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I've started to set aside a little time every week to jot down some writing-process-related thoughts to put on the blog. Lots of times I forget to post them and then they seem silly or out of date, but I'm going to make an effort now to do this.
I started reading writers' blogs because I was looking for insights into the work process--insights on every level from lucky pens to big ideas--and I started this blog with the idea that I'd make an effort to articulate my own meta-writing stuff. Here's the first thing I came up with--and it's not really about process, it's about purpose.
I'd love to hear about your own purposes/ambitions in either reading or writing in the comments, if you feel so inclined...
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I want my reading to bring me deeper into reality, and I gravitate to SF as a vehicle because it addresses the world, and the possible things that can happen in it, not as fact but as a rich and open question. SF does lots of things, but the one that interests me most is how it reifies aspects of the world that go otherwise unacknowledged and therefore unexamined.
But these days, I am more often a writer than a reader. I use SF because I like to approach the idea of the world from slightly unconventional angles. This enables me to be shaken from my habits.
The big risk in writing SF (and to a lesser extent, I think, fantasy) is the massive demand of worldbuilding. I grew up with a D&D view of worldbuilding: you know, you makes your maps, you sets your parameters, you creates an internally consistent framework, and then it all runs like clockwork. This kind of analytical/extrapolative thinking typifies SF/F worldbuilding, although often in SF there are some funky ideas thrown in that play havoc with internal consistency and result in a game-like or puzzle-like reading experience. Although I admire those who can work with this model of worldbuilding, it's not one that helps me terribly, because it's almost impossible not to get sucked up in all the left brain details. How does the tech work? What is the science? The politics? The psychology? Does it have enough symmetry? Does it have enough idiosyncracies? How does my imagined world relate to previous writers' treatment of same?
Is it logical, Mr. Spock?
When I'm writing, shit comes to me in little disordered glimpses. I go crazy every day trying to get these guys to work together and serve me, trying to make them march to my drum. And every day, I fail. I often feel bummed.
But.
The D&D model is not the only one. Recently have I started to get my head round that fact that what I'm calling 'logical failures' are not so much failures as incompatibilities with the model. I don't want perfect worldbuilding; don't want anything like it. My aim is not to render the world as a simulacrum in which the reader can feel happy to wander around inspecting the decor. My aim is only to trick us both into inhabiting a shared thought space for long enough so I can maybe set off some reactions in your head. The 'world' is only a medium for that process.
If I were really good, my invented worlds would work like koans. They would mess you up in a specific way and leave you for dead. Some writers can do this. But I'm only just finding my feet here, and so my 'worlds' are really rather passive. They don't bite, and only occasionally will you feel one shift beneath you. They suffer from over-complexity and a certain smearing of purpose at times, because I'm working at the upper end of what I know how to do, in the anaerobic threshold zone of writing. I'm struggling, in my half-assed Dr. Frankenstein way, to animate the text.
Whether or not a given SF piece is 'hard', the genre's readership demand a certain rigour. The problematics of logic, of story, and of story-logic are so exacting that I walk many miles through a novel with awareness only of the nuts and bolts of construction. This is more than enough to worry about. I even--and this happens frequently--feel completely fed up with the book because it refuses to lie down for me. Then, eventually and after much self-pity, I remember that I don't want it to lie down.
If I hang out too much with logic, I lose the very reason I showed up at the party in the first place.
The reason I show up is to give you a hard time. Chiefly this manifests in me giving myself as hard a time as I know how to give. I don't do it in all my SF. But most.
Writing this little piece has been helpful because as I'm going along I'm recognising something that's been itching me. I tend to wonder why I can't just tell a good story and go home to Kansas. Other people do it, some better than others, but it can clearly be done. So why oh why can't I?
Here is my answer: Writing is me trying to exchange heads with you and send you back a little skewed. I'm not sure why it's so important that I mess you around. It could be because I only know I'm me and not you if I can make you ontologically uncomfortable. It could be because I only know I'm growing if I can make myself ontologically uncomfortable.
In any case, in order to exchange heads we must meet. I do want to relate to you. The only way you'll let me in is if you trust me. So I must work very hard to earn a little of your trust, even though all along you rightly suspect me of being trouble.
And somewhere in this undefined space between me and you, somewhere in my-imagining-of-you, I locate my efforts to alter us both. My primary purpose is survival. I am writing for my life. I'm writing so as not to be absorbed into an undifferentiated mass of cliches, reflexes and dramatic-structure hardwiring that collectively identifies humanity. Not without a fight.
