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By Jeanie Franz Ransom, on March 10th, 2012
A lot has happened in the almost three years since I took the 10th of the month spot at Storytellers Unplugged. A high-school graduation, a semester abroad in Copenhagen (not for me – I just got to pay for it!), trips to Michigan and to Gulf Shores, and the death of my father-in-law of almost thirty years.
In the writing department, I wrote and sold my sixth children’s book — a picture-book mystery that’s a sequel to What Really Happened to Humpty?, went to several retreats, became a guest columnist for the local newspaper, and steadily increased the number of author visits I do at schools each year — no small feat in these economic times. Next month, I’m going to New Mexico to accept a Children’s Choice award for What Really Happened to Humpty? Sounds good, right?
But a lot hasn’t happened in the past three years, including keeping my monthly obligation to post on this website. I’ve told myself that it’s just once a month; I should be able to do that. And then I miss a month, even two.
Between working two part-time jobs, visiting schools, writing, and being a wife and mom, I’ve come to the realization that while I do a lot of things, I don’t do them all particularly well. I don’t want to be that kind of person anymore. I don’t want to be that kind of writer, either.
So, it is with regret that I surrender my spot on Storytellers Unplugged. If you’re a fellow SU blogger, thank you for inviting me to join you, and for making me feel welcome. If you happened to read one of my posts, I appreciate it. And if you want to check up on me from time to time — and I hope you will — please visit me at www.jeanieransom.com
Best wishes,
Jeanie
By Brian Hodge, on March 9th, 2012
 “No, my lord! If we don’t let him go now, how will the enemy know when, where, and how to attack us?” Even though life doesn’t always seem to proceed with anything resembling logic, fiction generally has to. If it doesn’t, the wires start to show, and it becomes obvious that you’re just making it up as you go along. Which you are, totally … except most readers and viewers aren’t keen on being slapped in the face with a reminder.
Let logic lapse too many times, or too flagrantly, and you will pay a price for it. Your work may be rejected altogether. Or if it does make it to an audience, some of them (along with reviewers) may call you out on the offenders. And it’s embarrassing when that happens. I recently went through OCR scans of my first two novels, for new editions, and took the opportunity to fix a spot in each one that deservedly drew fire their first time around.
Better, though, had these slips never appeared at all.
Anatomy Of A Screwup
When lapses in logic occur, it can be for any number of seductive reasons: We get lazy, we’re stumped for viable ideas, we want to make it easier on ourselves or harder on the characters, we’re just not thinking … or without the lapse, the momentum stops or there’s no story at all.
Here are some of the common symptoms of logic failure:
- You repeal the laws of physics and/or nature.
- You violate basic human nature.
- Characters suddenly start acting wildly out of character.
- You break your own rules established for your fictional world or universe.
- You ignore the obvious easy solution in favor of the dramatic difficult.
Mind, now, any of these can be pulled off in grand style. But this is nearly always the result of a lot of subterranean effort to make it work … not laziness or carelessness. And then there are people like David Lynch, who’s made a long career out of doing films that, for the most part, don’t make a lot of sense on the surface.
Most of us, though, can’t get away with that. For most of us, logic is another item in the long list of things we need to be alert for as we scrutinize a semi-finished work, to see how well it’s hanging together.
To that end, here’s a quick demo of sniffing out lapses in logic, and speculating on how they might be fixed.
Case Study: The Lord Of The Rings
The filmed version, that is. Some lapses will also apply to Tolkein’s books; others, maybe not. I’m not bashing either here. I love this story and these movies dearly; so much, in fact, that in my home, ever since they were all available on DVD, we’ve spent most New Year’s Days vegging out with the whole extended edition marathon. It’s only because I’ve seen them so many times that their warts chafe.
(1) Lapse: The entire quest journey doesn’t even need to take place.
I can never watch LotR without wondering why they couldn’t just saddle Frodo on one of those magnificent eagles that Gandalf periodically calls in, and airlift him straight to Mount Doom. The whole thing could’ve been handled between second breakfast and afternoon tea. The eagles are great, but they do seem to be brought in only when there’s no other way out of a predicament.
Workaround: How to write the eagles off? I could be wrong, as it’s been a long time since I’ve read The Hobbit, but I seem to recall them being portrayed in this earlier novel as aloof and not much concerned with the affairs of humanity. Thus they could refuse the request. Or maybe Gandalf fears that, being animals, they might be unpredictably susceptible to the ring’s malign influence. Either way, this option could be cleared from the table at the council of Elrond, when everyone’s arguing over what to do. It would take 3 or 4 lines at most.
(2) Lapse: Aragorn stops King Theoden from killing the traitorous Grima Wormtongue and the entire population of Edoras just … lets him go???
This may be the most egregious lapse in the entire saga, because it isn’t merely passively illogical, but actively stupid. Not only does Aragorn physically restrain the land’s king from hacking Grima into two well-deserved halves, but gives this rationale: “Enough blood has been spilled on his account.” Umm, yeah, and payback’s a bitch … unless the story needs you to hurry back to Saruman and blab about everyone’s plans and vulnerabilities.
So they all stand around and watch Grima snarl, run off, steal a horse, and ride back to their enemies, all but calling out, “Vaya con Dios, my friend!” It’s kind of excruciating.
Workaround: Two parts here. First, sparing Grima’s life. The land of Rohan is based on Anglo-Saxon culture, which recognized a rudimentary right to trial. If Grima suddenly invokes that right, that would give Aragorn logical cause to intervene … but more for Theoden’s sake than Grima’s. A king who butchers a man invoking his right to trial, in front of his people, could be gravely diminished in their eyes.
Next, getting Grima away. It’s conceivable there could be a second conspirator in Edoras who releases him from captivity. Or: Saruman has already shown, through the king, that he has the capacity for mind-control; he could flex this muscle again, targeting a guard, long enough to let Grima go.
(3) Lapse: Aragorn releases the spectral army from their oath of service while the biggest confrontation — the assault on Mordor — is still to come.
Another puzzlingly short-sighted decision from the future king. Aragorn risked his life to enlist this ghostly army of cutthroats, without whom the good guys would’ve been crushed at Minas Tirith and Pellinor Fields. And then? “Thanks, fellas! We can take it from here. We’re only heading into the heart of darkness, with reduced numbers, against even more overwhelming odds.” What’s the rush? These green dudes have been in limbo for centuries, so another few days shouldn’t hurt.
Obviously the alliance has to dissolve; otherwise, ultimate victory comes effortlessly. Still, there was a missed opportunity here to tighten the screws and heighten the direness of the situation.
Workaround: This could’ve played better, for more suspense, if Aragorn comes out of the Minas Tirith victory fully expecting the spectral army to be with them until the end, but instead its leader confronts him, demanding their freedom. Not because Aragorn intended all along to give it this early, but because he was overly restrictive in his choice of words. In short, he conscripted them for the battle, not the war, and now has no choice but to release them or be dishonored as an oathbreaker.
(4) Lapse: Is Arwen immortal or isn’t she?
There’s a scene in The Two Towers when Elrond apparently taps his gift of foresight to describe a bleak future for his daughter Arwen should she remain behind in Middle Earth, rather than sailing into the west with the rest of the elves. It includes an eternity of widowhood after Aragorn’s death in old age, and it clearly upsets her. However, this seems to contradict The Fellowship of the Ring, when she surrenders immortality and chooses a mortal life.
Workaround: I’ve seen people complain about this as a continuity goof, if nothing else. Eventually I got to wondering: Does Elrond even know she’s done this? I suspect not, but with this much room for doubt, the issue was sloppily handled. It could be clarified by either having her blurt out what she’s done here, or mention earlier to Aragorn that she intends to keep this decision a secret from her father.
(5) Lapse: Over 3000 years, Middle Earth seems not to have advanced in weapons technology one bit.
Bonus round, this one. I’m grossly overthinking this — sometimes you just have to suspend disbelief — but still, it’s interesting to contemplate. In both the prologue and the rest of the story, people go to war with exactly the same weapons: swords, spears, bows-and-arrows, maces, etc. This bears no resemblance to our own civilization. In theirs, Saruman’s bomb and the ring itself are clear aberrations. I can buy it that, in an agrarian society, daily life could remain in stasis in perpetuity, but when it comes to killing each other, we seem to never stop looking for bigger, more efficient ways to get the job done.
