The Entmoot

I take a long time to write. Well I guess I take a long to do everything. I once told my ten year old brother who was flabbergasted that I was driving slow that one of the key points in understanding me was that I am ‘NOT IN A HURRY’. Ever. I’m like an Ent. I never do anything unless it is worth taking a long time to do. Sometimes this is good. Sometimes it is not.

The manuscript I am working on now I have been working on for four years. Only the last two have I been serious about it but still, that is a very long time. I look on those who whip out a first draft in a matter of weeks or even months with a certain pang of envy. How do they do it? I start feeling accomplished if I can crank out a scene a day. Not two or three chapters.

I’ve experimented with trying to speed my work along, telling myself that I wasn’t taking it seriously enough or I was being lazy. It didn’t work. I would start writing and change my mind on what the scene was about half way through. I would write a chapter and realize after I’d already printed it that, that was not at all how it actually happens. I know I can always go back and change things after I’ve completed a draft but how can I build on a story if I haven’t got the beginning right? It didn’t work for me. I need to let each scene breathe a little before moving on. The story has to have time to fester inside my brain before it can come out right.

I write slow. Does that mean my first drafts have less flaws in them than those who write fast? Maybe. I don’t think so. I still see plenty of revisions that need to be made and the second draft isn’t particularly fast either. I see days and days ahead of me, letting my story sink into the cracks in my head as I get to know every corner of it. It will be a long time before it is ready.

Oh well. I am not in a hurry.

Beauty Spots

Sometimes when I read other people's writing and then they read mine I am surprised that they like it. I see their work and make a comparison and its not even close. Comparison is almost always a bad idea. I've been over my work a hundred times trying to make it perfect and I see confused plotting and unclear character development, chaotic blocking and those annoying little typos that I was sure I'd cleared out. I see imperfection. I am aghast. But that is not necessarily what my readers are going to see.

Think of it like the wrinkles or zits (depending on your age I guess) we often obsess over on our faces. Our flaws and imperfections always seem obvious to us because we are so close to them but even if we forget to rub ourselves down with lotions for a day no one is going to say "Oh my God, look at those bags under that woman's eyes". They probably won't even notice them but if they do it won't be such a big deal. They don't expect the same kind of perfection we do from ourselves. In fact in the case of a mole or one eye a little higher than the other our imperfections might even be what people find attractive about us. They are the beauty spots that make us unique.

So obsess over your imperfections. (in writing that is. I'm not about to condone obsessing over your appearance)Get rid of those punctuation mistakes and plot holes and clumsy dialog but also remember that you will never reach perfection. You don't have to. If you compare your work to other people's you're not letting your story speak for itself and your mistakes may even be a part of what makes your writing beautiful in the first place.

"A Double Life"

Last night I finished reading "A Double Life", a collection of five short stories by Louisa May Alcott that were published under a different name during her life time because of their content. They are thrillers or "Blood and Thunders" which happen to be one of my favorite kinds of book.

Most literary critics consider these stories drivel. She pumped them out for various magazines because that was what sold and didn't even put her name to them. What is typically regarded as her serious work are her children's stories, particularly "Little Women". Because it was based on her life as a child "Little Women" is said to reveal the true Louisa May Alcott.

There is another school of thought however that says her thrillers, with all their on stage murders and and barbarian princes, reveal the darker side of her that was suppressed by Victorian society. After all, "Little Women" was never her idea. It was written on commission at the suggestion of her publisher. (So was "A Long and Fatal Love Chase" which is probably my favorite of hers) So which was the real Louisa?

Probably both. Some prefer her more innocent realism stories while other prefer her darker sensational tales. The point is Louisa May Alcott wrote for money. Does that mean she was never a real artist? Is everything she ever wrote crowd pleasing drivel with no other purpose?

I choose to think not. She wrote some things I really enjoy. The concept of the author's deep inspiration and intense attachment to their work is inspiring but perhaps it is asking little too much. In the end it is the result that matters and a true craftsman can make even their most detached assignments writhe with inspiration.

Re-incarnation Through Reading

Forgive me for going a bit mystic on you for a moment. It will connect, I promise.

Earlier this week I watched a documentary on Buddha. One of the things they talked about was finding enlightenment from all the lives we live through re-incarnation. I don't exactly believe in re-incarnation and I'm not about to convert to Buddhism but somehow the thought stuck with me. In it I found an answer to a question I have been asked over and over.

Why do we read? Why do we write?

There have been many answers suggested by various sources and I have tried all of them on for size, never quite feeling like I've got it right.

The answer most often given is escapism. We use books to transport us to another world when we find we can't quite cope with this one. This is a stigma attached especially to fantasy junkies like myself.

"We Read to know that we are not alone" (this one is from my old friend C.S. Lewis). We Read to see that others experience the same joys and sorrows and confusions that we do.

Literature has been described as a mirror, reflecting reality.

Literature has been described as a light, inspiring us to change reality.

Probably the closest I've come to the answer is Dickens' concept of "Mooreeffoc" ("Coffee room" backwards) of using literature to see reality in a new way.

Here is my new answer:

We read to come to terms with ourselves. To seek enlightenment.

Think of every book we read as another life we live. Re-incarnation if you will.

It is an answer that is almost not an answer because it encompasses all the others.

It is escapism because we must step outside of what we perceive as ourselves to partake of this other life.

Through this experience we do learn that we are not so very unique in our struggles. That we are not alone.

We see the reflection of new pieces of reality that we might not have otherwise noticed.

