Envy and Imitation

"There is a time in every man's education when he arrives at
the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide;
that he must take himself for better, for worse, as his portion;
that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel or
nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed
on that plot of ground which is given to him to till."
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Self-Reliance"

It's okay. Every writer does it. I do it. You do it. The best-sellers do it. The indie savants do it. 

We tend to ape -- sometimes unintentionally, sometimes on purpose -- our favorite writers and pick up on the traits we enjoy about their work. 

When I started writing, I was determined to be the next C.S. Lewis. Not the Narnia Lewis but the Space Trilogy and the Till We Have Faces Lewis. Because of that, my writing was overblown and way too wordy. And I also sounded British--using British turns of phrase and UK slang. Don't take my word for it. You can trust the fine folks at The New Yorker and The Missouri Review, who both told me the same thing. I still have both rejection letters in a binder with other memories from my writer's journey. 

When I started my Bachelor's classes in Literature, I found out how much I loved the novels and short stories of a certain boisterous and burly man-baby named Hemingway. So I moved on from the verbose intelligence and heavy vocabulary of C.S. Lewis for the clean, crisp, succinct prose of Papa Hemingway. 

The trouble was that I was still playing the imitation game. 

Only something was changing, something I wasn't even aware of.

Every Man's Education

After Hemingway, I went down the 20th Century American Literature rabbit hole. There was Raymond Carver, Flannery O'Connor, Eudora Welty, Zora Neale Hurston, Langston Hughes (yes, stories not just poetry), and Shirley Jackson. As their ideas and styles added to what I had learned to apply from Papa, I noticed my way of writing changed significantly. I retained my love for simple sentences and direct nouns and verbs without lots of adverbs and adjectives, but I turned away from trying to be so "Literary" and embraced the "Southern" of my youth. 

And so began my phase of "Southern Literary" where I found the themes of Welty, O'Connor, Hurton, etc. weaving into my fiction. However, the voice was always changing from the Lewis/Hemingway copycat to something new that blended bits and bobs from lots of influences. 

It was during this time that I wrote for the award-winning Cyber Age Adventures. Being a literary writer, you can imagine the fun I had crafting superhero stories with my lens of literary impact and import. Somehow, it worked. Between Frank Fradella's RPG-inspired adventure yarn set in real-world physics and repercussions, Tom Waltz's quasi-military approach, and my focus of American Literature, we created something unique and engaging in the world of superhero fiction. 

But my inspiration still had some growth to come. 

Imagine the confusion and prosaic mush created when I started exploring for work of the great pulp and pulp-adjacent writers as I tried my hand at some New Pulp Fiction stories thanks to some introductions by friends like Bobby Nash. To do my homework at writing pulpy tales, I dug into the stories (both novels and short stories) of folks like Edgar Rice Burroughs, Robert E. Howard, Dashiell Hammett, and Raymond Chandler, among others. 

With these new influences, my style took another shift. The simple prose of Hemingway was still similar to the simple, direct prose of Chandler, but the types of stories were suddenly allowed to become a lot more, well, more exciting physically and emotionally rather than just the intellectual excitement of my Literary focus.

This began a new phase of what Derrick Ferguson and I often called Literary Pulp. For us, that meant deeper than mere surface characterization, dialogue that does more than just advance the plot, and looking for real-world interactions that didn't sugarcoat the time periods we were writing about. For me, it was just a continuation of what I had been doing since discovering Lewis and Hemingway. Lewis made me want to deal with spiritual and philosophical topics in genre fiction. Hemingway made me want to create characters who, when they spoke about a topic or when they avoided a topic, revealed a lot about who they were. Same uniform, just a different ballfield.

Nourishing Corn on My Own Plot of Ground

Okay. So what did I learn through that journey toward becoming Sean Taylor, the writer? Are there lessons that can help other writers push through their own journeys from imitation to what Emerson called "self-reliance"?

Sure. If you know me at all, you already know I love both tutorials and lists, and when I get to put them together in a single article, I'm suddenly the happiest little clam in the world. 

So here goes...

1. Embrace your idols. 

It's okay to be inspired to imitate. We learn by copying the works of those we enjoy reading. Their stories teach us about story structure, how to write dialog, when to break grammar rules -- all those wonderful techniques that ultimately fill up our writing toolkit and become what we call a personal style and voice. 

Take those inspirations. Work with them. Play with them. Turn them upside down and inside out. Put your own spin on them. Play with all your favorite toys. 

