I Still Don't Know What I'm Doing (Part 2)

 

Old Covers with an alternate title for the Bright Black Sea

In a previous post on this subject I talked about how different my approach to writing appears to from that of many other writers. In it I said that I felt that part of this was that I write in an old style and an old method, one I acquired before all the how-to advice proliferated on the internet. And also how some writers seem to spend much more time and effort designing their stories and constructing their characters according to blueprints than I consciously do. And so, in my view, they look upon stories as something to be constructed from a proven formula, while I think of stories organically growing from the seed of an idea, incident, after incident to a known end.

There may be several more factors involved in this phenomena than just my age. One factor I blame on academia. I think that academics have long analyzed and described classic works of fiction by breaking them down into what they see as their component parts. And then teaching this as a description of literature. This is how they make their living, after all. It seems to me that writers today are now being told to use the components identified by academics as the proven way to build their stories, thus converting what was a mere description into a prescription as how stories should be written. A prescription derived from boiling down many stories to fit a standard form or forms. Creativity is to be found only within this established form. This is not to say it doesn't work, since it clearly does. But I would contend that these standard forms are not the only way to tell a story. 

A second source of structure and writing by blueprints is taking and adopting components from media other than novels and applying them to novels. The "three act" structure comes from stage plays. "Save the Cat" comes from movies. "The Hero's Journey" comes from the study of the pre-novel, oral storytelling tradition. None of them come from a study of the novel. Still, all of them are now being applied to novels. I would argue that the characteristic requirement of a novel can be significantly different from plays, movies, and ancient epic tales. Once again I won't claim that these structures don't work for novels, only that they are not the only way that works.

A third source of blueprints to construct a story comes from meeting the expected conventions of various commercial genre fiction. In many genres readers expect to find a familiar story structure, tropes, and archetypical characters in their stories. Romance readers demand happily ever after endings. Murder mystery readers want clues to solve, red herrings to fool them and a clever solution. Science fiction readers want amazing new ideas to wow them, and ideally make them think. And the list goes one. Genre fiction, perhaps by definition, demands conventions to be honored. Thus, if a writer approaches commercial genre fiction with the idea of making money, as almost all do, delivering what their particular readers expects to find in a story makes sense. If the formula works, why fix it? 

Writing fiction is more than an art, it is a business. And anyone in business knows that to succeed you have to know your customers and offer them what they want to buy. So whether it is agents, editors, or readers who are their customers, it likely pays to use a blueprint that is known to work for the target customer, and then try to be creative within that given structure. I have no problem with that approach. 

It just isn't the one for me.

I think one reason it doesn't work for me is that I don't want to write contemporary commercial fiction. Indeed, one of the reasons I started writing what has become my published work is that I couldn't find new stories that suited my taste. My archetype story structure and style date back to the first half of the last century. Now they they were likely writing stories to meet certain conventions back then as well, but, given the lack of access to knowledge we I enjoy today, I have to believe their efforts were far more individual than formulaic. Indeed, their efforts established the conventions of may a present day genre.  

The other reason is that despite being the son of an engineer, I'm not an engineer, and my approach to creativity is not by design, but with spontaneity. I can't picture anything in any detail in my mind, so that my paintings grow and change as I paint them. My stories are much the same. I can't picture characters or setting, so they must grow on the page as I write. I try to have the entire story thought out in my head before I sit down to write it, but even so, the story grows as I fill in all the details, page by page, dialog by dialog. Hopefully I know, instinctively, how to write and pace a story, because I'm not planning it. I don't consider pace, turning points, conflict points, and all the other features of these how-to-construct-a-story blueprints. But, because I'm not writing commercial fiction, I don't need to. Step out of the bounds of commercial genre fiction, and you can leave a lot of the rules on the table. I do want to entertain you, dear readers, but I don't feel any need to entertain as many of you as I can by writing a story that would appeal to as many of you as possible, i.e. a commercial story. I am content to reach kindred spirits, and if I do, everything just works out.

I still have more to say on this subject. That should keep you on the edge of your seats. Stay Tuned!

 

The Saturday Morning Post (No. 209)

 

THE SATURDAY MORNING BOOK REPORT

Time to return to a sure thing....

