Yeah, Write

In any long-term endeavor, there are going to be times when you don't feel like doing your work. Days when you just can't face the keyboard, canvas, whatever. During these periods it's very easy to hate what you're doing or wonder if it's worth doing at all.

An important thing to note is that once you're into it, once you've warmed up and let the world fall away from you, it's almost impossible to hate what you're doing.

During the down times, when you're procrastinating instead of doing your work, this should be your mantra: when I get to the middle, I'll find the joy. When I get to the middle, I'll find the joy. Then when it comes, allow yourself to feel it, be replenished by it. Don't stop working; just acknowledge that this is what happiness is and that you have found it.

It's worth sitting through the agony of the first fifteen minutes, when you're stone-cold and dumb as a stump, to get to that first accidental chord that makes you do a double-take, or a character turning left instead of right, to get to that question mark that demands you answer it. Then you fall through the hole in the paper or start riding the melody line and all is right with the world.

When I get to the middle, I'll find the joy.

Everybody argues about whether it's plot or character that's the source of good fiction. Of course, it's a trick question: the real answer is that there is no real plot that doesn't derive from character and no way to show character except by their reactions to plot. But I'm starting to think both of these miss the point. The works I really and truly adore derive their succulent power from relationships.

My greatest writing hero is Joss Whedon. He's the creator and driving force behind 3 of my favorite dramatic series of all time: Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel and Firefly. The opening sequence of "Serenity", the movie extension of the tragically short-lived Firefly TV series, is a masterpiece of film-making on at least 3 levels: cinematography, economy of language and character development. Joss introduces his entire crew of eight characters,¹ tells us what they do on the ship, how they interact and what matters to them in probably the longest single camera shot since Alfred Hitchcock's "Rope".

Oh, yeah... and the whole time the ship is this close to burning up during re-entry.

How does he do it? A classic SF info-dump? Some ninety-second blast of exposition beginning with "As you know, Captain..."? A slow crawl of yellow type yammering on about trade agreements with the planet Naboo? Hell, no.

Arguments. Five of them in a row. Some of them no more than two sentences long. Each as distinct and beautiful as jade chess pieces. What Captain Malcolm Reynolds says to his pilot, his lieutenant, his muscle, his mechanic and the ship's doctor in that single sequence describes the entire dynamic of this crucible called Serenity. It also sets him up as a larger-than-life figure: anyone who can have a coherent argument with his entire crew is a man to be reckoned with. I've talked with people who'd never watched the series, had no idea what they were walking into, but by the end of that scene felt completely at home in the world.²

That scene wasn't an accident. The history of all three series³ bears out this credo: it ain't got a thing if the ensemble ain't got that swing.

Author Jenny Crusie has two brilliant essays on her website about the work of Joss Whedon and reading them really brought home for me why Buffy and Angel are so addicting.⁴

No man is an island. True. But even if one was⁵ there wouldn't be anything to say about them! People are only people by their relationships with other people. This is in part about conflict, sure, but people agreeing with one another can be a defining moment, especially when you can feel their hearts breaking as they do it.

Let's take Cordelia Chase, for instance. A minor character in the early days of Buffy, Cordy became a central figure for most of Angel's run. By the end,⁶she was my favorite of the cast and her swan song episode possibly my favorite of the run.

Taken alone, Cordy is a shallow, self-absorbed beauty queen that deserved all the loathing the Buffy cast lumped on her. But through her interactions with the other characters, her "layers" begin to show and she matures into a real hero and a real woman. Her perpetually-bemused relationship with Xander Harris on Buffy, then later with Grue on Angel forced her to face the fact that perhaps her goals in life "marry rich, divorce richer" weren't actually where her joy was after all. By the time her relationship with Angel begins to develop, she is -- and we are -- ready for it to be as powerful as it deserves.

The complicated relationship between Buffy and her Watcher/father figure/punching bag Giles is another example. By the legendary musical episode "Once More With Feeling" in the sixth season,⁷ he realizes his role as her surrogate father at almost the same moment that he must step aside in order for her to become a woman. His duet with Tara (who expresses similar torment over her doomed relationship with Willow) "Wish I Could Stay" peaks with the line "Believe me, I don't want to go... And it'll grieve me 'cause I love you so..." If that doesn't break your heart, you don't have one.

I could beat this into the ground -- it's possible I already have -- by talking about Buffy and Spike, Spike and Dru, Angel and Xander⁸ or Willow and magic. The examples are strewn across the Buffyverse like semi-precious stones. Joss didn't put them there as lessons, he put them there to tear your heart out and make you beg for more, but that doesn't mean we can't learn from him anyway.

The cult of conflict states: they must fight to keep our interest. Interest is not enough: it sells our creative birthright short by a mile. I say: it's how they fight that makes us fall in love.

