'It' Leads to Disaster

While I'm waiting around for a new comic book project to appear, I'm taking some of Willingham's advice and finishing a novel. I have a few bad writing habits that manifested while writing my first novel that I finished last week. Writing that first mystery was a tough staggering fight and I just made it to the end like a punch drunk boxer looking for that final bell. When I'm working I can get a lot of words down on the page each day, but my bad habits bloom. One of those has to do with the word 'it' which in most cases is a place-holder for a much better term.

So after a few days tending to other projects, I was ready to knock that word out of the manuscript as best I could. I set up a Find/ Replace operation where the computer would find the next instance of the lazy word and I would manually make some sort of change. Then I would move on to the next and so on. Well, I have a trick computer that sometimes throws the cursor around and adds keystrokes. The machine had one of its spells as I was in that find/ replace mode. Then I saved the document. A little poking around in the novel revealed that the computer had replaced the word 'it' with nothing. Thanks to that fluke, 'it' had been removed from the entire document, all seventy thousand words. That disaster tore apart words like wait, white, with, within, security, reality, etc. Those of you who live in Austin may have heard my profanity-charged tirade. Birds scattered. Dogs were silent.

My just-a-quick-polish draft turned into a word-for-word careful examination of the novel. It hurt, but it focused my mind on the manuscript in a unique way. The Milk Run is a better book for it. Still, I hope that never happens again.
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Miscellaneous Stuff

I should catch you up on some news and general stuff, much of which has been piling up and some of which doesn't merit individual posts.

Item One: Scattered Werewolves spotted, with chance of howling.

If you glance to your left you will see the gorgeous cover to a Bigby-centric Fables original graphic novel (coming out not soon at all) called Werewolves of the Heartland. Its title is not, as too many comics sites have posted, Werewolves in the Heartland, which sounds more like a weather report to me, rather than the more poetic of the. Small differences can be vital ones.

The cover was painted by the vastly talented Daniel Dos Santos whose website, which is chock full of wonders, you can visit here. The Werewolves piece is a wrap-around cover, so you are only seeing the front half of it here.

So who is that achingly lovely blonde in Bigby's arms? It certainly isn't Snow White. Is it Cinderella or Rapunzel, as many have already guessed, or somebody new entirely? You will of course have to read the book to find out.

Item Two: A small private debate made public.

I had an interesting exchange with Stacia Kane, the author of a number of fantasy books. You can learn more about Miss Kane and her books by visiting here. On her website, or blog (or I forget), she expressed such a strong dislike of first person narrative in general, and a vow never to perpetrate it in one of her novels, in specific, that I had to find out why. As an admirer of the first person story I felt a need to stand up for it and the following mini debate ensued (paraphrased in parts, due to my doddering old man's memory):

Me: First person has one quality I like. With damn few exceptions (such as unreliable narrator) it's loyal to one character in the story. True and dedicated loyalty is so rare in real life that I want to experience it from time to time in fiction. First person almost requires the reader and the point of view character to be allies. Almost. When's the last time you spent so much time with a person you knew you could count on, when the chips were well and truly down? So that's one among the reasons I like first person. It forces you to pick a side.

She: Good point, yes, but I write in a very tight third, single character. I don't jump into other POVs. In actual first person I'm forced to deal with the filter of the POV character -- all those "I felt, I saw, I blah blah blah," -- whereas in third I can almost cut out the middleman. I think it feels more intimate, rather than less. At least the way I do it.

Me: Granted. Very tight third person single character POV is just as good. Your rebuttal to my rebuttal is on target. I yield the point. (And then, following some back and forth nonsense): Take what victory trophy you deem most fit.

She: I win! I win! But you don't want to give me that kind of freedom. You'll end up with my name tattooed on your very attractive ass. (Okay, she didn't actually say "very attractive" there. I may have inadvertently added that part. The original transcript seems to be a bit garbled there.)

Me: How about I write a blog post about our wee debate in which I admit you fairly out-argued me? Will that suffice to prove I am well and truly owned?

And so it went. But, regardless of having to concede a highly narrow point to Stacia Kane, I am grateful to her for forcing me to put into words one of the more compelling reasons I am a fan of first person narrative in fiction. And, with my limited research powers, I can't find that my specific argument has been made before. I have yet to do a prose novel in first person -- at least none that have been finished and published. Now I need to. I've got the bug.

Item Three: The Robert E Howard Day, One-Man Contest.

Look at the post below by Mark Finn. He's always a good writer, but he's seldom better than when writing about Robert E Howard. All three of those points he made are cogent and compelling. I must use the term "tall liar" in a story soon. When Mark makes the claim to be a Robert E Howard scholar, I suspect he might be guilty of understatement. But how often can Mark write about Howard? Why not instead pay tribute to that author we both love by writing a Howardesque story?

From time to time us Tick Tock Men (back when we were all male, so no intention of leaving you out, by using the old, defunct term, Marjorie) would issue writing challenges and contests to each other, often with mixed results. But they were always fun and revealing. So I hereby issue the following writing challenge to Mark Finn alone: You will write a prose short story in the Howard style and post it here. Your opening line is: "Brannon Harak, the northern warrior, kicked the door open. There was murder in his eyes and cold steel in his hands."

Here are the rules:

1) You can fix that opening line(s) a bit, but not much.

2) You must finish and post the story within five days, starting tomorrow, Sunday. And no, I won't accept as an excuse that you didn't see this post in time. You and I share many aspects of the same ego, buddy, so I know you've been checking back here at least daily to see who's commented on your latest post.

