Hayden Trenholm Writer |
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My book launch has been rescheduled to 6 p.m. on Saturday, August 21 (instead of five). And don't forget the launch of Marie Bilodeau's new novel on Friday night!
I’m currently reading through a novel I wrote a few years ago with a view to re-writing it. The results are mixed. Most of the central ideas and a lot of the writing is pretty good; other parts – the action scenes as it turns out – are overwritten and drag. Some of the technology definitely needs an update – though not as much as I thought. It will take a lot of work to get it up to snuff but probably less than writing an entire new novel. And the story is still of interest to me, which isn’t always the case with older work.
The story involves a journey – from a place that was home but no longer can be to a place that really only exists as a hope for a better life. Cyberpunk meets The Grapes of Wrath. So some of the story takes place where I was living at the time (Calgary and southern Alberta) but a lot of it takes place in places I’ve only visited (Seattle, Idaho, New Mexico and Mexico). And of course some places I’ve only been in my imagination. A lot of Canadian writing is deeply rooted in place. Landscape is another character for writers like W.O. Mitchell and Margaret Laurence. Where would Mordecai Richler be if he weren’t in Montreal? Robert J. Sawyer confounded popular publishing wisdom by setting many of his novels in distinctly Canadian places. Some writers write about where they live while they are living there; others, like Alice Munro, have to move elsewhere to return home in their fiction. And, of course many of the great new Canadian writers, like Ondaatje and Mistry, are immigrants who write both home and away simultaneously. My first two plays were set in the NWT, where I lived for nine years. One was written while I was living there; the other shortly after I left. Two of the next three were set in my hometown of Amherst, N.S. It was only after I’d been living in Calgary for three years did I write something set in the city. My first novel, published over 15 years ago, was set in places that I or my father had lived in. My most recent books, The Steele Chronicles, are set in Calgary, but were mostly written while I was living in Ottawa. Most of it was written from memory. Does the adage, ‘write what you know,’ require a writer to get the details of place precisely right? Or is there a truth that goes beyond the facts? One deliberate mistruth I told throughout the Steele Chronicles was about a jazz bar, Kaos Cafe, where I worked for a year. The bar first moved and then closed but in my novels it is right back where it was when I worked there. Metaphorically and emotionally, I needed it to be there. As I read through my old book, I come across scenes where I can say I definitely saw and heard those things; others where I know I made it up; some I can’t really tell. Does that matter? I don’t know – though as I get to the end chapters where the characters have to make new home in a place I’ve only visited – I may find out it does. Getting that right may be my biggest challenge yet. The Conference of Canadian Speculative Arts and Literature, better known as Can-Con 2010, will take place over the weekend of August 20th to 22nd. I’m pleased to be a guest at the Con along with GOH, Marie Bilodeau, and several other Ottawa SF luminaries. If you will be in the Ottawa area and have an interest in speculative fiction or writing of any kind or just feel in the mood for something fun and different, I encourage you to attend. SF Cons are a great bargain for your entertainment dollar!
The Con opens at 5pm on Friday at the Travelodge Hotel on Carling. My schedule: Friday, 6pm, Time to Write: – how should a writer manage his/her time? Yes, you want to write, but when? Writers talk about time management and tips to get going on the days you really don't feel like you can. At 7pm, I’ll be attending the book launch of Marie’s new novel, Destiny’s Blood. Friday, 9 pm, How to Prepare your Manuscript for the Market: -- This discusses the long (and sometimes arduous) process that a *completed* manuscript must undergo before it is published and reaches the local bookstore. From editing to sales pitches, from finding an Agent to release timing, this covers all the tasks that authors usually are unaware of -- but are needed before a book reaches the bookstore's shelves. Saturday, 11am Reading: I’ll be reading some of my short fiction. Saturday, 5pm Book Launch of my new Novel, Stealing Home Sunday, 10 am Writers’Workshop with the inimitable Matthew Johnson. And, of course, I’ll be around for all the other fun events that the Con has to offer. Anyone who wants to attend my Book Launch but won’t be attending the rest of the Con ($40 at the door), you should let me know by Thursday so I can make arrangements for your admittance. It seems that everybody I know – and a lot of people I don’t – are mulling over the future of publishing. Some people seem excited (almost to the point of Schadenfreude) with the predicted demise of big publishing; some seem distraught; most seem confused. I fell into the latter camp. I have no idea what the future of publishing will be. If I did, I’d take my life savings... and invest it somewhere else. Publishing has never been great for the ROI (not the French King but the return-on-investment).
