Fundamental Change of Outlook
I've decided to stop getting stressed over things I can't change. No. Really. Stop laughing... I'm right here you know!
Anyone who has spent any amount of time around me will know that anxiety is a good friend of mine. All those sad little thoughts mount up at the back of my mind until they spill over and show me exactly how the life I've built for myself could go horrifically wrong. Then comes the sadness, the anger, the frustration and the absolute shitting terror. There's a lot out there to worry about and I tend to let it influence me more than other people I know... unless they just hide it better.
Anyway, it took living with someone to really understand what a problem anxiety was. Living alone you have no perspective. You don't know what it's doing to you and the potential it has to mess with other people. It's very hard to get a good sense of your own mannerisms when you live on your own. That and you just don't care as much.
So here we are at the end of the decade with Christmas bearing down on us. This is me making a conscious decision to not sweat the small stuff, or the big stuff that I have no control over.
We'll see how it goes...
Vampire Books, Brian Lumley and Metamorphic Proto Flesh
So I was discussing vampire stories, in the wake of the latest Twilight movie, and realised that I've not read nearly so many of them as I thought. So let's get a couple of things out of the way. I've not read Anne Rice, Dracula, The Vampyre, Twilight, 'Salem's Lot or any of the others that I probably should have. That right there probably makes it illegal for me to discuss vampire stories, but never mind. It's after midnight and I'm running on fumes...
I'm currently reading The Evil Seed by Joanne Harris. Apparently it's her "haunting debut novel". I have to admit to being kind of disappointed when I realised it was another vampire story, but oh well. I'll keep at it on account of her prose being ridiculously readable.
When you mention George R. R. Martin people think of fantasy. Specifically, they think of his Song of Ice and Fire series and are likely to whine about the lack of the next book. Ignore them. Fevre Dream is better. It's got vampires on steamboats! The hero is ageing, overweight and anything but dashing. The story is filled with desperation and loss from start to finish. Just fantastic!
Richard Matheson wrote I Am Legend, a stonkingly good science fiction take on the vampire story. The last man on earth struggles for survival at night. During the day he hunts vampires and uses his powers of science to figure out what created them! There's also a dog. Apparently the movie adaptation sucked (never saw it myself) and was less than faithful to the original, going so far as to make the title pointless. In the book the title has a point! Read it!
Already Dead is the first book in a vampire noir series by Charlie Huston. It's set in Manhattan and stars Joe Pitt, a gritty renegade type who struggles to make a living, while avoiding joining any of the big vampire clans. It's dark, it's violent and it's a damned good read (all 1 day it'll take you per book). Oh also, the characters have no idea what makes them what they are, which means Huston can avoid all kinds of tedious discussions. Very good!
One of my writing tutors once told me that Brian Lumley is a very scary man. Judging by his Necroscope series (and it's sequels) you might be tempted to agree. But then I heard him read at Alt.Fiction the other year and he seemed very nice! But let's get this said. The Necroscope books are truly horrific. Yes I know they're horror, but damn these take it to an extreme. The first opens with a man torturing the dead for its secrets (using the dead guy's body as a "means of communication") and the fifth one features a character who "makes his own holes". That's before you get to the vampires. I hear a lot of people complaining that vampires have lost their teeth. Well look no further. Lumley's are monsters in every sense of the word. And yes they also have metamorphic proto flesh. They don't shapeshift so much as fleshcraft and create their own creatures (and houses!) from other people. This means you get to read a few rather bizarre sex scenes too! Harry Keogh, the hero, is a maths wizard who can talk to the dead! There's also psychic intelligence agencies fighting it out! And wormholes!
So if you know people stuck for interesting vampire literature, feel free to recommend any of these.
/fade
Oh Dear… and Stuff
I kinda forgot my whole one or two posts a week rule for a while there. Can't say it'll change from here on out, but you never know. The whole purpose of this blog was to talk about writing, so when I don't have a lot to say about it...
We've started workshopping again, resurrecting the group (fortnightly on Wednesdays) that saw me through a year of fiction on the MA. We've two sessions under our belt now and I'm really enjoying it. The second session was particularly good, with people offering suggestions for improvement as well as the normal critique. I'm up next though... Should be interesting, if extremely humbling.
My own writing is very much stop/start. I've said this a million times before but there really aren't enough hours in the day. Most of them are filled with work and random house related jobs. I got another 3k words done on Hemlock Hex and started working on Breaking the Sequence again. This was "inspired by" NaNoWriMo, for which I've failed miserably to meet the average daily word count. But hey getting anything done is good right?