3) You are limited to between one and two thousand words, max, but fewer is even better.

The Prize:

A) If you simply finish on time and within the rules, I cook you a victory dinner at the next Clockwork retreat (with the same dinner for the others too, if you deign to allow it).

B) If all other Clockworkers unanimously vote that it is an excellent story, then not only do you get all of the above, but I do the deed, cooking and serving, in full formal mode (ala the Famous formal dinner in which you and Brad cooked and served and you-know-who had to wear the chicken suit), cooking a menu of your decree. No, guys, I'm not the one in a chicken suit, in this scenario. I'm in the fancy pants "Happy to be of service to you, sir, will there be anything else?" part of the famous bet. Ask Mark for details if you must.

And Mark, of course you are allowed to campaign for "excellent" votes from your peers. We are still a silly people at heart.

Serendipity is the Enemy!

As a mystery and crime writer I like to believe in cause and effect. Beyond the poetry of the prose, there lay the nuts and bolts of story construction. My characters have to figure things out, so I have a series of objects placed in front of them and the correct construction of the right clues will show a solution. It is like being a puzzle-maker, but I use things beside jigsaws and lumber.

I recently hit a wall in a certain plot and had a character just stumble across a thread that would lead to a momentum- changing clue. To me it feels like a cheat. That moment of serendipity stands out like a sore thumb. It's the bathroom with the bad drain in the brand new house. With luck, I will be the only one to notice. Rather than going back and fiddling with it endlessly, I'm working on the next thing. But it is rather irritating to have a coincidence propel a detective story.

Clockwork folk, how often does this kind of thing happen to you?


(Yes, when it gets cold enough, I dress like a manga character.)

It seems this has somehow become my New Year's post.

So there's Coleridge who saddled us with the notion that the ideal reader-writer relationship is achieved by a "willing suspension of disbelief," which idea caught on and we've been stuck with it ever since.

As you can no doubt tell, I don't like the idea and never have. Long before I had any real notion of becoming a storyteller myself I was a dedicated participant on the reader side of the equation, and could never warm up to the concept that a reader will (or even could) temporarily cancel his disbelief mechanisms in order to be drawn into a story to the extent that he could care about characters and events that never happened and never will. It always seemed to miss the mark. But I couldn't pin down what was wrong with it until I stumbled across an essay from JRR Tolkien who posited the more apt idea that readers "create a secondary belief." And I knew instantly, in that unmistakable ping of epiphany, that this was right. This was the essential formula in a successful story, and the proof at last that Coleridge had gotten it wrong.

Why does this matter? Why is it more than just a semantic exercise?

Well, for one thing, the most important thing in fact, a suspension of disbelief, willing or otherwise, is a negation. It's passive. Not an act, but a lack of one. However the creation of secondary belief is active by definition. The partnership between writer and reader is a collaboration in which the reader participates actively and bears much, if not most, of the responsibility of creating the fictional world in which the stories take place. There's nothing passive about it. As one tiny example of the million things a reader will bring to any story: the writer may mention a city in which part of the action will take place, and maybe even describe some of the details, but it is up to the reader to create the fullness of that city in his imagination. Not being able to abide a blank canvas, he fills the streets with people and architecture and a nearly infinite number of details the writer can't fully describe for fear of bogging down the story beyond endurance.

Your readers don't sit at a remove and let the story happen to them. They don't suspend application of consistency, logic and accountability. They participate. They get to work on each page, paragraph, sentence, teaming up with you to create.

Create.

Active.

Any story in which the reader hasn't actively and enthusiastically participated in the creative process, every step of the way, is an unread story. There's no other option.

In part I mention this in order to get it on the record, to let my colleagues know, in our ongoing discussion about the craft, that anytime they mention the "willing suspension of disbelief," the conversation (whatever the specifics of the conversation might have been) will grind to a halt while we argue the point of suspension versus creation. And I'll win that debate, so why even try? Can we just agree now to suspend the idea of suspension?

Okay, I've been meaning to get to this rant for some time, but deadlines, holiday guests, and other things intervened, as things often will, until now it's become a New Year's Eve post. I suppose that obligates me to tie it in somehow with the new year. Easy enough: In the coming year I plan to write about thirty (or so) comic stories, a couple of short prose stories, and at least one new novel. And each of these stories will fly or fall depending on the willingness of many readers, most of whom I will never meet, to do most of the work, to help create the worlds, the characters, the histories and the events, and every other detail in each and every tale. I'll do what I can to make all that work enjoyable.

Also in the coming year I plan to read a lot of books, including just about everything written by the nine other writers sharing this space with me. In that role I will be a willing and active participant, rolling up my metaphorical sleeves, doing my part in our collaboration to get those stories told. I will not be at a safe remove, negating. Sorry, Mr. Coleridge, but you got it wrong.

Christmas Has Begun

As a general rule, we aren't going to make this a link blog -- you know, one of those blog's whose basic purpose is to provide links to various cool things to be found out in the wilds of the internet, even though there are admittedly many wonderful things to be found out there. But we have a specific purpose here at the Clockworks among which linking to other cool things has a very low priority. However, there is that thing some bright fellow mentioned once about a foolish consistency having something to do with hobgoblins. Not being a fan of hobgoblins, we don't want to exercise a consistency that wanders into the foolish end of the dial. With that said, I am going to direct your attention, via a link, to something pretty cool.

