Month: March 2020

As a leftist, I’m meant to take a stand against profit driven enterprises. Many people on my end of the political spectrum decry copyright law as inherently exploitative, keeping art and literature in the hands of the privileged class and denying the working class access to content. To some extent, this is true. We’ve all heard stories about giant movie studies going after small YouTube creators for using movie clips, or HBO suing individuals who downloaded one episode of Game of Thrones. When multi-billion dollar industries, and the corporations behind them, take on individuals, people who usually have limited resources with which to fight these companies for small copyright infractions, it is hard to side with the creators. Those of us who were downloading music on Napster in the early 00s remember how much ridicule Metallica endured for suing Napster and asking the company to ban users who downloaded Metallica’s music (which they did). When piracy is seen as a conflict between the big guy and the little guy, we tend to side with the little guy.

The problem with book piracy is that often the piracy of books is not about the little guy versus the big guy, it is about the little guy versus the other little guy. Authors may be under contract with publishers, who are indeed large companies with a lot of resources, but the authors themselves have little control over what these companies do with their money. Authors themselves, contrary to what many people think, are not rich. Those six figure advances that the public hears about are the exception, not the rule, and for every J.K. Rowling there are hundreds if not thousands of writers who struggle to make even the equivalent of minimum wage for their work. While you may think that by pirating a book you’re sticking it to a big corporation, a publisher like Random House or a bookseller like Barnes and Noble, you’re also directly impacting authors.  Every book that you download is a sale the author does not make, and money that the author does not earn. Are the large corporations impacted? Yes and no. Because large publishing companies publish thousands of books a year, including bestsellers guaranteed to sell regardless of whether or not pirated versions are available, downloading one pirated book is unlikely to make the same impact upon say, Random House, as it would upon the author of that book.

Nor is book piracy similar to the piracy of television shows or movies. If you download an episode of Game of Thrones you can rest assured that the directors, actors, and writers will be paid regardless (and paid well). Downloading an episode of a television show means that you did not pay for the subscription service or view the advertising that funds these shows. Still, these shows are massively successful and piracy does not generally jeopardize their existence.  Book sales operate on an entirely different premise. An author is paid an advance for a book, and must make the amount of that advance in sales before they see a penny in royalties. Most advances are modest, and rarely amount to more than what would be a year’s salary for most people, say $30,000-$50,000, even though books represent sometimes two or three years worth of work on the part of the writer. Sometimes advances are even less. Again, an author does not start earning royalties until their books have earned back the advance. At that point, the author earns money, or royalties, on every book sold.

Authors, by and large, do not have many other ways to make money aside from book sales. While bands might sell merchandise and play to packed stadiums, or sell the rights to their songs to movies, TV shows and films, writers, for the most part, must rely book sales to make money. There is the slight possibility that a writer might sell the television or movie rights, this doesn’t happen to all, or even most authors. Some authors like J.K. Rowling may create an entire intellectual property based upon their works, with toys, posters, and t-shirts, these authors represent a tiny minority of the whole. The vast majority of writers rely on book sales and the occasional paid appearance to earn a living.

Many people who complain about greedy authors who oppose piracy seem to imagine the author as a figure of immense privilege, when in fact writers often work several jobs in addition to writing because writing alone rarely pays the bills. And while being able to write at all certainly implies a degree of inherent privilege — an education, perhaps, enough time each day to set aside for writing — writers are not, by and large, wealthy people. They struggle to pay the rent. They’re paying off college loans. They’ve got kids to support. Writers are not sitting in castles counting their stacks of cash, they’re people, just like you and I. Authors are not trying to deprive people of reading material out of greed, they simply want to be properly compensated for work that represents years of time and effort.

While it can certainly be argued that the entire capitalist system of modern publication is something that needs to be revamped, leftist thought has never involved denying workers the right to make a living. Writers provide an essential service, creating stories that entertain, educate, and inspire us. If writers cannot make a living, these stories will cease to exist. And in our current society, if publishers deem certain books unprofitable, those authors will lose their contracts, those books will cease to be published. Writer Maggie Stiefvater most famously planted a fake pirated copy of the fourth book in her Raven Boys series after piracy took its toll on the sales of the third book. When would-be pirates downloaded the fourth book and found it incomplete (with a message at the end the portion regarding the impact of piracy), they were forced to purchase the book outright, and sales of that book far outpaced those of the third. When we download books illegally, not only do our favorite authors lose the ability to make a living, we may lose the ability to read these authors’ books at all.

