Author: Sarah A. Hoyt

I think part of the reason I hate outlines is that they lead me into fatal errors.

No, wait, let me rephrase that – the reason I hate PROPOSALS and the outlines that accompany them is that they lead me into fatal errors.

Outlining a book for a proposal is not the same as outlining it for writing.  For one, you truly can’t (Heck, even I can’t) read a proposal without my eyes glazing.  Yes, even my own proposals.  A proposal is a sales tool.  I learned early on that I had much better luck if I sprinkled the proposals with “scenes” from the (not yet written) book.  And the proposal can only be about ten pages.  This means what I have in there before that is the barest sketch of an outline.  Not much to lead me astray, you say.

And yet it often does.

See, when I write a “synopsis” for myself, it is a thing without form or substance to anyone else.  I think I do in words what other people do in pictures.  That is, I’ve belonged to writers’ groups where people spend time clipping pictures from magazines (I suppose now from the net) that excite them or give them an idea.  Okay.  I can see that much.  While making covers over at dreamstime, I’ve often come across pictures that intrigue me enough that I think “I should be able to write a story for that.”  So far, let me tell you I haven’t.  But I can see doing that.

But the way my colleagues work is yet totally different – they’ll string two dozen or so pictures, put them on a corkboard, and they get the feel of what the novel will be from this.

For me, a working synopsis in its first incarnation, might be something similar.  I’ll have “Beginning of – ” and the name of a book or even a Disney comic.  Looking at it will bring it back, but other people might never get what element started this.  And it doesn’t have a heck of a lot to do with the book that’s finished.  I can’t remember now the title, but the opening of A Few Good Men was sparked by the beginning of a romance, in which someone is being transported on trumped up charges.  I didn’t know THAT had anything to do with the book, I just thought some element there (which, btw, might have been the voice or the landscape) would work for AFGM.  Then there’s songs.  I’ll hear a song and go “Oh, that’s so and so’s theme song.”  And I write that down.  Now, at this point the novel doesn’t yet have a title (though some appear first as titles) but it does have a character.  ALL of my stories, from novels on, start as “So and so’s story.”

This is before the real working outline.  That’s when – after some period of “cooking” in the subconscious which can go from a few months to a year or more – the novel is suddenly clear in my mind.  I then sit down and write, usually, ten pages or so for me.  (This is my process now.  I used to write fifty page outlines, once upon a time, because I was trying to figure out plot at the subconscious level.  I think I’ve now integrated it there, and don’t need to do front-brain work on it, unless there’s a tricksy bit.)  Mind you, these ten pages are supercompacted stores of information.  One line, at one time I had the line “Vara goes banana tree” which translated into three chapters of the character descending into paranoia.  The lines can be that short because they are FOR ME and don’t need to make sense to anyone else.

This is the point I’m usually ready to sit down and write the novel.  This means I write three chapters, then outline the next ten in detail, sometimes running to twenty pages or so.  Then I write them.  Then I outline the next ten.  Now, often enough I only write five, and realize it won’t do.

What do I mean by that?  There are motivations and behaviors that seem perfectly good in outline, but which become painfully flimsy on paper in extended version.  For those who read AFGM I had the two main characters originally argue over the dog and come to punches.  For those who didn’t read it (meaning you’re not betas) these two characters have a lot of other reasons to resent each other, particularly one towards the other, but I thought – on outline – it would be a clever trick to make them argue over possession of a dog, instead.  When I tried to write it, it wouldn’t come off.  It was impossible to make it fly without a series of misunderstandings and implied insults and other stupid-plot devices.  I realized it as soon as I wrote the scene, and spent three days in misery trying to figure out how to rewrite it.  Removed the misunderstandings, and had them argue about the REAL causes of resentment, instead, even if one can’t ever completely name them.  They are clear to the reader.

Again, mind, the argument over the dog seemed perfectly reasonable on extended chapter by chapter outline.  It was only when I snapped the piece into place that I realized it needed to be sitcom-level stupid to work.

So sometimes I write two or three chapters, then sit down and rewrite the whole outline because of the things that have changed.

For instance, until the very last set of – long hand – outlines Tom’s father was an out and out villain in Draw One In The Dark.  Except that didn’t make it a strong book.  It made him into a comedy villain, twirling his moustache, nothing more.  And therefore, I changed it.

Where the selling outline intrudes: It requires me, usually at a time when the novel is little more than a glimmer in my eye (or the back of my mind) to make it real enough for someone to buy.  This means bringing it from the back brain into the forebrain.  And making it “rational” and “About something.”  (Yes, of course all my books are about something.  But often I don’t know that till the last phrase is written.  No, I don’t think anyone else works like that.  Yes, it’s entirely possible I’m nuts.)

And you’re saying “But Sarah if you go completely indy, you don’t need outlines.”  True, though I haven’t yet figured out if Toni will allow me to work without proposals for future books.  That’s … something else.  OTOH RIGHT NOW I’m not completely indy and the last set of proposals I sold had a major boner in them.  This is the musketeer vampire books.  I’ve been struggling with the second for various reasons too lengthy to go into, but the main of them is this:

The series is not REALLY a series, but one long, massive book.  As such, the middle book feels like the middle of a book, where you’re setting all the dominos in place, but you haven’t “broken the novel’s back” yet (This is my idiom for the point at which the novel snaps and more or less writes itself at speed.  It happens anywhere from halfway to two thirds through.)  So as a book it feels meandering and unfocused.

And here is where I made the mistake in proposal.  I kept the focus of the novel on the same person as the first book.  Since the three novels are metaphorically the character’s descent into hell and return  (Metaphorically.  He doesn’t ever die as such.) in selling outline form this seemed ENTIRELY logical.

The problem is it won’t fadge, and I can’t get the book to feel like a book, let alone to extend to the required length.

However, now that I have a first version written and the third book is starting to take shape, it’s obvious what I should do: The book’s main character is the one who got “compromised” and whose nature changed at the end of the last book.  This book is his journey, in which he conquers his inner demons.  The other’s descent continues, as needed so he can come up again, but he’s not nor should ever have been the focus.

How I missed that in the outline is now beyond me.  HOWEVER it’s another advantage for me of working “without a net” (or a proposal.  Wait, that is working without a net, since I have to wait for the books to sell to make money.  No net.  No gross either.)

Now I don’t know if other writers’ brains work like mine.  Often, when people explain how they come up with stories and/or write – including a colleague who plots by BEADING – I wonder if I’m wired backwards from everyone else.  So maybe for everyone else it won’t be such a change.

And now, forgive me the foregoing ramble – I’m going to go recast this – grossly overdue – novel!

Blame this on the fact that I grabbed what I thought was a fluffy regency romance this morning – fine, whatever, go ahead and giggle.  I’ll be here when you’re done – because I can’t read anything that grabs me and forces me to read all of it on the morning of a day when I’m supposed to work.  Otherwise I start the “Three more pages” dance and next thing you know it’s noon and not a line written.

No, not reading while cooking breakfast for the kids and having my own is not an option.  If I don’t read something, how is my brain supposed to know we’re awake now?  And while I usually read the news with my last cup of coffee of the morning – in front of the computer – it’s hard to drag blogs down to the kitchen table (Yes, I have a tablet but… I don’t want to splatter it.)  This is the only way in which I find blogs grossly inferior to newspaper.  OTOH 12 or so years ago, at the height of my newspaper addiction, we subscribed to three of them (one was the WSJ) and reading the paper took me the better part of the morning.  So it all balances.

Anyway, this morning I thought I was picking up an innocuous regency about a missing heiress, the type of thing I can read a chapter on then resume whenever.  Instead, I found the book – while probably still a fluffy romance – was set in Elizabethan England.

