Writers Reading

I imagine that when a sausage maker tastes a sausage made by another sausage maker, they consider the sausage in more detail than, "I like it" or "I don't." They would consider the casing, the blend of meats, the grind, and the mix of spices that went into the making of the sausage. It would be more than mere lunch meat to them.

By the same token, I'd think this would apply to writers reading the work of other writers. A writer, when reading the work of another writer, would naturally feel the desire to look deeper into the story and writing than most readers. Moreover, writers should have a deeper insight into the creative process involved with crafting the story than most readers, because they know how the sausage er, story was made.

Being a writer myself, this seemed pretty obvious to me. I was so certain this was the case that I set out to write this essay on the subject. It just makes sense. Stories, and writing stories are not just lunchmeat to writers. They're our bread and butter... Well, you get the idea. When we writers read what other writers have written, we can image them writing it; or rather, ourselves writing it, or not, depending on the writing.

But while trying to organize this essay, I found it harder and harder to distill what was my writers' eye from what was just my reader's taste in writing and stories. Every insight seemed to flow from my taste in stories - a taste that has evolved over time - and not from being a sausage maker, er, writer. Indeed, it seems that the writer in me is just the reader in me, expressed.

Still... I have a blog spot to fill.

I would like to say that being a writer, I have an insider's view of how the books get written, and with it, an insights into the choices that authors made in how they tell their stories. A sharper, more knowledgeable eye for the flaws in the stories. But damn, I'm far from certain that I can say that.

With several years of book reviews on this blog, I can look back on the books I've read. Not that I actually have, mind you, but I could. But if I did, I think I would find that for most of the books I loved, I didn't delve too deeply into discussing why the author and their writing worked for me. The fact that it just clicked was enough. The opposite can be said for books that didn't click. In those cases, I often delved into the reasons why they did not work for me, highlighting the authorial decisions the writers made that I wouldn't have; if only to justify my panning of the work. But, as I've said, thinking about this process, I find it hard to distill my writer's experience from my reader's taste.

Let's take a recent example of a historical/fantasy book I recently DNF'ed (review coming in a few months.) As a reader, one of the reasons for DNF'ing it was that I felt that it was trying way to hard to educate me. I love to learn about the past in well researched fiction. A well founded story can "teach" you a lot about certain aspects of the period the story covers, without drawing attention to this aspect of the story. But in the first third of this book, the part that I read before putting it aside, I felt, as a reader, that the author was taking time out from the story to lecture me, the reader, on very specific aspects of Victorian English society. And by lecture, I mean lecture. The author essentially put aside the telling of the story to turn to the reader to tell them about the historical facts the author wanted to tell us about. As a reader, this always annoys me. I'm reading the book for the story. If there are things that I don't understand or want to know about, there is Wikipedia. I resent this assumption of ignorance on the part of an author. 

Reading it as a writer, I felt including scenes not necessary for the story or the characters merely for the interjection of the information the author wanted to tell us, the readers is clunky, at best. I suppose if an author is writing omni-present third person with multiple POV, as in this case, they have the freedom to shove whatever they want into a story. Whereas a close third person or first person narrative this information would needed to be introduced in the thoughts of the characters or in dialog. As a writer, this pausing of the narration to insert a Wikipedia article about something you want to draw attention to, especially incidental information peripheral to the story is, in my opinion, lazy writing. I believe that an author should be able to bring an aspects of the past to light over the course of the story, without turning to the audience and just explaining the it. Readers will pick things up on whatever it is as they go along, if it's important enough to the story to make it feel organic to the story. And if they want to know more, the 21st century reader can look it up in less than a minute.

I am not the only person who was struck by these inserted lectures. The blogger/reviewer, a SF anthology editor, who brought my attention to the book, also noted this rather heavy handed promotion of the author's agenda in the book, and he felt it detracted from the story as well. He, unlike me, found the story compelling enough to not only read it in its entirety, but praise it, which is why I tracked the book down in the first place.

I'm fine with writers having an agenda, if they weave it into the fabric of the story with some finesse. But in this case it was a ham-fisted attempt to highlight the ills of the historical society the story was set in. As a writer, I found this inexplicable, indeed inexcusable, since this is not the work of a new author. The author is an award winning author whose first novel was published in 1982. 

But does it matter how I look at it? Looking at it's 4 star plus rating on Goodreads, probably not. Indeed, this is seems always to be the case with books I dislike, and criticize for their writing; most readers clearly don't mind the things I do, as much as I do. 

