Acid Free Paper

New Site

2007-08-14T12:11:00.000-07:00

Please visit my new site: Acid-Free Paper

Remember to change your bookmarks to the new URL. Thanks!

Address Change

2007-05-30T08:18:00.000-07:00

This is my last post to this blog. Say hello to my new site for Acid-Free Paper. It looks and feels the same in just about every respect except for the commenting system and the URL, which now includes a hyphen in the name.

Please update your links to the new site.

(You can find out why I made the change here and here, if you care.)

Moving

2007-05-25T14:32:00.000-07:00

So forget about importing Haloscan comments into Blogger. The only way I could do that without writing some kind of script would be to do it by hand, comment by comment. Not gonna' happen.

So I've decided to move Acid Free Paper instead.

The new site will be called Acid-Free Paper (notice the hyphen), which ought to please all of you grammar puritans, and the URL will be acid-freepaper.blogspot.com. I'll officially announce the change as soon as I get all of the necessary parts and pieces moved over. My last post here will be a pointer to that site, and I'll keep this one around for as long as Haloscan holds out.

For the record, I plan to avoid ever using the word 'shitzu' on my new site — a mistake I made on about my second or third post here — because that one word turned out to be Google's favorite and I really don't like shitzus (nor any other yappy dog), so I felt kind of violated every time one of those shitzu fans started shitzuing Google for the word shitzu on my blog. My dog, if I had one, would eat shitzus.

I'm also hoping that with the hyphen in the name, I will get fewer searches for making acid from paper, putting acid on paper, people advertising free acid, eating paper while on acid, and my all-time favorite, acid toilet paper.

Human beings, I swear. (Toiler shakes his head.)

Trouble With Comments

2007-05-21T10:03:00.000-07:00

As most of you know, I use Haloscan to manage my comments. It was a great choice for one reason alone: It almost completely eliminated spam. (A few started to come in several months ago, but then they stopped for some unknown reason.)

Unfortunately, Haloscan appears to be a sinking ship. Login to their site fails almost daily now, the comment links don't always appear on my blog, and sometimes the comments don't show.

I'll look into extracting all of my comments and maybe moving them. Until then, I apologize if commenting on my blog is a trying experience. Just remember what Yoda said.

Update! It has come to my attention that some of your comments may have been lost. If so, it was a glitch (see comments below). I've only ever rejected obvious spam. If you saved a comment that got "rejected", feel free to try again or send it to me personally by email and I'll make sure that it gets posted.

Never Say Never

2007-05-15T15:29:00.000-07:00

I once swore that I would never anthropomorphize an animal in a story.

Guess what? I'm anthropomorphizing an animal.

Personally, I find crow tastes a lot like chicken.

Kitty cat (not her real name) agrees, although she finds crow a bit gamey.

(Image Credit: Big Cats Online)

The Allure of Tools

2007-05-14T11:27:00.000-07:00

Why is it that writers who seem most obsessed with the tools of the writing trade — word processors, flowcharts, computer technology, special pens, etc. — never seem to write anything?

I've met quite a few "writers" like that. One guy, who was part of a writer's group that I attend until he finally admitted that he never actually wrote anything, seemed particularly fascinated by computer programs that supposedly help novelists do their thing.

How on earth can a piece of software help a novelist do his thing? I'll never know. The best help that I ever got was from a clean, sharp rule on a white piece of paper. It was just begging me to put something on it, and I was helpless to resist.

That's why my current best friend is my moleskine, which is a small notebook of thinly ruled, off-white paper. My second-best friend is a gel pen, because it doesn't make my fingers tired. And my third best friend is a little 12-inch notebook computer that I got for about $75, although it would have cost only $50 if I hadn't asked for a special battery and a case. It also came with a bunch of Atari stickers on top, but my friend didn't charge me for those. I love it because it has a very clear screen, it weighs almost nothing, and I doubt that anyone will steal it.

But these three gadgets combined comprise only about 3% of my tool set. The other 97% involve my senses of seeing, tasting, touching, hearing, and smelling (say, 25%), and my gray matter (say, 70%). The remaining 2% remains unaccounted for at this time.

Stardust Comes to Life

2007-05-11T11:16:00.000-07:00

Neil Gaiman's short novel Stardust is coming to a theater near you some time this summer.

