GENREALITY

Went to see the movie John Carter Saturday with my good buddy, Jay Lake.  I loved the movie.  I’ve read some reviews where people were disappointed, but that’s okay.  I don’t go to the movies to look for critical approval or even correct grammar.  I go to the movies to be entertained.  Don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t Star Wars or anything, but I found echoes there.  I doubt a generation of new science fiction fans will count this movie as a life changing event.  But I think it is a damn fine way to spend a couple of hours.

What I don’t understand is why this huge pulp/space-opera is doing so poorly at the box office.  Some folks have mentioned a rather odd and awkward ad campaign, which I can sort of agree with.  Some blame it on Disney, and others seem to be apologetic for the fact it’s a huge, pulp/space-opera.

I find this amusing.  It’s got action, it’s got adventure and it’s got romance.  what more could you want?  We go to movies to be entertained, do we not?  I’m not in college anymore where I need to write a critical analysis and earn a grade.  My goal is to settle into a comfy seat, hunker down in the dark and let my mind be taken over by an amazing story.  John Carter did that for me.

When I was in the third grade my grandmother handed me the entire Burroughs John Carter of Mars series and promised me that it would change my life.

And she was correct.  I devoured those books, learning that sleep is for sissies when you have a great book to read.

I knew they had flaws, even at a young age, but I fell in love with the characters, the adventure and the story.  That’s what I’m in it for.

So when I watched John Carter I went in with the expectation of being entertained, wowed by the special affects and stunned by the beauty playing Dejah Thoris.

Afterwards I got to thinking about the value of success and critical acclaim.  As an author, I want nothing more than to connect with readers and sell a lot of books, maybe get a movie deal somewhere and become a full-time writer without losing my house or family along the way.

I find the movie John Carter to be an excellent metaphor here.  I loved the movie, others didn’t.  The sales are not what the studio or the media pundits thought was good enough for the blockbuster budget this film had.  But I know several people who have already seen this movie in the theaters two or more times.  I plan to go see it again, paying the stupid price for the 3D and loving every minute of it.

I’ve seen many reviews that talk about how this movie was true to the books, and true to the Edgar Rice Burroughs vision of the characters, the world and the story.

So is it a  success or not?  I’m sure the film-maker is delighted with his product and perplexed why it isn’t being received better.  And here is a very important lesson for authors.  We cannot control what the audience does.  We cannot control sales, marketing and most of us don’t get a vote on the cover art of our novels.  We may truly love the work we’ve produced, have good art, great editorial support and still the books are not overnight sensations.

Hunger Games is in the theaters now.  I’m sure it is going to break some records, earn some amazing box office numbers –  similar to Harry Potter before it.  But we can’t all get struck by lightning.  We don’t all get to ride at the head of the parade with the prom queen and smile while adoring fans throw roses.

What we get to do is produce another work that shows our obvious love for what we do.  Then we can send it out into the world and hope that there will be people who will fall in love with those things we love.

I’ll buy John Carter on Blue Ray when it comes out.  I’ll also go back and buy another set of the Mars books to read again.  I’ll always love those stories as they formed the foundation of my own journey into becoming an author.

But when I start to worry about whether or not my books are selling well enough, or see a review by someone who didn’t care for my style, I’ll look back on the movie John Carter and remember that we don’t always love the same things.  Nor do we always meet the expectations of others.  In the end, we have to entertain ourselves, pour our heart and souls into our work, and trust that someday we’ll reach a reader and change their lives the way Mr. Burroughs changed mine.

Besides, what do critics know?

Happy Saturday!  Last week, I told you  that as a part of my series on short stories we’d dissect one of my older bits — “Edward Bear and the Very Long Walk.”  There will be spoilers ahead if you’ve not read the story.  Just saying.

I wrote “Edward Bear…” in June of 2000.  I did three passes of revision during that month based on feedback from writer-friends John A. Pitts, Manny Frishberg and I think Steven Hunt may have even weighed in on it.  At the time, I probably had 20 short stories total under my belt, including some written in high school and college.  I’d sold my first short story a year earlier and my second right around the time I sat down to write about my favorite bear of little brain.

The idea, as I think I said earlier, came from a co-worker in 1991 — when I worked as a label gun repairman — who one day walked in on windy day and exclaimed, “Winnie the Pooh and the Blustery Day!” for unknown reasons.  This was six years before I came back to writing.  It stuck with me and a few years later — during my preacherboy days in in Bellingham — I was given the collected Pooh stories by Milne.  My exposure to Pooh was entirely by book — and an LP of someone reading some of the stories when I was in the first grade.  I’ve avoided the cartoons my entire life.  I’m Classic Pooh all the way.