Can I blame that on my writer's mind?

Does this mean that most readers read books like eating lunchmeat, while I read books like a sausage maker eating lunchmeat, i.e. curious to know how and what it's made of? 

I would like to believe so, since being a writer, I had aught to be more aware of the choices that go into the writing a story. But as I said above, I have my doubts this is the case.

I think the main difference in my vs most readers' ratings might be that most readers enjoy and rate stories for the stories they tell, not on the writing. If the story draws them in, the writing becomes invisible. The story lives in their imagination, with the words only acting as prompts for their own imagination. As long as the words do that, it doesn't matter how artfully they're arranged. It also seems that if the story grabs them, many readers are willing to overlook what I consider laziness in writing; cardboard characters, plot holes, and well worn tropes and plotting for the convenience of the writer that, if the reader takes the time to think about, make no logical sense.

I, on the other hand, value the style and cleverness of the writing above all other aspects of the story. And I value stories which make sense, even when you think about them. I can't say if these requirements are because I'm a writer, or because of my love for writing in and of itself, was such that I became a writer. I've always been interested in writing, and have done so all my life, so I have no baseline to measure how much of my criticisms are based on my taste in books, vs my interest, instincts, and efforts in writing my own books.

But is this the case for all writers? I dare not speak for writers. So what do you think? If you're a writer, do you think knowing how the sausage is made affects how you read and enjoy stories?  And if you're not a writer, just a reader, do you still notice what the author is doing in the way stories are written to achieve the affects they ae hoping to achieve? 

The Saturday Morning Post (No. 119) SUNDAY EXTRA!

Like our previous review, we have something unusual for this EXTRA EDITION; A book of short stories. I'm not a fan of short fiction, as a rule. Most short fiction is just a setup for some sort of punch line at the end. An unfunny joke. I make  exceptions when the short fiction features continuing characters, like Sherlock Holmes or Bertie Wooster, or when the writing is entertaining in and of itself, without relying on the story. So how does this collection of short stories fare?

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. 

Tales From the Folly by Ben Aaronovitch  B-

I discovered The Rivers of London book, about the time the first book was released, and for a number of years afterwards I read each new book in the series as it became available, though their release/availability in the US was, at time, rather helter-skelter. I eventually lost track of them. I believe I've read one or two of the later books since I started this review series, but I'm too lazy to find and  link to them. In any event, searching for something to read from the library, I came across the series again, and I was most interested in a novella he wrote set in 1920's New York. Alas, it wasn't available as an ebook, so I settled on this one, which was.

As you can see, I enjoyed the stories, the "B" grade is for the telling of them, rather than for the stories being told; since most of them were very slight indeed; feeling incomplete and not very satisfactory as stories. Aaronovitch is another of those British writers who always strikes me as clever and witty, whose work I read for their writing rather than the story.

The stories are divided into several sections, featuring Peter Grant the original main character of the series, along with a number of side characters who have apparently been featured in some of the stories as the series has gone on. Given the nature of the stories, this is for only readers who have read at least some of the novels, otherwise none of the stories will make much sense at all.

The Saturday Morning Post (No. 118)

 

This week, for a change, we have a movie to review. A movie adaptation of a book I've read. I had come across this movie before, but when I came across some music for the score of the movie in my music playlist feed, I tracked down the movie itself and found it was free on YouTube. So I watched it.

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 Lightkeepers (2009) Written and Directed by Danial Adams  C

I found the film here on YouTube. It may not be here when you see this review, who knows? You can find the Rotten Apple reviews of the movie here as well. To save you a click, its tomatometer score is 20% and popcornmeter score is 45%. 

As I mentioned above, I had come across this movie from a different direction some years ago - from the novel it is adopted from. I'm not a movie person, so I didn't follow up on it at the time, and only watched it now, because I could do so for free. 

From the scores I've quoted, it should be clear that this is not a very good movie. But what really annoys me is this Danial Adams fellow. Not only is he apparently a bad director, but he pirated the story and claimed it as his own. Almost. If you wait, the very final entry on the end credits reads; "Story Inspired by "The Woman Haters" by Joseph C. Lincoln." Inspired by? That's a bold-faced lie in little print. It was Joe Lincoln's The Woman Haters from 1911, beat by beat. 

I haven't read the book in some time, but I have it, and glancing through it; from the opening scene to the end of the book, I could see episodes in this movie that follow the story line of the book, including using the same names for the characters. Anything this Adams wrote would have been what would have been expected adopting a novel to a movie. Why, there are illustrations in my copy of the book that could just as well illustrate scenes in the movie. The only thing that this Adams fellow changed is the back story for the young "woman hater" for no good reason. It's just as trite as Joe's. 