Workaround: If you were to touch on this, Gandalf would be the key. He’s lived “two hundred lives of men,” so he’s obviously going to have a longterm perspective. He’s also prone to philosophizing in quiet moments. I’d be very interested to hear his take on this issue, even if, as is sometimes the case, he doesn’t have all the answers. I would wonder if he might have sensed some underlying consciousness in their world that limits their capacity for mass destruction, so they don’t destroy themselves in their baser moments.
Sure, I know … a complete fantasy.
But you can dream, can’t you?
***** Agreed, that was a lot to take in. Take a breather anyway, rehydrate, and come on over to my own blog, Warrior Poet, for a look back at “The 3 Words That Forever Changed The Way I Write.”
By Gerard Houarner, on March 4th, 2012
My good buddy Tom Piccirilli, whose “noirella” Clowns in the Moonlight ( http://www.amazon.com/Clown-in-the-Moonlight-ebook/dp/B0078B6VK2/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1330741769&sr=8-1 ) was just released, recently posted on Facebook: “Worst thing about working through your novel for a second draft? Realizing that all those brilliant lines you wrote actually suck dead grizzly ass.”
Yes. Yes they so sadly do.
Of course, his suck is what some of the rest of us can only aspire to, but still, the point remains, running through your first draft with a cold eye can make you feel like you’ve slipped into a talent show judged by Ricky Gervais, Seth MacFarlane, and MST3k guys. You can’t help wincing.
But there’s no choice. Not if you want to sell. Or at least not be held up to ridicule like many self-published innocents whose work gets the occasional Ricky/Seth/MST3k treatment at writer gatherings. The cold eye is essential. It ain’t all poetic inspiration and glasses of wine.
Some writers embrace, even love the editing process. Blessed by stronger editing genes, or perhaps they’re strangers from another planet granted the super powers by the light of our sun, they’re not frustrated by debris from the crumbling façades of imagination. They’re not appalled by weak, even non-existent foundations of motivation. Nor are they attached to the clever bits that come in the fever dream of creation, the kind that wilt and die under the glaring reality of a really good second read. They love to prune, and are not afraid to chop off entire chapters.
The rest do it because it is part of the job. Face it, for any kind of work, there’s always some part that sucks worse than any other. I’ve heard writers say they hate writing, but love having written. Gardeners don’t all love messing around in the dirt, but they love the flowers or vegetables they grow.
There are ways to find support. Some folks give their work to hand-picked readers or writing partners who know their material, what they want to say, and can be trusted to give appropriate feedback. Others use a writing workshop for fast edits as deadlines loom. A few even have great editors with keen eyes who really work to make the piece even better than you ever imagined it might be.
The editing process differs with the writing process. Some folks like the fast first draft, others build the work carefully, scene by scene, laying down a strong foundation, putting down one chapter seamlessly on top of the another.
I usually spend a lot of time on beginnings, because I feel the end is in the beginning. As the story develops, I go back and plant a seed that needs planting, or I jump ahead and lay something down that will need to be done or said at the end.
I’m also a foundation type of writer. I need to feel what’s gone on before is solid before I move on. Of course, I know I’m deluding myself. But in the moment, I want to feel like something feels solid. I’ve dug into the characters, even the setting, maybe exposed something new or different, which then leads to a plot twist I hadn’t anticipated. Maybe I have to go back again, change a couple of things. In other words, I always seem to be going back and edit, smoothing out the rough spots so I have an idea what the thing I’m building actually looks like, and not just an outline of what I hope it’ll turn out to be.
This means I violate a rule many writers have of never researching while writing. Make it up, fix it later. My problem if something is worth mentioning, it’s worth getting it right. The detail may have an impact on plot, or maybe you put it in for the sake of authenticity. But if I’m going to bother with the details of, say, the ingredients of a meal and how it’s prepared, it means I want to use it as a way to show something about the characters. For me, it’s important to know those kinds of details as I come to them. It helps me get deeper into their POV, work with their reactions, make them more consistent, or surprising in believable ways.
But I understand the lay-it down first and smooth it out later types. For a lot of writing work, like media-based stories, you just have to pump it out. Deadlines rule. Business is business, and sometimes good enough writing and timely delivery will get you the next job, while great writing handed in late means zip. And, for folks not on deadlines, it seems like they need that feeling of being rushed to get through to the end and finish a story.
Whatever gets you through the long night.
Alas, whether you’ve written fast or slow, benefitted from friendly or rough feedback, worked on tight deadlines or loose ones, edited on the fly or not at all, you’re going to be faced with a final edit at some point, even if it’s at the last-chance galley stage. If you’re not, you didn’t get over, you got robbed.
Hopefully, you’ve gotten some distance from the material and forgotten those cherished little things you put in there that you thought were so cool. And for projects that may have taken a long time to complete, or suffered from a lot of interruptions, it’s the last chance to pick up problems like mixed up names/characters/descriptions, jumps in mood or tone, unfinished thoughts, questions that really should have an answer, repetitions and all the other errors and bad habits that pop up because, well, nobody’s perfect.
Speaking of lack of perfection, I’ve been working on revising a long piece and thought I’d share, for whatever it may be worth, a snapshot of an edit in progress.
In the following section, my goal was to show a part of the background setting, the Caravan of Death, actually working instead of trudging through desert. I also wanted to offer my main character, a young girl, Aini, an opportunity to return to a safer place.
In the earlier draft presented here, I already (thankfully) deleted a heaping glob of a useless paragraph that seemed to be a placeholder for something I wanted to say, making the initial word count around 500 words. In a cold second read, I had no idea what I’d been talking about, so out it went.
I’m pretty sure I went on to fine tune it a bit more, but you get the idea. I’m not putting it out there as an example of how to do it, just an example of what I did.
419 words – earlier draft
Dejjal took the camel bridle from a servant, and the rest quickly vanished. “You must be careful what you play with,” he said, passing his fingers gently over her exposed calf, bruised and scratched by the djinn. “My brothers must work hard to calm what you stirred, and you might not survive another such encounter.”
Aini pointed to Bomaye and Mafufunyana at the center of a knot of figures, and said, “Not all your brothers.” She thought her thief had returned to bargain for her return. But then she noticed jeeps and trucks, the machinery of her youth in the other world, and uniformed men with guns. Another kind of bargain was being made. Bomaye was talking to the dead, calling them out of the line, looking to a fat man in green and black. When the fat man nodded his head, Bomaye yelled at the pick, directing each to the line loading into the vehicles. Mafufunyana pulled the females out, dragged them to a smaller van while carrying a strong box on his shoulder. None of the children were chosen.
The trucks started up as thunder rolled over the desert once more, drowning the noise of the engines. As the vehicles drove off to the east, the sky shimmered above them while ahead, the rocky, rolling landscape seemed to shrink and waver, like a mirage.
She thought of al-Sirat, and the possibility of other roads in and out of the country of caravans. She tried to remember the old stories she used to tell of growing up in that far and other place, before her parents had brought her into their dream of a caravan life.
Every place, she supposed, needed storytellers.
Dejjal laughed. “Finding the way to and from the Caravan of the Dead is part of the price of trading with us,” he said. “For those in need, what we provide is worth the cost. But do not believe that any journey back with those in such need would be gentle, or the world at the end of such roads a welcoming one for you.”
Aini closed her eyes, blocking out Dejjal with the many voices, the pictures moving and talking, the endless stories happening and being told all at the same time in an enormous stewpot of fantasy and gossip seasoned by the occasional fact and rare dashes of truth.
“You protected your virginity, but surrendered everything else to our world,” Dejjal said. “You’re ruined for any other land you think you could run to.”
****
480 – final draft
Dejjal took the camel bridle from a servant, and the rest quickly vanished. “You must be careful what you play with,” he said, passing his fingers gently over her exposed calf, bruised and scratched by the djinn. “You might not survive another such encounter. My brothers must work hard to calm what you stirred. ”
Aini pointed to Bomaye and Mafufunyana at the center of a knot of figures, and said, “Not all your brothers.”
She thought her thief had returned to bargain for her return. But then she noticed jeeps and trucks, uniformed men with guns, the machinery of her childhood in the other world. Another kind of bargain was being made.
