I love popcorn. Especially, I love movie theater popcorn. It's horrible. I can't go to a movie without wanting it. I'm sure that's what the theater wants, too, and that smell is sooo... intoxicating. I used to not be able to go to the movies without buying popcorn. Of course, movies were cheaper then. The popcorn was cheaper, too.
It wasn't really the money that made me quit buying popcorn all the time, though; it was my kids. Okay, it was the money, too, but, really, it was my kids. I mean, it's one thing for me to make the decision to put all that crap into my own body, but, back when we used to actually do (almost) a weekly movie during the summers, I didn't think I needed to put all that crap into my kids bodies, too. Even if they did enjoy it and want it.
Still enjoy it and want it.
The thing with popcorn is that it's so easy to just keep eating and eating it. Handfuls at a time. Don't give me a large bag of popcorn to hold at the theater and expect to get some. I will eat it all. You'll reach over to get some, and it will be gone. All of it. Well, there'll probably be a few loose kernels in the bottom of the bag. I won't have meant to have eaten it all, it will have just happened. The same goes for the lesser microwave popcorn at home. I will eat it. I might not even feel bad afterward.
Sugar is the same way. Things with sugar in them, anyway. It's so easy to sit down with a bag of, say, peanut butter cups and eat the whole thing without realizing it. And it makes you want more and more of it.
Eating junk makes you want to eat more junk. That's the way it's designed. Even when we know it's bad for us, we want to eat it anyway. I mean, it's been... well, it's been years since I've had a soda, but, sometimes, I still want one. And I think one can't be that bad, right? It's been years since I had one, so what could it hurt? But that will just make me want more and more. Once I re-acclimate myself to it, that is. Because, actually, having been off of sugar for so long means that anything that has any sugar in it at all is usually way too sweet for me.
The thing is, though, if you give people the option between something that's good for them and something that's bad for them, they'll usually pick the thing that's bad for them. Well, assuming it tastes good. I was certainly that way when I was a kid, which is why I grew up on soda. My kids are no different. They want to eat crap all the time. Even though we don't keep sweets and treats in the house and have a habit of not eating that way, they ask for things every single day. Every single day. EVERY SINGLE DAY! And it drives us crazy every night! NO! WE ARE NOT GOING OUT FOR ICE CREAM! NO! WE ARE NOT GOING TO SIFT FOR CUPCAKES! Why do you keep asking that when you get the same answer every day?! Oh! My! Gosh!
People, especially kids, don't have the ability to look at their food choices objectively and weigh the advantages and the disadvantages and choose accordingly. Mostly, because they can't see what the disadvantages are. Or choose not to see them. Most people respond to things the same way my younger boy responds to food:
"Yum, this is full of sugar and carbs; this is awesome!" [Even though it's objectively bad for him.]
"Yuck! That's green and leafy and disgusting!" [Even though it's good for him.]
However, if you work with the things that are good for you, eventually, you will like them. And I know, because I grew up hating broccoli and yams, hating them with a passion (at one point, I think I vowed to my mother that I would never EVER eat broccoli), but those are two of my favorite foods now. And my younger son also likes yams, now, because we kept making him eat them.
The real issue is that you have to train yourself to like the things that are good for you. And it's not easy. I grew up with a cook for a mother. A southern cook. Let me just tell you right now that the southern diet is not the most healthy in the world. Even the things in it that are good for you are cooked in such a way as to not be good for you. They'll boil the nutrients right out of anything. And, if it can't be boiled, they'll batter it and fry it. Or, you know, throw sugar all over it. Want to eat strawberries in the south? Cut them up and toss sugar on them. Why? It's already fruit; it doesn't need sugar. But that's how I ate strawberries when I was a kid. And why eat broccoli when there was fried okra as an option (and the okra smelled so much better!)?
At some point, though, you have to look at what you're putting in your body and say, "Is this good for me?" If the answer is "no," you have to train yourself into a different behavior set. And, no, I can't tell you how to do that. You have to figure that out for yourself.
Of course, I'm not really talking about food here. I mean, I am talking about food, but I'm also talking about books. Of course, I'm not the first to compare books to food. I'm probably not even the first to compare junk food to junk books. At any rate, just like most people (in the US, at least) spend way too much time eating junk food, most people that read (because most people actually do not read) spend way too much time reading junk books. Popcorn books.
A lot of people would say, "but at least they're reading something," and I almost agree with that. Except that saying that would be like saying of an adult that was still eating baby food, "well, at least, s/he's eating something." Yeah, I know it's not the same, but it kind of is.
See, I know some people that like to brag about how many books they read. And, yes, they read a lot of books. A couple of them read, like, 250 books a year. But they're all the same kind of book (and I'm not gonna say what kind that is), and they amount to popcorn. At least, that's how I visual it. All pretty much the same with very little substance. Not challenging. Not anything.
So when someone says, "at least, they're reading;" I think, "I'm not so sure about that."
I don't have a problem with reading for pleasure. Reading is great, and reading should be enjoyable. I also think reading should prompt us to think and, hopefully, to grow. The occasional treat is fine, but you really shouldn't try to live off of them (treats), just like you shouldn't use McDonald's as your dietary staple. Okay, McDonald's is trying to reform a little, so we'll go with Burger King. [Actually, it's been so long since I ate at either of those places, I don't know how they are.]
Other than observing people that just read the equivalent of literary junk food all the time, it's my own kids that got me thinking about this. Just like not letting them have popcorn all the time, I can't let them read easy, non-challenging books all the time.
