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Small Acts

9/30/2019

I’ve recently started keeping a five-dollar bill in the center console of my car. Not for parking, because that all seems done via credit or debit these days (although the Scot in me attempts to avoid --- as much as possible --- parking in places requiring payment). Nor is it in case I develop a sudden sweet tooth, because that’s credit or debit, too. Nope, it’s in case I’m waiting for a traffic light at an intersection and a homeless person starts making their way along the captive audience of stopped cars, looking for a handout.

(I was going to say --- in fact, in my first draft of these musings, I actually did so state --- I couldn’t honestly pin this to any sudden flash of epiphany… just a gradual nagging realization, augmented by a couple of verses from some book somewhere. But on reflection, that’s not correct. Because it really was a sudden realization, the last time I encountered this situation. I’m not sure about ‘epiphany,’ exactly; I don’t know about you, but my conscience tends to operate more along the lines of Jiminy Cricket, sitting on my shoulder and, without warning, poking me painfully with his tiny umbrella before saying rudely, “What are you doing, dummy? You know better than this.” And he did reinforce his admonition by supplying those verses to back up his assertion. Boy, it’s annoying when he does that. Well, maybe not.)

Now, in this oft bleakly cold, uncaring world, in such a situation, it’s all too easy simply to turn away, to avoid eye contact, to pretend the tailgate of the car ahead is suddenly worthy of your complete and undivided attention as the raggedly dressed homeless person shuffles along, sometimes holding a cardboard sign crudely lettered with yet another tale of anonymous woe. It’s also too easy to rationalize it away by thinking, ah, crap, my wallet is in my back pocket, I’ll have to undo my seatbelt and dig around to reach my wallet, then fumble my way through it --- and that’s if I’ve got a damned five in there in the first place --- and maybe the light will change and the guy breathing down my rear-view mirror will regard my charitable action as not worth a few seconds of his precious time, and will impatiently and very audibly urge me to get the hell going, and, besides, there are shelters --- which I support through donations, by the way --- and am I just going to be feeding the homeless person’s (likely) addictions, and…

And… and… and…

You know, you’ve got to regard humanity’s stunning collective ability to rationalize uncomfortable situations as an incredible talent --- one of our strongest, although, unfortunately, not one of our more shining ones. Sigh. Why do we do this? Is it because the sight of mundane misfortune --- and by that, I mean a situation that’s not emergent, like a car crash or fiery explosion or other immediate crisis, just quiet, run-of-the-mill, private misfortune --- somehow repels us? Maybe it’s a case of there-but-for-the-Grace-of-God-go-I, and that realization somehow makes us feel ashamed of the other’s poverty, because it reminds us all too forcefully that many of us are only a paycheque away from homelessness ourselves, or many of us struggle with our own addictions or mental issues? Or is it charity fatigue? Are we so wearied by the constant parade of human misery displayed across the planet that, like the American public in the face of Trump’s constant, unprecedented, jaw-dropping, narcissistic defiance of conventional norms and decency, we no longer respond as we should to outrages perpetrated around us?

Well, with many of us, I rather suspect the answer is: to a certain extent, a greater or lesser mix of all the above. Which is bad enough, but not the worst possible scenario, which is, we plainly and simply don’t care… or think the person with the sign somehow deserves their misfortune. I hope our Grinchy little hearts really aren’t two sizes too small. Because that really would be the worst-case scenario, with no redemption or hope for the future at all.

Anyway, getting back to my personal tale. I thought to myself, you know what? Consciously, deliberately, put a damn bill in the centre console. And next time you see this situation unfolding, it’s there. It’ll take mere seconds to get it out. So, no excuses. Roll down the window, make eye contact, and say something. It doesn’t have to be anything terribly profound. Just treat the person outside the car as a person, not as a robot or a thing. And make sure it doesn’t sound patronizing.

Here’s the funny thing about these musings, at least from a writer’s standpoint --- and every writer should be able to see themselves in it: I didn’t intend at all to write what you’re reading. In fact, I was going to talk about a piece of live theatre I saw the other day… and my opening thoughts were relevant to that, as was one of the verses I mentioned earlier. (But they led to other thoughts. Which is not a bad thing at all --- in fact, it’s one of the best things about writing.)

Hey, speaking of verses, by the way, you nudge tentatively… those couple of verses? Wanna clue us in on what they were?