I’m pretty sure that publishing in some form or another will have a future. Unless the fundamentalists completely takeover people will still continue to read books – probably in roughly the same type and numbers as they have for the last twenty years. E-book formats may slightly increase the accessibility of books; they may even lower the average cost (though they still don’t come close to competing with remaindered or used books) which will slightly increase demand. But my suspicion is (and I’d be happy to be corrected on this) the supply curve for books is slightly inelastic and a significant cut in book prices will not lead to as significant rise in book sales at least not in the long term. From a sample of one – I read between 25 and 35 books a year. It’s all I have the time or appetite for. Even if books were free I wouldn’t read more than I do now. After the initial burst of e-book sales – a combination of techno-geeks who don’t normally read but like the neat gadgets and bibliophiles buying e-versions of books they already own – the curve will smooth out. So the bottom line is e-books will not increase overall book sales. They will simply reduce the sale of physical books. Even the most conservative old-style publishers seem to think the balance will wind up around 50-50 for each format. The big questions seem to be: What will the price point for future book sales? How will the revenues be distributed? Most people say that the market will ultimately determine the price of books and to some extent that is true. Markets can be rather efficient, even brutal, at assigning values to things. But the book market – like most markets – is subject to distortions. If you remember your Economics 101, efficient markets require lots of buyers, lots of sellers, preferably of similar size and perfect communication between them. I believe the parlance these days is: FAIL. Amazon and few others dominate the retail sales and a few big publishers dominate the wholesale ones. And communication between both groups and the large mass of consumers is confounded by proprietary technology, rhetoric and marketing spin. These kind of efficiencies generally work themselves out but, for a while, we are likely to see competing pricing models more than competing prices. Economic change happens. Whenever it does, some people win and some people lose. Generally speaking in the long run, there are more winners than losers. The invention of internal combustion engine initially put a lot of buggy makers, steam and electric car manufacturers and livery stables out of business. It also dramatically reduced the horse population of North America. At the same time it made billions for the Ford family and employed tens of thousands of autoworkers at stable high-paying jobs. There are a lot of towns that exist because of the auto industry. And a lot that are being wiped out by the social, economic and environmental factors that have led to its decline. Make no mistake – the transformation of the transport industry will create a lot of new winners but that is little consolation to a 48-year old assembly line worker looking for a job at Tim Horton’s. So somewhere down the line we will have a new model for the book business. That model will produce a lot of winners and some losers. Though there is no way to say who exactly will be on one side or the other, there are some clues. Big publishers are in trouble – some have already gone out of business and others have dramatically cut back their author list. They are caught between an aggressive marketer in Amazon who already has agents marketing backlists directly to them, and writers and a suspicious consuming public who suspect they are greedy and oppressive. I have my doubts about the rhetoric in that regard but it will create great difficulties for most publisher’s ROI to meet writers and agents demands for higher royalties and Amazon and consumer demands for lower prices. In a world where capital constantly seeks the highest return, a lower ROI means a dramatic decline in traditional publishing. No wonder they are fighting so hard! There will still be publishers, I am sure, but they will be smaller and will struggle to be heard. More books may get published but, in the noise, fewer copies will be sold of each one. But who cares? Well, other than the hundreds, perhaps thousands of people who will lose their jobs and way of life, I care. And I suspect, so should a lot of writers in my position. Part-timers with a few books and hopes for a modest career. I was going to call this blog – I Don’t Need Another Job! I am a part-time writer. I have a full-time job, one that fortunately is fairly flexible and gives me periods when I can find blocks of time to write (and others when writing is out of the question). I’m fortunate that I write quickly. But still, I have a full-time job with a salary that probably exceeds that of the majority of full-time writers (having been a full-time writer for 6 years, I know exactly how little one can live on when one is creatively satisfied). As a part-time writer, I write, I try to sell my writing and when I do, I promote it by going to Cons and using blogging and Facebook and a web-site. Some years my revenues from writing exceed my expenses; others, they don’t. The only way I am likely to consistently show a profit is if I sell a lot more books than I currently – which means I need my current publisher to get bigger (and I sincerely hope they do – Virginia deserves it!) or I need a bigger publisher. Because frankly I need the expertise of book layout and editing and marketing to make it happen. I’ve got one full-time job and don’t want another and, when I retire I don’t intend to work full-time just to stand still. The recent decision of the Conservative government to make the long form census voluntary rather than mandatory has generated a lot of comment in the popular press and the blogosphere – most, though not all, of it negative. The government claims that many Canadians (no statistics on the numbers yet) find the questions intrusive and that the threat of fines or jail time for non-compliance are inappropriate in a democracy. The fact the no-one has ever gone to jail in the hundred year history of census taking doesn’t seem relevant. But, then, that is the criticism from the other side of the debate – that this is a government that never lets facts get in the way of their opinions (or ideology). The opposition believes the government want to weaken the ability of governments to formulate good policy and of civil society to oppose government decisions using good data.