When I was a kid, I didn't have anyone to help me navigate books. My family does not read. I stumbled my way through on Hardy Boys and stuff I could pick up at school until I started having things assigned to me, and, even then, in my head there was a differentiation between what I read on my own and what I was assigned at school. It didn't matter that I liked the books I was being assigned at school; they were still a different category, so I spent my time otherwise reading literary junk. It wasn't until my junior year of high school that I figured out that I could explore "real" literature on my own. Of course, by that time, I'd wasted seven years of reading on (mostly) popcorn.
I don't want my kids to do that. Not that I force them to read anything, but I do make suggestions.
There's nothing wrong with reading the occasional piece of fluff. It's nice to have a mental break from thinking from time to time. It's something else entirely to devote yourself to only mental fluff. It makes it difficult to recognize something that is actually, really, good, because it's too challenging to get into. Everyone should challenge themselves to grow as readers. To start reading, to read more broadly, to read more deeply. Learn to like your broccoli and yams. I did.
Showing posts with label Hardy Boys. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Hardy Boys. Show all posts
Wednesday, June 20, 2012
Tuesday, October 25, 2011
The Cliche Monster
Face it, we all fear and hate the Cliche Monster. All of us. It doesn't matter if you're a writer or not, no one wants to fall into a category. No one wants to be a cliche. At least, not post-high school. During high school, I think about 95% of people want to be a cliche of some sort or another. We even had a group of guys, yes, guys, in my high school that was referred to as the "dime-a-dozen" group. At some point, though, we pass through that stage into the stage where we all hold some inane belief of our own individuality: "We're all individuals!" Except this guy: "I'm not!"
Yes, I do believe it's inane. If it wasn't inane, marketing wouldn't work so well and there wouldn't be demographics. But, face it, most of us, nearly all of us, fall neatly into some demographic or another. A cliche.
It's kind of a funny story:
When my brother was in high school, he went through his "rebel" phase. It would make me laugh. He'd come into my room with his ripped jeans or whatever else and boast to me about how much of a rebel he was, because he was going to go to church like that. I tried to explain to him on more than one occasion that by doing his whole rebel thing, he was just fitting into the whole rebel mold and, therefore, was being the exact opposite of rebellious. He was just fitting the image of the rebel, and, when you're striving to fit an image, you can't be being a rebel. He never got it.
However, I think writers may fear the Cliche Monster more so than your average joe. I mean, there is no greater horror than to have your work labeled as cliche. Typical. Fitting the mold of your genre. Maybe that's why there are so many cross-genre works coming out right now... people trying new ways to not be cliche while falling into the trap of not being cliche in the same way that everyone else is trying to not be cliche. Just like my brother.
Let me just say, right now, that the Cliche Monster is not so fearsome as everyone thinks it is. He's not a ravening beast out to devour your soul and your creative work, but he's actually kind of cuddly. Sort of like Sully from Monsters, Inc. Sure, he can be all fearsome and stuff, but he doesn't have to be.
I see you all out there, right now, dropping your jaws at me and thinking that I'm crazy or that I've lost it. Don't get me wrong, I hate the whole cliche thing, too. Just like everyone else, I think I'm a pretty unique individual. Except, in my case, I know it's true. (heh) And I do it without even trying. (double heh) Which is the best way to be unique.
But, wait, if I'm going on about how unique I am, why am I saying it isn't so bad to fit in. To be a cog. To be a regular, old round peg in a regular, old round hole. Not like the not-even-square peg that I proclaim in the title of my blog?
Let me tell you a story:
When I was in 4th grade, I ran out of school. The problem was that there were still two more years to go in elementary school, but they had nothing left to teach me. It was an interesting situation, because there were three of us like that in the school, and we were all the same age, same class. They had to transfer us to a different school with special classes for smart kids. They called us "gifted and talented," and we got to be in a class full of other kids like us from all over the Parish (because that's what they call counties in Louisiana), and we had a brand, new sparkly teacher. I sort of think, now, that this was the first year they had done this sort of thing, because it was my teacher's first year being a "gifted" teacher, and it was a new program that was being tested (new to the whole country, not just Louisiana, which is a bit ironic considering that Louisiana was 49th in education at the time (but, maybe, they thought they had nothing to lose in Louisiana because of that)). She used to say to us all of the time that she was not a gifted teacher, as everyone called her, but just a normal teacher of the gifted.
She was wrong. She was a gifted teacher. We had her for 5th and 6th grades, and she, along with the science teacher they brought in for us for 6th grade (who worked part time for NASA (how cool is that? (in fact, he was one of the guys that was involved in setting up Space Camp (how even more cool is that?))), changed my life. Opened my eyes. Challenged me in ways that I had never been challenged. In fact, it was in this class that I really learned about reading. Not that I didn't read prior, because I did, but it was in this Gateway class that I really discovered the breadth and scope of books. Something I hadn't really known before as I was completely satisfied with my Hardy Boys books. But, really, that's beside the point.
Anyway... my teacher taught kindergarten when she first started teaching. She said she didn't want to be one of those cliche kindergarten teachers that had the same old, same old clowns and balloons and stuff on the walls year after year. She didn't want to be boring. She wanted her classroom to be unique and original. Not just in general but every year. So the first year she taught, she came up with a theme and decorated her room around that theme, and it was great! The second year, she thought of a new theme and re-did her classroom, and that was great!
After a few years of that, thinking of new themes became a challenge. Having something new and fresh became more and more of a challenge. And that's when she had an epiphany. Although having the same thing in the room year after year might get boring for her, it wouldn't be boring for her students. Every year, they were new students, and, therefore, it didn't matter how she decorated the room, because it was new to the students. Each year, it was their first time to experience it. Especially since she had kindergartners. Nothing she ever had in her room would be cliche to them, because it was a brand new experience every year. So it was clowns. And she left it that way.
