Sorry I’ve been even less attentive to this blog than normal.  My reason—yes, reason, not excuse or justification—is that I’m starting a new book.  Really just the proposal package, which means the first three chapters, a synopsis, and a cover letter, but doing that requires that I pretty much know where I’m going with the entire story.  Sticking with my typical method, I can’t share too much about the story, but I will tell you that it mixes a Korean boogeyman myth with teen girl lit.  Yeah, that’s right, and I dare you to use that to figure out what I have mind. 

It’s Spring Break at SLCC so I’ve set the goal of finishing the sample chapters by this Saturday.  Three chapters, roughly 7-8,000 words, in a week shouldn’t be too tough.  As of this morning I’m to about 5,500 words and am nearly done with chapter two.  Right on pace.  It’s impossible to know if a rough draft is good or not, especially as our emotions so often lie to us during composition, but I feel pretty good given how new and different this genre and perspective are.  I’m writing from the POV of a 14-year-old Korean-American girl, first person, so there’s a lot that’s new there.  I’ll keep you updated, hopefully with greater frequency once the rough draft of these chapters is finished.

In preparation for writing this new story, I’ve been reading some teen girl lit with a strong voice and powerful, traumatic emotions.  That isn’t all I’ve been reading, but it has added titles to the list that I wouldn’t likely have picked up otherwise.  So here’s a rundown of the books and authors I’ve been reading in recent months and why:

- Sara Zarr.  Sara’s a friend and member of several local writer’s organizations with me, and I’ve been hearing about her work for a long time.  It isn’t the type of stuff I read normally, but this new story gave me a good reason to try her writing.  It’s good.  Very good, in fact, if Sweathearts is any indication.  (And I hear her other books are better.)  So I’m picking up Story of a Girl (her National Book Award nominated debut) and Once Was Lost next.    

- Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson.  Another teen book, very strong voice and equally difficult subject matter.  It was very good, though I did feel that sometimes the dark, jaded slant of the protagonist was a little excessive.  Dark humor can lose it’s theraputic value if used too often, which I felt occasionally made this protagonist feel just a touch artificial.  But that’s pretty particular criticism; overall, very well done.

- Dune by Frank Herbert.  I’ve read this book before, of course, but not since I was a teen.  I knew I liked it, but I’d forgotten just how much.  Aside from Herbert’s affinity or jumping heads within a scene (which I sometimes find distracting) and his italicizing thoughts (which always irritates me when done as frequently as Herbert does), it’s a near-perfect book.  Great drama, fine characterization, fantastic dialogue, all communicating really complex and important ideas.  The rest of the series is less cohesive than the first book, but it’s definitely a worthwhile read.  It’s a great study into what it means to be human and how intricately that is tied to our ability to hope.  It will always be one of my top recommendations.

- Kate DiCamillo.  I’ve made no secret of the fact that I’m not as familiar with children’s lit as I am adult, and that since I started writing for kids I’ve been trying to catch up.  In that rush, I’ve found no children’s writer that I more admire and even envy than Kate.  The Magician’s Elephant, The Tale of Despereaux, The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane, all fantastic.  They’re books I wish I had written.  I still want to be Neil Gaiman when I grow up, put now I’d like a bit of DiCamillo thrown in as well.

- Terry Pratchett’s The Fifth Elephant.  A Discworld novel I’d not read before, it was typical Pratchett, which means it is anything but typical.  Life is always better with a little Pratchett added to the mix.

- Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations and R.L. Stine’s Welcome to Dead House.  The first I reread and the second I read for the first time in preparation for UELMA a few weeks ago. 

- I just started Dan Wells’ I Am Not a Serial Killer.  While I’m not much of a horror reader, I’m impressed by Dan’s craftsmanship and his ability to tread the very fine line he needs to tell the story without losing sympathy for the protagonist.

- The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins.  Good, well-written story, but I’m not as high on it as many others.  I found that a number of things in the story felt implausible, which made the experience less authentic than I would have liked.

- Next on the list (if I ever find the time) The Gathering Storm by Brandon Sanderson and Robert Jordan.  Hey, I put them in the order I consider proper given how the book was written.     

Adios.