It’s not that I don’t like Elizabethan England.  It’s that I spent several years of my youth and most of my thirties reading non-fiction books about Elizabethan England.  I have an hyper-sensitized “this book needs flying lessons” button when it comes to Elizabethan England.  (Now, this book hasn’t flown yet, which is a compliment to the author, when you consider I got about twenty five pages in.  However, her habit of rendering what she thinks is Elizabethan dialect phonetically and also of assuming that every day people spoke like Shakespeare plays – yes, of course they did, in vocabulary and construction, but from bits of dialogue quoted from court dispositions and such, they didn’t in fact go out of their way to take three sentences to say what took three words.  Everyday people weren’t required to use iambic pentameter or beautiful language.  Yeah, I know what I did in the Shakespeare books, but for heaven sakes, that was supposed to be part of the fun.  And besides, shut up – is going to make me strangle her at some future con, I swear.)

Unfortunately, too, I had time to think in the shower.  This is not always the case, as I often have to hurry through shower to go run some errand or other.  And I thought about the bit of the book I just read.  One of the things that impressed me about it, with this writer – so far – is that she’s not swallowing the mythos.  It is not assumed that if Elizabeth signed your death warrant you’re a scoundrel and a traitor.  In fact, Elizabeth is shown in such a light that one wonders if the author is a Black Adder fan.

And this got me thinking about history, the factualness of history, the prevailing, dominant narrative, what we assume are/were victims.  Of course, this took a side-leap into fantasy and the way we portray things and why.  Normally, I would have discussed this stuff with Dan and got it out of my system.  But Dan woke up late because of daylight savings.  And my older son isn’t awake yet.  And when I tried to discuss this stuff with Amanda Green early morning, I got the hairy eyeball – and let me tell you, friends, considering we’re texting and she’s three states away – it takes a heck of a lot to give me the hairy eyeball.  But she managed it.  Believe it or not, she accused me – me! – of trying to give her story ideas, so I wouldn’t have to deal with them myself.  As if I’d do that… more than twice a day or so.

So you, lucky, lucky you get to listen to my musings.

It’s not (just) the fact that history was written by the victors, a maxim that we’re taught in school and which is supposed to make us doubt everything that we read in exactly the way the teachers tell us to doubt it.  (Waves airily.)  I’ll spare you that.

Of course the winners, particularly in Elizabethan England were few, fiercely devoted, carefully censured and terrified.  Also, the documents have gone through the sieve of history, in which we can read less and less of them both through decay and through linguistic distance.  Therefore OF COURSE most of us read tertiary sources at best and buy what they’re selling.  (Well, you buy what they’re selling.  I was born mistrusting.)

This set me to wondering.  I’ve always thought we lived in a uniquely screwed up time.  I.e. having acquired power, what used to be the ideological underdogs have spent the last fifty years or so screaming and claiming to be victims.  Also, claiming to STILL be the ideological underdogs and becoming more an more unhinged.

It didn’t take me long after coming to the States to identify this schizophrenia in the culture.  No, I’m not going to go into politics.  I’m just going to mention that even when I came over in 1980, it was obvious that the people preaching a life of few possessions and helping others were the same clawing their way up the corporate ladder by hook or crook, and trying to outdo each other in the style of their houses, clothes and possessions.  They talked one game and acted a completely different one.

I’ve since watched this same cohort move into power in various fields, from education to publishing, and mouthing things like “question authority” while becoming the most tight-*ssedly authoritarian educators in history (no?  Do you have a kid in school now?  It’s all the mindless requirements for tab a into slot b that drives me nuts.  And our being told that our kids will need these “skills” in the “future” is insane, unless the future is early industrial revolution.  Incidentally this is also blatant discrimination against males who around middle school aren’t developed enough to adhere to a schedule with no reminders, or to do things as precisely as girls the same age can. [Yes, girls develop faster than boys neurologically.  If you don’t believe so, you’ve been listening to the “truth” of those in power.] I’m not going to go into details, but I’ll just say the level of regimentation is insane. Prussia called.  They want their martinets back.) and “speak truth to power” – provided it’s power circa 1955.

What the book this morning made me wonder is – was it always that way?  Is this a normal part of how human societies act?

I’d like to think our time suffers uniquely from this – to a very high degree – from being subjected to highly unified mass culture and means of communication more persuasive than mere print for about fifty years.  That is now passing away, much to the chagrin of those in control.  It’s too recent, though, to make much difference.

And I have no doubt that our time is unique in various ways, one of them being that we have a near-world uber culture where all the educated have the same frame of reference, even if parts of that frame of reference are completely wrong or insane.

But can this have happened to, to an extent, through history.  I thought of Marie Antoinette and her rather hapless husband, who have been featured as monsters of cruelty in countless literary works, partly based on the propaganda of the time – not just while the revolutionaries were working up to toppling them, but afterwards too, to make sure their name stayed blackened.  Which means the revolutionaries were hitting and screaming that they were oppressed…

And of course, Elizabethan England.  We tend to think of Elizabeth and Henry VIII as being ruthless, etc, in defense of the state and of the change in religion (which it could be argued was done to concentrate ALL power in the crown, thereby creating the modern state.)  But it wasn’t like that.  Proportional to the population, they both killed more people than Stalin or Mao.  (One wonders if some of these people went to the block murmuring “Queen Elizabeth cannot know”) and while a lot of it was dressed up in the trappings of religious dissent or even treason, I know for a fact that a vast number, probably vaster than we expect was because the Queen (or King) hated that someone had more power than she/he did.  Or because she/he coveted some nobleman’s estate.  Or even, of course, because she/he felt pettishly offended.  And all the time, the agents of royal power drummed up the story that THEY were under attack.  Jesuit conspiracies (which seems to have been a big fizzle) and traitors under every bed justified ever harsher suppression.

I won’t go into the political implications of this.  The cure for this has long been established.  It is to keep the state lean and small.  Keeping all leadership small and dispersed is also a good idea – like in publishing.  We’ll all be happier if it’s not ALL concentrated on half a dozen people in NYC.  And now we can make it so.  BUT that’s a theme for another time and perhaps another of my blogs.

What I was thinking, though, is that in a way – I blame Shakespeare – Elizabethan England – the soft light, Good Queen Bess, is at the back of every “good monarch” in fantasy, and the idea that the throne is and should be the source of all power.

It’s easy to disguise this in fantasy, of course, and make the reader suspend disbelief.  Magic in the land and the king and all…

There have been, I know, instances of usurpers being the good guys in Fantasy (though not many.  It is remarkably resistant to upending of tropes) but has there ever been an instance in which “the good king” that has just taken power is in fact a horrible, ruthless despot, constantly accusing the dark lord of the things he, himself is actually doing, as the Tudors by and large did?  A king and “good knights” who are actually screaming while they hit, and a “dark lord” that is no more than the dethroned previous-power, which might have been less than good but which right now – by dang – can’t hit anyone, even if he wants to, but is still being accused and chased around?

Is there even a graceful way to write that?  And is – more importantly – there a way of showing the dark Lord has in fact reformed and is willing to end this cycle of ruthless power cemented by accusations against the people who can no longer hit?

It never happened in history, but then… there’s maaaaagic.  (Or the future.  It could be argued I did this in A Few Good Men and am sort of trying to do it again in The Brave And The Free.  Though there, the change is not permanent because… real history.)

It strikes me that it could be a fascinating novel.  I don’t want to write it.  I’m not even sure I could.  It’s hard as heck to signal to the reader that the story is something else than it seems to be on the surface.

On the other hand it might be a story that needs to be told.  At some point we need to have stories that prepare people for a less-information-concentration future, and to think critically about what they hear.

Maybe the time has come in fiction, for the dark lord to come and free us from the iron clasp  of the good king.

And possibly something relevant.  BUT right now, I’m short on sleep — curse Daylights Saving Time — and cranky and definitely under-caffeinated.

If you’re in the mood for some insanity, go over to Mad Genius Club where my writers workshop seems to have spawned a novel series about a vampire killing chef — with, you’ll be glad to know — recipes at the end of the book.  (GROANS.)

