Creating a Masterpiece (an Indie Life post)

What do you think of when you hear the word "masterpiece"? And I don't mean Masterpiece Theater, either. Do you think of this?

Or this?

Or, maybe, even this?

Or something like this?

Joyeuse, the sword of Charlemagne

While it's true that we think of great works of art or craftsmanship as masterpieces, it wasn't always so. Far from it, actually. For hundreds of years, right up until modern times, the word masterpiece was actually applied to what was probably going to be the least accomplished work of one's professional career.
Wait. What?

Okay, let me explain.

There used to be this thing in Europe called a guild system. I'm not sure if they called it that, but it's what we call it. If you were a craftsman or artisan of any kind, you belonged to a guild. So there were guilds for woodworkers, stone cutters, goldsmiths, cooks, painters, sculptors... nearly anything you could think of. And, while it may seem that these just covered, basically, practical professions, they also covered the arts (and many of the most famous pieces of art in history came out of guild work, especially stuff done in cathedrals and other important buildings). [I also want to point out that the guilds also, to some extent, covered writing, especially scholarly writing.] If you wanted to be in one of these careers, you would get apprenticed to someone within the guild to learn the trade. Usually, this was just arranged between the families involved (because often the apprentice went off to live with the person he was apprenticed to), but, (I think) sometimes, these arrangements could be assigned by the guild.

So the apprentice would spend years working with his master to learn his trade, whatever that trade was. At the point that the apprentice had (1) learned everything from his master that he could or (2) learned everything that his master was willing to teach him, he would either become a journeyman (someone who "traveled" (because actual travelling wasn't always involved)) while he worked on his craft and attempted to learn new skills through practice or from finding others to learn from or, if his master had taught him enough, attempt to become a "master craftsman" himself. This was kind of like a test. Okay, no, it was a test. A skills test. The craftsman would have to produce an item to show that he had mastered his craft. If the item was judged worthy, it was called his "masterpiece."

And, as an aside, many (most? all?) of the guilds kept the items that "students" presented and had halls to display great "masterpiece" items. As an additional aside, some of these guilds grew into actual universities. Two prime examples are the Universities of Paris and Oxford.

So... it is true that an artisan tried to do his absolute best work on his masterpiece; it is also true that the production of a masterpiece marked the beginning of a master craftsman's career, not the culmination of it. It was expected that a "master" would go on to create even better works of... art. Because a master was expected to create things of beauty. Even if it was just chairs. Or stone pillars. Or swords. Or, even, writing, to a certain extent.

So here I am to present to you The House on the Corner as my "masterpiece." Not my best work, but the work that proves that I can do the work. I intend that everything will just get better from here on out, and I think that I've already done better. "Christmas on the Corner," for instance, is better. Brother's Keeper will be even better. That's how it goes. Or how it should go.

Now, you get out there and make your "masterpiece"! Whatever that is. Create that masterpiece and declare, "It only gets better from here!"

This post has been brought to you in part by Indie Life.

Tolkien's Failure (an IWSG post)

This is not one of those posts meant to make you feel better by allowing you to compare yourself to the failure of "stars" before they made it big. Actually, I hate those posts. I don't care how many times Rowling or Dr. Seuss or Stephen King or John Grisham were rejected before they met with success. If it makes you feel better when you get a rejection, well, good for you, but that's not what this post is about. Personally, I just don't find those kinds of stories all that inspiring, but, maybe, that's because I don't have an issue with persistence. Or maybe I just believe in the value of what I'm doing and don't care so much about the outside validation. That's probably closer to the truth. I do what I do because it's what I do, and I see the value in it, so I don't care as much whether other people do or not.

Sure, I'd like it if other people value my work, because, you know, it would be nice to actually make a living, well, even half a living, from writing, but I don't derive my worth from what other people think of my work.

I think it's vital that we don't derive our meaning from other people's opinion of what we do. After all, there's Van Gogh. Completely not appreciated in his own lifetime. We just don't, can't know how our work will be perceived later on.

Which brings me to Tolkien...

It might seem surprising, but Tolkien considered himself a failure in his literary life. Yeah, that's difficult for me to imagine, too, but it's true. But, then, it all comes from how we define our success, which is something I've mentioned before. The importance of knowing what it is you want when you start all this writing business. If you don't know what it is exactly that you want, you are sure to meet with failure, because you're going to layer over the world's idea of success over your life rather than your own.
Which isn't actually what Tolkien did, but, still...

So what happened with Tolkien?

The main thing to realize with Tolkien is that neither The Hobbit nor The Lord of the Rings was what he considered his real literary work. In many ways, those books were accidents. No, Tolkien's real work was The Silmarillion and his history of Middle Earth, work which never saw publication during his lifetime. So, despite the wide success and popularity of his two most famous works, he never believed he'd been successful because of the repeated rejection by publishers of his "real" work.