Bomaye was talking to the dead, calling them out of the line, looking to a fat man in green and black. When the fat man nodded his head, Bomaye yelled at the pick, directing each to the line loading into the vehicles. Mafufunyana pulled the females out, dragged them to a smaller van while carrying a strong box on his shoulder. None of the children were chosen.
The trucks started up as thunder rolled over the desert once more, drowning the noise of the engines. As the vehicles drove off to the east, the sky shimmered above them while ahead, the rocky, rolling landscape seemed to shrink and waver like a mirage.
She thought of the world her parents had left behind and what might be waiting for her on the other side of a mirage. Every land held a promise, and a price. It was a world, she was certain, filled with stories and wonders. But no Caravan of Death, or Dreams.
Dejjal laughed as he followed her gaze and pointed at the rapidly diminishing trucks. “Finding the way to the Caravan of the Dead is half the cost of trading with us,” he said. “We claim the rest. And, of course, the way home requires its own payment. For those in need, what we offer is worth the sacrifice.
“But do not believe that any journey in the company of those in such need would be gentle, or the world at the end of such roads a welcoming one for you.”
Aini closed her eyes, listening to the crack and rumble of djinn until the many voices they’d awakened in her mind rose up in a tide of tales, real and imagined, seasoned by fantasy and gossip, the occasional fact and the rare dashes of truth, to drown Dejjal’s seductive murmuring. Tears came to her eyes, the kind she might have had if she’d ever seen her parents one more time.
Dejjal’s voice slipped through, a steel blade as hard and sharp as his smile. “You protected your virginity, but surrendered everything else to our world. You’re ruined for any other land you think you could run to.”
By Carole Lanham, on March 2nd, 2012
Do you cower in the face of romance? Or do you love writing about love? Penning these types of scenes can be tricky, even if it’s something you enjoy. As it goes with real love, you’re sometimes left to wonder, did I go too far? Maybe I should have restrained myself a little more? What will Mom say if she hears about this?
The ingredients that make for a good love scene cannot be passed from writer to writer like a recipe that guarantees perfect chocolate chip cookies every time. For each and every type of love that exists there is a different school of thought, and the world is a lot more interesting because of this. Understanding your target audience and exercising the appropriate amount of care when tackling the subject will help you get it right.
This seems like a no-brainer, I realize, but taking a courtesan approach to the process is the only way to go. You don’t want to ruin a good thing by pouring on too much perfume, and you don’t want to be timid when the story calls for more knee. Done right, the art of love should enhance everything else without showing off. It takes skill and forethought to pull this off smoothly and still manage to give the reader what they like. A misplaced throbbing member is not only capable of inducing unwanted giggles, but it can spoil the romance faster than just about anything else, especially if your audience prefers kissing. You’ll score brownie points for originality if you can come up with something new. Regardless of who you’re writing for, it doesn’t hurt to remember that sensuality often wins the day when pitted against detailed mechanical descriptions.
But how do you know what your readers will like? In some cases, genre will lead the way. I want to think it’s slightly easier to pinpoint your target audience when the subject is roses. Category Romance, varied and complex as that genre has come to be, gives a reader (and a writer) a leg-up by spelling out one thing: Expect romance. That said, sustaining romantic interest throughout the course of an entire book must surely be tougher than tackling one or two little love scenes. It takes a very skilled hand to do this. The same can be said for those writers who keep the world outfitted (scantily!) with good old-fashioned bodice-rippers. When readers choose a book from this section in the library, they’ve every right to expect lots of juicy action. If a chaste kiss never dissolves into untamed passion, no one will blame readers in the least if they decide to toss the remiss author off the pirate ship.
By my experience, you’re more apt to find an ill-advised attempt at lovemaking when a Sci-Fi writer drops a clandestine romp down in the middle of an alien invasion. I’ve seen a lot of good plots cheapened by sex scenes that come on too strong. I’ve also read books that could stand to let their hair down a little more. If you’re attempting to add a love affair to a tale that is more espionage story than romance, the face of your audience can be hard to see. Let a blend of research, instinct, and editorial input guide you through this. If still in doubt, ere on the side of subtly. I tend to embrace the theory that less is more when it comes to love.
Finally, whatever you do, don’t give the lovers in your work short shrift. Cavalier treatment of the subject matter is the main mistake I see with love scenes in books. Most writers put a lot of time, effort, and thought into creating an historical scene. If you’re writing about WWII, the details obviously need to be right in order to attain believability. Love deserves no less attention. Whether it’s meant to be beautiful, tragic, complex, or depraved, this element of your week is as important as any other. Take your time with it. Get it right. Don’t ruin the rich, in depth story you’ve created about the Bataan Death March by throwing some haphazard heaving bosom in there.
Love scenes can and should add a new level of characterization to a story. This makes them an important part of storytelling. Even if its a casual encounter described in three words, you’d be wise to carefully consider your audience before choosing which three words to use. When you’re done writing, take a hard look at what the love scene says.
Does it convey the message you wanted it to convey?
Carole Lanham is the author of the short story collection THE WHISPER JAR.
A free copy of the award-winning story THE GOOD PART (from the collection) is available for a limited time at:
http://www.goodreads.com/story/show/293884-the-good-part?chapter=0
carolelanham.com
horrorhomemaker.com
morriganbooks.com
By Robert Jones, on February 19th, 2012
This essay might be of special interest to writers of detective and mystery stories who would like to enrich their stories by presenting their readers with a gift of extra detail. It might also be of general interest to many other readers.
Although the following describes a sufficient number of gruesome activities to give readers a fairly good idea of what Richard Kuklinski was like, many much more gruesome activities were not included.
Richard’s early years were spent in an unfortunate environment. He was the second of four children. According to Richard, his father was an alcoholic who beat him, often for no apparent reason. His mother was a strict Catholic, and she also beat him, once even breaking a broom handle in the process. He was also beaten by priests and teachers. When Richard was five years old, his father beat his older brother so severely that he died. His mother told hospital personnel that he had fallen down stairs. A short time later, his father left.
Having experienced such an outstanding introduction to life, it is not surprising that Richard did not follow a life path that might have been recommended by the Boy Scout Handbook. In probable response to his beatings, he tortured and killed just about every wild cat and dog in his neighborhood. For a time, he continued to receive beatings and harassments from the leader and members of a small gang. He finally decided that he had received his last beating. With a thick, wooden, closet rod in hand, he caught the gang leader alone and, with all the hatred in him fired by the beatings given him by his parents and all the others, beat him with it. His intention was to teach the leader a lesson, but he couldn’t stop beating and kicking him until he was well beyond dead. Richard drove the body in the trunk of a stolen car to a swampy area in South Jersey. He checked the body for anything that would identify it. From having read stolen crime comics, he knew that a body could be identified by its teeth and fingerprints, so he knocked out all the teeth and chopped off all the finger tips before dumping the body from a small bridge. Richard was 14.
That was when Kuklinski discovered it was “better to give than to receive.” It was apparently a credo that guided him throughout the rest of his life. He had to feel that he was always in control.
As an adult, Kuklinski was a busy man. He was always involved in one deal and/or another. He dealt in stolen cars and expedited the illegal distribution of guns, drugs and pornography.
Kuklinski also began doing jobs for crime families and said he was willing to kill for money. As a test to ensure he could follow an order to kill without questioning it, he was driven to an inner city area where a man was walking his dog. He was told to kill the man. Kuklinski got out of the car. He walked past the man, turned and shot him in the back of his head. The car pulled up. Kuklinski got in. The car pulled away. Kuklinski had passed his test.
Kuklinski was to be a contract killer for more than 30 years. The tools of his trade included his hands, fire, lamp cords, ropes, bats, a lump hammer, ice picks, screw drivers, knives, guns, hand grenades, a crossbow, rats and poison. During a documentary, he said that he usually carried two Derringers in his pockets and another gun attached to his ankle.
Kuklinski didn’t work exclusively for the crime families, but would kill anyone for anyone who would pay his fee. His only exceptions were women and children. At different times, he claimed that, during the next three decades or so, he had killed between 33 and 200 persons. He was an attentive viewer of the CSI television programs and attributed much of his success at avoiding arrest to what he had learned from them. He also had a habit of killing anyone who knew anything that could be used as evidence against him.