WHY does this stuff happen to me?  Why, why why why?  I don’t remember having that much fun that I should have to pay for it this way.

by Dave Freer

(Yeah, I know, I haven’t got in enough trouble all by myself lately, so, here is my friend Dave Freer taking up one of my favorite themes.  Dave for those of you who are lucky enough not to have read him yet — because you get to read all of his work NEW, you lucky sobs — is a wonderful writer and manages to be funny and moving all at once.   He blogs at Flinder’s Family Freer and also at Coal Fired Cuttlefish  [and yes, his mind is what you expect from someone who comes up with THAT notion: Delightfully creative.  And more than a little scary!])

So, let’s get back to the Writing Pink Ghetto

“I know what darling, we’ll paint the whole place pink.”

“Pink?”

“Yes. Even cerise, maybe.”

“With lace frills?”

“Oooh yes. That’ll put those nasty Nazis off.

“You’re barking mad, do you know that? Instead of giving bastards one excuse to kill us you give them two.”

“You’re just being mean to me!”

Let’s face it: Ghettos aren’t funny. And any sane human wants no more of them.

Well. Maybe. Sane… maybe. Decent or nice are a different matter, but like sanity are relative terms. You can be sane and a lowlife. The two are not exclusive.

Let’s look at history and the article (http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/business/women‑gangs‑dominate‑business‑areas‑creating‑pink‑ghettos/story‑fn7ki14e‑1226290981814) that prompted me into my usual satirical snark. The link is one, but pretty much the same article popped up all over, like toadstools after rain. To summarize to save you reading it, some consultant types found that HR and PR departments in many large companies had become entirely female or with a few gay males. There was suitable outrage from feminist business-woman types about the fact that these were now seen as low status departments and their feminization limited their effect on the boardroom, which was yet more discrimination against women. The comments were telling too: there were the handful of parrots (trust me this is very bad for your hands) who bitched about evulll men, and a few misogynists who thought letting them out the kitchen was a mistake (I have always thought letting them into the kitchen was a mistake, but then that could be because I like cooking and Barbs detests it, and saying this really flat-foots your average femme-nasty)… and the vast bulk who said ‘how true, and how horrible working in those departments had been, and how much happier/more effective environments with a broader cross-section had been. ’ The posters seemed a cross section of men and women.

I thought about the whole boiling ferment and thought about how it relates to my own industry, and about how some of it was raising the bullshit meter and logic screens. And then I went and had lunch, which proves I have a very strong stomach and fairly low intellect.

Look , I have seen the same thing in other places. Schools and libraries to think of two really important ones.  And it is sweeping publishing, writing and… even reading. What’s somewhat more worrying is that there are people who think its a good thing (TM). Let’s just drift back into that thing we never learn from, ergo, History. The term ‘ghetto’ comes  from Venice – which as some of you may remember is where I set SHADOW OF LION, and where the social and political background of that 15th century series is set. I’ve been to the Campo Ghetto, read about its history. And it’s not particularly nice reading. But here are things you may not know.  1) in comparison to most of the rest of Europe (and a lot of other spots too) Venice was a liberated spot, and a good place to be a Jew. This doesn’t make it wonderful, but as all things are relative, means if you handing out prizes for integration and tolerance back then Venice would have been a long way ahead of Rome (or just about anywhere else), which makes Venice bashing (in modern terms too) a little… odd. 2)The gates on the ghetto could be locked… from the outside (to keep Jews in during various ‘important’ times in the Christian calendar, like Easter).  And also from the INSIDE to keep rampaging pogroms out. 3)The Ghetto had its own rules, laws… and naturally leaders and law-makers, who were very powerful in that sphere.

Two other things of course have come out of history since then. One is that ghettos develop when a certain critical mass of whatever group it is bunch together, whether they are made to or choose to: other people either expelled or choose to move out. It takes a fairly determined effort to stop this happening. It’s almost inevitably bad news, socially and in terms of worsening discrimination in the long run. And the other is the development of ‘ghetto pride’ where the positive aspects of grouping are praised and anyone leaving (or speaking against it) is regarded as a traitor.

So let’s slip back to the feminization of HR and PR departments. ‘They’re service industries, they’re regarded as unimportant, and that’s why women are shunted off there into a dead end with no effect on the boardroom.’ Oh dear. My Bullshit meter just exploded at the logic flaws… HR — besides settling cat-fights and organizing team building exercises — aren’t those the people who hire-and-fire, specifically HIRE people? Surely the kind of hires and where they are hired to is 1)vital to the company’s future and bottom line. It is, in strategy terms, your most powerful and direction influencing department (try strategy games if you don’t believe me. You can win or lose based not such on your skill in playing as who you choose and where you put them. And in real life, more so.). If you can’t do anything while controlling it, consider getting a big L tattooed on your forehead. For ‘learner’ of course. Couldn’t be for ‘loser’. 2) Who, if not the HR department, ends up controlling who is in each department?  So if it’s an all female and gay male (I quote – seen as ‘weak’ by other males) department, who made it thus? Who favored ‘sisterhood’, and who wanted to go to that department? Who let them? As for PR… yeah it’s a lot of waffle… by which companies sink or win Olympic swimming medals. Apple has good PR. That’s why they sell a lot of products. Be the products brilliant (or about par or shoddy) or not, without PR they’d be selling about the same as my books – which have the benefit of no PR bar my little efforts.

If these potentially powerful forces are weak and lack boardroom influence… why?  Is it because they put gender – and/or other factors before effectiveness?  And if it really is the case that it’s just because they’re all women, what pragmatic step can they take to change that?  They really are in the best possible position to open the gates to the Ghetto. Yes, it will mean they’re not 98%+ female departments any more. And yes, it will mean the company – looking for some sort of gender parity to keep itself out of trouble with those who will call ‘discrimination’ otherwise, will need to make that HR department work at finding female IT workers or metallurgists, seeing as your female numbers from HT and PR will drop.

As with teaching and librarianship — it’s hard to imagine positions which should more respect, which should wield more influence, or which I regard as more important.  So ask the hard question: why aren’t they influential, well paid, keenly competed for by the best… and what can we do to change that?  And the answer is obviously NOT ‘more of the same’ Eventually you have to realize that repeating the experiment won’t change the result. It’s time to try something different, being pragmatic, even if it messes with your biases.

So how does this play into writing? As I said, it too is suffering from ‘pink Ghetto’ cries, with all the same complaints and all the same non-solutions. Romance – the biggest, richest most powerful genre sector – constantly complains it is not taken seriously. Yet there are women – often the same women who are successful in that genre or YA which is overwhelmingly female dominated – bitterly complaining about sex ratios on the TOC’s of tiny hard science short-story anthologies (my favorite whine here comes from Aussiecon when a female author of literary fantasy complained about the fact that she was excluded from Hard Science. Did she have a Science background, or any grasp at all of science, she was asked. Well no, but you didn’t NEED that, you didn’t even have to write that. You should be on the TOC even if every other male-written story was written by a scientist and was about hard science and yours was about the feelings of girl unicorns for other girl unicorns. It was just pure discrimination that kept women out.)  The whines about men getting all the reviews and literary prizes are rather like being chained down in a room with 50 mosquitos and Oprah re-runs (especially considering the non-effect of said reviews and prizes).  The answer ‘women only contests’ makes me think of tennis (I need to sleep more, and I find Wimbledon very sopor-soothing). Women, even militant feminists, who tried take on male champions, failed. Men are just more muscular and faster. So: they have Women’s Championships… which make sense if you are willing to accept that physiologically or mentally you are less-than-equally able.  This does NOT apply to writing skill, in my opinion. It must do so in the opinion of those who initiate, sponsor, and accept prizes from such competitions. It’s not exactly liberating is it?  Yet women editors are no novelty, and outnumber males (and some are right at the top), women writers outnumber males by a huge margin, and women readers outnumber males by an even bigger one. JK Rowlings, Janet Evanovich and Stephanie Meyer barely earned any money at all… Any suggestions that there might be a problem with, for example, the overwhelming female writer/reader situation in YA fiction is met by a fierce clash of the Ghetto gates…

Lady Guardian: “This is OUR patch. WE make the rules here. It’s our turn now. Jacqueline here deserves our support far more than Joe, who shouldn’t even try to write YA. He’s a filthy hetero white male. She’s the victim of sexist persecution.”

