Writing Fiction

Downloads from Writing Science Fiction and Fantasy

The second edition of Writing Science Fiction and Fantasy has a CD with some supplemental materials—links to books and authors mentioned in the text, posts from this blog, plus a number of reviews. (I've even thrown in a scholarly article published way back in 1972.) The CD is readable only on a PC, however, so Mac users (including me) are out of luck.

However, I've uploaded those materials as a long Word file, and you're welcome to download it—even if you haven't bought the book. I hope you find these items useful.
Download wsff_cd_items.doc

Finding a Publisher

A reader posted a comment about finding a publisher for her novel in progress. I suggest going to my online course Write a Novel, specifically section 16: Researching Publishers and Agents.

50 Open Source Resources for Writers

Via Job Profiles.com, a list of 50 Awesome Open Source Resources for Online Writers.

They include various free word processors and reference tools. I can't vouch for any of them, but it might be worth the time it takes to download some and experiment a bit.

Getting over writer's block

A commenter wrote:
I've been writing for a while. I have the common potential novel problem (At least it seems common to me) where I have no difficulty writing the short story and enjoy it. However, when I try to write anything over a few thousand words, I lose my pace. My story seems to slow down and stop going anywhere.

So I started a new project to see if I could just get over that hurdle. (My own blog.) And I've hit it again. Now I look back and wonder if I had a strong enough of a hook in the start. Or is it strong enough, but comes too late. Are the character motivations real? Is anyone other then me going to care about them?

Then, what should I do when I know where the story needs to go, but don't know how to point the character in that direction? Is a new catalyst point needed?

Do you have any advice on how to get over this hump of self-doubt and writer's block?

Well, I've certainly written myself into some blind alleys. About 40 years ago I was on fire to write an SF novel. I bashed out about 100 pages and stopped dead. It took me almost a decade to get a grip and finish the novel, which was published in 1978.

Sometimes it helps to get serious, perceptive, constructive criticism. Such critics are rare. We are almost never married to them, or otherwise emotionally entangled with them.

I finally got through to the end of that novel (The Empire of Time) while teaching courses, helping raise two little girls, doing a master's thesis, writing another novel, writing a nonfiction book, and walking a black Lab named Max. Maximilian Kilian offered not a word of advice, but he dragged me out on night-time walks where I had to think a lot. That helped.

It also helped when I started writing letters to myself, and discovered that this was a good way to free my inner editor. That editor had watched my inner writer get into awful trouble, but hadn't had a way to say so.

Stories often stall when our inner editor can't stand the crap our inner writer is cranking out. We don't know why, but the story suddenly looks dumb.

But let your inner editor explain what's wrong, and something strange happens. You're listing all the awful problems and errors in the story, just like the most brutal reviewer, and suddenly you begin to see solutions to the problems. So you write them down too.

Turn that letter to yourself into a journal, which you add to every day or every week--whenever you feel the need--and you have your own editor, blasting your goofs and praising your successes and pointing out where to go next. I don't create a journal for every novel, but it's a huge help when I do feel I've run into trouble.

That's not the only way to fight writer's block. If your novel seems to run out of content, you haven't been cruel enough to your characters. The key to a long, interesting story is a four-word phrase: Not only, but also.

Whatever the main problem your characters face, they need more misery. Something has to complicate their lives, which are already at risk. It's the combination of "not only but also" that will really show us what your characters are all about, and make us interested in their fate.

A student of mine once showed me the start of a novel about a legal secretary having a hot affair with a rock star. (She was a legal secretary.) She couldn't figure out where to go with the story once her lovers staggered out of bed.

OK: Not only are they having an affair, but also the secretary's boss is running out of work and money, so they may both be looking for new jobs soon. Not only is the secretary's job in danger, but also her new sweetie's band has a rotten contract that's going to take him on a months-long tour for almost no money.

Now we've got ourselves a story! Secretary saves her job by introducing her sweetie to her boss. Boss saves his business by getting sweetie a tough new contract. Other rock musicians hear about this and come pounding on his door, asking for new contracts too.

Not only is secretary happy, but also her boss now looks at her in a different light and wants to steal her away from her rock-star sweetie...

So the key to getting a manuscript to novel length is to keep inventing "but also's" that will show us more and more about the characters and their predicament.

So there are two ways to fight writer's block: Be mean to yourself by writing down all the problems in your story, and be mean to your characters by giving them even more problems than you have!

Maxmilian Kilian is long gone, but I now have two Australian shepherds. They drag me out for even more walks than Max ever dreamed of, and I do a lot of thinking about the current novel. Now that I'm just retired from teaching, I hope to finish the novel before too long.

A reminder: Read and re-read One Hundred Years of Solitude

This weekend, The Globe and Mail published another in its list of the "50 greatest books": One Hundred Years of Solitude. Excerpt:

Gabriel García Márquez, then a little-known Colombian journalist, wrote One Hundred Years of Solitude over a period of 18 months, in seclusion, in Mexico City. The book was published in Buenos Aires in 1967, heralding a new literary wave from Latin America and becoming the most important novel ever published in Spanish on this side of the Atlantic.

If you haven't read it yet, put down that trashy Dostoevsky thriller and get serious. If you've already read One Hundred Years of Solitude, get it off the shelf and read it again.

It took me two or three tries to get into, but I was young and dumb circa 1970. Once I did finish it, I was young and dumbfounded. Who knew you could write a novel like that? And even if you were allowed to write a novel like that, where would you get the talent? Several re-readings later, I still have no answer.

