Composition

It's taken me a long time to realize that writing fiction, that is, composing a readable work of fiction is similar to writing a song.  From all I can gather songwriters either come up with the lyrics and then try to find the tune embedded in the words or first compose the music and then find the words that fit the music. In fiction there are the lyrical components as well - the words, and the musical score, which is the structure of the story.

In my writing career I have been trying to do both simultaneously; letting the story evolve on its own and then rearranging, rewriting, and editing the structure into something worth reading. Only of late did I make the musical epiphany and decide that I've probably been doing it wrong, or at least wasting valuable time.  Now I see that the structure of a composition is a thing apart from the story being told.

The top level organization of a classic short story is: Introduction, Exposition, Epiphany, and Denouement.  The Introduction sets up the story's problem that will eventually be "solved" at the end.  Along the route to the Denouement there should be no more than three challenges to success, with the final challenge leading to the Epiphany or realization of the solution. There should be high and low points. Throughout the presentation there should be a bass line to set the tone of the piece. What's left is to sprinkle the composition with a few bright notes of brilliance, a not-too-long stretch of expositions, and maintain a consistent refrain for each character. Pull all those elements together and you have built a perfect structure for the story.

All you have to do then is add the words.

Shout Out

The web is a wonderful thing, connecting people around the world who never might have otherwise met. When I post  a new blog it is interesting to see how the different countries "light up" on my blog map. Apparently this blog is being read by not only people in the US and Canada but also struggling writers (which is probably redundant phrasing) in India, China, Russia, Germany, France, England, Scotland, Brazil, Argentina, and South Africa. I am suitably impressed to say the least.

I have no way of knowing who you might be or what perverse pleasure you might get out of my masochistic musings, but I want to thank you for your continued interest in my struggles to understand this impulse that drives me to write. It is somehow reassuring to know that others may be as beset with what appear to be everlasting personal and professional doubts as I.  Welcome, fellow sufferers.

For my own part, if nothing else, I hope that at least one of you is encouraged by the news that they are not alone in dealing with their writing demons. I hope that someone will someday find a bit of my advice that actually helps move their work forward or at least gives them encouragement to continue.  The world needs stories, your stories, and failing to provide them would be a sin.

I will keep posting to this stream of consciousness as long as new devils beset me. I hope that some day I will experience a writer's epiphany that leads to the denouement of happiness and will be able to share that as well.  Until then, I hope you continue to read and enjoy these posts.

By the way, it wouldn't hurt to comment now and then.

A Reason to Write

A well-published novelist told me recently that a writer should enjoy the building of a novel regardless of whether it ever sees "print" or not.  A writer's joy should come from the mental effort of producing a satisfactory cogent and compelling story.  Advances, royalties, and other rewards are nice, but they are a thing apart from the writing itself.

I have found this true for short stories, as witness my dismal 1:5 sales ratio. But then, I write what I damn well please to exorcize my personal demons and if a story sells, so much the better. I take no offense at rejection (well, maybe a little.) The process of creating worlds, populating them with curious creatures, and putting them in complicated situations lets me feel like a minor old testament god. It is very satisfying.

Nobody knows where the impulse to create comes from or where lies the source of the spring that waters a writer's imagination.  Yet writers seem impelled to create and put their creations into a reasonable form so that others might enjoy the result.  Some might think this a form of exhibitionism, of an ego-driven need to assert their vision on the world.

There might be a touch of this, but for the most part writers care less about acclaim than they do about the pleasure they get from a well-turned phrase, of choosing the perfect word, of crafting a well-defined character with depth and an emotional range.  There is a surge of almost orgasmic pleasure at putting the final bit of polish on a completed work.  This pleasure is rarely mentioned at conventions when being bright and amiable seems the better choice of presenting oneself and selling whatever books are waiting to be sold or signed than sharing ones innermost thoughts.

Joseph Campbell advised people to follow their joy to attain happiness.  This is true in writing as in everything else:  A writer should follow the joy of writing for its own sake. 

Blog Post 100

It seems somehow apt that this one hundredth blog post should mark my return from the breathtaking Rio Hondo week-long critique-fest in the mountains of New Mexico.

Typical critique session

I spent last week high (9,700 feet) above Taos with a group of eminent genre writers who came together for mutual criticism and to discuss the markets, the writing life, and drink. Each of the ten writers brought an early draft of something they felt needed improvement and which they  hoped could benefit from examination by other professional writers.

Each draft was read multiple times and, in a joint session, each person provided an intense, three-minute expression of viewpoints, sometimes helpful suggestions, and penetrating observations about the sample provided.  At the end of each round of comments there were sometimes lengthy discussions among the group on writerly points of style, phrasing, and pace. More detailed observations were scribbled on the manuscripts and returned to the author.

Any writer worth their salt requires a substantial ego to weather the fickle genre fiction markets and this group was no exception.  Despite their strong egos, there was no animosity, no wails of injustice, nor hurt feelings evident despite sometimes searing criticism over some flaw apparent to all but the author him/herself.  Often I felt that my critiques were a young pony in a draught horse show, underweight and overwhelmed.  Nevertheless, I learned a little about going beyond the obvious surface of words and plot to examine the underlying structure of the piece to discover how to convey understanding to the reader.

My piece was neither more nor less criticized than any other and now I have to sort through the notes and written comments/corrections resulting. That everyone read so carefully and multiple times assured me that little was untouched. Strangely, everyone grokked on a subplot throwaway that I  paid scant attention to and which would take the novel in a completely different direction that I was not contemplating (and may not follow.)

