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Without Darkness, There is No Light

9/21/2010

A while ago, I read a book that by all accounts should have been a great success. It was filled with fascinating ideas cleverly expressed, likeable and lively characters, a strong narrative and so on. The book has garnered many positive reviews, been nominated for some significant awards and appears to be selling well. I’ve read a number of books by the same author and generally enjoyed them all, some more than others, of course, but still I was surprised at how flat this one seemed, how little emotional or even intellectual response it generated in me.

It took me a while to figure out why. In fact, it took another book, this one so unrelentingly bleak I couldn’t bring myself to finish it. (I did skip ahead to the final chapter – I was not wrong in my assessment; it never got any better.) But I’ll focus on the first novel I mentioned.

It was so relentlessly optimistic, and having heard the writer talk about it, deliberately so, that its brightness washed out all the shades and shadows fiction needs to function effectively. Even the antagonists weren’t evil, merely misguided, and there was no problem, no matter how serious, that couldn’t be solved by rational discourse.

At first, I thought the problem lay in my own perceptions and biases. Perhaps I take too dark a view of human nature to be able to enjoy the pleasure of these characters as they inexorably ‘made the world a better place.’ Trouble is – I’m not what most people would call a pessimist. Quite the opposite, in fact. I really believe that love conquers all, that adversity brings out our best qualities and the highest human virtue – kindness – is also the one most frequently expressed.

Yet, stories need a degree of darkness if only to provide contrast to the light. Take ‘Twelfth Night,’ arguably one of Shakespeare’s best comedies (okay, it’s mostly me who argues that). The play begins with a devastating shipwreck – there is apparently only a single survivor, a young woman cast up on the shore of a foreign land. Her last memory is of watching her twin brother drown. For her own protection she disguises herself as a young man and soon falls in love with a man who has become so cynical about romance that he has rejected love as foolishness. Not exactly a great start for the inevitable happy ending (Aside: A Shakespearean comedy ends in a wedding; a tragedy, in a funeral). It is only Viola’s struggle against adversity – callow servants, double dealing officers, spiteful lovers, death itself – that makes her final triumph so satisfying.

Fiction is neither real life nor is it life as we would wish it. Fiction is both a distillation, and therefore concentration, of life and at the same time, a simplification of how life really happens. Oh, sure, there are lots of post-modern novels that try to replicate the ordinary – with all of its inconsistencies, ambiguities and lack of resolution – but who wants to read that crap anyway.

In the past, I’ve mentioned Italo Calvino’s unfinished “Memos for the Next Millenium,” which outlined the values in literature for the 21st Century. They were: Lightness (as opposed to heaviness, rather than darkness); Quickness; Exactitude; Visibility; Multiplicity and Consistency. He believed good literature contained all of these and great literature balanced all of them. To those values, I would humbly add – Brightness and Shadow.

The (un)importance of reviews

9/14/2010

Writers love reviews. We particularly like glowing reviews from people we don’t know but we’re pretty happy with positive reviews by friends, acquaintances and colleagues. And, as perverse as it may seem, we even like bad reviews (at least some one is noticing us!) though we don’t tend to link to them on Facebook or post them on our web-sites.

I was inspired to think about reviews because of a particularly tepid one of my most recent short story. My first response was how can he call me a beginner!?! Doesn’t he know who I am?!? Probably not. The telling statement in the review comes early; the story “didn’t quite connect for me.” And that is the essence of all reviews – in my opinion this is a great/good/average/mediocre/horrible story. And generally any given story or novel may get reviews that cover the whole range. Certainly that has been my experience.

But other than the ego boost or deflation, do reviews matter? Getting a review certainly seem to make a difference. One study of reviews in the New York Times shows that, within the limits of a difficult methodology, good reviews seem to make a significant difference – causing a 63% spike in sales in the week after the review. Bad reviews make a difference too – they lead to a 34% increase in sales. Just getting a review in the NY Times is good for book sales. Positive is better but negative doesn’t hurt. The evidence from other analysis suggests that any review in a widely circulated and/or highly respected forum has the same impact. Think Kirkus or Publisher’s Weekly (though apparently not when it comes to being nominated for a Pulitzer Prize).