I bought a bike! I did have one already but it was broken down, crappy and would have required significant investment to make roadworthy. So I bought a new one through the Evans Cycles Ride2Work scheme. The voucher, that's meant to take two to three weeks to arrive, turned up two days after I placed my order, so this morning I rode in. Damn it was cold... But damn it was fun too!
We're now hurtling towards Christmas. I think I'm pretty much sorted for present buying, but there's still Christmas dinner to plan. Like fools we volunteered to host this year - it being our first Christmas in our own house - and I can feel lists of timings and alarms being planned. I've got three straight weeks booked off over the holiday too. Should be good!
Moving Forward
I got the marks for my dissertation yesterday. To say I was pleased was an understatement. I didn't do so well in the first year of my MA and didn't expect to be able to recover. I did and, thanks to the kindness of the lecturers, I got what I wanted. Of course - I keep telling myself this - getting the marks was only the beginning. It's what I do now that really matters.
Today I took the first step and had another look at my synopsis. Breaking it down into, what could potentially be, chapters was a really useful exercise. I knew there were scenes that I was looking forward to writing, but seeing them all laid out in bite-size chunks was almost too much. I wanted to stop my day job right then and there and start writing. This I think is a good thing.
One of my biggest worries was that the plot I've got planned out wouldn't be enough to reach my target word count of 40k. It seems like this might be unfounded though. I've even found room to fit in my aborted prologue as a flashback!
It helps to think of it as the novel I will finish.
Maybe I should try affirmations.
Hah!
Onward!
The Human Connection
I enjoy fantasy. I love the visuals, that aesthetic and the escapism. But, most of all, the stories I love are those that show humanity at its best and worst. Fantasy allows a writer to extrapolate the real world to an extreme and explore the result.
Richard Morgan achieves this by setting his story, The Steel Remains, in a world where brutality is commonplace. The main characters don't fight for their queen, country, empire, proletariat or anything else. Each has a deep trauma that drives their actions. Then take Master of Whitestorm by Janny Wurts. Magic plays a huge part in the story, but at its core it's a tale of one man's quest to make the world safe for himself and others. The fact that his quest is spawned from the entirely human desire for revenge, which, when sated, grows into obsession, makes it all the better.
Do you need a fantasy setting for that? Maybe not, but it makes it a lot more fun. So is it wish fulfilment then? I think so, to a degree. As I was growing up I found myself, time and again, failing to stand up for myself. Today I have a tendency towards confrontation and argument. Do I just want to feel like I've won something? It doesn't really matter, but I think that's the root of my attraction to heroic fantasy. The stories I enjoy the most revolve around someone standing up for something they believe in, regardless of the cost.
I think that's one reason I dislike the stupid names that most fantasy authors feel the need to come up with. They detract from the humanity of the story and turn the characters into parodies. It takes a damned good author to make that work.
Sitcom Law
[Spoilers ahead]
Q: What's the number one rule of a sitcom?
A: The characters don't change.
Take The Office (British version). Ricky Gervais put the nail in the show's coffin by having his character become tolerable.The American version on the other hand is still plodding steadily into the future on the back of Michael being zany... over and over.
So how does The Big Bang Theory handle this? The Leonard and Penny romance was only ever going to work if either of the following was to happen. 1) Leonard became normal or 2) Penny became severely nerdy. This has been solved by having them sleep together anyway and ignore any of the logic that would make this possible. I think it helps that the audience are more interested in what Sheldon will say next rather than any other aspect of the show. The romance is almost inconsequential and certainly the least engaging aspect of the show. But then Big Bang Theory has always played free and loose with its "plot", so I guess it doesn't matter.
The question then becomes: How long can the show continue to run on the back of Sheldon's "issues"?
Disarming Fantasy
Very little fantasy seems fantastic any more. A sweeping statement I know, but it's true all the same. We're too comfortable with it. While the magic and advanced technology doesn't exist, for the purposes of stories, it may as well. Space ships, ray guns, zombies, dragons etc. are such a big part of our collective pop culture, that they have lost a lot of their impact.
Take the trailer for Avatar. It impressed me with all its technological wizardry (in creating such a realistic looking world), but none of the creatures, technology or landscapes made me think "WOW". I just thought "space marines vs. night elves... great..."
I sometimes wish I could erase from my mind all the tropes, clichés and expectations that go with fantasy and SF stories. I recently read The Stars My Destination and The Demolished Man, both by Alfred Bester, and was blown away. But not as much as I could have been. The former deals with a society where teleportation is available to all and the latter the effects of telepathy on police work. To read these novels without any knowledge of either subject would have been amazing.
