Writing

The Rut

Author: February 18, 2009

In this business of publishing, your definition of success changes as time goes by. It’s a ladder: When you’re at the bottom and not even on the ladder, not even published in any way, you just want to see your name in print – someone else’s print, that cost someone money to print. Even a zine called Everything in This Zine Sucks seems like a dream at that stage. Then, once you’ve seen your name in print a few times, you start to want to get paid – just a little – for your stories. You’ll even accept chickens and McDonald’s gift certificates just to be able to say you got paid. And so on, until you’re a hugely successful novelist demanding that solid gold toilets be installed in your house before you write a single word for your next blockbuster book.

Or so I’m told. I’m sort of at the lower-middle of that ladder myself.

Of course, one of those steps on the ladder is publishing a book. Just a book. One, tiny novel. Once you do that, of course, you immediately want to publish fifty or seven hundred more – eventually flooding and dominating the universe with your literary output until you are proclaimed Emperor and given absolute authority – and at this point, assuming you manage to do so, you’re in serious danger of hitting The Rut.

When I was younger, I read a lot of books by Jack L. Chalker. I still love those books, and I still have the cheap paperbacks I bought back when I was a kid, because I never throw or give books away, ever. Chalker was a master and I can only hope to publish as many books as he did – but Chalker had a Rut. We all do. The Rut is your Theme You Can’t Escape. Often subconscious, it’s an overarching concept that creeps into all of your work, or at least most of it.

For Chalker, his rut was body transformation. I haven’t read every book the man wrote, and I may be forgetting something (I often do, because of the booze), but so many characters get repeatedly transformed into some other creature – while retaining their personality – in Chalker’s books, you start to expect it. No matter how cool the overall premise is, no matter how inventive the plot or how appealing the characters, you know going in that Chalker is going to transform some or all of the folks he’s writing about into mythical creatures, SF monsters, or blue-skinned gods of some sort.

Nothing wrong with that. We all have themes we can’t escape, tropes that show up over and over again, creeping even into our non-SFnal work. Sometimes these themes will be buried, deep and hard to see, sometimes they’re right there in front of you, obvious.

You have to get beyond one book or series of books to really see, however; in a series of related books, it’s natural to have shared themes or obsessions that bubble under all the time. You’re writing about the same characters in the same universe, after all. When your first series of books deals with a group of teenagers with special powers who are hunted by the powers-that-be, and your third, unrelated series deals with a different group of teenagers with different special powers who are hunted by the powers-that-be, well, you might have a Rut going there.

Is The Rut a problem? Not necessarily. Our obsessions drive our work, after all – we’re exploring things that interest, terrify, and amuse us. Trying to explore themes that don’t interest/amuse/terrify you would be sort of like writing a textbook that resembles a novel: All the parts might be there, but nothing would pop off the page. If your Rut is feeding the world crackerjack stories, no worries. But once you notice The Rut, it starts to worry you a bit, just because you have to start wondering if you’re a one-trick pony, writing the same story over and over again.

The big question, I suppose, is whether you’re bringing anything new to your obsession each time. If you’re exploring new, bold horizons using a familiar tool, bully for you. If you’re just falling back on familiar plot twists to keep things moving, well, that will bite you in the ass soon enough, grasshopper.

What are my Ruts? You tell me. I think I know; I’ve got enough unpublished material here to give me a fair idea well before my work goes public. And no, booze and pantslessness are not Ruts, technically. Those are Lifestyle Choices.

Deep Thoughts & Pronouncements, Writing

Mind Meld

Author: February 11, 2009

SFSignal recently invited me to take part in another Mind Meld with them, this time considering the question of what the hardest part of being a writer is. You can read my response as well as everyone else’s here:

http://www.sfsignal.com/archives/2009/02/mind-meld-the-most-difficult-part-of-being-a-writer-is/

Personally, I think the hardest part really is having to wear pants all the time. So binding when you’re sitting at a desk all day. But court orders are court orders.

More Shit I Gotta Do, Writing

Twittered Fiction Redux

Author: February 9, 2009

Hola, everyone. Still recovering from NYCC. I’ll probably be saying that for months to come, because I am not a young man any more, and The Drink has taken its toll. I have the body of a much older person.

