Writing Popular Fiction (1974)

     A lot has changed since the mid-1970s, especially if one is writing about that period while still cognizant of the lingering impact of the late-1960s.  It would be wrong to think that the market for fiction is anywhere near the same.  While the shift is likely less jarring than the pre- to post-Hemingway era of American literature, genre fiction – the subject of Dean R. Koontz's Writing Popular Fiction (1974) – one must consider how different the world is the more recent now.
     Koontz was writing about a world where Peter Benchley's Jaws was just released as a book and had not become the first modern blockbuster.  George Lucas had made two films at that point, THX 1138 (1971) and American Graffiti (1973); there was no such thing as Star Wars (1977).  Star Trek (1966-69) was a show that had a decent run on network television and had not yet emerged as a presence in syndication.  The use of vampires in successful fiction wouldn't emerge until Stephen King penned 'Salem's Lot in 1975, and it would not be until Anne Rice brought the sexy vampire back with Interview with a Vampire (1976) that the undead got to be in something more than a sub-category of the horror genre.  Cable television had been around for 25 years but was still something more common in remote rural areas than the sameness of suburbia.  Satellite television existed; it had its first single purpose satellite launched in '74.  The personal computer was effectively unknown.  The VCR existed, but was extremely expensive.  It wouldn't be until 1975 that Betamax came on the scene and allowed for the average person to record broadcast television or watch movies at home at one's leisure.  Hell, print magazines were still a major and viable outlet for a writer to submit fiction.
     Koontz lists seven categories of genre fiction: Science Fiction, Fantasy, Suspense, Mysteries, Gothic-Romance, Westerns, and Erotica.  I would argue that Sci-Fi (wildly expanded over what it was by the mid-1970s, for better or worse), Fantasy, Suspense (still very strong), Mystery (Koontz writes about the more traditional, Agatha Christie style mystery, which has been superseded by a more active plot structure since the early 1990s at least), Gothic-Romance (this is a chaste kind of romance, part Brontë sisters' young girl sent off to live in a strange house and long for the unobtainable man, part supernatural mystery; my understanding is that this market died before the 1970s were over), Westerns (another genre that has widely gone by the wayside; it takes a very well-written book to garner any attention beyond people who go purposely looking for a Western; however, the more modern Western follows a much different plot structure where a man can be a man instead of a slave to the modern world), and Erotica (Koontz divides this category into the Big Sexy Novel and the Rough Sexy Novel; the former category includes everything from the bodice-ripper romance novels of the 1980s and 1990s to the sex-filled stories of Jacquelin Suzanne or Harold Robbins, and even more, while Rough Sexy is effectively porn).  To his credit, I think that Koontz did a fantastic job of delineating the categories and his understanding of them.  I could not think of a kind of genre fiction that would not fit in these groups (though as noted, I believe the Gothic Romance is dead).  More to the point, Koontz, who was not yet 30 when he wrote Writing Popular Fiction, clearly understood all of the genres and the necessary elements to make one acceptable to a publisher.
     Koontz is a little too eager to go to numbered lists (this is more of a personal complaint, because if one is keeping the book handy as a resource then this tactic is fine, but it gets cumbersome if one is just reading through the book as a book).  Then, when doing so would make the most sense, he avoids the tactic and just lists the information with paragraph breaks.  It feels a little odd, but once I understood that he was going to change it up whenever he felt like it, I became much less concerned about it.
     One of the better parts of any book on writing is how many forgotten (or at least unknown to me if they have remained popular) books the author mentions as good examples of the genres.  For the most part, Koontz rattles off well-known and renowned titles and authors, though in some instances he seems to be well ahead of his time.  He praises Lucas' THX 1138 as being one of the two worthwhile (meaning not derivative) science fiction movies, which is impressive mostly because nobody saw THX 1138 when it was released.  Still, it became quite clear that not only was Koontz very well read, he also had no problem throwing other writers under the bus when it came to their abilities and works.  This stood in odd contrast to his straight-out advice that a writer is better served by writing sub-standard, by the numbers genre fiction to earn a paycheck than in taking a 9 to 5 job and neglecting writing for even a few short months.
     Koontz also gives great insight into why the authors of the era were so eager to use pen names.  This always confused me, but apparently there was a prevailing belief that an author could compete with himself (or herself) instead of a loyal following buying more books by the same author.  Likewise, there were genres (this may still be the case) where the audience was thought to only endorse on gender of author – Westerns needed to be written by men, Gothic Romances only by women – and an author often took a name for each genre in which he or she worked.  It still seems crazy to me, but Koontz does an excellent job of explaining that when the publisher tells you to use a different name if you want the advance check, do it.
     According to Koontz, a good story needs:
❶ A Strong Plot
❷ A Hero or Heroine
❸ Clear, Believable Motivation
❹ A Great Deal of Action
❺ A Colorful Background
     That all seems super-obvious, doesn't it?  Yet there are several stories I'd love to develop that I have have yet to figure out how to move the plot to the forefront of the tale.  I have been known to try to force weak or unlikeable characters into the main role.  I cannot remember I time I did not try to hide the characters motivations.  I love restricting action (for no reason).  And I am weak at describing the alien (Science Fiction or Fantasy) settings, or in bringing out the particulars of an environment and making the story come alive because of them.  It is all simple advice, but sometimes I need to be clobbered over the head with it.
     My overall reaction to this book is positive.  I think I would enjoy a conversation with Koontz more than his books (and non-fiction to his fiction), but he clearly has mastered the craft of getting the readable, serviceable story in print quickly.  Dated, sure, but worthwhile.

Here are some of the fun bits I marked:

Koontz wondering about the future for a science fiction novel: Will marijuana be legal? p. 18

History lesson on American politics: In a short novel, appropriately enough titled If This Goes On..., Robert Heinlein writes of a future in which the church's tax-exempt status and the gullibility of the masses propel a backwoods evangelist into national politics and, eventually, a religious dictatorship that covers North America.  Heinlein's argument that the church should not be given an inch of influence in government, lst it take a mile, is given plausibility by the manner in which churches, in recent years, have pyramided their moral influence over government into a multi-million-dollar-a-year pro-church lobby in Washington. p. 21

Just kind of funny: For example, if you were primarily concerned with writing about the total failure of law and order in the city streets after dark by the year 1990... p. 22  (I had forgotten how focused on urban decay 1970s Sci-Fi was.)

Avoid cliched plots: Do not, for example, propose "secret organizations" who are out to overthrown some government and destroy the world.  Only governments themselves have the power to destroy the world.  And organizations out to overthrow governments are usually not secret, though their machinations may be. ...Never propose a villain who, single-handedly, sets out to destroy the world, no matter how wealthy or resourceful he may be. p. 78  (People still violate this all the time, and it is sad that it has endured.)

On p. 83, Koontz misunderstands the duties of the Secret Service while criticizing authors who misunderstand the duties of the Secret Service (he states they only protect the President and candidates).

The unlikable narrator: There is no hard and fast rule for this, in any genre; every story demands its own voice.  However, a good rule of thumb is to use third person for a story whose hero is hard-bitten and extremely competent.  A first person narrative by such a hero, in which he must regularly comment on his own prowess and cunning, may seem ludicrous to the reader.  He may dislike the hero and, therefore, the entire novel.  (This is how I felt about Patient Zero.)

