most of my other efforts, this one was brilliant! Yet, I realized that it did not represent what I hope to accomplish with the word craft. (No, the author I was referring to was not Lovecraft!)

In my last blog entry I heaped praise on a story that I found moving, profound, just a little bit difficult, and well worth the effort. Now, should you take my advice and read that particular story you may think that it sucks - differences of opinion do happen. But, at least I didn’t waste your time by bitching about some writer who pisses me off, or simply bores me. I tried to introduce you to something good. For both of you who read my blog, there is the possibility that I’ve introduced at least one of you to greatness.

So here I was, having deleted my best work to date, with a blank page. I began to ponder: Why do I bother writing anyway? After several false starts, and the inevitable deletions I decided that, at least for tonight, I would give up on that particular question. However, I can say that my intention in writing is that my writing be a positive experience. Not necessarily all laughter and giggles, maybe something that tears you apart, but in a way that allows you to empathize and relate with the story and with the characters.

It occurs to me now that there is a mantra stating that you write for yourself. Well, OK, of course you write for yourself, but there would be no need to bother with all this typing if I didn’t want somebody else to read it too. So, write for myself - yeah, yeah, of course – but I also write to create something of worth; something worth sharing. Sharing because I’ve been constructing my alternate reality in an effort to explain - everything and anything - to me - and to you. 

They - and as had been established many times, we have no idea who they is - say that a picture is worth a thousand words. I’ll leave that unchallenged as truth. But an idea or emotion, especially one that attempts to encapsulate the many thousands of contradictions that are inherent in any worthy notion, easily requires tens of thousands of words. (Or a few carefully bent notes from B.B. King, but I’ll leave that discussion for another day.)

Lost in the Cloud Atlas

This is not a book review. But occasionally a book will come along that inspires as much as it intimidates. I recently read one such book: Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell.

Why Cloud Atlas? I don’t know. For someone such as myself, with a slightly sub-standard cranial capacity it was quite a challenge. It’s the story - no, it’s six stories - of people bound to each other through several (many) generations by... Well it’s not too clear on that point. I think the best way to explain it is to say that we’re constantly being re-incarnated with the same collection of souls. How we interact today, with cruelty or kindness to our fellow travelers will have an effect on our relations in some future life. Of course, I over simplify. If it were simply a tale of what-goes-around-comes-around that wouldn’t be so interesting. The type of karma described in Cloud Atlas does not manifest itself as some linear cause and effect equalizer of deeds. The karma in Cloud Atlas is more like that ball of Christmas lights that while packed away for a couple of seasons somehow managed to intertwine itself into a seemingly inextricable mass only to magically unravel and expose itself as an orderly string of lights, connected one to another, always and obviously.

As a would-be-writer of good stuff (I’ve somehow managed to publish some not-so-good stuff) I come across something like Cloud Atlas and think: That’s what I want to do! It is then that my limitations hit me. I struggle with Purple Prose. I hate it, but I fear my writing appears naked without it. My story lines too are simple: boy meets girl, boy meets problem, the problem comes between boy and girl, boy and girl beat the problem, some good guy dies so happy ending can become a tragedy and therefore turn into serious literature. Ugh!

I have no way of knowing what David Mitchell was thinking when he began writing Cloud Atlas - even though I did check for insight on Wikipedia. Maybe all he ever intended to create was a really exciting pirate story. I said maybe - so don’t complain to me that there are no actual pirates in Cloud Atlas. Did he sit down with the intention of capturing… hmmm. What did he capture? I’ve sometimes equated writing that works for me as hearing the perfect blues note. I don’t know exactly what it is but when I hear it, or read it, it rattles the dust off the soul. For a moment teleportation is not just science fiction, it’s real, and I’m someplace else where clarity of vision is the norm, harmony is inevitable and the warmth, wherever it’s coming from, is nourishing.

Someplace David Mitchell is saying, “For crying out loud, it’s only a book!” But for me Cloud Atlas successfully encapsulated all those little sparks of thought that are constantly darting about in my head making absolutely no sense at all: the contradictions of thoughts that can love and hate the same things at the same moment, the supposedly deeply held beliefs that aren’t so deep but are really equal parts faith and doubt. For the brief moment that I basked in the shadow of Cloud Atlas what once was a convolution of seemingly unrelated thoughts mucking up my psyche appeared orderly. Then, like that magic single note that only an Eric Clapton or B.B.King can find, that moment of clarity fades away.

