Losing It

Charles posted on writers who destroyed themselves when they felt their best work was behind them. The examples he used were vivid: Hemingway, Howard and London, two suicides and one who drank himself to death.

Truth is, Charles barely skimmed the surface, but he did make his point. Writers struggle with the idea that they've 'lost it'.

Reading his post, it occured to me that I might have a useful perspective on this. You see, I've lost it a few times in life. Sometimes lost and found it again. Others, just, well... lost.

Comics: I haven't drawn a comic in some years now. My last original work was two parts of a trilogy that still sits unfinished. I never meant to stop, it just sort of worked out that way. The stories that have come since then have been novels, or sometimes paintings, but no comics.

Painting: While I'm on the subject, I was a keen painter in my twenties (back when paint was a newfangled invention) but I somehow managed to go the best part of a decade without picking up a brush. Those rare occasions I did try to paint, the work simply wasn't up to scratch. I made up my mind that those particular guns had been hung up.

Then one day a couple-odd Christmases ago, paintings were requested as gifts. I dutifully strapped on my brushes and made a big old mess out of some canvases. The work lacked my old magic (whatever that was), but it was too late: I was once again in love.

I got back to painting. The magic wasn't there, but the love was back. Then Frank Frazetta's Painting With Fire gave me permission to paint like my new self, if that makes any sense. New magic came. Last year I did my best to date. This year, well... it remains to be seen.

Tattooing: I've also certainly had fallow periods in my tattooing. Times when the work I turned out was... uninspired. When I'd look at the next tattoo and think I just couldn't be bothered.

Couple of those times I took a sabbatical, lived off my savings, took in illustration work, whatever. The most recent one, I couldn't afford to quit. So I just kept on keeping on. One day, I found inspiration again, this time in the work of Guy Aitchison, Kat Von D and Nikko Hurtado. I remembered why I picked up the needles in the first place. My focus shifted. The magic returned.

Personally, I think plateaus are natural. Exercising and learning, the curve tends to be periods of sharp, upward development and long, flat stretches where what really counts is the will to continue. No reason to think that things should be any different for creative skills.

Who says we have to be fresh, always doing our best?

And who says we can't?

Any writer who worries that they've 'lost it' should look to Johnny Cash for inspiration. Johnny came out of the gate with a bang: the first few years of his career, he wrote Walk the Line, Cry Cry Cry, Folsom Prison Blues and most of his classics. It was an unbelievable streak of creative brilliance.

Thirty-odd years later, he was still playing those same songs. He'd had a few bright spots creativity-wise (as opposed to commercially), but by the late 80's he was well and truly in the has-been category.

He was sure his best days were behind him. He even thought he'd quit recording, spend his time doing live concerts performing the music from his glory days.

Enter Rick Rubin, and a different vision. Johnny stripped down to the absolute essentials: his guitar and his voice. American Recordings may or may not be the best work he ever did, but it sure as hell showed the world his best days were far from over.

Maybe for Johnny (as for me), it was permission to be himself. To be that old guy with all the hard miles on him, not trying to fit who he used to be or who the other singers around him were. I know for me, those times I 'found it' again were also times I realized I had to be me, not a knock-off, even of my own earlier self.

Maybe if Hemingway hadn't spent so much time trying to reiterate Fiesta and For Whom the Bell Tolls, he would have had more, and better, work than The Old Man and the Sea. And maybe he wouldn't have been so damned depressed that he got the electroshock that made him suicidal.

And yeah, the Steampunk Word-O-Meter stands at 12,800 words. I think it's the weekend (my busy time at work) that's the culprit, not the scenes themselves...

Topsy Turvy

This is nuts. I can't say if it's the plotting, the stresses of month five of small-business ownership or those of life in general, but writing this novel is completely wonky.

Normally, I sweat and strain and shear gears loose in my head trying to handle sequels and quiet moments in general. It's a real effort to do my 1000+ a day, until I get to the fist fights, car chases, gun battles, etc. when the work simply flies along.

Not this time.

I've flown through these early stages. As this one's a mystery, I'm introducing suspects and red herrings, planting false leads, all that good stuff. I'm even, thanks to having a handle on my plot first, able to think about stuff like vision systems and imagery as I work.

Until I hit the Sequence 1 Climax. It's a small thing, a fist fight. It serves to:
a) establish the hero as at least somewhat tough (to qualify the later stompings he'll receive)
b) frustrate his Plan
c) show a few of his flaws and issues, and
d) wake up those readers who haven't had enough action in the last 5000 words.

Normally, I'd fly through a scene like that. Instead, it was a horrible, painful grind. Best I could manage was 200-300 words a day. For five days!

Once I got past it, I was back on 1000+. Freaking ridiculous.

At any rate, on Day, let's see.... Day 12, the New and Improved, Steam-Powered Daily Wordcount-o-Meter stands on 11,200 words. Not happy.

Stage the Second

Yup, it doesn't stop with 3x5 cards. Once those are filled out, shuffled, crossed-through and flipped over to reuse, shuffled and rearranged, a few thrown in the fire and fresh cards begrudgingly trotted out to take their place, I have the bones of my plot. No trying-to-piece-together-a-complete-cromagnon-from-a-scrap-of jawbone for me-- I've got a reasonably complete skellington here to work with!