As someone with several university degrees and who has spent most of his life doing policy work, I know that the information generated by the census is critical to both government and business. And anyone with a Master of Economics (i.e. the Prime Minister) should certainly know that a self-selected sample is not the same as a random one. The data is not as accurate and it is not comparable from one sample to the other. I have to admit that I find it disingenuous for a government to claim it is protecting our privacy and preserving such vital info as the number of bathrooms in our houses from the prying eyes of, well, the most privacy obsessed organization in the country, while at the same time they want to allow police to tap our phones without a warrant and permit CSIS greater powers to undertake domestic spying. Not to mention the nasty habit of their political staff to monitor and flame the postings of anyone who opposes them. But as a science fiction writer, the elimination of the national census creates all sorts of possibilities for stories. I’ve heard it mentioned several times that some Scandinavian countries eliminated their national mandatory census decades ago. That is true. However, they didn’t replace it with a voluntary one. Rather, they merged all the various government administrative registries (driver’s license, health card, gun registration, employment insurance, pensions, tax returns, etc.) into a single data base linked directly to an individual by a national identity number (sort of an SIN on steroids). This number is also required for all your dealings with banks (have to watch for that money laundering) and a number of other private data bases as well. While the national census in Canada produces ‘aggregated data’ which can never be traced to specific individual, the data bases in Scandinavian countries can pretty much follow you personally from cradle to grave. Of course, they have nice benign social democratic democracies so it’s not a problem right? While I’m sure this is not Minister Clement has in mind, it does create all kinds of possible plot elements for future fiction. For example, in my novel, Defining Diana, I postulate a National Data Base – very similar to those in Scandinavia. But not everyone is in it. Some people avoid it by living their entire lives in isolated religious colonies. But others have their data removed from the system – either willingly or unwillingly. If the former, they are often rich and are seeking the freedom of action anonymous money produces. If the latter, they become the Disappeared, people who don’t legally or officially exist and whose lives and deaths are reduced to simple commodities. They become the perfect victims. And that is what happens to people who don’t count (or aren’t counted) in society. They become prey for the unscrupulous, or worse, the psychotic. When we stop including the poor, the homeless, the immigrant and the aboriginal in the data that forms our public and private policy, pretty soon they disappear from our society altogether. Great stuff for dystopic science fiction. Not so good for a modern society. Anyone who has ever been to my house will not be surprised to know that I love books. My personal library generally runs between one and two thousand volumes – and would be a lot bigger if it were not for my frequent moves and life changes. However, unlike some book lovers I know, I also like bookstores – preferably ones that sell nothing but books. Other than antiquarian book dealers and a few independents, that type of bookstore is pretty rare in North America. While I understand the business pressures that require bookstores to stock candles and chocolates, games and DVDs, it actually diminishes my pleasure in shopping there. Which is why I mostly shop at Chapters on-line.
Venturing into the anchor store of Blackwell Books in Oxford, England was, therefore, a real treat. Other than a small coffee and tea shop for weary browsers, the entire 4 floors (over 150,000 books on seven miles of shelves) of this local landmark was devoted to books. Blackwell is a chain in the UK (and also a publisher of educational texts) and I can’t attest to the quality of their other stores but I spent 90 happy minutes and (and over 100 pounds) wandering from shelf to shelf – without even getting to half their sections. A combination of University and generalist bookstore, you can pretty much find anything that suits your fancy. I bought a collection of short essays about France between the wars written by Joseph Roth, a biography of Paul Dirac, a novel by Australian Stephen Toltz, recommended to me by a lovely Aussie woman, named Mary, whom I had met in Tuscany and several others. And when I checked out they actually apologized for making me wait while they served the one person in front of me. A few days later, I dropped into another famous bookstore, this time Shakespeare and Company in Paris. Though not the original store founded by Sylvia Beach in 1919, it has its own significant literary provenance which you can read about here. The store was crammed to the gunnels with all sorts of literature, with large sections devoted to poetry and, of course, the ex-patriot community who hung out there in the 1920s. The only non-book item in sight were book bags, being sold to fund libraries in third world countries. Apparently there are sleeping quarters above the store for young writers to stay at. They pay their rent by working a few hours at the store. Any takers? The hardest thing about writing, for me at least, is getting started. I will spend hours, sometimes days, trying to get that first paragraph written. The funny thing is – I almost always change it. I guess it is pretty much true of any new thing in your life – whether it is as trivial as learning how to use a new phone or as important as beginning a new friendship – getting started is the hard part. Mess up the beginning, you think, and you set the pattern for the whole future.