[Actually, I don't remember that it was clowns, specifically, but I do remember clowns coming up in that conversation, so it's a good enough example. Don't anyone go all ballistic over the clowns.]
The lesson here is that she embraced the cliche and used it. Turned the ravening beast she'd been fighting into something cuddly. It's an important lesson, and it's stayed with me for three decades.
Let me give you another example:
My introduction to fantasy writing came through Piers Anthony. Not that he was the first fantasy I read, but it was Anthony that prompted me to delve into fantasy for the first time. Anthony lead me to David Eddings and The Belgariad. The Belgariad is one of the absolute best fantasy series I've ever read. Probably second only to Tolkien. The catch? It's completely cliche. Completely. And it was on purpose.
Setting out to write the adventures of Garion, Eddings decided he was going to do an experiment by writing what would be a conventional fantasy novel. Literally, he took all the conventions and worked them into his story. Here's a sample of a check list of the types of things he included:
It's a coming of age story about a boy.
The boy is an orphan.
The boy has a heritage he doesn't know about.
The boy has powers he has yet to discover.
There is a prophecy about the boy.
There is a princess fated to the boy.
There is a party of adventurers. One of them is a scoundrel.
Do you see where that's going? Eddings looked at what was cliche about fantasy, and he embraced it, and he wrote one of the most magical fantasy stories ever. The characters are great. The writing and dialogue are superb. If you like fantasy, it's hard not to like The Belgariad. Even if you know going in that it's designed to encompass everything that's common to the fantasy genre. It is the definition of cliche, but Eddings made it work in a way that I've never seen done by anyone else, and I can't help but suspect it's because he did it on purpose.
Here's the thing: your story... it's not original. My story... it's not original either. No one's story is. Sure, sometimes, you get elements put together in new ways, but, really, none of the... stuff... none of the elements... are new. As Bono says, "Every artist is a thief."
I see people stressing all the time about finding out someone else has already written the story they have in their head or have halfway finished or, even, all the way finished. They find out someone else wrote something that is too close to their story for their comfort, so they shelve their story. Give up on it. "There's no way I can pursue this, because it's already been done." That... that is a mistake. Everything has already been done. If you let that stop you, you'll never write anything.
Take a look back up at that list. That's just a tiny bit of what could be a full list of conventions in fantasy writing, but how many of those apply to Harry Potter? Let's see:
It's a coming of age story about a boy.
The boy is an orphan.
The boy has a heritage he doesn't know about.
The boy has powers he has yet to discover.
There is a prophecy about the boy.
I could even make a case about the party of adventurers with Fred and George being the scoundrels. Does anyone think of Rowling's work as being cliche? Not that I've ever heard. But, yet, there it is. Cliche. But she makes it work.
I'm not going to lie, there are some cliche elements in my book The House on the Corner. Some of them, I even chose on purpose. There are some very Narnia things, because I wanted it to have some very Narnia things. There is a sword not quite in a stone, because I wanted there to be a sword not quite in a stone. I wanted those elements in the book. I wanted something of the familiar there, the things that resonate with us and bring us back to our childhoods or awaken dreams in us as children.
Look... here's what I'm saying: stop stressing over being original. Things that are really original don't come along very often, and they usually don't happen because someone is trying to be original. They usually just happen. Acknowledge that the story you have has been told in some form before. Acknowledge it, and do it anyway. Just because that story's already been told, doesn't mean you can't write a great story. If Rowling had looked at her Potter story and said, "oh, geez, that's been done before" and just given up...? Well... can you imagine, now, a world without Potter?
Tell your story. Tell it the best way you know how. Don't worry about whether it's been done before. It has. Go ahead and do it anyway.
Yes, I do believe it's inane. If it wasn't inane, marketing wouldn't work so well and there wouldn't be demographics. But, face it, most of us, nearly all of us, fall neatly into some demographic or another. A cliche.
It's kind of a funny story:
When my brother was in high school, he went through his "rebel" phase. It would make me laugh. He'd come into my room with his ripped jeans or whatever else and boast to me about how much of a rebel he was, because he was going to go to church like that. I tried to explain to him on more than one occasion that by doing his whole rebel thing, he was just fitting into the whole rebel mold and, therefore, was being the exact opposite of rebellious. He was just fitting the image of the rebel, and, when you're striving to fit an image, you can't be being a rebel. He never got it.
However, I think writers may fear the Cliche Monster more so than your average joe. I mean, there is no greater horror than to have your work labeled as cliche. Typical. Fitting the mold of your genre. Maybe that's why there are so many cross-genre works coming out right now... people trying new ways to not be cliche while falling into the trap of not being cliche in the same way that everyone else is trying to not be cliche. Just like my brother.
Let me just say, right now, that the Cliche Monster is not so fearsome as everyone thinks it is. He's not a ravening beast out to devour your soul and your creative work, but he's actually kind of cuddly. Sort of like Sully from Monsters, Inc. Sure, he can be all fearsome and stuff, but he doesn't have to be.
I see you all out there, right now, dropping your jaws at me and thinking that I'm crazy or that I've lost it. Don't get me wrong, I hate the whole cliche thing, too. Just like everyone else, I think I'm a pretty unique individual. Except, in my case, I know it's true. (heh) And I do it without even trying. (double heh) Which is the best way to be unique.
But, wait, if I'm going on about how unique I am, why am I saying it isn't so bad to fit in. To be a cog. To be a regular, old round peg in a regular, old round hole. Not like the not-even-square peg that I proclaim in the title of my blog?