Everyone who grew up between El Paso, Texas, and Tierra Del Fuego, Chile, thinks it is the story of their own home town. (I spent four years of my boyhood in Mexico City, so I understand that.) North Americans who read it suddenly and rightly worry that they've missed the best part of life.

Some critics call him "Gabo," the nickname for Gabriel. Not me. He's the maestro, the one who breaks the rules we mortals never dare break, and who puts magic in our heads.

When you've finished One Hundred Years of Solitude, get going on the rest of his work, fiction and nonfiction alike. Yes, it will indeed be on the final exam.

Judging writers by their writing, or their private lives

In the Guardian, Lionel Shriver raises a good point in connection with the late literary titan Norman Mailer: It's time for Mailer's ghost to rest in peace. Excerpt:

Critics are divided on whether literature should be analysed through the prism of the writer's life and psyche or should be read without reference to its author purely in its own terms. I would like to vote for Plan B.

Harvard University is going for A. Its library missed out on the papers of its illustrious alumnus Norman Mailer, who sold them to the University of Texas while still alive in 2005, including numerous novel typescripts, what in publishing goes by the wonderfully redolent name 'foul matter'. So Harvard has bought the papers of Mailer's lover instead.

In North America, the manuscript of a published novel is called "dead matter," but I take the point.

Shriver raises an issue all writers ought to think about. Many writers are more famous for their private lives than their public utterances.

Mailer, of course, marketed himself as much as he promoted his books. So did most of his contemporaries, and they were just following in the footsteps of the previous generation.

More people know Scott Fitzgerald for his Jazz Age revels, and his insane wife Zelda, than have read The Great Gatsby and This Side of Paradise. Dashiell Hammett was an ex-private eye, the lover-mentor of Katherine Hellman, a drunk, and a political prisoner; more people know that than have read his stories about the Continental Op.

Mailer's reputation survived the stigma of stabbing his wife, but Norwegian author Knut Hamsun, internationally successful, became internationally despised when he supported the Nazi occupation of Norway in World War II. Some people can't or won't read Atlas Shrugged because they know too much about Ayn Rand's private life, or detest her philosophy and politics.

The issue really has two aspects: Should we read (or shun) a writer because of his or her sexual behaviour, financial problems, or alcoholism? And should we read writers whose political views are in line with ours, and ignore those whose politics disgust us?

When I read Fitzgerald, or Malcolm Lowry, or any other writer with a complicated private life, what I know about that life makes me marvel that the author got anything written at all. I may also understand why alcohol, for example, is a big issue in such writers' work. That at least makes me think about the talent required to write under such disabilities.

But I hope I can still read their work as literature, just as I would read a novel by an author I didn't know anything about. I want to judge The Great Gatsby as a vision of 1920s America, not just a tarted-up diary of Scott and Zelda's lives. And I want to understand the storytelling that Fitzgerald put into his novel, so I can make my own work a little better.

As for authors' political background, I know it's going to influence the kind of story they tell, but I try not to let it get in the way of my reading. Every novel is anecdotal evidence for the author's vision of the way the world works, and that vision will certainly reflect the author's politics.

So I can read Robert Heinlein, for example, and love his stories while rolling my eyes at his bizarre political views. His world is a great place to visit, but you wouldn't want to live there. And in any case, his politics reflect Heinlein's era, not our own.

Similarly, I can read Jack London's The Iron Heel, a lurid vision of a capitalist tyranny, and groan at this supposed socialist's fear and horror of the American working class. But I remind myself that "presentism" is a vice: We simply can't impose our modern values on the writers of a century ago.

(There's a story idea, by the way: Someone in the early 22nd century, studying the barbarous values smugly held by the ignorant and benighted savages living in the early 21st century.)

We know frustratingly little about William Shakespeare's private life, but his plays and poems stand up very well regardless. So I'm with Lionel Shriver's Plan B: Judge a piece of writing on its own terms, and for the light it throws on your own private life—not on the author's.

Chapters in a Novel

Casey, in comments, asked:
Should a manuscript be broken down by chapter or should it be one continuous story?

It depends on the kind of story. Gabriel García Márquez, in The Autumn of the Patriarch, wrote his novel in four "chapters" that are also four paragraphs. Every chapter is one unbroken stream of prose.

The maestro can get away with that, but we ordinary humans would be silly to try it. (You still ought to read everything he ever wrote, if only so you can feel what it's like to have a genius inhabit your brain.)

I'm going to try to answer Casey's question in a slightly strange way, so bear with me.

The basic direction of any story is from ignorance to awareness—often a very sudden awareness, the "shock of recognition" that makes you say "Aha!" or "Oh my God!" We start out knowing nothing about the characters and their predicament, but every scene—every paragraph, every sentence, every word—adds to our understanding and prepares us for the next revelation.

We know more at the end of a sentence than we did at the beginning. In effect, we say "Aha!" or "Oh my God!" after every sentence. The same with a paragraph, and with a scene. A chapter generally contains one or more scenes, and each scene tells us (and the characters) more about the situation.

Sometimes we're way ahead of the characters, because we know more about them than they know about themselves. At other times, we still haven't learned enough to make sense of what the characters are doing, so we keep reading to learn more.

