I have a great fondness for this story. It distilled nicely and the character worked out well. Performed it at WisCon 2011 as well as in Vancouver– it seems to strike a chord with some older female audience members, and for this I am grateful.
Anyway, please take a look!
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v479/n7374/full/479562a.html
Just imagine! If these editorials/interviews are clumping online now you bet the deadlines overlapped as well!
Sometimes a little challenging for a writer/thinker who can only comfortably hold one idea in her head at a time (And luckily the children are Big, now, and I didn’t drop them when they were little when I was juggling several items simultaneously although I did toss my daughter into the air (of course catching her!) and miscalculated the distance to the exposed furnace venting on the ceiling of the ice cream shop but the impact with her head was mostly loud rather than injurious and all the other parents thought I was an idiot but we finished with ice cream and all’s well that ends well don’t you think?)…. It’s very odd. Invitations and requests seem to come in little clusters. I don’t know why they can’t be nicely spaced out, one each month, but that would be rather, perhaps, too unrandom. But a series of clustered deadlines are unrandom too. That geeky man making charts on the trajectory of Angry Birds could probably graph the results for me. But graphing it won’t affect how the deadlines still come in. !__!
I am grateful. Truly.
Here I am on The Rejectionist with “Some Thoughts on Speculative Fiction”. (I do apologize for the rather prosaic title; I was pressed for time. >_< )
(Does this mean I needn’t worry about blogging for three weeks???? ^____^)
A cluster of interactions outside the actual writing of novel has resulted in some postings in print and online. “A Planet of One’s Own” is a guest editorial I wrote for the Canadian magazine of the fantastic, On Spec. I wonder what Ms. Woolf would have thought…. ~__~
On the one hand I figure once you’re dead it doesn’t really matter, on an ego-level, does it? There’re only ego concerns if you’re alive enough to appreciate it and care (I’m working on the premise that there’s no after life, no self-conscious ghosties, no burdens of regret to pass onto the next generation, etc.). On the other hand I have children so if I can have books still bring in royalties, yah, that’d be awesome. Leave them a little something– if not enough to let them retire when they are 55 years old, at least enough to eat at a fancy restaurant several times a year!
When I write my novels I’m not thinking about whether or not they will Stand The Test of Time. And I am not specifically and consciously crafting stories that will try to evade or float above my historical timeline. (What I mean is we are creatures of specific times. My childhood in the 70′s has imprinted in specific ways. 80′s in the Canadian prairies has formed something else inside of my experience-scape. Etc. We bring those sensibilities to the atmosphere, if not the setting itself, in the stories we write. Some timeprint. It’s in us. We transport it. It’s one of our filters.) Some novels/stories/poems/plays etc remain as vivid, remarkable, relevant and vital even after decades, centuries have passed. Did the authors of these narratives wonder if their work would still speak to an audience three hundred years into the future?
I’ve been thinking about which SF and Fantasy stories stand the test of time and why. Not in a scholarly way, Jim, because I’m not a scholar, but in a writerly abstracted musing kind of way, like a little yarn hanging from my sweater that I like to pluck at and tug between thumb and forefinger.
Last week I reread Barbara Hambly’s Darwath Trilogy after 15+ years and was surprised to discover that it read very well, even revisiting it as an older and more experienced reader/writer, and that the subject matter and content would actually be quite fine to be released now. It’s a fantasy series with two humans from our world finding themselves in an parallel world that’s very much like what would have been a medieval culture for us. Aside from the very beginning of the narrative, there are no leaps between the locales. They are trapped in the medieval realm. So there was very little to fix the “presentness” of their lives in contrast to my reading now in the 21rst century. The only thing that stood out as time-fixed was mention of VHS videos…. (Which I still watch I’ll have you know! ^__^)
This got me to thinking about which elements may fix SF and Fantastic stories into a tighter reading time-frame. What I mean by a tight reading time-frame is stories that are best read in “the present” of when the story was first released, and, as time passes, its relevance or interest wanes. It doesn’t have a long shelf life. It is like a Beaujolais, not a bottle of brandy.