Christmas has finally and quite officially begun.

How do we know this? Because our very own, and very distinguished, Paul Cornell has started it over on his personal blog, by once again posting the first of his Twelve Blogs of Christmas. Apparently he does this annually, this year being no exception.

Beginning today, the 13th of December, and continuing on until the Night Before Christmas, Paul is posting a new and entertaining, and possibly enlightening, thing every day, each post having something to do with the holiday that is nigh.

Today's offering is a lovely prose story, featuring a famous Doctor some of you might recognize, and with whom Paul has had many a delightful past encounter. In the days to follow you might see some other interesting and surprising guests pop up to entertain you.

Christmas ends in the usual way, with a big flourish on the 25th. But it begins now.

Go here to join in.

And do please have a Merry Christmas.

Eric Brown's Ten Tips for Aspiring Writers

Science fiction author Eric Brown has posted a set of ten (well, tenish) tips for writers on the blog for Solaris Books, and while in general it's a worthy list, the same sort of thing you'll often see established writers trot out for the neophytes, he says one thing in particular that I found interesting. It was second in his countdown.

2. Trust in the subconscious. Beginning writers are beset by fear. I was. I overcame the fear - i.e., the doubt that I had anything to say, the tools to say anything - by writing and writing and trusting in the subconscious. Write long enough and the old SC kicks in. Try it.

Check out the rest of Brown's list for the rest of his advice, but this one I thought might merit discussion. I know that I have often been rescued from some nettlesome plot point by ideas that bubbled up my from subconscious, or discovered at the eleventh hour that some part of my brain was working out the mechanics of a plot without me being consciously aware of it. I've set up mysteries without knowing the answer, only to discover that the obvious solution was in front of me all along, and more than that, I had been seeding clues as I went along.

I think that learning to trust your own instincts, or to rely on the unconscious parts of your brain while writing, is an important step in the development of any writer. What about the rest of the Tick-Tock Gang? Is this something that resonates with you?

What Do We Owe Readers?

I've been thinking about this "What do we owe readers?" business for a little while, and while I think Chris more or less summed up my feelings on the matter, I've got a bit to add.

I think we owe readers what we promise them. A story makes promises early and often and what we owe our readers is to follow through on those implied promises. And that's pretty much it.

The cover art makes a promise, as does the blurb on the dust jacket or the back of the book and whatever author quotes might be found. Hopefully whoever wrote the blurb was able to communicate the essential promise of the novel. We writers should pray that they do, because that text can return your book to the shelf before any reader ever even sees all those pretty words we wrote.

With any luck, the potential reader has made it past the cover unharmed, or has had the book recommended by a friend or a reviewer (who have already made promises to this reader over which you have no control whatsoever) and doesn't bother to inspect it. Then your reader goes and orders a latte and sits down to read the first few pages before she decides to buy it. (My reader is female and she orders a latte. I don't know who your readers are or what they order.) This is where our promises start.

From the very first sentence, our stories tells its readers about what kind of story it is, and what they ought to expect from it. Assuming the readers make it past the first few pages, they're going to expect that we deliver on those promises. And that, I think, is what we owe them.

Consider the opening of the first Harry Potter novel (which I happen to be reading to my daughters at the moment). In the first ten pages you get: a buffoonish family, a coterie of silly wizards, and a baby with murdered parents and a great destiny. What do these pages tell readers? They promise that this story is going to be a story about magic and wizards, that it is going to contain farce, and that in its pages, a boy will discover and confront his destiny.

Say what you like about the Harry Potter books, but one of the reasons these books are so satisfying is that they deliver exactly what they promise. Rowling has told her readers precisely what to expect from her story and then she follows through. Give me that and a character I can root for, and I'll let you get away with plot holes, narrative gaps, and pedestrian prose until the cows come home.

I'll quibble with Chris on one point--I don't think you owe the reader an ending. Well, let me be a bit more precise: you always get an ending (every story stops sooner or later), but you don't always get a conclusion. And I'd argue that you don't always owe one. If you promise the reader a conclusion, then you have to deliver one, but if you never make such a promise, then you don't.

Consider Kelly Link's magnificent story "Magic for Beginners." The story claims to be a description of an episode of a television show, which focuses primarily on the personal lives of a few teenagers who spend most of their time watching a television show of the same name. The story makes no implied promise of a payoff; it doesn't adhere to a traditional narrative structure. It instead wraps up its readers in its crafty mysteriousness, drives them out to into the woods blindfolded, dumps them there, and then drives off cackling. Readers at the end of this story are left to wander in those woods. The story has no conclusion; it just stops. But I'd argue that while it doesn't conclude, it ends at a beautiful moment. Kelly Link knows (my guess is that she knows it intuitively) when to stop, when not to explain, understanding that in the worlds she creates, to explain is often to ruin.

To further illustrate, let's look at a story that fails catastrophically to deliver on its promises. When I was a teenager, I read the first few volumes of Stephen King's Dark Tower series. I loved 'em. He wrote four of them, waited for a long while, and then wrote three more. And at some point in the interim, he totally forgot what it was he was supposed to be doing.

The book opens with a stellar, simple premise. A gunslinger is chasing a man in black. We don't find out for a very long time why he's chasing him, and we don't care. But this is the central story that spans all seven volumes: the gunslinger chases the man in black in a world that has moved on. This world is connected to our world somehow. Fair enough. But in setting up this premise, King has made a huge promise: at some point, the gunslinger needs to catch this motherfucker. And guess what? He never does. After twenty years and seven books, the gunslinger fails and we're never told why.

