Storytellers Unplugged

“genre vs literary” in the days of the Technorenaissance

2009-11-20T07:52:01Z

I was hanging out in a writer’s forum and came across the age-old question of how do you define genre and literary? which always turns into genre vs literary: genre types bash the literati for lacking plot (which is absurd), while the literati bash the genre-ati for lacking everything else (equally absurd).

One person said you could recognize a genre novel by its “shallow theme and simple characters”. He wasn’t trashing genre novels; he considered himself a ‘genre’ writer writing a ‘genre’ novel. He had given himself an ‘out’ when it came to considering things like theme or characterization.

I thought, Wow. There’s someone who will never ever be published.

Personally, I think rather than defining ‘genre’ or ‘mainstream’ novels by their artlessness — as this person did here — literary novels, by far the smaller group of the two, should be defined by their ‘literariness’.

Literary is not a genre so much as a sensibility. It’s a feel for language, a complexity of theme and character, a general overarching intelligence that informs the novel. It can apply to any and all of the genres.

If you say that genre/mainstream novels are characterized by artlessness, you’re also saying that most readers want an ‘artless’ experience — and that, as an aspiring writer, you can get away with writing an ‘artless’ novel. But in today’s “brutal” marketplace, where an agent will complain about”passing on really good novels because currently I believe that really good might not be good enough in today’s market“, how successful is a writer likely to be if she thinks it’s acceptable to be ‘artless’?

This is the part where someone says, But there’s so much crap on the shelves at Barnes & Noble. There’s so much crap on the bestseller lists.

Those books managed the difficult feat of publication because enough people loved them to spend time and money developing them and putting them into the marketplace.

And just like the public didn’t understand why Julia Roberts married that quirky-looking country dude, you don’t need to understand why some people love Dan Brown or James Patterson…only that they do.

Which doesn’t mean they’ll also love you.

What writers tend to forget is that ‘genre’ is a marketing term as much as anything else.

Booksellers want to know where to put the books so that the people most likely to buy them can find them. The people who want to read about space aliens can go to one section and the people who want to read about forensic investigators tracking serial killers can go to another section and the people who want to read about young women coming of age in the city while wearing fabulous shoes can go to yet another section.

No one decides, “I’m looking for an Artless story. Where’s the Artless section?”

In fact, many of the ‘genre’ writers who rise to the bestseller lists bring a literary quality to their novels, like Dennis Lehane, who started out writing experimental short fiction in an MFA program. He established himself with a series of critically acclaimed mystery novels, then broke onto the bestseller lists with a novel called MYSTIC RIVER that was so bleak and ‘literary’ people had predicted it would end his career.

Martin Scorsese is now making a movie based on Lehane’s novel SHUTTER ISLAND. Starring Leonardo Dicaprio. Maybe you’ve heard of them.

Many ‘literary’ writers write books that have a strong and riveting sense of story (I challenge you to put down Ian McEwan’s much-praised ATONEMENT once you get past the first 50 pages).

In his introduction to Poe’s Children, Peter Straub acknowledges this kind of crossover when he mentions “literary” writers such as Michael Chabon and Jonathan Lethem “who have no problem embracing their inner Poe.” He also lists the wave of fantasy/horror/SF writers (Kelly Link, Elizabeth Hand, Graham Joyce) who are “literary and genre writers at the same time”.

I like that: literary and genre writer at the same time.

As a reader, that’s what I look for. That would be a perfect world. Some books would be better than others, no question, and art would still range from ‘high’ to ‘low’. But writers, with the exception of those so experimental in nature they resist any categorization except ‘literary’, would be literary and genre at the same time. Novels wouldn’t respect such a clear cut division between ‘literary’ and ‘genre’. That division would cease to exist.

Publishing is changing. We’re witnessing a revolution and entering the digital age, where writers will still write and readers will still find them but the middleman might just get eliminated. This is the age of tribes, personal brands, author platforms and “1000 True Fans”.

Dean Koontz once remarked — way back in the 80s, when a Kindle was a thing in science fiction movies — on his publishers’ insistence that he write his different genre novels under different pen names in order “not to confuse the reader”.

What Koontz discovered, he went on, was that his publishers were wrong. Readers who really like your stuff “will follow you anywhere”.

Ultimately we love our favorite writers not for the type of stories they write but their voice, their worldview, the way they bring their characters into existence so that we may develop relationships with them and, through them, touch the writer’s mind.

I’m reminded of a fan of Poppy Z Brite’s who said, when she found out that Brite had a blog, “now I can have Poppy every day!” She didn’t care that Brite’s blog doesn’t chronicle vampires (from her early work) or chefs running a New Orleans restaurant (her later work). She craves Poppy’s voice, that mash-up of style and thought and personality that defines Poppy’s work and marks it apart from everybody else’s.

In the digital age, as writers are forced to grapple with blogs and Facebook and Twitter, and develop an author platform alongside their body of work, our ‘voice’ will define us more than ever before. Our ‘voice’ becomes our ‘brand’, and readers connect with it — and us — directly.

According to the theory by Kevin Kelly, in order to survive, artists only need 1000 True Fans who will buy anything he or she does (because if each fan spends $100 a year…).

True Fans are the ones “who will follow us anywhere.”

And with that kind of access to us and our work, do we have to adhere to such rigid genre categories?

In fact, might it be kind of dangerous to do so? In a world as cluttered and chaotic as the Web — where anyone can upload a manuscript and set up a blog and call themselves a novelist without having to deal with the age-old filters of agent, editor and publisher — how can any writer develop enough ‘pull’ so that readers will single him or her out from the competition?

I think Seth Godin had it right: in this age of overabundance and oversupply, where the reader’s time and attention are at a premium, the way to survive is to be remarkable.

To use your voice to tell your stories your way, in the best way you know how.

And in a world where readers increasingly flock to author-brands online — and build tribes around them — maybe the emphasis will no longer be on what genre you belong in but the genres you bring together to form what Koontz (who did it himself, with great success, before the Internet was even born) a “cross-genre novel” that isn’t like anything else in the marketplace.

Copyblogger compares the Internet to the Renaissance, creating what this blogger calls a Technorenaissance:

The Renaissance was one of the most innovative eras in human history, and many credit the Medici family as the catalyst that made it possible. By attracting talented souls from so many different fields and cultures, the Medicis caused these varied artists and scientists to come in contact with one another, trade ideas, and discover the intersections that allowed for giant leaps in creativity and innovation.