So back to Hambly’s trilogy. Fantasy, with its construction of an alternate world/setting with or without elements of the magical, may float above the tethers that would bind a narrative to a specific time because it’s often working out of an imaginary system that is actually removed from our experience of “real time” (and all the markers of reality that have a time-print). Science fiction runs a greater risk of being “dated” because of two significant elements: 1) SF will often imagine a future, and as we approach the date it can seem quite silly when what was imagined as the future is so far from the reality (Interestingly, as we catch up to the imagined timeline, the futuristic story actually becomes an interesting artifact of the past as it foregrounds the anxieties and interests of that culture’s present!). 2) Focus on technological advances/discoveries also fixes the narrative in time as technological discoveries continue onward, quickly surpass it, or veer in a different direction, etc. For instance, computers were room-sized machines but now they are becoming extremely small. What was cutting edge is swiftly surpassed. It seems to me that an SF novel based on technological discoveries would face more challenges in being current and relevant than a fantasy novel (of course I’m speaking in very broad terms, here). Steampunk seems an interesting marriage of fantasy and science fiction with a ground based upon nostalgia but that’s another little discussion for another day. Hambly’s fantasy adventure has elements of a mystery as well as following tropes of fantasy (such as fight between human survival against a strange deadly and evil force), as well as conflict between groups (church and state), conflict between individuals and groups, as well as a moderate romantic element (nicely handled, not overdone, <she nods approvingly>) and all of these things certainly recur in human history, they’ve never gone away. There’s one final element that actually affects how well it resonates as a book for current interest, but I don’t want to speak of it because I would spoiler the trilogy… >_< !! So I won’t. At any rate I suggest you read this trilogy for yourself and have a ponder about how and why it can still resonate.
As a writer is it important to consider whether or not the novel you are crafting is “timeless”? Is it important to carefully pore through the text to try to erase all timeprints that will anchor it forever in 2011?
I don’t think there’s a correct answer….
I have a feeling that trying to write “a timeless book” would be very much like trying to write “a universal story”; a fruitless endeavour, a little like trying to catch air with a butterfly net…. But who knows? Maybe there are a slough of writers out there who approach their novels in that very way??? I don’t know. And, as my father said, “Life is… <dramatic pause> Unknowable!”
Often reviewers will describe a novel as “timeless”. “Universal” is also probably close behind. Birth, death, love, heartbreak, success, failure, good and evil; these binary constructions have indeed, orbited our very short human lives since time immemorial, at least we’ve endless chronicles about them.
Of course writers write stories set in a wide spectrum of time. Their stories may be set in the distant past, the near past, the present, the future, the far future, etc. They combine multiple timelines, what have you. We are only limited by our imagination. As writers we can play with time! We can bend it, we can alter it, as long as we have the ability to have manipulate language to convey this. But none of this really clinches whether or not a story will stand the test of time.
Ultimately the story has to be very good, specific, and distinct.
In terms of my writing process my character(s) are the primary engines to my narrative. I have a broad concept, probably several pressing questions and the character(s) are dropped into the mix. Sometimes I feel very bad about the things they must endure. They are always very deeply loved….
I’m not trying to prove anything, here. <grin> I’m just kinda working out some random thoughts. Mulling. I suppose it would be good to talk about how one treats time inside a story. The seeming semblance of the passage of story time in the story world as opposed to how much time is passing for the reader…. Now THAT is a magic trick, I kid you not! But not today. ~___~
And, rather randomly, I end with a link to a recent interview for the Fall 2011 issue of The Seventh Week, Clarion West Writer’s Workshop! The most thoughtful, astute & imaginative Nisi Shawl asked me non-typical questions and it was an absolute delight to respond to them. You need to download the pdf once you’re on the site.
http://www.clarionwest.org/The_Seventh_Week
I suppose it does no actual harm, not like a deadbeat parent. <weak grin>
I’ve been writing and rewriting whilst editing another’s manuscript. Making excellent headway, but less time for bloglife, je me regrette et je ne regrette pas!