Whatever the actual number of persons killed by Kuklinski is, the murders left the police searching for a suspect. He stuffed one of his victims into a 55-gallon steel drum. The body was found, and the police traced its identity. They learned from the victim’s brother that he had been in great fear of Kuklinski. This finally presented the police with a suspect. They tracked Kuklinski for years, but were not able to pin anything on him.
Kuklinski would sometimes “accidentally” spill cyanide onto a person. It would eventually be absorbed through the skin and do its intended job. He also sometimes put it onto a person’s food. Once he put cyanide onto the hamburger of someone he had invited to lunch.
He “field tested” a crossbow by pulling his car over and lowering his window as if to ask a passer by for directions. As the man leaned down, Kuklinski shot him with the crossbow, Its projectile passed through his forehead and into his brain. When asked if that killed the man, he answered, “It sure did.”
Kuklinski partnered for a time with a man named Robert Prongay, who had been a military-trained demolitions expert. Oddly, Prongay drove about in a Mr. Softee truck from which he actually sold Mr. Softee to kids. Prongay knew quite a bit about various kinds of drugs and other chemicals that could be used to terminate a person’s life, and he taught Kuklinski such things as spraying cyanide at a person’s face while walking past him. The victim would inhale the cyanide and die very shortly thereafter. He also discussed freezing a body so that the time of death could not be determined, thus relieving a killer’s alibi concerns.
The partnership with Prongay ended soon after an argument. Prongay had made the huge mistake of threatening Kuklinski’s family. His body was found shot to death in his Mr Softee truck, which was parked in his garage, which happened to be across the street from Kuklinski’s rented garage.
Kuklinski kept the body of one man he had shot in a frigid well for two years before dumping it in upstate New York. The body was found a few days later. It appeared to have been dead for only a day or so. The body was wearing the same clothes that the man had been wearing when, carrying $90,000, he went to have dinner with Kuklinski. An autopsy revealed ice crystals within the body tissue, which indicated that the body had been frozen. Fingerprints identified the body, and Kuklinski was promoted from suspect to chief suspect. It was then that the police began referring to him as the Iceman.
It took an undercover agent a year and a half to establish a relationship with
Kuklinski. During subsequent meetings, he recorded many conversations during a number of which Kuklinski incriminated himself. The two even planned a murder-robbery. When his superior thought Kuklinski might kill the agent, which he was actually planning to do, he was arrested, tried for murder and sentenced to Life in prison.
It didn’t help Kuklinski’s standing with the jury when, as his defense attorney was attempting to discredit a witness who was testifying that Kuklinski had admitted to two murders, Kuklinski pointed his finger as an imaginary gun at the witness.
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION:
1. Ted Bundy and David Berkowitz were known as serial killers. Kuklinski was not; he did not derive psycho-sexual gratification from his murders, and he was not known to have ever killed a woman.
Kuklinski had a brother, Joseph, who had raped and killed a 12-year-old girl and threw her and her dog from the roof of a building. He drew a life sentence at the same prison (Trenton State Prison) Richard Kuklinski would later call home for life. They both died there. Richard had used their history as an example of how such an upbringing as theirs can twist the lives of children.
Kuklinski’s emotional distancing is consistent with those suffering from dissociative identity disorder, but he apparently does not have multiple personalities but, as defined by his moods and behavior, he certainly has two sides–one good and one very bad–. His wife stated that, when in a good mood, he could be loving, generous and protective. When in a bad mood, he could threaten and beat her. If he couldn’t do that, he would even beat up on himself.
When engaged in his “business,” he got his victims to give him whatever he wanted before he killed them. He interpreted perceived insults as threats to his strictly maintained self-image. Control was always the major factor.
Research indicates that one cause of sociopathic behavior such as that exhibited by Kuklinski is abnormalities in the frontal lobe of the brain. Self control, planning and judgment are the responsibility of this area. Another cause has to do with the environment within which Kuklinski and his violent brother were both raised.
During an interview, Kuklinski said that he did have one regret: that he had hurt his family, who supposedly never knew exactly what he did for a living. To neighbors, he was simply a “business man.”
2. Until recently, tests could reveal elevated levels of cyanide within a body for only about two days before it degrades into carbon and nitrogen. Even its infamous bitter almond odor soon departs, leaving only lividity evidence in the form pinkish spots on the skin. The spots indicate oxygen starvation, but carbon monoxide can also produce such spots. Absent any additional evidence, the latter sometimes causes medical examiners to overlook cyanide as a possible cause of death.
A recent study revealed that a biomarker, ACTA, was found to have been significantly increased in liver samples of a person who had been subject to a sublethal dose of cyanide. Hopes are that the biomarker will substantially extend the window within which cyanide poisoning can be detected to weeks or months.
Readers interested in chemistry might care to know that ACTA is 2-aminothiazoline-4-carboxylic acid. Actually, it’s the same for those readers who don’t care to know.
3. A coroner and a medical examiner are not the same. A coroner, especially one in a rural county, might not be required to have any medical qualifications. His or her duties would often be limited to confirming that a body is dead, identifying the body, notifying the next of kin, returning personal belongings to the deceased’s family and signing a death certificate. If an autopsy is required, a nonmedical coroner can request that a medical examiner perform it. Many coroners, however, are physicians trained to examine dead bodies.
Medical examiners (MEs) in most counties are required to have a medical degree, although, in many, it does not have to be in pathology. Their duties typically include examining bodies of persons who have suddenly, unexpectedly and/or violently died to determine the cause and time of death and whether it was a natural death, a suicide or murder, or a death due to unknown causes. They also typically supervise the collection of evidence from a body, identify bodies and skeletal remains, determine any contributory factors associated with the death and sign s death certificate. In some counties, they might be in charge of a crime lab. They also provide expert testimony in court and often explain, in easily understood terms, forensic evidence to the judge and jury.
4. A detailed description of an autopsy can be found in the archives of Storytellers Unplugged. It is titled MORE FORENSIC DETAILS, and was published on August 30, 2007. The description is also among the 30 forensic essays in my e-book titled FORENSICS 101: A FRIENDLY PRIMER FOR WRITERS (which is available from Amazon.com).
5. During the last century or so, handling the dead has had a rather shady history. For example, at one time, coroners in New York City were paid by the body. Reportedly, some were pulled from the Hudson River, issued a John Doe death certificate , and slipped back into the river. This procedure was even repeated a number of times with the same body. For an under-the-table bonus, a corrupt coroner would protect the reputation of a family by declaring a suicide to be a natural death. For a much larger bonus, the coroner would protect the reputation of a killer by declaring a murder to be a natural death. In 1914, the office of medical examiner replaced that of coroner. Unfortunately, coroners and medical examiners are still under pressure by district attorneys and other officials to “assist” in obtaining convictions when evidence may be a bit scant.
By Bev Vincent, on February 17th, 2012
I’m not sure I’ve ever been this busy before. At least as far as writing is concerned. I have a major deadline coming up in about 6 weeks and I’ve got the nose to the grindstone, working every waking hour, to get this book done on schedule. It’s fun, but it’s hard. There are distractions. I have to get the taxes done. There are TV shows I’d like to watch and books I’d like to read. All of that goes onto the back burner until April 1.
However, things arise that require my attention. Such as a recent advisory at the HWA message board that a site was hosting pirated copies of work. I checked out the site and yes, indeed, something of mine was there.
This isn’t the first time I’ve had people giving away (or, in this case, selling access to) copies of my work. I’m not an obvious target, but apparently these pirates cast a wide net. I filed a DMCA notice with the site (they provided a helpful template to do so) and within about 48 hours the offending content was gone. Just mine, mind you—the site still offers scads of books by names you would certainly recognize. [Addendum: after I wrote this article, I found a site containing two pirated anthologies featuring my work. DMCA notices filed. In this instance the response was that it would be "difficult" to remove the file, but they would try. Hmm.]
It’s a little like playing whack-a-mole, though. You bop it down in one place and it pops back up again in another. Thanks to sites like the now defunct MegaUpload, people have plausible deniability. They can upload the content anonymously and provide a link to it from some other equally anonymous site. When challenged, they can claim that they are just providing a link, not hosting the content. I’ve dealt with this before. I usually focus my efforts on the hosting site, since all the links in the world don’t mean a hill of beans if there’s nothing at the end of them. Every once in a while, one of the link providers will provide a shame-faced apology when challenged.