So, you understand that authors are not rich, and you don’t want them to lose money, but you still can’t afford books. What can you do? In the year 2020, if you live in the English speaking world, there are a great number of ways to access books online without violating authors’ copyrights or interfering with their ability to make a living. If your town doesn’t have a good old fashioned brick and mortar library, or your library’s selection is limited, most libraries now allow for the borrowing of e-books. Libby, for instance, is an app that lets you connect to libraries all over the country and will give you access to potentially millions of e-books for free. You are not limited to simply one library either — you can sign into multiple libraries with one device. Again, Libby is entirely free (I’m not being paid to plug Libby, I promise, I am just a big fan!), and because libraries have contracts with publishers that grant them legal licenses for the books that are in their systems, authors get paid when you use the service. Aside from Libby there are services such as Scribd which are relatively low cost — a subscription to Scribd costs $9.99 a month and grants access to thousands of e-books and audiobooks. And of course, any books that are already in the public domain are freely available on a multitude of sites.

Perhaps one day society will be remade and artists will be supported by state funding or endowments for the arts, and books, artwork, movies, and music will all be available to everyone at no cost. Certainly writers and artists would be the first ones to rejoice if there were a way to ensure that  not only would they be fairly compensated for their work, their work could reach an even broader audience. In the meantime though, we do not yet live in that society. It is cruel to argue that writers should have no control over the products of their own labor. And while there are some writers today who are willing to write for the sake of it (I’m receiving no money for writing this blog, after all), and who will freely disseminate their work, it is unfair to expect writers to do this on a regular basis while maintaining consistent output and professional standards. If we think of authors as workers, writing as labor, and books as the fruits of that labor, then taking books away from the writers who created them and giving them nothing in return, is hardly a progressive stance. What’s even more shameful is treating authors as the enemy because they have the audacity to ask that people not pirate. Authors are simply people trying to make a living. Speak out against an unjust system, against publishers, Amazon, big box stores, but authors? All authors want is some small compensation for their labor, and if that makes them the enemy, then so is anyone else who refuses to work for free.

Many of us are currently under “shelter in place” orders, only allowed to leave our homes for supplies and essential work. Some of us are even quarantined, and not supposed to leave the house at all. It sounds, in theory, like a writers dream come true. After all, who among us hasn’t thought “imagine all the writing I could get done if I didn’t have to go to my day job?”

However, many of us aren’t getting much writing done. Twitter is full of writers who are stuck, unable to write, even under these seemingly “ideal conditions.” We are continually reminded that Shakespeare produced King Lear while holed up hiding from the plague, and feel guilty at being unable to do the same.

The problem is, these “ideal conditions” are actually anything but. These are uncertain times. Many of us have friends and loved ones who are ill, and even if we don’t, we are existing in a state of constant anxiety. It is hard for me to tear myself away from obsessively virus statistics, constantly refreshing Facebook, Twitter, and news sites, checking for new announcements. As of now, my state says we will return to school (where I work) on April 6th. I don’t see how that can possibly happen, but our state government refuses to make any long term plans. I am worried about the virus too. I am not technically part of the vulnerable group, many of my relatives are, including my mother, who lives with me.

Which is all to say, anxiety, worry, and uncertainty are not exactly the best conditions for creative output.  I was supposed to write this article on Sunday, but it has been hard for me to sit down and focus long enough to get it written. I know I am not the only one.

Creativity requires a particular mindset. Generally, writers work best when we’re not distracted by outside worries or pressures. Since writing takes a great deal of emotional energy, if your emotional energy is all used up worrying about the state of the world, about your loved ones’ health, about your job, or even how you’re going to survive being cooped up for another month or so, you’re unlikely to be at your creative best.

However, I want to write during this time, but paradoxically, in order to write, I have had to forgive myself for not writing. I cannot add disappointment with myself over being relatively nonproductive to my stressors at the moment. There is enough for us to worry about in March 2020, and we don’t need to add our inability to produce King Lear added to our worries. Give yourself permission to write, or not write, as you feel able.

For my own creative energy (and for my own mental health as well) I’ve also decided to make sure that I stay away from the news cycle and off of social media for a set period each day. No checking the news, no refreshing my Twitter feed, no turning on the television. I read a book, or watch a show, play with my pets, and sometimes I even try to write. We all need a break from obsessing over the increasingly depressing statistics about this pandemic. It is hard, I know. We’re experiencing something that most people reading this will not have experienced in living memory. The temptation to follow the news is greater for the newness of it all. It reminds me a bit of the post 9-11 days, when we the entire country was glued to our television sets, entirely unsure what was coming next. Eventually though, there comes a point when twenty four hour news cycle and the endless social media discourse only amplifies our anxieties. Give yourself permission to disconnect, even if it’s only for a few hours.

