Posted on by Eileen Young

Full Fathom Five

Full Fathom Five is James Frey’s latest project. We all remember Frey, right? The notorious author of the ‘memoir’ A Million Little Pieces, he’s now using his notoriety – er, sorry, industry contacts – to get young and bright-eyed MFAs published, with aims at movie deals for all of them.

Sounds great, right?
Except that said MFAs don’t get to claim credit for it. Their names appear nowhere on the published book. The recent movie I Am Number Four was put out by Full Fathom Five, and the author has sued for the right to claim in public that he wrote the original novel. He’s now allowed to talk about it, but his name still doesn’t appear on the book.
It’s an interesting concept, a think tank for coming out with cool young adult novels, surrounded by other people trying to do the same thing, with someone acting as literary agent for the whole group. Even the idea of branding as a think tank more than as a collection of individual writers is kind of fun, in concept.
Where Full Fathom Five falls off into creepy and exploitative is that James Frey is modeling it after Damien Hirst’s art factory – it’s all to be rewritten to his orders, and bear his stamp more than that of the writer, or even of the collective, for low wages and no recognition. The contract is a nightmare.
Which is why, despite pretty people and sparkly special effects in the previews, I will not be seeing I Am Number Four, or any future project from Full Fathom Five that makes theatres.
Posted on by Eileen Young

Akrasia, and the necessity thereof

Akrasia, as defined over at Wikipedia, is “the state of acting against one’s better judgement.”

For example, venti creme brulee lattes with whipped cream are bad for me. They contain dairy, which I react badly to, caffeine, which renders me strung out, and whipped cream, which renders me fat. Also sprinkles, sometimes. I know, logically, that they are bad for me and that I should not drink them. But they’re also delicious.
And sometimes delicious wins. That’s akrasia.
As an aspiring rationalist, I want to avoid akrasia as much as possible (that’s why I have tea in front of me – that and holiday beverages being over of the year).
Since I like to have characters that represent a fair spread of humanity, there are some characters who are aspiring rationalists, too. They fall victim to akrasia infrequently, since they’re specifically looking to avoid it, but they still do, since they’re still aspiring rationalists. And, in my stories, they end up in extreme situations where their best interests might not always be clear, making akrasia nearly inescapable.
For non-rationalist characters, akrasia is much more frequent. They do things like go off on adventures to save the world, when staying where they are and filing a complaint with their local representative or calling the police would be more practical and be the more logical decision, as there are agencies which are more effective than they are as an individual and present lower risk to life and limb.
It’s important to separate akrasia from the character judging outcomes using only the information they have, as opposed to information the author has. If the character has let their dog outside and hears a scratching at the door that sounds just like their dog, but the author has shown that it’s a ravenous wolf scratching at the door, the character is acting in their best interest as far as they know when they let the wolf in. To a reader, it’s achingly stupid, but the character is using the information they have available. To present the same character in a situation that really would involve akrasia, install a window next to the door. The character has heard stories on the news of wolf sightings in town. It’s dark out, and the shape is canine, but distinctly not that of his dog. He wants it to be his dog, since otherwise it means something has happened to make his dog not send up an alarm. Does he keep the door closed and call animal control, or let hope rule and let in the wolf?
Take out the possibility of akrasia, and you as a writer remove a great deal of suspense from your writing. The three main conflicts are man against nature, man against man, and man against himself. A rationalist who acts always towards what is best for themselves removes the third conflict. An aspiring rationalist, however, may simply elucidate that conflict more than many.
In fiction, akrasia serves a purpose, and can be good. It adds conflict, and makes characters more relatable to we flawed mortals who don’t choose rationally at all junctures. If the main character of Alexander behaved in a rational way, I’d never have made it past Chapter One with that particular story. This post is a result of more ruminating on the differences between good fiction and good life.
This post is also up at my group writing blog, Lunatic Writers.
And now, blog post complete, I shall go and drink something with sprinkles.
Posted on by Eileen Young · 1 Comment