Our Twitter Fiction Experiment was a success, and we got some great feedback. AJ over at Spontaneous Derivation even collected the Tweets, organized them in order and filtered out everyone else, and have offered it up to the world, for which I thank them. So, if you wish, The Black Boxes, in order:

http://tweets.spontaneousderivation.com/Somers/Black-Boxes.html

Since it was such a grand success, what the hell, I’ll do it again. Just as before, let’s vote on which title gets Tweeted. All you get is the title; no other indication of what the story’s about. Though I can say they’re all SF/Fnal in nature, to some degree. Herewith your choices:

1. The Music Makers

2. Dreamers of Dreams

3. The Awards Dinner

Note: Complete coincidence that 2 of those titles are ripped from the same poem.

Go on and email/comment/twitter you vote to me. Story starts on 2/16, and votes will be counted up until 2/15. The same Twitter account: http://twitter.com/somers_story.

See ya there!

More Shit I Gotta Do, Writing

Paper Mate

Author: February 2, 2009

A fellow named Paul Riddell has a saying: I love living in the future. This generally refers to all the cool gadgets and technologies we have at our disposal: Just a few decades ago home computers, iPods, video games – all of these would have seemed pretty incredible. For people who grew up primarily before the digital explosion, the last twenty years or so has just been one marvel after another.

You know what I miss, though? My manual typewriter.

Oh, I still have it. I just don’t use it much. I used to; I used to write everything on it. I have filing cabinets stuffed with manuscripts, and it was glorious, pounding away at that monster, almost like carving the sentences on the page. Of course, the benefits of the word processor are too many to list, and even a Luddite like me had to give in eventually – at first it was just clean final revisions, but now I write everything on the PC and the manual typewriter collects dust.

One thing hasn’t changed: I still write short stories in a noteboook, longhand, using blue and white Paper Mate pens:

Ah, the ole’ blue and white. I won’t use anything else. If my pen dies and I don’t have an extra, I stop working. It’s just superstition, and I can’t really explain it, but I refuse to use anything else.

And to be honest, I can’t imagine what would ever change my process and cause me to abandon a technology that is several thousand years old. This isn’t an indictment of modern technology or a statement in favor of universal adoption of paper and pen by all writers; it’s just me and what I like. For my process, I can’t imagine what could possibly happen to make me utilize a different tool to write shorts. Unless, perhaps, a trained monkey at a keyboard I could dictate to. No, wait, I take it back: NOTHING WILL PRY MY CHEAP PAPER MATES FROM MY HANDS.

As technological advancement speeds along, of course, these sorts of decisions start to look crazy. I remember, when I was a wee kid, watching an episode of Lou Grant (all ye children, Google it; you didn’t miss anything) wherein a blackout paralyzes the newspaper office except for the crusty old reporter who’d always refused to use an electric typewriter. Back in the mid 1970s refusing an electric typewriter in favor of a manual was eccentric. Sticking with the manual in 2008 would be insane. That’s where I am, I guess.

Of course, when I like a story I’ve written I key it into the word processor (Open Office). I’m eccentric, not stupid.

Now I read how kids these days aren’t learning cursive handwriting any more, so my short story notebooks are slowly turning into secret codebooks that only I will be able to read. So I’d better get keyboarding, if only for my legacy. It’s going to get weirder and weirder to keep writing stories longhand as time goes on – though eventually I’ll be visibly old enough to qualify as an “old coot” and no one will worry about it any more, as my every foible will be ascribed to age and infirmity. I can’t wait! And the final joke will be that when I’m that old my handwriting will be illegible anyway.

Writing

Tweetin’ a Story

Author: January 22, 2009

Hola. A few days ago I mentioned I was going to start Tweeting a short story, 140 characters at a time, on Twitter to anyone who cares to follow. Why? Why not? Sounds like fun to me.

I’ve got a Twitter page set up for myself already, but I’ve also created a Twitter Page specifically for the short story (http://twitter.com/Somers_Story), so as not to get everything all confused. Why haven’t I yet? Because I want y’all to pick the story I’m going to Tweet, based entirely on the title. Here’re the three candidates:

“The Witch King of Angmar”
“The Black Boxes”
“Hold Me Closer, Tiny Dancer”

You don’t get anything else than that. So, comment here, email me, or contact me in any other way you want and let me know. The title that gets the most votes will begin Tweeting on 1/26. Thanks!

More Shit I Gotta Do, Writing

Writing on the Road

Author: December 26, 2008

Okay, since that last entry I’ve a) had about six gallons of coffee and b) had a shower so hot things melted. As a result, I’m feeling somewhat better. I’m not a very good traveler, as anyone who’s read The inner Swine can tell you; I’m a whiny and unappreciative tourist. Here’s a sample of what it’s like to travel with me:

YOU: Look, Jeff, the Sistine Chapel!