Tangent:…

(Tangent from the tangent: If one is of a schizophrenic persuasion, chasing impulse and flighty ideas like a dog spinning at cars on the freeway, is any thought really tangential? It’s not like we have a strong, solid baseline from which to diverge. Well, back to the initial thought.)

Isn’t it cool that storytellers rule the world? I find that truth to be totally awesome, to use a Dashnerism. (Dashnerism: noun—A word used with great frequency by James Dashner and which is, without exception, completely incongruous with the world of Jane Austin, unlike James’s name; common Dashnerisms include “totally”, “awesome”, and “totally awesome”.)

What do I mean? Simply that story is structure, as William Goldman says. This doesn’t mean that screenplays include three acts or that novels wrap up with a denouement, no more than consciousness means having the physical ability to sense the outside world. The truth is so much greater and grander and unfathomable than that. The structure of story is nothing less than meaning; story is the interrelating of stuff (anything really) in such a way that relevance can be drawn from the raw material of life, thought, and imagination.

I’ve been thinking about this since teaching an adult learning class on writing last night. (Thanks to Brenda Bench and her class for an interesting and enjoyable evening, as always.) The presentation was on using POV to achieve the three objectives of story simultaneously, and I got to talking about how we can only make sense of anything by incorporating it into a story. Here’s an example: China has a population of about 1.2 billion; the U.S. population is around 300 million. So tell me what that means. No, “China has more people that the U.S.,” doesn’t count. That’s like saying red and blue are different colors: meaningless. Can’t do it, can you—at least, not without placing these numbers into a story, such as: Because of their massive workforce, China will supplant the U.S. this century as the world’s greatest economic power because of its power; or, as environmental destruction and global climate change continue to intensify, China’s massive population will result in far greater negative consequences than the U.S.’s smaller citizenry, which is why China will not overcome the U.S. as the world’s dominant economy. One story is the story of environmentalism, one is of means of production. What are these, really, but perspectives or points of view and the narratives that go along with such?

No fact matters in isolation, only in conjunction with other facts. The structure of aligning information is story. Story is the substance of who we are as individuals, cultures, religions, nations, and even as a species. With that being so, a storyteller becomes something a good deal more than the proverbial daydreamer detached from things that really matter. We’re more akin to superheroes, possessed of mystical powers to manipulate reality according to our desires and designs. All the truly influential individuals in history have understood this or have benefited from someone who did, whether politicians, scientists, artists, business people, philosophers, or whatever. History isn’t just written by the winners; the meaning of life and its substance is created by the tellers of tales.

Which leaves only one question: am I, Clint Johnson, also known as R.D. Henham and a slue of less respectful appellations I won’t mention, a superhero or supervillain? There is a certain romanticism about being bad….

May one be a  super-anti-hero? Now come on, there’s no way a question that important could be considered tangential.

I don’t see many movies, but over my annual holiday month off—and with my writing career mostly stuck in waiting mode—I had time to see a few movies recently.  So I thought I’d comment on them.

Note that I said “comment” not “review.”  I don’t plan on reviewing movies on this blog, or much of anything else, truth be told, including politics.  I may comment on anything at any time, but that’s not the same.  The one thing I may formally review is books, but only books that I really love.  When I read a book I love, or at least like very much, I’ll mention it here; doesn’t matter if it was sent to me for a blurb or just something I picked up, it works pretty much the same way.  So, for those who send me books, be aware that I’m not an easy blurb or reviewer.  Quite the opposite.  I’ve found that I’m probably quite stingy when it comes to formal praise of others’ work to be used for marketing purposes.  I hope this doesn’t discourage anyone, because I do enjoy giving recommendations that I truly mean for whatever purpose might be beneficial.  Just understand that I don’t recommend many books, even books that most others feel are good or even great, and I don’t do negative or neutral reviews.  So if you approach me for a recommendation of some kind and don’t get it, please understand that I may not have had time to devote to reading it thoroughly, or I may not have loved it.  There are plenty of fine writers, many very successful, whose work would and has earned exactly the same response. 

So why even try?  Why approach an elitist curmudgeon with the puerile sensibilities of a mentally deficient hamster?  Because when I do give a recommendation I mean every single word, so it may be worth a go.

Films, on the other hand, I won’t review.  I’ll just tell you what I think.  So today I’ll tell you what I thought, in various levels of detail, about the movies The Blind Side, Avatar, and Sherlock Holmes. 