So I re-read the Pooh stories around 1993.  And then, seven years later there was a spark.  The notion of Pooh in a starfighter trying to save the universe.  When I was early in twisting the idea into a story, I was at lunch with Patrick Swenson and telling him my idea.  Amazingly, he’s the editor that eventually put it into print the first time.  But that day, I think he was amused by the notion and skeptical about whether or not it could be done.

When I sat down to write, I had the first line immediately:  ”He was a bear and his name was Edward and he lay twitching in the corner of a room that smelled of death.”  In hindsight, from a dozen years later, I’d swap out “of” for “like” for the consonance.  But otherwise, it does what I wanted it to do — bring the reader into the story rather abruptly with the cadence of a children’s tale followed by the smell of death.  It hints at a problem, which shows up quickly on the heels of the opening line — it’s a room full of dead children.

Now, I broke a pretty big “rule” there.  I’m not even sure I’d try to break that one these days.  After becoming a parent, my threshold for stories that harm children is much lower.  But anyway, it’s what I went with back in 2000.  Edward Bear is twitching in the corner of a room that smells like death and has a vision of sorts — a holographic image of a familiar friend who tells him that he needs to leave the nursery, setting him on his hero’s journey.

Edward Bear’s initial problem turns into a much bigger problem once he escapes from the nursery and finds the AI of the dying starship (named for a poem, actually) who tells him that not only are the children dead, so are the rest of the colonists, and more are coming in another ship. And unless they learn about the virus that is waiting for them, they’ll all die, too.  Because the ship is damaged and dying, she can’t send a message.  But she can send Edward Bear with a little red hover-wagon to climb a mountain and push a button on a transmitter.  I wanted it to be a simple solution for a simple toy bear.

Along the way, he makes some friends…the Parrotishes…and I tried to telegraph something more ominous in that they always left before dark and returned after sunrise.  I also used the Parrotishes along with the other aspects of the setting to reinforce the notion of just who my protagonist is.

The next significant hitch in Edward Bear’s journey is when he wakes up to discover his wagon and transmitter is missing.  But more than missing, it’s been stolen and hidden away in a cave.  Our hero is given a weapon and sent into the cave where he’s faced with his big decision and his final “try” attempt at solving the problem that’s been set up at the front of the story.

In the first draft, Edward Bear goes into the cave, goes to get his wagon, realizes that there are Parrotishes being held captive and makes a quick decision to help them, only to accidentally wake up the slumbering monsters while he’s in the midst of freeing the captives.  The battle ensues with Edward Bear eventually being rescued by the Parrotishes outside.

But this wasn’t quite strong enough — feedback from my first readers pointed this out.  Edward Bear’s choice needed to be clearer and more consequential.  So in the second draft, I changed it up so that he sees the Parrotish prisoners — realizes that they are children — and frees them, getting them outside to the others before going back for his hover-wagon.  There is more emphasis on the fact that these are children, too, just as much as the human children that need him to haul his wagon to the top of the mountain.  This made his choice to help the alien children he’d encountered along the way more impactful…along with his choice to go back into the cave after his wagon once he knows the Parrotish children are safe.  And that choice then makes the Parrotishes’s choice to come to his aid more impactful, I thought, too.

One of the more poignant parts of the story for me, at least, is when they fashion a teddy bear replica of himself and give it to him as a comfort during the last leg of his journey.  And in the end, Edward Bear truly has surpassed his programming — he is a changed Bear of bigger brain and bigger heart than when he started, though those changes came from choices that cost him his life.  And the button is pressed.

Next week, I’ll tackle my last post on drafting your short story.  Then we’ll talk about what comes next.  Meanwhile, it is open season on Edward Bear.  If you have any questions at all about what I did or didn’t do in that story, please post them below and I’ll try to tackle them.

That’s all for now.  Trailer Boy out.

Today’s blog post comes from a question in my email box:

A asks (edited some for identity’s sake):

I am a budding writer myself, and attempting to complete my first novel.

I know that you have written very tense and bloody battle scenes, and I am now stuck writing the great final battle in my book. Do you have any advice for me?

First of all, congratulations on closing in on completion of your first novel. That’s an amazing achievement and you should be really proud of yourself. I wish you the best of luck as you finish it, edit it, and begin your path to publication.