That's pretty inexcusable. I read an interview in which King described the ending he provided. (And here, okay, I see that there's an exception to the notion that all stories end. The Dark Tower doesn't actually end at all. If you followed it to the last page, you know what I mean.) He claimed in this interview that his ending was the only possible conclusion. But this is madness. There was only one possible conclusion to this story and for reasons we may never guess, he deliberately chose not to provide it.

But there are other crimes here. Long about the sixth book, King goes off on an insane metafictional tangent in which King himself and his books appear in the narrative. I have no problem with metafiction. I love it and have indulged in it myself. The problem is that at no time in the first couple thousand pages of this massive story was there any hint given that metafiction was going to come into play. This was not in the contract. It's as bad as if you were reading a Sam Spade mystery and at the climax you discovered that the murder was committed by the Loch Ness Monster.

I could go on and on, but the bottom line is that The Dark Tower is a deeply unsatisfying story for the simple reason that it breaks all of its promises. Mr. King, sir, I fell in love with your story and then it broke my heart and pawned the engagement ring.

So that's my answer. What we owe the readers is what we promise the readers. No more, no less. Readers, like lovers, will forgive a great many sins as long as we remain faithful to them.

Edit: Now that I think about it, I can't remember if he catches the guy or not; it's all kind of a blur. Does anyone know? Either way, when he finally gets to the Dark Tower, it's a pretty big letdown.

I'm pretty sure Robert Louis Stevenson wasn't actually a psycho killer.

Mark Finn asked the question here. And it's such a good question that I'm going to take a whack at it.

First of all, Mark, I was just going to say that I don't anticipate ever doing a story that would fit into the details of your question. I won't be writing any fictionalized and fantasticalized account of an historical figure. But then I recall I did exactly that when I wrote Robert Louis Stevenson into my second Beowulf novella (or was it a novelette? I keep forgetting the official divisions), even going so far as to make him the villain. That was the textbook definition of taking gross liberties with the facts. In that case I read the widely available details of RLS's life, found out when he was in America, when he might possibly have been wandering about in the old west, realized that I would have to fudge the dates by a month or two, to make it tie in with the rest of the book, and with malice aforethought went ahead and did it, changing what I needed to change to make the story work.

I think that's an entirely legitimate way to do it. Then again, once I was willing to take the arguably outrageous step of making RLS a villain -- for which there is absolutely zero supporting evidence -- rearranging some of the details of his actual timeline by a month or two didn't add much to my sins.

But I do sort of have a personal policy of setting the record straight in the afterward notes, when I do take such liberties. I call this the Bernard Cornwell rule, after the author of the wonderful (you need to read these) Sharpe's Novels, wherein he takes sometimes huge liberties with the facts and events of the Napoleonic Wars, so as to properly insert his fictional hero into every major battle, but then carefully explains the changes he made by providing an Historical Note at the end of each novel.

Another example: In Peter and Max I had to move the dates of Hamelin's main Pied Piper festival, in order to make the fictional timeline of the novel work. I had no trouble doing so, but I did mention it in the back-of-the-book material.

That's my personal rule, but I don't necessarily believe it should be a universal rule. I probably believe -- I say 'probably' because I haven't yet given the matter all that much thought before now -- that a writer of fiction should be free to take just about any liberty with the facts, the history, and the public record (not always the same things, but you already knew that) for the good of his story. It's called fiction for a reason. And, he should not be required or even expected to explain himself. Many are of the mind that a story should always stand on its own, not needing an explanation or apology at the end. I don't know that I absolutely subscribe to that notion, but I can absolutely see the sense of it.

I would encourage you to take any and all liberties with Tom Sharkey that you deem necessary to your tale. And I agree with Bill Williams that, if a Tom Sharkey biography ever is written, you're likely to be the one to do it, and thus will have plenty of opportunity to set the record straight.

What Readers Are Owed

A while back, Bill asked "What do we owe our readers?" I've been mulling that over in the days and weeks since, in and amongst going to conventions, playing video games (for work, honest!), and reading big stacks of comics.

I tried to think of the question from both sides, taking into account not only my expectations as a writer sitting down at the keyboard, but as a reader when picking up the work of another. And I think my answer can be summed up in one simple phrase. What do we owe our readers? "A good story."

That deserves a little unpacking. A good story, I think, is one that has an ending. And so writers owe their readers an ending. If you begin a story that can't be comfortably fit into one volume, fair enough, but writers should ask their readers to begin reading a story if they aren't ever going to provide the ending. Obviously, there are real-world complications that can get in the way, and some writers have the poor foresight to die before finishing their tales, but all things being equal I think that writers should finish what they start.

What else does "a good story" mean? Well, I think that varies a bit from reader to reader, but in general it means that there should be some point to what's going on, that stuff should go on, that there should be characters (hopefully interesting ones) in a setting doing stuff (or at least talking ab0ut doing stuff, or maybe just thinking about doing stuff). There should be some entertaining element to the story, on some level, and if the writer can manage to squeeze a little enlightenment in there, so much the better.

This "entertainment" and/or "enlightenment" business is something I've thought about a lot over the years, and which I may talk about again at some point. To cut to the chase, though, I've come to look at myself as an entertainer, primarily. Not every writer is the same, obviously, and there are those who put more value on enlightening their audience--teaching them something, or portraying some truth, however painful or difficult to hear--but as for me, I'm Sammy Davis, Jr. I'm a song-and-dance-man, and while I harbor ambitions of working in a bit of Truth in my fiction whenever possible, I know that if I have to choose only one or the other, I'm going with entertainment.