A chapter is a kind of mini-novel, where we and the characters start out relatively ignorant. By the end of the chapter, we (and maybe the characters) have learned a lot—especially about the predicament the characters are in. Knowing what we've learned, we also know how much more we and the characters have to learn before they succeed or fail in their endeavours. So we plunge into the next chapter, ignorant all over again.

So chapters are convenient ways to break up a story, and to emphasize some problems over others. The problem at the end of a chapter is more serious than the problem in that chapter's first scene. When we go into the next chapter, we know the stakes have been raised, and the cost of failure will be higher.

But the length of the chapter is up to you. Kurt Vonnegut wrote bite-size chapters, maybe just a page or two long, and each chapter ends like a punch in the nose. Other writers are comfortable with much longer chapters. My novels seem to break naturally into chapters of around 5,000 words, but that's just me.

So if you want to use chapters as organizing units of your story, end them when your characters have come to some crisis in their lives—when they understand more clearly just what a jam they're in.

How Many Pages Make a Novel (again)?

I had no idea, when I first posted on this topic back in 2004, that it would turn out to be one of the most popular posts on the blog...judging from the number of people who arrive here after asking Google that question, and from the number of comments.

Here's the latest comment:
I have written a young adult science\fantasy novel that is 60,782 words. I have no clue if I need more.

Sixty thousand words is a reasonable length for a short novel. I don't keep up much with the young-adult market, but my impression is that a YA novel can run anywhere from 20,000 words to 60,000. So in that sense your story's the right length.

To make sure, visit the websites of some YA publishers and find their notes for submissions. They'll probably tell you what their length requirements are. (If they don't, find a book from the publishing house you're interested in, count the number of words on a page, and multiply by the number of pages.)

More importantly, ask yourself if you've written the right 60,000 words. Maybe the manuscript needs cutting, or you've left some loose ends that need another 5,000 words to tie up.

The first thing you owe yourself, as an apprentice writer, is to tell your stories as well as you can, at whatever length the stories want to be. Only then should you worry about what publishers want.

A New Blog

You may enjoy some of the posts at a new blog I've set up: Books and Writers offers recycled book reviews I've done for The Tyee, plus comments on other books I've read and on writers I think deserve a mention. I look forward to your comments there.

Editing: How Much is Too Much?

A good question from a reader named Cassandra:
I'm 16 and have written a few handfuls of novels, novelettes, and short stories. I've been told by other writers that my writing is pretty good, but I always want change something. Either the color of this, or the plot of that. My question is, "How do you know how much editing is too much editing?" I always want to change something, given the fact I'm still learning change is good. But I don't know when’s the right time to quit. Do you have any advice for me?

Years ago, Robert Heinlein published his Five Rules for Writers, and I've done my best to pass them along:

1. Writers write. They don't sit around moaning about how much they would write if only they had the time, or the inspiration, or a better computer.

2. Writers finish what they write. Even if they end up hating every comma and syllable, they grind away to the bitter end. It's good discipline, and sometimes you actually write your way out of the problem.

3. Writers never rewrite, except to editorial order. What a slap in the face to every teacher of English and creative writing! But carpenters don't rebuild a house over and over again; they make sure they have a good plan and build it right the first time. Outlining may seem boring compared to banging out page after page, but it's critical.

For a professional writer, this is especially important: Spend too much time rewriting, and your income drops to pennies per hour. But for apprentices, I admit that rewriting can be helpful. It forces you to pay more attention to what your manuscript is trying to tell you, and you may learn a lot. The hazard is that you can edit your story to death.

4. Writers put their work on the market. They don't just make their friends and relatives read it. Besides, the editorial opinion of friends and relatives is rarely helpful.

5. Writers keep their work on the market until it sells. Rather than collapse in self-pity after the first rejection, they send the manuscript off again, and again. Even a rejection letter can be instructive. I'm eternally grateful to Judy-Lynn Del Rey for her dismissal of my novel Icequake--I was telling, not showing, she said, and she was right. I got a grip, rewrote the novel, and sold it (for far more than Judy-Lynn could have paid me).

Heinlein argues, and I agree, that people who break these rules just don't get published. If I hadn't broken rule #5, I'd probably have published my first novel at age 26 or 27, instead of age 38. Instead, the manuscript stayed on my shelf until it was hopelessly dated. (It's now in my papers at the University of British Columbia, where some unlucky PhD candidate may run across it.)

So to get back to Cassandra's question, when you want to change something in a manuscript, ask yourself: How does this change advance the story? Does it teach us more about the characters, the setting, the plot? Does it affect the outcome? Or is it just a demonstration of my high opinion of myself as a writer?

Hemingway said the test of a good story was how much good stuff you could cut out of it...that is, "fine writing" that was just showing off. We might now have a different definition of "good stuff" from Hemingway's, but the principle is sound.

Advice to Teenage Genius Writers

Munoz, a 14-year-old in Spain, posted a comment earlier today about the progress he's made on his novel and asking how to find an agent. So here's my answer—the link to a post from the summer of 2006: Writing Fiction: What if You're a Prodigy?

And for all you other teenage geniuses out there: I'm not trying to poop your party. Notice that very few important writers published their very first novels. Mozart's teenage work is worth listening to, but even he might have been embarrassed to hear his youthful compositions when he was in his 30s.

So write like mad, and put your heart and soul into it, but don't expect to publish. What you're doing now is for the future Ph.D. students, looking in your early unpublished work for the signs of later greatness.

