Category: Uncategorized

Yes, I have other posts burning a hole in my head, so this week might be post-rich.

I also figured out what’s delaying the writing. Until I recover my IP from Baen I’m not continuing my mainline novels in those universes (there might be others, but it seems kind of pointless, since it would be new characters anyway, and so, in a way, starting anew, while in the same universe, which has fans who would be upset at starting anew.  Though there might be a sub-series called USAians, starting in the 22nd century. Haven’t decided yet.)  I have two other worlds, one fantasy-sf (don’t ask) and another a vast overhanging universe that will probably consume all my other future space operas, even if they seem unrelated.

Having started a novel in each, I came to a grinding halt.  Why?  Well, that took me time to figure out.  It boils down to this (beyond weird medicine interactions that made both my ADHD and depression unmanageable, and wedding and other life stuff that I haven’t talked about here): for the last fifteen years, I’ve written in long-established worlds that I knew like the back of my hand (whether my own or others) or historic stuff which has its own worldbuilding.  So, the stutters I’ve been experiencing are when I run up against …. something.  Like “She comes from an expensive, ultra-developed world, named…. named…” And then the ADHD takes over and I go off to clean toilets.

So today, the writing will happen with a Rocket book notebook (you type in it, then take a picture and it does handwriting recognition, even for my horrible handwriting) at my elbow, for notes when I hit an unknown unknown.  It’s a self-generating world bible.  Since I’ll probably spend the rest of my life in this world (with expeditions to DST, should that ever come back to me) at least for space-opera, I might as well build the foundations right.  Yes, it’s a lot like work and I’m lazy (duh, I’m a writer.) But it has to happen.

Anyway, so that’s been the hold up (on top of everything else.)

Now to the topic on hand: how much being born and raised in Portugal influenced my writing.

My fan eventually came back with the “But I want to know what great Portuguese literary works influenced your writing.”

So let’s talk about that.  You see, the problem is not that Americans are ignorant of other countries. Every country is ignorant of other countries.  It is that Americans, born and bred, tend to not realize every country is not the US.  The concept of how foreign and bizarre things can get is not even in the compass.

As I tried to think of one, just one, Portuguese literary work that influenced my work, I came up dry.  Sure, there were some children’s books and fairy tales that influenced me, but they are few and far between compared to foreign ones even there.  I’d say when I discovered fairy tales my favorite were grandma’s editions of the Countess de Segur.  (And I only discovered fairy tales at 16 or so, realizing I had a hole in my upbringing.)  If you’re into fairy tales, google her.  Her stuff is in Guttenberg, and frankly deserves better editions.

It’s not that I didn’t read Portuguese books. I did.  If they came near me, I read them.  It’s more that I don’t remember them/didn’t read them preferentially.

I have a theory for that.

Mostly I read Enid Blyton (all of them, even the boarding school books my brother disapproved of) then graduated to Rex Stout and Agatha Christie, and eventually fell headlong into SF/F.  Other things fell in along the way, including but not limited to Sir Walter Scott and Dumas.  But in general those were my influences.

Portuguese prose writing (more on that later) tends to have a really slow tempo and a weird, kind of flat reminiscent voice.  This is not just 19th century (most of the works kicking around) it’s what allowed me to detect Portuguese writers using English names in US or UK anthologies.

The more recent Portuguese work is all message fic, and the message is very po-mo, very left, and I already got a surfeit of that at school, so literature classes became “How little can I read of this while passing the test.”  For novels, at least.  Most short stories are short-shorts, and usually also message fic, or “done for the shock or twist ending.”  Those often have a decent voice, but the genre is limiting.

The reason for the state of Portuguese literature is this: there is no money in it.

It’s not just that Portugal is TINY (Brazil is bigger, but the language can grate.)  It’s that most Portuguese aspire to write SOMETHING.  So Portuguese publishers are determined not to shell out a cent for the work.

Under such conditions, popular literature doesn’t exist.  Amusing the public is a DISTANT and remote thing.  The publishers are going to make some money off these free books, anyway, and why bother?  They try rather to publish things that schools will put on their reading program.  The results are predictable. These aren’t things (by and large, short-shorts excepted) you read for fun.  They are more for display than for reading for adventure or fun or… anything.

In this day and age, I’ll be a dog if I understand why a bunch of Portuguese would-be writers don’t band together, arrange for having their work translated into English, and start putting out dual-language anthologies.  If I had more time, I’d suggest it/run it myself.

And maybe that would change things.  But maybe like news/opinion blogs it is too weird for the European mind?

Anyway that’s Portuguese prose.  Its fate is what always comes to things that are not monetized: they become display items to the elite and ossify.

I used to be really sad — and my dad is heartbroken, particularly on the mysteries — that none of my books were translated into Portuguese.  Until I found out how few they have of Pratchett (and those only in Brazilian English) and none that I can find of Correia.

