The Writer As Eternal Student

For the next roundtable let's talk about how writers are eternal students (though usually on self-study courses). 

The first side of that coin is that we can only write what we know. How has that been evident in your work? Are there topics/interests/specifics that you find your work covering over and over again?

Bobby Nash: I always take the “write what you know” advice to be the beginning of the journey. I didn’t know much about FBI agents or serial killers when I wrote Evil Ways, but I knew about the relationship between two brothers so that’s the foundation for the story. If the relationship between them is solid, the rest I can build on from there. I’ve had demeaning day jobs. I can use that as a basis for a story or character, even if it's not the same job, I can extrapolate from real life to make the story feel real. If I took “write what you know” literally, my stories would be very boring.

Ef Deal: I write steampunk, which has the advantage of being set in history. There's a lot to know about history, and the information is readily available. My plots involve an element of social conflict, an historical setting including historical figures and events, scientific dvelopments of the time period (1840s), and paranormal features as they were understood at the time. Research is essential to nail down all of those elements in such a way as to find a nexus where they present a plausible plot for me to pursue. I like to get down to the personal level, so I often read journals of the time, memoirs of the historical figures, newspaper articles. These often give me significant lines of description or dialogue. When I saw Eugene Delacroix's comment about the Paris-Orleans railway being "a blessing to my rheumatic bones," for example, I knew that line had to be in the book and that the story would begin there. In researching conditions for child laborers in the coal industry, I learned of the disaster that drowned 30-some kids, and I learned their names so at least one would be immortalized.

Paul Landri: Buckle up because this is a long one! 

One of the best compliments I’ve gotten so far for the first book in the Crimson Howl series came from an up-and-coming comic book writer friend of mine named Patrick Reilly (he’s got an anthology series coming out later this year everyone should check out,) who told me that I write “white rage” very well. Now, I don’t normally talk politics but art has been and always will be political by its very nature.

I am not an angry white man in the sense that I feel my privilege is being eroded by outside influences. I am angry at the injustice I see all around me perpetuated by thoughtless and ignorant men who feel like the march of progress is somehow an affront to their identities. In Howl book 1 I wanted to channel that feeling because I grew up around this type of thinking. The Jersey Shore where I lived, Atlantic Highlands, is a pretty blue-collar area despite its status as a tourist town. Lots of fishermen and old salts who’d spend their late afternoons and evenings at the local watering hole lamenting about how the good days were behind them. These were people from an older, less tolerant generation who had no filter and didn’t care, after a few Miller Lites, who knew their opinions. Of course, this was constantly brushed off because they were “from another generation” (as if that was any excuse!) So when I came up with the character of Arnold Grant, the titular character of the Crimson Howl series, I wanted to see how a character with superpowers from a “different” generation would exist in the modern era. I came up with the idea of the Crimson Howl as a character in 2014. Two years before the MAGA movement usurped the Republican party and transformed it into something unrecognizable. I like to joke (although it’s becoming much less funny as time goes on,) that the Crimson Howl was MAGA before MAGA was MAGA.

I have a degree in history from Monmouth University. My senior thesis was on propaganda during World War 2 in America. You can read it at the Guggenheim Library in West Long Branch if you’d like. I found the subject fascinating (and got an A on it, to boot!) and wanted to incorporate as much of my WW2 knowledge and nostalgia into the book as possible. When creating the world for Return of the Crimson Howl I had to marry my love of Golden Age comic books with my fascination with World War 2. How to do that, though? Well, the answer is simple: make superheroing a part of the New Deal. I don’t seem to recall if this had been done before, but it definitely worked in my narrative. I currently work with the estate of Joe Simon, who along with Jack Kirby created Captain America. My work has a heavily anti-fascist bend that I’m very proud of.

Despite also being very anti-mafia in real life, I find mafia stories fascinating because it’s a shared part of my Italian-American heritage for better or worse. I’m a big fan of Mario Puzo and wanted to honor his style when I wrote the origin chapter of Rudyard Sinclair, our magical/mystical character named The Swami (He’s on the front cover of Return of the Crimson Howl, done up in full color by Terrific Ted Hammond). In that chapter I got to bring the knowledge of the mob I learned while living out in Nevada and bring it into the story in a fun way. It’s always great to name-drop Kefauver and the hearings that helped destroy the prestige of the Italian mafia.

