June 2009 Archives

John Scalzi, author of Old Man's War and a whole stack of other stuff, has a fat category on his blog titled The Big Idea. What's in it? "Authors discussing what makes their books tick -- and what that meant for the writing process," that's what.

I'm all for picking the brains of writers more accomplished than I am. And stealing things from them. I've just started reading through the various entries, but it didn't seem fair to keep it to myself.

Every so often I get something close to overwhelmed by what seems to be the lightweight and frivolous nature of my life, all the more so when important and meaningful things are happening in the world. It makes it difficult to post my thoughts about the differences between writing that squirts out whole and complete and writing that requires endless revision and reworking. Even though that's what's been on my mind lately, it just doesn't seem to matter all that much. I suppose that in reality the lives of many people are the same way, and they get through each day by ignoring that in one way or another. Usually I do that as well, but some days I'm better at it than others.

Over the past several days I've tried to remedy some of that by working on one of what I call my "serious" pieces. Unlike the two currently on the sidebar, these stories never seem to come out right. Lots of revision, rewriting, and focusing on structure and detail in a way that threatens to suck the life right out of the tale. If one of those ever sees print, I'll be a happy man, because although I like the shorter, lighter pieces just fine, it's these other ones that I really sweat over. They're the ones I work on so long that eventually I have to give up and shove them in a drawer somewhere for a year until I can read them in a fresh way.

It's strange. Sometimes a piece will emerge almost wholly formed, requiring nothing but a little spit and polish. Anchovies and Sumerian Pot were both like that. But for some reason I tend to value those works somewhat less, as though I cheated somehow. At some level I probably believe that it's not really writing unless I've battered my fists against it and invoked the damnation of god during its forging.

Which is nonsense, really, because I continue to maintain that it's the reception of the story by the reader that determines whether it works or not, and much of the difficulty I have with the "serious" pieces stems from my deliberate intention to convey something specific. So instead of thinking about the eventual reader, I'm wrapped up in my own ideas, which, I think, impedes the characters. They get stiff as they try to play the roles I've given them and read the clumsy lines I've written. I'm trying to get them to express my ever-so-interesting ideas about sexuality and identity while they're just waiting for me to leave the room so they can fuck.

So anyway, if anybody was wondering where all the damn content went, that's where. Bit of a funk, you see, and it's not the kind with a tight bass line.

I'll get over it.

I've done it again. I sent a submission that seems to have coincided with a changing of the guard over at Thieves Jargon as Matt DiGangi steps down and hands the pointy dangerous pen over to Dan Scannell.

As before, my first thought was that they just hated it and blocked my address forever and made little dolls and poked rusty pins where my bladder would be. Could be, could be. But then I read Matt's blog post announcing his departure and got a nice note back in response to my status query.

So, my intersection with editorial changeover has happened twice. I don't have a decent data set, though. I don't send out a torrent of submissions, and I know that there's enough staff churn that it happens often enough. If it happens, say, twice more within the next six months I will name myself the Scourge of Editorial Stability, but not before then.

At any rate: good luck, Dan, farewell, Matt.

No, really. I did. I mean...it wasn't a post written by me, so much as a post posted by me, which is to say that it was a post of something I'd found in a book that seemed interesting, like the post below.

Just for a larf I Googled the first sentence of it. Because I had a suspicion, you see: it seemed like one of those things that, while new to me, was in fact scattered all about the lands of the IntraTubes, known to all far and wide.

And I was right.11 pages of results. So, rather than stay here to read it, go here and pick a page and read it there.

This is one of those lazy posts that turned out to be more effort than I originally intended. Bugger.

If an artist does not spring to his work as a soldier to the breach, if once within the crater he does not labor as a miner buried in the earth, if he contemplates his difficulties instead of conquering them one by one, the work remains unachieved, production becomes impossible, and the artist assists the suicide of his own talent...The solution of the problem can be found only through incessant and sustained work...True artists, true poets, generate and give birth today, tomorrow, ever. From this habit of labor results a ceaseless comprehension of difficulties which keep them in communion with the muse and her creative forces.

Honoré de Balzac

Some days, a certain word will clamor for my attention. Sometimes it's a word with a peculiar resonance of meaning. Sometimes it's a word that just reverberates in an especially rich way. For the past few days, that word has been bar.

As in: bars of gold. Bars of silver! Bars of dark chocolate. The word seems imbued with weight and value: the heft of precious metal in the hand, the sensual melt of cacao bean and cocoa butter against the palate. The special way that breath evaporates off the mirrored or satin surfaces of elements found in the more expensive neighborhoods of the periodic table, and the smooth matte sheen of incipient tastiness encased within a velvety envelope of crystalline snap.

Say it with me now: barrrr.

Did it work?

Try it again.

Must just be me, then. Really, though, you're missing out. I've achieved a sort of synesthesia in my imagination. A bar of  gold becomes tasty and flavorful, edible wealth, and a bar of Michel Cluizel gains the mass and inertia of dense metal. The commonality between the two becomes intuitive, a richness that connects the realms of the pecuniary and the sensual.

It will fade soon, I think, but for now I'm enjoying eating bullion in my mind.