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D.R. Ranshaw

D.R. RANSHAW

Self-Promotion, Shameless or Otherwise

10/30/2017

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Back in the Dark Ages, when I was a rather nerdish young teen (I’m prepared to admit that, although as Fred Pohl said in his memoirs, I do deny I was a toad), my parents arranged for me to receive classical guitar lessons. I’m not really sure, now, where the idea originated; my sister was heavily involved in ballet, and I believe the guitar thing was some sort of well-meaning tit-for-tat sop to me on my parents’ part. (I was also given the option of taking judo lessons, but my mother and I toured the place giving the lessons, and I felt rather like Daniel-san visiting the Cobras’ dojo in the first Karate Kid film: these were psychotic-looking dudes and there was absolutely no way I was getting involved with them. So, guitar lessons it was.)
 
I didn’t mind the weekly lessons --- quite enjoyed them for the first few years, in fact, although I don’t think I ever had a huge passion for the guitar, and any skill I developed was technical rather than from the heart. It did involve my first real taste of independence, as I had to take the bus downtown on my own from our house in the ‘burbs, my guitar in its case securely held between my knees while the old electric trolley bus jounced along. My father would often meet me after the lesson to accompany me home from work on the bus, and I have memories on those trips of him reading to me little episodes he had written down of his rural English childhood. (Which may well have contributed to my early passion for writing, so that’s justification for the guitar lessons right there.)
 
The only thing I hated about my guitar lessons --- with ‘the white-hot intensity of a thousand suns,’ to quote cartoonist Jeff MacNelly --- were the periodic recitals and ‘test classes.’ And perhaps it wasn’t so much hatred as fear… although the white-hot intensity metaphor still applies. Test classes occurred when my instructor, a remarkably gentle, soft-spoken man who bore none of the outward hallmarks of a sadist, rounded up a bunch of his students to play pieces for each other in preparation for the yearly exams. Bad enough, but recitals were waaay worse: they were more formal twice-a-year affairs, involving students from the entire conservatory playing all manner of instruments before an audience of perhaps 200 mommies, daddies and assorted siblings.
 
And crap (almost literally, come to think of it), talk about mental torture.
 
It’s a little nostalgically amusing to gaze through the lens of 45+ years now, but I well remember the terror of recital days. Being before an audience wasn’t really the key thing --- after all, I have enthusiastically and confidently taught secondary school for over 30 years, and spoken to groups as large as 2000 people. No, it was playing an instrument. Solo. A very technically demanding instrument. In a fairly unforgiving environment. (I refer not to the mommies and daddies, who were very supportive and wanted you to do well, but the fact that if you made a mistake --- or, horror of horrors, forgot the music --- you were literally on your own, in an atmosphere so charged with agony you could cut the tension with a knife. The fear of failure could be almost paralyzing. Oy.)
 
So, what dredged this hoary little reminiscence of adolescent rite-of-passage scarring from the vaults of memory today, you ask?
 
Well, yesterday I had my first book signing for my debut novel Gryphon’s Heir --- although, I should quickly add, it didn’t produce the same depth of terrors of 45 years ago. Faint echoes, perhaps, but not the full-blown sweaty terrors.
 
The funny thing, I think, is that most writers are introverts --- I’m a Myers-Briggs INTJ, myself, which I suspect is a fairly common writer’s profile. And as such, we don’t like putting ourselves ‘out there’ on display, hawking our wares, do we? But We Have To. Because the Damned Book Is Not Going To Sell Itself (Writers’ Painful Lesson #1).
 
Quite a few book buyers must be introverts, too, because the Second Lesson I quickly learned yesterday was that many would avoid making eye contact unless I smiled and said hello so they couldn’t pretend they hadn’t seen me without appearing rude. (Ha! Gotcha, Potential Buyer!) I also learned the other end of the spectrum is represented, too, by people marching right up to you who say, almost challengingly, “So what’s your book about, then?” (Hmmm. You want me to condense into a paltry 25-word summary 186,000+ words of prose so breathtakingly magnificent they could make Mark Antony weep, as when he beheld the glories of Egypt? A SPELLBINDING 25-word summary? Are you out of your cotton-pickin’ MIND?) Well, yes, they may be, but --- Lesson #3 --- yes, you need to be ready to do exactly that, because there are thousands of other books calling to them from the surrounding shelves, and you’ve got about 15 seconds before their eyes glaze over and they aimlessly wander off to the biography section --- non-fiction freakin’ biographies, fer cryin’ out loud! --- and the opportunity to thrust your magnum opus into their hot little hands has evaporated forever, with you plaintively, fruitlessly calling after them like Catherine Earnshaw imploring Heathcliff to return. So carpe the freakin’ diem, boys and girls, hard as it may be for all us IN-prefix Myers-Briggs types.
 
Well, there you are. Actually, it was a great experience --- once I overcame (minor) cold collywobbles. The good folks at Owls’ Nest Books were very supportive and nurturing of a new fledgling and we actually sold a decent number of books.
 