And this is why I don’t write book reviews. I can’t tell you how many misspelled words there may have been in my edition of Cloud Atlas. I’m not entirely sure that commas weren’t over-used, or that semi-colons were used correctly. I read a book. I fall into it or I don’t.

So, why does Cloud Atlas inspire? Because, once again, a gifted author shows what can be achieved with nothing more than a collection of words. Why does it intimidate? Because while writing can be enjoyable in its own right, and life on the plateaus of blogdom can be fun, it’s the top of the writing mountain that we strive for. Luckily, inspiration and the desire to emulate will overtake intimidation.

“…only as you gasp your dying breath shall you understand, your life amounted to no more than one drop in a limitless ocean!"

"Yet what is any ocean but a multitude of drops?”
- David Mitchell

Flash Fiction, A few words. Not too many. I promise.

Not too long ago, a time which should have been left for doing something else. I came upon the term Flash Fiction on the Internet. Faster than you can say, “Look a cat”, I was Googling* away, trying to learn all I that I could about flash fiction.

I’ve been anxious to step back into the published waters and this seemed the fastest way to go about it. I had some old stories, yellowing for sure, but just begging to be re-born as Flash Fiction.

My memory let me down in this instance. I thought that all that would be necessary would be a little dusting off of some old chestnuts and then off it would go to some flash fiction publication. But have you ever seen an old chestnut? They’re foul looking, sticky and just a little gooey. I would not eat one of those things. Re-reading my old stories did not bring joy to my heart. If you think I’m bad now, with the comma-splicing and all, you should have read me back in the day. Much worse.

The other area where memory failed to serve was in remembering just how short my stories actually were; not very. Well, they were short for novels, but most were several thousands of words too long for flash fiction. There would be some re-imagining and re-writing required in order to get any of my stories into the target range of less than 1,000 words, or better yet, less than 500 words.

Eventually I chose on old favorite, a shorter old favorite. I did some minor re-working of the story and sent it off for publication. I fully expected to be cashing a $60 check in just a few weeks’ time. It had worked that way for me in the past.

Anyway, the weeks came and they went and I heard nothing until… an email. Not a check, but a very polite rejection.

I have several theories as to why my story was not accepted for publication. All of them conveniently ignore any possibility that the writing itself may have been at fault. Although an almost total disregard for the rules of flash fiction does loom as a possibility.

Flash fiction should have a beginning, middle and end. I had a beginning, definitely had a middle, but the end? No one died, nothing was resolved, the reader could expect that the situation described in the story would gone on mostly unchanged day after day. That’s a legitimate ending for some literature or even a frustrating stage play but not flash fiction. The story should come to a close; it is a complete story unto itself, not Chapter One of something else.

In order to be kind to your editor the genre should be definable. My story was written for young adults (seriously young adults, my eight-year old son) yet it featured ghosting and taunting, so it was sort of a horror story. An editor hoping to satisfy blood-lusting horror readers would only disappoint their subscribers with my YA-horror tripe. (In defense of all tripe writers: It’s not easy writing good tripe. Anyone up to eight-years old should love tripe while starting at around ten-years old, they're likely to be too embarrassed to admit they ever enjoyed it. Luckily for tripe-writers everywhere, readers over twenty-one can indulge in a nostalgic tripe-fest every now and then.)

That’s not to say that I’ve given up on the notion of writing some flash fiction. Although, it may turn out that the format is not for me. It’s a little like Haiku or Bernie Taupin lyrics, an acquired taste. Still, at only 300 words, more or less, the temptation is too great not to give it another try. Hacks like me just need to remember that this is not some throw-away format. Writing flash fiction is a serious business. You only have a few hundred words to get your tale out. You’ll need to zero in on the gist of your story quickly as well as exercise an economy of words that would make Hemingway look like a chatter-box.

I did consider peppering this space with many of the useful links that I’ve captured regarding flash fiction. But links in a blog can quickly grow stale, turning every link into a short hop to a 404 error message faster than you can say, “Look, a Cat!”