Of all the stories that I've read over the past year, that one stands out as my favorite, mostly because of its sense of life. It's a fairytale, plain and simple, but Gaiman's mind seems to have its own, unique, and benevolent landscape, and it comes through in the story. Like some examples of magical realism today, it has a modern edge to it, except it's bright and happy for a change.

If you read it, don't scrutinize it. The story doesn't hold up under careful analysis. Take it in as a fun romp through a happy fantasy land.

I'll put it this way: If you're the type who would like an off-the-wall, happy movie like Amelie, then you might like Stardust.

A Success

2007-05-10T12:50:00.000-07:00

Here's some happy news.

I generally keep my work to myself. After all, I'm not a charity. But recently I shared a couple of my better short stories with about ten select friends and associates. The results have been positive, to say the least, and profitable for me.

Best of all, several unrelated readers offered the same, enthusiastic praise about a certain aspect of my writing. They said that my characters and settings are so vivid that they fairly leap from the page. As one reader put it, "I felt like I was transported into a place that I had been before, yet I noticed that you accomplished this with just a few touches. How did you do that?"

It's a trade secret, my dear. I've been sworn into secrecy by the International Guild of Vivid Writing. :-)

Thank you all very much for your kind words! This is an aspect of my prose that I already considered to be one of my strengths, so it's good to get, not just validation, but actually some rather enthusiastic validation.

(Toiler takes a bow — his one and only moment of glory in the last five years, and perhaps his only glory for the next five.)

Now, if I can just figure out how to develop a fascinating, twisting-turning plot, then I'll be cooking with some serious hydrogen fuel.

New Propaganda

2007-05-09T14:49:00.000-07:00

I happened upon a quote by Terry Goodkind from his novel Phantom, which I have not read. It inspired my comments below. If you can't bear to read the whole thing, then you should be able to get the point from reading just the first few sentences:

Like all irrational beliefs, it was also unworkable. To live, those beliefs had to be ignored to accomplish goals of domination, which in themselves were a violation of the belief for which they were fighting. There were no equals among those of the Order, the torchbearers of enforced equality. Whether a Ja'La player, the most professional of the soldiers, or an emperor, the best were not simply needed but sought after and highly valued, and so as a body they harbored an inner hatred of their failure to live up to their own teachings and a fear that they would be unmasked for it. As punishment for their inability to fulfill their sanctified beliefs through adherence to those teachings, they instead turned to the self-flagellation of proclaiming how unworthy all men were and vented their self-hatred on scapegoats: they blamed the victims.

Through an act of deep magic, I have developed my very own literary crystal ball, and here is what my probing vision reveals: The "philosophical novel" is going to be the next genre. (Or, at the very least, the future of New Romanticism is going to be burdened with too much dense, quasi-philosophical prose.)

Pray, let this not come to pass.

We writers, by and large, are nothing like real philosophers. Few of us have integrated -- or will ever integrate -- enough particulars to write competently about the sort of broad, philosophic themes that Ayn Rand deftly tackled. And when a writer wants to tackle lofty themes but lacks particulars to draw upon, he will always resort to bald reporting. That's why this new genre's guiding principle -- or so I gather -- will be to tell and not to show.

This should never happen to an Objectivist.

More than any other literary theory in history, Ayn Rand's romantic realism respects the mind, both the reader's and the writer's. The romantic realist illustrates his ideas primarily in the form of images using words, which themselves primarily denote action, to which the reader responds via an active and deeply familiar mental process -- the process of looking at "reality" and perceiving it. The effect of this kind of transaction between writer and reader is an enormous commitment to story, and a sense of traveling on an emotionally complex thrill-ride.

Clearly the most engaging fictional imagery emerges when a writer draws upon his own observations and integrations in the real world, by which I mean, from that which he knows in fact, not just in theory by means of reading other people's books. Qua romantic realism, Atlas Shrugged is not a boilerplate. It couldn't be even if it wanted to be, which it doesn't. (For Rand's view on this, see especially the taped version of her course "Fiction Writing".) That's because no writer living today even slightly resembles Ayn Rand. (Please forgive me if I have overlooked a budding genius among us.)