…allowing people to seek and find the connections between different disciplines and cultures led to an explosion of exceptional ideas. This intersection of ideas produced huge advances in literature, philosophy, art, politics and science from the 14th through the 17th century, starting in Italy and spreading throughout Europe and the rest of the world.

The Internet isn’t about neat little boxes and tidy definitions. The Internet has become, like Florence in the era of the Medicis, a place of access, opportunity and creative convergence. The Internet is a crossroads where ideas from different worlds can meet and synthesize. It’s where you smash old boundaries and let the new stuff in; read and write across the disciplines; be both literary and genre at the same time.

I like to play with the idea of what the first ‘true’ bestselling 21st century writer will look like, a writer who rises from the online world as well as traditional print publishing. I don’t think they’ll rise from some box marked ‘mystery’ or ‘thriller’ or ’science fiction’ but, instead, those places where the genres intersect. They will give us what we hunger for: something accessible and engaging, yet innovative and new.

The emphasis won’t be on what genre.

The emphasis will be on great storytelling.

Justine Musk

FORENSICS 123: CRIME SCENE MISINTERPRETATIONS

2009-11-19T23:18:09Z

There are many things that, when misinterpreted, can result in inaccurate crime scene investigation results. The following describe some potential misinterpretations.

Body positions:

Bodies burned in a fire often assume a pose commonly referred to as a “pugilist position.” Their hands are clenched and raised like those of a prize fighter. This could be misinterpreted to mean that the victim was fighting or trying to ward off an attacker when killed. Actually, the pose is simply the result of the heat of the fire causing muscles to contract.

Bullet and knife wounds:

When bullets or knives penetrate skin, the skin stretches a bit as it is being pierced. Consequently, bullet and knife wounds often appear to be smaller than the objects that caused them. This applies to bullet entry wounds but not to bullet exit wounds. Depending on the type of bullet and its path inside a body, it can be deformed or even split into several pieces. As a result, exit wounds can be of many shapes and sizes.

Lividity:

The term “lividity” refers to blood that, due to death, ceases to flow under the urging of a beating heart and settles under the urging of gravity into the lowest parts of a body. These parts assume a reddish-purple color. An exception would be a bright red color when death is the result of carbon monoxide poisoning. Another exception would be when low areas are under great pressure. This can cause light marks to appear within the overall lividity coloration. An inexperienced investigator might confuse the marks with bruising.

Interestingly, if a body has been in one position, say, on its back on a floor for some time, lividity will form in the lower parts. If the body is then moved, say, into a chair, the lividity does not reposition itself. This, of course, indicates the body was not originally positioned in the chair and can indicate how the body was originally positioned.

Lividity is not an accurate indicator of time of death. It usually begins to appear between twenty minutes and four hours after death and completes within twelve hours.

Rigor mortis:

Rigor mortis (roughly Latin for stiffness of death) refers to a chemical process that takes place in muscles after death and results in a stiffening of joints – so stiff that it can take considerable force (sometimes applied by several persons) to change the positions of a corpse’s limbs. A common misconception is that a medical examiner can accurately determine a time of death as a function of the stiffness of a corpse, but its onset and completion are functions of a number of variable factors. An extreme example is that of an emaciated baby that suffered crib death and was found to be in a complete state of rigor mortis within two hours of death. Rigor mortis usually, however, begins between two and six hours and completes between two and six additional hours. It begins in strong persons faster than in an average person and lasts longer. In a weak person, it begins later and lasts for a much shorter time. It both begins and ends faster for bodies in hot locations. In extremely cold locations, it begins faster and lasts for a much longer time. Stiffness in a body found in a very cold location can easily be mistaken as being the result of rigor mortis or freezing or vice versa. Rigor mortis typically begins in the face muscles and then proceeds in general order to the jaw, upper extremities, trunk and lower extremities. Some muscles relax before rigor mortis sets in, however. The jaw usually drops open, and the eyelids remain open.

Cadaveric spasm:

Sometimes referred to as instant rigor mortis, and sometimes mistaken for actual rigor mortis, a cadaveric spasm is a seizing of muscles that can occur when the moment of death occurs during extreme exertion by skeletal muscles. Such might occur, for example, when a person is shot in the head while struggling with an attacker. Other examples might be when a person drowns while trying to swim to safety or has a heart attack while running a marathon. Cadaveric spasm can lock a body in such positions as sitting or kneeling with arms outstretched. Hands are often clenched and can enclose hair, fabric or other evidence torn from an attacker.

Algor mortis:

Often thought to refer to the relaxation of rigor mortis, algor mortis (roughly Latin for coolness of death) actually refers to the cooling phase undergone by a corpse after death. In cases where a person has undergone prolonged torture just before death, body temperature might actually rise for an hour following death before dropping. Being a function of a number of variable factors, the temperature of a body is also not a very accurate indication of time of death. Variable factors include the initial temperature of the body, the ambient temperature at the location, the weight and condition of the body, the humidity and the air movement. These factors are then applied to a formula. An estimate is that temperature drops at a rate of 0.8 degrees Kelvin per hour. Some estimates set it at a two-degree drop during the first hour and a one-degree drop per hour thereafter.

Postmortem movement:

Body movements usually cease within seconds or minutes after death but, at least temporarily, may be taken as signs of life. The movements can include those within a range extending between fingers twitching and, as in one case, a portion (the myocardium) of a heart continuing to beat until rigor mortis was well underway.

Strangulation:

First of all, choking and strangulation are not the same. Choking refers to asphyxia caused by an internal blockage of the airway and is usually accidental. Strangulation refers to asphyxia caused by an externally applied pressure that closes airways and blood vessels in the neck and is usually intentional. Ten percent of all violent deaths are the result of strangulation. Strangulation cuts off oxygen to the brain, and this leads to death in about four minutes. Persons deprived of oxygen for some 10 seconds lose consciousness, and those deprived for 50 seconds rarely recover. If both arteries leading to the brain are closed by strangulation, death can result in less than 12 seconds. In crime videos, investigators often report a body’s broken hyoid bone as if it and strangulation always went together. Broken hyoid bones, however, reportedly occur in only 10 percent of strangulation cases. A San Diego study of 300 strangulation cases revealed that half had no visible signs of strangulation. Even petechiae (small red or purple spots caused by underlying broken capillaries) are not always present after a strangulation. Other signs that are often visible include red eye hemorrhages, bruising, scratching, tongue swelling, urination, defecation and even miscarriage.