1. The ship Serenity herself is the eighth [↩]
2. Let me take a few seconds to let my heart stop pounding. Honestly, the guy's a rock star. [↩]
3. Abbreviated as Firefly's was [↩]
4. My wife and I inhaled them on DVD, two and three episodes every night for months. [↩]
5. Tom Hanks in Castaway, for instance [↩]
6. I won't steal Ms. Crusie's thunder by discussing the last half-season. Read the essay. [↩]
7. Don't get me started; we'll be here all night. [↩]
8. No, that's not what you think; they're just both in love with Buffy [↩]

"Evolving as a Writer" was the second panel in a row to debate the merits of doing the same thing versus doing something different. "Gluten-Free Fantasy" talked about breaking away from an entire sub-genre -- call it "Suburbs of Middle-Earth" -- and this panel discussed breaking away from whatever you have been doing in order to grow as a writer.

First off, let me say that all four authors -- Scalzi, Sarah Zettel, Paul Melko and Jim Hines -- all agreed that it's imperative to challenge yourself and make each book better than the last. On that one aspect the answer was an undisputed "yes" in favor of evolution.

From there, it got murky.

In a certain sense, evolving means not writing variations on the same story over and over, trying new subject matter, new settings, new character types. At the same time, Scalzi and Hines are both known primarily for a single series each: Scalzi for OLD MAN'S WAR and its sequels, Hines for his goblin books. Series almost always outsell individual novels, partly because of the "contract with the reader" Scott discussed at the previous panel. When a reader picks up a book set in a continuing universe, it's because they want to spend more time with old friends, indulging in a particular kind of derring-do. It would be foolish to pretend they don't.

But does evolving require shooting the cash cow? Is Terry Pratchett -- over two dozen Discworld books and counting -- milking the cash cow and prostituting his talent for the almighty dollar? Scalzi says emphatically "no" because of how much the stories have changed over the years. Pratchett is one of my favorite writers precisely because he manages to keep the spirit of the characters intact while pushing them onward through their lives; the progression of Sam Vines being a prime example. He also uses the tropes he himself has created to deal with increasingly larger themes in recent years: communications and money and their respective roles in the evolution of society. Scalzi hit a pure note when he said "I can't criticize anybody for paying their mortgage."¹

In another sense, evolution is the process not of going different places, but going deeper into the known. Deeper and better characterization, truer and more powerful dialogue, a finer control over the reader's emotions. All of these are noble aspirations that don't require throwing out the baby with the bathwater.

So how do we do it, at a nuts-and-bolts level? The answers were as varied an idiosyncratic as the writers themselves. In fact, Sarah Zettel's advice centered around finding your own idiosyncrasies: your best method of working, your preferred topics and narrative style. Ignore the how-to books, she says, the only real way to learn to write is by doing it your way and doing it a lot. She also emphasized finding the love of the daily craft; there's a lot of mythology about legendary writers who profess to hate the act of writing, but perhaps if those writers spent a few months working in a factory they'd realize that joy is relative. It may not be rainbows and lingerie every single moment, but it sure beats driving a cab. At the same time, if you really do hate the daily process, you're going to go crazy in short order.

Paul Melko concurs. You can't live for the milestones: completed drafts, publication dates, royalty checks. They are too few and far between to sustain a life.

It's possible to lose yourself in your and other people's expectations, too. Jim Hines talked about completely missing the point when his first book was published. He thought that style -- happy, sarcastic sword-and-sorcery fantasy -- was a fluke and went back to what he thought he "should" be writing: serious, deep, moody high fantasy. When he couldn't sell it, he began to wonder if happy fantasy was actually his calling after all.

Scalzi had moderating advice on that subject. After establishing over the course of a couple books that he was "good at dialogue, smartassery and action scenes" he decided to experiment with THE SAGAN DIARIES, which had none of that but was set in the same universe as his other books. He believes it's the best thing he's every written.

Scalzi introduced a metaphor to think about evolution on a grand scale: dinosaurs, mammals and cockroaches. Dinosaurs rule the world. They are the dominant predators of the age and all the old success stories are about them. But they're going extinct because the world they were created to dominate is disappearing. Mammals are newcomers, poised to take advantage of the new climate and tools. All the new success stories are about mammals, because they're taking over the dinosaur spot at the top of the food change.

But consider the lowly cockroach. They've been here forever, and as we know they'll be the only survivors if "the big one" hits. They're disdained by both dinosaurs and mammals alike, because they're not the prettiest things around. They may do media tie-ins, work-for-hire. They may publish non-fiction because frankly, non-fiction pays. They may continue to crank out mortgage-paying works that will never make it into the hall of fame. And cockroaches do evolve, contrary to popular opinion. They shift from one food source to another with lightning speed. They're a species that will never need to read WHO MOVED MY CHEESE? On survivability alone, the cockroach is worth thinking about.

