Declaration of Human Writes

Declaration of Human Writes

Nothing like starting with a horrible pun, now is there? Onwards.

I debated whether or not I should put this article - I don't like the word 'post', it reminds me of something you'd tie a horse to or an unfinished section of fencing - on the By the Book blog. But I want to keep that site as pristine as possible with just reviews along with a possible Top Five Recommended list somewhere in the future. Fear and Loathing is more my personal toy where I write what I wat about whatever i want and if you happen to enjoy it, then all so much the better. And this is an article about writing itself. 

I've been reviewing books full-time for five months now, which has me reading about two and a half new books a week, ten a month. I don't review all of them, or at least don't archive all the reviews at the site. If I hate something, why write about it? Unless of course I hate it for really interesting reasons, as with Tell-All (reviewed here) which was a gimmick disguised as a novel. But if I sincerely dislike something for an interesting and/or unusual aspect of the book, it is quite true that someone else might love it for those exact same reasons. Placing your opinions in public is a gamble. On the opposite side of the poker chip, I loved all the early work, through 1980 or so, of the late Kurt Vonnegut Jr. You might find that to be juvenile mock-science fiction. And you might be right. Literature can be a love/hate thing, like eating squid, or buying a painting for the living room wall. 

But boring has no defence or possible virtue, so I don't post reviews of boring books. (There. I used the word post. I feel unclean.) What is wonderful is that I have read very few books that were less than wonderful. I sincerely and absolutely believe that one outcome of the computer/internet age is that people write a hell of a lot more than they used to. If you're old enough to have been an adult pre-1996 say, how many letters did you write in a year? Honestly now? Signing Christmas cards doesn't count, although I'll begrudgingly allow Year in Review Family Letters. Someone could do a wonderful thesis in anthropology or sociology by compiling and analyzing them. at their best, they're found poetry, heroic ballads built around the theme of Aunt Nancy's Recovery from Her Broken Foot. I'd happily read a compilation. But I digress (and as I say, Fear and Loathing is my favourite toy, so I'm allowed tangents).

Point is, we write more emails or blogs or Facebook status updates in a week than we used to write letters in a year. I have no scientific data to back this up, but I really don't think I need any. As the caption on the old dorm room poster used to read: your problem is obvious. You remember it. Here:

 

Ah, good times. Anyway, as we write more, perforce there are more writers - people who get good at it. Rising tides really do lift all boats, but it lifts the big boats higher. There are more great writers right here and right now in time than any comparable time in history. And I do have a degree in English Literature and wrote the curriculum for OAS :Level Canadian :Literature a few years back, so I think I know what I'm talking about. Talent's breaking out all over, all over the valleys and the plains.

Which means that this is a wonderful time for readers but ironically a difficult time for writers. All this great competition means that is perversely harder for a new writer to be read because people only haved so much time and money and there are entertainment choices coming out the wazooey. 

The other factor behind this article is that as I'm a reviewer - three papers, two dailies and a weekly and I'm working on getting more - people are starting to share their work with me. And while my partcular comments remain confidential, nonetheless from all this reading and writing and thinking you learn a gfew things. Tips. Like Harvey Pennick's book for golf (which you can buy here ), a series of tips that you can keep in your head, your pocket or your hard drive. Your choice. Or decide I'm a babbling idiot who couldn't construct or edit a five word, one clause sentence if he tried. Also your choice. But onwards.

Here is what I know I'm looking for in a book, and what I think nthe major publishers and their readers are looking for in a book.

Surprise Me: I want to get more out of the book than I thought I'd get when I first opened it. Two examples: C'Mon Papa (reviewed here ) surprised me by the humour and the depth of revelation about living with a disability along with the bexpected charming story of a blind man living through the pregnancy and the first two years of his first child's life. As well, the best book I have read in years, Curiosity (reviewed here) made very early archaeology during the time leading to Darwin and a full theory of evolution into something brilliantly romantic yet also presenting a great role model for women. That's what I mean by surprise me. Tell me something about a time, a place, a subject that I hadn't known and make me want to know everything about it.

But It's Not Wrestling: Don't go nuts on the surprises. Surprises does not necessarily mean plot or character swerves more fitting ti the wrestling ring when The Mad Jap turns on his tag partner The Russian Muslim by bashing him in the head with a steel chair, which turns The Russian Muslim babyface and starts a three pay-per-view feud that cumulates in a Hell in a Cell match at Wrestlemania. That works great in wrestling. It may not in your novel, is what I'm saying. 

    This is particularly true if you're looking at writing a detective or mystery story. A completely crap book like The Penalty Killing (reviewed for grins here) has its swerves so obviously coming they might as well be driving down the street in a bright yellow 1960s convertible Camaro, tooting the horn and shaking cowbells as cowering pedestrians while shouting out, "We're the Swerve Brothers!!! Yeeeee-Hawwwwww!!!" 

Obvious in other words. So be careful of that.

Be Accurate: This man is God: 

He is Harold Ross, who invented The New Yorker and edited it though its first twenty-five, best years. I've always wanted to write a play about Ross but I never have. A curious man for many reasons, and the subject of excellent biographies by James Thurber, Brendan Gill and reminiscences by the Murder's Row of great American writers of the mid-twentieth century.

Ross as an editor should have his picture hanging on every writer's  wall. The one above the computer, not the one behind your chair. He demanded accuracy. In everything. He argues for hours about the drawing of a cartoon if it did not make logical sense to him. From an interview with Thurber:

He called me on the phone and asked if the woman up on the bookcase

was supposed to be alive, stuffed, or dead. I said, “I don’t know,

but I’ll let you know in a couple of hours.” After a while I called

him back and told him I’d just talked to my taxidermist, who said

you can’t stuff a woman, that my doctor had told me a dead 

woman couldn’t support herself on all fours. “So, Ross,” I said,

“she must be alive.” “Well then,” he said, “what’s she doing up

there naked in the home of her husband’s second wife?” I told him

he had me there.

If you misstate a fact, or imagine a coffee shop on a particular block of Parliament Street in Toronto that you think no one is going to give two hoots about, you are dead wrong. Some reader, probably lots of them, are going to know that fact or know that block and it's going to drive them so nuts that they're going to doubt the veracity of absolutely everything else you write or have written. Don't be lazy. Let your Harold Ross voice be heard.

Speaking of ... Voices: The first person narrative -"I" did this, "I" saw that - may not be for you for a few reasons. Every novel is a biography in one way or another. Argue with me all you'd like. I respect your feelings, but I'm committed to this thought. But ... and but. Like the surprises, be honest about how interesting your life really is darling before asking the rest of us to live it. The first person doesn't give you much room for objectivity, particularly about the character him or her self. That is one of the principal flaws of the mightily flawed yet ultimately fascinating Beatrice & Virgil (reviewed here). No one ever questions why the narrator, a very Yann Martel-like writer, is bothering with this weird taxidermist. That's because Martel himself was fascinated with the taxidermist,a s here he was writing and creating him, so why would his avatar be questioned? I think it's a mistake. Your mileage may vary.

I do know that I've seen stories improve 150% when the first person voice was dumped. Still, if you have a terrific ear for dialogue and if - really important if - if your character is someone readers are going to want to listen to for 320 pages, the go right ahead. Or dare to use multiple narrators. A technique I'm quite enjoying is using notes or letters or diary entries by a second character to rest the inner ears from the first voice.

Okay. Enough for now. I'm not writing a whole book tonight. Cheers!

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