Portuguese poetry was always an exception, because the language is suited to it, and Portuguese write poetry like they breathe. So there’s always a ton of Portuguese Poetry that I like, and I own several books.  And it has influenced me to the extent I use rhetorical tricks first learned from memorized poems.  I not only think well of Fernando Pessoa: if I ever have the opportunity I’m going to make him four versions of a time traveler that got lost (those who know his poetry will appreciate that.)

Anyway, this concludes this dive into the origins of my writing.  And now I need to go do some of it. (GROAN.)  I hate the work, but it’s the price I pay to get the stories out of my head and make money to keep a roof over my head.  See you tomorrow.

……. First, coffee.

In Flanders Fields

by John McCrae, May 1915

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

Europe is dying of a WWI wound. And America is suffering the contagion.

The best of Europe at the time died in Flanders (And France) fields, and all the poppies that grow upon them obscure that in their absence the weasels, the sentimentalists, and most of all the demagogues seized upon their sacrifice to tell future generations what it meant.

Not even World War II, born of new internationalist movements (even though one of them emphasized imagined national identity) convinced people that the problem was not nationalism, instead of, say, crazy prescriptive just-so philosophies, or totalitarianism, or considering humans no more than widgets.

And so the world went careening after “internationalism” and “world government.” Both of which are not just bad ideas, they’re suicidal ideas, where the West is concerned.

Race is of relatively little importance in human affairs.  (Genetics, maybe, but even then it’s iffy.) Culture, however, is of massive, overpowering importance.  And culture is markedly difficult of change.  Archeological anthropologists can trace survivals of culture in places where the normal human pattern before the 20th century prevailed, and all the men were killed by the invading tribe, and all the women impregnated by the invaders.

Words and tales survive of the old culture, because mothers sing lullabies and talk of homely things.  Patterns of behavior survive too, enough to make the new colony not a replica of the motherland.

Since — thank heavens — none of us is talking of invading the whole world and replacing it with western culture by killing everyone over the age of three — thank heavens because even when very mild and relatively successful rule by conquerors has odd effects. Witness Japan’s population crash — talking about a world government or internationalism is insane talk.  Inviting horders of unaccultured (and unacculturable because hordes) less successful (by the only measurement that counts, of decreasing human disease, hunger, misery and mortality) cultures is inviting them to influence your culture till you too can’t survive.  And letting the world tell you how to live results in rule by envy, at least if you’re as rich and powerful as the US.

It’s time to take a deep breath.  Remember the dead of world war I — sacrificed to a web of crazy international alliances and the last reverberations of the industrial revolution disturbing society — remember the dead of world war II — dead over infatuation with a crazy ideology that promised heaven on Earth and the need to stop it — remember the victims of communism, and those who died fighting it — dead over infatuation with a crazy ideology that promised heaven on Earth and the need to stop it — and here, at the eye of the storm take a deep breath and reconsider everything you were taught.

Then refuse to hate your country or your culture.  Refuse to hate the West too.  Sure, we’ve made mistakes historically, but what culture hasn’t.  And at least what resulted is the best society for humans yet, where our poor suffer from obesity and expensive addictive substances.

Square your shoulders.  Those young men, sleeping under Flanders fields, might have died in a misguided clash from the age of empires, in a misguided attempt to end all wars.  The war in which they died is best known as the War of the Two Defeated.

But they were the best of the west.

And we will not let them down.

It’s time to rebuild.

Book Promo

*Note these are books sent to us by readers/frequenters of this blog.  Our bringing them to your attention does not imply that we’ve read them and/or endorse them, unless we specifically say so.  As with all such purchases, we recommend you download a sample and make sure it’s to your taste.  If you wish to send us books for next week’s promo, please email to bookpimping at outlook dot com.  One book per author per week. Amazon links only.-SAH*

J. D. BELL’S FIRST BOOK:  Selai.

 

“The first thing you do, you kill the sheriff.” This is a bit of writers’ lore that generally works, and JD Bell displays it done well. SELAI hits the ground running and doesn’t slow down. It’s not really an urban fantasy because the setting is more varied and would better be described as modern fantasy. Bell establishes his characters quickly, and leaves puzzles like fishhooks in the story. This locks the reader in as one tries to make sense of novel and totally alien concepts. Bell escapes the trap of simply reheating or rehashing the common tropes in favor of striking out in new directions and draws the reader into a world where our quotidian world is only a small part of the universe. For an action-packed read in which the rules are not, at first, clearly perceived, this book is ground-breaking.

James K Burk, author of “Taking Hope” and “The Twelve.”