The Education of a Writer

Nick writes:
I am 16 years old. I live in Australia currently and am completing my last year in school before I must decide what I wish to do with the rest of my life.

I am extremely passionate about writing and becoming an Author. I have completed many short stories and
am trying to juggle my passions for writing with exams. My parents are adamant that I go to university and acquire all sorts of degrees, which I am indifferent to at this time.

Is it necessary for me to attend university in order to become an author? Right now my parents also believe that by writing I am distracting myself from school, they see it as a distraction, a mere hobby but I love writing so much and I want to make it as an Author.

They don't see it the same way I believe, which, well, really disappoints me and I feel that I should pursue my dreams with their blessing or not.

As I keep telling them, it is my life, so I should be the one to make the mistakes and learn from them, if that should be the case. Am I just too young to write novels and try to make my way as an Author? Should I just drop it and do better in school?

This is purely anecdotal evidence, and it may not apply to Nick's case. But here it is...

I had the luck (if it was luck) to grow up with friends whose parents made good livings as writers. My own father moved from being a TV engineer to being a TV writer, and did pretty well at it.

My own early efforts won a lot of praise from my parents, teachers and friends, so I decided by age 12 or 13 that I was going to be a writer.

But my later choices didn't advance that decision.

The big break in my young life was admission to Columbia University—with a meal job and a big scholarship. The big mistake was to go to Columbia and major in English.

I didn't realize that an English major is job training for the job of literary critic and English teacher. Within a semester or two, my critical abilities were so sharp that everything I wrote looked terrible. (Well, it was, but I was applying the wrong standards.)

As an English major I did get a pretty systematic tour of western literature, from Beowulf to Dostoevsky to T.S. Eliot and Scott Fitzgerald. But my own writing effectively stopped from 1958 to 1962. It didn't start again until I got home, wrote part of a crappy autobiographical novel, and then went into the army—where I wrote a crappy SF novel, never published (thank heaven).

Would I have been better off if I'd rejected university? Well, in those days, your alternative in the US was to go straight into the armed forces. I'd have come out in 1960 or '61 absolutely ravenous for university (the pre-Vietnam US army was pretty good in many ways, but it was boooring).

With the maturity gained in the service, I'd have done better in university, and might then have gone on to write better fiction. I'll never know. But I did spend weekends in barracks reading interesting novels, and learning about what life was like for guys who wouldn't read a novel if you paid them.

So if I were Nick, half a century later, what would I do if I wanted to be a writer?

Well, at 16 I had the maturity of a 12-year-old girl. That's typical for guys. Nothing personal; girls grow up faster than we do. (And that's why armies like to recruit teenage boys, who are still too stunned to know what's going on.) My immaturity made me waste much of an Ivy League education, though I finally sorted myself out. (Some of my classmates ended up like Senator John McCain, dropping bombs on North Vietnamese teenagers. My classmates grew up even slower than I did.)

So if I were talking face to face with Nick, I'd suggest taking a year or two out after high school. Go plant trees, or wash dishes, or hire out on a fishing boat or sheep station. Plan to get your ass kicked with awful frequency.

But keep some books in your backpack, and a notepad where you can scribble whatever crosses your mind. Whether it's a diary, or short stories, or articles, what you write will be the start of your education.

Two or three years of this should be enough for a lifetime. Now you can figure out what you'd rather do, which will almost certainly be four or more years of systematic education. But it doesn't have to be the study of English (or Australian, or American) literature. If I were going back to Columbia, knowing what I know now, I'd have majored in classics, or history, or Asian studies--and I'd have read all the western lit for fun, not for marks.

Parents want the best for their kids, and that usually means they want to put their kids on the education treadmill as early as possible, and keep them there as long as possible. Sometimes that's fine, but evidence suggests that boys start school two years too soon for their brain development, compared to girls. And in post-secondary, women do better than men because at 18 or 20 or 22, they're still more mature than most guys.

But if you start post-secondary at 20 or 21, you'll have the maturity you don't have now. (Need I mention that the girls will notice and appreciate it?) You'll understand a lot more of what your teachers are telling you, and the authors you read will teach you more as well. You'll emerge with a degree or two, and the freedom that a good education gives you...so you can pick and choose your jobs.

The right job will give you more time and energy (and ideas) for writing; the wrong job will send you home every night to drink beer and watch TV until you pass out.

So yes, go to university or college. But don't be in a hurry, and don't specialize in "literary" courses unless you really want to.

Good luck.

Farewell and thank you, Sir Arthur

Via The Los Angeles Times: Arthur C. Clarke, 90; scientific visionary, acclaimed writer of '2001: A Space Odyssey.' Excerpt:

Sir Arthur C. Clarke, who peered into the heavens with a homemade telescope as a boy and grew up to become a visionary titan of science fiction best-known for collaborating with director Stanley Kubrick in writing the landmark film "2001: A Space Odyssey," has died. He was 90.

The British-born Clarke, who lived in Colombo, Sri Lanka, for decades, died early Wednesday after experiencing breathing problems, an aide, Rohan De Silva, told the Associated Press.

Clarke, a former farm boy who was knighted for his contributions to literature, wrote more than 80 fiction and nonfiction books (some in collaboration) and more than 100 short stories -- as well as hundreds of articles and essays.

Among his best-known science-fiction novels are "Childhood's End," "Rendezvous With Rama," "Imperial Earth" and, most famously, "2001: A Space Odyssey."