At the very least, by reading this passage by Goodkind, perhaps some of my readers may now understand more clearly why I have, at least in part, placed some psychological distance between my work and the explicit tenets of Objectivism. I don't wish to write in a philosophical genre. For that matter, I don't wish for anyone to -- unless they can do it the right way, which is to say, the very same way that I plan to write an adolescent adventure story.

Writer's Funk

2007-04-23T07:18:00.000-07:00

I'm in a writer's funk right now. I like it, but I'm not sure everybody else does. My apologies to my partner. He's very independent, but even so, having me in a useless mental state probably doesn't do much for our social climate. He didn't get dinner until 8:30 last night (I'm usually the cook; he's the dishwasher), and we haven't been skiing or kayaking much at all on his free time. Same goes for my friends: my apologies if I seem a bit flaky right now. It's because I'm, well, being flaky. It's just hard to wrap my brain around anything besides work, and my motivation to do anything else has all but evaporated.

What do I mean by a funk? In my case, it's the state of mind that comes after working at the nuts and bolts of something for a very long time, when all of those disparate ideas finally begin to fuse and make sense. I can't say it's excitement. This work is too hard for that. Mostly it's a growing sense of focus and a stronger will to keep going.

Maybe it's a little like parenting: My kid has been equal parts wonderful and challenging of late — maybe less wonderful than challenging — but when he goes to sleep and I have a chance to see him in his most benign state, I feel reassured that I'm in this for the long term, and that I wouldn't have it any other way.

I'm Not Gone

2007-04-10T13:24:00.000-07:00

Just so you know, Toiler is still alive. Nothing tragic has happened to him. In fact, things are going more-or-less well -- or maybe I should say that they're going more-and-less well.

I am still in the midst of learning how to write a plot novel, as I mentioned in several previous posts. Don't be surprised if I remain at this stage for another year or two. My current story isn't moving forward as quickly as I might like. (That's the less part.) But it is moving forward, and I'm still quite happy with it.

I've been able to hobble along without destroying this one the way I destroyed the last one. In other words, I think that I've been able to morph the story in the right ways to achieve the right ends without letting it outgrow me or go off in some weird direction. I also seem to be learning quite a lot about, not just writing, but also better methods of thinking. (That's the more part.)

To give you an example of what I mean, one of my biggest discoveries recently has been the danger of ordered lists. They can really get in the way of certain kinds of thinking. Odd, huh?

Anyway, I think I'm starting to get the hang of this art business. I'm in a good space. My plot is coming together, I like the characters, I like the setting, and I can't see anything about the story that might prove too difficult for a beginning novelist. All in all, I couldn't be much happier.

Resource for Fans of Sci-Fi and Fantasy

2007-02-21T10:10:00.000-08:00

Science Fiction & Fantasy fans, if you want to find stories that might interest you, try this site: Sci Fan.

It lets you search for books based on subject, style, author, series, etc., basically chopping up the genres every way you could imagine.

Toiler, Student of a Certain Philosophy

2007-02-12T14:56:00.000-08:00

I'm so glad that I chose to use a pseudonym for this blog for several reasons, but mostly because I do not want my writing to be associated with Objectivism.

You heard me right.

I'm a huge, huge proponent of Objectivism, for it is the best -- and only -- philosophy available to a modern man who wants to live on this earth and live well. This philosophy contains the greatest set of ideas to grace this earth since the days when Aristotle, leading in the footsteps of some of his fellow Greek philosophers, tore his way through eons of mysticism and so gave men a chance to walk through life, perhaps not on solid stone, but at least on earthen clay, which at that time was an enormous step up from the mists through which earlier men had to swim. Now, thanks to the awesome accomplishments of Ayn Rand, a man living today finally has the opportunity to stand where he belongs: on marble, on a foundation that will never fail him as he walks the entire length of his life, a philosophy that will help him to discover immense spiritual contentment in the act of being real, meaning rational, independent, productive, honest, true, and good -- in short, being proud, which means, being worthy of the word "I".

(Those of you who have read Anthem will understand the vast meaning projected by that last statement.)