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* I’m hoping that when using some variation of the word google to referencing any personnel web browser activity that use of an upper-case “G” will satisfy the trademark jitters of the legitimate owners of upper-case Google. Nevertheless, I would appreciate any single-word substitute for future reference that you could send my way - just in case.

I’ve Seen that Movie Too

I refer to what I write as speculative fiction. Not as in the “speculative fiction” of the masters such as Harlan Ellison, Philip K. Dick, or Kurt Vonnegut; for that I would have to be good. But I do, in my writing, attempt to explore the thought process of the ordinary human by placing ordinary humans in unconventional situations. And yes, by situation I generally mean some science fiction or fantasy type anomaly. 

Recently I’ve been toiling away on just such an opus featuring human conflict and a science fictiony anomaly. (Note 1) The characters in my story are confronted with all sorts of dilemmas and my gimmicky anomaly provides the proper amount of fuel for their angst. Of course, the reality of the story is that the sci-fi gimmick is really nothing more than a gimmick. It is how the characters interact that is really important. I know this to be true yet…

As I have alluded to in a previous post, I don’t write 24/7. I wish I could, but I can’t. I have a 9 to 5 job, plus several other obligations from which there is no escape. I consider it a good week when I can write 2/7. This includes blogs, which I consider a therapeutic necessity when the other writing isn’t going anyplace.

I beg for patience, there is a point, of sorts.

As I said my opus does not depend upon the gimmick of a single cool idea yet…

I indulged in a non-writing re-charge moment, sometime referred to as vegetating, that involved some television. In my defense, it was quality TV – un-huh, something you can binge watch on Netflix. 

And there it was; a plot twist so brilliant that I could have written it!  Actually, I had, or was in the process of writing it. My opus! It had been encapsulated as episode #4 of Season #3. What could I do now? It was a little discouraging to say the least.

Naturally, I believe that we really do stand on the shoulders of those who went before us, but did they have to take my idea and put it on TV? Worse than that, they did a really good job.

Now, the truth is that variations of my “brilliant” idea have already appeared many times over in many different stories, yet I could always justify myself by pointing out the many differences. But this TV show was so well done and so close to the direction that I was attempting to take my story that I found myself wishing that this  TV version, had been my story.

I’d like to be able to say that at this point I came to my senses and the realization that no two executions of so-damn-close-to-the-same-idea are ever exactly alike and that my version still had plenty of new wrinkles to offer readers. (As in “readers” not too-damn-tired–to-care-any-more-at-the-end-of-the-day TV viewers, such as myself.) I would like to be able to say that I picked myself up and planted myself in front of the keyboard. Unfortunately, that would be a lie. I watched the next episode to see what happened.

Intellectually I know that my characters are in a different situation and live in a different world, even if both worlds do happen to have the same damnable device. But the key to my story isn’t the gimmick of the device, the key is how we identify and empathize with the plight of the characters, and that we care what choices they make and what happens to them. That knowledge alone should be enough to get me going again, and the truth is that it will. In fact, what will happen is that I’ll learn from what I saw. I’ll knock off a few more previously unnoticed technological loopholes, strengthen some strong points, edit away some weak points, perhaps eat a Snickers bar and then get back to work. 

***

Note 1: One of the reasons I prefer to write in English is that we can easily invent new words. A lack of any real mastery of any other language would be a close second as to why I prefer English.

This is not Procrastination

WriterReadersPost is not an exercise in procrastination, or so I must tell myself. Hopefully it will contain useful information: on writing habits, software, outlining, plot development, proper lighting and suitable refreshments.

I won’t dwell, too much, on things like writers block because, although I often suffer from this writer’s malady. I actually rather call it by its other more appropriate name: Those moments when there really is something else I’d rather do. They happen and I’m not worried. I’m not hard core. I don’t believe that if I’m not writing my joy meter immediately drops to zero, maybe later when I realize that time has passed and I haven’t written, but not immediately.

At the moment I’m struggling through a growing spurt. I’m re-working a decent short story into what I hope will be an even better novel. I’m moving along, some days discouraged, some days with new found enthusiasm. (I also happen to believe that just being a writer does not require a constant depressive state, although the ability to empathize is probably essential.)

So, I’ll close out for now, not having said much of anything tonight, but with notions for greater things to come.

Test Posting: This is a test!

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