2. There can't only be one. 

Now, here's the trick, isn't it? This is your journey to discovering who you are as a writer, not a rehash of the movie Highlander. 

Imitating a single writer makes you a copycat. Imitation several at once makes you a dedicated learner of the craft. The more you learn from multiple writers, the more you integrate seemingly disparate voices into your own work, and that makes you become unique. Even if you use all the same ingredients, you bake your pie from a different recipe. 

3. Start purging. 

There will be lots of tidbits and style doodads that you find no longer work for you the more comfortable you become in your own writer "skin." That's all part of learning. What doesn't work anymore, excise it. Purge it like last month's leftovers. Eventually, you are left with the style stuff that makes you happy and makes you, well, you. 

Just like I left behind the British-isms of Lewis, you may need to cull the standard adventure motif of Tolkein or Donaldson's ten pages of how brown the mountains and tunnels were. You may need to cull the reliance on the internal monologue you copied from Faulkner. You may need to ditch the sudden shifts in verb tense and -person you picked up from Ed McBain. They may have gotten you to where you are, but they no longer suit you.

4. Good writers borrow. Great writers steal. 

This quote is usually attributed to the poet T.S. Eliot and it is often quoted along with a variation on it by Aaron Sorkin: “Good writers borrow from other writers. Great writers steal from them outright.” Regardless of who said it when and how, it's absolutely true. 

Beginning writers obsess about how much their work may remind them of the folks they admire. Great and practiced writers stop caring after a while. In fact, it's safe to say that all those things you think you will be called out for copying won't even register with most readers. Sure, there will always be reviewers who are paid to make both fair and unfair comparisons, but those are your typical readers. 

Steal proudly. Steal broadly. Steal without any discrimination. Do you like the way Eudora Welty writes winter scenes? Fine. Take it and shove it in your toolkit. Really dig the way Chandler can chop dialogue into snappy fragments? Chisel it right out of his book and hang onto it for your next story. 

New in Nature

Now, before you look at that list above and start to craft a plan, stop. Those aren't steps in a printout from Mapquest in 2006. You don't aim for step one and then turn off Highway 20 onto step two like it's some kind of organized plan. 

What is it then?

It's a synopsis of what happens to us as writers. It's a description of the process more than an outline to follow. It's something organic, not ordained. Something passive, not planned. 

It's one thing to be aware of it and acknowledge it and not let it consume you with imposter syndrome. But it's another thing entirely to see it as a roadmap for your writing goals. That shift in thinking is both subtle and crucial. 

The next line in the Emerson quote that started this essay is this: 

The power which resides in him is new in nature, and none but he knows what that is which he can do, nor does he know until he has tried.

Ultimately it comes down to this: TRY.

Enjoy what you enjoy and let it shape you as a writer. Read, consume, mulch it in your mind, turn it into brain food, rinse and repeat. It's really as simple and as complicated as that. 

Not Fitting in at the Bookstore -- And What It Taught Me About Who I Am as a Writer

I love used bookstores. Most of my ever-growing library comes either from online discounters or used bookstores. Even so, with all that love (I can spend hours wandering in a single, skinny store in a low-rent shopping center), I still always have the hardest time at used bookstores. The stuff I'm looking for to fill in gaps in my collections... Well, I never know where to look for it.

Is Vonnegut going to be with the sci-fi books or with classics? Sure, I can find Heinlein with sci-fi, but not so much Bradbury. He might be in with literary collections or classics, but seldom sci-fi, even though that was his bread and butter.

And let's talk about more contemporary writers like Gaiman. The man writes the heck out of fantasy, but good luck finding his books anywhere other than general fiction or literary.

And when I'm trying to fill in Hammett and Chandler, do I look under mysteries with Sue Grafton, et al, or do I hope for the best in classics, or just go straight to the desk and ask for the rare book room even though I'm not looking for the pricey versions, just beat-up paperback reprints?

Does anybody else have this problem?

I posted these words the other day on my social media feeds mainly just venting after going to visit a new used bookstore (Did I mention how much I love used bookstores yet? Because I really do. I can spend hours there in spite of my issue mentioned above.)

Only the idea wormed its way into my brain and grabbed hold of my thoughts and wouldn't let go. And it got me thinking about how that same issue related to who I am as a writer. Sure, I write genres, from action and adventure to sci-fi and horror (but no epic fantasy, sorry, not my bag), but I've never felt defined by those genres any more than I have by my content. And trust me, my content has varied from super heroes to monsters to hard-boiled gumshoes to planetary adventurers.