ME: Bugger.

See? Not fun. I freely admit to being a terrible traveler. Add in traveling for the holidays, and damn, my ass, it is kicked. Because after hours on planes, trains, and automobiles, I then stand around for sixteen hours or so eating heavy food and drinking whiskey in random bursts. I know, I know – good food and booze, friends and family, poor Jeff. I get that kind of sarcastic response a lot.

Trying to write on the road is weird. On the one hand you’ve got lots of time constraints – right now I’ve got about half an hour before The Duchess gets back from her run and Round Two of Extended Family Holiday Extravaganza begins. On the other hand, I work well with time constraints. The less time I have the more I produced, and vice versa. On the one hand, I also don’t get a lot of time to just sit and ponder plot points et al, but on the other hand there’s a wealth of observable material that differs tremendously from what you’re used to seeing.

And then, there’s hotels.

I love hotels. Which is weird, since I just went out of my way to complain about traveling, of which hotels are often a necessary part. But hotels are great for writing, especially old hotels with lots of history and architectural detail. The older the better, in fact, for writing science fiction, I think, because they’re like time machines, giving you a glimpse into the past and also standing as testament that just because you’re writing a story set in the future, you don’t need to assume everything’s been destroyed and replaced, which some writers do. You see a lot of future fiction where the world has apparently been scrubbed clean and everything replaced with shiny new versions, when in reality it’s probably the opposite: A lot of very old things, like ancient hotels, just retrofitted, applied to new uses, and lingering there with their aura of old, old charm, the ghosts of the past howling about silently.

That, and the fact that I can get anything delivered to my room with a phone call. Hotels rock. I tried that back at home and got a sneer from The Duchess for my troubles.

Happy Holidays, everyone, and if these ain’t your holidays, happy Friday.

Bullshit, Writing

Fakin’ It

Author: December 23, 2008

The Adlerian made a comment on my “Sweet Romance” Battlestar Galactica post which he ended by saying “Generally though, the show is a bit like Lost and X Files in that I doubt the writers ever had a point, thus it’s sort of a waste to watch.”

This is an interesting point; over at i09.com they have as part of their “Morning Spoilers” today a discussion of the first two episodes of the coming season of Lost. I’m a big Lost fan, but I think most of us will agree that there was a point somewhere in there where we would have totally agreed that the writers were just making shit up as they went, without any overall plan. Which is horrifying, since shows like this are structured around revelations and mysteries and the idea that there is no well-planned ultimate point kind of stabs me in the liver. I was a big X-Files fan too, at least for a while, until it became painfully clear they had no overall plan. Bastards.

Lost feels like, if they didn’t have a plan to begin with, they’ve actually regrouped and made one. Which I hope turns out to be true. Even if the ending is a let down (which of course it will have to be), at least if it ties things together and feels like an organic ending to a real story, I’ll be happy.

I sympathize, though. When creating stories, it’s foolish, sometimes, to assume that you’re going to get the opportunity to tell a long, complex story. You can’t always assume you’re going to get a 12-book deal to tell your epic cycle, and TV producers must have it worse because even if your show gets picked up, there’s no guarantee you’ll get the 5 seasons or whatever to tell your story. Sometimes you just focus on the great idea, the beginning, the 2/3s of the overall story you can see in a flash of inspiration, and you just coast along hoping to have a second flash before you have to write that last act.

Heck, if I have 2/3s of a great idea for a series of books and someone wants to publish it, I’m not going to worry about coming up with the actual ending until I have to, y’know?

With Avery Cates, it was a bit different; The Electric Church was conceived as a standalone story, but the nature of the character and the universe left it very naturally open to sequels; Avery’s a guy who, you can easily imagine, has an exciting life and there are a lot of stories to tell. The universe itself I always saw as changing, evolving (or devolving), and that’s going to increasingly be part of the story – but I didn’t have to have that mapped out back in 2005 when I originally sold the book.

I don’t like to write that way; If I map everything out, I get bored with actually writing it. I prefer to start with a spark and see where it leads me. I usually have a vague idea of where I’m going, but I prefer to rely on instinct. Of course, my schedules for writing books are a little more leisurely than coming up with entire seasons of TV shows, and the budgets involved are lower. Lost probably costs multiple millions per episode when you factor in everything from Craft Services to Post-production to Marketing, whereas my budget for writing Cates novels is basically liquor costs. Which are considerable, but still an order of magnitude lower.

Writing