Voice of Reason: “Um. She’s lived a pampered life,  went to a liberal art college paid for by her father. And her brother had to go out and work at 16. Joe is the last 13 children and had to teach himself to read, never got enough to eat, and his book is funny, warm, and brilliant. Jacqueline’s reads like yet another carbon-copy of the sparkly Vampire.”

LG: “Well, Jacqueline’s mother was a victim.”

VoR: “Jacqueline’s mother was an only child, and spoiled darling and inherited a fortune.”

LG: “You can never understand how she SUFFERED. Punishment must meted out unto the 10th generation. Or more. The sins of the father shall visited on the (male) child.”

VoR: “Didn’t know you were fundamentalist Christian.”

LG (belaboring VoR with a pole-axe and a lawyer).“How DARE you! I’m Wiccan!”

There is of course a logical answer to all of this, but it is a disempowering one… to the leadership. The ghetto isn’t being barred from outside any more. And no matter how you complain, bringing more areas into ghetto-only will not help. If for example, you force Hard Science writing past the critical mass point… all it will do is make the situation worse. It’s like Liberal Arts Colleges – already at 75%+ female students, attacking the 20 male student strong Physics department for having no women. If they succeed in forcing the Physics professors to accept and give first class marks to essays on the feeling of girl unicorns for other girl unicorns while the males have to do Feynman diagrams… well, shortly you will have no male students, your physics department will be worthless, and your college sex ratio will be up to 76%+ female. A win all round, yes?

The pogroms are over.

Open the Ghetto. Get ‘non-pink’ people in too, and go out. And sometimes they may end up on top… but unless women are completely inadequate, some women will too. And some, having done well in one field, will show they have a perfectly good grasp of solid-state electronics too. If women aren’t winning prizes and getting reviews… start new competitions – ones in which the work made anonymous and is judged by 50:50 panel. Women are NOT (outside the few who feel terribly threatened by a 50% increase in competition and are squalling loudest) any less capable than men. And there are men who can write about the feelings of girl unicorns for other girl unicorns.

And everyone will be richer for it.

Ooh look, there goes a winged pig, chased by a girl unicorn…

This time I really MUST apologize because today’s chapter is little more than a teaser.  As an apology it must serve that I am on the very last phase of a difficult rewrite and that I’m just recovering (at least hopefully recovering) from a weird wobble in health.  I WILL try to post a little more either today or tomorrow evening (Tomorrow I have a guest post by Dave Freer, and trust me, you don’t want to miss that.)  However the choice is to post this afternoon and spend the whole day trying to do this, or to deal with the pressing things interfering with my writing more Witchfinder and then coming back to it, fully refreshed.  So, for now, have the very small chapter 25.  More cake later or on Sunday (or late tomorrow) I promise.

*This is the Fantasy novel I’m posting here for free, one chapter every Friday.   If your conscience troubles you getting something for free, do hit the donate button on the right side.  Anyone donating more than $6 will get a non-drm electronic copy of Witchfinder in its final version, when it’s published.
There is a compilation of previous chapters here  all in one big lump, which makes it easier to read and I will compile each new chapter there, a week after I post.  When the novel is completed and about to be edited the compilation page will probably be deleted.

Oh, this is in pre-arc format, meaning you’ll find the occasional spelling mistake and sentence that makes no sense.  It’s not exactly first draft, but it’s not at the level I’d send to a publisher, yet. *

For previous chapters, look here:  https://accordingtohoyt.com/witchfinder/

Dangerous Roads
“In here, Mama,” Caroline whispered, her warm hand on her mother’s arm, pulling her close and into a dark space between buildings.  For a moment the dowager saw nothing, then, in front of her like the landscapes one sees in a dream, a doorway opened, filled with something like twinkling lights.
The impression of twinkling lights was a moment, nothing more, and then they were on a vast meadow, under the moonlight.  It smelled like a dream, too, except of course one didn’t normally smell in dreams.  But what surrounded Barbara was a warm scent of hay and flowers and of water running nearby, all of it untinted by smoke or any sign of human habitation.  Also, all the smells were heightened, stronger, the sort of smell one remembers from childhood, when the world is fresh and new.
She stood rooted to the spot a moment, as the warm breezes of the meadow wound around her, thinking that she didn’t remember fairyland being like this.  Perhaps they’d come somewhere else all together.  But in her mind she was remembering what her rescuers had done to find her and bring her out – everything that she’d ever heard about bringing people out of fairyland.  She hesitated before speaking.  If she told them to Caroline she reached offending her daughter.
It had become clear to Barbara over the last few moments that her daughter knew far more than Barbara herself about some things: those things being for instance how to go into fairyland and how to defend oneself from elf magic.  Crossing over into fairyland was a major working.  It required not only a susceptible location, where a portal could be opened, but also preparing the magical spell and working it for about half an hour, before the portal became obvious.  Barbara realized that Caroline must have been saying the spell under her breath the whole while they walked down the street, and wondered if this too was something Gabriel had taught her.  She wouldn’t ask.
But there was a good chance, she thought, that neither Gabriel nor any of her teachers had taught the girl what she must do, to come safe out of fairyland.  She’d risk offending her daughter, then, because if they should get separated, what Caroline didn’t know could kill her.
Just then Caroline pulled at her, but the first rule, Barbara remembered, was to stay on the road.  And they were not on the road but on the grass next to it.  She resisted Caroline’s pull forward, upon the grassy rolling hill and instead spoke in measured accents, in a little more than a whisper, “No, my dear.  The first rule you must remember,” she said, while she in turn pulled Caroline sideways and a little back, until their feet were firmly planted on a brick-paved road.  “Is that you must always stay upon the road.  It will change as you walk, but the road is your only measure of safety.  It exists only for visitors to fairyland, and, as such, it is part of a pact between our people and elves.  They cannot hurt visitors who are on the path and we, in turn, undertake not to deviate from the path, and to stay on it whilst in fairyland.  Do you know the other rules?  I hesitate to ask, but what did Gabriel tell you?”
“That I should not eat anything any elf ever offered me.”  Caroline paused.  “Other than himself, I presume, because that would make it very difficult particularly when I was little and he gave me candy.”
“I don’t think that Gabriel counts as an elf.  Not a true one.”  She paused in turn, as an odd thought occurred to her.  “At least not unless he wants to be one.”
Caroline seemed to understand this, as she nodded a little.  “I assume this applies to anything in fairyland.”
“Yes,” Barbara said.  “I very much believe so.  But there are other rules.”
“Such as?”
“You must help three people you encounter.  You must remain loyal and pure and impervious to temptation, and you must do your best to help those who need you, while refusing to either leave the path or eat anything.  This might include performing feats that would otherwise be impossible.  In these tasks, you will usually find three helpers.  These are not always wholly good, and usually they want something in return, but you must accept their help nonetheless, and count on being able to defeat their wiles, later.”
“And?”
“And you must under no circumstances accept an offer to live in fairyland.  Oh, it won’t be presented that way.  It’s usually presented as great riches, a palace, anything you care to own.”
Caroline looked at her mother curiously, her head tilted a little to the side, as though evaluating something.  “How very odd.  But you’ll be with me and able to remind me of these rules, will you not.”
“I don’t know,” Barbara said.  “What you have to understand is that fairyland works in ways that our world doesn’t.  The same rules of logic do not apply to both.  I wasn’t with the people who came to rescue me, but I know that they got separated, and never found out how.  So, if you get separated, do remember those rules.  They should be enough to keep you safe.  And now let us walk.”
“Which way do we walk on the road?” Caroline said, confused, looking behind her, and then ahead.
“It doesn’t much signify,” Barbara said.  “Direction also doesn’t mean in fairyland what it means in our world.  Instead of north and south, they have deeper and out.  Whichever way we walk in fairyland, while in pursuit of our goal of finding your brother, we will be penetrating deeper into the lands of magic.”
“But how do we leave then?” Caroline asked, as the two walked the way they were facing, along the genty rolling road, amid a meadow so beautiful it looked like an illustration from a child’s book.  In fact, everything from the too-green grass, to the intense scents of summer, to the rolling hills gave the landscape the impression of being too beautiful to exist – something not even out of a real dream, but out of a story.
“We leave when we’ve found your brother and we’ve fulfilled all the conditions of our coming here, such as our agreeing to render help to three unfortunates.  That is,” she said, as another thing occurred to her.  “When those are done, we are automatically ejected from fairyland and into the real world.  That is unless…”
“Unless?”
“The king of fairyland objects to our going,” Barbara said.
“And then we’re prisoners here forever?” Caroline asked, her eyes very wide and for the first time the hint of fear in them.
“No.  We’re here,” Barbara said.  Until we can find a champion to fight for our freedom.  She paused.  Somewhere ahead, something or someone was crying desolately.