Super chuffed that Penguin Canada has chosen the cover images for my novel, Darkest Light (illustrated by the brilliant Jillian Tamaki!), as the cover image for their 2012 Children’s Titles catalogue! I spent several 5 minutes trying to take a photo of me holding up two copies, with the photo booth feature on the laptop even going to the extent of clicking the mouse with my toe, etc. Very ignoble. Always blurry.
Recently met someone who follows my tweets. She said that my personality is exactly like what she imagined it might be based on my tweets. Found this simultaneously dismaying and funny. Also very clear that I could never be a double agent. Heck, I couldn’t be a single agent. If I can’t even be a single agent I’m reduced to a subject. I object!
Sunday a day of chores. A run to second-hand bookstores. Maybe a late cheap lunch. I may finally try a Japadog. For the longest time the name really bothered me, but exposure has worn down my discomfort. Funny how that works, hey? <one raised eyebrow (which I can’t do in real life but admire a great deal in those who can)> A new friend who is Chinese Canadian mentioned that she would not be thrilled if there was one called a “Chinkadog”. Good point, I thought.
Thanksgiving has come and gone and Halloween around the corner. Every year I think how nice it would be to have a proper costume (Easy One Million Years BC “cave woman” costume a la Rachel Welsh tip: sew patches of fur (fun or otherwise) onto bikini!) but always some writing or family or life et al and I end up with a hurriedly bought bowlful of candies. One year I would adore to dress up as the female mime in Paris Je T’aime! I have a soft spot for over-the-top cliche and slapstickish…. But not this year. I’m galloping toward November, grateful for sunshine days and sweet coffee.
Bursts of work, a deadline yoke and nothing scrambled for breakfast except my brains of course I have to reorganize my desk, a bower bird compulsion of arrangementrearrangement…. First the surface cleared of receipts, dust, receipts, dust, coins, feathers, pens, Moomintroll sticky notes, scissors, books, unfiled papers, Chionodoxa bulbs, mice (not warm-blooded), magnifying glass, brochures and my ingrown heart…. Next the suspension of not disbelief, but a full spectrum light, above the far length of my writing desk, the garden herbs replanted into clay pots last week now placed in a row beneath the brilliant light when I leave my room the afterimage a dark horizontal strip hangs in midair.
The bower bird writer rearranges her desk not to attract a mate, but to create a space that has a pleasing kuuki, an atmosphere/air quality that will seep into her creative process as well imbue into the language of her projects…. Other might call it procrastination. What have you. I am a bower bird writer, intermittently compulsive, with aesthetic and philosophical leanings. (At least I am not obsessively piling dung pellets on my desk. Really. Things can be so much worse. It’s always extremely reassuring to think about this.)
Two years ago I had a large fish tank with a beautiful velvet-blue Beta fish named Eduardo. He was so very clever and interactive and the lovely flow of his silky fins as he swam up and down in his own medium, just beyond the screen of my laptop. I would catch his movement like thoughts flickering across my subconscious. Dreamy. Languid. Flow.
I’m hoping the full-spectrum light will keep my plants healthy over the dark winter. The window in my room is north-facing and the clouds can grow oppressive. I’m also hoping that the light will be vitamin D-good for me as well, and that I will be able to eat fresh shiso, red chillis and basil over the winter! We shall see.
Edits and editing, rewriting and critiquing, a doubling of work and work is good. So is time away from desk and fully into body. Last Thursday L and I drove out toward Pemberton in search of matsutake. I think it may be too early, but we found, instead, what we thought were chanterelles*!
Ohhhh, so sweet and soft the air. The clean delicious scent of cedar, pine and spruce. The uneven spring of moss beneath our feet. We entered the forest gently, the trees ringing with silence, water rushing unseen a stream, the crack of dry twigs, the luminous glow of lichen. So body and forest and air and sound and no clutterthoughts just the careful placement of feet, just the sweep of eyes for a pale mushroom pushing up through moss. Here. And here. Ohhh!
Whenever I reenter the forest I wonder that it’s taken so very long to return. Why so city when the mountains…?