Decomposition:

Decomposition is included here simply to note that, because it shares some of the signs of strangulation, care must be taken to prevent determining an incorrect cause of death.

Extra facts:

Many are under the impression that, when a TV character playing a lawyer mentions the words “corpus delicti,” s/he is referring to the lack of a dead body. Actually, the words refer to a body of evidence. A human body is not required to obtain a murder conviction.

On the subject of body temperature, a mistake is sometimes made by an inexperienced investigator by placing a thermometer in a body’s mouth. After death, this does not reveal the core temperature of a body. Such a measurement must be taken at the other end of the body.

On the subject of motion after death, chickens flutter for a time after having their heads removed in anticipation of a Thanksgiving dinner. In his book, PRESCRIPTION – MEDICIDE: THE GOODNESS OF PLANNED DEATH, Jack Kevorkian reportedly described how a few sadistic officers in the Shah of Iran’s army would bet on how far condemned men could run after being beheaded as they started to run. These phenomena indicate that postmortem motion might be related to directions from the brain just before death.

A Mile Plus One

2009-11-18T17:21:48Z

I’m a member of a lot of different writing organizations..International Thriller Writers, Mystery Writers of America, Sisters in Crime, National Association of Women Writers, Novelists Inc, Science Fiction Writers of America, Romance Writers of America, Horror Writers Organization, and the Writers Guild of Acadiana. I’m probably forgetting one or two at the moment, but whew, just listing them tires me out! My primary reason for joining these orgs was to network with other writers. It didn’t take me long to figure out, though, that you get a lot more out of an org if you give them more than just an occasional appearance at a conference. In essence, if you volunteer for different projects, more information and contacts come your way.

One of the biggest challenges for any org, especially non-profits, is the lack of help. Volunteers are hard to come by. Everyone’s life is so busy that even the thought of adding one more responsibility to that mile-long TO-DO list makes me ill. But I think it’s worth it. A volunteer often stands at the front lines. They’re usually the first to know what’s going on in the org, first to hear the latest in the industry, first to meet some of the biggest names in the business. Plus they get a sense of satisfaction at having earned those perks and at having contributed to an industry that puts food on their table. Their voice is heard. They make a difference.

And let’s face it, if anyone plans to survive in this business for any length of time, it’s all about the who and what you know. Idealism wants to rest on laurels, holding fast to the belief that a writer’s work will speak for itself. Not true. Just look at the national best-sellers lists. Not all of those authors reached that pinnacle because of his or her vast talent in literature. Many of them got there because of who they knew. That said, it sort of makes sense to immerse yourself in many aspects of the business as you can, and writing organizations are the perfect venue with which to accomplish that. You never know what opportunities may arise.

Do you belong to a writing org? If so, what’s its biggest benefit to you?

www.deborahleblanc.com
www.pentopressretreat.com
www.literacyinc.com

Location, Location, Location

2009-11-17T12:21:42Z

My newest book was the inspiration for my February essay (Book packagers) and also influenced other essays throughout 2009. It’s called The Stephen King Illustrated Companion, published by Fall River Press.

“Who’s that?” I hear someone in the back ask. Fall River Press is part of Sterling Publishing, a conglomerate that encompasses dozens of imprints including Gollancz, Hearst, Metro Books, Orion, SparkNotes and the San Francisco Chronicle. Sterling is a wholly owned subsidiary of Barnes & Noble.

My work on this project was enlisted by becker&mayer!, a book packager in Seattle hired by Barnes & Noble to produce the companion. Their previous works include companions on Poe (winner of a 2009 Edgar Award, written by a distant relative of Poe) and Jane Austen (written by an Austen scholar). They contacted me to develop the outline and write the text because of my previous work on The Road to the Dark Tower.

As I wrote back in February, book packagers are full-service publishers who produce books that have intensive design requirements. Mainstream publishers often farm out production of these kinds of project to them. I can see why—from inception to publication, becker&mayer! put together in nine months a gorgeous volume that has been receiving nothing but praise for its high production value.

After preparing a detailed outline, I wrote the text in January and February, and received the edited manuscript for revisions in March. The becker&mayer! documents specialist used my manuscript to gather complementary photographs and archival material in March. I received the copyeditor’s report in early April and the first page proofs shortly thereafter. I wrote captions for the photographs and included documents, and did the first pass on proofing the laid-out document by tax time.

The proofreader did her extensive review in early May, and I tidied up any remaining errors and omissions the same week. The final pass page proofs were delivered to me in mid-May and the files were sent to the printer at the end of the month. The finished books arrived at Barnes & Noble warehouses in late September, and I received a couple of boxes of contributor copies at about the same time. Nine months after I wrote the first words. This lavish hardcover, chock full of fascinating and faithfully reproduced memorabilia that few people had ever seen before, was priced at less than $25.

Throughout the process, the editors at Barnes & Noble stayed at arm’s length. They had final approval on everything, but their input was filtered to me through becker&mayer! I had no direct contact with them. By all reports, they were (and continue to be) very happy with the results.

However, here’s where the main difference between this and other types of publications kicks in. Since this is a B&N exclusive, it wasn’t marketed in the same way as books from traditional publishers. For one thing, the publisher doesn’t need to market it to booksellers, since they’re one and the same. They don’t need to get advance reviews to encourage bookstores to buy more copies up front. All they need to do is ship the books to their stores and put them on their shelves. Publishers don’t need to pay for product placement within the store. If a regional B&N manager decides he wants to put a big rack (a dump bin) of these books at the front of the store, he is free to do so.

I did what I could to promote the book on my own. I sent out press releases to all the usual suspects, and conducted a few follow-up interviews. Since I’m an active member on message boards, I spread the news about the book within the King fan and collector community. This was a strong case for the power of social networking. The book went on sale at the B&N web site two weeks before it was available in stores. Since there was no other promotion for the book up to that point, I figure that my bush beating was responsible for a large number of the early sales.

I was pleased with the results. Shortly after the book became available, it reached a sales rank of 317. Unlike Amazon’s mystical number, the B&N sales rank is literally a book’s position on the overall combined bestseller list, including hardcovers, paperbacks, videos, music, e-books—everything the store sells online. Thanks to B&N’s reasonable international shipping charges, the book became instantly available around the world, and I heard from people in Poland, Italy and The Netherlands who purchased it online.