But I am no philosopher. I am only a student of this particular philosophy, and perhaps not even a very good student. In addition to having read all of Ayn Rand's published fiction, including her early fiction, I have also read Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand (OPAR) by Leonard Peikoff several times, The Romantic Manifesto at least several times, plus just about every other major philosophic work at least once, including quite a few essays and tapes by Ayn Rand from the 1960s through late 70s. However, other than Ayn Rand's The Romantic Manifesto and her course on fiction writing and maybe to a lesser extent OPAR, it cannot be said that I have truly "studied" any of these works, only that I have read them. I am not even a layman. At best maybe I am only an accomplished student of her aesthetic theory. Beyond that I am merely a fan.

To be more than this, I would have to virtually end my writing career and devote far more of my time to intensive philosophical study, beyond just Objectivism. Can't do it. Won't do it. Don't want to do it.

When I am finally published -- I still intend to be and actually believe that my chances are looking up -- then you will probably never hear me speak my pen name in the same breath as the word Objectivism. The truth is, many of you will not even know who I am, and I plan to take steps to keep it that way.

I say this, not because I'm embarrassed by my philosophy. Quite the opposite! On a personal level, it's because I don't want the pressure. Writing has to come from exactly who I am right now, including every premise that I hold, possible warts and all. As many writers including Ayn Rand have stated in one manner or another, there's simply no other way. Fiction is simply too personal; the author can only project that which he has already integrated into who he is. Trying to go beyond that during the act of creation is suicide.

On another personal level, it's because the philosophy that I love so much deserves a more competent spokesman. I have seen in vivid detail recently what happens when a student of Objectivism misrepresents his philosophy in a public forum. The ensuing bloodshed (speaking metaphorically) is not pretty. I don't mind the bloodshed. Objectivists should be passionate about reality; as such, they don't take kindly to facts, especially about their philosophy, being skewed by the uninformed.

So there you have it. Toiler will probably publish under a pen name -- for more than one reason, incidentally -- and he will avoid discussing Objectivism when he represents himself as a writer. He will be, well... him.

I'm quite content with that, because I happen to be a big fan of me.

Update: Happy In Fantasy Land

2007-01-29T12:35:00.000-08:00

I try not to use this blog as a personal diary. After all, who wants to read my griping about tedious challenges or snoozing about how bored I may be today. Zzzzz. I hate diaries.

But right now seems like a good time to give everyone an update, because I'm happy! Yahoo! (Or Yeehaw! with apologies to Yahoo!'s trademark office.)

Seriously, things seem to be going much, much better for me after my having wandered aimlessly for so long through a vast, dry, and colorless desert in my mind; that is to say, through a failed novel. Now it seems as if I have finally crossed over that desert and I am back in what appears to be a lush, temperate rain forest — not just any forest, either, but one that's full of animals, fascinating people, mysterious events, and great courage. I like it here!

Thanks and many thanks to my wonderful and amazing partner for his continued advice about thinking skills, but also to my friends and blog readers for the great stack of reading materials that they suggested. By the end of this year, I will have read more than I have read in the previous ten. Each story has been a plot-training device, and my efforts appear to be paying dividends.

Always before, I would outline my novels with only about three hierarchical levels: one that was very general (too high in my hierarchy to be useful) and one or two that were right down in the details (too low for my crow). My one and only successful novel worked only because it was so simple that my crow could handle it. This time around, though, I seem to have learned some things.

The main lesson, as I said, is that a critical mid-point was missing from my outline, one where I could see my story as four or five major "events" instead of just one or many. Not only that, but I have learned that these key "events" can't be too generally defined so as to be useless. They have to express real action, such as "Adam wins the race and becomes the celebrated hero of Smalltown." Additionally, any one of these broad "events" may comprise many chapters in the novel, or just one; I neither know nor care early on.

I have also learned not to flush out these four or five major events too carefully at first. I have to let my mind play with them until the overall trajectory of the action seems to work. Even when I do go down into the details just a bit to test my ideas, I have to come right back up to rework the high-level plan, then I can go back down again into the details, expanding as I go — but not very quickly! I can't spend too much time in the details until I know for sure that I can't improve the four or five major events to any good effect.

I thought that I knew about this kind of thinking already. In fact, I was sure of it, but I guess I was wrong, or at least I wasn't doing a very good job of it.

I make no promises about when this current novel will be finished or whether it will be publishable (by my standards). I have progressed far beyond that folly! Still, there's reason to hope.