Best title for a book some should be ashamed to be seen reading: Thirteen and Ready! p. 148

Koontz on Women Readers: Many women who read the Big Sexy Novel are terrified of divorce and, rather than seeing it as an answer to the problem, might find it a frightening and depressing non-conclusion.  This might change, too, in coming years, as more and more women realize their value, as people, outside of the institution of marriage. p. 144

Keep it simple: The vocabulary of the BigSN should always be simple.  The fewer multi-syllabic words you use, the better.  This does not mean that the BigSN reader has a more limited vocabulary than other genre readers; however, most BigSN want a book that can be read at the beach, over several evenings, between household chores–in short, a book that is interesting but not so demanding that it must be read carefully and in as few sittings as possible. p. 146

Respect the rules: Writers break rules and still get published all the time.  But these are writers who have published, for the most part, numerous other books: people who have learned all the rules, have proved they can use them successfully time and again, and have therefore earned the right to break a tradition or two. p. 151

Don't write in a particular dated style: Finally, avoid using the observer frame for your story, in which the first person narrator prefaces and ends the story with statements that this was the way he saw it all happen.  This technique, made popular by Conan Doyle in his Sherlock Holmes stories, renders the plot all past even, one long flashback, and it robs the story of its immediacy. p. 166

Style: ...[I]f you are trying to write beautiful prose full of catchy similes and metaphors and other figures of speech, you have reached a point where you should stop and reconsider what you are doing.  Whether or not you recognize it, you have your own voice already, one the reader will identify as yours, and you have only to let it grown of its own accord. p. 166

Style: There is one rule of style that every writer can benefit from: say it a simply, as clearly , and as shortly as possible. p. 167

Style: Economy of language is the most important stylistic goal. p. 170

How to Write Tales of Horror, Fantasy & Science Fiction (1987)

     How should I describe How to Write Tales of Horror, Fantasy & Science Fiction (1987)?
     Dated?  Sure, to a degree.  Unlike Crawford Killian's Writing Science Fiction and Fantasy (1998), it doesn't waste time with instructions on how to set up a web browser.  It does, however, include at least separate cautions against submitting dot matrix printed manuscripts.  I can view this more nostalgically since I was stuck with a dot matrix printer into the late 1990s.  And while I had no qualms about submitting school work from it (stupid me), I would like to think I would have popped for the $6 to have a decent print job from Kinko's if I were submitting a manuscript from that era.
     The contributing authors, all of whom were members/contributors of the Writer's Digest classes or workshops, were surprisingly willing to demean and criticize not just the work of other authors (and most certainly filmmakers), but those writers themselves.  This strikes a much different note from more recent books that stress such concepts as not looking down on (other) published authors.  Apparently, in the early-to-mid 1980s, it was fine for there to be pure way to write horror – which is the primary format in which the contributors worked – and it was different from the way all those successful, mass market appeal authors.  Except for when they wanted to sing the praises of a Writer's Digest member who also sold a lot of books.
     There wasn't much in practical advice in terms of how to develop horror, fantasy, or science fiction.  I guess that is kind of par for the course with these books; an assumption that one writes in a genre because they have a deep and abiding love of it and can draw from their experiences of what other writers have done with it.  Sure, How to Write Tales of Horror, Fantasy & Science Fiction does encourage prospective writers to read both good and bad genre writing.  How else is one supposed to know what to avoid?  More than that, one is supposed to gain a perspective as to which ideas have been ground into lifelessness – relying on an acceptance of cliché rather than anything the author could shape on his or her own.
     Even with its somewhat nebulous advice, I still found myself believing that I was better informed about different approaches to writing.  It is not filled with writing exercises that bog down writing classes (which have disputable positive impact beyond forcing one to write something), nor is it the how to format your manuscript book (very general advice on that topic).  It is mostly a varied group of authors – some quite famous – being somewhat joyful on the subject of writing.
     It is in giving me some insight into some of the published authors of the era (many of whom I had never heard of, let alone read their material).  As someone who is way behind in terms of his overall familiarity with what has been written – which comes from taking a decade long break from serious reading – I can use something like this as both a resource and a kick in the pants.  
     Now, for the quotes:

          "Technology poses no threat to the future of the book," said a 1984 

           report from the Library of Congress; but dull, uninspired or safe 

           fiction does. – p. 22, J.N. Williamson
     It is funny not just because technology is kicking the printed book's ass, but also because also because how how poorly the book was doing in Orwell's 1984.

           As with introducing a human character, you will need to bring out 

           the oddities of your alien gradually; remember that long strings of 

           adjectives are more like inventories than descriptions. – p. 58,
           Ardath Mayhar
     I would love for someone to print this out and paste it to the keyboards of certain writers.  Henry Lopez comes to mind.  "Heavy is the Head" is a prime example of a violation of this general principle.

          Don't mistake action for suspense.  A good novel must be filled 

          with action, and the characters must be kept in meaningful motion; 

          however, a tale can be composed of one gunfight and wild chase 

          after another yet be totally lacking in suspense.  Action becomes 

          suspenseful only if you write with a full understanding of the 

          following two truths: (1) suspense in fiction results primarily from 

          the reader's identification with and concern about lead characters 

          who are complex, convincing, and appealing; and (2) anticipation 

         of violence is infinitely more suspenseful than the violence itself.
         – p. 60, Dean R. Koontz

          There is nothing wrong with [daydream fiction].  (The only people 
          opposed to escape are jailers.) – p. 81, Darrell Schweitzer
     I just really like this general idea.  That fantasy (however one applies the term) is not inferior because it is fantasy.  It can only be inferior if it is written worse than the alternatives while having less to say.

          No writer has orchestrated terror in prose more carefully than 

          Lovecraft, but you won't learn how to write dialogue or deal 

          with character from him. – p. 97, Ramsey Campbell
     And now I understand why I don't think much of H.P. Lovecraft as an author.  Because I am all about character and dialogue (usually to the point that the plot gets washed away, which is a problem); I want those elements to be strong in what I read.

          Always have a rough idea of your first paragraph before you sit

          down to write, and then you won't be trapped into fearing the 

          blank page. – p. 99-100, Ramsey Campbell
     This may be the best general advice on how to proactively deal with writer's block.

          Unless you're fairly sure that you have an unstoppable need to 

          write, you're probably better off putting this book down and 

          going about your business. – p. 147, Alan Rodgers
     No need to sugar coat it, right?  Seriously, the contributors make quite a few efforts to let the reader know that the life of a writer may not be a great or profitable one.  Indeed, one of them died of carbon monoxide poisoning in his mobile home (using a gas powered generator for electricity because the power had been turned off).

There is a difference between "challenging" and "frustrating"

     I first ran into people not quite understanding how to properly challenge their charges while I was in elementary school.  There were two teachers who ran the program for gifted (in the good way, not in the Midvale School way) children, NOVA.  Aside from the issues with gender inequality – they believed that girls were disadvantaged by traditional education methods, so their solution was to actively and purposely disadvantage the boys in their classes – they really had one major screw up.  While making the material covered more challenging was the right thing to do, they also decided to be much harsher in their grading.
     Not that there is anything wrong with tougher standards.  It is not irresponsible to tell children that they shouldn't be aiming for the 70% mark to get by.  Never mind that a C average would get a student booted out of the program, and even flirting with a low B led to some encouragement to migrate back to an existence with the normals.  Those were the standards, and even though we didn't know what they were going in, they were pretty regular.
     The problem was what it took to get that solid B average.  Many of us are used to the soft and easy break down of 90/80/70/60 percent for the floors of A/B/C/D grades.  It allows for an easy concept of how one is expected to perform.  In NOVA, the break down was a little different.  The As ranged from 100-96, Bs from 95-88, Cs from 87-78, and Ds from 77-70.  Now those aren't equal spreads, but I guess there is nothing that says they have to be.
     So, NOVA had tougher material and higher expectations in terms of performance in regards to grading.  That just makes for a challenging experience; you can make your own decisions as to whether or not that is a good thing for 8 year olds.  But these teachers also decided that they needed to be hypercritical when it came to grading and testing.  The multiple choice tests had between 8 and 10 possible answers, and the students received credit only if they picked the answer that best fit the expectations of the teachers (usually 5 of the choices were correct to some degree).  The essay tests (starting in third grade) demanded that the imposed format of topic sentence, supporting sentences, conclusion be used in every paragraph.  If a sentence were deemed to not be on point within the paragraph, that was 5% off right there.  Same for every spelling or punctuation error.
     Throw in the fact that neither of these women liked me (and said so to both me as a child and to my mother while they were trying to get my brother and I kicked out of the program despite our good performance), and I never really felt like I was being challenged by NOVA.  It was challenging, but I was just frustrated.  I was punished for my inability to spell – something with which I still struggle – and not allowed any degree of creativity in building my written arguments.  I wasn't rewarded for having a better understanding – as I saw it – than the teachers when I selected the answers that didn't need unstated qualifications (that they thought were implied in the questions).  It was a fight, all the time, and it did much to ruin any fun I had in school.
     And that lasted until about 2001.  Well, if I am going to be honest it will endure in some degree forever.  I have a general mistrust of teachers because of these women – the worse of the two has been reduced to teaching computer savvy students how to use outdated school computers at St. Christina School (3333 W 110th Street, Chicago, IL) – and, I would guess, that my similar distrust of women in general springs from the same source.  (So, for those who were so eager to blame someone I didn't meet until the fall of 1991, I suggest that you may be wrong.  Ask her.  I'm sure she'd agree that she is blameless.)
     Anyway...
     One should never have a goal of frustrating people unless the desired result is to drive them away.  Challenging them is different.  In the endeavors we willingly take on, most of us like a challenge.  If it all comes too easy, we tend to get bored and move on to something else.  If it doesn't come at all, we'll just quit.  And we are right when we do so.
     I see a fair amount of RPG scenarios where the writers can't seem to make the distinction between frustrating players and challenging their characters.  Sometimes this is because they just don't understand the mechanics of the game.  Henry Lopez was a textbook offender of this when he put together a non-combat encounter  for his Living Arcanis mod "Sibling Rivalry" where every PC needed to be able to scale a 200 foot tall cliff.  Not in a, if we take a lot of time when can mitigate the difficulty for characters that don't do a great job of climbing.  No, it was a every character needs to make this check that needs to challenge good climbers.  Run as written, this encounter should kill PCs.  It should leave entire groups sitting at the base, unable to go on.  While that may be somewhat realistic, it isn't what players are looking for.
     More recently, I and my fellow players suffered through Kyle Baird's Pathfinder Society Organized Play scenario The Rats of Round Mountain—Part I: The Sundered Path (#3-20).  The author had a completely different understanding of the rules than those who have played the scenario; this is never a good sign.  The result in a combat encounter which essentially runs as all of the players can make some guesses and maybe not be able to hit while the NPCs can do lots of damage to the PCs.  Not fun.  Not even for the GM running it.
     This is not the first time that PFS has embraced the frustrating over challenging mindset.  Sometimes it is because the GM isn't running it correctly (those little creatures aren't supposed to be invisible throughout the encounter, DG), but more often it was because somebody couldn't tell the difference between challenging and frustrating.  Having to defeat a really tough bad guy?  Challenging.  Having to make more than 10 Fort saves in a scenario or pick up the plague?  Frustrating.  Needing to find a way to accomplish some tasks without resorting to combat?  Challenging?  Having all of the roleplaying elements of a sessions mean nothing because the investigation cannot reveal anything?  Frustrating.
     We want challenges.  But we expect to succeed in them.  We want to think that there is a chance of failure, a real chance, because it is that perceived risk that makes the success matter.  Now, I don't think any of us wanted failure to be an actual option in elementary school (and that is not something we really willingly enter).  And we would probably like for work to have a much greater chance of reward than real risk, since without it we may go hungry and be without shelter.
     When it comes to hobbies, we want our successes to mean something.  We want the frustrations to be minor, ones than can be overcome by a better understanding of the technique or situation at hand.  It is why we don't stick with playing miniature golf or wiffle ball as adult hobbies.  It is why – if we are being serious – we don't try to learn to play a musical instrument without some form of assistance or aid.
     I guess I am one of those people who frustrates far many more than I simply challenge.  I would apologize, but that seems like a lot of work; I'd have to track down people who I would just assume have forgotten about me.  So, I have something to work on.  But nobody is really adopting me as a hobby, so they all have the option of just walking away.  I like my time spent playing RPGs.  I just wish that the people who took the time to write the material had a better understanding of the difference between challenging and frustrating.