Now to my lovely notebook. And it is lovely: the wee red beasty has nice creamy paper, hard covers, a pocket in back, an elastic band to hold it shut and one of those sweet ribbons to mark my place. I freely confess to a certain sartorial streak in matters of my stationery. :)

Right, the notebook. Sitting down with trusty, lovely, 50-odd year old fountain pen (that sartorial streak again), I flesh out each note card. Usually 50-100 words, just enough to describe what'll be happening, key points to hit when I finally sit down to write my draft.

At this point I found problems that didn't show up in the note cards: night scenes in the middle of the day, suspects cleared then re-interviewed, a few plot holes. So back to work, shuffling, scribbling, shuffling. The plot hole gets filled but now I'm *awful* long between my Big Midpoint and my Act II Climax. I've become flabby about the middle. Shuffle, scribble, tear up a couple more cards. Scribble scribble, shuffle, scribble.

If this sounds like a lot of work, please remember this is usually a stage I go through AFTER I've written the damn novel. In fact, I'm sometimes finding these problems after several drafts. Compared to that, this is a piece of cake.

One odd bonus I hadn't predicted: I'm writing faster. On the one hand, I'm able to angle language, imagery, etc. to foreshadow what's to come. On the other, these poor characters have been jumping up and down in that diary, scene after scene, mute and waving for my attention. Now that I'm finally letting them talk and act and do stuff, they're going hard.

At the end of Day 3, the New and Improved Daily Wordcountometer (shown on the right) stands at 5,400 words. Now if you'll excuse me, I gots me some writing to do...

Oh Dear... Overboard?

Longtime readers will remember my days as a fierce advocate for writing by the seat of my pants. Recently, I turned a new leaf, gave plotting-ahead a bit of a go.

And like any addictive personality, I took it too far.

Or have I? Those are 80 notecards, 20 for Act I, 40 for Act II, and so on. Roughly one per thousand words of story. Working with them, I've been able to work on pacing, juggle scenes and sequels, space out character appearances/subplots/etc. so that we never go *too* long without hearing from the Duchess of Maldorff and the Subplot to Blackmail her Third Underbutler. Plants and payoffs (the ones I know I need anyway) have been inserted appropriately.

In short, all the headaches I go through in the editing stage are now happening before I write a single line of dialogue or description. If this works, my subsequent drafts will hopefully go a bit easier.

Will it work for me? I don't know. Seem worth trying? Heck yeah. I'll do just about *anything* to get these damn stories out of my head quicker, smoother, and closer to what I see playing on that Private Theatre for One...

PS. Those note cards are all filled in now, but I just had to go with this photo. Just like his siblings, Buddy is much mended and now up to the task of helping me write!

Icepicks and Chainsaws

Recently I've been reading both John D. MacDonald and Ross MacDonald novels, close together. At the moment Ross reigns supreme and JDM is in the shade. Maybe in a few years that pendulum will swing back the other way; I certainly hope so.

At any rate, something stood out reading the two back-to-back-to-back. Both are writing in the late 60's/early 70's, and both Lew Archer and Travis McGee share a certain world-weary, nihilistic, these-kids-these-days way of looking at the world. They deal with it in different way, but there's not enough different about these two heroes to justify the strange shift in favor.

The difference I see is in the writing. More specifically, metaphor.

Ross MacDonald uses metaphor like an icepick, where John D. MacDonald uses it like a chainsaw. Both write elegant, vivid, wonderful metaphors, the kind of images that stick with you a long time after you put their books down. RM uses metaphor like Ali jabbing in his heyday: sticking and moving, sticking and moving. JDM, think George Foreman and his knockout cross...

Right now I'm reading The Underground Man, and it's peppered with lovely little images, a yellow-tinged sky like cheap paper darkening in the sunlight, a pair of pistols gleaming like strange blue jewels, shadows of palms like splashes of dark liquid on the pavements. No one is super-haunting, but like Ali and that jab, the cumulative effect is telling.

JDM's style was more about the single powerful image: that poor, strangled girl with her Long Lavender Look, the showdown under that Dreadful Lemon Sky, walking off into that Lonely Silver Rain. This guy doesn't ladle on the poetic imagery, he picks one single, resonant image and lets it shine. And yeah, that image is usually powerful enough that it gets picked for the title. There are exceptions, sure, but the point remains: when it came to metaphor, JDM went for the knockout punch.

Come to think of it, this reminds me of an older mystery-author pairing: Dashiel Hammet and Raymond Chandler. Chandler peppered his work with such classic lines as 'she had the kind of body to make a bishop kick a hole in a stained glass window' and 'he looked about as inconspicuous as a tarantula on a slice of angel food.' Hammet gave us the Glass Key and Red Harvest.

I'm guessing these days, the jab is in fashion, more than the cross. If you're the sort of writer who uses layer on layer of imagery to build a haunting effect, that's awesome. And if you're the sort to go for a single, powerful image, the kind that stays with the reader *years* after covers close, you might have a harder time getting your foot in the door. But if you develop that technique to its fullest, you just might blast that door off its hinges...