I watched part of a Mansfield Park movie based on the Jane Austen novel, and it was less faithful than The Lightkeepers, but was still considered an adoption of that novel. Now, I will admit that adding "From the Novel, The Woman Haters, by Joseph C. Lincoln" somewhere on the movie poster and in the opening credits would not likely have sold more than three additional tickets, unlike putting Jane Austen's name on a movie that only vaguely resembles the book. But still, to put in small print at the very end of the movie, when everyone has left, that it was "inspired" by Joe Lincoln's book is a lie. The bright side is that Joe Lincoln seems to have dodged a bullet, in that this movie is bad movie. 

The Lightkeepers is bafflingly lame in execution: A number of cuts don't match, and the entire film has a herky-jerky stop-and-start lack of momentum. - Chuck Bowen, Slant Magazine

The movie is about a lighthouse keeper on Cape Cod who "hates" women for reasons that we learn over the course of the movie. A mysterious young man washes up on the shore from a passing steamer, who gives an obviously fake name, and who is in no hurry to leave the lighthouse, also for reasons we learn over the course of the movie. The lighthouse keeper's assistant has just quit, so the young man takes his place, temporarily. They bond over their disgust of womenkind, a disgust that is tested, and found wanting, when two women take a nearby cottage for five weeks. 

As the critic I quoted above suggests, the pacing of this movie is off. The events almost seemed like they took place in just the span of three or four days, rather than over a summer. Scenes run on too long, with too few scenes to suggest the passage of any time at all. Costumes and the settings were authentic looking, but very limited, I suspect because Cape Cod is a very crowded place these days, and if it was shot on location, they would likely have few angles to shot the lighthouse and beach from without having to do a lot of CGI stuff in post to eliminate its modern surroundings. I'm no judge of acting, but I guess it was serviceable, though not with a lot of chemistry, in my opinion.

The Woman Haters is far from my favorite Joe Lincoln story, so it is not surprising that I wasn't very fond of the movie made from it. It seemed an odd choice, given all of the good Joe Lincoln books... 

Joseph Lincoln and his books are pretty much forgotten these days, the fate of almost every author, no matter how popular they happened to be in their age. Indeed, popularity in their time almost guarantees it. And yet, there was one more Joe Lincoln story made into a movie in this century...2009 to be exact. I can also watch it on YouTube, but for $3.99. It's called The Golden Boys, a film adoption of Joe Lincoln's Cap'n Eri, However, it tomatometer rating is 31% and popcornmeter rating is 22%. Even with good actors, it seems to be hard to drag Joe Lincoln's stories into the 21st century. 

Fields and Fence Lines (Part Two)

A month ago I posted a piece in which, using the metaphor of fields and fence lines, I compared my talent to a field or pasture, and its limits as my fence lines. Fence lines that I could look over to see what was likely beyond my talent, and fences that I could, perhaps, climb over, if I cared to.

I believe I concluded that some of those fence lines were a matter of personal taste, while others defined the natural limits of my personality and intelligence. Let's explore more of those fence lines.

This installment talks about one fence line, at least, that pretty much insures I'm never going to write a book that will become a classic.

Great books, classics that last the test of time, usually have certain characteristics. Not all have all these characteristics, but have most do. When I look around the pasture of my talent, I don't see many/any of those characteristics. They are not in my skill set. I have to look over the fences to find them. Still let's have a look over the fence to see what I lack in this regard.

One of the adjacent pastures that, I think, would need be enclosed in the fences of one's talent in order to write classic great stories is that of intellectualism. One needs to think in terms of, and have a passion, for "themes." 

When I hear people talking about the truly great books one of its characteristic is often that the book offers deep themes that make them think, and/or challenge the way they think. There are even readers who, finding a story itself unpleasant to read, persist in doing so because they feel it's good for them. It offers lessons to be learned. They hold their nose and swallow their medicine. And pleasant or unpleasant they remember those books because of the thought-provoking themes linger long after they finish reading them. Books, when they click with a reader for whatever reason, stick in their minds long after they are read.

Alas, this type of story is on the far side of the fence for me. I'm not a great and deep thinker. I'd like to think that's a choice, but I'm not the one to say so. I just know that I am quite content not to waste time and words pondering questions with no answers, though I know is amuses many people. I am quite content to take life as it appears. I'm not curious enough to want to peek behind the curtain. 