To put this slightly more into context: When Tolkien originally wrote The Hobbit, it had nothing to do with Middle Earth. At all. It was a bedtime story for his kids. He didn't ever really mean to publish it. Only by the insistence of his friend, C. S. Lewis, and the accidental discovery of the manuscript by the publisher's son did it end up being published at all. Tolkien didn't take it all that seriously, and, like I said, it wasn't related to Middle Earth, which had already been his writing project for 20 years by the time The Hobbit was published.

The Hobbit was successful enough that the publisher wanted a sequel. Tolkien tried to give them The Silmarillion, but they turned it down. No, they wanted more hobbits. Tolkien sat down and began to work on that sequel: An Unexpected Journey, the book that eventually became The Lord of the Rings. See, as he was writing it, he realized that the stuff with the rings was the stuff from the end of The Silmarillion, and it was at that point that it all became a part of Middle Earth. It was an accident, and Tolkien had to go back and revise The Hobbit to make it part of  the narrative. Because, you know, it wasn't.

So, see, George Lucas is not the only one to go back and change things after the fact. That ring Bilbo found really was just, initially, a trinket. Something Tolkien threw in to enable Bilbo to escape from Gollum. He had to go back to the already published manuscript and make the ring important. Make into the One Ring.

Of course, The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings became more and more popular. This is despite the overwhelmingly negative reviews when the books were published. Well, not so much with Hobbit, everyone loved The Hobbit when it was released, but, initially, the critics and reviewers hated LotR. But people did not, and they became great best sellers.

But it didn't matter to Tolkien, because, despite their success, he still couldn't get anyone to publish Silmarillion. He spent the rest of his life working on it and the other histories of Middle Earth, and no one would agree to publish it. To himself, he was an artistic failure. It would be rather like painting a great, intricate painting and not being able to get anyone to look at it, to study it, but, one day, sitting down with a kid and making a doodle for him and having everyone go crazy for the doodle. Tolkien was saying, "Look at this! Look at this!" and pointing at Silmarillion, but everyone was busy waving his doodle around saying, "But we like this!" And that is how things stood when he died.

It was only after his death that his son succeeded in getting The Silmarillion published.

So what is it I'm getting at here? Well, a couple of things, actually.
1. I think the thing that more people really need to do before they start writing is figuring out what they want to get out of it. I mean, what they really want to get out of it. Is the actual goal popularity? Is the actual goal to get rich? Is the goal immortality? Is the writing a path to something else or is the writing the goal? If more people knew this ahead of time, they might be more satisfied with their journeys.

Here is where Tolkien knew what he was doing. He knew what his goal was, and he didn't achieve that, so the success of his published works didn't matter so much to him, because those things were not his goal. He did actually fail to achieve his true goal.

2. Be malleable or flexible. Be able to acknowledge the things you do actually succeed at. Recognize your triumphs and adjust your goals to fit with where you are succeeding.

This is where Tolkien did not know what he was doing. His purpose was so single-minded and he was so unwilling to adapt that he was never happy, and he could not acknowledge the success of his two books. His creation, his Middle Earth, is brilliance. The scope of what he did is beyond what anyone else has ever done, and I'm not sure it's something that can be done again. Well, perhaps Asimov achieved something of the same thing with his robot and Foundation books. At any rate, so focused was Tolkien on the foundation, on The Silmarillion, that he could not see how The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings rested on that foundation and how much they relied on his entire body of work. They were a part of that whole; I think he just chose to ignore that.

The thing is, Tolkien's goal has actually been achieved; he just wasn't around to see it happen. The Silmarillion has been published along with so so so much more of his work. It's actually quite incredible what Middle Earth has become. It's too bad he wasn't around to see it happen, but... But.
That's kind of the thing, he did what he wanted to do and what he believed in, and, even though it took people a while to recognize it, they did recognize it. I think he would be dumbfounded to find how... pervasive... Middle Earth has become on a cultural level. Which is what he wanted. He wanted to create a mythology that would speak to people, and he stuck to it, and, in the end, succeeded. Beyond anything he might have imagined, I'm sure.

But, see, he knew what he wanted, knew what his goal was, and he stuck to that thing. I think the real achievement is being able to look at your work and know that you have done what you wanted to do. Which is why you have to know why you're writing. And, you know, if you are writing for fame and fortune, not because you want to write, maybe find some other way to get there, because writing isn't a great way to go about it.

Unexpected Applause: the After

I'm going to do something a little bit different with this review in that I'm also going to review the author, at least I am to an extent. Book reviews really aren't about he authors but about their products, but I really feel like talking about the author of this one a bit.

One of the things I see most frequently as a "rule of blogging" is to keep your posts short. I get it. I do. At least, I get the idea of it. I don't really agree with it, though. I don't agree with it for this reason: most short posts I see just don't say anything. At best, they talk about the idea of talking about something, but, because the blogger is trying to keep the post short, s/he never more than touches on a subject. Maybe s/he gives a list about the topic, but, honestly, a list doesn't say anything. They're good for a trip to the store but that's about it. The end result is that I don't tend to short posts or spend much more time on them than it takes to scan through it.