Not true really. First impressions are seldom lasting ones and bad habits can always be amended. But still, starting a new story is always tough. A couple of weeks ago I finished my novel, Stealing Home. It was not only the end of a novel; it was the final book in a trilogy. I’ve got lots of ideas for more books and even had a deadline to finish a story for an anthology. But it was a beautiful spring. There were walks to be taken, gardens to plant, wine to drink. Plus, my last book was nominated for an Aurora Award. Wait until that’s over, I thought, think how motivated you’ll be if you win. Right. And if you lose, no worries; all the other nominees are good friends. And you’ve lost things before – more often than you’ve won. Sure. The weekend at KeyCon was great. The nominees, calling themselves the Magnificent Basterds, held a joint party on Friday night that was a roaring success. Programming was fun as usual and I had lots of positive feedback – people saying they loved my book and had voted for it. Still, I tried to contain my optimism. Then, Dan O’Driscoll won for Artistic Accomplishment for my novel’s cover! Maybe, just maybe... But no. Robert J. Sawyer won for his excellent novel, Wake. A deserving win (and besides Rob had already suffered a bigger disappointment – the cancellation of Flash Forward, the ABC TV series based on his novel). I think I was gracious, smiled, hugged, said all the right things. And I meant them too. But I have to say, I shed a tear or two when I got back to my room. And the next day, I had pretty much decided to give up writing. I’d just see my third book launched and then take it easy for the summer – reading, gardening, travelling, drinking wine in my backyard. The next day, I started planning a search for a new job – one that would pay a lot more and fill up those empty hours I normally spent writing. That was the new me – a workaholic bureaucrat working 60 hours a week for the big bucks! Then I thought about it. I still had that anthology deadline. So Saturday, having spent a couple of days working out the plot, I sat down to write. God, it was painful. The first hundred words took over an hour and by the end of the day, I only had a thousand words. No, that was it. No way. I lost the drive, the zest, the skill. I really was finished as a writer. Sunday morning I avoided my office like the plague – quite literally since I’d come down with either the flu or a severe allergy attack. There was no way... unless, maybe if I approached it this way. By deadline day – Tuesday – despite frequent unpleasant interruptions, I had a five thousand short story. Is it brilliant? That’s not for me to judge – but it was certainly good enough to let the editors of the anthology make that decision for themselves. So I guess I’m back in the saddle. Oh, I still intend to enjoy my summer (we’re off to Europe in 18 days for a three week holiday) but I’m not looking for a new killer job. And I’m not giving up writing. Who knows? Maybe I’ll win an Aurora next year. This is your new blog post. Click here and start typing, or drag in elements from the top bar.
I spent the weekend at Ad Astra, the annual Toronto SF convention now its twenty ninth year. I’ve been a regular attendee the last six or seven years and it’s always fun to see my many friends. Often it’s the only time I get to see many of them so I try to make the best of it.