There’s still work to be done on my bower. The glare from the full-spectrum light (the fluorescent-tube variety, approximately three feet in length) is really hard on my eyes! Hahahahahahaha! Things don’t necessarily turn out exactly how one envisions, but it won’t be too difficult to make some kind of shade to attach along the edge of the piece of wood to which the light is affixed. I’m currently wearing a baseball cap to cut down on the glare. I’m sure the light is also bright enough to damage my photo of Alice B. Sheldon (a scanned reprint off the original, the original put away in a box) that’s hanging on the wall. So final tweakings to be fussed about, a darting beak and rustling feathers, midst words and language and the slow-building of an interior 3-D imaginary world in all its delicious details.
*Please NEVER eat uncertain mushrooms without having a professional confirm their identification. If you ever need to research dreadful details of a slow and awful death read up on mushroom poisoning. L got confirmation of the chanterelles from the mushroom guy at Granville Island Market. Don’t play Mushroom Roulette! Mushroom Farmers’ Daughter
Reading a work of narrative fiction can be compared to embarking on a type of journey. The reader embarks upon this journey willingly (unless it’s assigned reading for school, etc.), entrusting her well-being into the hands of the author. Of course this voluntary contract is non-binding– the reader can leave the book, unfinished, for whatever reason (Thankfully, this final power remains with the reader because no one wants to be trapped in a Clockwork Orange scenario. We call those nightmares….).
One of the key challenges faced by the writer is to draw the reader into the text and keep her engaged to the end of the journey. The writer maintains engagment in a variety of ways. In narrative fiction the common ways in which a reader can be held are:
1) An engrossing plot. This activates our hard-wired human trait, curiousity. I.e. What happens next?
2) A compelling character/voice. (We wish to be like her. Or we make the proxy cross-over and think we may actually be like her if we were to find ourselves in the same situation. Or we can’t ever imagine being someone like her, but wonder what someone like her thinks/feels.)
3) Creativity/Imagination. I.e. Elicits a sense of wonder.
4) Beautiful language and/or poetics. This elicits aesthetic wonder.
5) Via character, emotionally hooks the reader. I.e. Intimacy. (Also connects back to the idea of proxy. Empathy is socially and culturally valued if not a hard-wired trait in most of us.)
6) Eliciting intellectual curiousity. I.e. In terms of (new) information being relayed, or the mechanics of the structure of narrative is atypical thereby resonating as a puzzle to be solved or deconstructed, or making connections between disparate ideas in a new way, etc.
(This list is not defnitive, of course.)
I’ve been pondering the levels of intimacy that are subtly and not-so-subtly reached/triggered during the back-and-forth play between author-narrator-reader in that stretch of time/space of writing and a book being read. Because the flip side of intimacy, which can be beautiful and so deeply moving, is vulnerability. To open oneself to intimacy is to receptive and unguarded– we are open to intense connection, but also to deep hurt. Consequently, I believe that it behooves writers to take time to consider the ways in which they create and shape narrative fiction and to what levels and the ways in which they will use intimacy to engage their reader.
Authors have a wide range to work with. There are texts that are very cool, distant, emotionally removed and dry. The primary engagement may be foregrounded as intellectual, and intimacy can be pushed far back, into the nose-bleed section of the emotive auditorium. I think the British literary tradition excels at this type of narrative style. To the other extreme we can be placed so subjectively close to a fictional character that we can experience her life completely as if we, momentarily and actually, are her. We can be more intimately connected to a fictional character, know more of what she thinks and what she feels, than we will ever be able to with our own lovers!
Narrative fiction, on one level, is the careful manipulation of words in order to construct an artificial imaginary temporal, causal, emotional and intellectual mindscape for a reader. The very nature of this work is one of manipulation. Although I’ve stated that ultimately the reader holds the power to close the book should she find herself taken into a place she does not wish to enter, writers also hold a great deal of manipulative power in hooking the reader (particularly through plot) to staying until the end. (I’m not going to go into books that are “difficult” to read i.e. unfamiliar form, or political content, or experimental, etc., but are actually doing an important work/writing. This is separate topic from what I’m detailing here.)