Danger! Danger! – A CTA Story

This is where I get on/off the Blue Line.

     It isn't just that I didn't get around to writing a real post.  That is part of it.  But this post is mostly here because I just endured the scariest ride on the Blue Line yet.  Well, for the most part, there isn't anything scary about my trips on the Blue Line.  I used to ride it to school and back between three and five days a week (it was a summer session where it was only three) and nothing bad ever happened.  Maybe a little crowded on the way down, maybe an extended wait for a train on the way home.
     But Monday night trips to Chicagoland Games: The Dice Dojo (5550 N. Broadway, Chicago, IL) – I'm sure they'd love some business in you're in the neighborhood – has me taking the Blue to the Red and vice versa on the way home.  The Red Line can get a little dicey on the way back, something that isn't all that strange given that I don't usually get on it until after 11:30pm.  Not a lot of Nine-to-Fivers in that crowd.  Actually, a fair amount of drunks and addicts, but what trouble they cause is usually among themselves.  And they are the minority in any given car.
     But not so with the early Tuesday morning (I arrived home around 2:00am) trip back on the Blue Line.  The car was equally populated with the sleeping homeless – the one alert homeless passenger got off at Illinois Medical District – and the agitating, troubled, do-you-got-a-smoke or give me some fucking money for food crowd.  Some of them just came from a hospital, as evidenced by slings and casts and those paper bracelets hospitals give out.  Into this mildly unpleasant car came a steady stream of give me a smoke and you have any money, motherfucker? passengers who had no one else to bother for these items other than me.
     No, I don't have a smoke.  I'm like 7Up with regard to caffeine in that regard.  And I don't have any money.  Seriously, not a penny on me.  It isn't like I have any money at home, either, fellas.  I have nothing for you.  Maybe its a good thing I finished the book I brought just before I had to switch trains, because I wouldn't have felt comfortable not watching my fellow passengers.
     "How can you not have any money?" 
     Well, jackass, it could be that I simply don't want to give you any money.  I don't.  I would actually rather get into an unseemly knife fight – one I'm sure I would lose, because I've never fought with a knife before and I'm still not in general fighting shape, knife or no knife – than give you money.  But since I don't have any money to give, that is kind of a moot point.
     It isn't that I don't believe in giving money to people who need it.  I do.  And it isn't that I think that addicts and drunks don't need their fixes to some degree.  I just don't think it is my responsibility to support them when I have no money to spend on myself.  Like every greedy person who can be made to feel guilt, I want to have a reason to feel guilty.  My not jonesing is not some indicator that I am well enough off to spare a quarter, largely because I didn't have a quarter, dime, nickle, or penny on me.  I had a CTA fair card with $2.50 left, which means that I need to get some money to put on it if I want to be accosted again.
     Anyway, nine different passengers approached me twelve times.  The one guy demanded I give him something.
     "I have an unopened bottle of water.  That is the sum total of food/drink/valuables I have.  If you want it, its yours."
     Guy grabs it, gets upset.  Curses under his breath.  Curses louder.  Curses at me.  Fakes throwing the bottle of water at me (I'm all of about two feet away, buddy...I don't think you are going to get any arm speed going by throwing it...may as well just hit me with it).  Opens it up and spills it on two guys who are using the train as a place to sleep.  Decides to tell them its my fault because all I would give him was water.
     Motherfucker, I don't have anything else to give you.  At least not on me.  I'm not invited you back to my place so I can give you an unopened can of store brand mini ravioli (say what you will, at 50¢ a can they don't seem that bad), a sleeve of lower sodium Ritz crackers, or more bottled water.  I don't have what you want.  I don't have what I want.  And your need to pick a fight with me because I can't help you get your fix is really just reminding me that I can't get the shit I want for me.  The simple shit.
     Anyway, after about three minutes of trying to convince any of the other beggars to help him get some revenge for being given water the guy wanders off to a different car.  He comes back once to shout something (I couldn't understand him).  The rest of the awake passengers are all upset, and their anger is directed at me.  Because I'm awake?  No.  Well, maybe.  But because I seem to be in a position to help them but I am not.
      Ain't none of us in the position we wanted to be.  Not even by modest standards.  I managed to get there, I guess.  I just wanted to get home.  Safely.  Since nobody attacked me, I guess I did.  But there was this weird, real threat of it for the first time I can remember it.  And it makes me wish I had the ignorance of my youth, in a sheltered upper-middle class suburb (where we certainly didn't have the money to fit in, but that is what living on the fringe of said suburb allows).  Where thinking that people who rode public transportation instead of driving were stupid or lazy or bums.  Bums looking to bum something.  Bad people.
     But in that suburb, that was all code for something else.

Flashes of Mediocrity

Flashes of Mediocrity

  by Silence Do_nothing

   I've never been drunk, but I believe the writing process has allowed me to experience something similar to a drinker's remorse.  Ideas which seem great one day reveal their true terrible nature the next and I'm left wondering how I ever thought them good.  That's my explanation as to why,  instead of the short fiction piece I had planned, I have a short non-fiction piece on why I don't have the short fiction piece.
   As a dilettante writer (it's nicer than using "hack"), I was expecting to sift through a lot of garbage, but I figured a month's time was sufficient to generate the amount of acceptable material needed to build a presentable story several hundred words long.  I miscalculated.  The ratio of garbage-to-mediocre was higher than I expected.
    I struggled with three previous stories and two version of a fourth that weren't worth saving. Those were done on the computer so I tried pen and paper for a new rough draft.  The words flowed easily. The process of writing gave me a natural high.  I figured I had finally cracked it.  The next day, when I was typing it up, I saw that not even a tenth of it was worth a damn.  My enjoyment had clouded my judgement.
   I have a couple excerpts of the least bad of it.  I actually kind of like these, but I imagine an outside reader in even the most charitable mood would find them mediocre at best.
   Excerpt #1:

   Alan: "... Why don't you study engineering?"
   Braun: "Poor spatial reasoning ability.  It's like I have a female brain."
   Alan: "Glad you said it instead of me."
   Braun: "Because you were afraid of saying something offensive to me or offensive to women?"
   Alan: "Wait, is it offensive to you because a female brain is supposedly beneath you or offensive to women because your brain is beneath them?"
   Braun: "No one's beneath anything.  It's really more a matter of a mismatch.  Less suitable combinations."
   Alan: "You mean like your girlish long lashes?"
   Braun: "It's exacerbated by artificial tear drops.  The lashes absorb most of it."
   Alan: "Women wish they had your eye lashes."
   Braun: "Thank you."