There wasn’t a specific publication date. I was told that it would be up to local store managers to decide when to shelve the book and how. That was a little frustrating. One of my coworkers pre-ordered a copy from the store nearest to us, and picked it up at the information desk, but when I went to the store a couple of days later no one could find the book, even though it showed up on their computers as being in stock.

There was one published review of the book, in a Las Vegas paper, and a number of blog posts about it. News about the book spread mostly by word of mouth. It settled in to a comfortable and unremarkable position.

Until November 10, 2009, that is, which happened be my wedding anniversary. It also happened to be the publication date for Under the Dome by Stephen King. Unbeknownst to me, Barnes & Noble set out a flier to its club members that day, discounting Under the Dome and featuring a prominent link to my book as well.

And here’s where today’s title comes from. That promotional ad wasn’t the only location I benefited from. Many stores featured my book in a dump bin next to Under the Dome on the launch day for King’s new book. Publishers pay good money for that kind of promotion. It didn’t happen in every store—the one nearest to me shelved it in the Bargain Books section—but I had reports from New York, Michigan, Pennsylvania and California, some accompanied by photos, one of which appears with this essay.

Over the course of that day, my sales rank went from about 8000 to #132. It was selling at only a slightly slower pace than preorders for the next Michael Crichton, and orders for the latest Michael Connelly novel and Patrick Swayze’s autobiography. A heady feeling, for sure. I held secret hopes of cracking the top 100, but that was not meant to be. Nevertheless, a good day.

So, how do you sell a bunch of copies of a book? Make sure a bunch of people who might be interested in buying it know about it. It’s that simple.

Thomas Sullivan: “HE STOPPED LOVING HER TODAY…” or MURDERING YOUR MUSE

2009-11-17T08:38:33Z

Love that George Jones song. If you have an ounce of passion in you for anything, a single unblemished ideal, or if you feel a poignant stab in the heart for any kind of perfection, then you understand what’s behind that song.

Writers get it. Real writers. Lovers of the Muse. When you want something so badly that it makes your teeth ache and you swallow sand and you know that whatever the obstacles, it’s just right for you – not for someone else maybe, but absolutely for you — and life just won’t move forward unless you are in pursuit of that holy grail, well…that’s when you come alive. And only then. Passion sweats blood.

Only sometimes you bleed out. Bleed white. Your veins constrict, your heart turns into a dried husk, and your mind goes cold. That’s when you THINK you stop loving the Muse. Because passion that intense is draining, and rejection takes its toll. Your commitment may be true, but even a faithful dog backs off when it’s kicked in the teeth enough times. So your fingers slip off the keys; you quit caring. Hope becomes a dull ache, and you walk around in a novocaine stupor. You listen to loud music, you laugh at things that aren’t funny, you get hyper interested in feng shui or the kids next baseball game. The people around you who have patiently endured your impossible dream seem almost relieved. You are back. You are acting the way they act. Life is suddenly clear and simple and balanced.

And predictable.

But then you get a glimpse of color flitting past the window one day or hear a whisper in the leaves alongside an autumn path, and it’s like remembering where you placed your car keys. You vividly recall where you were going! It hits you full passion with a touch of dismay. Because you realize that you are wasting your life, wasting precious time. Like the white rabbit, you are so late! You can’t believe you let yourself become a zombie, that you lost faith with what you started out to be. The stars and the galaxies are still there; you just quit reaching for them.

But giving up on your dream is like letting the best part of you commit suicide. Because that’s where the real you lives. Your dream is where you are honest with yourself. If it dies, what’s left except to live a lie? And, yes, you can live a lie where appearances demand it, but you can’t do it 24/7. You need somewhere, sometime to live your dream, to know that it could really happen, to feel that you are worthy of it. Living a lie might meet the world’s expectations for you on the surface — it might even be noble, depending on your situation — but by definition it cannot be honest.

So you re-visit your dream. Secretly at first. Maybe life interferes with that a little bit. But you find a way, even if at the start it’s only in your mind, your heart. You imagine, plan, fantasize. And then you dare to reach out on a computer screen or a piece of paper. And the words come back. Because that’s who you are. Words and thoughts. That’s all anyone is, only with some people — writers – communication is infinitely more acute. You need words both coming and going. Like breaths. Inhale, exhale. Words are oxygen. You are a willing slave to the Muse. Forever in love.

But you only recognize that when you think you’ve stopped loving your dream. Because your passion is so great that it just exhausts your spirit and you have to take a timeout to let the ground springs refill the reservoir. To let the hurt of rejection subside. And you’ll probably repeat the whole thing again. Until you succeed. Or don’t succeed. It really doesn’t matter which, as far as what you have to do. Life is not a dress rehearsal. One take…action! Or else you go sit with the audience.

“He stopped loving her today… they hung a wreath upon his door.”

Yeah. That’s the only way to murder a Muse, if you’re for real. The only way to kill a true writer. And it says everything I’ve ever tried to say about the journey itself being the destination.

Thanks for reading along with these columns. I get a lot of e-mail from people who gave up on their dreams but think their dreams gave up on them. And speaking of e-mail, I’ve heard from a number of Glenn & Deacon Frey fans that my link to the September column is broken on some of the newsletter mirror sites. I think that column is being confused with earlier mentions of Glenn and Deacon from 14 months or so ago. Here’s the correct link to the most recent column: http://storytellersunplugged.com/thomassullivan/2009/09/16/thomas-sullivan-are-you-ready-for-fame-fortune-%e2%80%94-crosslake-redux-with-glenn-deacon-frey/

Oh, and another thing. If it says Comments closed at the end of this column, IGNORE that. Wordpress has a glitch or two and that’s one of them. Your comments are MOST welcome, and the way to leave them is just to click the title of this column, which will take you to a new page of the column so fast you may not realize it changed. At the bottom of that column is the posting box for your comments. If you got here from my newsletter link, you may already see that.

May I invite you to follow me on Twitter? It’s fun and won’t intrude on your computer. 2 examples of recent Tweets: Nothing is easier to take for granted or quickly forgotten than constant magic…until you suddenly realize it isn’t there. And… Why is everyone telling me I should write a romance novel? Am I wearing chick-socks or something? Hey, I can explain. That was Halloween. Here’s the link: http://twitter.com/thomassullivan . I’ll also be happy to put you on the mailing list for free newsletters packed with stories and adventures, including photos, if you email me at: mn333mn@earthlink.net . Past newsletters are archived at the author’s website below under News & Articles. Your thoughts are welcome, your attention valued.