Writing Software

Another frequent topic of debate is the technology used to write. Most frequently I see pen and paper vs computer, but not nearly enough do I see comparisons of the writing software available.
Microsoft Word and Notepad are the most obvious tools, since they come bundled with a Windows package on almost any PC you can buy commercially. But if you’ve had to wipe your hard drive and have lost your discs or are more interested in freeware in general, there’s OpenOffice. It has a lot of the same features as Word, except it can save in more formats. The default format isn’t Word, and Track Changes is hard to translate to another machine that doesn’t run OpenOffice, but it’s free, not particularly buggy, and has lots of online support. Probably not best for absolute computer beginners, but if you can google “how do I ___ in OpenOffice” and aren’t particularly set in your ways with Word, it’s a nice way to go. And if you feel bad about using freeware, you can just donate: a substantial donation at OpenOffice.org can still be cheaper than Word.
But what if you’re frequently switching between machines, and can’t keep track of a flash drive to save your life? What if you’re collaborating on a project with six people and can’t keep track of the latest version? What if, like me, you don’t want your hard work tied to your hardware? Then there’s Google Docs. Available anywhere there’s internet, they have a few fewer formatting capabilities than some software, but are free and perfect for collaboration. There’s a bit of a learning curve for using it, but it’s been well worth it for me.
Then there are the writing-specific softwares, like Dramatica and StoryWeaver. The only one of these that I’ve tried is yWriter5 (which everyone will be shocked to find is freeware). I found it interesting, the way it encourages planning and structure and pre-writing, but didn’t find that it gave me any appreciable advantage that couldn’t be filled by a spreadsheet. For people with large, sprawling worlds and huge casts of characters, it might provide more of an advantage.
Like every other aspect of writing, it’s a matter of finding those tools that work for you.
Posted on by Eileen Young

Island Writer Launch

Volume 9 Issue 1 of Island Writer launched tonight. It was my first issue as Editor In Chief.

There were a few minor crises, of course: un-synched lists meant that there were three people I wasn’t sure were reading until tonight, the final cover with the price on it wasn’t the one that went to print, Claudia de Veaux and her poem Waiting didn’t make it into the table of contents, and the 2010 contest honorable mentions were forgotten from my list altogether (sorry!).
But it was a fantastic launch: the readers were funny and moving by turns, the magazine was there, with enough for everyone who attended. Marianne Altos from the City Council came by and said very nice things. The magazine looked great! There was punch and cookies and fruit and cheese!
And I’m utterly exhausted. This is the result of six months hard work on the part of myself and Kim Nayyer, the Creative Non Fiction Editor; Sheila Martindale, the Poetry Editor; Catherine George, the Fiction Editor; and Simeon Goa, the Art Director. And then a week of living on nerves making sure the details for the launch were finalized. I’m utterly elated that it went this well, and I’m crawling into bed as soon as I type this last period.
Posted on by Eileen Young

Why are your aliens wearing Prada?

Writing science fiction opens up a plethora of fascinating aspects to explore: “physics”-enabled magic, cool weapons, thought experiments on everything from economics and ethics to the viability of a nitrogen-based lifeform. It can be what-ifs for how we would deal with disaster if it struck in the next week to far-future scenarios on Earth or Earth-parallels or on spaceships dealing with revolution or alien encounters or just internal politics or relationships against this new background.

That last part is key: no matter how futuristic and strange the world, there are characters acting on that stage. And, unless those characters are all time-travelers, they come from a society shaped by the technology available in the story.
That’s what baffles me most in some sci-fi stories I read: the world changes, but the social mores don’t: in fact, they’re about mid-90s and a little conservative, with no obvious in-world reason they’d be that way. Technology alters culture. Look at what the printing press and the industrial revolution and the Internet have done to society. It’s the industrial ‘revolution’ for a reason.
How human beings react to new situations is the point of all fiction. More so in speculative fiction, where inherent social conditioning can be more easily examined by removing or changing the conditioning the characters have. If their conditioning is the same as that of an average modern person, it’s removing an entire dimension from the story.
Of course, one doesn’t want to completely remove those elements of a character which make them relatable. But everyone needs air, food, shelter, companionship no matter their environment nor their relationship with it. How they approach their search for their basic needs (are they employed? living in luxury in a post-scarcity economy like someone from Heinlein or Doctorow or Stross? do they get their social interaction in person? for pay? online?) illustrates a world as well or better than all the ray guns you can fit in the prop room.
So when an otherwise promising story has characters who might as well have grown up in the 90s in North America, I’m disappointed: we can all do better.
Posted on by Eileen Young · 1 Comment

Networking 2.0

It’s no secret that most business decisions have always happened in old boys’ clubs, over drinks or golf or both. But now we do a lot of our socializing online. How many startups have been born from interest-based communities on the internet?