   I believe I do have lousy spatial reasoning.  I have no mechanical aptitude whatsoever and I struggled when videogames transitioned from 2D sprite based graphics to 3D polygons.  My eye lashes are unusually long and full for a guy's.  Instead of softening my creepy look they exacerbate it.  There aren't a lot of cosmetics commercials touting products that give you thinner, less lustrous lashes, so my options seem limited.  Even if that weren't the case, it strikes me as less masculine to groom your lashes, even for a more masculine look, than it is to leave them in their natural less masculine state.  I'm an expert at avoiding eye contact, so I doubt many people notice anyway. Avoidance of eye contact solves another problem.  If the Greeks of mythology were less sociable, fewer would have succumbed to the Medusa's gaze of stone.
   Excerpt #2:

   Braun: "...if he had disparaged high school football or if he had written that beef wasn't real BBQ and that the best BBQ was in Memphis or the Carolinas, then they [Texas] would have threatened to secede unless they received a formal apology."
   Alan: "That's not a useful gauge of their fury."
   Braun: "You're right.  They threaten to secede every time a replay is reversed against the Cowboys."
   Alan: "What we need is for Quebec to secede along with Texas so they can unite."
   Braun: "That's actually not a bad idea.  You'd have Tebec."
   Alan: "No.  We are talking about the sovereign nation of Quexas."
   Braun: "Okay.  Quexas would be a superpower in both accents and strip bars."

   The Texas secessionist movement probably isn't as ingrained as the snippet suggests.  I do think Texans identify as Texans more intensely than people of other lower 48 states would identify with their respective state.  I've heard radio personalities rave about strip bars in Montreal.  I don't know why, but I just assume Texas is particularly keen on those establishments.  I think Quexas would be a good fish out of water idea for a stupid reality show.  Take independence advocates from Texas and Quebec and let them switch locales.
   That was the best material I could pull from a 47k text file of notes and a 20k partial rough draft.  That was why I had to abandon it.  My writing goal now is to reach a sustained level of mediocrity, instead of  merely brushing up against it for a brief time.
   I still feel entitled to criticize the writing of movies and comics.  Partly because I'm an amateur and have the right to hold professionals to a higher standard, in the same way that a fan who couldn't make 60 percent of his free throws still has a right to criticize a professional for failing at the same.  More important is the practical consideration that barring me from criticizing writing better than mine would leave no material other than my tattered copy of the 80s"Kool-Aid Man" comic book.  Hopefully.

Why Can't the Americans...

     Close to a decade ago, a co-worker of mine quipped "Why can't the English teach their children how to speak?", borrowing that from the Lerner & Lowe musical My Fair Lady (1956).  He was making a veiled racist statement that African-Americans simply refused to learn how to speak better American English.  Not that the overall message is much different.  Henry Higgins is espousing a harsh form of elitism based upon conformity to an elocution.  One's worth based on how well can speak, and an abandonment of any heritage hidden in speech patterns or word choice.
      But this isn't about that.  This is about how Americans – my people – and how we seem to refuse to learn how to separate that which we wish to be true from the actual examination of facts at hand to arrive at a consensus of truth.  This is apparent whenever there is some sort of artificial dichotomy forced upon, say in an election or in the discussion of religion.  The American, it would seem, is of the mind that one can simply decide to create a fact out of belief; it is in his or her nature.  This is not some sort of mere belief, but some construct the American has come to believe to be core not just to his or her own experience, but to existence itself.
     Why can't the Americans teach their children how to approach the world rationally, with respect for reason and a sublimation of personal inclinations?  Maybe that sounds as impossibly biased as Professor Higgins.  But there is something that diminishes us all in the American rush to abandon judgment.
     Recent things that have troubled me include the following (some of them are the same person):

• A stubborn refusal to see how asking someone for identification before allowing them to vote is an example of an illegal search & seizure.
• A stubborn refusal to believe that gun control laws exist because there are ways to purchase guns without abiding them.
• Someone with an open mind as to whether on not the Moon Landings were faked.  Seriously.  There is absolutely no evidence (other than the will to believe) that we spent billions of dollars, employed the best scientists, and risked many lives in an effort to do something magnificent (at the time just for America) for humanity.
• The belief that hating people can be justified because it is out of love, and the desire to save these people being hated from burning in Hell.  
• The wonderment over just where our tax dollars go.  (Seriously, that information – save some classified spending – is readily available with just a small amount of research.)
• A woman on CNN, representing the stay-at-home mother who decided that the values she was representing were tied to destroying the EPA, unions, and access to affordable healthcare.  Someone else's talking points are not knowledge, lady.

That's the thing, though.  We, the American people, don't want to do the work, the research to find out those things we just want to doubt.  We don't want to confront our prejudices with reason.  We don't want to doubt our convictions, because they don't.  And they hate us.  Except, of course, that they and us are the same group of people: Americans.
     When there isn't room for reasonable discussion, for reasoned examination of the world we encounter, there is only belief.  But what is the point?  That belief relates to nothing.  It is an empty thing, useful only for the beating of one's chest and shouting the other down.  And that just eats away at our collective soul.
     Well, if you suffered through that, enjoy some good entertainment.

The Writer's Guide to Fantasy Literature (2002)

     I may owe Crawford Kilian an apology.  While I found little in his Writing Science Fiction and Fantasy (1998) to be full of worthless and severely out-of-date information, there was at least some consistency in it.  I may have found Kilian's tastes to be counter to my own, but he was trying to give some advice on the subject of writing.  That is not the case with The Writers Guide to Fantasy Literature: From Dragon's Lair to Hero's Quest (How to Write Fantasy Stories of Lasting Value) (2002), edited by Philip Martin.
     Martin is largely the author, but he fills in much of the meager 228 pages (the rest are appendices on resources for writers) with snippets and interviews from selected authors.  This is problematic for two reasons.  First, it interrupts any attempt at a narrative flow.  The examples are meaningless because it is never truly established what the exemplar is supposed to be.  Second, and worse, most of the selected text sections read as meaningless when divorced from their source material (or at least enough of it to give it context and weight).  It gives the impression that lasting fantasy literature is rather bland and unengaging.
     That is not to say that I could not stand to learn a lesson from this book.  Indeed, it served to reinforce how unfamiliar I am with the breadth and scope of authors of 'speculative fiction' that Martin considers to have contributed something beyond the momentary blip on the radar.  Granted, this is a lesson better illustrated by my meager library of read books as noted on Goodreads.com (where each title and author can be tracked), but it is one that can be learned again and again.  The list of authors I have not read is somewhat staggering:
✦ J.K. Rowling (I have, however, seen the third Harry Potter film and know the story from commercials for the other movies)
✦ Lloyd Alexander
✦ Susan Cooper
✦ Diana Wynne Jones
✦ C.S. Lewis (I have seen the three 'live-action' Chronicles of Narnia films, and remain scarred by animated version of The Lion, the Witch, and The Wardrobe)
✦ Beatrix Potter
✦ Madeline L'Engle
✦ George MacDonald
✦ Charles Williams
✦ Peter S. Beagle
✦ Mary Stewart
✦ T.H. White (that's right, I never read The Once and Future King, a book that was required in my Freshman Honors English class...in part because I thought we should have been reading actual Medieval literature instead of pretend Medieval literature)
✦Fritz Lieber (though I am familiar with Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser as characters)
✦ Michael Moorcock
✦ Brian Jacques
✦ Patricia A. McKillip
✦ Donna Jo Napoli
✦ Midori Snyder
✦ Gabriel Garcia Marquez
✦ Laura Esquivel
✦ Louise Erdrich
✦ Anne Rice (and I have no interest in reading her)
✦ John Marco
✦ Elizabeth Hand
✦ Richard Adams
✦ Kenneth Grahame
✦ Graham Joyce
✦ Terry Prachett (who Martin adores, but Kilian execrates in his book on writing)
✦ Orson Scott Card
✦ Neil Gaiman
✦ Alice Hoffman
✦ Franny Billingsley
✦ Kij Johnson
✦ L. Frank Baum
✦ Ursula K. Le Guin (I read a little booklet that she wrote about designing the maps for Earthsea, but I'm not going to count that)
✦ Lord Dunsany
✦ Eva Ibbotson
✦ Robert Jordan
✦ Terry Brooks
     Okay, that is a lengthy list.  And it highlights that my exposure to fiction is not weighted towards the British end of things or the well-received books that had no cultural impact among my age group (which makes me question the "lasting" quality of the works, but since I am wholly ignorant of them I should probably just shut up).  But I think it also speaks to how large the field really is.  If one were to be a dedicated reader of fantasy fiction, chances are that the best he or she could do would be to read about 5% of the published titles in any given year. 
     Back to the book.  The last two sections finally get around to some kind of discussion on actual writing, but that serves to highlight that the majority of the book is dedicated to a stand-offish, shallow review of the nature of speculative fiction.  Had it been an academic review of fantasy literature, dense as that would be, it would have been much more rewarding.  Instead, it was just sort of there to be slogged through, offering almost nothing in terms of insight as to what makes for good or meaningful fantasy literature (or even what elevates fantasy writing to the level of literature).
     If I had only spent two days on this book, I'm positive I'd be less upset with it.  But it took a full week of slow progress and stepping away from it again and again to get to the end.  That didn't feel helpful, and I don't know that there is anything I will keep with me from this.  The only upside is that it costs nothing to check a book out from the library.