My reviewer criteria. I like light, entertaining novels. I like smaller scale stories rather than epics. I like character focused novels featuring pleasant characters, with a minimum number of unpleasant ones. I greatly value clever and witty writing. I like first person, or close third person narratives. I dislike a lot of "head jumping" between POVs and flashbacks. I want a story, not a puzzle. While I am not opposed to violence, I dislike gore for the sake of gore. I find long and elaborate fight, action, and battle sequences tedious. Plot holes and things that happen for the convenience of the author annoy me. And I fear I'm a born critic in that I don't mind pointing out what I don't like in a story. However, I lay no claim to be the final arbitrator of style and taste, you need to decide for yourself what you like or dislike in a book.

Your opinions are always welcome. Comment below. 

The Surgeon's Mate by Patrick O'Brian  A

By this time in the series O'Brian was writing one long serial novel. Each book begins where the last one left off and continues the story. This one begins directly after the end of The Fortune of War, aboard the HMS Shannon arriving in Halifax after fighting and capturing the American frigate Chesapeake, the first British victory at sea after losing a series of ship battles between British and American frigate. Though a minor action in the War of 1812, it lifted British morale, unused to seeing the Royal Navy defeated.

In The Fortune of War, Captain Aubrey, the surgeon/spy Stephen Maturin had become prisoners of war held in Boston after being captured when passengers aboard one of the frigate battles that the British lost. In the end, they escaped aboard the Shannon along with Diana Villiers, the love of Maturin's life. She had been the mistress of a rich American also involved in espionage. She had taken away a great diamond he had given her, while Maturin had stolen secret papers concerning spies in Halifax and England. This rich American spymaster then hired two schooners to lay in wait to recover his properties from the British packet that would carry our heroes home to England. A desperate race ensues.

Once back in England, Maturin, a recognized naturalist, is invited to Paris to present a paper on his discoveries in the Pacific - science not recognizing that a war was going on. He takes Villiers with him to Paris because, having signed an American naturalization paper, she is now considered an enemy personage despite being English by birth and inclination. With this and several other complications it was felt that it would be easier for her to live in Paris than London where it would be very socially awkward for her, at least at present. 

There are, of course, lots of minor complications for all the characters, and further naval actions in the Baltic and a shipwreck off the French coast. And they end up in a French prison in Paris... But prisoners of whom?

I have raved about O'Brian's writing before, so I will spare you the full lecture. I will only say that he can seamlessly write literary fiction and naval action, bringing even the minor characters to life like no other author I have read. I think he is the best writer I have read. If you enjoy writing, as writing, without it being ornate, purple prose, plus compelling story telling, look beyond the genre of these stories - Napoleonic naval fiction - and read Patrick O'Brian for the sheer joy of his mastery of the English language.

The New Spammer's Gold Rush

Say what you want about AI, it has produced a new gold rush for scummy scammers. It has made chumps and suckers so much easier to find and fleece. The art I'm using above actually shows the old way of finding susceptible chumps. But these old style miners were, after a few years, replaced by great machines that sucked up tons of river sand to pan out the gold dust on an industrial scale. The same is happing with cons and scams today. By using AI conmen and scammers are now able to find and flood the inbox of creators with convincing, but fake emails from real people in the industry as well as schemes of their own invention. I know this for a fact, since my spam mailbox is filling up with emails from scummy scammers who likely found my email address through AI and who are now offering various scams in that pleasantly flattering AI voice. Everyone wants to help me get rich.

As I have said in the past, scamming authors/would-be-writers is about as sporting as shooting trout in a water barrow. We writers are, by nature, chumps, low hanging fruit, when it comes to being taken in by the bogus promises of conmen, scammers, and professional services we can be convinced we need. We have labored away to write a story that we think the world is entitled enjoy. But how do we tell the blissful unaware world about it? There has to be a way, a secret. Others have succeeded, after all. So how? Step in the scammers.

Scammers have always been around to step in and offer to help us achieve our dream. Vanity presses have long been a thing. However, with the invention of the internet and ebooks, scamming writers mushroomed into a growth industry. And now, with the help of AI it promises to stand on the shoulders of its past success on a truly industrial scale.