Thomas “Sully” Sullivan

http://www.thomassullivanauthor.com/

http://twitter.com/thomassullivan

Gorilla, My Love

2009-11-14T15:59:01Z

[John is suffering computer woes at the moment. I told him I'd find something appropriate to fill his slot, and found this archived post of his from September of 2006. Enjoy!]

A long time ago, there was this gorilla I knew. I was out of work, and the gorilla was similarly unemployed. At least he appeared to be, for every time I went to the Minneapolis zoo, all 800 pounds of him would be waiting for me at the cage bars like he didn’t have anything else to do. I swear the guy hadn’t moved an inch, and his expression was always direct and unchanging. “You poor jerk,” his brown marble stare seemed to say. “You still haven’t got a job, do you?”

I used to stare into those brown orbs, trying to make Mr. G look away. Never succeeded or even came close. For hours I tried to stare him down, wondering all the time, “What the hell’s going through your head? What are you thinking? What do you think of me? What are you trying to do?” I guess I was a little like Captain Ahab who obsessed about that great white whale, wondering what made it tick and if it had chomped off his leg because it was pissed off or just because it was doing its stupid, meaningless whale thing. Anyway, I’d stare and stare and after a while, I’d try to become that fucking gorilla. I WILL BE YOU! I thought. I WILL GET INTO YOUR FURRY HEAD AND BECOME YOU. I CAN MAKE THE IMAGINATIVE LEAP, I CAN!

Well, I never succeeded. Just as well of course, since I don’t know what I would have done with his 500 pound female companion. But my experience did have one tangible result. I wrote a poem:

GORILLA

Wrapped in a bulging sack of fur
The gorilla stares
Down my winding mind,
Unblinking.

He is grotesque.
In primal maze a memory stirs.
I lift a musty arm
To paw a marble eye.
Words are vines untangling.

The gorilla climbs
Through my combed hair,
Gathers a jungle around my mouth
to swarm in sun,
Suddenly

I am hunger
leaping at hairless flesh
to tear blood wisdom
from its tongue.

Okay, it ain’t great, but my point here has to do with the way I get my ideas. They come straight from Schenectedy. No, forget that. Bad old joke. What I should have said is that most of my ideas tend to just jump out at me, often completely unpremeditated. That’s the way I wrote “Gorilla.” I just sat down and . . . scribbled, let the pen have its way.

George Guthridge has a much more systematic method for generating stories, a brilliant nonfiction idea machine that has resulted in professional sales for both himself and his students. His articles (actually a series) are posted on this site, and I encourage everyone to check them out. I don’t have anything quite as good or elaborate, but I thought it might be interesting to share my “method,” to the extent that I have one. Please note that not all my stories have their genesis in such a spontaneous, unplanned, non-cerebral way, but most of them do.

One place I like to hang out is Barnes & Noble. There’s a huge one in Chesapeake, VA which I haunt. What I do is walk around, sometimes with a cup of java in my hand, and let my eyes roam. Often titles will ignite something inside me. Once I saw a book whose title was The Calm Technique. Bam! At once a similar but significantly different title leapt into my mind: The Death Technique. It’s about a man who’s able to will or cause his own decomposition and liquefaction – in other words, appear to die and rot. Lord knows, how one glance at that title inspired such a ghoulish tale. No wait, I think I do know. My horrific instincts simply “decided” to create the ghoulish opposite of a “Calm” technique. Look for it in HWA’s Dark Arts anthology.

I guess my main point here is that sometimes you should get in touch with your own inner gorilla and learn to love him. Open yourself up to inspiration and take chances. Trust your subconscious and avoid analysis and excessive thinking. Go with the flow and toss your safety net. Forget about outlines, scripts and character thumbnail sketches. Make it up as you go along.

Sometimes I haven’t had to make much up at all. Recently I opened a book of stories – at Barnes & Noble of course – and a story just leapt into my head. It was more or less fully conceived, though I didn’t read even one word in the book. Turned out to be one of my better stories too.

Some stories I’ve written have had bizarre origins.

 One day a sentence flashed across my mind: “I’m sitting in hell listening to Barry Manilow records when the call came.” I had no idea in hell what it meant, but I used the sentence to begin a pretty good SF novelette.

 Similar to that, I made up a word, “Dreamfarer,” which I used as the title and inspiration for a whole novel. Okay, the novel sucked, but the title itself
was great.

 One of my students became a little obsessive. She started to stalk me a bit.
Did I mention she didn’t have good eyesight? One night she pulled up outside my house in her trademark chartreuse van. My wife was upset but I wasn’t. Hell, I had a great story idea about a guy who’s terrorized by a girl who drives a chartreuse van, and I went right upstairs and wrote it.

Back in ’87, I published an article on this subject. I called it “Stories Without Ideas,” and I thought I’d close with some excerpts.

. . . Readers might be interested in a phenomenon that’s happened to me more and more in the past few years: Stories come to me WITHOUT ideas.

What’s my point? Simply that for some writers, beginning stories without (or almost without) ideas may be a viable and productive approach, and it may be folly to wait until something more solid develops. True, you must have SOMETHING, but it may only need to be an interesting phrase or word, a potential title, or a vague question or sentiment. Here are some other examples from my own experience.

I remember reading once, somewhere, that the most frightening and horrifying thing of all is when a rose sings. The quote rattled around in my mental teapot for years till I finally wrote “When A Rose Sings,” which appeared in 2AM Magazine. When I started writing, all I had was the dimly remembered quote, but it metamorphosed into a story about a divinely lovely rose perverted by hard rock music into a flower that mesmerizes its victims by singing. Happens all the time, right?

Recently, another potential title whomped me: “Two Moons East of Tomorrow.” No way I was gonna let that stunner pass. After a false start, the title’s seed burgeoned into a tale about an alien being who can recapture the past by using people who lived it.

One last example: a year ago, I took my seven-year-old son David out on Halloween, and as he ran up a curved path to a house, he disappeared briefly behind a trellis. A question briefly nudged me in a way that scribblers as opposed to normal people train themselves not to ignore: What if that did happen, and the father couldn’t find his son? The result is “Daniel, My Son” [which remains one of my favorites].