Vignettes by Luke, Mary Catelli and ‘Nother Mike

o what’s a vignette? You might know them as flash fiction, or even just sketches. We will provide a prompt each Sunday that you can use directly (including it in your work) or just as an inspiration. You, in turn, will write about 50 words (yes, we are going for short shorts! Not even a Drabble 100 words, just half that!). Then post it! For an additional challenge, you can aim to make it exactly 50 words, if you like.

We recommend that if you have an original vignette, you post that as a new reply. If you are commenting on someone’s vignette, then post that as a reply to the vignette. Comments — this is writing practice, so comments should be aimed at helping someone be a better writer, not at crushing them. And since these are likely to be drafts, don’t jump up and down too hard on typos and grammar.

If you have questions, feel free to ask.

Your writing prompt this week is: Order

I’m perhaps unusual — and it’s perhaps part of the uniquely Portuguese upbringing — in that my earliest memories include story-songs.

Maybe not absolutely unique. A lot of European culture included folk ballads that told stories in song.  Fairytales, mostly, but also strange otherwordly happenings.

Mine were mostly fado. And it wasn’t just being sung to sleep with them (though that was part of it, my being a sickly premature baby who often had trouble breathing through the night, I spent a lot of time being held and sung to. And both parents have operatic-grade voices, well suited to the exercise.)  It was the fact that mom worked from home, and like many women who work at manual (okay, hers was mind too, but the execution was mostly hand) work, she amused herself by singing to herself (when she wasn’t listening to radio programs, mostly on history and mythology because apples, trees, etc.)

Fado, for those of you who don’t know it — go look it up on youtube. I’ll wait — is mostly mournful songs about doomed love.  So, Country, you guys say.  Eh.  Kind of.  If you overlay the left-over-Arab-colonization bullshit about fate.  Yeah.

It’s funny, and I must have been an unusually cynical three year old because my earliest memories of mom’s songs, I dismissed all the ones about a mother’s love as “mommyist propaganda.” But the other ones?

When you’re a kid, you’re sort of a sponge, and you look around everywhere for info about what the world is actually like. EVERYWHERE. I remember looking for clues in brother’s biology books, pamphlets he brought home, books he and my cousin read which were like spaghetti westerns written ten to the day or something, Disney comics, comments dropped by grandma…  And extrapolating. Grandma would say something about how chickens acted when broody, and I would apply it to pregnant women.  (Not even joking.)

Kids are WEIRD.

And I was constantly bombarded with the idea you were born with a “star” with “fate.”

So, how much of this made it into my writing?

I don’t know.

Obviously I use prophecy and foretelling in my fantasy.  Or at least in my historical fantasy.  And sometimes in my historicals, period, since people at the time believed in these things.

And obviously, my stories — at least short stories — often get their emotional punch from a sense of tragedy and trust me, guys, there’s nothing quite so tragic as fado stories,  but… How much does it seep in, really?

I don’t know.

I know I have that issue in my life. I keep realizing I’m planning for things as though there were a fate, and I have to either help or combat it.  Which is deranged, because even if there were predestination, free men and women are honor bound to disbelieve it, because it’s evil and counters free will.  I mean, even if it really were the way the world worked, we should fight it.

Only I don’t think it is.  Except sometimes my back brain defaults to that as an assumption.  Except…  I don’t know if that’s from fados or just normal human nonsense.  We really have trouble with the idea that the future is unwritten, at a fundamental back-bone level. As a species.

Then there are the other songs and stories. A lot of what got sung are medieval ballads, and somehow my crazy family preserved the original/close to versions.  Possibly because most of our women were literate, and either wrote them down or read them in compilations.

There is the one that starts with “It was midnight when the blind man came and knocked thrice on the middle door.”  It doesn’t end well. Or at least it doesn’t end well, if you go with older son’s interpretation.  Having caught me singing it while working, and understanding just enough to get the gist he said “Would you stop singing about death?”

But you wouldn’t know it from the 17th or 18th century version in which the blind man is a king and the girl becomes a queen or whatever.

Those I can trace more directly to my writing, because certain situations in them fascinate me.  One of them being the shepherdess who suddenly becomes a princess.  “Put rings on her fingers and silk on her back” is something that gives me chills for some reason.  Perhaps the sudden change in fortunes.

For the record I’m also fascinated by the “If you like pina coladas” situation in which two cheating spouses find out they are perfect for each other.  But I l like in all sorts of other situations, like two friends conspiring for opposite sides realize they are still friends, etc.  For some reason, the situation is very common to fado. Fado “corrido” which is usually tragicomic.

Other than that?

Most Portuguese literature has a slow and tragic feel.  At least most traditional Portuguese literature.  But not only.  I used to be able to identify Portuguese writers in anthologies, even when they were writing under English names, simply by the “feel” and tempo.

That I was aware of when I first started writing for publication.  That I’ve tried to counter.  At least, unless it’s a short story that calls for it, and I want to emphasize it.  Even then, the tempo is a problem, even when the tragedy isn’t.