In a perfect world, I’d like to be able to say it’s about ars gratia artis and all that… but one truth I think we need to acknowledge is we write stories, at least in part, to be shared, and that can’t happen without a little self-promotion.
 
Shameless or otherwise.
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Austen No More

10/16/2017

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“You are too generous to trifle with me. If your feelings are still what they were last April, tell me so at once. My affections and wishes are unchanged; but one word from you will silence me on this subject for ever.” 
 
“From the very beginning — from the first moment, I may almost say — of my acquaintance with you, your manners, impressing me with the fullest belief of your arrogance, your conceit, and your selfish disdain of the feelings of others, were such as to form the groundwork of disapprobation on which succeeding events have built so immovable a dislike; and I had not known you a month before I felt that you were the last man in the world whom I could ever be prevailed on to marry.”
 
“I have faults enough, but they are not, I hope, of understanding. My temper I dare not vouch for. It is, I believe, too little yielding — certainly too little for the convenience of the world. I cannot forget the follies and vices of other so soon as I ought, nor their offenses against myself. My feelings are not puffed about with every attempt to move them. My temper would perhaps be called resentful. My good opinion, once lost, is lost forever.” 
                -Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice (all)
 
Modern translations of the above:
I need to know how you feel about me (text-speak: WTF, bae?)
You’re such a s***head, I would NEVER marry you (text-speak: u suck)
I’m a s***head (text-speak: FML)
 
Sigh. Disconsolate sigh.
 
Today, I’d like to rant about words, if I may. Words, words, words, as Hamlet said to Polonius.
 
Man, but we lose everything in these translations from Austen’s flowing prose into truncated modern-day usage too many of us, alas, employ, don’t you think? Even more so when that illiterate doggerel we call text-speak despoils the occasion (oh, the humanity). It is, methinks, the difference between the lilting cadence of the nightingale and the harsh cawing of a raven. One is gentle on the ear, even when expressing extreme dislike and condemnation; the other is… an assault. An illiterate assault. A barbarous, illiterate assault.
 
Why? Why must it be this way? Why don’t we talk like Austen’s characters today? Please note, I’m not saying we should all speak in Shakespearean iambic pentameter, by the way, with a doublet full of thee’s and thou’s and enough archaic vocabulary and syntax to sink a battleship. But Austen… read those passages again, I implore you. There is a grace to it; simultaneously elegant formality and yet an easy intimacy so lacking in 21st century English. So… what’s gone wrong?
 
I think there are three main factors --- and regretfully, none are good:
 
First of all, we’re in a hurry. And we’re angry. It’s rather like Brooks Hatlen said in The Shawshank Redemption: the world went and got itself in a big damn hurry. And when we’re in a constant state of hurry --- which we are nowadays, most of us --- coming up with literate conversation that actually requires some thought beforehand takes waaay too much time and effort. And, as I said, we’re angry. My Lord, what an angry society we live in. The breakdown in civil discourse over the last decade or six --- which seems to have reached new lows this last year --- has most people just about vibrating with barely suppressed rage almost all the time. And when we’re angry, intellect flies out the window, and so does polysyllabic, thoughtful conversation. Angry people say short, stupid, easy things in the heat of the moment, stupid things that later, when they’ve cooled off a little, they regret --- we hope… although grace also seems in lamentably short supply nowadays.
 
Second, literacy standards are dropping. I’ve been a secondary school teacher for nigh on 33 years, and I can personally attest to this. Even most of my star pupils today don’t have the literacy --- or attention span --- of my students three decades ago. By the way, please don’t blame teachers for this. They didn’t create the system and really don’t have control over curriculum or implementation. In any event, as I have said to more than one parent, schools are nothing more than microcosms of the society in which they exist. If that society does not place a premium on the value of education/literacy for its own sake --- as ours often does not, given statements from leaders and citizens alike, and more importantly, actions both groups undertake --- then children will not value literacy or strive for its mastery. I’ve heard it said by a number of people that humans have finally created a generation less literate than the preceding one, and unfortunately, I’m quite prepared to believe it. (I could say MUCH more about the educational angle --- 33 years’ worth --- but I’m already encroaching on my self-imposed word limit for blog posts, so please don’t push my buttons.)
 
Finally, there’s a lot of emotional poverty and emotional illiteracy out there. Words like Austen’s require people to think about what they’re actually saying, and to think about the emotions that are giving rise to these situations. People using Austen-speech actually have to listen to each other, to really pay attention to the conversation, and we’re not good at that anymore, either. Austen-speech won’t let people fly off the handle at each other, at least not in the modern sense of our smart-phone world.
 
Is there any hope? I hear you ask in a small voice. Yes, I think so. (Deep within my pessimistic exterior, there’s an optimist screaming to get out.) But it’s rather like climate change: enough people need to care, and more, be prepared to actually do something about it… before we reach a point of no return.
 