The Blind Side I liked a lot, even though it is a great example of my claim there is no such thing as non-fiction and that the statement “based on a true story” is ultimately irrelevant.  As someone once said—just who, I have no idea—”If the truth be told, I’d rather hear a story.”  It’s a good story, and so shouldn’t surprise people that it’s true but not factual.  In fact, I liked it so much that I won’t say anything other than go see it because I think you’ll like it.

On Avatar and Sherlock Holmes I will be somewhat more elaborate, which in this case isn’t good.

In the past few weeks I’ve seen a number of film critics and commentators recommending Avatar as one of the top films of the year, and I find this a bad, bad sign about the future of cinema.  Now, don’t misunderstand me: the film was visually stunning and the 3-D wasn’t gimmicky, which is an admirable move in the narrative form.  I enjoyed the movie mostly, though I won’t see it again and there were times when I found myself on the brink of boredom.  And while the story was decidedly cliched, predictable, and thematically didactic, it wasn’t any more so than most blockbusters, especially given recent history (the latest Transformers film, anyone?). 

You might tell from what I’ve said so far that I don’t greatly enjoy many movies, certainly not as many as I did before I started work as a professional storyteller.  But what I disliked the most about Avatar and its reception by many critics and the public is the clear foreshadowing that in future years I’m going to enjoy even fewer movies.  The Hollywood blockbuster, to which I have no ideological objection, is moving ever more toward excess glitz to cover anorexic story.  But that’s always been true, you  might say.  Yes—but recently more and more movies have been getting away with it. 

There’s always been a strong strain of visual puritanism among movie-makers, which often expresses in a fixation with technique even at the expense of rhetorical effect on the story.  Typically, these films have made the indie circuit where they’re watched by other filmmakers and no one else.  But now CGI has become so advanced that it’s capable of entertaining mass audiences purely on the level of distinction, so much so it can distract from or even hide the poor narrative structure beneath all the glamour.  Avatar used revolutionary production techniques to communicate what is, frankly, an unremarkable story—and in many quarters is being celebrated for this.  As a fan and writer of speculative fiction, this really, really worries me.  For years the best sci-fi and fantasy stories were avoided by Hollywood because of how difficult—sometimes impossible—it was to do the settings justice.  Recently we’ve seen technology unlock the door barring some of the greatest stories ever told from the visual medium.  The Lord of the Rings trilogy is a fine example of technology being implimented in service to great story.  But with the door now open too many filmmakers are mistaking their visual tools for their product, not as a means of production.  Avatar is the most spectacular average story ever filmed, and is certainly paving the way for many more gigantic expressions of mediocrity.  

If you think I’m being too harsh, consider that Avatar and Dances with Wolves are essentially the same story at the archetypal level.  Their structures are nearly identical, as are their themes.  Yet watch the two and there is no question which is a great story and which is not.  I’m disappointed because Avatar could have established a new standard for visual storytelling, broadening the possibilities of the medium; instead it took something very old standard and unremarkable, wrapped it in a massive, intricate, and glitzy bow, and called it revolutionary.  A revolution means doing something that hasn’t been done before, something truly new.  Avatar puts all its creative energies into packaging the common, old, and trite.  There’s nothing revolutionary in that. 

And you know, I think I liked Sherlock Holmes even less.  Partly this is because Holmes inexplicably became more Iron Man than super slueth (only without the suit); partly it was because the resulting action/mystery balance was, well, decidedly unbalanced; partly it was because I figured out the great “mystery” of the film about ten minutes in, and I hate that.  But the whole, complete, and total reason I didn’t much enjoy Sherlock Holmes is because it never understood what story it was actually telling.  I can’t say much without giving the story away, so I’ll leave it at this: the story is about Holmes vs Holmes, but the movie thinks it’s about the audience vs the filmmaker.  Really.  The entire movie is spent trying to manipulate the emotions of the viewer through uncertainty, and the manipulation is both intellectually and emotionally obvious.  The great crisis of the film is one of belief, and that belief is Holmes’s; his perspective should have been the perspective of the audience.  If that had been so, then the audience would have travelled the difficult path the movie wanted to take them down, because the character would have been their vehicle.  (If anyone’s interested, this is an example of abused point of view.)  Instead, the film feels schizophrenic and dishonest, trying to force the audience along a different path from the characters while claiming a joint journey.  In many ways, it’s a mess.  An entertaining mess sometimes (it does have Robert Downey Jr. in it, after all), but those moments of cohesion and pleasure are spaced out by all the instances where the film completely forgets its own story and goes places it had no business going by pathways better left untaken.  If you’re interested in an example of undisciplined and rhetorically mediocre storytelling in spite of strong moments of material, then Sherlock Holmes is something you should probably see.  If you’re just looking for a good time, read Doyle’s stories or watch Basil Rathbone or Jeremy Brett, because you can do much better than this movie.