So, if you’ve ever read one of my stories that left you sobbing and puddled on the floor? Thank a fado.

If you think I need to speed up my narration and add more action?  You’re not wrong. And I’m working on it. But you should probably curse a fado.

I’ll go into other bits and pieces that might have seeped in, Monday.

For now? I don’t know my influences, except for the slow tempo, are unique.  As I said, all old European-upbringing people would have them, and I find echoes in Pratchett and Christie.

Like most human beings, I came to writing with baggage. And if we look carefully it goes all the way to the Iliad.  At least. Maybe further back.

And all I can say is: And? Other than being human, what does that mean?
I don’t know.

 

In one of his more eloquent moments, my son referred to Portugal as an iceberg in time: whatever you see of the present is a tiny part, towed and moved by the massive weight of history.

He wasn’t wrong, of course. Part of the freight on Portuguese culture is the “way we do things” some of which go back to Rome, and it’s impossible to see how counterproductive they are, because they have become “the way we do things.”  In fact, they are largely invisible, just like water is to a fish.

Not that it hasn’t broken, at times, with traumas or — forgive me for using such a term — a paradigm shift, such as the discoveries. But — like art styles, which is what makes Portuguese monumental architecture so fascinating — it never really goes away, it just gets overlaid.

Europe has come the closest I’ve seen to changing the culture, and it’s not really, it’s just another layer.

How does this influence someone growing up in it?  Well, history is impossible to ignore, and you get a sense of how tightly packed it was.

It is comparable to the two Victorians we lived in for the last 30 years or so: you couldn’t turn around and change something, without becoming acutely aware of all the people who’d lived there the hundred years before you, and everything they’d done and changed.

The US, in contrast, is like living in the nice suburban home we have now.  Sure, it was hastily built and it shows in places, and the only couple who lived there before us never wasted an opportunity to do something in the most bass awkward and bizarre way possible, but overall, it’s just a nice relatively young house and much easier to change because you’re not dealing with a century of stranger’s (and strange) decisions and short cuts.

So how did growing up with that freight of the past affect my writing?

I don’t know.  I don’t know for the same reason you can’t be on the street and watch yourself walk by.  J. K. Rowling spent two or three years in the city next to the village I grew up in, i.e. the place I spent most of my time after elementary school.  People keep tracing to her work all sorts of peculiarities of the city.  Though I’m not sure they’re right about the cloaks and suits, because you know, Cambridge and other university towns int he UK preserve medieval attire too.  Honestly, though, I can see the platform whatever and a half coming from her experience with Portuguese railroads, because it often feels like your train is leaving from a secret platform. (And anyway I had all sorts of daydreams tied in to the Portuguese railroads and stations, mostly because they’re chaotic and never throw anything away: there’s carriages and abandoned trains in forgotten byways. But mostly for the same reason I had daydreams about roads.  “I wanna get out of this place.”)

I know that I grew up in a family — or at least with a dad — that cherishes history and historical accounts, as well as legends, and in a place so old that it’s thought to be the longest inhabited area of Portugal.

There were Roman mines in the woods near the train line. There were Roman and medieval inscriptions in the woods dad took me through. It’s impossible not to be aware of these people, that they lived there, and that they and their way of life are mostly gone.

Does it change anything?

I don’t know.  There is only so much deep history you can put in a story, or a future history, before your readers roll their eyes and go “oh, please, now.”

And you have to make the events right there more important, right? Or else, you get lost in grey goo. “Sure, there’s a barbarian invasion, and civilization might collapse.  There’s been many civilizations. Yawn.”

I think perhaps — at least son said this as we were trampling around Porto’s oldest part, (oldest house stills standing dating to the 9th century, before the country existed) — most games and books in the US lack that feel.  The feel of deep time, of things just getting overlaid and surviving wars and revolutions, etc, and still being used, more or less for the purpose they were built.

Maybe I can write more convincingly about stuff being really old and overlaid, and the feel people lived here a long time.  Maybe.

Because with writing the problem is always that you have to both be aware enough of it to write it and communicate it to the next person.  And mostly, what really comes through is the stories people tell themselves about the past, which tend to have a certain sameness to them, whether the past is actually there or not, if that makes sense.

Next up: songs of fate.

 

 

 

 

This series of reposts/posts started partly because someone in Sarah’s Diner, on FB asked me what was Portuguese about my writing.  Which set me thinking.

Years ago, I’d have said “my writing tends to be more poetic than average.”  Only I’m not sure that’s true anymore, or at least not in most circumstances. I have fought it pretty hard the last several years, mostly because unless it’s a certain type of writing (say, involving Shakespeare and fairies, for instance) it gets in the way of readers experiencing the story. If you stop and marvel at the words, you’re not following, much less living the action.