Oh, and there's one other lesson that I've been sorely reminded of: Write what you love! So far I am loving this story the way I love my favorite chair, blanket, cup of coffee, fire in the fireplace, and book in my hand. In other words, I enjoy going to work once again. That's a nice place to be — however long it lasts.

[Update: Edited for clarity. This is the hardest part of blogging for me. If I write on my blog as well as I write for work, then I won't blog very much. Then again, I can't stand to have crappy entries on my blog. Grrr.]

The Hound of the Baskervilles (reviewed)

2007-01-25T20:34:00.000-08:00

The Hound of the Baskervilles by Arthur Conan Doyle.

On a more positive note, I just finished reading The Hound of the Baskervilles for the second time. It's a great classic of the mystery genre, and it's a fun read.

Writers often remark that dialog is easier and more interesting to read than straight narrative, especially where exposition comes in. This idea gets a lot of support here. Oftentimes Watson or Holmes will describe a long series of events by the reading of a letter, which may go on for several pages. The prose may look like narrative, but it's actually framed as dialog, which did seem to make it easier to read and more interesting. At least I thought so.

[spoiler follows]

Doyle also uses red herrings rather liberally. Right from the start, for example, he makes us wonder who the doctor named Mortimer might be and why he would have left his walking stick behind, but these questions merely served to introduce Watson and Holmes; Mortimer wasn't involved in the murders at all. Also, Mortimer had a dog, but it wasn't big enough to be the hound in the story. There were lots of other red herrings, but then, what do you expect from a mystery?

[end spoiler]

Doyle deftly switches from one scene to the next. Oftentimes he'll prep a destination in one sentence, then suddenly they've arrived at it in the following. He doesn't always do this, and that's where it gets interesting, because when he does give detailed exposition and description, the effect really stands out. For example, at the start of Chapter 6, Watson describes Baskerville Hall as he and the new baronet see it for the first time, including the surrounding countryside as they approach by train, then the road and the buildings as they approach by carriage. This is a remarkably different experience from reading, say, Henry James, where everything is burdened with description and nothing seems remarkable.

Anyway, I recommend this story, especially for fans of the mystery genre.

As on a Darkling Plain (reviewed)

2007-01-25T19:37:00.000-08:00

As on a Darkling Plain, by Ben Bova.

This book is awful.

I hate to put it so bluntly — especially since I am a struggling writer myself and I know how tough it can be to write a tightly plotted novel — but this one is just inexcusably bad. An entire dream sequence is accidentally repeated almost word for word in two separate chapters. (Editors, what happened to you?) It has no flow whatsoever. The dialog is embarrassing. Characters do things inexplicably, suddenly, without any precipitating decisions or choices.

Okay, it's just bad, bad, bad. If you want to try reading Ben Bova, don't read this one. It's a stinker.

If someone else has enjoyed a different book by Bova — maybe one of his later novels, for example — feel free to speak up. I hate to knock the guy based solely on one of his earliest works. But the fact that he even considered this novel to be ready for a publisher has me scratching my head.

In a Word: Irregardless

2007-01-17T12:04:00.000-08:00

You may choose to do some things without regard for the consequences if you absolutely must, so long as your actions bring no harm to others. After all, it's your life. But you may never, ever do anything irregardless of the circumstances. That is not allowed. Not now, not ever.

People have died from saying irregardless. Seriously. And it's no quick and painless passing away, either. It's a horrid, vomiting, blood-gushing kind of rotting death that goes on for days and days. So please don't ever say that word again, regardless of how often you might hear other people saying it. Be a leader. You might just save someone's life — most notably your own if I happen to be nearby when you say it.

Jekyll and House

2007-01-09T11:59:00.000-08:00

Speaking of TOS, I highly recommend an article in the latest issue (Winter 2006/7) titled "Mr. Jekyll and Dr. House: The Reason-Emotion Split as Manifested in House, M.D." The author is Gena Gorlin, and she does a remarkable job. Her writing is clear, concise, and purpose-driven; her arguments read like an arrow that flies straight to the bullseye. It's no wonder Miss Gorlin was a two-time winner of The Fountainhead contest (that, according to her bio in TOS). She stays on theme throughout, and she hits the issue from several different angles, but each angle feels fresh and illuminating.