For more witchfinder, look here

No, not my characters.  For heaven’s sake, don’t even say that.  There’s this chorus of “ew” in my head right now.

No.  What I mean is more… convoluted than that. (Isn’t it always?)

I don’t know much about going to college in the US, never having done it here.  I’ve heard of Student Union buildings but I don’t know if they’re actually unions in the style of labor unions.  I know that you have student councils in Highschool, which was jaw dropping for this kid from Portugal.

So, my first brush with “group organization” – community organization, you could call it! – in the style of unions came in my second year in college.

I don’t remember the exact circumstances, but they went something like this – the fourth year (where the grades you got were essential for a few things) had two German professors.  A female professor who (I ended up getting her in my third year, so trust me, I KNOW this) was a very tough grader, partly because she didn’t understand that students came to college with six to eight years of English but only two of German.  She expected the same proficiency in both languages.  Also, she took her clue for how proficient we should be from the highest scoring student.  If you’re nodding at this idea you don’t understand Portugal.  Each class would inevitably have at least one student who was the child of an immigrant to Germany (Immigrant children born abroad are given preference in entering college.)  So ours, like other classes, had someone who was native-proficient in German (though she couldn’t pass any other class.  Never mind that.)  I never understood WHY this woman didn’t understand that, but never mind.  Maybe she was simply a sadist and got off on making even the up-till-then best scoring students struggle just to pass.

The professor who taught second years quit, and they moved the fourth year professor down.  This would force each professor to take double the load, but was doable.

Except…  There’s always an except.  The professor they moved, at least that year, was the easy-grader.  Also, one of the fourth year students was connected to the administration, which, this being a public university, probably meant politically connected.  (At least one.  Might have been more than one.)

The end result is that they never moved the easy grader.  For whatever reason (pay?) The hard grader refused to be moved as well.  So the second year students, for whom German was REQUIRED (there’s less flexibility in Portuguese universities.  You get ONE elective in your last year, up to there, you pick from groups of courses depending on your ultimate degree.  And while you can pass dragging a class or two, there are classes you have to pass to advance.  Being a core discipline for most of us, German was one of those.) had NO German professor.

Impossible you say.  Ah!  Yes, that would be nice, but no.  We were told we had the option of signing up for and taking the semi-annual or annual exams and pass.

The fact that no one would be teaching us made no difference to them.  We could take the exam, so it was fair.

(I have to say going to college in Portugal DID prepare me for a life as a professional writer.  And the following experience, certainly did.)

I was young, okay, and very, very, very stupid.  The two conditions often occur together and, as I’ve said before, one of them is curable.  I thought “the only reason they can get away with this is that the public doesn’t know.”  So far so good.  And then I made a fatal misstep.  I organized the second years to demonstrate.

This was stupid because there were – at most – sixty of us.  Even if we protested in shifts around the clock, we didn’t make a very impressive display.

What I should have done – or at least what I’d do in the US – was start a letter writing campaign.  AT the time, though, I just thought “demonstration” and “Strike.”  But here’s the thing… the college couldn’t care less if we striked.  They don’t have trustees or any board of accountability.  All it meant was that some teachers got almost empty classes (we didn’t have every class together, since some of us were German-English, English-German (me), some Portuguese German (and vice versa) and for the truly weird ones, French/German (and vice versa)) and our grades would suffer.

After about three days, I realized we were in a situation where ALL we could do is cut off our noses to spite our faces.  Or, as my grandmother told me at the time “They have both the knife and the cheese.  what are you bargaining with?”

In other words, all the control of the situation was in the other party’s hands, and if we protested too much, all it would do was get us failed – should we indeed manage to make enough waves to be noticed.

So, we went back to classes and organized study groups to teach each other German, as best we could.  And I spent the next summer working in Germany, to compensate for that year.

And it prepared me for life as a Science Fiction writer.  Even if the publishers weren’t members, even if SFWA tried to do good things for every writer and deal with the important questions – what were they going to do?  Picket?  Two to a city…  Write letters to the editor?  And then what?  In an industry in which you can get kicked out for being “difficult,” what would that get the few who became visible?

When I said that SFWA was always, at best, a directory that’s because that’s the best they could be given the way they are organized, their numbers and the fact that until very recently the publishers had both the knife and the cheese.  AND they were the sole employer of most of the members.  So provided something really egregious – the no-compete clause, say – was something all houses were doing, what was SFWA going to do?  More important, what were the very human people running SFWA going to do?  Destroy their one chance at working ever again?  Riiiiiight.  They all sleep with each other.  They have to.  There is (or there was until very recently) no other bed.

The only semi-effective writers’ organization is RWA.  It is semi-effective because in addition to the pro-arm, they have a vast army of wanna bes.  But even if we enlisted EVERY geek in every college campus across the US I doubt we’d have much more than a tenth the number of wanna-be romance writers.

Even RWA suffers from knife and cheese problems, leading the biggest publishers to get away with murder.

Partly, of course it is because these are organized on the principle of labor organizations, which flourish/ed only where the workforce has limited mobility (true of writers, since there are big six) but a large presence in one place (which we don’t have) a service that’s essential to the public (well, we kind of have that but not really.  Only part of the public, and besides there’s old stuff they can read) and a not-easily repleaceable work force (which we also don’t have.  At least the publishers think they can replace us on the minute.)

A writers’ organization would probably be better if it functioned more like a “fraternal order” and got other support for writers.  You know, rainy day funds, medical funds, widow and orphans and health insurance.  We have had several attempts at that, but never really got them off the ground.  Partly because during the last ten years just keeping a writing career going has been a more-than-full-time-job, as more and more of the work got offloaded onto us: publicity; editing; sales.  Getting fraternal support services going requires time and full dedication.  Of course if we had something resembling retirees that would be a good job for them, but most writers retire when they pry our cold dead fingers off the keyboard.  And most of us never have enough financial security to even step back from the mad schedule.

Anyway, all this to say that I understand why SFWA is INEFFECTIVE.  That was not what set me off.  What set me off is their attempt at seeming effective by stepping in the middle of a dispute that has nothing to do with them and which, if the side they’re supporting wins, would probably (probably because these details are not really obvious) would end up hurting their members and almost certainly CANNOT end up benefitting them (though it will benefit the distributor involved in the fight, mind.)

Just because publishers have the knife and the cheese it doesn’t mean SFWA has to borrow the knife and cut of the member’s feet with it.