But my thoughts on the entertainment/enlightenment question aside, the fact is that I think that readers deserve a story that exists for a reason. That reason may be to entertain them for a short while, to thrill or amuse them. That reason may be to bring home some underlying truth about the human condition, or a glimpse into the lives of others that we wouldn't otherwise have gotten. But whether the story is pure entertainment or some kind of enlightenment tract, the important thing is that the story has to be for something. If a piece of writing neither entertains nor enlightens, then it might be stylistically accomplished, it might have all sorts of pretty bells and whistles, it might be a dandy-fine writing exercise, but it isn't a story. And readers are owed more than that.

It's true that cockroaches have eaten an awful lot of my best work.

When Kurt Vonnegut died recently -- yes, 2007 is recent, because I'm getting old and the years are passing much quicker now -- many who loved him and his works passed around his list of eight writing rules. That's when I first became aware of them. They're pretty good rules. At least one of them surprised me -- I mean really surprised me. I thought I'd share them with you, with my own notes and commentary appended.

1) Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted.

I agree. Part of the unbreakable contract with the reader is that you won't waste his time. I would add that this includes an imperative to do away with all artsy fartsy writing, designed primarily to show off your amazing skills and talents. Quit trying to impress your reader and tell him a story instead. I suspect this is also a call to get to the point. Quit beating around the bush.

2) Give the reader at least one character he or she can root for.

I mostly agree, but the challenge of this statement does tempt me to one day see if I can write a compelling story wherein every single character is a despicable fiend with hellish goals. I'm trying to think if there are any good examples of that -- not just the antihero, but one with no redeeming qualities at all.

3) Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water.

I think this pretty much speaks for itself. Some variation of this rule shows up in every writer's advice on how to create "real" believable characters.

4) Every sentence should do one of two things -- reveal character or advance the action.

I think I mostly agree. But what about describing the setting? Can that be done totally within the context of revealing character or advancing the plot? Aren't you in danger of unduly burdening otherwise tight and concise sentences if the character and action parts also have to get bits of setting and physical description injected into them from time to time?

5) Start as close to the end as possible.

I agree and this is one of those bits of advice, obvious in hindsight, that freed up my own writing considerably. A lot of dead weight got lifted with this rule.

6) Be as sadist. No matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them -- in order that the reader may see what they're made of.

I agree wholeheartedly. This is the rule that frustrates me most, because it is so self evident, and yet it causes the most problems with a modern readership that is more and more composed of angry "we're constantly looking for ways to take offense" indignation groups. If your characters are black, or gay, or female, or any other sort that can be shoehorned into some category for which there is a vocal, self-elected and angry group of protectors, you're going to take some flak for what you do with them. Do mean things to someone of theirs and they will howl bloody murder. The thing you must constantly remind yourself is that these folks are few, no matter how loud they may be, they do not speak for the majority of whatever group they pretend to represent, and you must ignore them and soldier on, continuing to do nasty things to those characters, because doing otherwise is boring, which is among the worst offenses a writer can commit. You need to remind yourself that you will never hear from the thoughtful, reasonable reader, the way you always will hear from the indignation groups. But they are out there, and they are your true audience.

7) Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia.

This rule is most often expressed as "write for yourself" or "write to please yourself." I mostly agree with this. I tend to write for a very small, very select group, but not just a single person. I write to please and make sense to the other folks in the Clockwork group. But the entire purpose of forming the group was to be surrounded by those of like minds and similar tastes. Writing simply to please myself smacks just a bit too much of narcissism, and I know I'll never hold my own feet to the fire for my self-indulgences the way the other Clockworkers will. They will not let me get away with any self-indulgent crap.

8) Give your readers as much information as possible, as soon as possible. To heck with suspense. Readers should have such complete understanding of what is going on, where and why, that they could finish the story themselves, should cockroaches eat the last few pages.

This was the one rule that really opened my eyes. Before this I was all about keeping the suspense, which usually translated into keeping the readers in the dark, until The Big Reveal! Now I see that the big reveal was much overrated. I now think of my relationship to the reader(s) as leading a group of trusted comrades on a commando mission. If I die en route, they should be able to carry on and blow up the Bridge without me (and, guys, please make sure you shoot Alec Guinness, if for no other reason than to see if he comes back all ghostly and reveals you've been hot for your own sister for the last two movies).

Gordon Gekko Was Right

The first issue of Chris Roberson's Cinderella: From Fabletown With Love came out two days ago and has been garnering some well-earned critical attention since then. So just an hour or so ago Chris was gracious enough to publicly thank me, via the (possibly insidious -- we'll see) vehicle of Twitter for "handing (him) a comics career." His words, not mine.

But of course, as generous a notion as it was, Chris was dead wrong. No one gets handed a comics career. As tiny as the comic book business is, compared to the TV or movie business for example, it's a popular one, so much so in fact that, for every available job in comics, there are literally hundreds of people who would love to have it, and a large percentage of those who'd trample their dear old granny to get it. Our racket is tough and competitive. If you can't cut it, there's someone ready to step into your shoes right now. As a result there's zero room in it to hand out a single career as an act of charity. (We won't even get to the fallacious notion that I'd somehow have some ability to give them out, if such gifts were possible.)