If you think about it, it makes sense. There are huge numbers of books published every week and only a few get reviewed. For book buyers, it may well be as this blogger puts it that we just don’t have memory space to remember bad reviews. But when we read a good review from a respected source, we flag it as worth having. My own reviewer of choice? The Economist. For the most part, the reviewers there clearly identify their own biases and the review clearly reflects them. I compare my thinking to theirs and make my decision accordingly. I’ve found a number of books that I really enjoyed as a result.

For me, books fall into three categories – books I’ll buy no matter what (a new Tim Winton or Robert J. Sawyer), books I will never buy (Stephanie Myers is but one of a very long list) and books of which I have little or no opinion or information. A review will at least tell me whether the book falls into my general likes (well-crafted plots with strong positive characters, historical mysteries, medium-hard SF) or dislikes (allegorical wanders in the literary woods, most horror, epic fantasy) and give me some indication of whether the book is any good.

Since my default position is almost always not to buy a book, a really good review might occasionally make me take a chance while a bad review is not going to change the default. Unless, of course, I really hate the views of that particular book reviewer.

But what about the other potential value of book or story reviews? Are they any good as criticism? Obviously, they aren’t going to change the book or story that got reviewed – someone already paid me and put it in print. Nor in fact are they likely to change the way I write. After more than 20 years of putting words together, I pretty much know what I want to say and how I want to say it.

I will take advice from editors who want to buy my work (though I don’t do everything they ask) and I listen closely to writers and first readers whom I know and whose opinions I trust. In that context, do the 50 to 500 words of comments from an anonymous reviewer impact my decisions about what and how I write? Not bloody likely.

Bundoran authors interview each other!

9/1/2010

This interview between Hayden Trenholm and Matthew Johnson was conducted in the summer of 2009 – prior to the release of our novels at the 2009 WorldCon – but was never published. Some of the details are a little dated but the essence remains true. Matthew and I decided to post it on both our blogs.

H:        Matt, you've had a fair degree of success as a short story writer, with stories in Asimov's and some foreign language sales as well. Now, you have a novel, Fall From Earth. Other than the fact that it's 'longer,' how would you describe the difference between writing short stories and novels?

M:      For me the biggest difference between novels and short stories is that novels need to have a much more solid structure, and they take a lot more rewriting. It's rare for me to do substantial rewrites of a short story, but of the three books I've written the first two have had at least four major drafts each and the third is due for a heavy overhaul as well.

H:        That's interesting. My experience with novels and short stories is almost the exact opposite. I seldom get a short piece right on the first go and often have to go through three or even four drafts and, even then, I often don't get it the way I want it. Novels, on the other hand, are often single draft affairs, with relatively minor re-writes in the second (and usually final) draft. I've written six so far -- with Steel Whispers the third to be published -- and none have had major overhauls. I suspect it's because I spend a very long time plotting, doing background notes on character and theme and just thinking about it (often as much as a year or two) before I write a word. Then, my process is to start each day with a quick re-write of the previous day's work. What were the origins of Fall From Earth?

M:      Fall From Earth actually started out as a plan for a TV series. I was doing work developing series ideas for a producer in Montreal -- I got as far as writing the series bible for one of them -- and one of the ideas I worked on was for a CGI cartoon about a prison planet. It never panned out, but I liked the basic idea and the three seasons I had planned became the three main parts of Fall From Earth. At the same time I was starting to get interested in Chinese history and philosophy, both through a course I was taking and Larry Gonick's brilliant Cartoon History of the Universe, and so that found its way into the book as well, and turned the somewhat generic TV series idea into something a lot more interesting.

H:        Without giving away too much, what is the story and what makes it ''a lot more interesting" than what it started as?

M:      Fall From Earth became more interesting for two main reasons. The first was that when I started to integrate Chinese history and philosophy it gave the background a lot more character and consistency. The government in the book has basically the same problem that China had in the imperial period, which is that with a far-flung territory and poor communications it's always fighting the tendency to fly apart (which is where the book's title comes from.) So I had the Borderless Empire apply the same tenets as the Chinese historically did, based on the writings of Han Fei who advocated swift and brutal reprisals for any wrongdoing. Of course, when the penalty for hoarding grain is the same as the penalty for rebellion, you're going to wind up with frequent revolts -- which is what happened historically in China and what happens in the book.