The Everything Creative Writing Book 2nd Edition (2010)

     The Everything Creative Writing Book (2010) feels like the kind of book one should read immediately before taking an introductory creative writing class.  It contains a lot of good information, but there is a distinct lack of depth.  It glosses over most of the differences between the kinds of writing it purports to address, giving desperately little insight into applying creative writing to business reports or essays.  Indeed, there seems to be a disconnect between the notion of creative writing and simply not writing something awful in a different form.  Bad writing is not just bad writing, it is bad in relation to its intended purpose in addition to any other failings it may have.
     Perhaps the main problem is that the book attempts to cover too much material.  Letters to the editor, essays, and business proposals all require writing, but probably don't need to be in a book on the topic of creative writing.  Poetry felt rather awkwardly inserted into the mix as well, but I also have a bias against the form because I often have problems finding the rhythm the author intended .  Writing plays (and screenplays) is also covered, something that I gravitate towards because I do enjoy writing an over abundance of dialogue (see this old short story) into almost story.  Why not do it in a format where it is more accepted?  Unfortunately, The Everything Creative Writing Book spends no time addressing the format of plays and scripts.  To make up for this, it does explain a small amount of the lingo for screenplays, like slug line.
     Though relatively recent, the book cannot help but feel dated.  When it references self-publishing, there is still the assumption of printing physical copies of a book (or magazine or comic book) rather than simply choosing the e-reader friendly formats that Amazon and Barnes & Noble make available to just about any aspiring author.  Sure, the information on how to get an ISBN is nice, but essentially the self-publisher is going to search for information on the same topic in more detail on the internet.  Likewise, the information on how to get one's book into libraries feels very thin – another area where the purpose had to be more of keeping the idea in the reader's head rather than giving definitive information.
     What author Wendy Burt-Thomas does the best job of conveying is that the material an author has after the first draft is most certainly not to be considered to ever be on par with reviewed, rewritten, and edited work.  She does not make much of an effort to deal with the difference of authors whose first revisions are complete rewrites (effectively treating the first draft as a means of outlining and providing details for a story that has yet to be properly written), revisions (what I assume is standard rewriting), and editing, except in asides.
     It is hard to find something new in the fourth book on writing I've read this month.  There is bound to be a lot of re-stating the core principles: write every day when you are writing, treat rewriting and editing as serious endeavors, not everything you write is going to be good – even when it is finished.  But Burt-Thomas is somewhat more forgiving in telling the aspiring author that it is okay to take time away from a project (and even from writing, though this is supposed to be kept brief).  When she does the best job of is keeping the material positive at almost all times.  There is almost nothing in the book that will discourage the would-be author, and she is quick to point out that if the criticism is constructive it isn't going to be of much use to correcting the errors. 
     While How Not to Write a Novel (2008) is a more entertaining read, The Everything Creative Writing Book is undoubtedly a better resource when it comes to guiding beginning writers and aspiring authors into finishing their projects.  As long as one ignores how little most of the interviews add to the material, and that the essay and screenplay examples in the appendix are less than stellar (they will no doubt make most writers feel good about their own work), it is a solid book.  My one real complaint about it would be that her suggested writing exercises seem more tedious than insightful, but that is not enough for me to not recommend the book.

This Year You Write Your Novel (2007)

     That's right, I am continuing in the reading of books on the subject of writing rather than actually writing.  However, I avoided these books for so long with little reason  – unless simple arrogance is a reason and not just a cause.  There is a lot of this attitude in regards to politics, where people feel they know enough on the subjects to forever avoid actually learning anything.
     I picked up Walter Mosley's This Year You Write Your Novel (2007) at the Forest Park Public librbary without knowing who the author is (which makes me feel nearly illiterate) because I assumed that it would have some advice on how to budget time towards writing a novel.  Unfortunately  – at least for me  – Mosley's advice is to write every day, every week, for the whole year.  Sure, some of this writing is actually reviewing, revising, and full-on editing, but Mosley wants the aspiring author to put in between 1½ and 3 hours per day on the novel  Every single freaking day..  I think that would lead to a fair amount of burn out if it is all dedicated to the same story.  On the other hand, one of the major reasons I have this blog is to keep myself in the habit of writing something (usually not fiction, and almost never very time consuming material) on a regular basis, and from that I can attest that writing regularly makes it easier to find the rhythm for a story.
     Mosley, however, tends to view the novel as many smaller stories within the larger, connecting story.  Since he has been quite successful as an author, I am going to defer to his judgment on the matter.  Time spent with the smaller bits informs the bigger structure, and that can always change as the writer moves forward with it.  He also discusses the intuitive method (something all of us self-proclaimed smart people think is real writing) versus more structured, planned approaches.  How one spends time on the book is going to differ with each, and I'm appreciative for how Mosley covered this.
      There is also a small section dedicated to the value of the classroom, both in terms of academic study and writers' workshops.  I have long been too [insert one or more of the following: shy, timid, stubborn, arrogant, cowardly] to invite a crowd of people who are also authors (aspiring or published) to have access to my work just so they can point out all of the mistakes I've made.  Yes, I like being overly critical of the work other people do, but I don't want that same spotlight shined back on me.  But if an author is going to be serious about finding the flaws in his or her writing, then workshops seem to be a great tool.  You can find the errors you makes in the works of others (where they are easier to spot) and have others highlight the problems that you never see because you are just too damn close to your own story.
     By itself, This Year You Write Your Novel isn't going to be of much help.  As a supplement to knowing something about writing and a real desire to finish a story, it can be a great aid.  Mosley's acknowledgment that the first draft is going to be terrible (accept it, would-be authors) and that the real work comes from turning the rough story into a readable novel is encouraging.  On the other hand, he doesn't have much to say about how to get published other than to make contacts – another reason to workshop – and figure out who is likely to publish your type of material.  And then be ready for a steady stream of rejection, one that isn't likely to go once an author has had a few books (or more than twenty) published.