I’m sure there are people who are saying, “What’s the big deal?” This instance doesn’t represent a big financial hit for me. The work was originally offered as a give-away chapbook, for which I was paid in advance. It’s now available only as an eBook, and I do get royalties from this, though they won’t buy me a fancy dinner most months.
However, it’s the principle of the matter. This work belongs to me. If I want to give copies of it away, that would be up to me (and the publisher, of course). No one else has the right to do so. The situation isn’t the same as with a physical book, where a person can buy a copy and then do with it what they want—short of selling photocopies of it or scanning it in and giving away (or selling) the scans. It’s perfectly acceptable for you to resell your paperback or hardcover copy of a work. It is not acceptable to distribute an eBook. In effect, when you purchase an eBook, you are licensing it in much the same way that you license software. There are terms of agreement that you enter into with the author and the publisher.
I’m not going to get into the whole “piracy can be good for your career” argument touted by some authors. I don’t believe it anymore than I believe that leaving the jewelry store unlocked at night is good for business. Letting unauthorized people control the distribution of your intellectual property just isn’t right, regardless of any perceived “benefits.”
Writers are facing the same situation that musicians did a decade or more ago when file sharing services started robbing them of the royalties they relied on to make a living. There is a general belief that this situation has shaken itself out for musicians, that entities like iTunes and Pandora have legitimized online music distribution. All you have to do is hit Google, though, to see that there is a lot of music being illegally distributed on the internet. And now books, as well.
All we can do is go after the sites that are illegally distributing our works, one at a time. Whack that mole and wait for the next one to appear. I recommend putting Google Alerts to use so that you can find out when your name or a particular title shows up on the internet. That’s the main way I find pirated copies of my work. I’m too busy to go trolling cyberspace all the time, but when cyberspace comes to me, I act.
One sad fact, though, is that some of these sites are beyond my reach. If they dig in their heels and the server is located in some distant land, there’s little I can do about it. Hell, there’s little anyone can do about it—even the big authors with deep pockets and lawyers on retainer.
That doesn’t mean, though, that we should just throw our hands in the air and give up. We pick them off one at a time. People will always steal—and some offenders don’t even consider this theft, more the pity—but this is a kind of theft that we can stop some of the time, at least. Intellectual property is real property, with real value. And I have the royalty statements to prove it.
By Thomas Sullivan, on February 15th, 2012
Like some infamous interrogation room, the designation “Q&A” is starting to take on the ring of doom for me. I know I’ve been weaseling away from my prior commitment to use that format, but please do not doubt that I am exceedingly grateful for your questions and your interest. No one could have more sensitive or astute readers than I have – love you all – and I take it as some kind of affirmation that I must be dealing with meaningful issues whenever I read your penetrating questions. November’s column in particular brought in several dozen questions, most of them emotionally daunting for me, and something over half asking for details about what I meant by, “…almost found that single star to steer my ship.” Jeani of Ventura, CA, may have expressed the gist of responses best:
“…You are wrong to think that ‘[no] one could relate to the rather emotionally spartan specifics of my life anyway.’ I’m sure others would be just as intrigued as I to hear tales of little Tommy Sullivan! You did not hatch, shaved head and all, in the middle of Elm Creek on skis. Actually, I might believe that, if I did not possess a little knowledge of you prior to that version.”
Well, as I commented back in November, I asked for it, didn’t I? Thought I was going to be very candid and cleverly manage this, but now I’m thinking this is an onion, and I need to go one layer at a time. Hmmm. Not even convincing myself yet. Sorta like saying I’ll tell the truth any day except the ones that end in “y.” Okay, lemme ease in with a couple of softball questions first…
Q [Chicago, IL]: How cold do you like the MN whether before you shake your fist at it? Bonus question: do you write with more clarity during the cold weather?
A: By the time it’s that cold, my fist is embalmed in double-insert gloves with heat packs. And only a writer who has penned by candlelight in a cold garret could ask your bonus question. Your inference is true, methinks, cold does seem to sharpen perceptions, as if each thought has the crystal clarity of an icicle. But clarity of thought isn’t necessarily compelling in scenes that need emotion. E.g. they say Hitler’s optimum working temp was 62°F when he wrote Mein Kampf – so maybe cold isn’t conducive to writing warm, fuzzy stuff. Ever try writing in snow (no, not the way you’re thinking)? “S’s” done with a ski pole look like backward “Z’s.” In fact, any letters with curves done with a ski pole suck – I mean zuck. Lots of luck writing SOS.
Q [from Bonny, USA – judging from the question]: Do you ever watch American Idol? I love Stephen Tyler. His humor reminds me a bit of yours! When a person sang especially well the other night on Idol, he said Oh, I just had an eargasm ! I thought, that is something Sully would dream up!
A: Used to think I knew who I was, Bonny, but I get enough “you-remind-me-of’s” so that I now have an identity crisis and talk to myself in 7 languages. I’m flattered at your choice though, as I’ve been compared with Boris Karloff, Dracula, Hugh Laurie, the kid who played Harry Potter’s enemy at Hogwarts, and others I care not to remember. Only comparison I ever liked was Christopher Walken, and the only way I can see that is that Walken reminds me of my father. Can’t say I actually sit down to watch American Idol, though I often have TVs on all over the house while I’m doing other stuff, so I’ve seen/heard Steven Tyler – and like him (and Aerosmith) – thank you very much.
Q [Johannesburg, Gauteng, South Africa]: Is any of your work in talking books?
A: SOON! One of the very top audio readers in the world – Bob Walter – is doing THE MARTYRING as I write this. Details forthcoming in an upcoming Sullygram. BORN BURNING will follow thereafter, with four other novels on deck.
Q [mucho locales]: OK, gonna try to bundle the mega-faceted questions alluded to at the start of this column into a one-shot answer. And I’ll use these two questions to summarize the batch: [Englewood, FL] “…I am most interested in more details about that ‘almost found that single star to steer my (your) ship’ you described ?” and [Hampstead, MD] “…you speak in mysteries and wonderments that leave me wondering now what did he mean and what happened that he and changed his mind and wonder wonder wonder. What single star did you find to steer your ship? Or what happened to cause you to say when irony has the upper hand the less likely you will be to find a true companion for the journey.”
A: When it comes to love, I’ve gone to waste all my life. At least that’s what I thought. The waste was sorta voluntary, because I never expected to meet my fantasy soulmate (ha ha ha ha). Srsly. It was even more unlikely because I never went looking. Formally. Ms. Soulmate would have to turn up in my environment somehow. The thing of it is, when you rule out flesh and blood fulfillment of your dreams, it becomes safe to think free and live true to the highest romantic ideals of your heart, mind and soul. You can fantasize a relationship that is virtual romantic perfection. Which is what I did. Only I should have known better than to tempt the gods of irony. Because that’s when they dropped the biggest improbability of all into my improbable life. Blindsided doesn’t cover it. She wasn’t anywhere where it should’ve happened, and we were impossible, and I wasn’t going to do anything about it anyway. But she walked into my blueprint for romantic perfection as if she had a script and had been practicing all her life for the role. Not just fantasy perfection for all the senses – anyone’s senses – but of the heart, mind, soul in a rare way that made us a matched set…and I might have resisted even that, except that her values were totally contrary to what her looks and charms could’ve gotten her. She was as counterintuitive as I am. She defied all the rules of procedure, which was my final gatekeeper. No games. No gender dynamics. She had the courage and the depth of love to tell me and make it happen. How could I not love her for that alone? Not that it was rushed. She had known for years she told me, and yet she waited patiently while our minds met before our souls touched before our hearts melted before our bodies merged. And all of this was like lightning igniting words and deeds out of every part of me I’d held back in life just so that I could give it to one transcendent person – to her. I was like a little boy opening his hot little hand for the first time to offer up a shiny treasure he has hoarded because it is the essence of what he feels to the core. And she took it. Trembling. We were both trembling. Thereafter, inspiration, motivation and imagination went into overdrive far beyond the sweet sting of passion between us. … Yeah, yeah, I know, it’s an old story. But it’s not like I don’t know the drill of successfully evading heart/mind/soul commitment. Given the improbabilities of my life, I use the word “unique” advisedly. This was unique. And tangled. Hollywood pales. And the gods of irony are still having their fun in a most unbelievable way. Like I said previously, it only takes one star to steer a ship, if it’s the right star. But even our galaxies collided – one of the first gifts she gave me was a picture of colliding galaxies along with the CD of Howie Day’s “You and I Collide” – only, like most galaxies, hers had a black hole in the center that gobbles up stars. … So that was probably the last chance for me to be domesticated. Somewhere along the line the balance tips between avoiding loneliness and preserving romantic ideals. The perfect equilibrium between being tamed and my unconventional life is likely gone. Still, never say never. Because if you do, those same gods of irony will take that as a challenge. So, place your bets, kind readers – all you who have penetrated my abstractions from golden fields to white feathers – before we spin the wheel that spins the galaxy and sends the silver ball — silver soul — soaring round its cosmic carousel. Yes? No? Permit me the arrogance to weigh in with an opinion, though I’ve never won a single dream. It will be neither Yes nor No. Place all your chips on the one sure bet. That whatever happens to me next will be…unique.