Lance Stahlberg: If I only wrote what I knew, my books would be pretty boring. I do not live an exciting life. I go out of my way to make sure that not every character has all of my interests and such. Though of course there are elements of me in each of them. I know Chicago, but I've only set one of my books there.

Ideas Like Bullets -- I Oughta Be Committed

One of the things that comes with being a writer, well, to be honest, being a creative in any sense of the word, is the concept of assumption.  A sibling to that is of course expectation.  Now, I am not speaking of assumptions and expectations a writer may have, that’s a whole other column, but I am referring to assumptions made by and expectations of people who aren’t authors.  You know them, almost everyone else in the world, how it feels anyway, who are sort of on the outside of what we do looking in.  Those people who, when they learn what you do, have a range of physical reactions, anything from eyes widening like saucers as they ask, “Do you know Stephen King?” to the furrowed brow and disgruntled frown as they ask, “So, you live in your mother’s basement, then?”

Of course, we as writers react to these in different ways and that’s all right. We should, as we are all individuals.  It makes sense that people who aren’t authors have a preconceived notion.  Again, that’s a human thing, we do that with any career, any religion, anybody that is slightly ‘something else’, we ask questions or react to them based on the ‘stereotype’ fixed in our brains, usually.  And after the initial reaction usually comes questions.  Not just silly ones like “So You’re rich, right?”, but questions about how we write, what it takes to be a writer, those sorts of things. 

That is where I will venture today. 

I’ve got a lot of thoughts on many things.  Now, the fact that I am a writer and a publisher and somebody who does Genre Fiction and New Pulp adds no extra weight really to my opinions or advice, so I won’t take offense if you don’t print off this blog post and carry it close to your heart to treasure it always.  And my missives where writing are concerned are most definitely my own personal deductions on the craft and my views on the mechanics of how things work, all points you are perfectly allowed to ignore or even actively disagree with. 

Some of what follows will be the aforementioned advice.  Some will be simply answers to questions often asked.  Much of it will be my take on certain conventions, some of those aforementioned assumptions and expectations, and even things writer believe and feel.  All in all, just my musings, so be forewarned and take them for what you feel they’re worth.

One of the most common questions asked by anyone who has even an inkling of real curiosity about what authors do is, “Well, how do You become a writer?”  Another version of this one is “What do you to be a writer?”  And as silly as these questions may sound when you read them aloud, they’re not bad starting points.  The answer I give is actually rather simple and one that many, many of the writers I know and a lot I don’t know use as well.

Writers write.

That’s it, short and simple. Now, if you want my shade and coloring of that answer, writers write every day.  And by that I mean, someone interested in being an author, be it fiction or nonfiction, writing newspaper articles about Sunday brunches or earth shattering exposes on red dye food coloring and its effect on the sparrow population, must commit their craft consistently. 

Now, notice that last sentence.  Normally when someone says the above, the word they will use is ‘practice’… ‘must practice their craft consistently.’  Obviously, I am teetering on the edge of semantics, but that’s okay.  I simply don’t believe that ‘practice’ is the best word.  Although it can be defined as the doing of one’s occupation or the applying of one’s skill, I don’t like the fact that it sounds like a writer is still in the infancy of what they’re doing.  Moreso, I don’t believe that it’s a strong enough word.  That’s why I don’t practice writing. I commit writing, every single day.  I make it happen, I follow through, I get it done. Even if it is a single sentence furthering a project or maybe even a few lines putting a new idea on paper, I do it every day to some degree.  Sometimes it’s clean and precise and sometimes it’s messy and all over the place, but I do it on a daily basis.  Commit may seem too strong a word, and has connotations that some may not like, making writing sound like a crime, but what I do as an author, while not criminal (at least in my opinion, I probably have some readers who would disagree), is something I take very seriously and do with the greatest of intent. So, yes, writers should commit writing every single day.

The follow up question to the above that usually comes from those who are considering actually trying to write involves exactly what to write.  Again, my thoughts on this share similarities with the ideas of others, but that’s okay. It’s nice to know that not all my opinions are on the outer edges of conventional thinking.
There’s an age old adage that writers should write what they know.  Although a logical argument can be made for this, let me present just one of many examples right out of the gate that will blow this concept away. 

There was a man in the 1930s who had a job.  His job was working as an executive working for an oil company. He did what ever oil company executives do, I suppose, until something happened that cost him his job. This same something cost many people their jobs, their homes, their livelihoods and, even in some instances, their lives.  That would be the Great Depression.