Oh, yeah. Thanks for asking. Here they are:

Be not forgetful to entertain strangers: for thereby some have entertained angels unawares

and

Whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me… whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me

You can probably guess where those verses come from, so I don’t really need to spell it out for you, do I? And really, I don’t give a damn what your religious beliefs may or may not be, or whether you accept or dismiss the topic. In this particular instance, religion doesn’t really have to enter into it at all.

Just a small act of common humanity.

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Lose the Orcs

9/23/2019

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In the Beginning there were only a few classic fantasy writers of yore, like Lord Dunsany, and Darkness was on the face of the void, and The Readership either hungered for fantasy works of fiction, or knew not what they did not have. And the Master Author looked upon the darkness, ruminated for a bit, and said, “Verily and forsooth, it is not good that The Readership is not served. And so I will send unto them a revolutionary author in unlikely form, for he will be a university professor living a fairly pedestrian life, married with four children. Yea, but out of this unlikely scenario, he will create a mythos for the world, a mythos which will explode in popularity and make an incredible, indelible mark on 20th and 21st century literature and popular culture lo, even many years after his death. In fact, his writings will become a cottage industry for one of his children… and a major motion picture franchise, to boot.”

And so in due course, J.R.R. Tolkien was given unto us, and lo, it was good. And the Professor published The Hobbit (82 years ago just the other day, actually), a tale cleverly disguised as a children’s story but which, in fact, contained all sorts of references to deeper and darker themes, and it was An Unexpected Success. A Major Unexpected Success. And the readership, bless its little avaricious hearts, clamoured for more. And so The Hobbit begat The Lord of the Rings, and thus the modern fantasy genre was born.

And the readership read, and all was good.

Except for one small thing…

This is my (tongue-in-cheek) high declamatory take on how we got to Today in the literary realm of Fantasy. Tolkien almost single-handedly launched what is now a huge genre in literature… and film… and video games… and board games… and all sorts of pop culture references. His influence has been immense. It’s impossible to overstate it. He is The Godfather of modern fantasy. Which is all fine, except for that one thing I just mentioned, to wit:

Tolkien’s influence has been so immense that it tends at times to overshadow those of us who came after. He’s a literary juggernaut. A behemoth. A one-man scop army. (No, that’s a deliberate literary reference, not a typo. Look it up.) Look at fantasy races, for example. There are a lot of stories out there to feature wizards --- especially irascible ones resembling Gandalf the Grey ---- and elves and dwarves and goblins/orcs and lions and tigers and bears, oh my. Tolkien’s influence overpowers. It’s like when you see the film version of something before reading the book (Cardinal Sin Number 1, by the way): if you saw The Lord of the Rings films first and then read the books (or tried to, which is not an easy thing for the Great Unwashed, but which is something we can talk about some other time), chances are you couldn’t see any face on Gandalf besides (the very talented) Ian McKellen’s. It’s limiting, in a way.

So the point of my little epistle today is to give one wee piece of advice to fantasy writers: lose the elves, people. And the dwarves. And the orcs. At least, Tolkien’s versions of them. And come up with your own races in their place. Now, sure, most of his races have been around in folk and fairy tales for a long, long time --- Rumpelstiltskin was a dwarf, for example --- but Tolkien’s specific take on elves and dwarves and wizards is so deeply ingrained in our collective consciousness that fantasy writers need to very consciously set out to do something, if not completely original, at least not so carbon-copyish that we immediately think of Legolas and Elrond and Gimli and Thorin and Gandalf (oh my). Because then your tale starts to veer dangerously close to fan-fiction, which in previous posts I’ve spoken out against for its lack of creativity and slavish imitation. Contrary to the old saying, imitation is not the sincerest form of flattery, folks --- it’s mere creative bankruptcy. As I’ve said before, find your own well, dammit.

Now, imitation is not the same thing as inspiration, not at all, at all. Tolkien has inspired many of us, including yours truly. And some of my earliest work was quite imitative/derivative of Tolkien, yes… but I’m talking about when I was 14. Nowadays, more decades later than I would ever want to admit, I make conscious efforts not to be imitative/derivative of the Master, but rather to find my own voice and my own world… and people it with races that aren’t merely knockoffs of Tolkien’s.

So… tell the elves and the dwarves and the orcs to head back to Middle Earth, and dream up new races for your own magnum opus. It’s more work, but I think you’ll be glad you made the effort.