“Where do you get your ideas?” I believe the answer to this question is endless because the creative process may be a mystery to the writer itself, submerged in a subconscious realm he can’t fathom. But to me, that’s part of the fun, the fascination, and the glory, for to bring something out of nothing is as godlike as any of us mortals are likely to get. So, fellow writers – pay heed to those unorthodox, sometimes barely perceptible nudges and flashes. It just may be a story knocking!

A novel a month?

2009-11-12T09:45:11Z

Well, it’s November again. Halloween is done Thanksgiving is on the way (Pause here, folks, and contemplate what you have to be thankful for. The odds are there’s a good deal going right, even if there’s some negatives out there.) and a plethora of various religious celebrations are eight around the corner. Some of my fellow writers, well, okay, a LOT of my fellow writers are once again trying to crank out a novel in the month of November for NaNoWriMo. National Novel Writing Month, I believe, is the proper title.

It’s a neat concept, though I’ve never actually formally tried my luck with it. The idea is to write a complete novel length work (I believe it’s supposed to be a minimum of 50,000 words) or a significant portion of a novel starting on the first of the month and ending on the 30th, before Midnight. Neat idea, and I know a few people who are extremely pleased with themselves for finishing at or near that goal. A few even exceed that goal and their own expectations.

I have, for the record, bettered that number on several occasions. Believe me, deadlines are great motivators, especially when there are bills to pay.

Which brings me to my subject du jour. Recently I ran across yet another post that declared the horror genre as a dead beast that simply hasn’t realized it’s dead. I’ve heard the same for damned near every genre out there, to say nothing of the publishing industry.

Garbage, says I. First, I started hearing that horror was dead around the same time I started getting serious about writing. According to the people who seem to know everything—at least according to themselves in many cases—Horror should have been buried, resurrected and buried again half a dozen times by now.

Second, I often find that the people making these proclamations tend to be having trouble selling their own works. Not all of them by any doubt, but a decent number. Seems it must be the industry and not their writing skills that is suffering. Does that sound harsh? Probably, but I’ll stick with it just the same. If even half of the doomsayers were right, there would be no publishing industry.

But Jim, what about how book sales are down?

Yeah. So is real estate, medicine, insurance sales and bloody near everything but the numbers on booze, guns and prostitutes. It’s called a recession and while it is getting better, it hasn’t gone away yet.

What about technology? There’s these Kindle things from Amazon and a few dozen others.

Yep. Technology is wreaking havoc. Sooner or later books will become obsolete as digital readers of all kinds come along to take their place. Not in my lifetime, mind you, but it probably will happen. We can see it occurring already when it comes to the size of print runs and the growing number of digital downloads. Heck, I do half of my research online. Of course, I still write books, too, despite numerous programs. You sort of need to change with the times. If my publishers decided somewhere down the line that they need to publish digital copies I’m just fine with that, so long as I get my piece of the pie.

That mentality is the cause of most literary woes, by the way. The debate got into a little mudslinging and accusations that midlist writers, especially those who demand money for their efforts, are crushing the industry, primarily because they are writing too much stuff that doesn’t appeal to their fans. They are “phoning it in.” For the writers who are making a living as writers, apparently, do not care about the quality of their stories as long as they are published. Making money is destroying the quality of the work.

Sounds as stupid to me now as it did when I read it the first time around. What? Cooks stop knowing how to make soup when they become chefs? Artists stop producing art when they get paid as illustrators? As I said then I will say now, the business of writing should not be confused with writing. They are related, yes, but distantly. The same is true of any creative endeavor and the decision to try to make a living with it. I write a novel and then I sell it. Or, for a twist, I write sample chapters and an outline and then I sell it. Beyond the selling of the manuscript or proposal, the two have little in common.

Which brings me back to NaNoWriMo. If you decide to try your luck with this, more power to you. If you opt to follow the same principle but missed the November first deadline, my answer is the same. The purpose here is not to win a valuable cash prize. To my knowledge none of the prizes offered have anything to do with cash. No, the idea is to challenge yourself and see if you can do it. If you can, in fact, put forth the effort necessary to hammer out 50,000 words in 30 days. That’s almost 2,000 words per day and that’s not a small investment in time. Hell, I’ll do you one better, that’s like working a second job. You’ll work hard if you decide to try this and you’re remotely serious in your efforts.

And I wish you the very best of luck. I’ve managed that sort of rate for most of my career. I know a lot of professional writers who can’t manage that sort of word count per day. Doesn’t mean they aren’t excellent writers, just means they don’t work at the same speed.

But you should try it, just once at least, just to see if you can do it. Why? For the same reason you decide to submit the first time you’re done with a story you like a lot. To see if it can be done.

James A. Moore

The Compounds (and compound-complexes) of Style

2009-11-11T06:18:43Z

Perhaps you believe in the soul. Perhaps you don’t, and only view a living being as a series of biological functions acting in concert. Under either philosophy, you will view a dead body as different from a living person. All of the physical components are there, but the core of the individual is gone.

At this point, I could easily segue off into a review of Conjure Wife. Instead, I want to focus on a different book, one that may be one of the most effective learning tools I’ve encountered this year. The title is Horror’s Classic Masters Remastered (volume 1), and it was produced in 2006.

This book, at first glance, is no different from dozens of others. It gathers classic (all conveniently in the public domain) stories from famous authors. You’ve all seen the writers included: Poe, Stoker, M.R. James, Bierce, Hodgson and more. Where this book differs is in its presentation.

According to the editor’s introduction, he “did not set out to rewrite anything.” His “intent was to ‘translate’ these stories for today’s readers.”

I’ll admit, my first instinct was to avoid the book as I would a horrific traffic accident. That impulse was magnified when I realized that the altered stories were being presented under the author’s names alone; not “translated by….,” but merely attributed. Any neophyte reading the book without reading the introduction (a common occurrence, in my experience) might plausibly believe that these stories were being presented accurately.

Upon reflection, however, I had to mitigate my initial reaction. The notion of translating work from archaic languages is neither new nor abhorrent; nor is translation from one living language to another.

What bothered me, instead, was the implication of incompetence from the reader. The stories aren’t reconstructed with a seventh-grade reading level in mind; they’re not intentionally insulting. The stories are structured instead for a high school freshman or sophomore.