He was an extraordinary man and a prophetic writer. The way we look at the universe has, over the past half-century, been shaped largely by his vision.

Without being in the slightest "literary," Clarke was a wonderfully literate novelist: Childhood's End, The City and the Stars, and 2001 are all remarkable Christian allegories, rich in symbolism and allusion. He could also be literately funny, as in Tales from the White Hart.

Building his career when science fiction was not much more than a pre-videogame entertainment medium for geeky teenage boys, Clarke helped the genre mature—and then, alas, lived and wrote too long.

In his old age Clarke cranked out sequel after sequel, often with the "help" of collaborators lacking a scrap of his talent. I hope the royalties at least supported him in his precarious old age, but they did not advance the cause of original, thoughtful, and thought-provoking science fiction.

Even so, we owe him a great deal. If we skip the potboilers of his old age, we miss little. If we skip the stories and novels of his youth and mature years, we impoverish ourselves. Thank you, Sir Arthur.

LA faces meltdown as Hollywood strike bites

Most readers of this blog are pure freelancers, willing to sell their work for whatever they're offered. But we should support the Hollywood writers' strike even though, as this Guardian story puts it, LA faces meltdown as Hollywood strike bites. Excerpt:

The 11-week writers' dispute is turning nasty as it slowly but surely strangles artistic and economic activity beneath the iconic Hollywood sign.

The writers, an unlikely vanguard for a revival in America's trade union movement, are demanding a say in future internet distribution deals and a percentage of any revenues gained when their work is streamed or downloaded.

Crucially, they have the support of the actors, whose refusal to cross the Globes' picketline ensures a no-show from nominees including the British contenders Keira Knightley, James McAvoy, Julie Christie and Helena Bonham Carter.

On the opposite side are the producers and studios such as Disney, Fox, Paramount and Warner Bros. Wary of being locked into a deal on hugely unpredictable new media, they are blaming the writers for intransigence.

'It feels like the nerdiest, ugliest, meanest kids in the high school are trying to cancel the prom,' said Ben Silverman, entertainment chief of NBC.

Mr. Silverman wouldn't even be the entertainment chief of a daycare center if not for those nerdy, ugly, mean kids. Writers have always been objects of contempt in Hollywood, but the whole operation depends on them. Without a script, the glamorous actors have nothing to say, the directors have nothing to direct, the producers have nothing to produce, and no one makes any money.

Just once, I did some work for a producer on spec. She blew off my treatment as "not having that magic," and I got not a penny for my efforts. Well, that was my tuition fee, and fortunately I could still pay my rent. But never again will I take on such a commission without a signed contract.

A sad, good day in Canada

We Canadians lost Oscar Peterson last month. And today the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation broadcast Oscar Peterson—Simply the Best: The Tribute Concert.

The concert will be on the CBC website for a year, but the sooner you hear it, the better.

The Writer as Outsider

Michael Taylor posted a great comment to my remarks about David Stacton:

I am a heterosexual who is interested in Queer Theory. It seems to me, as a student of creative writing that my particular bent is social and anthropological. I'm simply trying to understand what your view is on homosexuality. Why reference the murder? I don't mean to sound trite, Stacton is a great writer in my opinion and I respect your expert opinion and obvious respect for the author. It is difficult to communicate good fiction with so poor data on sexuality, our customs, culture, and other social ways. In a very real way, queerness is very misused and misrepresented in writing by heterosexual writers like me.

I thought quite a bit before mentioning the possibility of a specifically homosexual murder as the cause of Stacton's death, and I didn't offer it as a titillating bit of gossip. Stacton's sexuality probably helped make him a fine writer by making him an outsider.

Until a few months ago, I had no clue about Stacton's sexuality. I knew almost nothing about him except for a biographical item in a reference book on American authors, and that had told me almost nothing. Since his death I've sometimes mentioned him to other writers, but they were as ignorant of Stacton's life as I was. Even in his days of fame, he was almost as mysterious as B. Traven, the author of The Treasure of the Sierra Madre and many other powerful novels.

The man who's planning to publish some of Stacton's novels was kind enough to send me some materials I'd never seen, and that's where I learned not just that he was gay, but flamboyantly so—flying in drag to a job as a teacher of creative writing, for which he dressed soberly in jacket and tie, then flying home in a cowboy outfit. And this was in the 1950s and 60s, when such behaviour could get you beaten up or even killed.

Exactly nothing of this is evident in his novels. He has gay characters, but their gayness is just part of what they are, like the straight characters. Unlike many American male writers of his generation, he does show some entertaining insights into the way women think: I still recall his throwaway line, "Wives consider their husbands' friends the unshaven underworld." Try finding that kind of observation in Norman Mailer!

So Stacton's gayness, and how it might have led to his untimely death, interest me for just one reason: Gayness made him an outsider, and being an outsider made him a writer.

You don't have to be gay to be a good writer. You just have to consider yourself as not quite belonging to your society. In Stacton's generation, born in the 1920s, it helped to be Jewish or black or communist or just some kind of crank...combine two or three of these qualities, and you couldn't lose.

Here in Canada, our outsider-writers are often Asians, blacks, women, gays, aboriginals...and it also helps just to be Canadian, living next door to the huge dysfunctional family whose parties keep us awake all night. The Americans define themselves as insiders, so that automatically makes us outsiders. (Most Americans, of course, don't consider themselves insiders at all, which is why so many good writers are Americans.)