And yeah, the poetic thing is absolutely a Portuguese survival.  Not only because Portuguese as a language approaches meaning in spirals and therefore is more suited to poetry than to any other type of writing, but because Portuguese culture emphasizes and favors (makes heroes of) poets.

It is said that every Portuguese has a poetry book in his drawer (written by himself)and I used to doubt it but not anymore.

What’s truly amazing is reading history books written in Portuguese and seeing all the extra words added to a sentence to “make the rhythm work” even though the book is non fiction, factual, and the added words add nothing.  Heck, sometimes there are subsidiary phrases that make no sense, but are there to add the rhythm and the feel. Which to a now thoroughly accultured mind reads really odd, let me tell you.

Now, Charlie Martin, who occasionally edits me, says that my writing still has a Latin Rhythm (please, make it not be the Girl From Ipanema) and I can sort of buy that, at least when I’m writing off the cuff and letting myself go.  Perhaps like the accent in speaking it is something trained in so early that you cannot lose it, no matter how you try.

I know it’s given people very odd ideas of who I am and what my ambitions in the field are, probably from the beginning.  People have thought that I aspired to be Faulkner, when in fact I can’t even read Faulkner without getting impatient, and people — by which I mean NYC publishers and agents — have assumed I aspired to or was best suited to literary fantasy and then were horribly disappointed I wanted to write “Space Opera trash.”

Eh. Indie makes that not a big deal, though there must be something still remaining, considering I often get praised for “beautiful language” on something I wrote while sick or sleepy and which I only gave a cursory look to to kill typos after.

So, that’s possible. Something of a penumbra of Latin might remain on my word choice and rhythm, though I’d argue it’s grown much fainter or at least much more controllable over the last 20 years.

But that was not what the person asking wanted to know.  They wanted to know what ur-story, what trained in bit of thought came along for a ride in my plots and character creation, which would never have been there if I hadn’t spent my first 22 years in Portugal and hadn’t spoken Portuguese almost exclusively for the first 14 of those.

It’s a fair question, but one which, like almost everything in life, is far more complicated to answer than it might seem at first glance.

Because your early training in infancy is everything from legends to lullabies, from the environment you grew up in, to the the unspoken assumptions of your relatives.

Now, I am perhaps more conscious of those than most people, having had to deconstruct them as part of my attempt to acculturate.  But how far does the unraveling go? How far the root?

I don’t know if this is of any interest to anyone but myself — feel free to tell me to shut up — but if anyone else wants to follow along tomorrow we’ll look at “A sense of history” which is definitely different than if I’d grown up in the US and which arguably influences everything, including future history.

 

 

Recently I was reading a book by a sensible-sounding Christian author about the dangers of fiddling with the supernatural, and was lulled along, in a sense of “that makes sense” until I hit her condemnation of D & D and how it prepares people for deals with the devil.

To be fair, this might have been like when I was following along with the geologist describing Pangaea, and suddenly hit his conviction that dinosaurs are circling the Earth in a world-spaceship.  Because moments later this lady was going on about backward Satanic messages in Rock and Roll and moments later of fantasy books that talk of magic in general, both of which seem to be to put it mildly exaggerated dangers.

After all, it might be a danger to believe the devil doesn’t exist, but an equal danger is to attribute every little thing that annoys us to him, when it’s adequately explained by human folly, frailty and perverseness or when, like fantasy books in general (in particular some are pernicious, as are all kinds of books), there is nothing to explain beyond “people like to dream about harmless stuff that doesn’t hurt them.” Though I suppose it might be baffling to people who don’t like to indulge their imagination or who, like this lady, might be prone to more danger from their imagination than others.

But yesterday night, possibly because of Fever, The Return, I found myself thinking of D & D in particular. I’ve played it a total of one time, and what I noticed about it is that it “pulls” from the same place as writing.  Which is why I haven’t indulged since, because I save my work for paying work (in theory. Soon, I promise, there will be finished stuff. I hate my body.)

I should explain this lady, in the rest of her book, details some harrowing possibly dangerous supernatural experiences, before her conversion and invoking of protection of religious prayers and symbols.

This is something I can’t really explain to anyone who hasn’t/can’t experience it, but trust me, some of us can have this stuff happen to us; there is a frame of mind that invites it; and this woman seemed unusually prone to it, and also unable to tell good from bad at a fundamental level and I don’t mean just at the level all of us can be fooled, but having had no instruction at all on what can go wrong when messing with such things.  Maybe that’s fairly normal for the US? Maybe I’m lucky to have grown up in a place where old traditions and old dangers are remembered?

So perhaps she sees exaggerated dangers, because she is unusually prone to falling into trouble? Kind of like I’m terrified of driving in a six lane highway because I know my reflexes are slow? (It’s the other mugs I’m afraid of.)