What Publishers Want

Publishers and readers look for categories, and not just any categories, but easy to define divisions. Those are easy to sell. A reader wants a mystery for the beach this summer, and bang, a clerk can walk said reader to the mystery section where he or she can be inundated by racks and racks of books by pretty much the same 100 authors. A reader wants a new urban fantasy, and poof, there’s a section for that, not to be confused with either sci-fi or mystery, or even epic fantasy. It’s quick, it’s easy, and it’s basic marketing.

It gets even quicker, easier, and more marketable with series. Publishers love series. Readers love series. Both love them because it means they don’t have to think about what to read next. They don’t have to experiment with authors outside their “I know and love him or her” list unless it’s a strong recommendation by a friend. Series make money for that very reason. Series make careers for that very reason. And smart writers (unlike me) know how to take advantage of that market for series books.

You see, I have learned that the publishing world is a lot like that used bookstore I love to visit. It continues to work because it is built on categories that make people’s choices for them. If you like ___________ then you’ll also like ___________. Don’t feel bad if there’s not a new book by ___________ yet, just read this similar book by ___________ and you’ll be fine.

The Spanner in the Works

I can’t write like that. Hell, I can’t even read like that. I love the authors I love because their works are so vastly different from each another. There are worlds between Bradbury's Dandelion Wine and R is for Rocket. Vonnegut only wrote one Player Piano, only one Sirens of Titan, and both of those are on the other side of Crazytown from God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater and Slaughterhouse Five. Even Heinlein, while staying firmly inside the structure and settings of sci-fi, ranged from one end to the other with his diverse styles than covered the gamut from Starship Troopers to Job to For Us the Living to Stranger in a Stange Land and I Will Fear No Evil. I’ll have to acquiesce to the standard with Hammett and Chandler, but even those two diverged from their “series” from time to time.

I grew up on this kind of writing. Of the novels I’ve read, very few are parts of series. And even fewer fit easily into one genre. Most overlap between genres like the choreography of a Three Musketeers sword fight overlaps settings. One foot here in the foyer, then here in the dining room, then a hop to the stairwell and a step into the ballroom for another strike. 

The stuff I’ve always enjoyed most doesn’t fit into easy categories or series. At best, Kilgore Trout shows up in a few of Vonnegut’s novels, but not as the main character except in one. Even The Martian Chronicles isn’t a complete novel, but a series of related short stories with differing protagonists. Gaiman’s Sandman comics are the only true series work he’s done. The rest interrelate only in the trappings and table dressings, much like those of Stephen King’s fictional city of Derry.

Nor do I want to write like that. I want to paint with all the colors of the wind (thank you, Pocahontas!). I want to master all of the Lantern rings, from green to black. I want to write like the writers who influenced me, not because I want to be a clone of them, but because they created the same kinds of stories I want to be able to tell... a little bit of whatever the hell they wanted to tell at the time. They didn't get locked into markets, and even if that's the way the industry works today, I won't do it. I can't do it. It'd be like putting a part of me in a box and shoving it under the bed or in the top of the closet to ignore.

Maybe the business doesn't work the same way it did for them anymore, but it doesn't change who I am, who they helped make me as a creator of stories.

Outside the Genre Lines

I pity the reader looking for my stuff in a bookstore setup. It’s not as easy as going to the fantasy section and seeing a huge row of similar works all by George R.R. Martin (and not just because I’m not that popular). Nor can you waltz to the sci-fi section and find all my books together like Heinlein’s or Frank Herbert’s.

No. You have to go to the action section, the horror section, and sci-fi section, etc. and find maybe one each in these genre classifications. Because I love to write everything. I cherish that freedom. I think if I had to get stuck in a single genre because I was writing a successful series and having to revisit all the same characters over and over again, I’d be miserable as a writer. Sure, I might be a lot more successful and maybe even have more money if I pulled a Sue Grafton or a Craig Johnson. But, at best, I might be able to do a Walter Mosley and have to finish a series to start another when I felt it had run its course (I miss you, Easy.) But most likely, even that is beyond me, and I’ll continue to jump around in obscurity from monsters to private dicks with all the wild abandon of a child coloring outside the lines in his first “I Went to the Zoo” coloring book.

If I had to single it out, I think the one thing that defines me as a writer would be voice. It’s the “who I am” as a writer that links my books and stories together. There’s a way I tell stories that comes across (at least I hope) to let you know you’re reading works by the same author.