Your thoughts are welcome, your attention valued. I’m truly grateful for your interest and feedback. And for those who have asked, my latest release is a low-priced e-book edition of my World Fantasy finalist for Best Novel available here: http://www.amazon.com/The-Martyring-ebook/dp/B0069CIFL4/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1321818520&sr=1-1
Thomas “Sully” Sullivan
http://www.thomassullivanauthor.com
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By Bill Lindblad, on February 12th, 2012
Up front, I wish to make it clear that this post is not about any specific person. The sad fact that it could so easily be interpreted as such says much about the state of horror writing today.
I’m also making this fast, because I missed my upload date yesterday by being on the road in Austin, and I need to get this in before today’s essay posts.
Success comes both critically and financially. Either of them will earn an author a measure of respect and adulation from people he doesn’t know. Because nearly every author developed an interest in writing from their own youthful appreciation of literature, this is heady stuff: a chance to be acknowledged as a member of a group they view as special.
Few people make it to any level of notoriety overnight, however. First there are years spent on the outskirts, making an occasional sale to a magazine with a distribution smaller than a typical circle of Facebook friends or getting into an anthology by a publisher whose works have never been encountered outside of conventions and mail order. Self-published chapbooks are traded between people who are learning not simply how to expertly craft sentences into paragraphs but also how to establish contacts in the publishing industry.
After years of effort honing writing skills and developing relationships in the industry, people succeed. It really is that simple. Anyone who is not completely inept can get published if they exert enough time and effort. That truth does not tarnish their success, however, and that’s a good thing because it truly is a goal worth lauding.
It’s what’s been happening afterward that’s been annoying the hell out of me. The horror field bottomed out in the 1990s, and in the 2000s there was a new crop of authors trying to revive it. As anyone familiar with the small press would guess, those authors have gone on to varying degrees of success. Some of them are now demonstrating their pettiness.
When everyone was trying to make it as a new author, there was a general sense of cameraderie. Now I see people who get a movie made as a screenwriter, or a book deal with a major publisher, or multiple short fiction sales from prestige anthologies and magazines, and they are divesting themselves of old associations. The people they once spent hours with at conventions or online have failed to reach their level of success, and they are therefore unnecessary. I use that word with consideration: it’s not that there is some animus that suddenly exists and it’s not that the former friendship wasn’t real. Rather, the friendship takes a back-burner to spending time with people who could help further their blossoming careers, and they don’t want to expend time with someone who would likely only need their help.
To anyone who finds themselves in this position: Grow up.
Look at the stars in this or any genre field. Not only are they highly regarded by their peers, they overwhelmingly tend to be approachable and friendly. They are not striving to reach greater success in any way other than the norm: negotiations with publishers and writing great stories. Some have learned that fame is a temporary thing, as contracts that were once for six or seven figures are now for five or four. Some remain atop the bestseller lists. They have seen talented friends disappear from the field, they have seen others shift into roles as prominent editors and publishers.
I’m not old, but I’m not young anymore either. I’ve watched this happen before, and I expect I’ll see it again. It’s annoying me now because it’s happening with so many people simultaneously. People in the field who have finally broken into the big time… even if it’s with a contract that would cement them only as a C or B list author for advertising dollars… are ditching the friends with whom they spent time in the trenches. It reflects very poorly on them, and it results in hard feelings and burned bridges if their sudden success suddenly flames out, as is all too common in the literary world.
It doesn’t need to happen like this. Authors can take a lesson from people like Gary Braunbeck, Mort Castle, F. Paul Wilson, Peter Straub, David Morrell, Al Sarrantonio, Ray Garton and others. After you achieve success, don’t cut off a friend or even a friendly associate just because they don’t seem to be useful to you anymore. Whether you’re doing it because you are truly callous or because you simply don’t think you have time to spend with people who can’t contribute to your success the result will be bitterness.
By Brian Hodge, on February 9th, 2012
This is for the ones who despair. This is for the ones gripped by the feeling that it will never get better. That they will never get better.
I promise you this much: It can. And you might. That’s the best guarantee you’re going to get. Can and might. There’s only one certain guarantee, and that’s how to make sure that it doesn’t and you never do:
Quit. Whatever you’re doing, just stop right now. I mean it. Put down the pen, close the Word file, toss the notebook in the trash, click that folder full of story files and half-formed dreams and punch the Delete key like you mean it.
There, now. Just relax. Breathe. Doesn’t that feel better?
If it does, if it genuinely does, then go ahead and empty the trash, real or virtual, stop reading right now, and go about the rest of your day, the rest of your life. You’ve just been spared years of toil, doubt, and heartache.
But if it doesn’t feel better, if in fact it feels kind of awful, then you’d better fish those temporary discards out of the trash before something bad happens. Clutch them to your breast and promise to never treat them — or, more importantly, what they represent — with that kind of disrespect again.
Respect is important, because there’s work to do.
The Agony And The Ecstasy. Mostly Agony.
Over the past few weeks I’ve been digging among my roots. I’ve just finished prepping my first two novels for new editions. Both predate my migration to word processing, so I’m working with files generated by OCR scans of the original books. You have to proofread these things. Carefully. Sometimes OCR software has a whacky sense of humor about what it thinks it sees.
I’ve had no need to look at either of these novels for more than twenty years. Now that I have, I can honestly say I would’ve been happy to let them sit another twenty, if only to spare myself the daily torture.
I thought these novels were awesome at the time. And they still have their moments.
But now they’re like that TV show you used to love as a kid. You know the one I mean. The one you were absolutely nuts for, that you couldn’t get enough of. The one you’d run miles to get home in time to watch.
The most merciful thing you can do is never watch it again, ever. It never holds up. Better to leave it alone and let the sepia-toned memories remain intact.
Here’s how I described my reaction to this process the other day, in a new Afterword to one of the novels:
“Here and there are bits that make me glad I wrote them, that wouldn’t look or feel out of place in later work, but mostly I just groan a lot and want to bang my head against the desk, unable to believe that this was the published draft.”
Which sounds polite for general company, but really, it’s more like this prayer:
“Please, oh Odin, god of battle and poetry, please make it stop! And if you can’t make it stop, make it better. And if you can’t make it better, please send your ravens to pluck out my eyes.”
Yeah, that bad. To me they are.
There are a lot of things about these formative works that should console me: That agents thought they were worth representing. That publishers thought they were worth publishing. That reviewers said good things about them. That there are readers who remember them fondly, maybe even loved them the way I did, and that even now there are publishers who want to bring them back into print.
While I’m enormously grateful for all that, I can’t say there’s much consolation in it.
But then there’s this. This summation of the gulf between then and now, of all that’s come in the interim, and all that’s still to come. This may be the finest thing you could ever say about yourself when comparing where you began with where you are today:
I would never write that now. It would never even occur to me. Or if it did, I wouldn’t write it in remotely the same way.
It’s so clear: Things got better. I got better. Mostly as a consequence of not stopping. Not stopping, and an unrelieved sense of dissatisfaction.