It is the same when it comes to social issues. I've come to understand that everything takes time, usually much more time than we'd like to think it should take. Change happens at its own pace. Still, when I look at the big picture, the history of mankind is going in the right direction (left) slowly, but surely, even if it moves with all the speed of a glacier. Knowing this, I don't get too deeply wrapped up in all the fleeting issues of the day. Headlines, if that, are enough. Oh, and I'm not a very detail orientated person.

This mild mannered indifference extends to the study of humanity itself. I have no interest in human phycology and so I have nothing useful to say about us. I am quite content to take us as we appear on the surface. Basically, people are strange, and having said that, I'm content to leave there. 

My explanation, or excuse, for being content with my limits, content to stay in my pasture on these issues is that I'm an old and simple philosophical Taoist. I'm a "The Way That is Spoken is not The Way," sort of person. Instead of living by words, I live largely intuitively. I am content to "know" what I know without the need to put that knowledge into words, into a set of "facts." As I said above, I'm content to live with mysteries. And I don't do details.

So, in summery, I have no interest in exploring Western Philosophies, no interest in exploring current world or social affairs, or human psychology, no interest in exploring humanity; all great themes explored by great literature.  Nor do I have any special knowledge or brilliant insights to offer readers; i.e. things people claim to find in great literature, as well as in any book that people remember after they close that book. 

Given my lack of knowledge and interest in these subjects, I don't think I could leap this fence, write a heavy book, even if I wanted to. Which I don't. As a result, you'll find none - or little - of those things in my books; by choice as well as lack of talent. So, "Deep and/or Universal Themes" is unchecked in the checklist of the type of stories I can write.

Stay tuned for more unchecked boxes. There are more. Many more.

The Saturday Morning Post (No. 117) SUNDAY EXTRA!

 

This EXTRA! installment, marks a return to the Regency Romances of Georgette Heyer. 

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

Faro's Daughter by Georgette Heyer  C+

Faro is a game of chance, and the orphaned daughter in this book title is the niece of a widow who has turned her London house into an unofficial, and illegal gambling house. This venture has not gone well, and the aunt is in great debt. However, a young lord has fallen in love with her niece, who is, of course, viewed as not the thing by society. His mother fears that the niece will marry her son for his money, and requests that this young lord's older cousin, a rich man about town, try to buy off this gambling house's girl. He does, offering her money to drop his cousin, an offer which she finds insulting, since she had no intention of marrying him in the first place. And in mutual anger, they both set out to better each other in a game of wits. The ultimate end is predictable.

Tropes are both good and bad, or so I've been led to understand. Many readers, at least of genre books, expect to find the customary tropes of their genre in their stories, since they often are the essence of the genre fiction. On the other hand, an over reliance of them, or the use of generic tropes, is a sign of a less accomplished author. These Heyer Regency Romances all have her trademark tropes, which include a single, handsome, cool, competent and rather domineering male, and an unmarried, level-headed, young woman who, at first, dislikes the domineering male, but eventually falls for his masterful charm, and he for her beauty and common sense. Heyer has used this scenario with various variations, in her romances to date, which, taken in small doses, can be very entertaining. But, after a half dozen or more of these stories over the last several months, I've had my fill of them for now. It will be some time before I return to Heyer's romances. Still, I am going to give her mystery stories a try, though I'd have to drive down to the library to do that, since there are no ebook versions available at my library. Such a pain...

Note: I have done so, and as this is posted, I have one of her mysteries in hand. Review in a few months...

The Saturday Morning Post (No. 116)

 

This week a double feature, a two novel series by one of my old standbys. Do they hold up to expectations?

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. 

Bel Lamington by D E Stevenson  C

This book relates the life of the title character during a six month period. Bel is a twenty-something (four?) year old woman. Her parents were killed in a car crash, so she was raised by an aunt in the country. When her aunt died, she inherited just enough money to learn how to be a secretary to make an independent living. For two years she has been working for an importer in London as a typist, and eventually as the personal secretary of one of the partners in the firm. Lonely in the city, she still yearns for the country, and, like the cover art shows, had made a rooftop garden out one of her windows. There she meets a painter, who found his way there because he likes to climb mountains, and when in cities, climbs buildings and roofs. He talks her into posing for a painting. She briefly falls in love with him... and from there, has a variety of other experiences and trials at work and in her life, of which I won't spoil. It is a nice snapshot of the life of a single woman in London in the late 1950's.

