An Unnecessary Mess

Right now, the Smart Bitches are tearing through a certain author's works. They found pages and pages of 'marked similarity' between the historical fiction of Cassie Edwards and various dusty volumes of non-fiction published between 1902 and 1937.

The Smart Bitches cry plagarism. Signet Books shouts fair use.

I mutter, "Sloppy writing..."

Historical fiction's tough. It's as tough as science fiction or fantasy world-building, but with the added bonus of other people being able to shout 'Anachronism!' at the top of their lungs if you screw up. Research, accurate research, is soooooo vital!

And since the appeal of historical fiction is the chance to be transported back in time, we the reader know, or at least really really HOPE, the wrtier did her research.

The Bitches' issue with Ms Edwards doesn't seem to be the accuracy of her research. It's that her authorial voice changes when she wants to show that research off. Changes so much, they googled those odd bits. Then googled some more... It becomes clear that the writer's awkward info-dumps (if your readers notice the change in voice, that's awkward) were literally scooped up and dumped from source material to novel.

"Plagarism!"

"Fair use!"

Sloppy, sloppy, sloppy. Lazy.

By contrast, yesterday I started 'Why Mermaids Sing' by CS Harris. It's a murder mystery set in Regency England. September 1811, to be exact.

I'm reading with a sort of sense of wonder right now: beautiful language, flowing dialogue, local dialects that actually work, a deft hand with characterization and a cracking good pace. Seriously, this writer belongs on the bestseller lists.

So it should be no surprise that her research and historical texture are spot-on as well. And restrained.

Marvelously restrained. Her characters move through their world without feeling the need to stop every few pages and 'break the fourth wall' explaining it to us. Yes, it took me a few chapters to figure out what a 'tiger' was, but it was worth it. I'm about a quarter of the way through, and not a single info-dump narrative or 'As you know Bob' in sight!

It's a walk along a knife's edge, giving the reader enough information without giving too much. And it's a bloody magic act pulling it off without the seams showing. Mermaids does it, and damned if I can quite see how...

Doing all this research. Ignoring it while you write. Using facts sparingly. And then doing it in a pleasing and entertaining way: it's a lot of heavy lifting. A lot. And as a guy with a lazy side myself (for two years I hired a lawn service rather than mow my own), I can understand the aversion to heavy lifting.

But here's the thing. We love what we do. Otherwise, we'd do something else. And love means doing the heavy lifting.

ROAR

A couple of weeks ago, the lovely and talented Shauna Roberts put my name up for the Roar for Powerful Words. I have to list, in my opinion, the three most important essentials for powerful and effective writing.

I may have taken the task too seriously. This blog is full of tools large and small, but three essentials demands getting down to first principles. Almost two weeks later, I'm finally ready to answer.

3. Practice: None of us is born perfect and at the height of our powers. Even the greatest talent is nothing more than potential. Learning to write, play the cello or do a backflip takes work: practice, development, practice, examination of the greats and the not-so-greats, and practice.

Sports authorities say it takes ten thousand hours to become good. John D MacDonald said it was one million words. No matter how you look at it, it's a long road...

2. Craft: James Joyce or James Ellroy, craft is at the heart of what we do. It's the lens through which your story is viewed.

You may use words to weave gossamer strands of lyric beauty or to craft razor-sharp icepicks. Either way, you should know exactly why you use every single word, phrase, sentence, paragraph, scene and chapter in your work.

I sometimes meet aspiring writers who assume their basic literacy is all they need to tell their stories. Vocabulary and grammar are fundamental and basic tools, but your tools need to be exceedingly sharp if they're to cut to your reader's heart.

And the number one essential to pwerful and effective writing....

1. Love: Ten thousand hours is a long damn time. One million words is roughly ten novels.

There are some gorgeous, gratifying moments on that road, but also plenty of despair. And even if you walk those long miles and use every step to become the very, very best that you can be, there's no guarantee your best will be good enough. I once knew a fencer like that: very dedicated and very, very bad.

Fate is fickle, rewards uncertain. Money and fame may find you, but they just as easily may not. In the end, the only reason to walk this road is love.

Simple Pleasures

I"m somewhere in the middle of a very happy wee vacation just at the moment. The ocean is involved, as is the sun, good food, a little wine and the occasional roller coaster.

This time next week, I'll be back commenting with the best of em...

Once More into the Breach

(80,000 words)

I've spent this last week or two getting rid of the stuff that didn't belong. They're scratching weakly at their file right now, their pitiful screams too faint to trouble me.

I'm also writing fresh material for the stuff I skipped over. That first draft, I was sticking to the action, the high points of character development, etc. By the time I was finished, I could see some of the places where I needed to go deeper, or build slower, or just plain give the reader a rest for a minute.

The actual, -sit-down-and-read-it-with-a-blue-pencil first read won't happen for a while yet. I need time enough to come at the work fresh. These new scenes are going in now, before the characters themselves start to see foreign to me. Later, when they do seem like they were written by someone else, I'll have a third persepective about what they need.

Some writers (Tom Robbins and Donna Tartt are two of my favorites) agonize over every word, trying to craft a work a complete and perfect beauty on the first pass. I have to wade right in with both fists flying and see what I've done when the dust settles.

Hoping to have all the new writing done in the next few days or so. We're off to OZ on holiday, and I'd like to actually holiday instead of writing.