Through The Looking Glass
Pure serendipity. The other day, not even knowing what I’ve been up to lately, my longtime friend Clark Perry cued me into the quote below. Clark is one of the few spawning salmon who made it all the way upstream, past a million belly-up floaters who gave out, to get hired writing for TV.
We were there at the very beginning, for each other’s origin stories. We saw each other through years of the exact process that Ira Glass, host and producer of Public Radio International’s This American Life, describes in this clip from 2009:
“…all of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there’s this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase. They quit.
“Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you’re just starting out or you’re still in this phase, you gotta know that it’s normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work … It’s only by going through a volume of work that you’ll close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions …
“It’s gonna take awhile. It’s normal to take awhile. You just gotta fight your way through.”
Except there’s one thing Glass doesn’t address here: Okay, so how do you fight your way through?
The Good Fight
People analogize the creative process and the crucible of improvement in different ways. Me, I like finding the parallels with, appropriately enough, fight training. It resonates.
If you’ve never done any fight training, just know this much: The bag work, the mitt work, kicking pads and drilling your footwork and head movement … it’s all just theory. True practice comes when you take what you think you know and match it against something that hits back. And when you start sparring, it’s a humbling, humiliating experience.
How did this guy just hit me six times and I couldn’t do anything about it? What openings did he see that I wasn’t even aware of? That I couldn’t see on him?
Simple. Once he (or she) was where you are now. He was the one getting hit six times. She was once the one without the experience to spot the openings.
It’s nothing personal, this pounding you’re taking. Or if it is, it’s personal in a good way. You and your sparring partner are actually there to teach each other. True, it’s a hard way to learn. It’s also the only way.
Your partner got through it by doing what you have to now: find something to love about the process. Something you love more than you dislike the discomfort. Something that never gets old, that keeps the experience alive and fresh for you. Something that keeps luring you back from the pits of discouragement.
You get through it by learning to live for the little victories. Maybe next week you only get hit four times in a row. Or she swings and you’re no longer there. Or you nail him with a sweet counter.
And so it is with writing, with every other creative endeavor.
Everything you think you know from books, from blogs, from classes … it’s all just theory. Everything you work up behind closed doors and leave there in the dark, that’s theory too, just another kind … still something you haven’t yet put to the test.
True practice comes from putting it out in the world, daring to risk the vulnerability that goes with this. Feedback readers, critique groups, submissions. Especially submissions. That’s when the ordeal begins. That’s when you have to find the thing you love enough to keep you going despite the rejections, the cheap shots, the indifference, and the clear-eyed recognition of the gap between your work and your ambitions.
That’s when you have to learn to live for the little victories. Do you know how many successful writers have had their day made, their week made, when a rejection came with a personalized note of encouragement from the editor? All of them.
That’s how better happens. By increments and milestones and thinking in timeframes that most people don’t have the patience or guts for.
So put in the time. Take the hits. Keep going.
It does get better. And so will you.
***** Sure, that was a lot to absorb. Take a breather anyway, pack a light lunch, and come on over to my own blog, Warrior Poet, and glean some ideas for 2012 from “Rock Your Writing This Year With The 30-Things Challenge.”
[Photo by Eric Langley]
By Gerard Houarner, on February 4th, 2012
Or…”interrupted by a person on business from Porlock” — sustaining the vision of the story you want to tell as life’s storms rage around you.
Trust me, it’ll make sense.
Quite some time ago in a LOCUS interview, Jay Lake talked about the challenges of containing the story he’s working on in his mind, or living in the “dream world” of his fictional creation.
I’ve always related to the problem, and kept the issue alive in my notes if not in my ever shrinking mind. I know I’ve mentioned the idea before, but perhaps never explored the concept. Also, over the years as life has closed in and its many challenges consumed innocence, insouciance, and energy, writing has become harder, not easier.
The topic haunts me.
One of the many romantic notions about writers is that they rattle off poems, stories and novels in a “white heat” of inspiration, working day and night, chain smoking, sitting in their dirty underwear in small rooms, their haggard faces lit only by the light of a computer screen (a single dusty bulb in the “old” days, and by candle flame in ancient times) surrounded by empty liquor bottles and piles of pristine finished manuscript, until the book is done and the royalty checks are already in the mail.
Everything real seems to stop in these writers’ lives. Children are magically fed, creditors compassionately defer their pursuit of unpaid bills. The sanctity of the torch of inspiration is respected, and the fire is allowed to burn until the fuel is spent and words are forged.
Now, it’s true there’s a least one famous thriller writer who books a hotel room for a few weeks and locks himself away to write a novel. And there are writers with significant others who “enable” their writing by taking care of the little details of life so they can concentrate on living in the imaginary world of their story until the tale is told.
The reality is that for most writers, that ain’t happening. More often, we’re like Coleridge with what we innocently and passionately believe is Kubla Khan in our heads, putting down lines from a (hopefully not opium inspired) dream vision until we’re interrupted by, as the story famously goes, a person on business from Porlock.
And if you’re a writer and never heard of anything from the above paragraph, stop reading and don’t write, but search out the poem and Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Romanticism.
So the problem (one of many) for writers is keeping what you’re working on alive in your mind. For me, what Jay Lake is talking about is more than a memory problem of recalling plot direction and character tics. And it’s not “inspiration,” that magical booster shot people who want to be writers wait for so they can produce something when, and only when, they feel like it.
I believe containing the story in your mind is about getting a state of awareness about what you’ve done, where you’re heading, and what you’re supposed to be doing with your story when you’re at your keyboard. Something like an altered state, without the opium. An understanding that certain things have happened and that, because of those things, the blank page/screen is waiting for you to set down what you already know, deep down inside beyond your conscious mind, will happen next.
Maybe it’s a meditative state, for some. Or the “zone” athletes talk about, in which years of practicing certain skill sets, along with instinct, experience, and athletic talents, combine to elevate performance out of the mud of fear, nerves and thought. A higher state is achieved in which the baseball appears bigger, moving slower, toward your gigantic bat which swings so effortlessly.
A dream state. Being “in the moment.” Focused on the thing you are doing.
This precious state of knowing and being happens all the time in life, I think, though we may not be aware of it. I think it happens in the process of raising kids, working, driving, praying. Addicts miraculously rise from their stupor to orchestrate their next score.
For writers, I think it means avoiding the struggle of finding the “next thing” to write, rekindling the fire of “inspiration,” feeling again the urgency of having to say the thing you wanted to say in those first moments you scribbled down the story idea. It means recapturing the magnificent arc of story you saw at some point early in the process, re-entering the dream of your vision of Kubla Khan, with all its shimmering details, its clever references, plot points, characters, imagery and layers of meaning, and dragging it out into the waking world whole and complete.
We want it to happen whenever we write.
But it doesn’t happen all the time. We can’t live 24/7 in the dream state of our stories. Other lives, including our own “real world” lives, also need tending and care. Duty calls. Responsibilities knock on our doors.
Obviously, opium worked, at least once for Coleridge. The “romantic” image of writers that includes empty liquor bottles documents the supposed need for alcohol and other drugs to “lubricate” the imagination.
Certainly there are plenty of literary legends fueled by this kind of inspiration. There’s also a lot of bs, folks claiming one thing but doing quite another because, well, the bon vivant is a cool “platform” from which to sell stuff. Aside from the physically, emotionally and cognitively self-destructive aspects of these habits, there’s also regret.
If you wrote that well when you were high, think how much better it would have been if you were in your right mind.
And then there’s the sad reality that 99.9% of that stuff is buried, unseen, along with the creators. Mostly, at a very young age.
So what triggers these states? What else can we use to find the dream in which we can create?
I believe the discipline tricks writers use – writing in the same place, at the same time, every day – not only helps with production, but it also gets the writer back into the “space” or “head” of writing. It’s certainly helped me at times.
Keeping a Fortress of Solitude, a Batcave, a private space decorated so that it resembles the inside of your mind, is a tried and true. But I’ve found that isolating, at times. Cut off from life. Too unreal, perhaps too comfortable. And sometimes, when illness, death, disaster, financial woes or other big life tragedies and issues knock on the door, the Fortress walls come down, or they seem just silly and irrelevant, both in terms of life and to a story you may be trying to tell.