Because of my job, I do a lot of reading on paranormal research/legends.  I’d recommend Hungry Ghosts and Signals in the Storm on the subject.

Most — like 98% — of paranormal phenomena and research are prone to the trickster effect.  Not just because the people involved are often tricksters (and worse, lie to themselves) but because there seem to be, for lack of a better term “trickster spirits” out there that will mess with anyone who undertakes research or experimentation in the area.  Or if you prefer, because our subconscious tricks us and plays bad jokes on us, when we put ourselves in a susceptible mood.

That said, I suspect this writer’s (and other’s) issues with D & D because D & D brought into the “susceptible mood” (or mode) people who are not writers, and therefore not used with the fact that your imagination/subconscious/whatever kicks up fully formed eideations that seem compellingly real.

There are two types of writers. Those who work in the limnear dark, the “muse led” or gateway writers (as Kate Paulk puts it) and those to whom writing is a process purely of the rational mind.

There are dangers to each side of it.  The purely rational people are often beguiled by how rational they are and how they must instruct all the rubes out there, resulting in just-so stories, stories that virtue signal, and stories that would put an insomniac to sleep.

I’m not going to say these are the sum total of such rational writers.  I know such writers who are very good and produce really good work.  And I’m not going to say the sum total of snoozers are produced by such writers, because there are muse-led writers whose muses are deeply perverse or perhaps filled with a sense of their moral superiority, who knows? (Maybe those really are Satanic? ;) )

On the side of the muse-led writers, there are perhaps more dangers.  One of them is of course that you never actually finish anything, because the dang things really are tricksters and pull you from story to story, never finishing.  (In which case, you need to learn to train them, and exert discipline.)  Another is that you fall victim of the trickster effect and your work is at best incoherent and at worse evil. (I.e. it espouses or promotes objectively evil principles and ideas that even you, in the cool light of day, feel revolted by.)  The answer to the first is to know enough of story telling technique (I can’t recommend Dwight Swain enough) to fix it in post.  The answer to the second is of course to know good from evil and stop before you embark down that road, no matter how seductive (and it is always seductive.)

There is also the problem that your work schedule can get waylaid by a sudden, overpowering idea and that this thing is not totally under your control. I’ve been dealing with that as best I can for over thirty years. It hasn’t killed me. It’s also not wonderful for the career.

The big danger, though, it’s that you’ll come to believe your own writing.  I mean, that you’ll come to believe the thing is alive and has an important message for the world.

I know writers who’ve gone down that path, and it never ends well. Often it changes the person into… something else.*

It’s rather like the effect on people who go full hearted and unprotected to play with the supernatural. It leads the same way.

The problem, I’d say, like Terry Pratchett, is forgetting which voice is your own. Trusting the wisdom of what comes to you fully formed better than your own mind/beliefs.  If you believe in the supernatural, then the problem is trusting invisible things/ethereal beings more than flesh and blood ones, because they’re invisible or ethereal.

In that sense, I could see how D & D could be a problem. If you fell so enthralled with your own creation that you started trusting it.

I suspect the function of being wayled by “spirits” or “muses” is similar to being wayled by storytelling. It’s amazing how often in ancient cultures bards or storytellers had a ‘priestly’ function or else, the opposite of that.

Some of us of course have to work there, in that half-light of the shores of imagination. But perhaps we should never leave behind our mental faculties aided by our sense? Perhaps they’re only safe when we go into them, remembering who we are and why we’re there?

And perhaps in the end that is better than proscribing all activities that stimulate the imagination? And eventually storytelling itself?

There must be a space between fear of the dark and irresistible attraction to it.  And the same with the imagination.

Else, in either case, we make ourselves less than human.

*And perhaps when Shakespeare called Marlowe “The Muses Darling” he meant more than we assume.

 

 

 

 

*The point of two posts today is to write a post on Muses and other afflictions, tomorrow – SAH*

Why I Write The Things I Do – A blast from the past from October 2007

(You should read the post previous to this to know what the rant is all about.)

I’ve been accused — in fact, I’ve been accused recently and by someone who should know better — of writing to market.  This is not true, though it might not be immediately obvious.  What I choose to write — what I have to say in each short story or novel — I want to write.  Often desperately enough to do it — often — for the drawer.   And, hell, if I wrote to market, I’d write a lot more thrillers, romances and women in peril.

With one exception — my one write for hire book — I write a story when it chases me down, pins me to the desk and makes me type.  I write it because I must.