If I were in office at a writers’ organization (horrible idea. Was tentatively sounded out on it ONCE, made it very clear not only no, but h*ll no.  The six books under contract being only a part of the problem) I’d right now be looking at what is happening with Indie and looking closely – very closely – at any possibility of transitioning at least partway to a fraternal support movement.

Perhaps someone who is more sociable and plays better with others – I don’t know.  Perhaps the spouse of a writer? – can look into starting a Fraternal Order of Pen Pushers. (Yes, I know it’s anachronistic, but do you REALLY want to belong to the Fraternal Order of Keyboard Strikers?  Think about it!)

Me?  I have books to write.

Update:  I should add here, as David Burkhead has pointed out that SFWA has some of the functions of a fraternal organization, including legal fund, medical fund and such.  The thing is, I’d forgotten them momentarily which tells you something when I have been a member for eleven or twelve years.  I don’t think most of us turn to SFWA when in need because… well… the resources are limited  This is because, as I said, writers’ purses are limited, and we don’t have that pull of retirees which devote themselves to fundraising for such things.  The fact that we’re all as antisocial and fractious as cats might not help, either.

To be honest, neither MWA nor RWA, of which I’m also a member, is markedly better on that end, though RWA is a little more proactive than the rest (and also massive because they take on people TRYING to be published, into another category of membership.)

I still think particularly in the new era of publishing that’s the place for writers organizations to go, and not into misguided defense of the status quo and pseudo-labor-movement attitudes.  By being uniquely talented (not by meaning we’re special, just that each of us has a unique type of talent.  We’re not interchangeable), literate, mobile and disperse, we’re the least likely jurisdiction for a labor movement to help.

No, this is not a post about my car troubles.  Do I want to start crying this early in the morning?

Though, metaphorically speaking it is a post about ALL of our car troubles.

Years ago when I was young and stupid – the first of which is curable – we had a good friend who worked as a French chef.  Turns out, at least at the starting levels this is one of those professions like writing where your work schedule and money aren’t always incredibly regular.

Because of this, like many writers, our friend owned an endless succession of pre-broken cars which he drove till they would go no more and then get another.

Then one day he bought this van.  As he was driving across town in Charlotte, NC (motto, our traffic makes NYC cabbies shudder) he suddenly realized the van wasn’t responding to the brakes.  So – as he approached a six way intersection – he tried to steer it to the side of the road…  And the wheel came out in his hands.

I no longer remember how he got out of this situation, except that he SAID he’d closed his eyes and prayed several rosaries, which – he said – was kind of funny since he was a practicing Jew.  I suspect he downshifted until it came to a grinding halt.

For a little over a year, since I realized something had gone seriously wrong in publishing, I’ve had that feeling, that we’re all in that van, with no brakes and no steering, closing and our eyes and frantically looking for the rosaries we don’t carry.  Since then I’ve been looking around and I’ve noticed that there’s something wrong with almost every field from science to politics.  And then a few months ago, it hit me.  It’s not us in that broken van.  Or it doesn’t need to be.  Because, you see, we’re not the drivers in that van.  The leadership of whatever the field are the ones in the van.  They’re twisting the wheel, they’re applying brakes, they’re pressing the gas and nothing is happening.

In publishing, of course, the bastages deserve it.  For years they’ve been taking that van four wheel driving, (the push model) to teach the reading public what’s good for them.  They’ve driven in the wrong lane (those very odd accounting practices).  They’ve applied the brakes for the heck of it on a steep downhill incline (the foreshortening of “careers” to three books, then two, then one unless a miracle occurred) and a ton of other practices designed to break that van.  Sooner or later the poor van was going to give out and grind to a stop.  We’ve been screaming that, here, from the back seats, whenever we dared scream at all.  (After all, you know, they were driving.)

So, now, they’re driving and they’re screaming, but we don’t need to be in there.  That road is now covered in all sorts of other vehicles: flying cars and mopeds, bicycles and the inevitable guy jogging.  Because this is a metaphor, all it takes is that you close your eyes, then open them again and see things from the other side.

Yes, I know, if you were in the van, getting pretty good advances and getting somewhere, you’re looking at the moped with distaste.  So?  Soup it up.  Trade it for something bigger.  It’s in your hands.

The problem is most of us aren’t used to having any REAL control – not in writing, not in politics, not in news reporting, not in life – we’re used to be able to get behind the “people who will get us there.”  There are entire systems of prestige and patronage.  They’re milenia old, in society, and they worked on the basic principle that only someone with power and influence could reach a lot of other people.

But technology has upended all that.  Joe Schmo at his computer can suddenly become a cause celebre if he hits at just the right time.  (Luck?  Of course there’s luck involved.  What, you think there wasn’t luck in the old system?  If anything less luck is needed now, and more persistence, more of what my friend Dave Freer calls “battler spirit.”)

You can publish your own books.  If there’s any stigma left, it applies to those badly proofed and badly formatted ones we get now and then.  If you do a competent job and you hit it just right, you can make a living online, on your own. No, I’m not doing that yet, but I still have contracts to fulfill.  I think I can, though.  Maybe not with one book or two but… eventually.  No one made a living from a book or two in the old system, either, not unless you were one of the favorite children whom the establishment picked up usually for reasons other than your competence at writing.

Yes, the van is careening towards a six-way intersection and the leadership – not just publishers, but all the fossilized hangers on of the establishment – are screaming at you about how bad it is, how terrible, how we’re all going to diiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiie.

Unless you’re one of the leadership or one of the darling children, I suggest you close your eyes, open them again, and realize you don’t have to be in that van.  You can walk, ride or fly towards the intersection and pick your own path.  You don’t have to diiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiie.

Yeah, it won’t be as fast as the van, at least for now, but do you want to go fast where that van is going?  Let go of the broken wheel.  Stop praying.  Look around.  Inform yourself.  Research.  See the new opportunities.  FIND the new opportunities. Then pick the one best suited for you.  And if you want to follow the van for a while for the updraft, do so.  Just be aware that the rumors of the death of books and reading are grossly exaggerated.

You are not the van.

Yesterday, two rather fractious commenters, one on this blog and one on a friend’s post on another blog, made me think over a) the whole purpose of this blog and what I post here b) what is art, and what is the purpose of art c) the whole point of meaning in books and blog posts ranging from the meaning that can’t help being in it to the “message” bit d) the importance of politics to meaning and to art.

I know I’ve covered this territory before, but clearly I’ve not done it well enough, since it came up yet again.  Or perhaps what brought it up was a determined attempt to change/dismiss the conversations that go on here.  I’ve seen the same thing done to books.

So, pardon me while I try to explain again.  Warning: some of this is going to get all philosophical, but I’ll try to be clear and plain, nonetheless.  Note that these are not the answers for everyone, and I would not presume to dictate to other artists – I’d say other craftsmen – how to do their thing, but they are the answers for ME and in a way the only way I can function.

First let’s start with the purpose of this blog and what I post here.  I’ve called it a writer’s blog, and it is that.  I’m a writer.  Necessarily the way I’ve occupied my time the last twenty some years has left a mark on how I view life, the world and the metaphysical.  (I realized this, when I found myself at a very difficult time in my life, looking vaguely skyward and asking “What made you think that was a good plot twist?”  I could also go into how the way I read books is not the way I read books when writing them wasn’t my job.  Or the way life has become a way of researching, but I won’t.  All those are subjects for other posts and this one is going to be very long as it is.)  It also affects the things I’m interested in.

Some of my posts will be about how to write.  I know they’ll be of limited interest to pure readers.  Maybe.  Even in the days I thought I’d never write for a living, I liked knowing how the sausage was made.  Your mileage may vary, though.  A lot more of my posts will be about how things work/history/the mechanics of what we’ll call, with some poetic license, the human heart.  These too are part of my tool box and my stock in trade.  You have to understand others in order to write others convincingly.  Otherwise all your characters are yourself.  Yes, we know writers like that. Most of them fail to sell.  I suspect the ones who do sell do so by virtue of that magical “push” that publishing houses are finding is less and less effective.