Music, especially when writers talk about specific genres for different types of writing, also serves as an emotional and imagination gate to get back into the story. I’ve seen candles and scents would do the trick.
There are stories about writers doing it naked, as if getting back into some kind of primal state to get the work done.
But not everybody works that way, and even if these techniques work for the structure and discipline of getting back to the work of writing, there may still be problems finding the dream of the story, particularly when time has gone by or a writer is jumping from one piece to another.
I guess what I’m looking for is something tied not to the act of writing, but to the story you’re trying to tell. An anchor, or a touchstone. A key that unlocks the cabinet through which you enter the adventure.
Well, yes, music works for a lot of people in this regard. Theme songs, like a Quincy Jones arrangement for a detective show, except the show is your story and the theme song is whatever rocks your boat. Alas, most of the time this is not for me. I find music too distracting, engaging me in ways that make me want to do other things besides writing, unless I’m writing a very musical story. And even then, at some point, I have to shut it down so I can concentrate on what the characters are saying and feeling.
I guess one factor in finding the right “key” is understanding which of the five senses dominates your awareness – are you visual, auditory, etc?
I do find getting in touch with the story’s setting a good way to start things up each time I write. Working on a longish piece set in a surreal desert, on and off over the past months (more on this another time), I found pictures, documentaries, even a screen saver all pretty good starting points. I write a lot in urban settings, and I live in a city, but I’ve also done nature settings, and I like parks and country, too. I know in those times when I write in a non-urban setting, I’m always thinking of and remembering the time I’ve spent upstate, out West, by the sea, etc.
Setting to me establishes the mood of a story. Again, I can see how music would be a great tool. But I’ve used, as above, documentaries, Sunrise Earth (HD films of sunrises in different parts of the world), and touchstone movies – Blade Runner, Casablanca, David Lynch stuff, surreal cartoons – running silently in the background to guide me into my zone.
Another way is to start every writing session by editing the previous session’s writing. This is a good habit, anyway, as what seemed like gold last night can turn out to be lead in the morning. But, depending on your need, re-reading the work and starting to tinker with it can get you back into the frame of mind you were in when you were last writing. Sparks fly, connections are re-opened. You’re reminded of things you wanted to say, or why you said such and such. You recall threats, you react to dangers. Hopefully, at some point, you’ll feel the need to stop editing and move into the action.
Yes, I know, there are some writers who cannot go on before finishing the perfect page. I studied under one of those. And for that person, the story was complete in his mind. It seemed like the dream of the story was readily accessible, though I was too young and stupid at the time ask. Most of us are not like that.
The point here is to get back into the overall story, the dream, and not to get caught up in close editing. Unless, of course, you find that to be your key. In any case, reviewing old work can wake up the other part of the brain where the dream is living. Listen to it when it calls.
By the way, I recently talked here on Storytellersunplugged about using “dead time” in your life as part of the writing process. Doing a little editing – re-reading what you’ve written, doing minor edits on the fly on your portable computer, smart phone, or manuscript pages — is not only a smart use of little snippets of time while waiting for something to happen, but it also helps to keep that dream alive in your head. Maybe it’ll make you more motivated to hurry home, or dip into the dream for as much time as you may have, and carry the story a little further along with new material.
The biggest key for me getting back into the dreamtime, I’ve found, are characters. I guess it’s something like an actor waiting in the wings, ready to throw up, having no memory of the lines, dreading the cue to step on stage. And when that moment comes and the floorboards creak underfoot, the actor doesn’t so much enter the play but the character in the play, and the lines flow and the fear flies off and the game is afoot.
It’s not the easy or magical, or nauseating, when I write. But I have found that once I’m “in” the character – I have a firm grip on needs, fears, strengths and weaknesses, as well as a sense of personality like sense of humor, patterns of connecting with others, how they relate to friends or family – I can see and understand the story through that character’s eyes. I’ve done long pieces through the eyes of several characters and never had a problem switching around and getting into the story from their point of view. Their individual worlds, and the world of the overall story, was usually within my reach.
Finding and feeling comfortable with the characters is another story, of course. Looking back, I can see the “failed” stories, particularly the ones that never sold or the ones I never bothered to finish, had problems centering on my lack of connection with the characters. The dream never came alive.
Sometimes (let’s not say often) dreams die when published. They never come alive for other people. So it goes. But at the very least, the dream should be alive for the writer.
Strong characters carry their own atmosphere, bring the mood to the story, invite certain kinds of characters to play with them. Good characters can make the work of telling a story so much easier.
Think of the Harry Potter series. Really, all that fantasy stuff is wonderful, but not particularly original. The magical schoolboy is practically an English genre all to itself. But it’s Potter and his Scooby gang that makes that dream come alive for readers. When I imagine myself writing something like that (and cashing all those checks!), I envy the way the characters come alive for readers, and how it must have been to work with them and letting the story flow from their traits, their histories, habits, needs and fears.
In my surreal desert fantasy (no, really, I’ll talk more about that next time, I really must), which was a pain to write and is still a pain in the editing/revision process, which this column is interrupting so I must hurry and finish so I can get back to that dream, I was only able to get back to it after through the many interruptions I had because the main character had a weight of her own. Sometimes she’d say or do things that completely surprised me. But I had a strong sense of her right from the beginning, and that anchor allowed me to slip back enough times (but not al the time, because no solution is perfect and writing is hard no matter how many tricks and shortcuts you use) to keep the dream of that story going.
Another thing that kept that piece, and most things I write, going and alive in my head is having an ending in mind.
For the desert piece, the reason I even started it was to write about the Caravan of Death. This was an idea and a collection of characters from one of my novels. I always loved the idea and wanted to return to it. I started the story knowing the little girl I invented would meet the Caravan of Death and somehow all hell would break loose. For that little girl to hold her own against something called the Caravan of Death, there’d have to be some special qualities to her, and finding those qualities became part of the process of telling the story, part of the dream.
But a general idea of the ending, in most cases, is part of the beginning of the story. As I’ve said before, the seeds of the end are always at the beginning. They may be invisible, implied, cast like shadows around the edges, part of the background, in the imagery and symbols, but usually it’s there, somewhere, lurking, waiting. You may not be aware of it. The secrets may only be revealed with time, the story’s development. You may re-read that beginning a hundred times before you see it. Or, you may have to go back and plant the damn seed as the ending becomes clear by telling the story. One way or another, the end usually gets there in the beginning.
And I say this not just because I have an Ouroborus tattoo on my arm.
It may not be the ending that actually happens, and in fact, it’s probably better if the ending changes as the story evolves. But having that ending, or just a general idea for how the character conflicts will resolve (where the characters are going in their individual arcs), serves not only as an anchor for the plot, but for all the different levels of the story being told. Having a direction, an ending, helps to give the dream And by general idea, I mean, do I want
Part of the reasoning behind beginnings/endings and characters as keys to keeping the story alive in your mind is another piece of advice that a lot of writers talk about: having a strong foundation.
By foundation, I don’t necessarily mean a strong beginning, though that helps. But, I’ve found to my chagrin, beginnings change. You think you’re starting in middle, like the sage writing advice tells you, but suddenly you discover you need to start the story earlier or, more often later.
And having a big finish in mind is no guarantee that it will happen, unless you’re the kind of writer who lives by the outline. No problem with that. If the outline works, and can contain the dream and make the story come alive in your mind, I envy you. Most writers I know throw out the outline at some point.
But a start and end does help to define the dream. It’s like recognizing a picture, knowing the outline on a map is not some vague blob, but Africa and all the history and pain and wonder that the name conjures.
And going back and making that beginning stronger, going back and revising and inserting and deleting material, even leaving notes here and there for yourself with what needs to be done right in the manuscript (and believe me, I’ve been startled by my own forgotten notes more than once, and slapped my head over a forgotten part of the dream that needed to poke its head out at the place I’d left a marker), is another reason to edit during “dead time” and start writing sessions by re-reading the story.
If you’ve been away from your story for a while, start at the beginning. See if the beginning awakens the dream, reminds you of the things you’ve already written about what’s going to happen, if the characters come alive and fill you with the need to go back into them, and if you sense what’s coming, good or bad, at the end, or perhaps more importantly, feel the drive to find out what happens, in the end.
If you do, then the story is still alive inside you, and the dream waits for you to join in the adventure.
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