As well I know.

A I said above,  my scam folder, as well as my inbox has recently seen a great influx of people interested in my work and willing to help promote it. Finding me on this scale can only be possible with the use of AI scrapping my book listing, this blog, and connecting it with my published email address from the web. Since these scams only work on a small percentage of potential victims, being able to send out thousands of them with the press of a button is a godsend. Just like those big mining rigs that replaced the miners and their pans. What is also a godsend, is using AI to write the appeal using AI to summarize and praise whatever story they are pitching to help me market, giving the illusion that they have actually read it.

Though one pitch described the process of creating the cover for Some Small Dive as using sharpies to draw the outline, and then filling in the color in Gimp. Maybe that AI wasn't so smart. 

Let's take a stroll though my scam folder. To be safe, I generally do not open these emails, so I usually don't know exactly what they are trying to sell me. All of the following emails landed directly in the spam folder.

We have the "Redieans" emailing me "Re: Some Small Dive October 1"? A rather lazy effort. Hardly enticing. But then we have Hugues Pluvinage emailing me about "A German readership for The Poision-Pill Will?" Even though the Poison-Pill Will, is the third novella in a series. However, he tried a day or two later with the same pitch for Some Small Dive. Then we have "Leslie D harry"(sic) emailing me with just "Sailing into The Bright Black Sea" as the subject line.

A Lindsey Brodowski emailed me, twice, about "Media Adaptation Review/Portfolio Analysis Charles Litka's Fiction" Curious, since I write as C Litka. I will usually Google these names, and there is, indeed, a Lindsey Brodowski, a real agent who, on her Linkin account, noted that she had received a couple of messages from authors asking her if she emailed them offering publicity services. "This is a scam, please do not engage." she writes.

Robbie offers "A Goodreads Listopia idea for your latest novel." The "Ecom Vantage" emailed me about "Reader Discovery for your Speculative Fiction"  Ecom Vantage has a website, but its founder, "Alex" appears on site with a photo of the back of his head. Yah, that's reassuring... David Oliver writes; "Some Small Dive: a reader-fit snapshot." What? Not curious enough to find out. While the "Book Evangelist Fel" tells me "Action required on The Aerie of a Pirate Prince." Required!

Now here is one that ended up in my inbox. It is from "Henry Cadwell" about "Film and television rights - A Summer in Amber." 

Here is the text;

Dear Charles,

My name is Henry Caldwell, and I work in dramatic rights, connecting literary properties with potential film and television opportunities.

I came across A Summer in Amber and was interested in its premise of a world transformed after powerful solar storms destroy the electrical grid, leaving society without computers, television, or mobile phones.

The collapse of modern infrastructure offers a compelling foundation for a screen story. The shift in everyday life, the challenges of rebuilding communities, and the human consequences of losing familiar technology could create strong dramatic possibilities for a feature film or television series.

I am contacting you at an early stage to establish the rights position and determine whether A Summer in Amber may be available for further consideration.

May I ask whether you currently control the film and television rights to the book, or whether these rights are managed by an agent, publisher, or another representative?

If you handle these rights directly, I would be glad to share further information about the kind of screen opportunities being considered. If someone else represents the work, I would appreciate it if you could direct me to the appropriate contact.

Thank you for your time, and I look forward to hearing from you.

Best regards,
Henry Caldwell
Films & TV Rights

This email arrived as a very authentic looking Arclen Group email, even including his photo. And there is indeed, a real Henry Caldwell at the Arclen Group agency, that matched the photo on the email. The giveaway that this is a scam is that while everything looks legit including the source, the Archlen Group.com, the email address ends "via gmail.com". This is the tell-tale of a scam, since "via gmail.com" would not be part of an authentic email sent from the Arclen Group. The funny thing is that  on the same day I received a second email from "Victoria Lane" from the same company about "Film and Television Adaption Enquiry - The Poison-Pill Will". I'm apparently hot at the "Arclen Group."