When GDC came out a few months ago, I thought I’d get some copies in the SLCC bookstore.  It isn’t often–or ever, to my knowledge–that employees of the college have had nationally published novels to their name.  I assumed the bookstore would be ebullient to sell a homegrown masterpiece.  Instead, I found them… what’s a mix between indifferent and disdainful?  Well, whatever the word, it described them fairly well.  Eventually, they gave me the standard arrangement for self-published authors: twenty books bought on consignment for sixty days.  Basically, they were covering themselves in anticipation of selling no copies, and after sixty days of indulging me would tell me to take my wares elsewhere.

After two months, they were out of copies.  That changed things. 

So, I just got back from the bookstore, which bought ten more copies—this time not on consignment.  Apparently, they are no longer worried about being able to sell copies.  Can you tell this post has been written in a little bit of smug mode?

I just can’t help it.  I found out today that people have been stealing my book from the bookstore!  While this may not exactly be ethical, I find that really cool.  Now, it’s cool whenever people read my book; it still stuns me a bit that this is so.  It’s even better when people think enough of the book to buy it.  Best of all is when people tell me, in that special shallow-breathed enthusiasm, that they loved the book.  But there’s something special about knowing that people out there consider my book important enough to break the law to attain.  There’s something very charming about the thought of dashing thieves willing to live on the lam for the sake of great literature—or bizarre kids stories about dragons colliding with cows, however you characterize GDC. 

Anyway, I thought it was cool, and it made me happy.

There was been a J.D. Salinger sighting!  At least if you count the documentation of a federal suit.  I read about it on CNN here, if you’re interested.

This is the gist of it: Some person calling himself/herself/itself J.D. California wrote a book about a sixty-year-old Holden Caulfield tottering about New York making an ass of himself, and the North American rights were just purchased.  Apparently, the book was first published by some Swedish publisher with somewhat suspect credentials—and no, the fact that the business is Swedish is not what makes it suspect.  In response, Salinger compromised his forswearing of the entire world enough to marshal a legal team to file suit.

It’s really quite an interesting situation.  Salinger has been holed up in New Hampshire for the last four decades or so, three of which he’s spent refusing to talk to just about anyone.  He makes Thomas Pynchon look positively chatty.  So you know this new book really has irritated him if he instigated a legal complaint.  I kind of feel sorry for him because he’s certain to lose.  I’m no specialist on the matter, but I do know it doesn’t take all that much of a variation on a creative work to escape copyright.  Just ask J.K. Rowling, among others.  The rip-off doesn’t have to be good, just sufficiently different from the original.  This work sounds like it will be sufficiently distinctive in its mediocrity, if nothing more.  Anyway, Salinger doesn’t strike me as the type to take his crowning creation Caulfield having manic and  moronic adventures around New York with much equanimity. 

If it were me?  I’d remind myself  that The Catcher in the Rye truly is one of the great English language novels, that it keeps selling hundreds of thousands of copies a year, and that a poor derivative will have the impact that a poor derivative deserves—something like a kitten’s sneeze rating on a hurricane severity scale.  Mockery and satire can affect the legacy of a great work, but only if the satire is as ingenious as the subject work in question ever was.  Salinger should relax, enjoy his Hew Hampshire freedom from the banished world, and enjoy his tenth decade of life—just not too much to cost him an eleventh.

Oh, one last thing: anyone who is interested in the true potency of voice delivered through strong point of view craftsmanship should read Catcher, as you won’t find much better.  Pay particular attention to the repetition of derogative terms Caulfield uses.  They’re so prevalent they’d be unreadable if that wasn’t exactly the way a furious, bitter teen boy would describe his world.  Caulfield is so dissatisfied with everything and yet doesn’t even possess the vocabulary to articulate his exasperation, even to himself.  It’s wonderfully awkward expression, readable only because of its truth.  A lesson any writer can learn from.