When this particular man lost his job, he of course began looking for other ways to make the scratch necessary to live.  So, he turned to writing. Not just any writing, but writing for the Pulps. Writing mysteries. And not just any mysteries, but tales featuring Private Investigators, and other such types. And not just any Private Eye either. This man, this former oil executive whose job had been doing oil executive things, created Phillip Marlowe, one of the most recognized characters in fiction today.  Raymond Chandler was this man and he didn’t write what he knew.  He wrote what he wanted to.

Now, it can be argued that Chandler wrote what would sell, and that’s a true statement.   But I’ll hold that he wanted to write what would sell, so he wrote what he wanted to.  In today’s market, there are opportunities to write just about anything.  If you want to be a professional writer and that be all you do full time, there are ways to make that happen.  I know people who do it and don’t mind it, some who absolutely love it.  But many of them do it by not necessarily writing things they enjoy, but instead by authoring technical manuals or writing ad copy for websites.  Yes, it’s writing, and yes, they want to write it because they want to get paid for it.  But I have to take it a step further to offer advice. 

Write…what you like. 

If you like space opera, write space opera.  That means doing as much research as you need to to write intelligently about it, but do that and then WRITE it.  If Westerns are your thing, then dust off your hat and saddle up and WRITE a Western.  Write what you like and find a market for it, if authoring is something you want to turn into a career.  Or, if that’s the case, look at what people are paying for writers to write and find something in that You like and WRITE it.  In one sense, writing is like any other job.  It takes far too much time and work and commitment to be a writer for you to spend hours and days and years writing things you would never read, putting down words you can’t stand.  So…write what you like.

Life’s too short not to.

[Link] In Defense of "Write What You Know"

In lieu of another personal interview this week, I thought I'd instead share this practical, helpful article from a fellow writer. I think you'll find your time reading it well spent. 

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by Lucy Blue

In a recent writers roundtable over at comic and fiction writer Sean H. Taylor’s blog (Bad Girls, Good Guys and Two-Fisted Action, and if you’re not reading it, you’re missing out), we talked about the best and worst advice we’ve ever received as writers. More than half of us piled on the hate for that cursed pearl so loved by high school creative writing teachers everywhere: Write What You Know. What a load of crap, we agreed. How boring would fiction be if writers only ever wrote what they know? There’d be no science fiction, no fantasy, no horror that didn’t make you cry and throw up, and very little romance of the slightest interest to anybody but the parties involved. I was part of the lynch mob, I freely admit. I think this idea of writing what you know has produced more soggy, self-indulgent crap calling itself story than any concept ever devised with the possible exception of “why do vampires have to be so mean?” Most of us in the roundtable write speculative fiction of one kind or another, and we rejected this nonsense out of hand. “Write what you know,” indeed.  But now that I think more about it, I’m not so sure we were right.

After all, the advice isn’t, “Write ONLY what you know.” Very few of us have autobiographies that the average reader would find enthralling, no matter how artfully we might present them. There are exceptions, of course, and different readers will always be interested in and inspired by different things. But anybody who has a friend or cousin who posts every breath they take, every move they make, every leaf they rake to Facebook knows what I’m talking about. That being said, we all of us have our moments, and for writers those moments “recollected in tranquillity” (to borrow a phrase from Wordsworth just this once and never again, I promise) are what bring our stories to life and make them uniquely ours. Isaac Asimov presumably was not a robot, nor did he own one. But after reading the Foundation trilogy, I’m pretty sure he spent a fair amount of time is some situation which caused him to consider the need for and dangers inherent in altruism and the search for identity in plain, old, ordinary humans.

Continue reading: http://lucybluecastle.wordpress.com/2014/11/02/in-defense-of-write-what-you-know/

The Writer Will Take Your Questions Now (#244) -- Write What You Know?

Which is more true for you, “Write what you know” or “Research, research, research”?

Get ready for another of my trademarked non-committal responses.

I’m a big believer in both of these writing truths. I think that you can’t write what you don’t know, but inversely, research can only give facts and can only go so far. So, where does that leave a writer?

With the imagination to take what he or she does know (“we can only possess what we experience… truth, to be understood, must be lived” -- thank you Charlie Peacock), add to that facts about the topic or time period or people involved in the tale, and stir vigorously to create something tasty for a reader’s brain to digest.