And this is why being an outsider is so good for you if you want to be a writer: Outsiders don't take much for granted. They walk down the street as if they expected to be pointed out, denounced, and then beaten unconscious. They look more carefully at the people around them. They notice the habits, the rituals, the tone of voice of the insiders. They see what works and what doesn't, and they learn about what goes on in everyone's head.

In The Great Gatsby, the outsider Nick Carraway watches the outsider Jay Gatz try to become an insider by winning back the ultra-insider Daisy Buchanan. If Nick had been part of the Buchanans' class, he wouldn't have noticed anything worth mentioning about the failed love affair. He'd probably have gone on and on about Tom Buchanan's polo ponies.

The basic plot of all fiction, meanwhile, is of someone who is an outsider trying to gain (or regain) insider status. The outsider has been kicked out of Eden, and now has to struggle in the desert to find a new home. So if you're not an outsider, you're not going to know how your characters feel, why it hurts to be an outsider, and what they'll do to become an insider—even if it kills them.

David Stacton's gift was to show us that even an Egyptian Pharaoh, or a Republican presidential candidate, could be an outsider. If we recognize what a gift he offered us, we will be better writers.

Historical Fiction with Real People

A reader wrote the other day:
I have an opportunity to develop a work of fiction that has a basis in fact. One of the primary characters is a long-dead United States president. Do you have any advice or can you recommend any guidelines for fictionalizing events and circumstances relative to such a figure? I have no idea what sort of leeway (if any) that I may have.

The short answer is that you have all the leeway you want to take.

The long answer, however, is a lot longer.

I'm going to take a particular writer of historical fiction, one you've probably never heard of. But in the late 1950s and 1960s, David Stacton was a widely read, respectfully reviewed author. He was also astoundingly prolific. After starting with detective and soft-porn novels under pseudonyms, Stacton switched to historical fiction unlike anything people had read before. Just off the top of my head, I can think of a number of titles:

On a Balcony (about the Pharaoh Ikhnaton)
The Judges of the Secret Court (about John Wilkes Booth's assassination of Lincoln)
Segaki (medieval Japan)
Tom Fool (about Wendell Wilkie's run against FDR in the 1940 presidential campaign)
People of the Book (about the Hundred Years' War)
A Signal Victory (a Spanish renegade fights with the Maya against the conquistadors)
A Dancer in Darkness (a retelling of the Duchess of Malfi tale)
Sir William; or, A Lesson in Love (Admiral Nelson and Lady Hamilton)

And on and on. Stacton wrote in a witty and philosophical style, a bit detached from his characters, but with a knack for oddly persuasive details (Gonzalo Guerrero, the renegade, has his lower lip pierced to hold a jade labret; when the labret's out, he enjoys running his tongue in and out of the hole as an aid to thought).

I mention Stacton because almost all his novels had historical figures as either the protagonists or important characters in his stories. But while Gonzalo Guerrero certainly existed, we know very little about him. Stacton could therefore develop his character any way he chose. We know a lot more about Wendell Willkie, but Stacton invites us into Willkie's mind, where the character becomes very different from the "real" Willkie.

In other words, Stacton was using the sketchy outlines of historical figures as a way to dramatize his own points, his own view of the world. This can lead to the sin of "presentism"—judging our ancestors by our own moral and political standards—but Stacton avoided that. His characters are living in their own present, by values that make sense to them. We may look at them ironically because we know more about them than they know about themselves. But we can see that in Stacton's view, we're equally ironic.

Every historical novel is a kind of thought experiment: If we look at someone living in the 17th century, or ancient Egypt, does their experience of life contrast with ours? Do they grapple with the same questions? Do they plead their cases before the judges of the secret court, as Stacton says we all do?

To do this, we may sometimes have to play fast and loose with historical facts: Maybe we need to put our hero in a different location from where historians say he was on a given date. Or we need to give him a more plausible motivation for his actions. (Real people are the only ones allowed to do crazy, unmotivated things.)

That's OK, as long as you're not totally twisting historic fact—and even that's OK if you're writing alternate history, with FDR and Stalin fighting an alien invasion in the 1940s.

But the point I'm finally making is that you are using your characters, not the other way around. If you're thinking of writing about a former US president, he has to dramatize your vision of the world—both as it is now and as it was in his time. You may use lots of historical factoids, but they're really just window-dressing. The key question for you is this: How do I make this person in history provide "anecdotal evidence" for my view of the world?

I can't mention Stacton without telling you more about him. He died in 1968, reportedly of a stroke, while doing research in Denmark for another novel. (More likely it was a covered-up murder by a homosexual prostitute.) He was 42, and I still recall the shock I felt at hearing of his death. Two or three magazines provided obituaries, and then he disappeared. It's hard to find his books even in good second-hand bookstores.

As a historical character himself, then, David Stacton offers an ironic model for writers of historical fiction: As perceptive as he was, as elegant a writer as he was, he nevertheless vanished from our literary history. He left no disciples; as I found out the hard way, his style was inimitable.

But I can offer this small consolation: A few of us do remember David Stacton and the impact of his fiction, and I gather that a small publisher plans to bring some of his novels back into print. I look forward to their appearance, and I'll let you know when they're published.

Writing in Longhand

A commenter recently mentioned that she'd been writing in longhand, and that certainly struck a chord with me. For a computer-addicted writer, I've written an awful lot in my awful longhand.