Okay, on to the advice portion of our show. Yes, I actually do have some advice for writing battle sequences. (I know, right? I’m in such a weird Jane Austen headspace right now, what with trying to promote my new novel, that I almost forgot I’ve totally written multiple books about bloodthirsty unicorns and crossbows and claymores! The closest my latest heroine gets to a deadly weapon is when she hands a servant a pair of garden shears.)

Off we go.

1) Read a lot of action scenes. Read action scenes in your favorite books. Read action scenes you really liked in books that weren’t otherwise your favorite. Read the ones that were most clear to you, the most compelling, the most riveting. Read them even if they have absolutely nothing in common with your battle scene.

2) Study them and analyze what worked for you and why. Then steal the crap out of those techniques.

When I was writing Rampant, I did this. I thought about the action sequences that I remembered most vividly from books. Here are two of my favorites:

1. Any Quidditch match in the early Harry Potter books.
2. Any hunting scene in Jean M Auel’s Clan of the Cave Bear book and sequels.

Now the latter makes a lot of sense for Rampant. After all, those scenes tend to be about humans hunting large ungulates. But it’s also more than that. As I analyzed what I loved so much about these scenes, and why they stuck with me years after I’d first read them, I realized that they almost always focused on Ayla’s decisions and feelings during the hunts. Ayla gets high off hunting. She truly, truly loves it. There is violence and terror, but there’s also a very strong sense of urgency. If she doesn’t succeed, it’s highly likely that she and/or her companions might starve to death. (I especially like the scenes where she learns to hunt alone in Valley of the Horses.)

Astrid is in a similar situation — not hunting for food, but also really, truly needing to kill the animal she’s hunting, or risk dying herself. As Auel did with Ayla, I made sure to focus the sequences on Astrid — her feelings, her place, her motivation, and her urgency. I’m not a huge sports fan, but I love to watch a game when I’m cheering for a team or a player. When I write my battle scenes, I’m want my readers cheering hard for my protagonists and, through that, to follow along.

Okay, so, Harry Potter. I know some people love sports fiction, but I was never a big fan. If games were described in books, I usually skimmed. Until I met Harry Potter. J.K. Rowling described Quidditch in the most fascinating way possible. I remember way too much about all the minute details and movements and points scored in every Quidditch game in the series. For some reasons, those scenes always held me riveted (even if, as I wrote about in my recent essay, I found the game to be a flawed sport in general) When I went back and reread those scenes, I was drawn right back in. (In a way I wasn’t necessarily with Rowling’s battle scenes or even the challenges at the Triwizard tournament.) What was it about the Quidditch matches?

Quidditch has nothing to do with hunting unicorns, obviously, but one thing I noticed as I analyzed it is that Rowling was exquisitely clear about who and where her players were, and what they wanted and were doing — even in the 3-D world that was the Quidditch pitch.

You could see the whole field and you could see how the action of some Beater down below was going to affect a circling Seeker elsewhere in the game. It was brilliant. So that — as disparate as it was from unicorn hunting — was also something I could use to make my writing stronger. You might find there are submarine fights or Orc invasions or Ender Wiggins Battle School matches or whatever else that really pushed your action scene buttons as a reader. Take that. Study it. Steal the methods and make them your own.

When you do, you may find your big points to hit are somewhat different than mine. From what I did above, I got:

1) Focus on character emotion, goals, conflicts, and motivation. Yes, seeing hte big picture is grand, but battles can’t all be crane shots.

2) Make sure the reader knows where things are and how they connect. You don’t want them to get lost in the action.

Additionally, I advise:

3) Use your senses. One thing you might learn from all this “stealing from your favorites” stuff is that when characters are involved in action, they go all primitive. Their senses all heighten — they see things, hear things, smell things, notice things.What would people notice in your battle sequences? Where are they? What time of day? What’s the weather like? What’s the state of the ground, of the air, of the people? What does it smell like? What does your clothing or your weapon feel like in your hand? What can you hear, before the battle, during the battle? Ask yourself those questions, even if they don’t make it onto the page. Your writing will be more vivid if you know.

4) Make sure injuries and losses are real. I hope you’ve never been shot or trampled or burnt or bludgeoned before, but try to think about exactly what those sensations are like. I was very concerned in Rampant that my characters weren’t getting Hollywood wounds — you know, the ones where they were shot in the shoulder, but didn’t even need to pause for a breath. When the girls were injured, they were injured. Sometimes down for the count. And old injuries would bother them, too. They had magic on their side, of course, but there were plenty of ways they could get hurt where the magic couldn’t save them. (And when the unicorns knew that, they could concentrate on those methods.) When people get hurt, ti’s not G rated.