Writing Science Fiction and Fantasy (1998)

     If one were ever curious as to the magnitude of difference between the educators at the community college and university level, he or she should pick up Crawford Kilian's How to Write Science Fiction and Fantasy (1998, though there is a more recent revision that should avoid some of my criticisms).  Kilian manages to spend 160 pages giving information that could just as easily have been conveyed in a pamphlet. 
     Part of the book is wholly worthless.  Information about how to set one's Netscape browser or using AltaVista as a primary search engine seem damn near laughably ancient 14 years after publication.  Formatting instructions so that manuscripts can be read by Macs and PCs also seems redundant.  Worst of all, Kilian dedicates a mini-chapter to a rushed overview of basic English grammar.
     It is a little difficult to take an author seriously when his books are almost entirely out of print.  Does he know scores more about writing, marketing, and publishing novels than I do?  Absolutely.  Ashton Kutcher has more practical experience in terms of television and film acting than I do, but I wouldn't go to him for advice on the subject matter; I would seek out someone I believe can act at a professional level.  Where Kilian lost me was in his deep and abiding love for Orwel's heavy-handed 1984 (1949) – a fine, but far from excellent novel – while completely misreading Niven and Pournelle's Lucifer's Hammer (1977) as a manifestation of a white suburban fear of urban black men.  Talk about not understanding the time and setting of the book, and that the racial tensions in Los Angeles did not end with the Watts Riots.
     But to the material itself.  Kilian expends a fair amount of effort to display that he is well versed in the genres of Science Fiction and Fantasy.  He name drops constantly – revered authors become his lifelong inspiration, lesser authors are acquaintances and peers with whom he has debated at workshops, and the truly obscure are mentioned to prove that he isn't just familiar with the most successful titles in print.  Kilian calls out those who write licensed fiction – what he terms formula fiction – as not being real authors interested in telling real stories.  I don't know if this applies to the more recent authors who create their own setting and characters that go on to be licensed; I would assume so as Robert E. Howard is viewed as a real author for his Conan stories.
     Unfortunately, Kilian is very interested in providing a formula for writing a novel.  In his estimation, all Science Fiction and Fantasy novels are about power.  That may be true; the ones I have wanted to write are about political and economic power.  But it reads as overly restrictive to announce that all of them must be.  He provides a blueprint for moving the story forward, something that seems much more valuable as a workshop or classroom tool than a means to work on anything other than formula fiction.
     I found this book to be a waste of time.  Well, not entirely, but I would have preferred he had written a much more concise book that didn't feel the need to be constantly self-referencetial.  From what little example Kilian gives of his own works, he doesn't seem like somebody I would want to read, but I have one of his books on order from the library that I intend to read to give me a better idea of his ability as a fiction writer.  He certainly seems well versed in what it takes to get material published – that section felt more honest than the rest of the book. 
     I cannot say that I am eager to read anything more from this series.  Not just because Kilian did not address "how to get the science and magic right" ('read science journals' and advice on keeping magic internally consistent isn't informative by itself), but because the target audience seems to be much different from me.  What Kilian illustrates well are the following two points.  First, devotees to a genre may harshly judge works by authors who are not as familiar.  Secondly, waiting for inspiration to write is an invitation to being something other than an author.

How Not to Write a Novel (2008)

     I don't know if I have had more laugh out loud moments with a book than with Howard Mittelmark and Sandra Newman's How Not to Write a Novel (2008).  There is something special when authors can make 'bad writing' much more entertaining than what passes for acceptable fiction these days.  Sure, such prose really only works in small doses – nobody wants to read 180 pages of rapid-fire absurdities, unknowingly self-denying characters, and logical inconsistencies – but because there are so many real mistakes that writers can and do make, Mittelmark and Newman have no problem keeping the examples short and extremely pointed.
     Some of the fun in reading this comes from the liberal recycling of character names from all the fake, flawed fiction.  Melinda may be a waitress who obsesses over her boyfriend not remembering to celebrate the anniversary of their third date or a woman sold into sexual service to a ruthless terrorist.  Maybe it is the same Melinda; that would be an odd mash-up novel. 
     One of my favorite moments – and one that actually could work given a truly gifted author who could give it deep contextual meaning...well, some of it could work – comes from the sub-section "Linearity Shrugged" (p 124)

           Melinda would have never guessed that she would find true love in the arms

          of the ruthless terrorist to whom she had been sold like a hardware fixture 

          by the man she had trusted with all her most intimate papers and 

         documentation.  The beans were still too hot to eat.  In the early 1900s, 

         Tripoli had been a small market town, where goats could be seen not only 

         the streets, but making themselves at home on the Persian rugs of 

         fashionable homes.

I must have laughed for about a minute at the abruptness of "The beans were still too hot to eat."  Not only does it seem to have nothing to do with the establishing sentence, but its curt, very masculine tone stands in complete contrast to the overlong romantic sentence that proceeds it.  Where "The beans were still too hot to eat" could stand as a metaphor – a clumsy sexual one, or a clever one about reigning in one's passions, or something more mature than I can imagine on my own – it reads here as a complete distraction.  But more than that, it conveys more meaningful information to the reader on its face than the one exploring Melinda's journey into being the property of a terrorist or where goats slept in early 20th Century Tripoli.  It takes an insane amount of understanding of the craft to structure a paragraph (and it goes on for some length in the example) that both showcases the mistakes authors and wanna-be authors can and do make.
     Likewise, Mittelmark and Newman have great advice about the dangers of indulging the desire to soften the villain by giving him or her some likable qualities.  First, there is the issue of what the would-be author may consider sympathetic may not play as such with a wider audience.  But more to the point, some villainy is beyond redemption.

          Jack robs and cheats and beats his kids—but still pines for his first love.  

         Adolf introduces Fascism to Germany, spreads war throughout Europe, 

         murders millions in concentration camps—but he's a strict vegetarian and 

         loves his dog.  Tossing in a touching scene with his German shepard 

         Blondie and a dish of lentils won't make Hitler "more balanced."  Hitler's 

         character isn't balanced.  The only way to avoid caricature is the hard 

         way: making the bad guy's insane behavior and motivations believable. 

           (p 87)

Round out characters, of course, but there is no need to falsely "humanize" them.  The elements of character that don't directly relate to motivation should still inform the reader about the experiences that inform that motivation.  Furthermore, note that not everyone loves dogs (some of us harbor an intense fear of them because dogs tend to bite people) and vegetarianism isn't super-popular; see the lack of competing vegetarian chain restaurants as opposed to the massive profits of McDonald's, Burger King, Wendy's, Taco Bell, and KFC.
     There is advice that I just assume real authors know.  Bold print, unusual capitalization ('his Beer was cold and Refreshing') and exclamation points (except when a the dialogue needs to represent a character shouting or screaming) should see little to no use in a novel.  Sure, I liberally abuse italics and bold print on this blog; I don't have an editor to tell me I can't do it.  And it is an overly easy cheat to try to put extra meaning (or note that I'm trying to be sly) with a word or phrase.  Serious writers should do the work.  If you are trying to be sly, then actually write something that conveys that.
     Because Mittelmark and Newman aren't interested in the proper way to write a novel, they can concentrate on the many mistakes that are waiting to be made.  Illustrating the mistakes makes for a much more enjoyable read than a dry treatise on the proper technique for writing a novel.  Indeed, there isn't really a proper technique.  How Not to Write a Novel could have subtitled sections "You are Not [insert author's name here]."  Aspiring, unpublished authors are not Hemingway, Faukner, Roth, Twain, McCarthy, or King.  There is an assumption on behalf of Mittelmark and Newman that the would-be author is aiming for a more commercial than literary product – more Grisham or Collins than Morrison or Mailer – something that I find a little odd.  As much as I enjoy Richard A. Knaak's Dragonrealm books or Michael A. Stackpole's BattleTech novels, I would rather my works be more meaningful; I would like to think I want to write something more than just an interesting yarn. 
     In making the case for remembering where a scene is set – to not ignore other character present entirely, or forget what the scene would otherwise be about if the characters weren't so self-involved and interested in being interesting – Mittelmark and Newman give a passage that draws together several other flaws.  It is also the example that convinced me that this book would work as a movie, though I don't know how large a market there is for a kind of Amazon Women on the Moon (1987) built around literary clichés, grammatical errors, and inconsistent point of view..  Still, I don't know if any film has captured this level of sincere absurdity:

          The meeting began with a few prefatory remarks by the Mayor.  As luck 

          would have it, Jane and Alan found themselves seated next to each other

          at the far end of the conference table.  Jane avoided looking his way.

          Alan took out his pen and began tapping it on the table, something he 

          knew got on Jane's nerves.

          Jane glared at him.  Alan smirked.  She darted her hand out and snatched

          the pen from him.

           Alan glared back, but his look soon softened.

          "Jane..."

           "I don't want to hear it."

          "Jane, don't you know how sorry I am?"

          "You should have thought of that before you and your cousin—"

          "Second cousin, okay?" Alan interrupted, his tender feelings forgotten.  "It's

          not illegal."

          "Whatever!" she said.  "If she was two months younger, it would be."