We see light we never imagined the the visions of others

and

we emerge back into our reality, seeing it in a different way.

We are closer to knowing ourselves.

Of course sitting down to a cozy mystery or romance might not always seem like a path to enlightenment. The effect will usually be much more sudden than ant kind of epiphany but emerging yourself in someone else's world for a period of time will help you find piece in your own world. Just make sure you always know how top come back.

Narrative Summery. Friend of Foe?

It would be impossible to tell a story entirely in real time. My current manuscript is well over 120,000 words as it is. If I wrote out everything scene by scene I would never have time to finish it and I don't think anyone would want to read a book that long anyways. Most books have portions of narrative summery that only last a page or two but convey the events of weeks or even months to link important scenes without loosing stride in the prose. For some reason I am unable to do this. My narrative summery always goes too fast when I read it back. That inner voice that had been instilled in me since who-knows-when starts screaming "Don't tell your reader that the next few days passed slowly. Show it." and though my conscious mind realizes that that would be a bit extreme --I mean honestly, who wants to read days passing slowly in real time? --I can't seem to shake the niggling. I always want to add a few more details. And then a just a few more. And then --well it might as well be a scene now anyways right? The manuscript grows thicker. The plot starts to get off track. I find myself explaining rules to a card game that was supposed to be there only so my characters had something to do with their hands while they talked . . .

The closest I have been able to come up with as a solution has been to cut straight to where the action starts to pick up again and stop for a paragraph or two after I've set the scene to fill the reader in on what's been going on. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. It may just be that my writing style does not pair well with narrative summery. Or that I have not yet accumulated the skills.

I Write Genre Fiction

I am not William Faulkner. I am not Earnest Hemmingway. I am not George Eliot or Nathanial Hawthorne or John Updike. I am not even Tolkien. My work is not groundbreaking or profound or particularly original. I write fantasy adventures novels.
For some reason this is a hard concept to get across in casual conversation. When I tell people I've been working on writing a book (well more than one really) I always get a reaction like I'm especially clever or deep and I feel like I'm misrepresenting myself.
It also doesn't help that my current novel project is hard to sum up into a sentence. (OH how I am dreading summarizing it into a query) The best I can come up with is "There is this three way war and it follows the lives of six characters who want to be friends with their political enemies" which sounds like its some kind of WAR AND PEACE which it is not.
Its not that pieces of my personal philosophy don't find their way into my stories or that I don't dig as deeply as I can into the characters and cultures I use but I don't have any great concept to get across to the the world. I don't feel I have to. I love stories. I love experiencing things through my imagination and getting into the heads of other people. I love the world of 'What if'. I won't pretend my manuscripts can do anything more than entertain. They are stories. Nothing less, but nothing more.
Still, the words 'novelist' and 'book' and 'manuscript' have an unaccountably impressive ring to people who don't write. Is there a way I can convince them that genre fiction (at least what I write. I do not mean to malign anyone else's writing)is not really such a grand thing?

The Review

And not after all that anticipation I bring to you my very important opinion of the book Conspiracy of Kings by Megan Whelan Turner.

It was great.

Oh, wait, you want more specifics? Are you sure about that you could be opening a never ending gush here. OK. Specifics it is. Without spoilers. O dear. I shall try.

As usual for Megan Whelan Turner there are a lot of things that aren't stated outright in the narration but are revealed later. For example that one significant detail in Sophos's dreams and what he plans to do at his final confrontation with his would be usurpers. Most of them are pretty easy to guess at though. There isn't any "OH MY GOD WHAT!?!!" moment of revelation but it is still fun to be kept on your toes and be left to figure things out for yourself.

Sophos's character was a very interesting perspective to see the story from. He's much more honest than Eugenides for one thing --though one might argue not quite as clever. But not to be underestimated either. In the space between this book and The Thief --the last time we saw Sophos (or should I be calling him Sounis?)--and even more during the course of Conspiracy of Kings he goes through a lot of changes. There is no mistaking him for the same boy who slept late and let Gen steal his food but he also becomes quite fierce. On more than one occasion he is called 'lion'. He still blushes. I love that he still blushes. It is a true mark of Turner's genius that she is able to grow him up without loosing that sweet self-conscious boy that he was. It is the extreme contrast of him being entirely one thing but also entirely the other that makes him such a multi-layered human being, struggling through different stages of his life. I think this contrast in identity is what makes all her characters seem so real instead of characterized plot points.

The book is partly told in first person and partly in third. I love how the voice is so different for both but also consistent for Sounis' (shall I call him Sounis now?) character. Turner is not afraid to play with the format but the switching of narrative isn't a gimmick either. It contours to the needs of the story. In the beginning if we have been reading the other books we want an immediate connection with Eugenides and even promise of the role he's going to play before we're ready to plunge into what has been happening to Sophos -sorry I mean Sounis-- all this time. There are also some things that need to be to be expressed from inside the minds of other characters toward the middle of the story. Having him relate where he has been to another character is the obvious solution.

The story is exciting and intriguing and it ends happily (oops is that a spoiler?) but even though Sophos gets everything he's after I'm left feeling a little sad for him. He's just so convenient to everybody. His dad, Eugenides, the magus, Edis. They don't ask him if he wants to do things for them. He does of course but they don't ask. I don't know what that will do to their relationships in the next books. (there are supposed to be two more but, alas Ms. Turner takes so long to write her books)

In conclusion. Read this book. It is fabulous.