Most importantly, we need to make sure that we’re taking care of ourselves and each other. Reach out and start a chat with someone if you’re feeling stressed out or overwhelmed. Pick up the phone and give that friend you haven’t spoken to in ages a call. Check up on your friends who you suspect might be having a hard time. Writers, by nature, tend to be sensitive people. We feel things deeply, which is what allows us to create moving stories that speak to our readers, but it also means that tragedies and crises like these hit us particularly hard.

If you have writers in your life, don’t pester them about why they haven’t written the next King Lear, ask them if they’re doing alright and lend an ear if they need someone to talk to. And if you’re a writer, remember, for every one of us who might be writing the next King Lear, there are many many more of us who are doing nothing of the sort. You are not alone.

Sharing your writing can be, perhaps, one of the most exhilarating and simultaneously terrifying parts of the entire writing process. Most of us seasoned writers have been there — the anxiety as your finger hovers over the send button, the way you refresh your email with a mixture of dread and anticipation, waiting for that feedback, the rush that only a compliment can bring, as well as the crushing sense of defeat that comes with a bad critique. As creators, most of us are driven to share our creations, no matter how terrifying that sharing may be. Therefore, what I am about to advise may seem counterintuitive to many writers, who, eager for feedback, are considering showing their work to others.

Creating something is a heady feeling, and it is natural, having created something, to desire some sort of recognition for your creation, a validation of your efforts. However, no matter how strong that impulse may be, don’t click send right away. First, ask yourself several questions.

First, you should ask is my writing ready to be viewed by others? That is, have I produced a clean draft that is relatively free of distracting errors, that makes sense, and can be read with relatively little background information or knowledge? Showing a potential reader or critique partner a draft that is overly rough is going to leave a poor first impression on the reader. Furthermore, while your draft of course doesn’t need to be perfect, if it is full of errors, has continuity issues, plot holes, or other issues that you should have been able to catch yourself, your reader will be distracted and tempted to comment on issues that are easy fixes versus commenting on your true areas of weakness.

Next, ask yourself, what do I hope to get out of sharing this manuscript at this stage? If what you want is to receive constructive criticism, to understand your manuscript’s strengths and weaknesses, then you’re on the right track. If your answer is validation, compliments, or encouragement, then think very carefully before sharing. If you are the kind of person who finds positive comments to be the best form of motivation, then you need to be very clear with your readers that you are only looking for motivation at this point, not criticism, even of the constructive sort. While I personally think there is limited value in this sort of reader interaction, I have known fanfic writers who find positive comments to be an almost addictive kind of positive reinforcement. However, the danger in receiving only positive feedback is that when you begin to receive honest, critical feedback, that feedback can be even more difficult to accept.

Which leads to another question you need to ask yourself, how will I react to negative criticism of my manuscript? Am I ready to hear negative feedback about something that I have invested considerable time, effort, and emotional energy into? As an editor, I have given well-meaning and gentle criticism that a writer has nevertheless described as “tearing apart” his work. I have known writers who have fallen into writing slumps, and even into depression, after receiving less than glowing feedback. Understand, once you send your manuscript to someone else or post it online, the kind of reactions you will get are entirely out of your control. It can be extremely disheartening when a piece that you are particularly proud of gets a harsh critique, and being disappointed is natural.

However, the ability to take on criticism and not take it as a personal attack is essential if you are going to be soliciting writing advice from others. An inability to do so does not mean you’ll never succeed as a writer, it means at this point in time sharing your writing isn’t a healthy choice for you personally. Be honest with yourself. Are you currently in the mental frame of mind to handle criticism? If not, it is fine to write simply for yourself — everything you write, no matter who sees it or doesn’t see it, is a step towards you becoming the writer you want to be.

Further, even if you know that mentally you could handle negative criticism, if writing is a relatively new endeavor, there may be limited value in receiving negative criticism, even constructive criticism. So ask yourself, am I ready to receive criticism at this point in my writing journey? New writers who receive too much advice too early on can easily become confused and frustrated. It is important before you start receiving critiques from others that you develop some writerly instincts of your own, and develop the ability to tell good advice, advice that will improve your manuscript, from advice that you can discard.

Receiving criticism is something every writer, in order to improve, must one day face. However, soliciting criticism is a big step, and each writer must take it when doing so will be most beneficial to the writer and the work. Taking this step at the wrong point in the writing process could in fact do more harm than good.