          "If you were a little more enthusiastic in bed, instead of bringing up your 

          so-called trauma every time I tough you, maybe you could complain," Alan 

          said, bitter.  "I get it, okay?  Seeing what your father did to Fluffy was 

          horrible.  Well, that was twenty years ago.  Time to get over it."

          Jane shook her head, angry.  "That's what I get for trusting a Neo-Nazi!"

          "Of course!  Blame my politics!"  Alan pounded the table with his fist, 

          nostrils flaring.  "You and your Jew friends would just love patriots like 

          me—"

          "Shut up, Alan!  Shut up!"  Jane shrieked wildly, grabbing his collar and 

          shaking him.

          When the meeting was over, they filed out with their colleagues, 

          comparing notes on the Carb-Free Detroit! campaign that the Mayor had 

          detailed.

            (p 142-3)
     It should be noted that one can make many of the 'mistakes' outlined and still get published.  A lot of them can go into the same book.  David Heinzmann's A Word to the Wise (2009; commentary on it can be found on this blog) has a stereotypical gay character who seems to exist to show how okay the main character is with homosexuals.  Too much attention is paid to the minutiae of details of clothing.  The main character is supposedly well-rounded because he still thinks about a college football game where he didn't score the winning touchdown (never mind that he is a former FBI agent turned lawyer, and not bad looking to boot) and likes to cook...no, he's a natural cook who intuits what makes a good meal.  But Heinzmann has had a long and successful career as a journalist – still does – and that is going to open more doors than perfectly crafted characters.
     I recommend this book not just for the frustrated would-be author, but for anyone who likes to read.  Mittelmark and Newman have an easy, conversational style.  More than that, it is clear that they respect the effort it takes to move a story from imagination to the page.  If the story is nothing more than a retelling of already established clichés and stereotypes, why bother?  And if one is going to bother, at least the easiest of errors can be avoided.

The Best Car (2012)

     This is some real-life inspired fiction.  While there is much about this that resembles my life, it is far enough from the real truth that it would be an unrecognizable accounting for anyone who was present to the era for me.  But the car was real.