Let me tell you a story:
When I was in 4th grade, I ran out of school. The problem was that there were still two more years to go in elementary school, but they had nothing left to teach me. It was an interesting situation, because there were three of us like that in the school, and we were all the same age, same class. They had to transfer us to a different school with special classes for smart kids. They called us "gifted and talented," and we got to be in a class full of other kids like us from all over the Parish (because that's what they call counties in Louisiana), and we had a brand, new sparkly teacher. I sort of think, now, that this was the first year they had done this sort of thing, because it was my teacher's first year being a "gifted" teacher, and it was a new program that was being tested (new to the whole country, not just Louisiana, which is a bit ironic considering that Louisiana was 49th in education at the time (but, maybe, they thought they had nothing to lose in Louisiana because of that)). She used to say to us all of the time that she was not a gifted teacher, as everyone called her, but just a normal teacher of the gifted.
She was wrong. She was a gifted teacher. We had her for 5th and 6th grades, and she, along with the science teacher they brought in for us for 6th grade (who worked part time for NASA (how cool is that? (in fact, he was one of the guys that was involved in setting up Space Camp (how even more cool is that?))), changed my life. Opened my eyes. Challenged me in ways that I had never been challenged. In fact, it was in this class that I really learned about reading. Not that I didn't read prior, because I did, but it was in this Gateway class that I really discovered the breadth and scope of books. Something I hadn't really known before as I was completely satisfied with my Hardy Boys books. But, really, that's beside the point.
Anyway... my teacher taught kindergarten when she first started teaching. She said she didn't want to be one of those cliche kindergarten teachers that had the same old, same old clowns and balloons and stuff on the walls year after year. She didn't want to be boring. She wanted her classroom to be unique and original. Not just in general but every year. So the first year she taught, she came up with a theme and decorated her room around that theme, and it was great! The second year, she thought of a new theme and re-did her classroom, and that was great!
After a few years of that, thinking of new themes became a challenge. Having something new and fresh became more and more of a challenge. And that's when she had an epiphany. Although having the same thing in the room year after year might get boring for her, it wouldn't be boring for her students. Every year, they were new students, and, therefore, it didn't matter how she decorated the room, because it was new to the students. Each year, it was their first time to experience it. Especially since she had kindergartners. Nothing she ever had in her room would be cliche to them, because it was a brand new experience every year. So it was clowns. And she left it that way.
[Actually, I don't remember that it was clowns, specifically, but I do remember clowns coming up in that conversation, so it's a good enough example. Don't anyone go all ballistic over the clowns.]
The lesson here is that she embraced the cliche and used it. Turned the ravening beast she'd been fighting into something cuddly. It's an important lesson, and it's stayed with me for three decades.
Let me give you another example:
My introduction to fantasy writing came through Piers Anthony. Not that he was the first fantasy I read, but it was Anthony that prompted me to delve into fantasy for the first time. Anthony lead me to David Eddings and The Belgariad. The Belgariad is one of the absolute best fantasy series I've ever read. Probably second only to Tolkien. The catch? It's completely cliche. Completely. And it was on purpose.
Setting out to write the adventures of Garion, Eddings decided he was going to do an experiment by writing what would be a conventional fantasy novel. Literally, he took all the conventions and worked them into his story. Here's a sample of a check list of the types of things he included:
It's a coming of age story about a boy.
The boy is an orphan.
The boy has a heritage he doesn't know about.
The boy has powers he has yet to discover.
There is a prophecy about the boy.
There is a princess fated to the boy.
There is a party of adventurers. One of them is a scoundrel.
Do you see where that's going? Eddings looked at what was cliche about fantasy, and he embraced it, and he wrote one of the most magical fantasy stories ever. The characters are great. The writing and dialogue are superb. If you like fantasy, it's hard not to like The Belgariad. Even if you know going in that it's designed to encompass everything that's common to the fantasy genre. It is the definition of cliche, but Eddings made it work in a way that I've never seen done by anyone else, and I can't help but suspect it's because he did it on purpose.
Here's the thing: your story... it's not original. My story... it's not original either. No one's story is. Sure, sometimes, you get elements put together in new ways, but, really, none of the... stuff... none of the elements... are new. As Bono says, "Every artist is a thief."
I see people stressing all the time about finding out someone else has already written the story they have in their head or have halfway finished or, even, all the way finished. They find out someone else wrote something that is too close to their story for their comfort, so they shelve their story. Give up on it. "There's no way I can pursue this, because it's already been done." That... that is a mistake. Everything has already been done. If you let that stop you, you'll never write anything.
Take a look back up at that list. That's just a tiny bit of what could be a full list of conventions in fantasy writing, but how many of those apply to Harry Potter? Let's see:
It's a coming of age story about a boy.
The boy is an orphan.
The boy has a heritage he doesn't know about.
The boy has powers he has yet to discover.
There is a prophecy about the boy.
I could even make a case about the party of adventurers with Fred and George being the scoundrels. Does anyone think of Rowling's work as being cliche? Not that I've ever heard. But, yet, there it is. Cliche. But she makes it work.
I'm not going to lie, there are some cliche elements in my book The House on the Corner. Some of them, I even chose on purpose. There are some very Narnia things, because I wanted it to have some very Narnia things. There is a sword not quite in a stone, because I wanted there to be a sword not quite in a stone. I wanted those elements in the book. I wanted something of the familiar there, the things that resonate with us and bring us back to our childhoods or awaken dreams in us as children.