And then, because we live in interesting times, some of my posts, at least, will be about the future and where the industry is going.  Because I’m a science fiction writer, some of them might even venture into where the world is going.  It might startle you to know that I have opinions about that too, and I can see trends that few people are talking about.  Part of this is that, I think, most people are only seeing the upheaval tech is bringing about in their own little sector.  Because of my specialty, I read EVERYTHING and talk to any expert who will stand still long enough, so I’m more of a generalist, and I wonder how many other people see that what affects them is happening ALL over, much less realize what kind of a world this will create.

If by now you’re going “But that leads you with both feet into politics.  And you say you don’t like politics or religion on your blog!”

Of course a lot of that leads me straight into politics, if by politics you see “the way things are organized” or “the way we view the world” or “the way we arrange economics” or “how we view the individual.”  Of course it does.  BUT that’s not the politics that’s banned on this blog.  You are allowed to comment on “That’s not how people work” or “Consider that altruism has a function in the human life.”

The politics that I don’t want on the blog are the same I don’t want in my books and work very hard to keep out of my books.

Sigh – this is going to be complicated, so hold on tight, okay?

I came over here for in time for the 80 election.  (And then I went back to Portugal for years, to finish my degree.  Never mind that.)  At the time Heinlein had just exploded in my own mind as the lodestar of the authors who guided my thinking.  Up until about two years before, I had had several influences, but as I got close to 18, Heinlein seemed to make the most sense to me.

As we neared the election, and I got involved in one candidate’s campaign, one of the questions that worried me was “How would Heinlein view what I was doing?”  And another “Who was Heinlein voting for?”  (Years later, talking to Ginny, I found he had voted for the candidate I’d worked for.  But that was through private knowledge.  I couldn’t have GUESSED otherwise.)

Now, no one, not even the least attuned of the fans could say that Heinlein’s books were completely apolitical or that he had no MEANING to his stories.  However, as far as his meaning applied to then contemporary American politics, I – a zany fan – was in the dark.

This is sort of what I aim for with my own writing.  It’s what I aim for in my blog too.

Yes, I do realize if I’d been in the con circuit I’d probably have KNOWN Heinlein’s political affiliation – or even if I’d heard the spiteful comments of some of his colleagues.  In the same way, my politics aren’t very hard to find out in terms of “who is Sarah voting for?”  Heaven knows I’ve written about it enough in the last few years, though never on this blog.  They aren’t as easy to DEFINE, as far as “what political philosophy does Sarah hold?” but they are still easy enough to find out.  I contribute to a couple of political blogs.  Most of you know this.

But then why the double-life?  Why keep myself innocent of politics here and in my books?  Why not reference current candidates, excoriate the ones I hate, laud the ones I approve of and generally talk here as I do in my political persona?

Well, see, that has to do with the nature of art.  At least art as I understand it.

Most people know art when they see it, which means most people have a different view of art.  (I still rather like the Terry Pratchett explanation that art has either urns or columns.  I’d guess in writing, art has descriptions of urns or columns?  Um… I’m falling down on art, if so.)
At least, most people who think for themselves have an individual definition of art.  A lot of the public who is not particularly interested in the art form being discussed – be it music, visual art or writing – just assumes whatever the experts say is art must be so, since these are “the people who know.”  (This is why even as the reading market fractures and “push” no longer works for your average, run of the mill bestseller, you’ll get more and more mega bestsellers and those will be the “pushed” ones.  Think Twilight or Hunger Games.  Those will succeed because the publicity around them is so extraordinarily massive that it will get people who don’t care much for reading to buy them on the principle that “everyone is saying these are really good.”  If you see the power of the mega-push decline, it will mean, paradoxically that MORE people are reading for entertainment.  This is because) Most people know what they like.  But a lot of them are vaguely embarrassed by it, because it doesn’t agree with the experts, so it can’t be “art.”

One of my family’s favorite pastimes (we have mentioned we’re bad people, right?) is to go through the modern art section of art museums and do unvarnished critiques of “installations.”  Because a) yeah, we know how to evaluate lines b) if something is a crock of pretentious baloney we don’t care what the “experts” say.  We know how the sausage was made.

Anyway, for me art – real art – be it in writing, music or visual art is by definition something that transcends its time and place and both holds a mirror up to the person experiencing it, by touching something so basic in his human experience that it tells him what it is to be human, and allows the person experiencing it to momentarily escape the prison of his brain and see what it’s like to experience the world as someone else.

In books, this is literally so.  We have the advantage over movies in telling stories, because movies can only TELL the story while we can have the reader BE someone else for the duration of the reading experience.  Or at least that’s what we aim for, and approach in varying degrees, (sometimes in the same day). [This is one of the reasons I despise the minimalist style of story telling that aimed for the stripped-down camera-eye.  Why should we put down our superior tools and take up the inferior ones?]

The great books we read become a part of us and we use them as references in our own lives and emotions.

So, why not let contemporary politics leak in?  Aren’t those important?  Don’t we live through them?  Aren’t I a political animal who often sees the next election, the next issue, the next cause celebre as a vital hill to die on?

Okay, let’s talk about Shakespeare.  Take a deep breath, it connects and it will all become obvious in a moment.

Shakespeare has, I believe, stood the test of time.  The fact that we can still emote with and “experience” his characters despite the fact that a) his art was closer to the script writers of today (though not quite) b) our world is so different from his he might well go mad trying to process it, means that he did indeed touch something essential about – that inadequate term again – the human heart.
Shakespeare lived at a time of great ferment, when the modern state was literally lurching forth out of the womb of the renaissance.  And yet most of his plays are apolitical – at least with reference to the personalities of the time, or the time immediately before him.

Those that aren’t…  Well, I know many more of you than I’d like to think about like USING Richard III.  We won’t go into that.  Richard III, the play, has become a pawn of modern political thinkers who push it this way and that to attack their enemies.  Stage it just SO and it is an indictment of fascism.  Turn it around the OTHER way and attack whoever you don’t like in politics today.

That is because Shakespeare was a genius, and when geniuses turn their minds to mere political hackery – which Richard III was for him – they still create a superior work that can be used as a weapon centuries later.

But it is a weapon and, as such, it is not as much art as it could otherwise be.  The reality of Richard III intrudes in the minds of those who have studied the history.  Beyond the fact that he was not a hunchback, he was a complex man and in many ways no viler than anyone in his time.  Richard III the play is political hackwork, written to curry favor with Shakespeare’s patrons.

Had all Shakespeare wrote been those “history” plays he would now be an obscure Elizabethan playwright, maybe as good as Marlowe, maybe a little better, studied only by those of us who have a jones for that sort of thing.  And had he, instead of Richard III written the Tragic and Faithful History of Sir Roland Octone, King of Fareeans, the play would likely be superior, because, unmoored from the need to appease his patrons and justify the rather icky Tudor reigns, he would have made the tyrant more human and touched more of that universal humanity that is life to writing.

Why would that identification with current – for any time – political parties/affiliations blunt art?

Because humans are tribal creatures.  Yes, I know I keep telling you that.  Listen, though.  Humans are tribal creatures and as such are predisposed to identify ours/not ours.  Writers are human.  (Well most of us.  At least when the writing is going okay.  You don’t want to place any bets when I’m blocked.)  If you start using labels and use the labels you identify with, you exclude other people.  Writing from the point of view of the label means, by definition, that the book is going to deal in caricatures.  Caricatures are very well in their place, but the Mona Lisa is not a caricature, nor is every portrait ever painted supposed to be a caricature.  In the same way, though one or two books one reads and likes (when it pulls for one’s side, at least) can be caricatures, we don’t always want to read caricatures.