The reason is ostensibly due to the archaic style of the writing; I cannot disagree more. The true reason seems to be due to the complexity of the language, which is something entirely different. It is easy to imagine this editor “translating” the works of Thomas Ligotti or Brian McNaughton.

This, however, leads to what I believe is the true value of the book. It is intended to draw the casual reader into an interest in the classics; that is a fool’s errand. If a potential reader isn’t willing to expand his or her vocabulary on the (actually relatively rare) instances when the stories of Poe and Hodgson toss them an unfamiliar word, they’re not going to be able to read any of the author’s “untranslated” works anyway. They’d be served as well… arguably better… to simply watch an old movie or episode of Night Gallery featuring the story in question, with the understanding that they’re not getting the full flavor of the tale.

The true value lies in its aid to writers. This book, combined with the original tales, provides a magnificent illustration in how to make successful stories NOT work. The tales in this collection are dead bodies; the basic storylines still exist, and they are immediately recognizable. The energy which animated the stories, however, has been completely eradicated. “The Mezzotint” is still a horror story, and it is a fairly effective piece, but it is no longer a M.R. James story nor is what remains a classic.

I’ll give some examples; the original first, followed by the “remastered” version:

“During the whole of a dull, dark, and soundless day in the autumn of the year, when the clouds hung oppressively low in the heavens, I had been passing alone, on horseback, through a singularly dreary tract of country, and at length found myself, as the shades of the evening drew on, within view of the melancholy House of Usher. I know not how it was – but, with the first glimpse of the building, a sense of insufferable gloom pervaded my spirit. I say insufferable; for the feeling was unrelieved by any of that half-pleasurable, because poetic, sentiment with which the mind usually receives even the sternest natural images of the desolate or terrible.” – The Fall of the House of Usher, by Edgar Allan Poe.

“It was a dull, dark, autumn day. The clouds hung oppressively low. I rode alone, on horseback. At length I found myself, as the evening drew near, within sight of the melancholy House of Usher. I do not know why, but at my first glimpse of the building, I felt a sense of terrible gloom.” – as “remastered”

“In response to Carnacki’s usual card of invitation to have dinner and listen to a story, I arrived promptly at 427, Cheyne Walk, to find the three others who were always invited to these happy little times, there before me. Five minutes later, Carnacki, Arkright, Jessop, Taylor, and I were all engaged in the “pleasant occupation” of dining.

“You‘ve not been long away, this time,” I remarked, as I finished my soup; forgetting momentarily Carnacki‘s dislike of being asked even to skirt the borders of his story until such time as he was ready. Then he would not stint words.”- The Gateway of the Monster, by William Hope Hodgson.

“I arrived at my friend Carnacki’s house, ready to have dinner and listen to his latest story. I had known him for years, and Thomas Carnacki – the famous ghost investigator – never failed to entertain. Three others who were always invited to these happy little times had gotten there before me. Five minutes later, Carnacki, Arkright, Jessop, Taylor and I were all engaged in a pleasant dinner.

“Your latest case didn’t last very long,” I remarked, as I finished my soup.” – as “remastered”

……………….

On occasion, through workshops with colleagues, special editions of classic books, and sometimes even first readers to professional friends, people get the opportunity to see a story grow from a rough draft to a polished work. Much can be learned by observing the process. This takes it further, changing a polished work into another polished, but lesser, work…. Taking a cut of high-grade prime rib and using it as taco meat.

Toward the beginning of the year, Brian Hodge recommended to all authors that they spend some time investigating nonfiction books on writing. In appreciation of his return, I thought I’d focus on this title and the benefit it can provide to anyone trying to wrap their head around the ephemeral definition of “style”.

What I Learned From Blogging About the Kindle

2009-11-10T12:12:17Z

Last month, when I finally decided to “come out” about owning a Kindle, I learned two things. One, after reading some of the comments about my blog entry, I realized that I have always written about “safe” topics, ones that are least likely to stir up controversy, and heaven forbid, make readers think less of me.

Maybe that’s why I was drawn to children’s picture books. Of course, there are some dark picture books, but the majority of mine are definitely on the sunny side, sprinkled with light humor and less-than-deep situations. Writing the blog entry about the Kindle made me nervous. What would people think? What would people say? It turned out that people had a lot to say, and not all of it made me feel all warm and fuzzy inside, like my children’s books do.

And you know what? Taking the risk of writing something that may not have endeared me to fellow readers and writers was good for me. And any writing worth its salt SHOULD evoke strong feelings in its readers. Writing outside of my comfort level was just the kick in the butt I needed.

The second thing I learned from blogging about the Kindle was that I wanted to learn more about why many authors – and most booksellers (save those at Barnes & Noble, which is ready to launch its own e-reader, the Nook) – are not big fans of the Kindle.

So this past weekend when I was at a children’s writers’ conference, I took the opportunity to sit down with one of my favorite independent booksellers. I asked her to help me understand just why the Kindle is a “bad guy.” My friend said that it’s not just the Kindle, it’s Amazon’s entire bookselling practices, as well as those of Walmart, Target, and apparently, now Sears. Barnes & Noble’s new Nook is also seen as a threat.

From what I understand, the aforementioned are all involved in “predatory pricing,” offering discounts that other bookstores can’t afford to match. And e-readers like the Kindle make it possible to download a new hardcover bestseller for just $9.99 in less than a minute, and without leaving home.

I continued the conversation with my husband, a former music director and disc jockey, that evening. It’s his opinion that what happened in the record industry is now happening in the book world. With Apple’s iTunes online store, customers could buy a CD that might retail for $17.99 at the local record store for $9.99. They also could purchase a single song – or several songs – without having to buy the whole CD. However, to do so meant they had to have an iPod, which is pretty much the same situation as Amazon and the Kindle, and the other e-readers that are bound to follow. Today, the big chain record stores are largely gone, but some really great independent record stores can be found throughout the country, and they’re still going strong. .

Although I enjoy browsing my local chain bookstores on occasion, in reality they are becoming more generic – kind of like a McDonald’s for the average book buyer, at least in the children’s book department. At the children’s writers’ conference this past weekend, a fellow picture-book author told me that when she recently paid a visit to a local “big box” bookstore, she was appalled to see the explosion of toys in the children’s section. Less space was devoted to books, and of these books, many were the mass-appeal series, and the small picture-book display featured primarily celebrity authors.