5) Have a plan. I know this is anathema to many writers, but I think when you’re planning out a battle sequence, some choreography is going to go a long way, even if it’s just knowing what are the big points you’re going to hit — who dies, or how, or who wins, or what finally turns the tide for the victors, or etc. Get an idea of where you’re going before you get in there and the fur/arrows/nanotech weaponry starts to fly.

Good luck! I’m off to see The Hunger Games — which, if it’s anything like the books, is going to have some amazing action sequences!

Sorry for the late post. I put the blog entry in last night and then didn’t hit save. That should tell you how my week has gone so far, which leads me to this…

I’ve had a rough week on the writing career front. Nothing catastrophic. Just one of those setbacks you’re not quite expecting. Doesn’t sound so bad, right? Yeah, well, it totally knocked me off my game. Tuesday was one of those days when nothing – NOTHING – went right. Some of the issues were outside of the writing world. For some reason the USPS took 12 days to deliver an eDeposit, which messed up a bank acccount. A tax payment never arrived at its destination (note: this is also a postal service issue but the State of CA doesn’t really care who is at fault). As a result of these two things, I spent hours on the phone Tuesday morning fixing the various messes. So when I saw my agent’s phone number on the caller ID I just knew it was more bad news. And, really it wasn’t terrible news. It just wasn’t the news I wanted. It was the wrong news for my career, an offer that didn’t make much sense for me.

So I sulked. I mean, really sulked. The hubby came home and I was curled up on the couch in sweatpants staring blindly at a marathon of The Big Bang Theory on tv. While he knew I needed to sulk, he also gave me the “this is no big deal” and the “take the project somewhere else” speeches. He was right. I wasn’t ready to hear it, but he was right.

Wednesday morning I woke up feeling like I was on the verge of the flu. I wasn’t physically sick. This was leftover furstration, sadness and anger from the day before. Then it happened. Somewhere in the middle of the afternoon on Wednesday I had the “get over yourself” moment. I gave myself the pep talk that goes something like this: you know you can write; there are other options; other doors are open; and stop wallowing. By Wednesday night I was working on an adjusted career plan and thinking about what I thought I should do next.

I really think this was one of those moments people talk about. You know the ones. Speakers at conventions refer to hitting a wall and finding a way around it. About how many unpublished folks receive bad news and give up, but how someone who really wants to be an author doesn’t stop writing. Tuesday felt like one of those moments. It was easy to throw up my hands with an “I give up”…but I only let those feelings fester for about 24 hours. Now it’s time to get back to work.

We get paid to invent stories.  How cool is that?  We invent something from just our imaginations.  Amazing.

So why are writers squirming masses of insecurity?

A lot of it is external:  little validation, an uncertain business, isolation, bears.

But deep inside almost ever writer is this feeling that what we do, what we produce, isn’t real.  That we are perpetuating a fraud on the world.  That we’re ‘fooling’ everyone.  We believe we got where we are via luck and contacts.

When I teach Write It Forward the #1 fear of writers is feeling like a fraud.  The word just keeps coming up, over and over.

How To Deal With Feeling Like A Fraud.

Writers aren’t the only creative people who experience these feelings of being a fraud or concerned the world will found out they are an imposter.

“I still think people will find out that I’m really not very talented. I’m not very good. It’s all been a big sham.” Michelle Pfeiffer

“Sometimes I wake up before going off to a shoot, and I think, I can’t do this; I’m a fraud. They’re going to fire me. I’m fat. I’m ugly . . .” Kate Winslet.

It’s important to realize everyone has doubts. What’s debilitating is if you feel like you are the only one. You’re not. Studies of people who are identified as feeling like frauds range in percentage, but the overall number is high. In fact, studies show that many of the most successful people feel it the most. The higher up the ladder one goes, the greater the fear is of ‘being found out’.  The higher the stakes become.  The more people are watching.  And, honestly, the more people who want to see you fail.  Thus those magazines at the checkout counters in supermarkets.  The headlines don’t scream:  Actress Has Great Day And Loves Husband.

Doubts can be good: they can inspire you to become better. If you combine your doubt with your passion, it can motivate you to great success. Studies have shown that women who score high in the area of feeling like a fraud tend to compete harder to compensate for their doubts. Interestingly, men who scored high on feeling like a fraud, tend to avoid areas where they feel vulnerable to avoid looking bad.

There is a thing called The Imposter Syndrome. It’s when you difficulty internalizing your accomplishments. All those things they’ve achieved: degrees, promotions, publication, best-seller lists, etc. are thrown out.  The more you agree with the following statements, the higher your Imposter Syndrome:

I can give the impression I am more competent than I really am.