I had the good fortune, back in 1966, to marry a gorgeous woman who couldn't stand the peck-peck-peck of my typewriter—especially after our kids arrived, and silence in the evening was the whole purpose of getting through the day.

Far from being a career-stopper or a marriage-breaker, this was an advantage. While my wife sat and read in the den, I parked myself at the kitchen table with a loose-leaf binder and a ballpoint pen. I would scribble silently for an hour or two (or fifteen minutes, on bad days), and we'd stagger off to bed.

That looseleaf binder went with me to some of the most boring faculty meetings in Canadian academic history, and to my daughters' music lessons, and on holidays. I'd fill page after page, and revise passages with a quick horizontal slash through any line that wasn't earning its keep.

This was of course still the typewriter age; in those days, to change a page of typescript was big deal. But it was dead easy to cut and rewrite in longhand.

Better yet, I'd wait until my wife was out of the house. Then I'd fire up my IBM Selectric (with a way-cool correcting tape!) and transcribe my scrawls into clean typescript, revising as I went along.

It might seem cumbersome, but this was the procedure I followed for four or five of my published novels—and in those days I was publishing a novel every 18 months or so.

Computers of course transformed writing in many ways, but I still do a lot of writing in longhand. I don't have a laptop, and if I did, my wife would veto any idea of taking it on holidays. And I must admit that a couple of weeks of computer detox every summer is actually good for me.

That's why I still recommend toting a notebook of some kind around with you. With a laptop you may not have working batteries, or wireless, or an electrical outlet. With a notebook, all you need is a pen or pencil. If your dentist is running behind schedule, you can read some ancient magazine in the waiting room, or pull out your notebook and scribble some ideas for the next chapter (or describe your dentist's waiting room).

Some French novelist was famous for being unable to write unless dressed in a suit and tie, and writing on his preferred blue paper. Some modern writers can't write unless they've got the latest ultra-powerful computer, preferably a laptop so thin you could shave with it.

Well, I suggest you try out a binder with some filler paper. Write on every other line so you'll have room for changes, and don't worry about word counts or spell checking. Just get the story down on paper, and worry later about the printout.

Banished Words

It wouldn't be a new year without Lake Superior State University's list of banished words.

I don't always agree with them, but they remind me to think carefully before using a popular new expression. It may already be a cliché.

Of course, if you're trying to establish that one of your characters thinks and speaks in clichés, these are the terms to use.

Holiday Wishes

Christmas Eve is not yet here in North America, and when it arrives I'm going to be very busy. We have family and friends coming for dinner, so I won't have much chance to blog.

But the first thing I'll do in the morning is to start a batch of pulla, a Finnish coffee bread that for decades has been our Christmas breakfast. You're welcome to make it yourself:

Download recipe_for_pulla.pdf

My old friend Merlin and I take this opportunity to wish you a very happy holiday and a new year full of surprises that make you laugh.

More Good News for Pullman

Via The Star in Toronto: Board widens ban on fantasy novels. Excerpt:

The Halton Catholic school board has rejected the recommendation of its book committee and banned the children's fantasy novel The Golden Compass, as well as the subsequent books in the trilogy, which were not officially under review.

The board said the novels in author Philip Pullman's "His Dark Materials" trilogy are not in keeping with "the Catholic values that we are trying to teach children."

A majority of trustees felt the series was "not in line with our governing values ... so they chose to take it out of the library," board chair Alice Anne LeMay said in an interview. LeMay said she favoured the proposal to limit access to the books to those in Grades 7 and up.

The decision, made in a vote Tuesday, follows a move by the board last month to pull The Golden Compass from library shelves after a complaint. The board's elementary principals were also directed not to distribute a Scholastic flyer that had the book available to order.

The book review committee recommended The Golden Compass, now a major film, be returned to shelves and made available to students in Grade 7 and up.

The Golden Compass tells the story of a young girl's travels to the edge of another universe, where she's involved in a battle between good and evil. Written by Pullman, a self-described atheist, it's seen by critics as anti-religion.

And via Reuters, the Vatican itself chimes in:

The Vatican on Wednesday condemned the film "The Golden Compass," which some have called anti-Christian, saying it promotes a cold and hopeless world without God.

In a long editorial, the Vatican newspaper l'Osservatore Romano, also slammed Philip Pullman, the bestselling author of the book on which the family fantasy movie is based.

It was the Vatican's most stinging broadside against an author and a film since it roundly condemned "The Da Vinci Code" in 2005 and 2006.

"In Pullman's world, hope simply does not exist, because there is no salvation but only personal, individualistic capacity to control the situation and dominate events," the editorial said.

The film, which premiered earlier this month in the United States and stars Nicole Kidman and Daniel Craig, is an adaptation of Pullman's acclaimed novel "Northern Lights".

The Vatican newspaper said "honest" viewers would find it "devoid of any particular emotion apart from a great chill."

In the fantasy world created by Pullman's trilogy, 'His Dark Materials', the Church and its governing body the Magisterium, are linked to cruel experiments on children aimed at discovering the nature of sin and attempts to suppress facts that would undermine the Church's legitimacy and power.

This is precisely the kind of response that will encourage kids to read the books and see the movie. Those of us whose books have never been banned can only watch with envy.

Happy Birthday, Sir Arthur!

Via The Star: Arthur C. Clarke at 90: Where's ET? Excerpt:

Science fiction writer Arthur Clarke listed three wishes on his 90th birthday Sunday: for the world to embrace cleaner energy resources, for a lasting peace in his adopted home, Sri Lanka, and for evidence of extraterrestrial beings.