Look... here's what I'm saying: stop stressing over being original. Things that are really original don't come along very often, and they usually don't happen because someone is trying to be original. They usually just happen. Acknowledge that the story you have has been told in some form before. Acknowledge it, and do it anyway. Just because that story's already been told, doesn't mean you can't write a great story. If Rowling had looked at her Potter story and said, "oh, geez, that's been done before" and just given up...? Well... can you imagine, now, a world without Potter?
Tell your story. Tell it the best way you know how. Don't worry about whether it's been done before. It has. Go ahead and do it anyway.
Thursday, September 15, 2011
Who Started Your Dream?
Before I get into this dream business, Shannon Lawrence over at The Warrior Muse has gone and interviewed me. My completely unbiased opinion (>smirk<) is that it's a great interview, and you should all go read it. Actually, I do think it's a good interview, and it has some good thoughts in it. You'll get to find out a little bit more about my book, and there's some of my thoughts about publishing and the publishing industry that I may not have said on here, yet. So go check it out. Just click the little linky up there.
Seriously. Go. Now. I'll still be here when you get back.
As part of Rachael Harrie's platform building campaign, Cat Gerlach started up this little blog ring about what inspired us to be writers.
The idea is that if you follow the chain of links, you will eventually get back around to the person you originally clicked from. So pick one of these: Rachele Alpine or Ali Cross (although, I think Ali's post won't actually go up until tomorrow (the 16th), if I followed that conversation correctly) and click through. If you continue on through the links that is the other one that you haven't already read, you should get all the way back around to me. Sounds like fun, right? And don't worry: it's only a dozen or so of us, so it's not going to take you weeks to get through them all.
Oh! and there are prizes. However, I'm not going to list all of those out, because, honestly, I'm not sure what the list boiled down to. I will tell you how to win one, though: leave a comment. Each comment you leave on each blog is worth one entry, so there's your incentive to make the full round. I do think there were some good prizes in there, even if one of them is not a copy of my book (sorry, I just don't have any available, yet, but I'll explain about that next week).
Anyway...
Who started my dream?
I think my answer is somewhat atypical, at least from what I have seen from other people talking about these kinds of things. I never got "inspired" to write because of some book or some author I read. The closest I come to that is, probably, The Hardy Boys, but I wouldn't really call it a moment of inspiration. I started reading The Hardy Boys sometime around 4th grade. At some point in there, I decided I was going to write one of my own. Except that I changed the names to protect the innocent. Mainly myself. Because I didn't want to get in trouble for copyright infringement, although I have no idea why I would even have been thinking that at that age. But I was.
I got out a notebook, and I started writing. Probably Big Chief (Big Chief was really pads of paper. Colored red (not the paper, just the covers). Because it was an "Indian" thing. No, no one thought anything about that back in the 70s), because that's what I always had back then. I don't really remember, though. I was making decent progress. But this was back in the days before I knew I could tell my mom to stay out of my stuff, and she had this annoying habit of getting into my things, so she found my "book" and read it. Her very supportive comment was, "Did you make up all these names yourself?" The book went in the trash. Especially since I hated the names. I felt that they were inadequate, and that was the thing she commented about. I didn't continue my writing pursuits.
But I was good at it. Teachers commented about my writing all the time, sometimes reading things I had written to the class. But I didn't think about writing anymore. I was a math/science student, after all; artistic pursuits were good for nothing more than hobbies.
By the time I was exiting high school, I hated math and science. Well, mostly math. I was so tired of it. I elected to major in English in college. I did this with the idea of writing. No, I can't tell you why. What I can tell you is that I had to argue with every counselor at the school about my choice. Yes, my math/science scores were that high. Not that my English scores were bad; they weren't. In fact, they were great, so that should say something about my math scores. I spent my entire freshman year at college explaining to the administration that, no, really, the English major wasn't mistake. Yes, I knew what my scores said. No, I did not want to major in math or anything related to it.
The English department was ecstatic with my decision, and I was, eventually, appointed a counselor from the English department.
My first real attempt at a novel was during a break from college while I was substitute teaching. It's about a dragon. I still have it stored somewhere in a box, and I still think it's a good story. I might one day go back to it. I can point to no inspirational moment for that novel, either. It was really more about saving the environment. With a dragon.
What I'm saying here, I guess, is that the decision to "be a writer" came more out of not wanting to do math anymore and knowing that I was good at writing. So, yeah, sorry for the big let down there. I didn't even follow through with it at the time. I was young and busy, and staying home at night to write never occurred to me. Then, I was out of college and working and still out at night and staying at home and writing never occurred to me. Then, I was moving to CA and getting married and, later, dealing with kids, and the whole writing thing had, mostly, just left my brain.
So how, then, did I end up writing a book? Well, here's the thing: A few years ago, I kept hearing about these Anita Blake novels and how good they are. Let me preface this by saying that I hate, hate, the whole vampire thing. I hated it in high school when everything was about Anne Rice, and I still hate it, today. Vampires are the bad guys. Period. End of story. I liked Buffy the Vampire Slayer for that very reason (I'll excuse Angel, because he was an exception); the vampires were bad. Evil. So, hey, here are these Anita Blake novels, and she's a vampire slayer, so I thought I would try one out.
Big mistake. And apologies to anyone that likes that trash, but it was trash. I started with the first one, because, you know, that's what you do, and it was torture. I'm not very good at putting down a book once I've started it, but I seriously considered it with that one. One thing stopped me. See, by about page 80, I had figured out the entire plot. Really. The entire plot to a 350 page novel in 80 pages including who the bad guy was. But I kept thinking that I must be wrong, because, really, no published author could be that bad. And I kept hoping that I was wrong and that Ms Hamilton had tricked me all the while knowing she hadn't.