Part of the issue with writing – particularly science fiction, to a lesser extent fantasy, but to a greater extent (weirdly) mystery – is that the publishing establishment – a very small group of people, most of whom either agreed with each other or were afraid to dissent – collided at high speed with boomer ethos [not to be confused with boomer Athos, which is either a time travel story or a reincarnation thing].  Boomer ethos demanded “message” in their books.  (Don’t ask me why!  It just seems to have been true in every art form all over the world for that particular generation.) And most people – certainly publishing establishment people – THINK message means “current politics” either in the form of echoing a cause celebre du jour, or in the form of naming party affiliation.

This became such a touchstone and a demand, that – before indie came and set everything on its ear – the establishment was busily making regency romances as unreadable as everything else by demanding political rants in the middle of those.  These political rants were usually about things that are VERY well decided in our days, and which frankly don’t need defense.  They made of every romance heroine a vocal supporter of woman rights (before she gives it up to the hero after one kiss…  Don’t go there) and every “good” character a vocal opponent of slavery or child abuse or whatever the publisher’s hobby horse was.

Let alone that this was in most cases a-historical (yes, it’s possible that most women thought they had a raw deal back then.  They did.  But they wouldn’t think of their rights in modern terms, which these books portrayed.  And yes, an amazing number of people at the time were publically or privately opposed to slavery.  But again, very few of them would think of racial – or social – equality in modern terms.  Humans are tribal creatures and the ‘consensus’ of the time was elsewhere.  Yes, there’s ways of making it convincing, but most writers can’t/don’t know how.  And besides… every book?  On subjects that are a “duh” in modern times?)

That type of demand for explicit political allegiance is the death of art.  All it creates is an endless succession of … not even Richard III, more like Henry VI.  You read them, you flinch past the bad parts, and then you never pick it up again.  And that’s if it doesn’t take flying lessons because it says something that amounts to an insult to the group you see yourself as fitting in.

Freeing us from that type of nonsense, expanding and fracturing the book market is one of the best parts of the ebook revolution.

Another good part – beyond creating what I consider better “art” – is that not having to identify and label yourself allows you to talk to readers who might otherwise disagree with you.  As much as I love Heinlein, I – of course – don’t believe as he did in everything.  For one, I find keeping a “group marriage” going, human nature being what it is would require WAY more emotional effort than most humans can muster.  (And yes, I realize there are group marriages that work.  I just don’t “believe” in them, and from the outside it seems a dicey endeavor, needing exceptional people.)  But there are other points, minor or major.  I can still read him and love his world and his characters, because his characters are internally consistent AND convincing.

This is partly because he didn’t tag them with contemporary politic tags, which would both hold me at bay and in a way allow him to – almost without noticing – create caricatures, instead of real people.

And that’s the other reason I don’t allow politics – or at least political identification tags – on this blog.  Oh, I’ll ignore it once or twice, but I will NOT allow the blog discussion to be diverted to current political tagging (most of which are deceptive, anyway, let alone that one of the sides changes names more often than a Chinese restaurant with a bad menu) or the current cause celebre because to do so means that the stuff that interests me, like futurism or ethics becomes diverted to a flood of tribalistic name calling.

Allow me to tell you, too, that if you what you identify with is the label, you are not thinking through any of the underlying issues and you’re dehumanizing your opponents – and yourself.

I’ll make an exception to this when talking of the ideology Heinlein called Red Fascism and its blinkered economic theory.  Like stupidity as referenced by Heinlein, there is no way to “try it” that it will work.  Not for human beings.  Not on Earth.  To quote Heinlein, “the result is always death; there is no reprieve.”  That it is considered bon ton and bien pensant in intellectual circles today only shows that education, like publishing five years ago, has become so confused it needs a revolution.  But that’s a post for another time.

My goal for the discussions in this blog is to discuss the real issues and the real causes, without recourse to touch-stones that call out to group identity and close off thought.

And my goal for my writing is to create stuff like Romeo And Juliet and maybe, one day, if I’m very lucky, Macbeth and even perhaps, in the fullness of time, King Lear and NOT an endless succession of Henry VI.

If that doesn’t interest you and that’s not your notion of the writer’s art, so be it.  In the end, I write what I have to write because it’s what someone like me CAN write interestingly (or even competently.)  No artist, not even the great ones, ever pleased every one.  And no one EVER liked every story he heard or read.  However this is my path and the only one I can walk.

Normally I don’t do book reviews.  This is not because I don’t read, but because I read everything.  Though most of my blog followers are odd ducks (this is said in the most appreciative way possible, because it takes one) I don’t think even you would stand still for a revolving selection of books, from mystery to regency romance, (I have yet to venture into the other kinds.  Baby steps) to sf, to history or popular science, some new, some re-reads, most with the notation “Meh, it was okay.”

Most books I read are in fact okay.  At least I pick them carefully enough to get that.  Very few excite a “wow” and even fewer for me to want to re-read sometime.  And even fewer do I wish to write more than one line about.  (Mind you, if you’re all extremely curious, I’m willing to post – when I remember – a series of “this week I read” probably on Saturday.  I don’t know why you’d be curious, though.  It’s kind of like listing what I had for breakfast.)

Anyway, this brings us, sideways and backwards (through gorse bushes) to Ric Locke’s book Temporary Duty.

I first became aware of it through a mention in Instapundit and I emailed Ric — I don’t even remember why.  He sent me his book.  I read it, thought “wow,” and set it aside.

Then I met Ric at Fencon, and he asked me for a blurb for TD.  At which point I thought I might as well do a review.  Only I got sick and hit my head and… life has been interesting.  So – here’s the review which would fall under “pimping my friends” and might if I meet Ric a few more times.  Right now, we’re just friendly acquaintances.

Ric Locke’s Temporary Duty is science fiction for the soul.  Not that it’s in the slightest bit spiritual or about the supernatural.

It is about the first contact between an interstellar-faring species and humanity.  The humans who get contacted are officialdom and eventually two low-ranking military men get assigned to serve in the alien ship, to prepare the ship for the detachment of troops who will go with the aliens on a voyage.  (Here you must excuse me for using – I’m sure – all the wrong terms.  I’m having trouble accessing notes on my kindle, and the reason I never write anything even vaguely military is that I make a salad of official designations.)

Through an intentional bureaucratic trick, the two end up staying aboard and visiting other worlds with the traders.

This is the barest of schematics for the novel, but Ric actually has a few surprises build in there that I don’t wish to give away.  We’ll just say that reading the novel brought back the sense of wonder I thought had vanished from science fiction.  It made me feel about 12 or maybe 13, in a good way.  I felt the same wonder and amazement I used to feel while reading The Adventures of Captain Morgan.

To an extent, it is because it’s the same type of book.  It taps into the “young man makes good” mythos going all the way to Babylonian legends.

In another way it’s a serious book of social analysis and critique, all of it wrapped in a bang up adventure.  And I liked the way his aliens answered pervasive story telling like Star Trek.  Let’s just say there is a reason that Temporary Duty is one of the finalists for the Prometheus Award.

All that said, let me say I know why it wasn’t bought by one of the major houses.  The beginning is pure wonder and takes time to develop our understanding of the world, as the main characters learn the language, etc.  A lot of the golden-age SF worked that way.  The sense of wonder was built slowly, by layers, while the characters discovered things they didn’t know about themselves and their environment.

These days, story telling requires a gun held to the head of the character in the first page – metaphorically if not realistically.  There has to be something hanging over your head.  Or, of course, it has to be a long disquisition on post modern philosophy with the barest trappings of fiction.  Thank heavens, Ric’s story is neither of these.  And thank heavens we have indie publishing which allowed this story to be published and allowed me to read it.

Now, kindly, go and buy his book, so that he’ll feel inspired to write the second one.  You see, he left a lot of puzzling hints, including an implication humans came from the stars (made me feel about 12 and reading Space Engineers) and I want him to write more about that universe and explain at least some of it.

So, go get it.  You won’t regret it.