The fantasy and SF stories that really excite me are those that introduce something new, either in terms of the magic they deal with or the technology they present. The battle between the sentient storms of Jupiter, described in Phillip Reeve's Larklight, was so epic in scale that I read the chapter several times over. And this from a writer of YA fiction, something that a lot of fantasy readers appear to deride.
So much SF deals with a future so far removed from our own that we have no basis on which to connect with that world. Far more interesting are tales that look at the potential effects of near-future technologies, those that according to Wired (and other such sites) might be just around the corner, ready to transform our lives. The bite-sized stories told in Global Frequency, by Warren Ellis, are a perfect example.
Is there still room on my bookshelf for a story with magic swords, dragons and faux-medieval kingdoms? Sure. But there'd better be a "holy shit" moment in there too. Preferably two or three. Ideally more.
Creativity Failure
I spent a decent amount of time this week drafting a new story. It was set in a post-apocalyptic world, where a cataclysm had turned the landscape into glass. My two protagonists, a weaver, who had failed to prevent the cataclysm, and an oven cleaner, whose daughter is injured by protection racketeers, seemed interesting, perhaps even entertaining.
The problem was this: The world did not inform the story. As a result, I ended up with a simple tale of revenge, albeit one that re-energised my characters. There was no reason whatsoever that this story couldn't have been set in the real world, present day.
I want to write speculative fiction. I want new ideas, both big and small, to make a difference to my characters. So this story will remain incomplete, and tomorrow I'll start a new one.
Reading Meme
Do you snack while you read? If so, favorite reading snack?
Cookies. Yes, I'm very original.
Do you tend to mark your books as you read, or does the idea of writing in books horrify you?
Nope. When I forget something, I tend to flick backwards through the pages, like a madman, until I find the bit the current bit connects to. I just don't think writing in books is necessary.
How do you keep your place while reading a book? Bookmark? Dog-ears? Laying the book flat open?
Bookmarks most often, but dog-ears in an emergency. I'm not the type who can just remember page numbers.
Fiction, Non-fiction, or both?
Pretty much all fiction.
Hard copy or audiobooks?
Hard copy.
Are you a person who tends to read to the end of chapters, or are you able to put a book down at any point?
Either or. I'm easy.
If you come across an unfamiliar word, do you stop to look it up right away?
Depends if I care enough.
What are you currently reading?
Sandman: Season of Mists by Neil Gaiman.
What is the last book you bought?
The Walking Dead 10.
Are you the type of person that only reads one book at a time or can you read more than one at a time?
Depends if a book grabs me. I like to finish them, but I do tend to start others if I'm not enamoured.
Do you have a favorite time of day and/or place to read?
On the settee, pretty much any time.
Do you prefer series books or stand alone books?
Stand alone books.
Is there a specific book or author that you find yourself recommending over and over?
David Gemmell.
How do you organize your books? (By genre, title, author’s last name, etc.?)
However they land. I like to group series together.
Writing Again
Close to 11pm on a Sunday night. Clearly the best time to start writing again. Screw it. I've never been a morning person. So this is me resuming an earlier project. One that, to my annoyance, was too long to be used for a fiction assignment and too short to be used for my dissertation. I mean I loved those projects, but this is something else: the first short story that might actually be good enough to send out. Reading my earlier submissions, it's obvious why no one in their right mind would touch them. This one will be different.
Here's the first little chunk...
She grips my ankle, dragging me down. The dim circle of light above me shrinks, obscured by mud and weeds. Tangled in wet clothes, I try to twist out of her grasp. It's so damned cold. I cry out but water rushes into my mouth. Then we hit the bottom and her face is before me. Beautiful. I twist again and fall, cracking my head on a rock.
"Alfie! Wake up for God's sake!"
I wake. But my body still panics. I lash out, catching Karen on the side of the mouth. She screams and I scream. Cold sweat plasters the sheets to my body. My head cracks against the headboard for the second time and I lie still. I hear moaning and then a sob. Tearing at the sheets, I stand up. It's freezing. Karen stares up at me, her eyes filled with hurt. She nurses her jaw and blood trickles from the corner of her mouth.
"Shit Alfie. I think you split my gum."
I'm next to her in an instant, trying to both hug her and dab at the blood. The words "I'm sorry" never felt more useless. I say them anyway, over and over. She shrinks away at first but I drag her close and hold on until her shudders subside. We sit there as dawn breaks, shivering in my cold sweat. I can't let her go.
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