The other thing I kept thinking was that I could do better. So much better. The thought that went along with it was that that thought was stupid if I then didn't actually follow through with doing better. It's like guys across America yelling at football players on TV. In other words, ridiculous. Anyone can say "I could do better," but it doesn't mean a thing unless you actually do that.
From that perspective, I suppose you could say that Laurell K. Hamilton was my inspiration, because it was because of her and Anita Blake that I decided to follow through with the thought of writing. I'd talked with my wife about it on-and-off for years, but that was all I did. Talk about it. I hadn't made a serious attempt since that discarded book about the dragon while I was in college. So I wrote a book. And it's better than Anita Blake.
At least, it's better than the first one. I was told, later, that the Anita Blake books don't really get good until you get to the third one, but, seriously, how does anyone get that far? After having all of my fears about the first one confirmed, there was never even the consideration of going on, so how did anyone ever get to #3 to begin with. Maybe I'm being too harsh? I mean, she is a big, famous author with a big, famous franchise from a big, giant publisher, so what do I know?
Oh, but wait, I do have to mention C. S. Lewis and Narnia. He's probably the writer that had the most influence on The House On the Corner. It was a very deliberate thing on my part to write about houses and the things you find there. It was deliberate because Lewis and Narnia had such an impact on me as a kid. I wanted to find places, doorways, other worlds. And I wasn't the only one. My friends and I used to play games wrapped around those ideas, and I wanted to capture that feeling in my own book. There's even a small nod to Narnia in House. How could I resist?
Seriously. Go. Now. I'll still be here when you get back.
As part of Rachael Harrie's platform building campaign, Cat Gerlach started up this little blog ring about what inspired us to be writers.
Oh! and there are prizes. However, I'm not going to list all of those out, because, honestly, I'm not sure what the list boiled down to. I will tell you how to win one, though: leave a comment. Each comment you leave on each blog is worth one entry, so there's your incentive to make the full round. I do think there were some good prizes in there, even if one of them is not a copy of my book (sorry, I just don't have any available, yet, but I'll explain about that next week).
Anyway...
Who started my dream?
I think my answer is somewhat atypical, at least from what I have seen from other people talking about these kinds of things. I never got "inspired" to write because of some book or some author I read. The closest I come to that is, probably, The Hardy Boys, but I wouldn't really call it a moment of inspiration. I started reading The Hardy Boys sometime around 4th grade. At some point in there, I decided I was going to write one of my own. Except that I changed the names to protect the innocent. Mainly myself. Because I didn't want to get in trouble for copyright infringement, although I have no idea why I would even have been thinking that at that age. But I was.
I got out a notebook, and I started writing. Probably Big Chief (Big Chief was really pads of paper. Colored red (not the paper, just the covers). Because it was an "Indian" thing. No, no one thought anything about that back in the 70s), because that's what I always had back then. I don't really remember, though. I was making decent progress. But this was back in the days before I knew I could tell my mom to stay out of my stuff, and she had this annoying habit of getting into my things, so she found my "book" and read it. Her very supportive comment was, "Did you make up all these names yourself?" The book went in the trash. Especially since I hated the names. I felt that they were inadequate, and that was the thing she commented about. I didn't continue my writing pursuits.
But I was good at it. Teachers commented about my writing all the time, sometimes reading things I had written to the class. But I didn't think about writing anymore. I was a math/science student, after all; artistic pursuits were good for nothing more than hobbies.
By the time I was exiting high school, I hated math and science. Well, mostly math. I was so tired of it. I elected to major in English in college. I did this with the idea of writing. No, I can't tell you why. What I can tell you is that I had to argue with every counselor at the school about my choice. Yes, my math/science scores were that high. Not that my English scores were bad; they weren't. In fact, they were great, so that should say something about my math scores. I spent my entire freshman year at college explaining to the administration that, no, really, the English major wasn't mistake. Yes, I knew what my scores said. No, I did not want to major in math or anything related to it.
The English department was ecstatic with my decision, and I was, eventually, appointed a counselor from the English department.
My first real attempt at a novel was during a break from college while I was substitute teaching. It's about a dragon. I still have it stored somewhere in a box, and I still think it's a good story. I might one day go back to it. I can point to no inspirational moment for that novel, either. It was really more about saving the environment. With a dragon.
What I'm saying here, I guess, is that the decision to "be a writer" came more out of not wanting to do math anymore and knowing that I was good at writing. So, yeah, sorry for the big let down there. I didn't even follow through with it at the time. I was young and busy, and staying home at night to write never occurred to me. Then, I was out of college and working and still out at night and staying at home and writing never occurred to me. Then, I was moving to CA and getting married and, later, dealing with kids, and the whole writing thing had, mostly, just left my brain.
So how, then, did I end up writing a book? Well, here's the thing: A few years ago, I kept hearing about these Anita Blake novels and how good they are. Let me preface this by saying that I hate, hate, the whole vampire thing. I hated it in high school when everything was about Anne Rice, and I still hate it, today. Vampires are the bad guys. Period. End of story. I liked Buffy the Vampire Slayer for that very reason (I'll excuse Angel, because he was an exception); the vampires were bad. Evil. So, hey, here are these Anita Blake novels, and she's a vampire slayer, so I thought I would try one out.
Big mistake. And apologies to anyone that likes that trash, but it was trash. I started with the first one, because, you know, that's what you do, and it was torture. I'm not very good at putting down a book once I've started it, but I seriously considered it with that one. One thing stopped me. See, by about page 80, I had figured out the entire plot. Really. The entire plot to a 350 page novel in 80 pages including who the bad guy was. But I kept thinking that I must be wrong, because, really, no published author could be that bad. And I kept hoping that I was wrong and that Ms Hamilton had tricked me all the while knowing she hadn't.