The same necessary camaraderie springs up just as easily from internet associations as from face to face ones for me, and for many people accustomed to socializing on the internet. Part of that is a paradigm shift from when I first started using computers, where I was explicitly warned by mentors that most of the people I met online would be predators and liars, and I’d never know who they really were or how old they were or where they lived, so I should never, ever give out personal information lest I be kidnapped.
This was before Facebook.
Now, while we don’t bandy our mailing addresses about on public forums, those people I’ve met on writing forums I know as people, not Random Internet Strangers. We’ve talked story ideas, bemoaned the night shift, watched the hilarious faces one of our number makes when she has to take her cold medicine. And, when one or more of us has an idea, it’s this network of like-minded individuals who come together and discuss it.
I’ve had a couple major ventures come out of my online networking; Theory Train and Lunatic Writers. They never would have come into existence if it weren’t for my finding a group of like-minded friends on the internet.
As valuable as local groups and workshops are, it never hurts to be open to the possibilities inherent in new media.
Posted on by Eileen Young

Rationalists Ruin Romance

One of the key ingredients, the glue that holds the genre together, is that tension between people in love before they admit it to each other. Forlornly wondering “but does (s)he love me?” is very nearly a staple of every romance novel I read, and that’s if the character currently narrating even knows they’re in love themselves.

Which is why rationalist main characters make for poor romance novels. In striving to behave rationally, it is imperative to assess one’s own emotional state, which would eradicate those doubts about whether one is really in love oneself. From there, if one is indeed in love, that which would most increase happiness longterm is discovering that ones beloved is in love in return, so it only makes sense to ask.
If the answer is positive, the book is over by chapter five. If negative, then it’s hardly a romance at all, and the sensible thing for the main character to do is to try to forget that they were ever in love. If the answer is uncertain flailing and ignorance on the beloved’s part of their own feelings, then, well, ask again in a week.
There. Happily ever after approached and seized sensibly within a very short time span. But there’s no catharsis in this, no sweeping moment of passion where all misunderstandings are forgotten. No encounter in the woods with Mr Darcy, because their engagement would have been announced shortly after Jane and Bingley’s wedding, which in turn would have been only shortly after that of Charlotte Lucas and Mr Collins.
It is one of the more interesting disconnects between literature and life that the most desirable outcome for real people is the least engaging in the genre of romance novels.
This examination was inspired by the Twilight retelling Luminosity and its sequel Radiance by writer and rationality blogger Alicorn. The major departure in Luminosity is that Bella is a rationalist. As you might imagine, it changes the story significantly. One of the ways I’ve noticed (in hindshight: the two books are now over) is in genre: Meyer’s novels are romance, with fantasy elements. The focus is on Edward and Bella’s relationship, and when will they finally be fully together? In Alicorn’s, while Edward and Bella are still totally and completely in love, it is a fantasy novel with strong relationships in it. The focus is on Bella and Edward’s adventures in changing the world.
Posted on by Eileen Young

Peter Grant

Peter Grant grew up reading very different material than I did. He read the New Yorker, travel writers, creative non-fiction. I grew up reading sword and sorcery, the more escapist the better.
Thomas Wolfe said that creative non-fiction supplanted novels as the font of all wisdom about the world.
He doesn’t differentiate deeply between journalism and creative non-fiction, holding creative non-fiction to a higher literary standard with the same core of fact. More widely, creative non-fiction needs to meet four criteria. It must be:
1. Must be based on real life.
2. Must be deeply researched.
3. “The scene” The context of events
4. Must be literary, have the style of literary prose.
The issues investigated in creative non-fiction provide the central motivation for the people, the characters. You let them emerge as you tell the stories of the people. It’s about investigating a community, worming your way in to find the way the threads weave together.
In a way, that’s what all literature aims for, though some genres focus on micro-communities (romance, and couples) and some try to tell the stories of entire worlds (high fantasy, like Tolkien or Carey).
Grant says that he’s very aware of place in his writing, and place is almost always about people.
A considered speaker, he seems most comfortable relating stories already written down, stories about other people. Hearing him speak, it’s easy to see how he’s drawn out other people’s stories to put on paper.
Posted on by Eileen Young