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The Writing Process

9/16/2019

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When I engage in polite/pleasant conversation with strangers --- which, as an introvert, isn’t something I particularly seek out, but which frequently can’t be avoided --- it isn’t long before the topic turns, as we all know, to What We Do With Our Time. Not surprising, really. One of the weird things about adults is we tend to define ourselves by what we do for work. Now that I’m retired, I can’t say I’m a teacher anymore. And simply putting “retired” in front of what we used to do strikes me as a most unsatisfying idea: I doubt most of us want to be identified as something we did with our time in the salt mines. So nowadays, I frequently tell people I’m a writer. Of books. Novels.

To which the answer generally tends to be one of several possibilities: (a) “A novel, eh? Yeah, I’ve often thought of doing that, too, but I just don’t have the time” or (b) A polite “Oh, that’s very interesting” with an immediate segue onto a topic of more egocentric relevance to the speaker, or (c) “That’s amazing! I could never do that!”

By the way, folks, just so we’re all on the same page --- no pun intended --- (a) is just plain insulting. It’s denigrating an achievement, like telling someone that yeah, you too could have been an Olympic calibre athlete if it wasn’t for that pesky hangnail. And (b) simply illustrates our society’s growing inability to genuinely care about other people. So (c) is the best answer, especially if you follow it up with a breathlessly gushy, “How do you do that?” Especially if you want to see a writer actually purr. Or at least preen.

How do I do that? Well, I write. One word at a time, as Stephen King has so famously said. I don’t think there’s any kind of magical process involved in the act, as so many people seem to think. I start. Then continue. And finally, finish. That’s a glib answer, I know, but it’s essentially true. Although that’s not to denigrate the creative act, which obviously looms large over the entire enterprise. (Without it, we’re just slinging words together… which any illiterate teen used to be able to do verbally, but now can only do via text.)

I wouldn’t say I do a lot of research, for a couple of reasons. First of all, I’m writing fantasy set in my own world, so, my world, my rules. At least most of the time, and at least as far as its physical construction and development goes. That’s one of the great strengths of free-lancing. You’re not going to get someone coming back to you and saying, “they didn’t do it this way.” Of course, the flipside of that freedom is that you don’t have the benefit of someone else’s blueprints, so you’ve got to make it all up yourself. The second reason I wouldn’t say I do a lot of formal research is because, if you’re walking around in our world, observing and noting the people and events taking place, you’re already doing research.

In any event, the main thing you’ve got to focus on is interior logic. You can make things as different and wild as you want in your world, but they’ve got to be consistent within the framework that you create. It’s when they don’t that people stop their willingness to suspend disbelief. And at that point, as a storyteller, you’re in big trouble.

People who know me would assume I’m a plotter (someone who plans the story out in excruciating detail in advance), because I’m fairly meticulous in most areas of my life. But I’m not. I’m more a pantser (as in, flying by the seat of my). I used to write detailed outlines for chapters, but abandoned that approach relatively quickly. Why? Because I found, when you got into the groove of actually writing, a story is a lot like life, in that you can plan things all you want, but if you’re smart, you don’t expect things to happen exactly as you planned. People can be unpredictable --- they aren’t always, but they definitely can be. Because life is definitely unpredictable… Robert Heinlein spoke in one of his books about all military organizations (an, by implication/extension, life itself) consisting of a Surprise Party Department, a Practical Jokes Department, and a Fairy Godmother Department. He notes that “the first two process most matters as the third is very small: the Fairy Godmother Department is one elderly female GS-5 clerk usually out on sick leave.’ But what between life’s surprise parties, practical jokes and fairy godmother interventions, life’s unpredictability makes it well-nigh impossible, in my humble correct opinion, to plan out a story plot for very much more than a chapter, if that. Which is not nearly as awful as one might think. If you want your characters to be alive, to be real living beings, why would you want or expect them to behave like marionettes on your strings? Be grateful for that unpredictability. It demonstrates that you’re not just dealing with cardboard cut-outs. That’s not to say I don’t plan anything at all, especially if I’m stuck and none of the characters feels like helping me. (Yes, that’s a thing.) I’ll sit down and hand-write almost a Q and A session for myself. You know, ‘if this happens, or so-and-so does this, then what?’ it pretty much always works, or at least provides grist for the mill.

And the word count grows. So and so does this, which means that the other guy will do that in response, which in turn means that this happens, and… so on, one word at a time. Just like life. How did the old soap opera intro go? “Like sands through the hourglass, these are the days of our lives…” And eventually, months (or years, with some of us, sometimes --- but that’s a story for another time) later, you have somewhere north of 50,000 words… a novel. You have had, in the words of author James Branch Cabell, “literary parturition” i.e. you have given birth to a story.

‘Tis truly a wondrous thing, to be sure.

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D.R. RANSHAW

Small Acts

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