The other thing I kept thinking was that I could do better. So much better. The thought that went along with it was that that thought was stupid if I then didn't actually follow through with doing better. It's like guys across America yelling at football players on TV. In other words, ridiculous. Anyone can say "I could do better," but it doesn't mean a thing unless you actually do that.
From that perspective, I suppose you could say that Laurell K. Hamilton was my inspiration, because it was because of her and Anita Blake that I decided to follow through with the thought of writing. I'd talked with my wife about it on-and-off for years, but that was all I did. Talk about it. I hadn't made a serious attempt since that discarded book about the dragon while I was in college. So I wrote a book. And it's better than Anita Blake.
At least, it's better than the first one. I was told, later, that the Anita Blake books don't really get good until you get to the third one, but, seriously, how does anyone get that far? After having all of my fears about the first one confirmed, there was never even the consideration of going on, so how did anyone ever get to #3 to begin with. Maybe I'm being too harsh? I mean, she is a big, famous author with a big, famous franchise from a big, giant publisher, so what do I know?
Oh, but wait, I do have to mention C. S. Lewis and Narnia. He's probably the writer that had the most influence on The House On the Corner. It was a very deliberate thing on my part to write about houses and the things you find there. It was deliberate because Lewis and Narnia had such an impact on me as a kid. I wanted to find places, doorways, other worlds. And I wasn't the only one. My friends and I used to play games wrapped around those ideas, and I wanted to capture that feeling in my own book. There's even a small nod to Narnia in House. How could I resist?
Wednesday, June 1, 2011
Sorry, Charlie!
I didn't read correctly as a child. Wait, wait! I knew perfectly well how to read. I just didn't follow conventional developmental patterns in my reading. I've probably mentioned this. The main reason for this was that I had no one to suggest books to me. Neither of my parents were readers. In fact, I don't think my father has ever read a book, and I know my brother has never completed a book, not even for school. My mom reads occasionally, but she's not a "reader" nor did she grow up spending a lot of time reading. I'm somewhat of an aberration, since how much a child reads is almost always determined by how much the parents read and how much encouragement they give the child in reading. But I started reading early. Before kindergarten. I just didn't know what I was supposed to be reading.
I started out reading science books. Non-fiction. Yes, I'm serious. I was into dinosaurs, so that's where I started. In fact, in 1st grade I got accused (by my teacher!) of making up the word paleontologist when asked what I wanted to be when I grew up. She made me go to the board and spell it for her. Because, you know, if I could spell it, somehow, that meant I hadn't made it up. No, I don't really follow the logic, either, but there you have it. I spent the first few years of my schooling reading texts about dinosaurs and astronomy, mostly. I branched into history next. I was in 4th grade before I really discovered fiction. The Hardy Boys. By that time, some school counselor or something had told my mom that I had some kind developmental delay in reading, because I wasn't reading what other kids my age read.
And I still haven't read a lot of those books. I just didn't know about them. Make a list of books you read and loved as a child, and I would bet I haven't read most of them. Some of them, I may not have even heard of. My wife, after more than a dozen years of marriage, still reacts with shock and dismay when she mentions books she read and loved as a kid that I've never read. Like The Wizard of Oz. The Edward Eager books. The Phantom Tollbooth. Of course, I've been trying to correct some of these oversights, and I have to say, if you haven't read it, go, right now, and get Tollbooth. It's awesome!
To make this even more clear, I loved, loved, loved Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (this being the movie, not the book) when I was a kid. I still adore that movie. Gene Wilder is amazing. As much as I love Johnny Depp, he will never come close to Gene Wilder as Wonka for me. In fact, I really don't much like Burton's movie version of the book. Here's the thing, I grew up thinking that that was just a movie. I had no idea that there was a book, and I was, probably, in my 20s before I even heard of Roald Dahl. After all, he's not exactly high school reading.
Last year, my younger son had to read Charlie and the Chocolate Factory for school. That was 3rd grade. I just want to point out, that I didn't have to any read any books for school until I was in, oh, 5th or 6th grade, when we started having to do book reports, and we got to choose the books. My kids started getting books assigned in 2nd grade. I don't know if this a difference caused by evolution in the wider school system or if it's because I live in California, now, and not Louisiana (not exactly known for its stellar educational system). At any rate, I remembered, at that point, that I'd never read a Dahl book and decided that I should fix that. I ordered both of the Charlie books.
I finally got around to reading them, recently. I was disappointed. And I was disappointed that I was disappointed. I went into it fully expecting the like the heck out of the books. I mean, I loved the movie! I'm not sure there's been any other movie from a book where I've liked the movie and not the book. It's unprecedented. The cliche response is always, "The book was better." But not this time. I should have whizzed through the 150 pages of chocolate factory, but I disenjoyed it so much that it actually took me two weeks to read it. I felt bad about it, too. And my son... well, my son is still in disbelief that I didn't like the book. Maybe, I shouldn't have told him? However, I did know enough to know that my daughter, our not-reader, would like it and passed it on to her, and she did like it, so that was good.
I've tried to reconcile this whole issue of not liking the book. Maybe, it's just because I'm an adult, now, that it didn't click for me. That's totally possible, although I haven't had that issue with other books. I still love Narnia, after all. So, I thought, maybe the movie just got in the way for me. Because I love the movie. Have I mentioned that? I still do. But, really, the movie is not exactly the book, and, maybe, I just wasn't liking it because it didn't mesh for me. I thought, I'll read Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator, and that will be better, because I won't have any false expectations for that one.