The other reason was that when the concept changed from being a TV series to a novel I reimagined the characters and they became a lot more nuanced and a lot less clichéd; as a result the story itself changed significantly. Originally the plot would have been what Shi Jin, the main character, thinks it will be at the beginning of the book -- a rebel taking advantage of her exile to organize another rebellion. That thread is still there, but as the story goes on becomes a lot more about what you're willing to sacrifice in order to win. A lot of the other characters changed, too, the most dramatic being the one who started as a posthuman cyborg warrior and wound up a priest who uses his implants to get closer to God!

          When you wrote Defining Diana, did you already have in mind the idea that you would do a sequel? What themes, plot threads or characters made you keen to revisit that world?

H:        Oddly enough, Defining Diana was originally written as a prequel to one of my as-yet-unpublished novels called La Suena -- a long cyber-punk tale inspired by The Grapes of Wrath. I wanted a bridge between the present and the very different and dystopic world I had created. There are only two characters from La Suena in Defining Diana, neither of them major. I wrote Defining Diana as a stand alone noir detective with no idea that there would be a second or in fact, the third, which I'm working on now. But the character of Frank Steele was appealing as were the talkative cyborgs (called The Borg) and there were enough loose ends to inspire a second book. The theme of Defining Diana was the self and Steel Whispers deals with family. The third book, Stealing Home, will tackle community.

M:      Did you find it constraining to be working in the past of an already established novel, or have you been making changes to La Suena as you write these two books?

H:      Writing a prequel does create certain restraints but it is also quite liberating. A certain amount of the form and structure is already set for you but then you get to play around within that. However, Steel Whispers, and the book I'm now working on, Stealing Home, had and have their own demands and have taken the story in different ways so I will need to make major changes in La Suena as a result. The real question will be whether I want to tackle that re-write or get to work on the three other ideas I have for novels.

            Matthew, You mentioned some of your influences. In terms of fiction, who do you read and why? Who would you say have been the biggest influences on your own writing?

M:      In terms of favourite authors and influences, the biggest shadow over this book is definitely John M. Ford, whose books include The Dragon Waiting, Growing Up Weightless and the best Star Trek novel ever, The Final Reflection. A lot of people called Ford a writer's writer and it's sad that he never got the wide acclaim he really deserved. Otherwise, people I follow eagerly include Gene Wolfe, Michael Swanwick, Tim Powers, Maureen McHugh, and many others. The last SF novel I read was Robert Charles Wilson's Axis and I'm looking forward to reading his Julian Comstock and Jo Walton's Half a Crown. What are your influences?

H:        Quite a few writers have influenced me.  Robert Sawyer has taught me a lot about the process of being a writer -- more through osmosis than any formal way. I've tried, in my own limited way, to take the same rigorous approach to research and to strong storytelling and the same professional approach to the business side of the job. Rob always has strong thematic elements in his books and that has inspired and encouraged me. The three other SF writers who have had a big influence on me are Joe Haldeman, Connie Willis and CJ Cherryh. I've been fortunate enough to take workshops from both Joe and Connie. And there are a ton of SF writers I read and enjoy. But I also have a lot of non-SF influences -- Hemingway, first and foremost, but also Italo Calvino, Umberto Eco, Chinua Achebe, Tim Winton, Barry Unsworth and most recently Michael Chabon and Jonathan Lethem.  Several of these bridge the gap between the speculative genres and the more traditional literary. And, of course, Dashiel Hammett and the other noir stylists.

          You have a job and a young family, Matt. How do you find time to write? How are you able to balance those other demands on your time? Are you happy with the current balance or do you aspire to be a full-time writer?

M:      Right now I don't find a lot of time to write. Since my son Leo was born last August my writing life has largely been on hold, and if I hadn't had to revise Fall From Earth for publication and do work on my second novel, Fire In Your Heart, for an agent I probably wouldn't have done any writing at all in the last year outside from work.

I'm lucky that my current job, at the Media Awareness Network, provides me with an opportunity to do a fair bit of writing -- I design lessons and activities for teachers as well as writing a blog that gets 40-50,000 views a month and designing computer games -- but compared to the ten years I spent teaching high school before I started there it's much harder to find time to do my own work. I don't think I'd like to write full-time though, as I have strong tendencies towards being a hermit; when I used to write in the summer I'd often go a full week without talking to anyone but my wife Megan.