Plugging With Fire

Our friend Charles Gramlich has a new book out, Write With Fire. All of you who read Charles's blog that the man is full of truly excellent advice on everything about the writing life from craft to career.

Buy this book. I will.

Letting the Monster Out

Recently, Charles expressed his disappointment in a story he read. The lead character (name of Edge), a cold-eyed killer (and borderline psychopath) now retired, spends most of the book trying to stay out of trouble. Until, of course, it's time to strap on his guns again.

The formula is tried and true. Shane. Pale Rider. Unforgiven. Sin City: A Dame to Kill For. The Big Boss. Hell, the true story of Cincinnatus. One of drama's favorite 'guns on the mantelpiece' is the bad-ass who's trying to hold back.

The book Charles read didn't work, and I thought I knew why. The hero's arc failed in two places: the start and the end.

Drama is about contrast. No matter what genre, the hero or heroine ends the story in a very different place from where they started. Bridget Jones starts her story miserable, alone and embarrassed at the turkey curry buffet, and she ends the next Christmas happy, in love and immune to anything her mother might say. We meet Harry Potter unloved, disregarded and the absolute bottom of the heap, positively hated by his adoptive parents and living in a cupboard under the stairs. By the end of that first story, he is the hero of his school, loved by all. Othello, on the other hand, starts his story a celebrated hero, saviour of the city with the most beautiful woman he's ever seen for his bride. By the end, both he and Desdemona are dead by his own hand.

Rule of thumb: the lower the hero starts, the higher he'll end up. Or vice versa. Sometimes, it can be both. The detective may end the story with all the answers and his life in ruins. All I'm saying, there's a reason you see a lot more rags-to-riches stories than rags-to-lower middle class.

Back to the Retired Gunslinger. This character always starts as a bad-ass held in check. Always.

Shane and the Preacher (the Mysterious Stranger in Pale Rider) are both introduced fronting off groups of thugs with little more than an icy glare and a palpable sense of menace. How do we know they're bad-asses? Groups of asshole bullies take one look at them and run away.

Chen (Bruce Lee's character in The Big Boss) and Dwight from A Dame to Kill For show the natures they're hiding in action. When Chen's cousins end up in a fight, Bruce Lee uses grace, skill and a deft comic touch to show us that he really could've whupped those bullies butts the whole time, only he promised his momma he wouldn't fight. Dwight stops an attempted murder with a single knockout blow, and his voiceover tells us directly how much he enjoys it, how tempting it is to 'let the monster out'. We soon learn he no longer drinks, smokes, won't even let himself exceed the speed limit for fear he'll turn that monster inside him loose.

Remember: the Retired Gunfighter is *not* a changed man. He may think he is. He may argue that he is, act like he is, do everything he believes a changed man would do. But *we* need to see that old Monster still lurking under his skin, sniffing the air and waiting for a chance to slip its chain.

We need to see that no matter how much the Retired Gunfighter might lie to himself, whatever it might cost him, part of him wants that monster loose.

And when our hero does finally let that monster out, WATCH OUT! We've watched our hero suffer through three-quarters of the story resisting his natural urges. His half-measure compromises have failed: the monster inside gloated and the villains still won. In the end, there's nothing left for it but to cut loose.

And here's the thing about cutting loose: you've gotta go big. BIG!

Shane guns down the hired killer, the ranch boss and everyone else in the saloon that night. Preacher blows up a strip-mine and wipes out the villain's whole gang. Dwight comes back with a brand new face, a duffel bag full of explosives, a ninja accomplice and a .25 automatic tucked up his sleeve. And in The Big Boss, Bruce Lee stabs the local drug lord to death with his own fingers.

Big.

I'm thinking this is why the book Charles read failed. The killer, Edge, starts out pretty whimpy (okay, cool), but he goes wrong in one important way. Maybe more: I don't know if we get to see what total bad-assery he's holding back, or if we get a sense for how very badly he wants to let that beast free. But I do know this: he carries his gun with him in a carpet bag.

To me, that's a fatal flaw.

And when the rough stuff does start again, he emerges quite a bit less violent than he used to be, with a greater regard for law and order. Wtf?

I call it 'muted arc', or rags-to-lower middle class: the character's changes simply aren't big enough. By keeping his pistol nearby (though not on his hip), Edge is making a definite statement. Contrast it with Preacher in the Pale Rider, who needs days of hard riding to reach the steel box where he's locked away his guns.

And Shane, Preacher, Chen, Dwight, any Retired Gunslinger you can think of, all give us a sense that their violence at the end is worse than they ever were back in their bad old days. They may suffer for unleashing their violence (Shane is badly wounded, maybe fatally. Chen goes to prison.), or they may simply have to live with this poisonous knowledge about themselves.

No way should it actually be better. Shane can't strap on his guns, give the hired killer a flesh wound and have the ranch owner surrender without further bloodshed. And then go off with the lesson that the answer is moderate amounts of violence...