I know that to earn my life, I must risk it. I want to get out on an edge, identity-wise, any edge I can find, and stay there until I fall off.
I'm OK with falling off, honest. Hell, I'm used to it. I once read a comment on a blog somewhere in which the writer described me as a writer of novels of 'sprained brilliance', and I love that. At this point I'd rather rupture myself and look like a fool than produce a masterpiece of narrative control that knows what it is.
I don't know what I am and I want to infect you with that same uncertainty.
I aspire to being a drive-by.
I think that might be my big ambition
Thank you for your generous words, too!
Purpose & Process
These days when I write I am doing it chiefly just to tell a story (with my opinions, ideas and the like inside it, somewhere), tales of adventure more or less. And my world-building is more sketched in, than written out. I give the reader impressions and allow them to fill in the gaps themselves, unless it's important to the story and needs expanding upon. Saying that, with some stories I have created whole towns and settings and then dumped my story in it, just to see how it works. Sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn't.
My purpose? These days it is to entertain, and for me to have fun with it. I have ideas to push myself further, maybe shock and awaken readers, but I don't feel like I can do that just yet, not until I feel more confident. But those ideas are there, lingering in my mind, waiting for their day. Until, I just aim to tell a story and to see what happens next :)
Re: Purpose & Process
This is going to sound weird, but to me the simplicity of storytelling seems to be elusive. I'm learning to embrace the fact that no matter what I do, I end up needing to create these extra levels of friction--but I love reading stories that are simply stories and I think it would be so much pleasure to be able to write one in that way. Following the story, I mean. So when you write about sitting on a train making up the story in a notebook, that sounds like heaven to me.
The simplicity of it came about because I decided to write in notebooks, rather than direct to the computer from a book of notes. It was hard to give up the copius notes I normally made, but ended up quite liberating too. Of course, whether it's any good is open to debate, but at least I enjoy it. Shame I can't just keep on writing and have to go to work instead :(
YES. Exactly. Thanks for posting this.
When I was writing, I kept doing it every day because I wanted to be seduced by the world and the language it demanded. I hope I get a chance to risk "normal life" for that again, and soon.
When I read your LJ I remember this so vividly.
Hope you can get out, find another way to live.
Also, I am so relieve to know that I was not a complete moron when I read your stuff, coming away all head-f*ed and whatnot.
Of course, reading this post, I feel moronic anew. Holy crap, how your brain works.
I write...I think, to find common ground. The connection between people; the things we share, the feelings that bind us. Because, you know, I am From Another Planet and looking to get in with you people.
I thought we were both from the same asteroid, or at least, neighbouring comets LOL!
As it turns out, I fell off the train and wrote a lot of science books and fan guides. I adored the character in my first novel but stripped her of some essential components due to editorial advice. The other three novels were about a 13-year-old boy with some serious family and school problems - he was a super kid, though, very intelligent and wise, kind, with great motivations and feelings for people around him. They were adventure-type stories, but I liked them a lot because my son was 11 at the time, he and I had just been through the loss of his father (same as the kid in my books), etc. I wrote these three novels to entertain young boys and also to help them cope (or so I hoped) with the demons of loss that children sometimes can get kids really down. Long after I'm gone, my son will have those books to remember those difficult years we shared and how we made things better and came out okay. I wrote them specifically to be positive, to NOT knock the lost father, to show the young boy that no matter how bad things may seem, there are ways to make things better, to take actions that move life into a better place. Those three books probably saved my own soul in many ways. I cried while I wrote a lot the scenes. And I also laughed - it was an action-adventure story, after all, and some of the characters and events were a lot of fun to write.
So why do I write fiction? Mainly to explore the human condition, to try and touch other people with my own feelings - but I also am fully aware that a short story or novel must ENTERTAIN readers. So there are actually two reasons to write - explore human condition, entertain.
Oh, there is a third, vital reason why I write fiction - when I hammer out a really fine scene, when things just pour out in that lovely way when you're on the rollercoaster ride of writing and it's all natural - it just makes me feel SO FREAKIN GOOD. Nothing else comes close to that feeling.
And now, I really have to go - sorry for the rambling comments, hope it makes a wee bit of sense - sorry I don't have time to edit the above -
I love these discussions, love reading how other writers think, etc. - thanks!