What Counts

Hard toremember sometimes, when we write: what counts.

Robert Heinlein was the first to clue me in: a good few of his characters were writers, adventurers who'd had adventurous lives and thought nothing could be easier than writing about their real-life experiences.

They soon found that the only way to successfully write adventure was to forget what they knew.

Some of us have this problem. Some writers have the opposite problem: I call it research-itus, where you research and research until you kno w every in and out and the subject lies dead under your fingertips.

I'll be honest. Along with a lot of writers, my process is half close-my-eyes-and-remember, half close-my-eyes and-imagine.

Remembering, I'm back with the the thump-thump-THUMP of my heart as a blade flashes in the sunlight, the vague brutality (like lightning looking for a place to ground) that drew me to nerve centers, floating ribs, weak places in joint-construction. This is very hard to turn into interseting reading.

Very. Hard.

To tell the truth, (and I want to tell y'all the truth), trying to chronicle these moments, however cathartic, leads to damned boring reading. The excitement is more taking that, and imagining...

More often, I read the other guys: writers who've done so *damned* much research and just. Can't. Wait. to show it. Whether it's the average rainfall of California or the three easiest takedowns against an armed assailant, these writers really, really, *really* want you to feel the depth of their research.

Guess what, all of us:

It don't matter.

Research doesn't count. Not really. Neither does experience.

What counts?

Words on a page.

We write words. Some of us draw pictures. A few of us do both. But, as always, the main thing is the story.

Tell a story the audience can't wait to hear, and they don't give a damn about your research. Or your experience.

They just want to hear what happens next.

Don't believe me? Check out the Iliad. Homer had all the access he wanted to seasoned veterans, men who could give him any detail he wanted about spear-maintenance, overlapping-shield tactics and the friner points of battlefield injuries.

What survived the last two or three thousand years? Achilles dragging Hector's body behind a chariot. Athene stepping in with her poisoned arrow. Helen, lovely and troubled, standing at the ramparts of Troy.

Gilgamesh? Nobody gives a rat's ass about the finer points of Bronze Age warmaking, only that the big bastard set out in a small boat to battle one hell of a big serpent.

More recently: most *real* pirates plundered tar and timber, rope and rum. Compare that shabby truth to the story told in Treasure Island, and be thankful RL Stevenson's research and experience wasn't of a higher caliber. In the end, every one of us who makes a mark on paper is just like Blind Pew...



In other news, Shauna gave me a lovely award. I'll pass it along when I'm sober. Meantime, thank you very much Shauna. Glad you find a little bit you like in this blog...

Stolen, With Credit

I wish I'd thought of this. I truly do. But I didn't, so credit is given where credit is due.

Hey, that kinda rhymes. Watch out, Charles! ;-)

Okay, seriously: Charles recently posted about a crappy literary novel he read, a much-acclaimed crappy literary novel. Lots of people complain about crappy literary novels. Others complain about crappy popular novels. In this verrrrrry long interview, Neil Stephenson (around question #2) casually drops the most elegant analogy possible for funding in Western Art: Beowulf and Chaucer.

Chaucer wrote for king and court. His meal ticket was creating art (The Canterbury Tales) that pleased and engaged his wealthy and powerful patrons. The anonymous bards who first sang Beowulf moved from town to town, night to night. A good tale that engaged the crowd meant a comfy bed and good food, etc. Boring or offending the audience... well, let's just say it's not a good idea to bore or offend a lot of big hairy men and women with axes.

It's probably no coincidence that The Canterbury Tales is a top-down look at medieval society: pious, occasionally bawdy (when the peasants feature) and gently teasing where Church-y materialism is concerned. Not that Beowulf features monsters by moonlight, subterranean caves of doom, flying dragons and the biggest, meanest, hairiest motherfucker to ever swing an axe riding into town to set the world to rights.

Modern fiction and movies, not much has changed.

And this duality is with us throughout the art world. While the very rich were daring each other to buy Picasso's throwdown to the art world, N.C. Wyeth's illustrations for Treasure Island were selling in the bazillions. About the time Martha Graham choreographed "Chronicle", Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers were packing them in the aisles to watch the foxtrot.

Two camps, one where a small group of discerning patrons drop big chunks of money and another where a whole lot of folks vote a dollar or two at a time. It's probably no secret which one I'm in. (I mean, the blog title's a bit of a giveaway, innit?) Sure, I go to the opera and the ballet, and I dig those underlit European movies where a lonely guy drinks coffee and then dies. But you better believe I'm going to be there when Hellboy 2 opens here!

My own education geared me to a life in the ivory tower. My inclinations put me squarely on the street. Best advice I can give ANY artist is, know which camp you belong in and work as hard as hell in that one. If I have any regret about my art career, it's those early years I spent sucking up to arts boards for funding, chasing down gallery shows and all that. Many of my friends did well in that world, but it wasn't me...

At their best, the Chaucers give us bold and daring work, art that might never have a popular following but that still fills us with a sense of pride. Without the Chaucer approach, we might not have the work of Jean-Paul Sartre, Pablo Picasso or Claes Oldenburg.

The Beowulf crowd are easy to dismiss with a 'low-art' sniff. But our work endures, precisely because it appeals to the average joe. It's common, vital and alive. No endowment funding or princely patronage could have ever led to pulp fiction, comic books or the Blues.

Thing about the Chaucers is, when they fail, they fail BIG. At their worst, we get novels with no discernable punctuation. We get music with no tonality. We get much of the visual art of the 20th century.

Sure, the Chaucer crowd get it wrong sometimes. Okay, a LOT. Those ivory-tower eggheads are always looking over each other's shoulders, biting their lower lips and hoping not to embarrass themselves. Painting, sculpture, music, dance, literature, it doesn't matter: they're all hoping to discover the next Van Gogh, all afraid of holding forth the next Jeff Koons.

Of course, it's not like we Beowulfs are perfect. After all, we brought the world the Da Vinci Code.