But being a cockroach -- or keeping your day job, as Sarah pointed out -- means never having to worry about keeping food on the table, which allows you to do things that ignore the market, the prevailing wisdom and the trade winds. The things that put a smile on your face when you lay your head down at night and again when you sit down at your computer.

Now it's your turn. Go write.

1. Though I doubt this applies to Pratchett much these days [↩]

"Why is it, with all the histories available to build a fantasy, all we ever get is medieval Europe with dragons?"

"Gluten-Free Fantasy" was a panel about a panel.¹ In the course of the original panel, Scott Westerfeld -- who asked the question above -- mentioned that so many of the things considered standard in modern fantasy² are not really necessary: swords, horses, a "hearty stew" bubbling in the fireplace, even bread. His final words were something along the lines of "Wheat is not necessary for fantasy."

At that point, the original con-goers rose up as one and smote the entire panel, leaving nary a soul alive. They sheathed their swords, mounted their horses and rode into the sunset in search of dragons, chomping loaves of whole-wheat bread.

My words will not express how funny this panel was; you really had to be there. What I'll try to address is the very real problem of cookie-cutter fantasy. Everybody wants to be Tolkien. Or rather, everybody wants to read Tolkien.

Karl Schroeder said, "As China Mieville will point out at virtually every dinner party, fiction is about consolation. It's about feeling good at the end of the day." Jim Frenkel called it the Fear of the New. At a certain level, fiction is comfort food. If we buy a gallon of milk that turns out to be full of California Merlot, we feel ripped off and betrayed even if we like Merlot, because that's not what we wanted when we bought it.

Scott noted that the writers with the biggest followings are not the best writers, they are the ones with the strongest "contract" with their readers. When you pick up a John Grisham book, you know you are getting a lawyer drama with lots of moral angst.³ When you pick up a Stephen King novel, you know you're getting expertly-drawn regular folks beset by malevolent evil forces with gruesome consequences.

Scott suggests that fantasy is actually more conservative than SF. We don't see dogsled fantasy or China fantasy or archipelago fantasy. What we do get is more medieval Europe with dragons.

Is this really because what fantasy readers want is "the same as last time, only different" as Patrick Nielsen Hayden put it? He quotes his wife Teresa as saying "Nobody ever walked into a bookstore looking for a 'sensitive new voice'." Patrick thinks the disconnect stems from the fact that writers are neophilic⁴ but most readers are not.

So how do we get Gluten-Free Fantasy? How do we draw from a sourcebook like A STORY AS SHARP AS A KNIFE , tapping into the wild dream-world of Native American culture, or do what Lian Hearn did with his TALES OF THE OTORI series and base a fictional world on feudal Japan?

Jim Frenkel pointed out that it's hard to sell an editor on a radically-different kind of book, and once you've gotten them on board, it's hard to sell to the public. However, once you've gotten a book "like that" out there, it becomes much easier to pitch something similar. He himself has published what he calls "some very whacked out books" because he believed so strongly in them and some of them become perennials, but it's a risky endeavor.

I brought up a concept I read in Malcolm Gladwell's fantastic THE TIPPING POINT that there are different sorts of people involved in spreading something new and helping it catch fire. You've got your early adopters, who are often socially-isolated but very tuned-in to new things. They can't spread the idea, because they don't have very many friends. The second group is what Seth Godin called "promiscuous sneezers",⁵ who don't discover new things except through their friends who are early adopters, but they evangelize what they like to gobs of people because they are the sort of people who know everybody. They are the ones who "unleash the ideavirus" as Godin phrases it. I wondered aloud whether the problem is that fantasy lacks these promiscuous sneezers.

Scott was adamant that at least in the YA genre, exactly the opposite was true. His fans are constantly online and exchanging opinions, spreading the word about new books and authors they like. The Net has given them the opportunity to be both early adopters who prefer to hang out in their room alone as well as the sneezers who have dozens or hundreds of friends: online.

Karl Schroeder says he has a list of 3 blogs he uses to find out what's cool in the world: Cory Doctorow, Tobias Buckell, and John Scalzi. He knows that if he has the three of them out there looking, he's not going to miss much.

This gives me hope for the future of Gluten-Free Fantasy. The only growth area in SF/F right now is among the young, and they're the ones who've taken their opinions into their own hands. They've taken it upon themselves to be rainmakers for their favorite books, their favorite authors. We can only hope that some of them are getting tired of Europe with dragons.

Last but not least, only the cockroaches -- and John Scalzi -- will survive.

1. I believe it was from back in 2004 [↩]
2. ie, post-Tolkien [↩]
3. With a few poor-selling exceptions [↩]
4. They actively seek out new things [↩]
5. Which got a huge laugh from the assembled [↩]