Over the years I’ve heard many writers say something along the lines of “so I’ve got this idea for a story,” but then they follow it up with something like this. “See, it’s about this girl. She has magic that hasn’t been seen for generations. Her parents died when she was a little girl, and she’s been raised by her grandfather. Everyone in the village hates her, and so she’s become very independent. She falls in love with the son of a lord, but his parents disapprove of her.” Or, they’ll approach me with ten pages of detailed character sheets, like something out of Dungeons and Dragons.  In both scenarios my reply is usually something along the lines of “great, but where’s the story?”

This is a mistake far too many beginning writers make, confusing story with character and assuming that a strong character alone is enough to carry a story. Even a character-driven story needs a strong plot to move the action forward, and the best stories are not those in which you could plop any old character down within the story’s world and the story would still hit the same plot points. If your story is designed this way, then congratulations, you’ve created a video game, and not a novel. After all, in a video game, the ending is pre-determined. You may choose various characters to act out the scenarios, and you may make various decisions along the way, but ultimately, your character is carried along by the plot, and not the other way around. Good storytelling in a novel, however, requires characters who are intrinsically tied to their plots, and vice versa.

The classic example often used to demonstrate the essential link between characters and plot is Hamlet and Macbeth. If you put Macbeth in Hamlet’s place, the play ends in the first act, Claudius dead, the end. If you put Hamlet into Macbeth’s place, then Hamlet never would have rebelled in the first place. The events of each play are intrinsically tied to the characters who create them. Events happen as a result of character actions and decisions.

This is why stories in which characters lack agency are often so frustrating. We keep reading, hoping that the character will act upon his circumstances, will make decisions, will do something to show why this character is so essential to this story. After all, if a character lacks agency, and is simply pushed along by the plot, then substitute literally anyone else, and the result would be relatively similar. No matter how interesting a character is, if that character’s unique traits are not driving the story, then the reader’s own interest will eventually wane.

This is why, for all that character sheets can be a fun and entertaining way to spend an afternoon, focusing too much on building a character without building the plot to go along with that character, can be a mistake. These sorts of stories are usually easy to recognize. The writer often starts off with a full cast of characters. We are given their full backstories, we meet their friends, their families, we see them on the job, we see them at school, but the story moves at a glacial pace and for all that the author has created a (sometimes interesting!) character, they have not presented that character with a conflict, have not given that character a motivation, have not written a story for that character.

The other type of character mistake occurs when a writer creates a character, and creates a plot, but there is a disconnect between the two, as if the characters and the plot each developed entirely independent of each other. Usually this happens when a writer starts with a character and realizes belatedly that the character needs a story.  Take our magical girl with the dead parents, raised by her grandparents. Perhaps the writer says, well, we need a conflict, so let’s throw in a war. Someone awful invades her country, kills someone she loves. She’s magical, and she makes it her mission to stop this invasion. There we go, plot. Rolling your eyes yet? Does this sound generic and interchangeable? It should! This scenario is where we end up with a character that lacks agency, who is pushed along by the plot, rather than being the force driving the plot. No matter how well developed our characters are, if they are not connected to the plot, the conflict will seem shallow.

It is absolutely fine to start with a character, or to be better at creating characters than at thinking up plots. The mistake is to create a character , or even a whole slew of characters, and decide that from that point you are ready to start your novel. Once you have created your character, more than identifying minutiae of your character’s personality, you need to identify your character’s motivation. Character sheets might suggest you ask yourself what your character’s favorite breakfast cereal is, or whether your character is a cat person or dog person, but the real questions you must ask about your characters are “what does my character want?” and “who or what is stopping them from getting it?”

Take our magical girl. What is it that she’s always wanted? Acceptance? A family? Who is stopping her from being accepted? Her awful village and her boyfriend’s parents, right? So when the invaders come, is this perhaps her chance to prove herself? To win acceptance from her people? What about a family of her own — if she helps win this war, will her lover’s family accept her as his wife? And maybe she does win, but finds that is not enough to gain acceptance — what then? Or perhaps they do accept her, and she’s still not happy?  Maybe all along she didn’t accept herself either, and the conflict wasn’t between her and the village at all, but between her and her own self doubt? The story then is not at all about winning or not winning the war, it is about our magic girl struggling for acceptance and learning to accept herself, which is a much more interesting story (if still a bit cliched, forgive me, it’s an off the cuff example, not the result of actual novel planning) than a simple story of heroes and invaders.