You do not have to be a fan of House, M.D. to benefit from the essay. In fact, I've never seen the show. Anyone who is familiar with the prevalent mind-body split in today's heroes (like Spock on Star Trek), will know precisely what Miss Gorlin takes issue with about the show. In any case, she provides excellent examples and descriptions.

The issue of the "cold hearted" advocate of reason versus the unhinged emotionalist is near (but not dear) to my heart. In fact, I so can't stand to see this dichotomy play out in a character that I will turn off the television, return a DVD unwatched, and even get up and leave a theatre rather than subject myself to the punishment of watching it.

Thank you, Miss Gorlin, for not merely skewering the mind/body idiotarians of the art world, but especially for illuminating the right alternative.

New Delights

2007-01-06T10:16:00.000-08:00

Art lovers would be well-advised to check out a new blog by Dianne Durante. It's called Forgotten Delights, and it foreshadows her forthcoming book by the same name.

Miss Durante is the author of one of my favorite articles to date in The Objective Standard: A Journal of Art and Politics (here's a link to TOS). That article, "19th-Century French Painting and Philosophy", appears in the Fall 2006 issue. Miss Durante also lectures on art and has written at least one other article for TOS. She holds a Ph.D. from the University of Cincinnati.

By the way, while I'm on the subject of TOS, I must congratulate them for creating such a value-oriented publication. It's about time that positive values — whether art, education, history, etc. — receive at least equal play with polemics. This is not to say that the polemical pieces contain no positive values — indeed, it can be a kind of pleasure to discover some new insight or integration that may be advanced by such clear thinkers, even in the context of bashing, say, Bush or the Democrats, which is hardly new territory for an Objectivist — but to see a better theory of, say, history or art appreciation advanced is to gain new tools for succeeding at one's own productive enterprises. (Or at least that's what it means for my life, given my interests. I'm no polemicist.)

Update: I just discovered that Miss Durante already had a website at forgottendelights.com (not a blog). This site includes several essays on art, several of which look interesting to me.

Two Novels and a Short Story

2007-01-05T09:58:00.000-08:00

So I'm working on two novels and a short story. By "working on", I don't necessarily mean writing. I mean planning, dreaming, sketching, and that sort of thing.

The first novel is SF/Adventure. The idea for it came to me about five years ago, but it was just a kernel then, what I call a situation. Maybe there was a bit of the character, too, in that hazy dream of an idea, but not much of one.

I'm still not sure if this story is ever going to find its way from seed to tree. The body of it is there, but its limbs and several vital organs seem to be missing. I'll just have to let it lie in state for a while longer until something new and compelling comes to light. This is exactly the situation that got me started on my quest to understand how page-turners work. It's supposed to be my job to know how to take an idea like this one and turn it into the real deal. Well, I'm working on it.

The other idea for a novel came to me just the other day. This one's pretty much pure fantasy. Not surprisingly, it's been done before — a thousand times, in fact — but I don't care.

People fall in love; we write about it. People die for a just cause in war while others die tragically for causes they don't believe in; either way, we write about it. Corrupt people use power to manipulate others; we write about it. A heroic man guards his honor because it's the only way to get his true love; we write about it. I could go on for pages.

In fact, I believe I'll do just that...

Do What You Do Do Well

2007-01-02T10:30:00.000-08:00

In an introduction to Stephen Brust's novel To Reign in Hell, author Roger Zelazny has this to say about the many types of writers:

"Most good writers have one or two strong points for which they are known, and upon which they rely to carry a tale to its successful conclusion. Excellent plotting, say, can carry a story even if the writing itself is undistinguished. One can live with this. Good plotting is a virtue. Fine writing is a pleasure. A graceful prose stylist is a treat to read — even if the author is shaky when it comes to plotting or characterization. And then there are the specialists in people, who can entertain and delight with their development of character, their revelations — even if they are not strong plotters or powerful descriptive writers. And there are masters and mistresses of dialogue who can make you feel as if you are witnessing an engaging play, and you can almost forget the setting and the story while trying to anticipate what one of the characters will say next."

After having read many stories over the years, I long ago discovered that readers can be very forgiving. What makes a reader stay with a story partly depends on the reader. Some will get wrapped up in well-written, highly dramatic dialog even if they have no mental image of the setting, characters, or even the point of where the story is going (e.g., social dramas). Others will stick with a story so long as it has enough eye candy such as fascinating space ships and weird aliens (e.g., hard SF). And so on.