Since I started writing this post three days ago, I've received similar emails from; Holly Frederick, and  Laoura Beneditti, both of the Arclen Group. As I mentioned above, I'm a hot item at Arclen Group. Innovate Malkin offered an opportunity to reach more fantasy and literary readers. Olalekan Oyedunle subject line mentioned unusual appeal of an ordinary story. TE Growth Partners had an idea for a book trailer for A Summer in Amber. And yesterday, at 6:25 in the morning, David Oliverpro was up and offering me a "reader-fit" snapshot of Some Small Dive. No rest for the wicked. 

While they never mention money, i.e. giving them money, in the first email, they will eventually get around to doing it.  AI can be used  to keep the conversation going until the subject of money for some reason is broached, without any real effort by the scammer. 

The sad fact of the matter is that desperate authors are relatively easy marks for all sort of iffy would-be schemes to improve their stories and market their books. Indeed, it is said that in the indie-publishing market, money flows from writers to the host of "services" and scams that prey upon them, instead of money flowing to them from their work. Really, the real money in indie-publishing is in offering "services" to authors. Authors, not readers, are the true customers in indie-publishing. And AI has made that business even more efficient by making it easier to find and reach the marks with more convincingly.

As W C Fields said "Never give a sucker an even break." Authors should never expect an even break in publishing.

The Saturday Morning Post (No. 208)

 

THE SATURDAY MORNING BOOK REPORT

Still turning to my own book shelf for my reading. This time, a traditional summer book.

My reviewer criteria. I like light, entertaining novels. I like smaller scale stories rather than epics. I like character focused novels featuring pleasant characters, with a minimum number of unpleasant ones. I greatly value clever and witty writing. I like first person, or close third person narratives. I dislike a lot of "head jumping" between POVs and flashbacks. I want a story, not a puzzle. While I am not opposed to violence, I dislike gore for the sake of gore. I find long and elaborate fight, action, and battle sequences tedious. Plot holes and things that happen for the convenience of the author annoy me. And I fear I'm a born critic in that I don't mind pointing out what I don't like in a story. However, I lay no claim to be the final arbitrator of style and taste, you need to decide for yourself what you like or dislike in a book.

Your opinions are always welcome. Comment below.

The Depot Master by Joseph C Lincoln  C

I've certainly been unlucky in my last two selections. It has become a long-standing tradition of mine to return to old Cape Cod via a Joe Lincoln book each summer. This time I selected one of his earlier books, The Depot Master. It proved to be a "fix-up novel" before the term was ever invented.

The first clue was on the copyright page. It read "Copyright 1910 by D Appleton and Company. And was published in May 1910. (My copy is the A L Burt Company edition, which is I believe a reprint likely from a later date.) However below this copyright is a list of other copyright dates from 1907 to 1909 by such companies as the Ainslee Magazine Company, The Frank A Munsey Company, F F  Collier and Son, as well as several others. Which tells the tale of this book. It is a collection of short stories, woven into a novel, of sorts.

The original story in this book, the one that makes it a novel - of sorts - is that in his youth, the title character, the Depot Master, had an argument with his fiancée over where to spend their honeymoon, and both being stubborn, had a falling out over it. She eventually married someone else, who died, and left her to shift for herself, which she did with a small craft shop, that doesn't quite pay the bills. Now a rich city person in the new mansion as bought up her mortgage and is going to toss her into the street in order to move a different house onto that lot. Of course you know how this turns out. This plot is a thin thread in the narration.

What you have instead is all these friend of the Depot Master stopping by and spinning yarns about their experiences or those of their acquaintances, all of which had previously been stand alone short stories. In this book they a sliced and diced into a narrative of sorts, making for a "novel" of some 380 pages. 

The problem is that I'm not a fan of short stories, even short "humorous" stories, which Joe Lincoln started his writing career with. I find short stories are like unfunny jokes. They're mostly just build up to the punch line, or rather the "clever" twist. And since most of the characters in the short stories only appear in that story, that's not long enough for me to care about them, or their fate. The only short stories I like are the ones with continuing characters, like Sherlock Holmes and Watson, or Bertie Wooster and Jeeves, i.e. with characters you know and who have a history beyond the narrow limits of a short story.  

So, long story short, another disappointment. I'm going to have to pick a sure thing next...