It’s obvious that the world of bookselling is changing. Just as Walmart has forced smaller mom-and-pop stores to close, there will be some casualties in the bookstore world. Survival depends on facing the inevitable growth of e-readers and online shopping head-on, and finding creative ways to work around these changes – and eventually, with the changes.

As long as there are people who love the bookstore experience, there will be people to support their local bookseller. There’s nothing quite like immersing yourself in a good independent bookstore. It’s like diving into a box of fine chocolates, and the assortment is often one you won’t find elsewhere.

But there’s also something to be said for having an e-reader, especially for people who travel, or who don’t have a bookstore nearby, or who can’t get out at all. For me, being able to browse my local bookstore – and buy books, as well as to click on my Kindle at any hour of the day or night and download a book, or a magazine, or even a blog, is the best of both worlds.

I think that there is space – and a place– for both brick-and-mortar booksellers and those requiring technology. I hope for a future where they can co-exist, “happily-ever-after” as we children’s writers like to say. I may be fooling myself, but time will tell.

Let’s Just Pretend The Last 8 Months Never Happened

2009-11-09T17:05:14Z

Looks like it was a sabbatical after all.

Last March, after close to a three-year tenure, I hung up my Storytellers U hat — the one with the Viking horns and a beer funnel — without knowing whether this would be permanent or temporary. Couldn’t help but notice, in the interim, that lords-of-the-manor Dave and Joe never filled that vacated slot for the ninth of each month, or even dropped my name from the active roster, maybe under the belief that, since nature abhors a vacuum, I would eventually slam back into place like an airline passenger into a fuselage crack at 30,000 feet.

Apparently this strategy of inaction worked. That thudding sound you hear…

And hang onto that word, inaction, if you will. It’s key today.

In the grand scheme, this monthly slot is not an especially demanding gig, although that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s immune to something resembling burnout. By last March I was feeling bereft of ideas to bring to the table here. Worse, maybe, I was feeling bereft of much desire to bring them.

And so it felt right to go for a long, meandering walk.

I’ve come to recognize in myself a restlessness that sometimes push-pulls me out one door and toward another, usually a less familiar one. At the same time, there’s a gravitational tug that sometimes pulls my orbit back around to those old, familiar rooms.

Except I come back not quite the same writer, not quite the same person. This is nearly always for the better. Because I’ve been rewired.

Hang onto that word rewired, too.

Nobody ever promised us that life in the creative lane would be a smooth ride. Oh, it has its moments of gliding across the glass-still sea. Days when the words bear you effortlessly up like thermal drafts beneath a falcon’s wings. But then there are the days, the many many days, when it’s all whirlpools, typhoons, and clipped feathers.

And there aren’t just days like that. There are novels like that. Stories like that. Screenplays and essays and poems like that.

There are times when, whatever your project may be, the two of you are just not right for each other.

Sometimes, in the face of a monumental creative incompatibility, be it a blocking wall or a yawning sinkhole, the best course of action really is none at all. Walking the other way. Heading the opposite direction, with an eye toward finding your way back again by some other route whose signposts you won’t know until you see them.

It’s more than just giving yourself time for a few fresh breezes to blow the musty funk and cobwebs from your head. You can accomplish that much in one indulgent afternoon off, and as the beneficiary of many such afternoons I’ll gladly admit they can work small miracles. Sometimes that’s all the honey-laced medicine you need.

But sometimes the challenge runs deeper. Think, in terms of degree, of the difference between a mood and a personality disorder.

Walking the other way — we don’t much like that here in the global West. It’s not the way we were taught. So there’s something shameful about it. While detouring down a path of lesser resistance has always struck me as being a perfectly acceptable strategy in the East, in the West we’re the amped-up spawn of different doctrinal DNA, in particular the hard-assed Calvinist work ethic which holds that if a thing is worth doing, then it’s worth doing with such grim, unrelenting insistence to bend it to your will that you make yourself miserable long before you’re finished and lose sight of why you ever wanted to do it in the first place.

Which is probably a great success formula for cutting down acres of trees or making little rocks out of big ones; but for creative work, personally I’ve always found that approach counterproductive for getting over anything more than a minor hump. Maybe because it doesn’t allow much room for reflection.

But here’s the thing about walking the other way. It really isn’t a path of inaction at all, or shouldn’t be. Not when there are so many other things, new things, to try. A different novel, story, screenplay, essay, poem. A different creative outlet altogether. Or something that may not even be traditionally regarded as “creative” at all.

Do it. Do it with heart, do it with dedication, do it with more commitment than you’d give some simple fleeting diversion, and it will leave its mark on you. Do it, and it will leave you rewired.

This is due to something I’ve found increasingly fascinating lately: neuroplasticity, the brain’s ability to reorganize its neurons and their networks in response to new experiences. It’s not a new concept — it was initially theorized in the late 19^th century, but had to overcome half a century of being ignored before it made much headway, and even then seemed to take a few more decades to filter into general understanding. Pretty much every biology class I ever had likened the brain to a blob of Jello that reached its developmental apex a few years after it jiggled free of the mold, then spent the next several decades declining into rotting Swiss cheese.

Yeah, and physicians used to bleed out evil humors, too.

Instead, my favorite metaphor for neurons so far is a passage comparing each one to a waving forest whose branches are constantly breaking old connections and making new ones.

Now, what does that have to do with walking away from a challenge and coming back to it later? Only everything. Because if you’re lucky — or intuitively prone to seeking out what you need — then just maybe this tweaked version of you is the one better equipped to meet the challenge you walked away from.

New paths of thought, expanded ways of seeing, deepened understandings … these are a writer’s bags of gold to foot the bill for that next trip into terra incognita.

Or at least bags of fertilizer to grow what you plant once you’re there.

Here are a few things I did since last March, things I’d never done before.

Received a torn biceps tendon during Krav Maga training.
Researched and self-rehabbed a torn biceps tendon.
Planned, planted, and tended a vegetable garden.
Discovered a love for refinishing furniture.
Took up soldering so I can make my own audio cables.
Learned and practiced a few rudiments of parkour.

I’m trying to stick to things that have a physical element of doing about them, where mind and body are both involved, and where they denote some kind of ongoing activity. Then there’s the life of pure mind: the books read, the words written, the subjects explored.

You have your own list. Do tell, please.

How will mine impact my work? In most cases, I can’t concretely say. Not yet. Although there’s one, which I’ll get into next month, because for now this is running long.

But I feel different, changed by them all, and as a starting point — or restarting point — it’s all good.