"I have always believed that we are not alone in this universe," Clarke said in a speech to a small gathering of scientists, astronauts and government officials at a ceremony in his honour in Colombo where he lives.

Humans are waiting until extraterrestrial beings "call us or give us a sign," he said. "We have no way of guessing when this might happen. I hope sooner rather than later."

The British-born author has written more than 100 sci-fi books, including "2001: A Space Odyssey." His fiction predicted space travel before rockets were even test fired and envisioned computers dominating ordinary lives.

On a different note, and just a day after delegates at a United Nations conference in Indonesia agreed to a blueprint for fighting global warming by 2009, he urged the world to consider switching to environment-friendly fuels.

"I would like to see us kicking our current addiction to oil and adopt clean energy resources," Clarke said.

I've been reading his novels since I was a very little boy, and I'm almost 67. For more than half a century, Arthur C. Clarke has shaped our imaginations, and usually for the better.

His last few novels, especially the collaborations, have been potboilers—but go to the early books, like Childhood's End and The City and The Stars, and he'll dumbfound you with his intelligence and vision and sensitivity.

Happy birthday, Sir Arthur. Please don't go before ET calls. You're the one he'll want to talk to.

More about His Dark Materials

Having finished the trilogy with great pleasure, I've written a review, and The Tyee has published it under the title A Dangerous 'Golden Compass'?

A Late Conversion to Philip Pullman

I don't know whether I need to get out more, or to stay in more and catch up on my reading.

For years I've despaired about SF and fantasy as genres enslaved by industrial publishing. The names of authors and titles washed past me; I ignored them, assuming they were just more wretched examples of franchise pizza masquerading as Italian cuisine.

It took the pre-release PR of the film version of Philip Pullman's The Golden Compass to stir me from my pastoral torpor. After seeing the movie trailer, I dug out a copy of the book at a nearby library. I'd managed about 60 pages of the first Harry Potter novel before going into a coma, so I didn't have high hopes for yet another well-hyped Brit fantasy.

Now I'm maddened by having to wait until tomorrow before I can get to a bookstore to buy the whole trilogy. All I can do tonight is grade papers and feel sorry for myself.

I'm also maddened by the thought that Pullman's been around for years: The Golden Compass appeared in 1995, and it's taken a dozen years for me to catch up with him.

If you're already a Pullmanite, you know what I'm talking about. If you're not, you have a hell of an education ahead of you. This is a writer of superb literacy who regards children (and seniors like me) as a serious audience ready to grapple with huge issues that make us turn the pages.

The title of the trilogy is His Dark Materials—a quotation from Milton's Paradise Lost, which is one of the greatest science-fiction epics of all time. Shame on me for not remembering the line from my undergraduate reading.

Pullman drags the blind poet into the age of quantum physics and makes him comfortable there. Then he proceeds to lambaste the poor old guy, and two millennia of religious tyranny, while telling a story that will shut you up and keep you hyperventilating from first page to last.

It's amazing, ironic, and strange that a kids' fantasy trilogy should deal with truly life-and-death issues, while genteel "mainstream" fiction worries about trivia. The irony is especially sour in that the trilogy's been out for years, but only the movie has triggered a hostile response from sincerely stupid Christians who think Pullman is a menace.

For good studies of that response, see this article in the Los Angeles Times, and this one at BBC New Online.

For writers of science fiction and fantasy, Pullman offers a hope of escape from Tolkien's elves and dwarves. Yes, you can write fantasy in clear, concise, vivid English. Yes, you can create your own world instead of being a sharecropper in someone else's. Yes, you can confront life, death, and the meaning of both without breaking into giggles or purple prose.

But part of Pullman's genius is that he never lets you relax. As soon as you think Lyra Belacqua and her daemon are finally safe, he tightens the screws even more. To match his kind of writing, you're going to have to work harder than you ever dreamed. The only consolation will be that if you can write as well as Philip Pullman, but not like him, you have written very well indeed.

Cast your bread upon the waters...

The other day I got an email:
...even though you don't know it, I'm your pupil and successful too. I studied your Advice on Novel Writing and my first novel was published last week. Thank you. Margot Voet in Zutphen, the Netherlands.

Well, of course it's a delight to see that my suggestions have helped another aspiring novelist. Margot tells me her novel took two years to write. The title is De Heling, which in Dutch can mean both "the healing" and "the fencing of stolen goods."

Congratulations, Margot! May the novel do well, and may the next one do even better.

Harlan Ellison: Listen to the Master!

The American SF writer Harlan Ellison has been around since two ice ages ago, and he is far past being a polite elder statesman. Via YouTube, the best advice you will ever get: Pay the Writer.

I confess I've been taken for a ride more than once. Twenty years ago, a poised American film producer, making movies on the cheap in Vancouver, invited me to write a pitch for a kids' TV series. Dazed by her charm, and without an agent to slap my face, I did so.

"I'm sorry," she eventually told me over the phone. "It just doesn't have that magic."

Don't get me going on all the "education" periodicals that expect their educator-writers to contribute for nothing, while their editors, layout artists, photographers, and clerks get paid the going rate.

And don't you ever, ever give your stuff away just for "exposure." You may have the hottest body in the northern hemisphere, but that doesn't mean you have to walk naked down Main Street just to get a date.