I Still Don't Know What I'm Doing

 

I don't know how to write. I just do it. This has been clear to me for years. Over the last dozen years, I've read numerous pieces on how to write, and seen many videos by authors talking about how they go about thinking and writing their stories. They all talk about things like story structures and character arcs and such. Stuff I never think about when writing, and stuff I have never bothered to adopt, because it seems so deliberately artificial. And to me, so wrong. 

Blame it on my youth.

I spent my youth in the dark ages before all the world's knowledge and disinformation could be carried around and consulted via a device in your pocket. Before the age of the internet. Before the age of the personal computer. Back then knowledge would be found in paper books, and those could be found on libraries and bookstore shelves. However, the amount and breath of knowledge was limited by the size of the local libraries and books stories. Plus your awareness of such knowledge. I really don't think I knew that how-to-write novels books existed, back then.

They must have existed. Right?  Well, yet maybe not. I haven't bothered to research that question on the internet Wait, I just did... 1884 The Art of Fiction by Walter Besant and 1925 The Writing of Fiction by Edith Wharton, so say Gemini. It's that easy today. But back then... who would know?

In any event, it never occurred to me to read a book on how to write a book.

I did do some research and discovered that the first master of fine arts programs was established at the University of Iowa in 1940. A workshop, The Iowa Writers' Workshop had been started there four years before. MFA programs in colleges only began to proliferate in the 1960's & 70's. Which is to say, about the time I started writing. It was almost three decades after I graduated from the University of Wisconsin, that it started their MFA program in 2002. In 1968, as a freshman, I wanted to write science fiction novels, not read, study, and discuss moldy old classic books. I wanted to learn how to write, so I listed my major as journalism rather than English, which even then was considered a mostly useless major. I changed my major to International Relations (another largely useless major) the following year when I realized I was too shy to be a journalist and interview people. 

I just decided then, and still believe today, that if you had the talent to write, you could develop it all on your own and write. That talent ruled all creative endeavors. Sure, you could study any of the arts, and learn the mechanics of them, but to be really good, you needed to have been born with a talent for them. I felt that if I had the talent to write, I would learn how to write over time, with practice, and by absorbing the art and craft of telling stories through reading stories. A long road, but one that leads to an authentically personal style.

My first published piece was a review of the war game Vietnam which appeared Vol 1 No. 8 of Strategy & Tactics magazine, "A Journal of American Wargaming." in the 1967. The magazine is still being published today. I did a few spot art illustrations for it as well. I doubt I was paid for the piece or the art. My first paid piece was a review, in some magazine, some time in the 1980's I believe, for the Franklin Spelling Ace, one of those stand alone spell checkers they had around before the personal computer became affordable and widely available. My latest published piece is upcoming next month in the local writer's group yearly literary journal, Barstol & Grand. I have a short story in Vol 10, though I waived the modest payment for a few extra copies of journal. And, well, except for the a small collection of rejection slips for my fantasy novel and science fiction novella and short story in 1980, that is the sum of my lifetime achievement in writing, save for writing and self-publishing sixteen novels, six novellas and a short story all of which I wrote after the age of 60, the product of all those long years on the road to a dream and a lot of free time.

Not the most impressive resume, for a lifetime of writing when viewed through a conventional lens. Nor a particularly compelling argument for talent, as opposed to being formally taught the techniques of writing as a craft. And yet I still, perhaps foolishly, believe in talent over training. And I still find something unsettlingly wrong in thinking of stories in three acts, plot points, and character arcs. I think writing fiction is a process of breathing a ghost of life to a life in words as it is felt. Not constructing some sort of facsimile of it according to a blueprint. 

A MILLION PAGE VIEWS ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! !

My modest blog has now just crossed the million page view milestone today! 1000346 to be exact. I would've never in a million years dreamed that being the author of a 782 blog posts I would have attracted a million views. And counting! We certainly live in an age of wonder. 

I am truly humbled by the idea that my (apparently) tens of thousands of fans have looked in on this humble blog over one million times in the past eleven and a half years. I want to thank each and everyone of you for the support your visits have given me and my poor attempts to entertain and inform you. As well as for the comments you have contributed. Even the ones advertising some sort of scam or another that I've had to delete. It is nice to think that you believe my poor blog is such a valuable advertising platform. This is one of the proudest days in my life....