I often compare myself to those around me and consider them more intelligent than I am.

I get discouraged if I’m not the ‘best’ in an endeavor.

I hate being evaluated by others.

If someone gives me praise for something I’ve accomplished, it makes me fear that I won’t live up to his or her expectations in the future.

I’ve achieved my current position via luck and/or being in the right place at the right time.

When I think back to the past, incidents where I made mistakes or failed come more readily to mind than times when I was successful.

When I finish a manuscript, I usually feel like I could have done so much better.

When someone complements me, I feel uncomfortable.

I’m afraid others will find out my lack of knowledge/expertise.

When I start a new manuscript, I’m afraid I won’t be able to finish it, even though I’ve already finished X number of manuscripts.

If I’ve been successful at something, I often doubt I can do it again successfully.

If my agent tells me I’m going to get an offer on a book, I don’t tell anyone until the contract is actually in hand.

Women who feel like imposters tend to seek favorable comparisons with their peers.

Men who feel like imposters tend to avoid comparisons with their peers. Often, they work hard so other people won’t think them incapable or dumb.  It’s called spinning your wheels faster even though you aren’t going anywhere.

People who feel like imposters are constantly judging their success against the achievements of others rather than viewing what they do as an end in itself. For writers, this can be very dangerous, because there will always be someone who is doing ‘it better’ or ‘is more successful’.  I’ve seen bestselling authors fall into this trap.

A technique to fight feeling like a fraud is to use a version of my Warrior Writer HALO concept on yourself. HALO stands for High Altitude Low Opening parachuting.  The technique is to start from way out, and work your way in with an open attitude to try to see things differently.  Most of us see thing from our inside out.  Reverse it.  When I approach a company or team where I know nothing about what they do, the HALO concept allows me to see what they’re doing very differently from the way they see it.

Basically, the HALO approach starts from way outside yourself, diving in until you can see things clearly. Step outside and view things as if you are a stranger to yourself.. Look at your resume. Look at what you’ve accomplished in life. Ask yourself what kind of person would have achieved these things? Could a fraud have done this? When I query a conference to teach or apply to lead workshops or do keynotes, I have to send my bio. Sometimes I stop and read it and ask myself: what would I think of this person, if I didn’t know them, but just read this?

Focus on positive feedback. However, don’t ignore constructive negative feedback. The key is not to let the negative overwhelm you. I don’t look at Amazon reviews or rankings any more. First, you have to realize that only a certain segment of the population posts reviews on Amazons. It’s not a true sample of the population. Also, the motives for posting reviews often have nothing to do with your book.

One way of dealing with ‘feeling like a fraud’ is to internalize more of your accomplishments via real, external symbols.  In the military, we always joked that everyone had a “Look At Where I’ve Been And What I’ve Done” wall in their home, covered with photos, plaques, flags, etc. Those walls serve a purpose, though. (In our A-Team room, we had to wire down all the knives, hatchets, edged weapons that were usually on the plaques because people might start using them after a few beers.)

I have all my published books in my office on the top of two bookcases, all lined up. The row is over three feet wide. I look at it sometimes to fight the feeling that I can’t write another book, that I can’t get published again.

I love this quote from a Python:

“Talent is less important in film-making than patience.  If you really want your films to say something that you hope is unique, then patience and stamina, thick skin and a kind of stupidity, a mule-like stupidity, is what you really need.”  Terry Gilliam

You’ve got to actively work on building that tough outer shell around your creative self. Have a bizarre belief in yourself even in the face of apparent reality.  You’re being bombarded  with negative messages about publishing.  It’s so hard.  The odds are against you.

You have to believe in yourself. If you’re unpublished, walk into the bookstores and don’t let all those published authors overwhelm you. Use them to motivate you. Tell yourself you belong there. I always look and say: “Hey, these people got published, why can’t I?”

List your accomplishments. They can range from a picture of your family, degrees achieved, awards won, whatever. Put them where you write. Use them to remind yourself that you are not a fraud. YOU ARE REAL.

Oh yes. FREE eBooks. We’ve got five books going free on Amazon starting today:

Atlantis Bermuda Triangle through Friday.

Area 51 Legend—just today and tomorrow.  This is a standalone book even though it was the last one published.  It’s actually a prequel to the story.

Bitter Moon Lane by international bestselling author Colin Falconer is free all week, ending Friday.

The Templar’s Seduction by bestselling romance author Mary Reed McCall through Thursday.

The Royal W.E. Unique Glimpses of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor by Victoria Martinzez through Friday.

Write It Forward!