Rob Sawyer and Carolyn Clink generously offered Liz and I accommodation in their condo, along with Buffalo friends Herb Kauderer, Isabelle Fournier and Al Katerinsky. Rob and Carolyn were staying at the Con hotel this year as he was one of the Guests of Honour. Liz decided to spend the evening visiting her son, Steve, his wife, Amanda and their son James while I trundled off to the convention. I only had one panel Friday evening: “The Electric/Alternative Car.” My fellow panellists, Al Katerinsky and Stephen B. Pearl were lively and knowledgeable and we had great input from our audience of about 15 or so. Then it was off to the party rooms where I had a chance to talk to lots of folks, including aurora-winning author Doug Smith, David Nickle (Monstrous Affections from Chizine Publications) and Chris Jackson, author of Scimitar Moon. Saturday was a busy day and began with a panel called “Each Character’s Voice.” I was joined by authors Grant Carrington, Karin Lowachee, Kate Story and Gregory A. Wilson. I learned a few new techniques for keeping characters distinct and shared a few of my own tricks of the trade. There was a good turnout for a Saturday morning and I think people generally were both entertained and informed. I had a nice lunch with members of my writing group – Peter Atwood, Matt Moore Derek Kunksken and their partners/children. After lunch I chatted with Rob Sawyer, Rick Wilber and Nick DiChario for fifteen minutes or so before heading off to my next panel, another science topic: “The Energy Mosaic: Why we don’t need to freeze in the dark.” Al and Stephen from my first panel were joined by Don Shears. The room was packed and the sun was shining through the south facing windows, so none of us had to worry about freezing that day! The general conclusion was that we needed to move forward as quickly as we could with alternatives to fossil fuels (especially coal) but that success would largely depend on economics and government policy. The most fun I had was participating in “The East block Irregulars,” which consisted of the six members of my Ottawa writing group, the three mentioned above plus Liz Westbrook-Trenholm and Marie Bilodeau. We chatted to a small but enthusiastic crowd about the pros and cons of writing groups and how we think our formula – professional, ambitious and dedicated writers all at the same level with a focus on the writing rather than the group – works well for us. It was a very comfortable session and reminded me again how much I like all these people. An autographing session followed where I got to share a table with fellow Bundoran author, Matthew Johnson. We both sold a few books and had some nice chats with fans. That evening Liz and I had supper with Herb, Isabelle and Al, along with poet and punster, David Clink. We ate at the Mongolian Grill and the food and the company were both great. We checked in at a few parties – notably the one for the new Toronto Con, SFContario, which will take place this November. Sunday started way too early with a 10am panel called “Writing the Future,” with Matthew Johnson and award-winning writer, Karl Schroeder. Another good crowd listened while we described how we crafted credible futures by projecting current trends and predicting possible shifts in technology, economics, the environment or social mores. Next, David Stephenson and I talked to a small group about the after math of the Copenhagen climate change conference. My last event of the day and the Con was a reading (time shared with Marie Bilodeau) from my new novel, Stealing Home, the first public presentation of the material. It was nice to see Nick Matthews who gave a great review to Steel Whispers. Then it was good-byes all around and the long drive back to Ottawa. Character arcs are another useful way to make sure your characters develop as the plot progresses. Once you have a broad plot outline (and I’m generally talking about novels but the same general rules apply to shorter fiction as well) and know who the major characters are, you can begin to think about how they will interact with each other and with the events of the story. You begin to ask questions like: Where do their lives intersect? How do the actions or reactions of one character impact the reactions and actions of the others? How do the characters change as a result of these interactions?
In thinking about changes it is useful to categorize what type of change is occurring. I generally use four broad categories. How are the physical circumstances of the character changed? This may include changes to their body (illness, injury, death) or to their material circumstances (wealth, social position). What changes occur in the character’s emotional and psychological life? The distinction is important. One may fall in love without becoming more loving; feel fear as opposed to becoming fearful. For example, a brave man may feel fear but a fearful man will seldom express courage. Finally what moral changes does the character experience? A brave man who becomes fearful could make several different moral conclusions: bravery is a foolish conceit; true bravery consists not of the absence of fear but acting despite its presence; that he is a weak man not worthy of respect. Characters may make several changes in the course of a story but each change must flow from what was in place before. The character at the end of the story may be a very different person that the one at the beginning but these changes must – to make sense to the reader – be as a result of some event or interaction, some conflict and resolution. While in real life most of what happens seems random, in fiction, everything happens for a reason. Once you have written out the arc each character must follow in their journey from whom they are to whom they become, you can lay them out on a sheet or a chart alongside the plot and chapter outline. What you are almost certain to find – especially if you have been doing the three things separately – is that there are places where they simply don’t match up. The events of the story won’t bring the characters they way you thought or won’t create the kind of changes you envisioned. You could try to mash them together and make them fit or you could let one creative process dominate the other two but I suggest that you instead engage in a dialogue with yourself. Asking questions about why and how can often improve both the plot and the process of character development and make your outline unfold in a surprising and powerful way. |
AuthorHayden Trenholm is a playwright and novelist who lives in Ottawa, ON Archives
February 2024
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