I’ll end by asking something from Pride and Prejudice… along with your (assumed) reply:
 
“Now be sincere; did you admire me for my impertinence?"
"For the liveliness of your mind, I did.” 

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Writers are Miners

10/2/2017

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Two events inspired today’s epistle: first, I read an essay by Annie Lamott with my classes last week. It’s titled Shitty First Drafts, which hugely amused my students, mainly because it meant teacher said a bad word aloud --- several times, actually, during the essay --- and let’s face it, adolescents are fairly easily titillated, especially when they think someone’s behaviour is discomfiting to that individual. But I didn’t read it merely to make them laugh. Amusing title aside, Shitty First Drafts is actually a very good essay, mostly because of a couple of points Ms. Lamott makes.
 
To start with, nobody does their best work first time out of the gate (we’re specifically talking about writing, but, come to think of it, that also applies to pretty much every field of human endeavour). In fact, Ms. Lamott says, first drafts are usually pretty awful. Case in point: she goes to great pains to talk about the angst she went through to write good reviews as a restaurant critic. (Although, for her sake, I hope she deliberately over-dramatized her angst when describing the process, because the picture she paints is of soul-shaking crises of confidence, each and every time. Yikes.)
 
Now, I don’t think anyone (except teenage students, possibly) would argue against this. Anything I write for students goes through several drafts. And my novel, Gryphon’s Heir, went through, if I remember rightly (it got a little hazy towards the end of the process), five distinct drafts. The first clocked in at a whopping 202,000 words, and to my dismay, I discovered, among other things, I have immense subconscious fondness for double adjectives. (Why use one word when six will do, right?) Fortunately, I listened to Stephen King’s advice that your second draft equals your first draft minus ten per cent. By the time I had finished the fifth draft --- complete with numerous suggestions by my editor and others --- the book clocked in at 186,000 words, give or take. And it had way more story, and way less unnecessary verbiage. Because it went through a great deal of killing of darlings, as A.Q-C says.
 
Ms. Lamott’s other point is that the beginning of any writing enterprise is usually the most difficult and terrifying moment of the process. Even the aforementioned Mr. K, Compleat Pro, says something to that effect. You stare at a blank piece of paper or screen. And you must Fill It with Reasonably Intelligent Thoughts. Yikes.
 
The second event occurred as I shared all this with a friend. After listening to my maunderings, she asked thoughtfully, “So, what is the writing process like for you? Terrifying to start? To continue?”
 
Hmm. Well, neither one, usually, at any rate. The metaphor I envisioned for her was writers are miners:
 
Each time you sit down to write, you figuratively don helmet and overalls, switch on the lamp, and head into the elevator. The wire mesh door crashes shut and you descend into the stygian depths of your imagination. Once there, you trudge through brightly lit tunnels, some dripping with moisture, others bone dry, eventually arriving at the mine face, which Wikipedia succinctly defines as “the surface where the mining work is advancing.” In writing, that’s the point where you left off. There are the final words from your last session… and then… nothing. Blankness. A character said something for which there is, as yet, no reply. Or a situation was developing and there it remains, frozen in time where you left off --- a character poised with a knife upraised, waiting for the blade to descend. And now you need to get the narrative rolling again. Find your pickaxe where you left it lying on the ground and get to work. Hi ho, hi ho, it’s off to work you go and all that.
 
(Okay, I exaggerate slightly… I usually try ending sessions with more resolution than this, mainly just because I’m That Sort of Bear --- and while I really want to resume writing the very next day, life inconveniently and inconsiderately does not always allow it. So I always try to leave the mine face, if not exactly pristine, at least not too shambolic… washing tools, putting them away relatively neatly and all that.)
 
Anyway, there I am, at the blank mine face. Except it’s really not blank at all, you know. There are usually all kinds of half-uncovered/discovered gems twinkling in the illumination of my imagination’s torch, especially if the Muse has donned a helmet too and kindly deigned to accompany me. (As with most writers, she doesn’t always. I’m afraid she’s rather fastidious, particularly if the mine face is wet and things are muddy, as they often can be; she’s also a wee bit fickle at times, so some days, she begs off with a headache that may or may not be imaginary and I’m left on my own to squint really hard finding those gems.) But she’s extraordinary at pointing out good stuff, noting which are the highest-grade gems, so on days when she’s along for the ride, man, things just scintillate.
 
And there they are, constellations of multifaceted, multicoloured gems twinkling in the mine face. My work is to delicately uncover as many as possible in a session, integrating them into the thread of my narrative --- sometimes with a pickaxe, more often a rock hammer. It’s not terrifying work at all --- mostly eminently satisfying and frequently joyous. I’m a happy miner when I write… and at times I do whistle while I work.
 
Hi ho, indeed.

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    D.R. Ranshaw's Blog

    Author of The Annals of Arrinor series.  Lover of great literature, fine wine, and chocolate. Not necessarily in that order.

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