Briane Pagel is the only blogger I know that routinely writes longer posts than me. And not just on one blog! Briane writes about half a dozen different blogs, is a lawyer, and has twin 5-year-old sons. And writes books! He's by far the most prolific person I've ever known, and it wouldn't surprise me if, one day, his body of work surpasses Asimov's (generally considered the most prolific author to have ever lived). However, I think Briane is also one of the most overlooked bloggers I know. People are daunted by his long posts, and I think it's their loss. It's unfortunate that so many people are willing to not invest in worthwhile things. Like taking the time to prepare a meal rather than just heating up processed crap. What I'm saying here is that the time you would spend reading half a dozen other posts would be better spent reading one of Briane's posts.

Often Briane is like Kevin Smith, and I like that. Not just that Kevin is dialogue heavy, which I like, but the way that Kevin talks is how Briane writes. Have you ever seen any of Smith's Q&A DVDs? If not, you should go get one and watch it. It's a simple format: someone asks a question; Kevin answers it. But it's how Kevin answers the questions that make it so great. Often (almost every time), he'll go off on some tangent and, then, another, and, sometimes, another, and you're left thinking, "Where in the heck is this going? What in the world could it have to do with the original question?" But he always gets back to that question, and, when he does, there are great "ah-ha!" moments where you see how all of the tangents fold together to make that one story and how a simple answer to the question in no way would have been as satisfying as the story he told. And that's Briane Pagel.

And he has six blogs, so there's bound to be something that you'll like. I follow two of them myself: Thinking The Lions and The Best of Everything. Seriously, you should go check out his list of blogs and try a couple or few out. Don't be daunted by the length of the posts. They're worth the time.

Other than the blog stuff, Briane writes books. I've previously reviewed some of his other works (Eclipse and his Xmas story), and I just finished his latest release, the After.

Considering that this is the third book by him that I'm reviewing, not to mention hyping his blogs, you may make the assumption that I like his work. You may even make the assumption that I really like his work, and you would not be wrong.

So, as usual, let's start with the technicals and get the bad stuff out of the way. Briane's not much of an editor. He admits that he doesn't find it to be fun so doesn't spend much time on it. Fortunately for him, he's really very good without the editing. I'm pretty sure he doesn't do any editing on his blog posts, and they don't tend to have more than the occasional typo. the After, though, could have used some more editing. A lot more in all actuality. On the plus side, there are no consistent errors caused by not knowing any particular grammar rule, but there are lots and lots of left out words, wrong words, and just plain typing errors. There's also an issue with the formatting. The big issue, for me anyway, was that he gets the character names mixed around a few times, especially with Ansel and Austin, which caused me to have to go back and make sure I knew what was being said before I could go on. Due to the sheer number of errors, I'd have to give a "D" on the technicals.

So, if you are a person that has a problem getting into a story due to these kinds of things as I usually am, you may need to skip this one.

Pay attention to what I said though: "usually am." Generally speaking, poor editing is a big roadblock for me, but not this time. Briane's story sucked me right in. His main character, Saoirse, is easy to identify with, empathize with. You want to know what's going on with her. And I don't really want to say more than that, because you should really just experience it for yourself.

Be aware, though, that this is no straight forward story that takes you from point A to point B and you have everything laid out for you by the end. Briane doesn't really write that way. There is much of the surreal in this book, and, as in Eclipse, you don't always know what's real and what's not. But that's okay, because the After is not about the destination; it's about the journey, and all that's really ever important is what's happening at that given moment. It doesn't matter what's real or not, because what is "real" anyway? And that is one of the big questions in the book, "what is real?"

There is an answer. Or, at least, what I'm taking as an answer. But I'm not going to tell you what it is. Maybe, you know, after you read the book, we can sit down and discuss what you got out of it and compare it to what I got out of it, but I'm not going to tell you going in, because, then, you'll just be looking for my answer, and I wouldn't want to ruin the journey for you in  that way.

Hmm... in many ways, reading this book is like looking at an impressionist painting, especially Van Gogh. In fact, there is one scene that made me feel like I was looking at The Starry Night while I was reading it.

At any rate, I would call this a beautiful book that needs to be read by the more than just the few people that have read it so far. The story is so strong, in fact, that it far outweighs the poor editing, and I give the book a "B" overall. This is the kind of book that really makes me sad to have to even point out the editing/formatting issues, but I'd hate for anyone to pick it up and not be able to get into because of that, especially on my recommendation if that's actually going to be a stumbling block. However, it's only $0.99, so, you know, for less than a buck, you have nothing to lose. Okay, so you'd lose a dollar, but it's worth so much more than a $1.00 that it's worth the risk.