Ultimately, character and plot are interconnected. The best stories take unique characters and put them in situations that are equally unique to that character. If your character lacks either a clear conflict or a clear connection to the story’s conflict, you’re bound to have a mediocre story, no matter how interesting the character is.

I’ve never been much one for violent media. Movies, TV shows, books — I tend to avoid the bloody stuff. Which is not to say that I can’t handle gore, or that I’m squeamish about the sight of blood — I can handle violence, I just don’t like it. When given the choice of reading material, if I am told a book is extremely violent, I will likely avoid it. Therefore, if you know much about the fantasy genre known as “Grimdark,” it probably comes as no surprise to learn that I am not a huge fan.

Grimdark is a sub-genre of fantasy that is characterized by extreme violence, an amoral or nihilistic worldview, and a general tone of hopelessness. Grimdark is full of antiheroes rather than heroes, characters who are ultimately, if not evil, then at least self-serving. Grimdark does not moralize, in fact, perhaps one of the biggest distinguishing features of Grimdark is its postmodern relativistic view of the world — there is no good, there is no evil, there is only the harsh and stark reality of people trying their best to survive.

It is perhaps not difficult to imagine Grimdark’s appeal. Fans of the genre often site their preference for “realism” versus overt escapism of traditional epic fantasy. Whereas traditional fantasy tells the story of the young hero, called away on a quest, often to defeat a great evil. The hero is usually victorious, and evil is defeated. Of course, it is true, in the real world evil is not defeated quite so handily, and it is true too, that the real world is often brutal. However, if traditional epic fantasy only shows one side of humanity, the heroic, optimistic side, then Grimdark swings far in the other direction. Real life, true realism, is more balanced than either.

Grimdark justifies its violence and amorality with a view that humans nature is selfish, that the quest for individual power is all that really matters. War and death are presented as the inevitable outcome of human conflict, but the sheer scale and scope of death, the graphic descriptions, at some point, no longer horrify the reader. One recent Grimdark novel (I will not name names, my intent here is not to bash specific authors or books) lovingly described war atrocities, in detail, for a full six pages. The characters in this novel believe these deaths to be “the only way,” but in the grand scheme of things, the deaths change nothing. The war continues, atrocities pile up. For characters in Grimdark, death is justified, but it isn’t meaningful.

It might surprise readers to learn that my favorite book is The Things They Carried, by Tim O’Brien. The Things They Carried is a book of stories about the Vietnam war, and as such, it is not without violence. In fact, The Things They Carried is at times downright gory — it describes a man stepping on a landmine, it describes desecration of enemy corpses, it describes a soldier brutally killing a baby water buffalo. However, despite all of this there is an undercurrent of hope that runs through the novel. The soldier who kills the baby water buffalo does so out of sheer despair over losing a friend in the war. Death changes these characters fundamentally, because these characters want more than individual power and glory. Although they may do horrible things, awful things, they are not irredeemable as human beings. Death in The Things They Carried is never justified, but it is meaningful.

Ultimately, Grimdark is an essential expression of the kind of moral relativism that has taken up much space in our modern consciousness. It tells us that there is no absolute  good, and that therefore everything, even extreme violence, has its place in an amoral world. In a world where humans are ultimately self-interested, empathy, compassion and self-reflection have no place. Violence is a means to and end, and while it is sometimes regrettable, it is rarely preventable. Violence is the inevitable and “rational” result of human actions. In fact, there is perhaps a large Venn diagram overlap between the fans of Grimdark and the internet types who harp on about logic and reason. If violence is the logical result, then it becomes, once more, realistic, and none can argue that it is gratuitous.

In fact, when violence is seen as the logical and inevitable result of humanity’s selfish nature, then there is no reason to decry it. For those who relish violent scenes of death and destruction, Grimdark offers an excellent excuse. Go ahead, Grimdark says, and enjoy the awesome battles and gory beheadings, because what other alternative is there? The world is a horrible place, so here, have your bread and circuses, but don’t imagine for a second that there is any chance for change.

I refuse to believe that the world is an inherently selfish place. Now, more than ever, I need to believe that there is an inherent drive in humanity towards cooperation, a desire to help one another, rather than hurt. I cannot relish in violence, in death. The author of The Things They Carried, Tim O’Brien, is a Vietnam war veteran himself, and his book is full of empathy for all of those people touched by the horrors of war. Those who have experienced war themselves know that hopelessness is no way to get through dark times, and these are dark times indeed. Embracing the grim darkness that represents the worst that humanity has to offer is something I cannot bring myself to do, not when the world is so desperately in need of the light.