I’ve been thinking about trust and intimacy relationships between the author-narrator-reader because I’ve recently read a novel where I felt hooked enough to follow the plot until the end of the tale, and left the completed reading of the book feeling that the author manipulated me, the reader, as much as she manipulated the characters she created. Of course I understand that the entire construction of a fictional narrative is, on one level, the manipulation of words into a specific form. One must manipulate in order to succeed. But what are the terms? What is shared? Who gives? Who takes? How much? Are there junctures in the narrative where the flow of power shifts? Does the writer leave space for the reader to maintain a sense of autonomy. Does the writer love and respect the reader? Does it matter if she does or doesn’t?
I don’t want to be coy– the novel that troubled me was Oryx and Crake, by Margaret Atwood. I admire her earlier novels a great deal, especially as I read them when I was coming into my feminist understandings in the late 80s and early 90s. In terms of the a narrative of the dystopic, I was and am interested in what she’s created in Oryx and Crake. She’s clever, imaginative and engaging and she’s a skillful storyteller. Outside from its genre (which is highly foregrounded), however, was a kind of pounding upon my emotive reading psyche– one of manipulation. I felt like I had been led through a narrative Matryoshka doll-effect, with the final largest doll being the reader, and Atwood the agent who gets to put the set away after she’s finished playing with them. And I did not at all appreciate how this felt.
SPOILER ALERT! Technically, Atwood adeptly and quickly hits the reader with a dual track of causality with which to hook our drive to discover what happens and why: 1) We’re placed in the “present” where it’s post-disaster, so we wonder what’s led to the disaster, and also what will happen next in the “present” timeline of the hapless narrator caught in a survivor situation, 2) the narrative’s past leading up to the disaster is unveiled through its own timeline underscoring the causal elements that led to the disaster as well as establishing the protagonist’s own bildungsroman. Nothing troubling about these strategies; I think she was/is very clever to double up on the narratives and it’s also not unheard of. She treats the same character (Jimmy/Snowman) as two separate characters via the distance of time with the timelines meeting at the end of the novel. Clever.
But the smallest of the Matroyshka dolls comes into play via the introduction and treatment of the characters of 1) Jimmy’s mother, and 2) the figure in the child porn abuse film that Jimmy views/overlay of Jimmy’s narrative of the abused child atop of Oryx. Clearly Jimmy/Snowman is a kind of anti-hero. And his understanding and perceptions of his mother and child-abuse victim/Oryx is that of a flawed and sexist/misogynist/colonialist character. But by situating the text via Jimmy/Snowman’s subjectivity the reader is situated to impose this reading upon them as well, and the writer who orchestrates this manouvre is Atwood. We are vicariously set up to perceive in a way we may abhorr, in order to experience Jimmy/Snowman as Atwood has constructed. The next stage of manipulation is unveiled when we discover Jimmy has been utterly manipulated by his long-time friend, Crake (who may have manipulated the video depicting the execution of Jimmy’s mother in order to manipulate Jimmy into having feelings of vengeance, as well as manipulating Jimmy via his obsession/desire for Oryx). Jimmy, whom we thought had had at least some level of agency in his own story, has actually been played like a pawn by Crake, throughout. To top it off, we are clearly made to understand that Crake is only the “natural” outcome of a society gone utterly wrong. Crake has been manipulated into being by a bad human world. The novel ends with a seemingly “open-ended” sequence– Snowman is at the ultimate crux of having to choose between the lives of humans like himself, or protecting the genetically constructed Children of Crake (as designed by flawed Crake). Atwood does not finish the scene for us, but in terms of how Jimmy was manipuated throughout the narrative, she leaves us with very little space to imagine him doing anything other than what he was manipulated into doing. This is the final manipulation. The reader is manipulated into reading only one ending even when there seems to be space to choose other options.
It could be said that I’m missing the entire point of the novel in that it was written as satire (as implied, for instance, by the main character’s Leave-it-to-Beaver-like name, ”Jimmy” alongside the figure of the emotionally distant and disengaged mother, invoking a kind of contructed and heimlich gesturing toward an artificial nostalgia that’s clearly ironic, not to mention the over-the-top names of drugs, trends, organizations, products, etc. found throughout the fictional world as constructed by Atwood). It could be stated that we aren’t meant to engage with the novel on an emotive and empathetic level when the primary engagement is meant to be satirical (and intellectual). This may have been the intention, but I’m not convinced that the intention was successfully deployed. Or, perhaps Atwood intended the reader to recognize that manipulation was the modus operandi, both cause and effect, and appreciate this?