Soundtracks

Stephanie Meyer is the first author I know of who let people know on a wide scale the sort of music that inspired her to write; I remember going up to the music section of Borders a couple of years ago and seeing a large central display with the Twilight covers plastered over it, advertising that the selection of Muse below was what had accompanied the writing of Twilight.

The role of music in writing comes up frequently on various of my writing forums, too: the validity of inspiration by music, stories written specifically to accompany certain songs (referred to as songfics), whether background music is distracting or beneficial, the genres of music best conducive to certain kinds of writing, theme songs for certain characters or stories and whether that extra dimensionality helps hold the characters in the writers head.
The answers to all those questions vary from writer to writer: some can only work in utter quiet, and consider using music to set a mood frivolous, others listen to classical to stimulate the creative portions of their brain, still others have a hard time writing unless they have a specific playlist whose lyrics exactly reflect the mood of the piece.
Like every other aspect of writing, there is no one true way, none that is inherently superior to others. As long as a good story is coming out of it, the tools and environment that foster it are little more than interesting side notes.
Music can definitely be a tool. Like lighting or temperature or having other people in the room, it can set the mood for writing. I know I would have trouble writing most parent-child affection moments to an accompaniment of death metal. With collaborations, I’ve found jointly putting together a soundtrack helps us gel the tone of the world: if we’re both suggesting 90s punk, we have roughly the same idea of the tone, if one of us is suggesting disco and the other bluegrass, we obviously have more discussion to do to make sure we’re on the same page for the story. I’ve found this focus on tone useful for my solo writing projects as well, though to a lesser degree, as, well, I’m the only one working on the world.
It’s possible to take enjoyment of it as background and use for mood setting too far, of course: if you find that you’re unable to write unless listening to a particular song, that’s probably not conducive to better writing in general.
Beyond the writing end, music can be a good way to engage readers: the Twilight soundtracks were intensely popular, and people liked listening to them as they read the books. It creates a more immersive experience to have the ears engaged as well as the eyes, and can help the reader be more fully transported to the author’s world.
It can also help the author engage the readers, as almost any peripheral to the story itself can: asking for music recommendations from readers creates a community atmosphere and can foster a feeling of being invested in the story. And who doesn’t want readers who feel personally engaged?
If you’re interested in what I listen to as I write this, you can find it here. I’m always happy to take recommendations.
Posted on by Eileen Young

Books As Personal Identifiers

What we read says a lot about who we are, or at least about who we want people to think we are. I read Wired and BBC Breaking News’ Twitter feed and Silicon Valley Insider’s Twitter feed (bit of a trend, there — headline-surfing is much easier when everyone’s limited to 140 characters) and romantic suspense and paranormal romance and science fiction and fantasy written by rationalists and webcomics. Those say a lot about who I am as a person – I like up-to-the-minute technology and thought, and I’m an old-fashioned romantic at heart.

Sometimes, though, I’ll cave to boredom or a weakness for shiny advertising and pick up a book that’s ‘in’ right now. The other night before a meeting in the Starbucks in Chapters, I was seduced by the New and Hot shelf near the door and looked at The Sentimentalists. A Giller Prize winner, it is also the product of small press: the initial print run was 800. It’s a testament to the power of literary awards in Canada, to the fact that story still trumps all the gimmicks in the world, that I was able to find the Nova Scotia-printed small-press novel in Chapters in Victoria less than a year later.
The win for The Sentimentalists also says a lot about who we are collectively as readers. Introspective and focused on the past, it also tries to make sense of war and human relationships: current, universal issues more easily approached through veils of fiction and historical context. It says that we as readers want to know more about how everything works in our own psyches.