...Wait. What are you saying? Really, you think its bots rather than people who are visiting my blog... That the 2,000 to 3,000 plus visitors every day are not real human fans of my stories at all... That they're just bots crawling the web and sucking up content for who knows what reason? Really? Really... Oh well...

I am truly humbled by the idea that literally hundred of thousands of bots have looked in on my humble blog over one million times in the past eleven and a half years. I want to thank each and every bot of you for the support your visits have given me and my poor attempts to entertain and inform you. As well as for the comments you have contributed. Even the ones advertising some sort of scam or another that I've had to delete. It is nice to think that you believe my poor blog is such a valuable advertising platform. It is one of the proudest days in my life that my writing has become part of the digital DNA of our future robotic overlords.

SINCERLY, THANK ALL OF YOU, FRIENDS, HUMANS, AND BOTS! IT HAS, AND CONTINUES TO BE FUN TO WRITE THIS BLOG.

The Saturday Morning Post ( No. 207)

THE SATURDAY MORNING BOOK REPORT

Sticking with detective fiction, but this time around with a fantasy world thrown in. I'm also sticking with rereading books from my collection. The best of my collection. In theory.

My reviewer criteria. I like light, entertaining novels. I like smaller scale stories rather than epics. I like character focused novels featuring pleasant characters, with a minimum number of unpleasant ones. I greatly value clever and witty writing. I like first person, or close third person narratives. I dislike a lot of "head jumping" between POVs and flashbacks. I want a story, not a puzzle. While I am not opposed to violence, I dislike gore for the sake of gore. I find long and elaborate fight, action, and battle sequences tedious. Plot holes and things that happen for the convenience of the author annoy me. And I fear I'm a born critic in that I don't mind pointing out what I don't like in a story. However, I lay no claim to be the final arbitrator of style and taste, you need to decide for yourself what you like or dislike in a book.

Your opinions are always welcome. Comment below. 

Petty Pewter Gods by Glen Cook   C-

This installment was, I believe, the next book I needed to reread the series in order. I didn't bother to look back on my posts to find out, mostly just going by what I remembered of the covers. Since they are mostly stand alone stories with continuing characters a background timeline, it didn't matter too much. I knew this was likely my most least liked book in the series, and as you can see, it hopefully is. I think I've gotten a bit more critical over the decades, which likely explains just how much I did not like this book, because I certainly liked it more in the past than I did now or I would've had stronger memories of just how much I disliked it. Oh well.

Like most of these stories, the action takes place in the fantasy world, and in the city of TunFaire, where every imaginable fantasy creature, and really anything else as well, exists, including things like dinosaurs, and in this case, gods, of a sort. Though the gods appear to have been refugees from some other dimension. There is a section of the city of TunFaire, the Dream Quarter, with its Street of Dreams along which all the religions of the city have their temples, the more believers they have, the higher up the street their temple is. As they loose followers, the they must move their temple down the hill towards the river. A new religion has arrived with more followers than the two at the lowest end of the street, so one of them must go, and going means the end of its pantheon of gods, or at least they become mortal without followers. To choose which of these two religion loses their temple, the commission of gods have created a quest for a special key, and our hero, Garrett is recruited by both sets of gods, very old school gods and unpleasant gods a that, to find that key.

Now, these books are a tongue in cheek satire of the old school PI school of stories, with the PI being great hunks of men who women are always throwing themselves at, which, I guess, is a trope that hasn't aged well. And in this case, a cynical view of religions in general. The problems in this book, are numerous, even overlooking women and female gods always throwing themselves at Garrett. Mostly it is an account of Garrett being chased and captured by the various factions of gods who then try to compel him to find the key for them. This happens time and again, giving Garrett little agency. This time the banter between him and the Dead Man, is often lame, not very witty at all. The sort of "found family" vibe other stories have by including a wide cast of reoccurring characters is largely missing in this story. And the mystery that Garrett and the Dead Man must solve, such as it is, is very confusing. All in all, a very tedious book, one in which I did a lot of skimming this time around, earning it, at best, its C- grade.  I chose it only because it was the next in the series. If I had known just how bad I would find it this time around, I would've skipped it entirely. Oh well.