I do enjoy satire– Philip K. Dick excelled at it in the best of his books. Perhaps it’s a matter of degree and tone. In our current lives of hyper-consumerism atop of inherited legacies of colonialism and oppression, that which Atwood gestures toward as satirical is actually part of our lived realities. The real and satirical collapses into one and the same. So the future that Atwood creates is not necessarily perceived as humorous embellishment. This is the whole point, it may be said.
I would respond to this idea with Fred Wah’s, “So what?”*
So what?????
Social commentary and warning if humanity doesn’t change its trajectory? Don’t be manipulated like Jimmy was? Don’t be a Jimmy or a Crake? Don’t be manipulated like they are, even though I manipulated you so that you can see how manipulation works? Aren’t our consumer-driven corporation-led lives a comedic tragedy…?
There is a huge experiential difference between satire that allows us to observe the unfolding of the joke, and one in which we are part of the joke. The dividing line may not be so clear in the construction of the joke– context and subjectivities are not static. I have no idea of whether or not Atwood situated the reader as reader-pawn intentionally, or if it was an unintended outcome. I like to believe that it was unintended. But the reading of Oryx and Crake had me pondering less about the dire conditions we are moving toward in terms of our global impact upon environmental/ecological/social/cultural wellness, and more focussed upon the difficult-to-measure ethical relationship between the writer and the reader.
In the end I felt like the writer had no love or affection for the reader. Indeed, I felt like I had been had. A curious place to find myself when the underlying impetus for the writing of dystopias could be said arises from a place of deep caring for the survival of humanity.
Ultimately I don’t regret having read Atwood’s novel, because it has had me considering important moral and ethical issues around the relational between author-narrator-reader. We should not enter this space lightly, even if the creative intention is an expression/articulation of levity. It is a relationship that we ought to consider every time we write something intended for a readership.
*Fred Wah was my first creative writing instructor at the University of Calgary. He had a very effective way (if not somewhat alarming/intimidating) of directing a critical gaze upon a story or poem that was skillfully constructed and stylistically “faultless”, but, somehow, devoid of life, or vibrancy, or risk, or edginess, or urgency, etc. The story set out what it intended to do, and achieved it, the end. Stories/poems like these elicited the dreaded Fred Wah’s, “So what?” A rhetorical question, but one critically necessary for the writer to consider.
I’m so very excited to share the cover of Darkest Light! Companion book to Half World, the cover and illustrations are being done once again (so lucky!) by the most amazing artist Jillian Tamaki .
I’m still working on finishing the novel but the catalogue comes early and what a nice incentive to see the book cover looking so real after years of working on a project… ~_____~ . Darkest Light is available for pre-order through Amazon. And I also encourage you to order it at your favourite independent local bookstore!
Description of Darkest Light:
The breathtaking follow-up novel to the award-winning Half World
The recently reunited realms of the Flesh, Half World and the Spirit are again at risk—something has been left undone. Gee, adopted as an infant, has been kept ignorant of his troubled past. Now at sixteen, he is a loner both despised and feared by his classmates. Dark feelings, unbidden, slowly grow inside him. Even as he struggles to control them, his past catches up with him and compels him to journey to Half World. Abandoning his adoptive grandmother and the place he has called home, Gee must face what he used to be in order to determine his fate and the fate of the Three Realms. Aided by a surly cat and a troubled newfound friend, Gee must fight the monstrous and the horrific in Half World. Most difficult of all, he must overcome his own propensity for evil.
The nightmarish adventure picks up sixteen years after Melanie’s return in Half World (2009, Puffin). With a new dark hero whose unlikely companions are a heartless cat and a self-destructive Neo Goth girl, Darkest Light is a compelling journey through despair in a desperate search for redemption.
Of note: this is my first novel with a male main character….