Chris got his comics career because he can do the job. Period. In fact, I've known for years what a rare few knew: that he was one of the most qualified persons for a career writing comic books that wasn't currently doing so -- an oversight recently corrected. The truth is, Chris came into this business years later than he deserved. Anyone familiar with his far too numerous prose novels and short stories could see that he was built for writing funnybooks.

So then, what did I do? Not much. When some work became available and I was asked for my opinion on who we should get to do it, Chris was first on a list of a very few names that I rattled off.

When I pointed this out, Chris, ever the gentleman, thanked me again, for at least "holding the door open" at the opportune time, and that's a pretty fair assessment. I'll cop to that.

Now why bring this up at all? Is the purpose of this post to demonstrate what a fine fellow I am?

Not at all. Since the oft-stated purpose of this blog is to discuss the art and craft and business of our profession, I think there's a larger observation to be made here, one worth pointing out.

Basically, I told you all of that to tell you this:

Helping a fellow storyteller get work in the same field, provided he's a gifted one (and he is), isn't an act of charity, or generosity, or selflessness, or largess of any kind. It's a quite premeditated and entirely selfish act of self-preservation -- it's long range career planning.

Follow me on this: In order to make a career telling stories (and after a quarter century in the business that's all I'm qualified for anymore) one has to have (meaning cultivate) a large and dedicated readership. Now here's the thing. Readers read. They read a lot. They read much more and much faster than any one writer (even Geoff Johns -- hi, Geoff) could ever produce material to sate their hunger. Therefore it's in my interest to do everything I can to keep the field stuffed with good writers, who want to write the same or similar sorts of stories I produce, so that my readers are kept happy, so that they'll still be around to read what I produce, when I am able to produce it. Like any species of critter, readers who aren't kept fed will wander off to other fields.

Those who know me well know that I am a dedicated capitalist, with all that implies. I could have rewritten Gordon Gekko's famous "Greed is good" speech so that it made sense -- so that anyone could see that capitalism, done right (meaning hands off, you pinko do-gooders) is not only a compassionate system, it's the only compassionate system. So believe me when I say that I wouldn't go out of my way to create competition for myself. But giving other writers a chance to create stories in the same genres and mediums I do isn't creating competition, it's growing the overall readership, which redounds to the benefit of all. Ever hear the economics proverb, "A rising tide lifts all boats?" It's true. It does. And it applies in this case.

So, finally, here's the lesson:

If you want to make it long term as a writer in the funnybook business (and I suspect this applies to other mediums, but I won't pretend to be an expert in other mediums), you need to write terrific stories, you need to have a herculean work ethic so that you can actually produce said terrific stories on time, and then do it again and again, you will need to be able to resign yourself to the fact that you will never ever again be "off duty" (which I understand actually occurs in other careers, but it's too glorious a dream for me to quite believe it), and when the chance occurs, you need to be ready to give the next guy a hand through the door, for your own sake -- because he may just be the guy that keeps enough dedicated readers hanging around that you can have occasional access to them.

So there. Greed really is good.

Hi, there.

Small confession, right off the bat: I'm not a joiner. If there was a herd, I'd be the stray little pony wandering up the mountain, accidentally (on purpose) getting away from everyone else. Sure, there are wolves (as well as cliffs and Bigfoot), but there are slaughterhouses, too. Ain't no safety in numbers.

But I do make exceptions, most humbly, and with great appreciation; such as when I received the surprising invitation to join this lovely crew of writers. I don't know what kind of craziness inspired putting my name in the hat, but I'm glad to be here.

So, with that said, Bill Willingham has asked what we, as writers, owe our readers.

My readers and I have got a trust thing going on between us. No one's ever said that, of course, but when folks read your work, they're taking a leap of faith. Someone's out there, opening a book, saying, "Do right by me. Take me somewhere else."

And I try. I don't always succeed, but I try.

I owe readers to be true to myself, to write the stories I want to write, and to tell the best stories I possibly can. I owe my readers respect, because I appreciate it more than I can say when people take the time to read something I've written (whether they like the tale or not).

But, as much as I love my readers, I owe them nothing else.

I'm a hypocrite, of course. As a reader, who has lived in agony for the next book of my favorite author, who drools over excerpts that end too soon and joins newsletters and reads blogs for updates, and who daydreams about worlds that exist only on paper (or, now, those various e-reader devices), I demand satisfaction. I want adventure, and thrills, and just the right outcome. I want, at the end of a book, to feel bigger than my body (even out of body), ten feet tall and ready to take on the world. I want, simply, to have an experience. A good time. A great time.

That's what I search for. And I can only hope that's what I give. Not every time, but sometimes, for someone.

Anyway, that's it for now. This little pony is going to gallop her way up a mountain of deadlines and battle those wolves for words.

Thanks for having me here.

Stuff I Said

Recently I was a Guest of Honor at Tel Aviv's Icon (as in Israel Convention, natch') where, among other things, I was interviewed by some nice and thoughtful people. The results of that interview, excised of all of my "uhs" and other verbal tics, making me seem much more cogent than I really am, is now posted and available.

You can find it here.

Also, in the spirit of properly welcoming our new members, I'll throw out a general question which each of them (of us, new and old) can tackle in a post of their very own. This is something I'd been meaning to address for some time, and now seems just the right time. So, what is it you owe your readers? What, if anything, do you absolutely not owe your readers?