*Okay, the cold is lingering but on its way out. However, yesterday I developed strong lower back pain, which I’m hoping really hard is not another fargin kidney infection, but just a side effect of many hours on plane. It’s better today than yesterday which would indicate that I hope. If it’s not gone by tomorrow, I’ll go see doctor, yes.
I hope to be well enough to resume instapundit duties tonight.  I also hope to get at least SOME fiction done today. Yes, there will be another Blast From The Past post later today.  This series is being revived because I want to go into “why people write” and the different results thereto and having this in mind first will help. So, bear with me – SAH*

Why I don’t write fiction set in Portugal – A blast from the past – October 2007

For those of you who have no idea why I’m answering this — there is a rather long (if polite) question in Portuguese a few entries back and because it is a polite question — for Portugal almost excruciatingly polite — it deserves an answer.

Considering I write historical fiction and that, if history were oil, Portugal would buy and sell the rest of the world, I imagine this looks odd to people from Portugal or of Portuguese descent.  Unfortunately I have many reasons not to write fiction set in Portugal — and this is not strictly true.  I sold a Portuguese History story to The Book Of Final Flesh and I sold a Henry the Navigator story to the Mammoth book of Historical Detectives (#3, I THINK.)  And one, very recently, to Universe.  And I’ve written several others.  I’ve just never published them.  But no, I haven’t tried to sell novels set in Portugal.  Unfortunately because, of course, if Portuguese History were oil, I’d have a fast track to becoming a multi-millionaire.

So, this post will set out, in generality, the reasons I don’t write fiction set in Portugal.  I will expand on this in other posts.  In fact, this post is little more than an outline.  There will be a post immediately after this expanding on point 1.

1 – Because no one will buy it.  And no, it’s not those racist Americans.  (First of all, get a grip on reality.  Which self-respecting racist sets out to hate whites belonging to the Mediterranean sub-race.  Gee.  Latin is a culture, not a race, something that gets obscured because once a group is bureaucratically set aside, it’s immediately considered racial. See for instance believers in Islam, who are also in many cases of the Mediterranean sub-race, btw. There are cogent reasons it doesn’t sell in the US, unless literary or small press and they would apply to practically any other country not Portugal.  Well, maybe Portugal too, but I doubt it.  You could knock me with a feather when I found out recently Portuguese are a protected minority.  To anyone out there intending to protect me, kindly stop it.  I have hands and feet and a nasty disposition.)

2- Because sources of reference for Portuguese history purely SUCK.  They’re better in the US than they are in Portugal as are most purely historical scholarly books — unless you’ve tried to buy in both countries, kindly shut up — but they still SUCK.

3 – I don’t write things set in Portugal in general because I know nothing of current day Portugal.  I’m fairly sure my parents think I abandoned the country.  I’d like to submit to them and you that the country left me behind.  I truly don’t recognize most of the places I grew up in — they’re paved and covered in stack-a-prole apartment buildings.  The only way for me to go home would be a time-traveling machine.  If anyone has one of those speak up.  I’d give ALL my current worth and a good part of my future for another hour with my grandmother.

4- I don’t generally write about past Portugal because I know nothing about past-Portugal.  I don’t mean historical.  One of the advantages of historical writing is that no one can pop up and say “I lived through the Spanish takeover, young lady, and the Spanish takeover was nothing like that.  We didn’t FEEL like that, and that’s not what it was like in Freixo de espada a cinta.”  They CAN do this for my lifetime — the last almost half-century.  And they would be right and I would be wrong.  Part of this is that i left Portugal very young — 22 — and never lived in it as a self sufficient adult.  Part of it is that, while still in Portugal, I bought Heinlein’s Stranger In A Strange Land on the title alone as “Oh, Lord, that’s how I feel.”

Okay, part one after I shower and have coffee.  Part one I’m afraid will have to go into “What a writer has to do in terms of where you set up the story and themes for it to make cogent sense and sell.”  Or “Sarah’s little book of secrets about marketing to editors.”  Mind you, given my track record of marketing to the public, the well-informed will take it with a barrel of salt, but this has been my experience as a professional writer.  Your mileage may vary.

For over ten years, I’ve had the following quote pinned above my working computer, because having found it gave me one of those moments of “Somebody gets it.”

“I have an idea that some men are born out of their due place. Accident has cast them amid strangers in their birthplace, and the leafy lanes they have known from childhood or the populous streets in which they have played, remain but a place of passage. they may spend their whole lives aliens among their kindred and remain aloof among the only scenes they have ever known. Perhaps it is this sense of strangeness that sends men far and wide in the search for something permanent, to which they may attach themselves. Perhaps some deep-rooted atavism urges the wanderer back to lands which his ancestors left in the dim beginnings of history. Sometimes a man hits upon a place to which he mysteriously feels that he belongs. Here is the home he sought, and he will settle amid scenes that he has never seen before, among men he has never known, as though they were familiar to him from his birth. Here at last he finds rest.”