          You've had a great run at the Aurora Awards recently, winning the English Short Form award last year for "Like Water in the Desert" and getting nominated (at least) for Defining Diana in the English Long Form category this year. How has that affected your writing career?

H:        Getting nominated for and then finally winning the Aurora last year has been a great experience. It is always nice to get some recognition from your work. But, of course, this doesn't happen by accident. In order for people to nominate my work, they have to know it exists. So the biggest impact for me has been as result of building an audience, going to SF conventions, meeting people and exposing them to my work. In the end, that's why we write, isn't it? You can write the best stuff in the world but if no-one reads it, what's the point? And, I think, winning a few awards demonstrates to editors who might buy your work that you are professional and that your work has a certain value. I'm hopeful that, if I can win an Aurora for Defining Diana, especially in the context of the World Science Fiction Convention, this will expose me to a whole new audience. You said that you have other novels in draft form. Are those the projects you are working on now or has a new idea grabbed hold? On the business side of writing, do you have an agent or have you been looking for one?

M:      I am looking for an agent, and as I mentioned above Fire In Your Heart has been sitting with one for a little under a year now. He asked for fairly extensive rewrites of the first sixty pages, so I hope that's a good sign! I actually did rewrites through the whole manuscript based on his comments, so whether he winds up taking it or not it'll be a better book as a result. My third book -- actually two novels, the first two parts of a projected four-part series -- is at the first draft stage and in need of rewriting, but I'm tempted right now to leave it fallow for a while and start on a different book I've just recently started planning. It's always more fun to start something new, but for me it's also easier to do the early part of writing in little bits of time than the later part; I need a solid block of time to do any significant rewriting.

Hayden, you mentioned a lot of "mainstream" and literary influences before. How did you come to choose to write SF? From your perspective, what does it offer you as a writer that other genres don't?

H:        They say you should write what you know. I'd add that you should write what you love. I was a voracious reader as a kid but I was also fascinated by science. My ambition from the age of ten was to be a scientist and, in fact, my first degree is in Chemistry.  So naturally I was drawn to science fiction and, to some extent, fantasy.  I even went to my first SF convention in about 1980. I wrote sporadically from a young age but really didn't get the writing bug until I was heavily involved in community theatre in my 30s. Naturally, the first thing I wrote were plays but pretty soon I was trying my hand at literary short fiction. I even got a few published. But even then they always contained a fantastical element -- magic realism, for example. MY first novel, A Circle of Birds, was a literary work but was partly set in the future. Eventually, I realized that SF was my proper place as a writer. I think what I like about it is that it offers so many options. You can do everything that you can do in mainstream storytelling but you can do it with a twist. And in particular you can explore how changes in technology, politics or culture can change people.

            Matthew, how do you see all your diverse experiences coming together in your future writing?  Having just become a grandfather (without ever actually having my own children), I know that babies can change your worldview, so, in particular, do you think being a father will change your writing?

I know you'll be at Anticipation in Montreal for our mutual book launch. Have you spent much time at SF conventions? How do you think the relationship with fans affects an SF writer's career?

M:      I think all the different kinds of writing I've done have probably influenced me in different ways. Like you my first pro and semi-pro work was in the theatre (though even then I was writing mostly SF) and I spent most of my twenties writing TV and comic book scripts, so I have a similar tendency to fall back on dialogue. It's definitely been a journey for me to let the other elements of a piece do their part, so I was particularly tickled when a reviewer recently complimented specifically on my use of setting. As for game design, I've read so many bad books that were clearly influenced by gaming that for me it's become a sort of negative test -- if something sounds like it would make a good game, it probably wouldn't make a good story. (That being said, one of the plot twists in Fall From Earth was inspired by an old board game called Web and Starship.)

I don't doubt that being a father has changed and will continue to change my writing, since it's changed my life more than anything since I met Megan. Like many writers, a lot of my work is autobiographical at its heart -- even if I don't always realize it at the time -- and fatherhood has definitely worked its way into my stories.

Conventions and socializing are probably the weak point in my writing career. The last con I went to was the Chicago Comicon sometime back in the mid-Nineties, when I was launching a comic I had written (from a publisher who went out of business right before publishing it) and I've only ever met one of all the editors who've bought my stories. That's something I definitely have to remedy now that Fall From Earth is out.

Without Darkness, There is No Light

The (un)importance of reviews

Bundoran authors interview each other!

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