I came away both exhausted and refreshed. The knowledge of the field gained far exceeded any costs I may have incurred. I just hope that that knowledge improves whatever I choose to write.

Drafting

This week I am among a group of professional genre writers in Taos NM for a one-week mutual critiquing session.  My intent on attending was to see if I could glean a hint or two about writing as I peruse their drafts and chat endlessly about the craft of writing in general. It is interesting to see other's unfinished drafts, hear the comments and observations and discuss their unique processes in drafting.

When I set out to write I seldom have a sense of length, unless it has been commissioned, and that usually comes with a defined subject.  What I think will be short stories because of the modest concept sometimes turn out to be novelettes or novellas (my natural length.)  The first draft of most are piles of random scenes, snippets of conversations, research notes, and scribbled ideas that pop up at random and usually have nothing to do with the work in progress - AT THAT TIME.  Yeah, the first draft is an exercise in discovery, flipping over the mental rocks to find what lurks beneath.

Second draft is more deliberative as I assemble the mess into a more or less comprehensible form, grouping things into defined scenes, making the characters recognizable and consistent, and figuring out how to dress the stage to give a sense of place. Chronology also needs attention, but not always.  Mostly the second draft tells me the length the story wants to be and informs the shape of the ...

Third draft, which I always hope is the penultimate draft. This is where I get serious about the actual words being used, the parsing of sentences, and the patterns of paragraphs that make for easy reading and more understandable pacing.  This is where the characters achieve nuance, tics, and distinguishing characteristics.  Perhaps I dress them handsomely or not at all. Sometimes they even don alien skins and behaviors. Finishing the third draft always leaves me feeling good and ready to cast it adrift on the tide of editorial whimsy.  But...

After letting the supposedly finished draft sit in a virtual pie cabinet for a week or more, I can read it with fresh eyes and realize all the flaws, the things that remain to be explained, the little ornaments that would improve a character or setting, and where the wording can be sharpened to a fine point. When this is done the work finally goes out, no longer a draft but a finished story, for if I kept it a day longer I would be impelled to fiddle more in an endless quest for impossible perfection.

In the last draft it is you who tells the story if it is long enough.

Competence

Every time I take on a project I am beset with doubts as to my ability to write a competent sentence, to catch all of the errors in the piece, to craft the work into something that will not be rejected out of hand. "Is this worth selling?" is a constant refrain that runs through my head and, on occasion, drowning out the more important "Is this worth writing." Fortunately, the latter usually dominates.

One of the NPR programs I follow mentioned that the problem with incompetent people is that they are so poorly schooled in whatever they do that they cannot --not "will not" but "CANNOT"-- see their own inadequacy.  The inarticulate feel that their language skills are equal to any other and the poor golfer usually blames their equipment, the weather, or "having a bad day."  Those who populate the thickest part of editors' slush piles are probably under the illusion that they have penned masterpieces.  Some of these same self-deluded fools (who do not see themselves as either deluded or as fools) foist jillions of poorly written, often rejected, and pathetically edited eBooks on everyone who wishes to get books for low cost or, better yet, free! Some succeed.

"Is this well done?" is the melody that plays against "How would I know?" on a daily basis as I toil to wordsmith text on my writer's anvil.  In the back of my mind are always the frustrating and exhausting doubts and misgivings as to word choice, phrasing, and succinctness.

The impostor syndrome weighs heavily on the mind of every professional, the fear that they will eventually be found out for the fraud they are, that they will be discovered to be not as skilled or intelligent or learned as everyone believes them to be. This feeling is the stuff of three 'clock awakenings in the chill grip of fear and failure, when every mistake is remembered and embarrassment rides high.  Although these waking nightmares can be suppressed the next morning, the thought that you are always one small step from the abyss of disaster never strays far from mind.

Tie all of these themes together and you enter my world of speculative short fiction where the future is ever uncertain, where I never know if the current piece will ever appeal to an editor or even be acceptable by the day's literary standards, much less marketplace.  Every rejection calls the impostor or incompetence question to mind, every acceptance makes me question whether I could have done better, and everything that reaches print makes me worry about it's meaning to the readers.   But none of these doubts and fears stops the writing.

It just makes me work the harder.

Nebula Weekend

The gods convene this weekend to anoint those considered to have produced the "best" fiction in the previous year and give them a heavy hunk of lucite. Mostly the weekend is a chance for the luminaries of the genre to mingle, chat, and drink without fans hanging around or having to race off to this forum or that. I've written elsewhere on my impressions and opinions so I will not repeat them here. So this is my apology for not writing longer as I head off to add my bit to the festivities.

And in so saying I decided to simply add to the post with my impressions of this year's affair.

Fabulous, awesome. entertaining, and exhausting are the keywords.  We had an astronaut and rock star attending along with a galaxy of writers old and young, veterans and novitiates, agents and editors - the wonderful variety that form SFWA and infuse it with wonderfulness. Mike Fincke, our astronaut captive for the weekend, regaled the crowd with stories of being in space and telling many that he actually read their stories WHILE IN ORBIT!! How freaking cool is that?  What we quickly fell into was a mutual squee-fest where he was thrilled to be among writers and we, the poor ground hugging subspecies worshiped someone who had fucking LIVED our dreams.  How cool is that?

Maybe I should stop saying it and just go on with HCIT from now on because the whole weekend was HCIT from beginning to end.

And, by the way, we gave out some awards.