Just received my (possible) schedule at CONduit next month. This is only a first look, but I thought I’d share. What the… I’m doing a workshop? Better decide on a topic, huh. (After a month-long point of view essay, that sounds a likely prospect.) Anyway, expect this list of events to narrow. I’ll probably end up doing 2 and 3 panels and the workshop. The more the better. Oh, and it’s unlikely I’ll be there Sunday. Sorry to be such a tease, not doing everything, everytime, (for or to everyone, take your pick)—though I really am more palatable in small doses.

Anyway, here are the possible panels and their times (all subject to change, of course):

Fri @ 1:00—My Workshop. (Likely on point of view and triple duty writing. Come ask me what that means in person.)

Fri @ 2:00—Writing Evil Overlords. (Sounds fun.)

Fri @ 3:00—Culture-Building in F&SF: How Do You Create a Viable and Consistent Culture. (The must have of every speculative fiction convention.)

Fri @ 4:00—It’s Not Your Parents’ Fiction:Writing for the YA/Children’s Market. (It’s still weird to be speaking about this as I only started writing for kids on a kind of desperate fluke.)

Sat @ 10:00—How Real Should Historical Fiction or Fantasy Be? (A better question is how real should reality be, and why can’t it ever manage to pull it off.)

Sun @ 1:00—Worldbuilding 101: What Do You Need to Know to Create Your Own Fictional World? (Hoping I don’t get this one and culture building. That would be like coloring two items blue-green and green-blue; I’d have to pretend they aren’t the same thing.)

Sun @ 4:00—Aspiring Writer’s Q&A. (Always has the potential of being interesting.)

Also, here are just a few names of other attendees you should know, and probably do:

Michael R. and Judi Collings: Michael is a retired professor who taught at Pepperdine and one of my favorite panelists. From poetry to Stephen King (and yes, he’ll cover both at CONduit), he ranges as widely as any academic I’ve met without a hint of arrogance. The only nicer person you’ll ever meet is his wife.

Dave Wolverton/Farland (whose doing a special presentation Sat at 1:00, by the way—I’m not sure as whom, but we’ll see). Dave is one of those writers so nice they named him twice.

Jessica Day George, writer of arguably the best embroidery-based novel ever!

James Dashner, who is a great guy but nowhere near as impressive as his name, so don’t be disappointed. He is not, despite the sound, a Jane Austin character.

Rebecca Shelley, fellow assistant scribe in the Dragon Codices.

Julie Wright, who is not a bubbly and adorable sixteen-year-old, though you’ll never believe me when you see her.

Paul Genesse, a friend who is having a book release Fri from 3:00 – 6:00. Get a signed copy or four.

Kathleen Dalton Woodbury, another favorite panelist of mine who happens to have impeccable taste in bracelets/bracers/gauntlets and the like.

Eric Swedin, writer, professor, and friend from Weber St.

Howard Taylor, guest of honor and newly minted Hugo nominee, whose book launch will be Sat at 4:00.

Brandon Sanderson (Sun only), the man brave enough to dare Robert Jordan’s shoes—who has, incidentally, discovered a way to rejuvenate the body completely through writing, thus eliminating all need for sleep.

And Dan Wells (Sun only), who is not a serial killer, and least if you ask him.

I believe my second essay on point of view is finally finished. The last section is on narrators. If you’re interested, go here to read it. This took longer than I thought, so thanks for being patient ForeverTeal. You’re request is coming next (how to make short narratives longer).

Oh, if anyone’s having issues reaching my essays, just join the site by going here.

Now I am going to think of an excuse to see a movie—or at least give it my best shot.

There’s a new section up on my point of view essay. It covers multiple POV use, both for logistics and complexity, and communal point of view. If you don’t know what that is, go read it here. Go. Go!

I am tired, and my weight bench awaits me. Big, big sigh. Bye.

As promised, I added another tab to my essay on point of view today.  Members who are interested can check it out in the essay section, and non-members who are interested can join here.