Update: Okay, so I'm looking over the posted interview and I see that the language barrier was in fine form over there. Some things got spelled oddly, due to imperfect pronunciation on my part, and some things seemed to just get lost in the kerfuffle. I do know that Laura is Rob's wife's name in The Dick Van Dyke Show. I have no idea how they heard that as Barbara. Reforger, the yearly war games during the Cold War, should be capitalized. Civic Comics was actually Pacific Comics. And so on. Most folks in Israel speak English. In fact I didn't meet a one who didn't have some English, but it wasn't always their first tongue. And sometimes I do tend to talk faster than my mouth can keep up. And some things are clearly just transcription typos.

It was pretty cool though being sponsored in part by the US Embassy in Tel Aviv. They wouldn't provide me Marine Guards though -- cheapskates.

Yet another update: I have an open letter to fellow Clockworkian Chris Roberson posted on the wonderfully cranky right wing Big Hollywood site, which you can find here. You may need to scroll down a bit, depending on when you read this. It's about the future, but not the one we think we were promised.

Six Words to Immortality

Go to this place right now. You'll thank me later.

For those of you still with us, who need more coaxing before leaving the safety and comfort of the Clockwork Blog, let me tell you what you'll find there. Wired Online Magazine took an inspiration from Hemingway's shortest story -- "For sale: baby shoes. Never worn." -- to invite 33 other known luminaries in our current literary firmament to do likewise and write their perfect six-word story.

The results are at least interesting, mostly good, and in some cases both wonderful and diabolical. My favorites are the contributions from Joss Whedon, Alan Moore, Eileen Gunn, and Orson Scott Card.

But best of all is that most of them are indeed complete short stories. When Matt and I did our hundred-word stories, to introduce the new Jack of Fables funnybook series, I thought that was a nearly impossible exercise in concision. What a luxury of abundance we had!

A six word story allows no room at all to waste one. Every word must carry more weight than Atlas in all of his tribulations could never have imagined. How cool is that?

Most of us here at the Clockwork Blog are crushed under deadlines and then taking off to San Jose next week for the World Fantasy Con. But once we return, each of us, along with a carefully selected list of invited authors, are going to present our best take on the six word story right here. It's too glorious (and painful) an idea to pass up.

In the meantime go see what 33 other writers came up with.

Which are your favorites?

The Conversation Continues

Both Matt and I have new postings over on Borders Books' fantasy and science fiction blog Babel Clash, which you can find here.

I talk about Heinlein a bit, then try to change the subject by talking about the vital writer/reader collaboration that is part of every story.

Matt talks about using reality as the most essential building blocks of a good fantasy story.

Hie yourselves over there and take part in our continuing conversation about writing. Or don't. It's still America for a little while longer and you can do what you want.

Four Good Rules

Massively talented writer of various Marvel comic books and urban fantasy novels, Marjorie Liu, recently posted this short litany of writing advice she finds helpful to remind herself from time to time: Get to the point. Get back to basics. Do it with a little pizazz. Don't lose your edge.

It's pretty much self explanatory, but why should I let that stop me from explaining it? Okay, not really explaining it, but I thought it would be fun to break it down to its four component parts and examine what I have been able to glean from it so far.

Let's proceed, shall we?

1) Get to the point.

In other words, quit dicking around by showing off your stellar wit and finely crafted prose and get the story told, with expedience, clarity and honesty. I'm sure we're as impressed as you are with your artistic turn of phrase and your intricate and poetic word constructions, but those don't mean a thing if you don't get the story told.

Orson Scott Card, one of the finest writers in our field, takes writing advice questions on his blog, fielding one from a fellow who was worried about his writing style, and complained his inability to refine his own style was causing serious blockages to getting his novel written. I deeply paraphrased the question and now I'll do the same with the answer. Card replied that it was a silly distraction to worry about style. Just tell the story as simply as possible. Do that and your style will be whatever comes out of just telling the story.

I mentioned that exchange because, whether it helped that fellow or not, it was a Damascus Road experience for me. The scales fell off of my eyes at the simplicity and obviousness of the advice. I had been struggling to learn prose writing, was finding it difficult, next to impossible, and was about ready to pack it in and stick with comic book writing for the rest of my career. And then Card said that, and it made sense. It was actually a freeing moment, in which a ton of metaphorical weights seemed to drop right off of me.

Don't worry about theme, or style, or any other extraneous nonsense, and just tell a clear story. Let your readers eventually decide those other matters. And, if you run into trouble between two wonderfully crafted scenes that need to be connected, just write the minimum material you need to do that, almost like notes to yourself on what needs to happen, and that should remove the blockage. Later on you may find that it's the simple terse connecting material that is the better stuff and those two artfully constructed passages are what needs to go, or at least be slimmed down.

2) Get back to basics.

I see this as, "don't try to reinvent the wheel." The stuff of good story isn't going to change. Trying to do something that's never been done before, such as writing a novel that's simply one run-on sentence, or purposely constructing indecipherable passages to "challenge" the reader, or any of a vast number of so-called new literary conventions, are all hooey. At best they're stunts. At worst they're purposely malicious. My job is to communicate an interesting story to my readers, and communication can only occur when the reader knows what the hell I'm saying.

3) Do it with a little pizazz.

When Marjorie first posted this, fellow Clockworkian Chris Roberson mistook it as: "Do it with a little pizza," and said as much, which put pizza in the minds of many of those of us who read the small exchange. I wonder how much pizza was ordered that night as a result of the misunderstanding? I know they got me, and my editor at IDW.