— from The Moon and Sixpence by W. Somerset Maugham 1919

This visit to Portugal was easier than others in the past, partly because I realized — or rather felt, at a deep level — that I could never have stayed and lived there all these years.  I don’t know if this feeling is true, mind you.  I know I’d be a different person if I had. But the feeling is strong and unavoidable that I COULDN’T, that my odd corners would never fit in that round hole. This removes my feeling of guilt from having effectively abandoned the family on that end which, as mom and dad grow older, in turn makes it hard for me to render any help and assistance. (It would be different if I were a millionaire, but I’m not.)

It’s probably more so — the feeling I can’t fit in — in that it’s not a big difference. If I were a startlingly different appearance — say tentacles or pink polka dots — from the people there, or if I stuck out in some obvious, visible way, it would be easier, because I’d account for that and THEN fit in.

It’s more that my way of “being in the world” is too different in small, annoying ways.  People rub me wrong or judge me wrongly and I, assuredly, also do so.

Perhaps it is nothing more than the result of having grown up mostly inside my head and in books, though I think that was rather the consequence of feeling out of place than the origin.

That quote above came to my mind a lot while I was in Portugal this time.

And because of that, at odd times, I found myself thinking of ways I felt welcome or relieved in the US that never worked in Portugal.

One of them, which I’ve mentioned here before, is the respect for private property that allows us to have unfenced yards and outdoor decorations.  That was both weird and enthralling before I figured out the differences.

But another, superficially just as silly but in reality as important was this: my high school in the US was festooned with funny, self-mocking signs.  The hall with math, physics and computers, for instance, had a hand-lettered sign entitling it “Nerd Alley.”

In Portugal — at least at the time — such a thing would not only be unbelievable, it would be incomprehensible, frowned upon and fought.

You see, from about the time I was old enough to go out alone, Mom complained I didn’t “hold myself up in my own dignity.”  Since I was 12, this was incomprehensible, since I had NO dignity (and a twisty sense of humor.)

What mom meant was my inherited class, as a daughter of an educated middle-class family who was attending school beyond fourth grade, unlike the daughters of laborers, who had been sent into the mills at ten.

This was supposed to be a source of pride, which I upheld.  I was supposed to internalize a sort of “do you know who I am?” which communicated itself to people who met me the first time.

I never did, partly because of those fine accomplishments, most weren’t even mine, except by chance. Surely I didn’t choose who birthed me nor how educated my ancestors were.

I never managed it, either, even when the accomplishments — such as entering college — were my own.

Mom was right, btw, for that place, that culture.  Looking at it through an almost total stranger’s eyes, when I went back this time, I saw that if you don’t hold yourself up as being important, having a reason to be important, people there will walk all over you.  If you’re not the “daughter of something” you’re no one and to be exploited and ignored.  I just never got it, and was enough my own, solitary person, it didn’t seem to affect me much.

But I see now why the self-deprecating humor in high school; the lame jokes teachers and people in authority made about themselves were a relief.  It felt more natural than holding myself up in false pride like armor. Armor is heavy and unwieldy.

It also, in terms of culture, prevents advancement. Part of what we dealt with, in hell-journey through Spain was the fact that every single bureaucrat, janitor, information booth lady, even the security guards/police of which Spain has a lot in surplus to requirements, was “holding him/herself up in their dignity.”  Which meant not bending enough to try to understand what two people going through, who spoke no Spanish but only English and Portuguese might be asking or wanted.

It is also, I think, responsible for why Portugal remains largely stagnant while any Portuguese immigrant abroad seems to have a head start on excelling in their field (Yes, weirdly, I did too. The odds against even being published in the bad old days were overwhelming. And most literary careers last 3 books, not 30 something.  And I’m not done yet.  And in indie, maybe monetary success will come, too.)

You see in Portugal being seen to work excessively or at something dirty, or having enough humility to start again if a career goes bang would be demeaning. It would rob you of your dignity and leave you open to predation or at least social opprobrium. Some people still do it, but they’re rare and exceedingly strong-willed.  Meanwhile the country, as a whole, lurches about with no innovation, no enterprise worth the name.

And from my glimpses of Spain, it might be worse there.

I understand why people think these things are genetic, but seriously, culture is enough to explain it. It’s just that very few people go behind the gears of the culture and see the little things that sabotage it. Or how difficult it can be to change, because those evil little mines in the culture field also protect the individual in the way the culture is, right now.

To me, as an American, it’s simply a relief to be able to laugh at myself and refuse the assumed dignity that can’t be dented.

Which is a good thing, since I’m basically starting again.  Once more into the breach…

At least I’m doing it from home, and not a strange environment I don’t fully understand.

Americans are, in a way, above our own dignity. We don’t need to hold ourselves in false pride because as sovereigns of our land, we’re all as important as may be.

And the result is that we can work, get our hands dirty, and even laugh at ourselves, with no fear.

It’s a good (and fortuitous) thing.