*****

Carolyn mentioned her creative writing teacher, and that got me thinking: Where have all of you gone to learn how to write?  Formal classes?  Maybe capitalize on the good fortune of having a childhood school teacher who promoted creative writing (not just book reports and summer essays on what you did that summer instead of a good assignment, such as what you wish you had done that summer)?  Were your classes at university or in the private sector?  How about books on writing?  If so, any favorites?  Did you have a more experienced family member to mentor under?  How about a friend?  At some point we all catch the bug, and for some of us that bug becomes a happy plague.  Let me know your moment(s) of contagion.

By the by, if you have any friends who really like to write and would interested in taking place in this conversation, invite them over.  My blog is their blog.   

Monday (I think) ForeverTeal commented as follows in regard to my recent point of view essay:

Interesting how you mostly refer to a feminine protagonist, narrator, or author–any particular reason?

I don’t know how particular it is, but I do have a reason. I expect that anyone who will ever stumble upon this blog understands that we don’t have a gender-neutral pronoun in English. Here are our maddeningly limiting options in the personal pronoun menu: “he/him” (meaning one guy or, as my friend James would say, a dude); “she/her” (meaning one girl, woman, mistress, madam, or any other variety of the fairer sex—which isn’t that great a compliment, seeing as it’s a ranking one step above men); “it” (meaning an object, something like a hammer or singing bass, which is never an appropriate appellation for women, and only occasionally for men); “they/them” (meaning a group or more than the loneliest number); “I/me” (meaning none of you); “you” (meaning none of me); and “we/us” (meaning the more fortunate you with the always fortunate I/me).

Anyone see what’s missing? How about this: maybe, just maybe, it’s possible to conceptualize a situation where a single person of EITHER gender/sex might apply. Like falling in a lake. To my mind, whenever someone falls in a lake, this person is of roughly equal likelihood to be male or female (unless there are other women around, in which circumstance the humor of the universe will make sure it’s some poor guy distracted to the point of foppishness). So, if we are speaking about hypothetical unfortunate said lake-faller-inner, saying “he” is no more accurate than “she”, for either may be true and neither alone is accurate to the situation.

I’ve always found it odd that a language as sticky fingered as English (which steals words from anywhere and everywhere) couldn’t be bothered to pinch a gender neutral pronoun or two while rummaging the linguistic pockets of the world. (I’ve heard all the following attemted by some one at some time in some place: co/cos, e/em, ey/em, hy/hym, thon, ve/ver, xe/xern, ze/hir, and ze/mer. Apparently ze nearly caught on. Personally, I like squeege/spewter, but that’s me.) But alas, we are without this particular concept of expression, which leaves we English speakers/writers with several options, none of which are very satisfying. We can call a hypothetical individual of either gender “he” as is tradition, much like we say “firemen” and “mankind”. This has always been accepted because, well, it is a man’s world, right? All right, stop laughing ladies. I hate the “he” option. It reinforces the belief that I’m too stupid to see who really makes this world go round.

The other options are little better. We can use “she”, only then the fembots are warned that you’ve uncovered their mastery of the planet and they make you disappear. (You sometimes reappear as a mindless drone—most often as a male model, new amusement of a middle-aged hollywood actress, or some other variety of boy toy…which may not be that bad a gig, if you can get it, I suppose.) Plus, for some strange reason, this throws guys off. Badly. Like telling them they throw like a girl. The only other option is to use “they/them”, meaning this hypothetical individual of either gender is spontaneously capable of mitosis. As someone accused of being on the particular side when it comes to language use (legitimately so), this situation makes me want to punch something. Having done so I find that nothing has been solved, so I chose one of these three bad options.

I chose the feminine option. I do this because I have a rule always to pick the feminine option, as I expect doing so will make life far more pleasant (as well as fragrant, chatty, and complicated). Besides, it’s not like showing a little favoritism to the ladies is going to unbalance the world. What with politics, economics, art, history, higher education, religion, and just about every other human endeavor being oddly weighted toward the advantage of men, making guys read through a bunch of “she”s that could possibly be a “he” and thus confront their inner girlyness doesn’t seem too great an abuse. If my male readers want to whine, you have my permission. But the gals have earned it.

By the way, I pass on a quandary implied by Carolyn: As cocoa goes with a good book, ______________ goes with a fluorescent-faced electronic reader like the Kindle? What does one drink when you curl up near the fire with a little glowing screen pretending to be a book? Pero, maybe?