The Best Car

     I avoided getting my driver's license at sixteen.  There were several factors that contributed to that delay – I didn't want to take driver's ed at school, and quickly quit the Len Scaduto course in which my father enrolled me; I knew I wouldn't have regular access to a car, at least not until my mother replaced her rapidly aging '86 Ford Tempo with something reliable; I had no means of income for gas or insurance, and I was thoroughly uninterested in working to acquire money; I had friends who could and would drive me places – but none of them were the real reason I didn't get my license.  I avoided it because having one would have meant I could be pressed into service at any moment, wholly subject to my father's whims and his imagined state of health.  I bore witness to my older brother being awakened in the middle of the night – anytime from midnight to four a.m. – for a not so emergency trip to the hospital because our father had a headache and wanted drugs to make it go away.  By the time I was old enough to understand his need for injectable medication to combat his maladies I was also aware that he was being administered doses that would kill a regular, healthy person.  Moreover, he needed such treatment at irregular times; whenever was worst for everyone else would perfectly fit his schedule.  My father lived a life that was, without question, wholly about himself.
     Living in fear of having a strange dictate – to drive my father to the hospital or his doctor's home, which meant that he would be getting a dose so large that it couldn't be recorded without alarming hospital staff – was something that I knew was abnormal.  Every part of it, really.  I have to assume that most children, even in the heady years of adolescence with a need to establish independence from their supervisory adults, would not be alarmed by the call to be of service.  Children are supposed to love their parents, sons to love their fathers, and so there should not have been a reason for my very real need to not be made to serve as courier to wherever the drugs were stored.  Still, there it was.  I knew that if I could avoid the license I couldn't be forced to take him, and I should then have been able to get my license without any need of driver's ed once I turned eighteen.  I drove occasionally without a license, in the parking lot of the apartment complex and once to a job interview – a job in which I lost all interest once it was clear they wanted me to work forty hours a week while I was still in school – so I wasn't wholly unfamiliar with the operation of a motor vehicle.
     My father only tried to get me to drive him to the hospital once after my brother moved on to college.  He woke me up at one a.m. and told me I needed to get dressed and take him for some relief.  I was told that he had waited hours before deciding it was so bad that he couldn't possibly sleep, apparently unaware of the fact that if we had left at 10 p.m. we could have been back to the apartment by 2 a.m., and that would have allowed for some sleep.  Waiting until one was essentially a type of sleep deprivation, so long as one allows that the thirty minutes of sleep I may have gotten to that point would effectively be worthless.  To this day I think of it as a kind of terrorism, and I had no desire to bend to the will of a terrorist.  I told him that he had plenty of options other than me.  He could call a cab – roundtrip fare would have cost less than twenty dollars.  He had a friend in the building next door that he could have called and she probably would have taken him.  If he felt so bad that he had no choice but to go to the hospital, he could call for an ambulance – we had learned that the insurance United provided would cover the cost of the ambulance if he spent at least a night in the hospital and be a little more than one hundred twenty five dollars out of pocket if he didn't – and spend the night there. 
     Whatever it took to allow me to try to get some sleep, something that never came easy back then, that is what I suggested.  He pleaded his case for about fifteen minutes upon which time he must have realized I was not going to drive him; he had no winning counterargument to "I am not driving without a license" and so he simply went back to bed.  When I saw him the following afternoon, he was fine.  More than that, he never got so sick that he needed to be taken to the hospital or his doctor from his headaches.  His condition was, as I suspected without any cause, was wholly dependent upon his ability to have others service it.  I did not want to be tethered to it, made to serve without any attention directed back at me, and thus I decided to similarly rely on others when it came to needing to be driven places.  To be fair, if I couldn't get a ride I would usually walk or ride my bike.  I appreciated the efforts others made for me, but I was sure as hell not going to be helpless without them.  And I wasn't going to make it all about me.  Not always.
     That was a lesson learned while without a license.  In an effort to retrieve a hastily mailed letter, I got a friend to drive me to its intended destination where I could steal it from the mailbox.  When it wasn't there, I told him we would have to try again the next day.  He smiled and said, "Not going to happen.  You had your chance to get it.  If it that important, find another way to get there before anyone gets the mail."  Well, there was no way I could walk or bike there in time unless I ditched school to do it.  I missed a lot of days of high school, but never so I could commit a crime.  The letter got delivered, and the consequences of it fell much more lightly than I would have thought.  Still would have liked to have had the chance to get it back before it was read, but that is a bell that cannot be unwrung.
     The only reason I ended up with a driver's license before I turned eighteen was that my father got demoted at work and couldn't afford to keep us living where we were.  In actuality, that pay cut served as his chance to hand me off to my mother while – unbeknownst to anyone – he started squirreling money away for a Harley.  He went to live out in Winfield and I was shipped up to Oak Park.  Rather than transfer to the local high school – mine was so familiar with my brand of bullshit that I got away with most of the things that would cause them to expel other students – it was decided that I should finish where I started.  The first week my mother drove me to and from school every day, three hours sucked right out of her day; she tired of that by Tuesday.  The second week I was allowed to sleep at a friend's house but not really fed, and that was about as bad as anything I had experienced to that point.  The next week school was on break, but it was also when the road work for my driver's ed started. 
     Knowing that I was to be moved twenty five miles north, there had been a real push to get a license in my hands.  I cruised through the classroom sessions, and the school decided to cut how much practical experience I needed because I would often be inaccessible.  I had four days of driving over two weeks time before the school said i was ready to get my license.  What did they care?  The check had cleared months ago.  I didn't feel especially confident, but I knew that I could not rely on a mix of commutes from my mother, accommodating friends, and simply not going to school to make it to graduation.
     My father cleared a day so he could be there when I took my test.  He had some work he had to do on the car, an '84 Subaru GL Wagon – the last of the non-boxy wagons – that had been handed down from my brother.  The red wagon had been replaced with a blue one, this time a stick, which made it somehow more masculine in my brother's eyes.  They were both little station wagons, so I can't imagine either dripped with masculinity.  And he traded the near burgundy red one for powder blue.  I didn't care, because what I needed was a car that would handle the sixty to seventy miles a day that I would put on it.  My father gave it a tune up, replaced the brakes, and properly inflated the tires before I arrived.  The car was at our old apartment where my father continued to rent garage space.  He wasn't going to abandon his collection of tools, but he also couldn't bring himself to package them up and not be accessible.  His tools were different from his son.
     He drove us over to the facility in his Jeep Wagoneer.  I'll never understand why he didn't want me to take the test in the car I would actually be driving, but in retrospect I imagine it was a sense of ownership that he needed to impress on me.  He would be fully in charge because it was his vehicle.  Anyway, there was almost no wait at the testing facility.  I got one question wrong on the written – I don't know which and it still bothers me that I don't know – and sat patiently waiting for a chance to go out on the road.  I was assigned a man who looked like he could have been my guidance counselor's ugly, angry older brother, which meant that he was thoroughly unpleasant all the way around.  He started off by barking "Horn singal!" at me, which apparently meant that he wanted me to sound the car horn to prove that it worked.  I lost points there, in parallel parking, and the three point turn, but was still set to pass.  Unfortunately, when I pulled into a space to park I was about a foot into the neighboring space.  So that was a fail.
     What to do?  I had a car sitting and waiting for me.  I needed a license so I could go to school and graduate and do something with my life.  Jesus, without the license I might have to actually finish at a different school and meet new people.  The horror of it all.  Normally – or so we were told – I would have to wait a week before any possible retest.  Fuck that.  My father and I pled my case, my need for a license.  Never mind if I might actually be a danger to others on the road, I had places to go and a means to get there; I just needed a license in case I got pulled over.  A younger, less angry man came out and agreed to let me retest right then.  I passed with no problems and got the damn laminated piece of paper.
     My father took me back to the garage.  He had to run a quick errand, but he would meet me up at the school and make sure I made it to my mother's in one piece.  That was fine with me.  I was young and stupid and eager to prove that I could handle unsupervised driving even though I had almost no experience and absolutely none with the car with which I was entrusted.  I pulled out of the parking lot and was pulled over about a minute later.  The officer said I had failed to signal and I pointed out, very politely, that I didn't signal because it was a bend in the road and there was no other way to proceed on it; who the hell wouldn't know where the car was going?  He grumbled a little and told me to "be more careful". 
     About a quarter of a mile later he pulled me over again.  "I ran your plates.  You aren't from around here.  Your car is registered up in Oak Park."  To him that meant I lived near black people and therefore crime.  I must be some kind of criminal.  I pointed out to him that I had lived in his sad little retail-reliant village for four years, my father maintained his garage there and it was where I had to pick up the car.  Furthermore, I went to the high school about five blocks west and one block north.  I showed him my school ID.  I had every right to be there, but officer asshole wanted to prove something.  He grumbled again and then said he was going to write me a ticket for the illegal turn.  I laughed at him and said something along the lines of suing him for wrongful prosecution – or something similar I could have borrowed from Ghostbusters – and waited for my ticket.  About a minute later he came back and gave me license and told me to get back to where I came from.  At least I didn't get that ticket.
     My father showed up about thirty minutes after I got to the school.  We headed north, me following him because despite making the trip innumerable times I had never paid attention to which streets I needed to use.  Somewhere after I exited on 1st Avenue I lost him.  Shit!  I crept along, terrified both by the prospect of being lost and the other, more confident drivers flying by on my left.  I made a wrong turn on Madison and thought for a moment that I had crossed the border with Chicago – instead of it just being Forest Park – because of all the signs for liquor stores and bars.  I got myself righted and made it to my mother's.  My father showed up about twenty minutes later.  He decided to stop and get something to eat.  Not a lot of concern about it, either.
     From that point on, the car was mine.  I owned that car – actually, my brother owned it until it spent a winter in an O'Hare employee parking lot letting its underbelly get salted away – and made myself powerful among my friends by being able to drive places.  More than that, I had to drive places.  I took the opportunity to give pretty underclass girls a ride home, girls who never would have spoken to me otherwise, and learned the dangers of treating parking lights as headlights.  I got to spend almost every Sunday with a girl I was in love with – never mind that she was dating my close friend with whom I would help work stuffing Sunday Tribunes on Saturday night – because I had a car and he had destroyed his.  The car allowed me to feel as though I were a real person and not subject to the threats and whims of others.
     It was, without question, the best car I will ever have.  It isn't just about its primacy.  I kept a bag of clothes in the back so that I could spend the night wherever I wanted – there wasn't any insistence that I needed to be home.  With the seats folded down it was like a miniature covered pick-up; it certainly could carry a heavier load than my best friend's truck.  While I was aware that it could also double as a fantastic 'fuck wagon', I had nowhere near the confidence to test it out in such an endeavor.  My relationship with that car was about me, and I don't think I would have wanted to invite anyone else into something so intimate and risk how I felt about the beast. 
     And it was a beast, a might monster hidden in a partially rusted out and neglected body.  That wagon drove over a tree and a mailbox in one motion.  It didn't even damage the car.  Never mind that that tree was about six inches in circumference at its thickest or that the ground was so saturated with rain that the wheels sunk three inches into the ground, tearing up the lawn like it was only an ephemeral covering for the soil.  It took some hasty work – and a pair of baseball bats wedged under the rear wheels – to free the wagon from that muddy mess.  As I drove my friends away from the scene of the crime – conspicuously close to where I had tried to steal a letter only a few months prior – me grinning and they in near panic, I excoriated them for not keeping their eyes on the road.  They knew my attention would be elsewhere, yet not one of them said anything until we had already laid waste to the tree en route to the mailbox; some twenty five feet of non-road and none of them felt the need to say a damn thing. 
     We were muddy, and scared, and exhilarated.  My car – utter perfection in a compact, unassuming form – had inflicted damage and remained unharmed.  It was beyond perfect for the feelings of an empowered adolescent; it was freedom to do anything, yet it never occurred to us that there was much more to do than use the car to drive.  Driving was both a necessity and an expression of freedom, and we were free.  When relating this story to the acquaintance who lived near the scene of the crime, she could not keep herself from bursting into a near hysterical laughter.  Apparently, all her neighbor had said when seeing the damage the next morning was an exasperated "teenagers".
     That wagon drove a thousand miles one weekend trying to keep a relationship together, and not one in which I was directly involved.  It made a trip to a Boy Scout camp just to rescue a friend to see the premiere of Jurassic Park on the big screen – but the friend blew me off – on my birthday.  It made two trips out to Iowa City while I was scrambling to get courses and a place to live, and three more while I was there for a year (not attending those courses).  It was my means of being something other than trapped.  My father was disengaged from my life for the most part and there would be no threat to be his driver as he saw fit.  My mother was content enough to let wander around with it so long as I kept her marginally informed and made appearances at home. 
     That '84 Subaru GL Wagon in near-burgundy will forever be the best car I will ever have because it was the only one that gave me a sense of freedom, a sense that I was something other than trapped and small.  No other car – and most that followed were absolute pieces of shit – can be that for me again.  Like the car, life has worn me down.  Instead of freedom, a car has become a responsibility, a necessity to travel to places not accessible by the CTA or Metra.  The subsequent cars became the beasts that bore me to and from work, which immediately lessens the value one can assign to it.  It was the freedom to continue to go to the school where I had a small band of intensely close friends.  It became the means to access pretty girls in high school, and if I had any confidence back then it could have been so much more.  It became to embodiment of what I wanted to be able to see in myself.  Small but tough, reliable, versatile, and efficient; with over one hundred fifteen thousand miles on it, the wagon still got about twenty seven miles to the gallon.  Neglected for a winter, it was destroyed.
     I would like to say that the lesson is that one cannot neglect oneself in a similar manner.  That is how time gets away from people, they get busy living the workaday and miss the moments that we think should define us.  It isn't, though.  I simply miss being able to sit behind the wheel of a vehicle and know – or be astonished by – it survive a run-in with a sapling and a mailbox and be no worse for wear.  I want it to be the metaphor for how the seemingly small shit that comes down on me like rain is nothing that I can't overcome, with nary a scratch (or smelling fine if I want to be consistent in mixing my metaphors).  I know better, though.  The little things are the ones that will kill you.  They will eat you away, piece by piece when you aren't paying attention.  They will die like that wagon, a victim of the services that made the lot accessible to those moving their cars in and out on a daily basis. 
     That wagon is the best car ever because at the time I was driving it, I was still full of potential and promise.  Never mind that it was well past its prime, it was new to me.  It was the vehicle that could help carry me forward, but it died an inglorious death.  And whenever I notice that its promise is gone, I feel somehow despondent over how I have accorded myself.  I have recaptured none of what I felt with that car.  That freedom is somehow gone forever.  The road is dark.  The trees are tall and healthy.  The mailboxes are wrapped over in brick and mortar.  There will be no second coming of that old hope, but the smallest remnant of its flame resides within me because I had experienced it and done so well.
     Even if, in the full accounting, it was just a car passed down to me because my brother had moved on to something better.