For this reason, I'm also VERY much hoping to put off starting the next book until the end of the month. The new story's pulling at me, trying to claw its way out of my skin, polluting my dreams with its foul breath and whispering in my ears in those quiet moments.

Like that dead girl in Stir of Echoes, the stories I gotta write get more and more insistent. All I can say is, "Not yet. Please, not yet."

But it itches so...

Tell the Truth and Shame the Devil

73,000 words

Stephen King says building memorable and believable characters is nothing more or less than our own observation of human beings and our ability to tell the truth.

He also says, tell the truth and you won't be popular in polite society for long.

I remember being fourteen or fifteen years old. Being afraid all the time, and turning hard to hide that fear. Looking at the violence and addiction around me, the teenaged parents, the kids who came out of prison dead eyed and flat faced and the ones who never got more than a memorial page in the yearbook, I was scared.

I remember sitting with Interview With a Vampire and getting my first clear vision of a life beyond what I knew. The thought that I might one day sit at a sidewalk cafe on a sunny street in Paris was impossible, but too tantalizing to resist.

I got tastes of what I wanted, but I also plumbed a lot of my own personal darkness. One day, I finally did get free. My dreams came true because I paid what they cost.

When my work goes wrong, this is usually where it gets lost: it loses its honesty. It's tempting to write these sort of nifty-clean thrillers where you can imagine Roger Moore in the lead. Or genteel murder mysteries where old ladies have to figure out who killed the vicar. Hell, I love to read that stuff.

But that's not my voice. It's part of the human condition I can relate to vicariously, but not the part that I can speak from with any authority. I *can* be honest about fear, about predators and victims and souls in moral freefall, about violence, hope and love.

I once couch-surfed with a stripper/sometime hooker and her disgraced cop boyfriend/sometime pimp. I can be honest about the love and anger and sadness between them in a way that I can't about, say, a witty and debonair jewel thief, or a group of high school kids throwing a party with their parents out of town.

The Tiny Dynamo sometimes wishes I wrote Regency Romance. She's afraid to let her parents see my work. *My* parents never finished my first book. Ten pages, and they were out.

When the Dynamo read about the Christchurch I know, she was aghast. But she also admitted every word was true. So these last couple weeks, that's a lot of what I've been doing with this (almost finished) retrenchment.

Telling the truth.

What's it All About, Alfie?

41,000 words (back on track, sorta)

There are at least a few different kinds of writer's block. My most frequent one is 'Driving with the hand Brake On.' That's where I spend more time second-guessing what I just wrote than I do writing more. It's my inner critic gone mad.

It's also not the subject of today's blog.

Today's about a second, more brutal form of writer's block. You know the one: you've come too far to turn back now, but no matter hwo hard you try, you just can't work out what happens next.

You're blocked.

Near as I can tell, it happens to everyone. It's not happening to me right now, but it has in the past. My last novel, for instance. And the one before that.

When it does, I get away from the keyboard. Long walks, bike rides, tramps up the sides of damn mountains are favorites, but it doesn't matter. The key is to give the body something to do so that the mind can wander. And ponder.

And ask, what the hell am I writing about, anyway? What's the point?

Literary professors get to used high-falutin words like central conflict and theme. But I am a bear of little brain, and prefer simple, working class words. I want to know what the story that's stumping me's supposed to look like when it's at home.

But really, central conflict and theme are what's getting lost in those white-out, writer's block moments. Writing is like building a forest one tree at time. The inner critic wants to see that every leaf and pine needle is just so. The white-out is when you've lost track and started building up above the ridgeline, or onto thin, rocky soil where your story doesn't properly belong.

There's something you love in your story. Something that puts that particular wood (whether a 2000 word grove or a 350,000 rainforest) in that particular place. After all, if you don't have the love, there are heaps of other ways to spend a day. The love of that story, wanting to see how it turns out -- to see it told -- is what makes writing worthwhile.

Find the heart of your story. You'll also find the key to your dilemna.

Regular Irregularity - Feel the Love

status: 14,600

You might have noticed that I only got 600 words written yesterday. Some drawings I needed to finish took longer than I thought, and one of my darling fiance's best friends rolled into town, so it was dinner and pool in the evening. Stuff happens.

Sometimes stuff doesn't happen at all. There've been a couple of days in the two weeks since I started where I just couldn't write more than three or four hundred words. The story wasn't talking to me.

But I still got to Day 14 on 14,ooo words. And I'll get to the end of the first draft in about three months. There are two important secrets to actually finishing any endeavor as long as a novel. One is to leave the bad days behind you. So you did nothing yesterday. So what? Don't lose today's progress beating yourself up about it.

The other secret is kind of the opposite. Don't accept slack. You've got to care enough about the work to commit to it. None of us can expect fame or fortune. It'd be nice, but even making a living is a tough slog in the creative industries. There are plenty of fun and wonderful things to do with our leisure time that don't involve sitting with a keyboard or goose quill pen or whatever. You've got to love the work enough to make it a priority.

Couple of years back, I tried to take up the guitar. I practiced scales and chords, even got to the point where I could do a half-decent blues walk and play a couple of songs. But the effort fizzled. there were novels to write and comics to draw, a living to be made and a lovely young lady (the Tiny Dynamo, since she doesn't want me naming her here) whose company I enjoyed. There was a life to be lived, and I just didn't love the guitar enough to put the work in.

But when the novel goes hot, the action's coming fast and the words are tumbling over me spilling out, I'll stop everything else and write for fourteen, fifteen hours a day.

It's all about the love...