Every story must convey at least something that's particularly compelling — after all, it must attract someone. Still, I think that no tale can utterly and completely ignore all of the other aspects of story. For example, even hard SF must have a believable character or two and a discernible plot, even if it's as shallow as a teaspoon.

So here's a liberating truth for struggling writers, one that I personally need to be reminded of from time to time: Don't worry yourself sick over getting every aspect of story right the first time. Just "Do What You Do Do Well", as that happy song by Ned Miller instructs. Who cares if you're not the best character writer or the most thematic? Just write what you like, have as much fun as you can doing it, and never stop learning as you go, for as Stephen King so famously advised, it doesn't work to do it any other way.

Happy Holly Days

2006-12-28T07:04:00.000-08:00

I trust my readers are spending their time this holiday season thinking about and celebrating all that is good and wonderful in life.

There's no excuse not to celebrate with gusto! There's so much good in this world, so many opportunities, so many wonderful values to be gained — and that's what the holidays are all about to me.

So when I say, "Have a Merry Christmas and a happy New Year!", that is not a wish. It's a directive. Go get yourself some happy!

As for me, I'll be back to my regular (spotty) blogging in about a week. Cheers!

Keep Moving

2006-12-22T11:00:00.000-08:00

When I asked for great plot stories or page turners from my readers, I purposefully meant to ignore certain other aspects of great stories, such as characterization, style, themes and premises, and so on. I didn't actually want great stories, but merely fun, exciting ones. Why? Because I thought that by reading a series of very basic page-turners in quick succession, I might see more clearly what makes a plot tick.

I went into this exercise assuming that even basic novels would employ techniques that the masters used (knowing that they might do so less artfully, of course). I assumed this because I know that A is A, which is to say that stories work as they do because of the nature of the reader and the medium.

Happily, now five novels into my stack, my bet may be paying dividends. I may have just discovered an indispensable technique for making a page-turner, well, a page-turner. Every exciting story appears to use it. Even Victor Hugo uses it.

I'm not going to try to teach it to you, because I can't. Suffice to say that it's about always keeping things moving. Even the descriptions have to feel like they're moving. Nothing ever stands still (or if it does, the writer uses such a moment for a specific effect).

Yes, yes, I know. Every one who has ever read a "how-to" book on writing knows about this technique already. Sure, I've read the same books. So why didn't I get it the first, second, or even third time that I read about it?

I suppose I didn't fully understand its value until I could really see it done so many different ways, by so many different authors. Or perhaps I only now need it enough for my mind to grapple with it and integrate it -- that is, to value it. I don't know why I couldn't see it clearly until now, except to say that now I can't not see it.

(There's something to be said here about the process of learning. It's definitely iterative. You have to cover the same ground over and over again until the pieces start to fit. But since I'm no education scientist, I'll let someone else dwell on this interesting epistemological issue.)

I have about ten more of these novels to read. What more will I learn? Well, I'm glad you asked. I'll answer that question in my next post.

Generous Scholarship to Founder's College

2006-12-21T14:24:00.000-08:00

The new Founder's College in Berry Hill, Virginia, is offering students up to $3,000,000 through a variety of scholarships, including The Victor Hugo Writing Scholarship.

According to their website, the scholarship is "open to all full-time incoming students, first year or transfer." To qualify, here's what applicants must do:

"Choose an actual person or fictional character. Identify three character traits about that individual that you most admire. Explain why you admire those traits. Submit a maximum 500-word essay, double-spaced, typed, and sealed in a 9" by 12" envelope. Send to: Founders College at Berry Hill, 3105 River Road, South Boston, VA 24592, Attn: Victor Hugo Essay."

Looking at the college's curriculum solely from the perspective of a would-be fiction writer, I must say that this college looks like it could be a great place to start. (Not for me, of course, but for younger students.) The true test will come when they announce their faculty in the spring.

Comment Moderation

2006-12-16T23:07:00.000-08:00

The spammers finally found my blog. It's like having rats move into your house. All they're good for is dropping you-know-what all over the place.

Well, since I can't exterminate the filthy rodents, I guess I'll just have to lock the door. In other words, comments will be moderated from now on.

Stupid spammers.