A caveat: At no point to I intend to slight the work of series or genre-specific writers as a lesser quality or more low-brow kind of writing. If anything, it’s a lot smarter than what I’m doing. It’s just not what I’m created to write. I’ve got a wandering spirit that resists today’s “rules” of marketing. There’s still enough Hemingway and Carver and Fitzgerald in me to screw up the “what I’m supposed to do” of genre writing and convince me that I can do it all.

“Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference,” wrote Robert Frost, and I think I finally understand how his way-over-quoted poem relates to my writing life. It means that when faced with the options of doing things the easier, more profitable, more marketable, industry-standard way, I dug in my heels, became obstinate, stuck to my guns, and walked clearly and steadfastly in the other direction.

And I’m cool with that.

Well, I never said I was smart.

[Link] Noir Fiction

by Warren Bull

I’ve been asked what inspires me to write noir fiction.

“Noir” (black in French) was reportedly first used by film critic Nino Franklin in 1946 to describe the downbeat, bleak themes of American crime movies released in France such as The Maltese Falcon, Murder My Sweet and Double Indemnity. Those films reflected the anxieties and disillusionment of the times. They stand out in contrast to the optimistic comedies and musicals also made at the time.

Writers like Dashiell Hammett, Cornell Woolridge, and James M. Cain helped to establish the form. Hard-boiled detective stories often portrayed a cynical, underappreciated man dealing with lying clients, threats and violent hard cases in a corrupt world. The primary difference between hard-boiled and noir fiction is that the hard-boiled detective has an ethical core, even if no one else does. The ending may or may not be happy, but the central figure is definitely heroic. As Otto Penzler has written, in noir there are no heroes and no happy endings. The focus is on “losers” driven by destructive impulses such as greed, lust or revenge who make choices that lead them further along a downward spiral toward doom. Although sometimes described as hyper-masculine writing, Patricia Highsmith and Dorothy B. Hughes among other women writers produced excellent noir fiction.

Noir continues to evolve over time expanding to locations, eras, and characters beyond what the originators of the form imagined.

Read the full article: https://www.goread.com/buzz/warren-bull/article/noir-fiction/

[Link] Pulp Fiction: What’s It All About?

by Paul Bishop

I WAS ASKED the other day to explain what makes pulp storytelling different from other types of fiction. My kneejerk reaction was to claim, it’s hard to define, but I know it when I read it – which does little to answer the question. I’ve since thought a lot about what constitutes the pulp style of storytelling, which engenders both excoriating scorn from critics and fanatical devotion from acolytes.

By now, most readers know the term pulp was coined in reference to the thousands of inexpensive fiction magazines whose heyday spanned the 1920s through the 1950s. Printed on cheap wood pulp paper, the pulps were typically 7 inches by 10 inches in size, 128 pages long, and sported eye grabbing, luridly colored covers, and ragged, untrimmed edges. Today, the original pulps are more often collected for their gaudy covers than for the fluctuating quality of the words in between.

At the height of their popularity there were hundreds of pulp magazine titles gracing the newsstands each week. The demand for stories was as voracious as the pay per word was cheap. To make a living, a writer selling stories to the pulps had to be a word machine, churning out prose for a quarter to a half cent per word. The result of this constant demand was a straightforward, often formulatic, style of writing designed to entertain a vast audience of everyday, hardworking, folks looking for vicarious thrills and chills to escape the humdrum of their daily lives.

The pulps were also a refiner’s fire for many writers who are household names today – Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett, Louis L’Amour, John D. MacDonald, and others. To these men belonged the battered typewriters and hard drinking tropes, which themselves have become a cliché within the public conscious.

There were also giants of the pulp writing field whose names are not as familiar, but whose characters have gone on to become iconic examples of pop culture – Robert E. Howard’s Conan The Barbarian, Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Tarzan, Walter B. Gibson’s The Shadow, Lester Dent’s Doc Savage, to name just a few, all started in the pulps. We all know their famous creations, but most would look blank if asked who the creators were.

The downside of the insatiable demand for stories to fill the pages of pulp magazines was it also guaranteed much of what was published was slapdash gruel of little to no lasting impact. It is this explosion of dross that gives pulp dismissing critics a place to hang their clichéd hats. However, the beating heart of the true pulps – the best of the stories and characters born within their pages – has shined for almost a century of popular culture.

Read the full article: http://venturegalleries.com/blog/pulp-fiction-whats/