My problem with this book, and indeed with the writing of D E Stevenson in general, is that she "reports," rather than spins her stories. By this I mean that she writes her stories in a rather cold, clinical, and unemotional way. Oh, her characters have lots of emotions, but her stories are often related with as much heart as a newspaper news article. Or at least that how it seems to me. Sometimes this unemotional storytelling is more evident in some stories than in others. It was evident in this story.

I find that many of her characters are not particularly likable. In this case, Bel is a strange mix of competence, and overwhelming timidness, such that I found it hard to reconcile who and what she was. She strikes everyone as levelheaded, but then acts in ways that are not at all level headed. For example she panics at the prospect of staying at a country inn when her boyfriend's car breaks down, because she doesn't like the look of the owner. While all this is quite possible, people are strange, after all, I find it hard to get into the mind of such a character and makes sense of the character. Plus, given Stevenson's very remote way of telling her story, I found it hard to care for her. But that's just me. 

The happy ending came as no surprise. But at least there is one.

Bel goes on to be featured in another D E Stevenson novel, the book below.

Fletchers End D E Stevenson  C

This second of the Bel Lamington novels features her friend, pictured on the cover. Bel gets married in this novel, and they buy an old house in the country known as Fletchers End. Over the course of the novel, we get to know the history of the house and the people who lived there. The romance of her friend with a rather irresponsible navy lieutenant commander adds what drama there is in the story.

My same remarks about the coolness of D E Stevenson's treatment of her characters and story in general apply here. What might have been a cozy story, is lost in the fairly heartlessness of its telling. The truth is that after these two books, I don't think I'll be all that eager to read more Stevenson books any time soon.

The Strangest Thing...

 

I was scrolling through my YouTube feed when I came across the video on the center left of the screen shot above. It proved to be an "album" of piano pieces by a Japanese composer/pianist, Yuriko Nakamura. Some music on YouTube Music also appears on You Tube channels and vise vera, and this is an example of that; a song with just a static version of the cover. I clicked on the video and found this;

The only reason I believe it appeared on my feed, was that I had been listening to some eastern music during my morning writing session on YouTube music. Which just goes to show you how much "they"  know about you and what you're up to, at least on the web.

And from there I went to the home page of the musician, and found this;

So why the curiosity?

It was the fact that the cover art for this collection of piano pieces is one of my paintings. Indeed the two covers on the left of the home page above are both my paintings. One is Upland Road in Winter which you can find HERE. The second one, Woods Along the Harniss Road you can view HERE.

Let me tell you, it is very strange experience to find your work as an the cover art of a Japanese new age-ish musician while scrolling through videos on YouTube. And rather cool as well.

The paintings were likely found on and downloaded from my DeviantArt gallery. It's a place where a lot of people go looking for art they can use. I don't watermark my paintings, and have no problem with people downloading them for their own use and enjoyment.

While I release all my work under a Creative Commons License, that license does require that if used, I be credited as the artist, and that it should not be used for commercial purposes without my permission. And since I was neither credited, nor was my permission sought to use it, and these videos and songs are commercial ventures for the benefit of, I presume, Yuriko, the use of my art is clearly not in accordance to the CC license. Hmmm...

Looking into the matter further, it appears that the music, along with the cover art, was uploaded to YouTube by Distrokid, a company that operates something like D2D, in that musicians use it to upload their work to music apps like YouTube and Spotify, whose Yuriko Nakamura page on Spotify is below also has my artwork for those albums.

From what I could find on the Distrokid site, the person uploading the music would also need to provide the cover art just like self-publishing authors do. Now I don't know who uploaded this music, whether it was Yuriko herself, or someone else, but in any event, I doubt I would have any easy way to reach out to them and at least request credit as the artist.

I suppose there could be some remedy for this, I could file a complaint with YouTube or some such thing, but I have no interest in pursuing anything like that. Why bother? Its use costs me nothing, and displays my work. Besides, I'm rather flattered that someone would choose my art for their album cover. Though I don't know exactly why they chose those particular ones, since I didn't see any title the paintings would apply to.

Besides, I am perfectly aware, and have been from the very beginning, that if you convert your analog work to digital and upload it to the internet, you have conceded control of it. Its use is out of your control, and there is no point losing sleep over that fact. I suppose, if you are trying to make money from your work, you might be tempted to try to find and put out all the little fires of piracy sites, but it is largely a futile effort. You'd best just look on it as free advertising.

So there you go, an illustration of how connected we are. Weirdly connected.

Strangely enough, I just used the Harniss Road piece for a recent posting myself.