I didn't like it either. I felt really bad. Part of that one, though, is that it takes place, mostly, in space. What? That's not where Charlie belongs. I couldn't come to grips with that. We've gone from a book about a magical chocolate factory to an adventure in space? I'll say it again: What!?!? But it goes beyond that. I really just don't enjoy Dahl's style. It's too... sporadic, for lack of a better term, for me. He seems to have the attention span of a teenager in the way he writes. I couldn't deal. Glass Elevator also dragged for me and took much longer to read than it should have.
My wife, also, can't believe that I don't like the books. But I can't help it. I'm fairly certain I won't try any more Dahl.
Now, I'm not saying that there weren't clever bits of writing in there or even that I may not have chuckled once or twice, but the books just didn't take hold in me. I'm glad my kids like them, though. Maybe, if I'd followed a more conventional reading path as a child, things would be different, but I can't say I'm sorry for the path I took. Although, I do wish I'd had someone along with me that could have said to me, "Hey, why don't you try this? I think you'll like it." I could have augmented the path I took if I'd had someone there to do that. More than anything else, I try to be that person for my kids.
I started out reading science books. Non-fiction. Yes, I'm serious. I was into dinosaurs, so that's where I started. In fact, in 1st grade I got accused (by my teacher!) of making up the word paleontologist when asked what I wanted to be when I grew up. She made me go to the board and spell it for her. Because, you know, if I could spell it, somehow, that meant I hadn't made it up. No, I don't really follow the logic, either, but there you have it. I spent the first few years of my schooling reading texts about dinosaurs and astronomy, mostly. I branched into history next. I was in 4th grade before I really discovered fiction. The Hardy Boys. By that time, some school counselor or something had told my mom that I had some kind developmental delay in reading, because I wasn't reading what other kids my age read.
And I still haven't read a lot of those books. I just didn't know about them. Make a list of books you read and loved as a child, and I would bet I haven't read most of them. Some of them, I may not have even heard of. My wife, after more than a dozen years of marriage, still reacts with shock and dismay when she mentions books she read and loved as a kid that I've never read. Like The Wizard of Oz. The Edward Eager books. The Phantom Tollbooth. Of course, I've been trying to correct some of these oversights, and I have to say, if you haven't read it, go, right now, and get Tollbooth. It's awesome!
To make this even more clear, I loved, loved, loved Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (this being the movie, not the book) when I was a kid. I still adore that movie. Gene Wilder is amazing. As much as I love Johnny Depp, he will never come close to Gene Wilder as Wonka for me. In fact, I really don't much like Burton's movie version of the book. Here's the thing, I grew up thinking that that was just a movie. I had no idea that there was a book, and I was, probably, in my 20s before I even heard of Roald Dahl. After all, he's not exactly high school reading.
Last year, my younger son had to read Charlie and the Chocolate Factory for school. That was 3rd grade. I just want to point out, that I didn't have to any read any books for school until I was in, oh, 5th or 6th grade, when we started having to do book reports, and we got to choose the books. My kids started getting books assigned in 2nd grade. I don't know if this a difference caused by evolution in the wider school system or if it's because I live in California, now, and not Louisiana (not exactly known for its stellar educational system). At any rate, I remembered, at that point, that I'd never read a Dahl book and decided that I should fix that. I ordered both of the Charlie books.
I finally got around to reading them, recently. I was disappointed. And I was disappointed that I was disappointed. I went into it fully expecting the like the heck out of the books. I mean, I loved the movie! I'm not sure there's been any other movie from a book where I've liked the movie and not the book. It's unprecedented. The cliche response is always, "The book was better." But not this time. I should have whizzed through the 150 pages of chocolate factory, but I disenjoyed it so much that it actually took me two weeks to read it. I felt bad about it, too. And my son... well, my son is still in disbelief that I didn't like the book. Maybe, I shouldn't have told him? However, I did know enough to know that my daughter, our not-reader, would like it and passed it on to her, and she did like it, so that was good.
I've tried to reconcile this whole issue of not liking the book. Maybe, it's just because I'm an adult, now, that it didn't click for me. That's totally possible, although I haven't had that issue with other books. I still love Narnia, after all. So, I thought, maybe the movie just got in the way for me. Because I love the movie. Have I mentioned that? I still do. But, really, the movie is not exactly the book, and, maybe, I just wasn't liking it because it didn't mesh for me. I thought, I'll read Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator, and that will be better, because I won't have any false expectations for that one.
I didn't like it either. I felt really bad. Part of that one, though, is that it takes place, mostly, in space. What? That's not where Charlie belongs. I couldn't come to grips with that. We've gone from a book about a magical chocolate factory to an adventure in space? I'll say it again: What!?!? But it goes beyond that. I really just don't enjoy Dahl's style. It's too... sporadic, for lack of a better term, for me. He seems to have the attention span of a teenager in the way he writes. I couldn't deal. Glass Elevator also dragged for me and took much longer to read than it should have.
My wife, also, can't believe that I don't like the books. But I can't help it. I'm fairly certain I won't try any more Dahl.
Now, I'm not saying that there weren't clever bits of writing in there or even that I may not have chuckled once or twice, but the books just didn't take hold in me. I'm glad my kids like them, though. Maybe, if I'd followed a more conventional reading path as a child, things would be different, but I can't say I'm sorry for the path I took. Although, I do wish I'd had someone along with me that could have said to me, "Hey, why don't you try this? I think you'll like it." I could have augmented the path I took if I'd had someone there to do that. More than anything else, I try to be that person for my kids.
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