But tastiness aside, pizza is not required to write well. In fact it may be an impediment, if you like to keep a clean keyboard.

Here's how I think Marjorie's third rule applies to me. It's not a repudiation of what I just wrote above about ignoring style. We still ought not to worry about our writing style, because that can only grow organically from our actual writing. I think it has something to do with confidence -- as in we should have some. Do it with a bit of a swagger.

Humility is all well and good, and a character trait much to be admired. But it has limited use to a writer. If I don't have enough ego and confidence to believe I have an interesting story to tell, then why am I wasting everyone's time by jumping up on the metaphorical stage and shouting, "Give me your money, your time and your attention for as long as I want it, because I have a great story to tell you!" That is an act of bravado bordering on arrogance.

This business isn't for the timid. Writing is an act of leadership, and no one follows an overly timid leader. When you write, bring your swagger. Bring your confidence. Bring your pizazz.

4) Don't lose your edge.

I've lost my edge before. Hell, I've lost the whole damned blade. I think the only way to keep your edge is to keep honing it. Keep writing or your tools get dull and useless. If I go a few days without writing it's like I'm starting all over again when I start up again. Ultimately writing means sitting alone in a room getting hours of work done one day, and then repeating it the next day and so on, for far too many days in a row. If you can't stand to be alone with yourself in a room for protracted lengths of time, then you can't do this. You will all too quickly lose your edge.

That's what I take, so far, from Marjorie's four admonitions. I know as I ponder further I'll get other wisdoms from them. That's the nature of good advice. I wonder what the other Clockwork boys take from the same four rules. Maybe they'll share as much in their own posts.

For those who want to go to the source, or maybe find out for yourselves why we're Marjorie Liu fans here at the Clockworks, you can find her and her books here.

The Practical Man(ifesto)

Not always being one to sit on the sideline of an interesting discussion, I have joined it, more or less with permission.

Now I also have an essay on the Babel Crash site, which you can find here.

Here's a wee sampling of it:

This isn’t a Zelazny line, but it could have been: “Then the volcano erupted, blasting its full compliment of ghost dragons into the sky, burning the sky first and then the seven god cities adrift in it. As the cities began to list, founder and then fall, trailing black ash and fire, I sat on the next slope over to smoke a cigarette, finish my coffee and ponder my next move.”

More About Mashups, and a Bit About Punks

The indomitable, and far too well spoken, James Enge has responded to Matt's ill considered tirade against the genre mashup, in their continuing discussion about writing, over at Babel Clash (terrible name).

You can find it here. Read it. It's (mostly) good. Tastes like chicken.

I do object to Enge's attempt to reclassify Roger Zelazny's unique and always quirky work as (long babel of something)punk. I thoroughly dislike any name for a literary movement with the word 'punk' appended to it. Punk is a word that belittles by its nature. And in that regard it was used perfectly for the cyberpunk movement, as that dismal sub-genre was purposely replete with punks. But (with the possible exception of the lead character from Damnation Alley -- and I'm not sure even he qualifies) Zelazny didn't write punks, who are silly, swaggering and unimportant by definition.

Unfortunately any label that ends with punk is far too easily embraced by the unimaginative masses that comprise the bulk of Geekland. I hope the damage isn't already done. For that only, in an otherwise wonderfully crafted essay that rightly takes Sturges to task, shame on you, Mr. Enge.

Trees and Bolts

Orson Scott Card once wrestled (as a teaching exercise I seem to recall) with the entire definition of what constitutes Fantasy and what is Science Fiction, raising many of the arguments Matt mentions in his essay. Finally, almost in frustration it seemed to me, he pared it down to its most basic structure: Fantasy has elves and trees, while Science Fiction has bolts and metal.

That's it. Everything else is fodder for academic debate, which has nothing to do with actual writers telling stories.

And yes, I agree that the Dune books are a lovely mix of Science Fiction and Fantasy. Such fine books. Too bad they're being spoiled by those wretched pre-Dune novels, which now outnumber the originals, if I recall correctly.

I can't say that the Dune books inspired me to write. More they inspired me to give up all such hopes. How could I ever hope to compete in a field that had these treasures in them? The trick though, at least for me, was in not trying to write like Frank Herbert. I can see his influence all over in Matt's writing though -- at least when he's really on his game.

Above and to the left you can see that my new Fables prose novel, Peter and Max, is getting some nice, front-of-store, placement. This pic was taken by Chris Ryall (he who wields mucho power at IDW publishers) while on a trip to Seattle.

Put that wooden stake down. We're not (un)dead!

Okay, we've let this place lie fallow long enough. I've been traveling, and got the flu, so got behind on deadlines, and every other sort of blah, blah, blah. But we started this silly blog to talk about writing in general, and our writing in particular, and to keep the communication going between the widely dispersed Clockwork Storybook group.

So let's kick this thing back to life, starting now.

Matt Sturges has a novel due in just about a month, and he has to complete it without letting all of his comic book work go undone, so he's decided to start another one of those "How much work can I get done in one month?" marathons, just like our Great February Writing Duel last year. This time Matt is starting October 1st and running through the month. I can't participate this go round, since I'll be in Israel for most of that time, but I will snipe and comment, when I can, from the sidelines.

At this point I have no idea if the other Clockwork boys will be joining Matt, but since Matt has to do it, even if he does it all alone, and since posting his daily progress here publicly will help keep him on track, away we go. Well, away he goes anyway. So visit and comment when you can, and help keep Matt's feet to the fire.