John Kessel: "The Future as Mirror: How SF Uses the Tomorrow to Understand Today"

Interesting video lecture by SF author John Kessel:

"The Future as Mirror: How SF Uses the Tomorrow to Understand Today"

(Thanks to Locus Online)

Joanna Russ: "Dirty Wordies, or, The Fiendish Thingie"

A big thank you to the blog future_of_feminism for posting this speech by the late, great Joanna Russ: 
"Dirty Wordies, or, The Fiendish Thingie" (1969)

There are so many quotable lines in this speech about writing and "taboo" words. Here are but a few:
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"There is a fashionable idea around today -- maybe I should not call it an idea, for I hardly think it attains to the complexity of real thinking -- there is this confused notion, then, that anger is somehow sacred, rage is holy, and you are justified in doing anything you please as long as you are angry enough -- and angry at the right targets, that is, at the currently fashionable targets. 
I do not agree. Being shocked is not in itself a good thing for people; on the contrary, it is a distinctly unpleasant experience, and the writer who shocks you on the grounds that it's good for people to be shocked is like the writer who hits you over the head with a brick on the grounds that it's good for people to be hit on the head now and then, and anyhow, he enjoys it." 

"One of the most annoying things in the world is the way dirty words can distract people from anything else -- when a reader gets shocked at a dirty wordie, he stops paying attention to the plot, to the characters, to the mood, to the theme, to everything. 
The dirty word is a little bomb that explodes and scatters the work of art in all directions."

"The whole effort of literary art is to make things speakable. Nothing should be unspeakable or unnameable. That's what language is for -- to name things."
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Read the rest. I implore you.

Out Now: THE TIME IDIOT (Kindle Edition)

My comedic novel THE TIME IDIOT has now been released for the Kindle, at the price of $6.89. (That's cheap, man!)

So what's it about, then?

The basic plot is: Stupid U.S. President gets a time machine, wreaks havoc all over history.
You can read the sample chapters here.
 
I was NOT first with the idea of a dumb President in a time machine. The cartoonist Tom Tomorrow was (at least twice).  But in THE TIME IDIOT, I take the concept to its very limit: the stupid protagonist travels so far back in time, and changes so many things, the "present-day" world eventually becomes a very strange place.

I tried to get THE TIME IDIOT published for several years. My wife said she liked it, so I decided to try and self-publish. All the flaws of the book are my fault. It's not a long novel -- only 48,000 words -- but I think humor works best in the shorter format.

THE TIME IDIOT on Amazon.com

 

The Rewriter's Fallacy

Anyone who ever wrote something will have this idea at least once:

"Wouldn't it be totally cool if I rewrote a classic... like something by Shakespeare or Jane Austen... only this time the story will be mine. Using all these well-known characters from the classics will make my story so much better... and it'll be so easy to write!"

I'd like to name it

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The Rewriter's Fallacy:
The notion that you can cut out a bunch of character names, a bit of plot, and a bit of setting from another author's work -- then paste them into your own story -- and the pilfered characters/plot/settings will automatically give your work a quality and depth that it wouldn't have had without them.
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I politely disagree. It's what you put into your work that determines its quality. Your actual work. Not the bits that you borrow from others.

I'm not saying you shouldn't offend readers who cherish the original work... if its copyright has expired, go for it.
I'm not saying you can't borrow a bit here and there... there is such a thing as inspiration.
I'm not saying you can't mock the classics... nothing succeeds like good mockery.
But: you can't expect the borrowed bits to do the hard work for you. You can't "coast" on the strength of the source material without falling flat.


A simple litmus test would be: Can the story you write stand on its own even if you removed the borrowed bits?

But let's be charitable. That a writer tries to "rewrite a classic" doesn't have to mean he or she isn't "trying."
When Alice Randall wrote The Wind Done Gone, she was also making a strong point about how Gone With the Wind had whitewashed Southern history and made the slaves invisible. I wouldn't call that devious or dishonest.
If Randall has an "agenda" with re-interpreting a "classic"(well, sort of a classic), then that is an agenda I can get behind -- especially since the original was so dishonest in the first place.

However... in this example of "rewriting a classic," the author tries to use Shakespeare to carry his well-known agenda, and many have objected to it.

Scott Lynch is charitable (and witty) toward said author:
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I'm pretty much an inclusive absolutist when it comes to re-interpreting Shakespeare. Add, sift, transmute, refine, pervert, and bowdlerize if you will... throw in steampunk robots, change settings, swap character genders, add harsh language, remove sex, add sex, whatever. 
Shakespeare's work isn't some solemn mausoleum at which we all must pay cold-blooded obedience, it's a playground which we can and must dig up, dirty, and refurbish on a continual basis.

So Card's got every right to tinker with Hamlet to his sad little heart's content. What draws my fierce mockery is that his Hamlet's Father willfully ignores the character and content of the original. 
The assertion that it reveals "what's really going on" in the tragedy of the Prince of Denmark is a reeking lie. It isn't an elegant interface with Shakespeare's creation, but a complete re-invention of it, steam-cleaned of its original texture and meaning. OSC's sternly moralizing, dull-as-a-brick Hamlet can only be conjured by completely disregarding everything the original character said, thought, and did. 
Now, if that's what you want to write, go ahead and write it. Just have the honesty to call it what it is... a bloody rewrite. Not an honest engagement with the original text.
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What next for Orson Scott Card? Could a radical re-interpretation of Twelfth Night be far behind...?

Heinlein's Rules Of Writing, Deconstructed

 You may have heard of Heinlein's Rules, coined by Robert A. Heinlein:

1. You must write.
2. You must finish what you start.
3. You must refrain from rewriting except to editorial order.
4. You must put it on the market.
5. You must keep it on the market until sold.

Now, the blogger at Scrivener's Error (recommended as a beacon of sanity in a crazy world) picks apart these rules -- and I'd like to quote his/her conclusions:
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The key assumption that Heinlein makes — and it alters the meaning of each of the five rules, but these two [Rules 3 and 5] more than most — is that "You, as a writer, must already have a commercially valued, consistent brand and identity before you can effectively apply the following rules."

That is, the rules work only for writers whose shopping lists scribbled on napkins have commercial value due to their authorship.

That's not to say that there's no value at all in these rules, even for beginning writers; only that they require application of some artistic sense and literary and commercial analysis.

At some point, when too many readers are expressing the same sort of problem with your manuscript, it needs to be rewritten. At some point, it makes no commercial sense to continue circulating a manuscript that is not getting licensure offers.
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(Read the rest)

Valid points, all. In fact, lots of very successful writers are not writing perfect books -- but they are doing enough things "right" to be readable and accessible to a wider audience.

How do you know when your writing is "good enough"? Tricky question, that one. I can only suggest the trite cliches "learn from your mistakes" and "practice makes perfect" -- trite, but true.

It also helps to have a clear, original vision. "Vision" is the theme that drives your writing. Writing itself may be a search to define and sharpen your personal vision. Is there a formula?

Maybe a little something like this:

Author's Vision + formal writing skill + Thorough Work + Luck = Success

Note that the above formula doesn't say when your work will be successful. Do you have lots of patience? Not all writers do, but most successful ones have lots of it -- and boy, does it help:

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After Stephen King had Carrie rejected by 30 different publishers he dumped pig's blood all over the publishers. No, I'm just kidding. Stephen King did throw Carrie in the trash though. Fortunately, his wife took it out of the trash and convinced King to try again.
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A patient spouse is also a good thing for a writer to have...