Happy Birthday Ray Bradbury!

I’ve written about Ray Bradbury at least a half dozen times on this blog, and Monday 8/22 is his birthday, so I figured I’d just dedicate this post to him.

Some of my first memories of books revolve around Mr. Bradbury. As a small child I recall playing on the floor of my father’s den while my dad read Bradbury books. I could always tell Ray’s books—they were the ones with the skulls and rockets and dinosaurs on the back cover. Even before I could read I was intrigued by what might be inside. Later, when I was finally old enough to start reading on my own, I couldn’t help but gravitate back towards books like “The Illustrated Man” and “Golden Apples of the Sun.” After reading one book I had to move on and read the next.

Ray is one of the many authors who have inspired me as a writer. What do I like most about Ray Bradbury’s writing? Three words come to mind: poetry, darkness and foresight. The images he conjures in his stories are something I aspire to. His vision and ability to see into the dark places in the everyday human world and at times predict the future with his writing are also amazing to me. These words, writing advice from his book, “Zen in the Art of Writing,” hang over my desk as my writing mantra, WORK, RELAX, DON’T THINK.

I could go on and on about his works and accomplishments, but instead I encourage you to check out some of the links below that speak for themselves.

In conclusion—Happy Birthday, Ray! Thank you for all your imagination, inspiration and influence on the world of fiction.

Sam Weller, discusses Bradbury's accomplishments in science fiction

Links to some great Bradbury short stories:

The Fog Horn

All Summer in a Day

The Veldt (the first holodeck story?)

A Sound of Thunder

The October Game

Ray Bradbury Maternity Shirts

http://www.cafepress.com/+ray-bradbury+womens-maternity

On Writing:

Ray Bradbury on Writing Persistently

Ray Bradbury Quotes:

“You don't have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.”

“Go to the edge of the cliff and jump off. Build your wings on the way down.”

“Don't think. Thinking is the enemy of creativity. It's self-conscious and anything self-conscious is lousy. You can't try to do things. You simply must do things.”

“Recreate the world in your own image and make it better for your having been here.”

“Stuff your eyes with wonder. Live as if you'd drop dead in ten seconds. See the world. It's more fantastic than any dream made up or paid for in factories.”

“Anything you dream is fiction, and anything you accomplish is science, the whole history of mankind is nothing but science fiction.”

“My job is to help you fall in love.” ~ Ray Bradbury

RUSH: What They Taught Me About Writing

I finally saw the 2010 documentary, RUSH: Beyond the Lighted Stage about the rock band of the same name http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1545103/

I really enjoyed it—although I was a bit biased going into the film. I’ve seen RUSH in concert at least 3 times during the last 20 years. During my teen and college years I spent many an hour (sometimes while writing and/or doing homework) listening to the fantastic guitaring, drumming and lyrics of RUSH. The movie has some fun cameos featuring various actors and musicians who have been influenced by their music.

As I watched “Beyond the Lighted Stage” I could not help but marvel at their wisdom and how they developed their craft from high school students forming a band to prolific rock legends. Here are a few tidbits I learned from this movie that I think apply as much to writing as to rock and roll.

• Practice, practice, practice
• Have a sense of humor about yourself
• Your art is just one aspect of your life (be it music or writing)
• Your health and well being are more important than your art
• Build on known stories and mythos
• Good friends can help you succeed
• It’s not about the booze, drugs and chicks
• Go for your passion
• Don’t focus on making money
• Ignore expectations of others
• Be true to yourself/don’t cater to what sells and you’ll succeed
• Read – it’s good for your writing/lyrics (Neil Pert)
• A large nose can come in handy (Geddy Lee)
• Humility is a good thing
• Always be open to new influences
• You can always learn something new
• Be aware of what you have—and appreciate it
• Hard work & virtue are rewarded
• Some of my favorite RUSH songs:

The Trees: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k4amV7__XFA

La Villa Stangiato: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=78D00dYOBrM

Closer to the Heart: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BEgXe-gQxX4

Spirit of the Radio: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wm0hSUs6giA

Red Barchetta: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EMtTJS3YcMc

Help RUSH into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Lets-get-RUSH-into-the-Rock-and-Roll-Hall-of-Fame/102414003128378

Lisa's Second List of Stupendous Literary Stuff

If you missed it, see here for LFLFLF (the first list). Now on to LSLSLS:

Dystopias

I love them on film. I love them in writing. Can't think of any I've loved in song.... I love how in a good dystopia, you can see how we could get from, say, a rising trend in fundamentalism right here, right now to The Handmaid's Tale. It's not surprising that I love dystopias, given that I love retellings from a different perspective (see LFLFLF). That's what I think a dystopia really is: it retells our present from the perspective of our future.

Favorite examples:

Oryx & Crake - Margaret Atwood. Full of amazing detail and research, and of course, amazing writing. Full of tough, tough stuff that usually I wouldn't be able to immerse myself in, but I was completely pulled in by her complicated characters. There's no simple good vs. bad here. Only lots of hard questions and fallible humans. This is the first in a series. The second, The Year of the Flood, is on my soon-to-be-read list.

Parable of the Sower - Octavia Butler. Devastating. Amazing. A very, very dark vision of our future as experienced by Lauren Olamina, a young, black girl who creates a new faith which holds Change as its core principle. As a friend of mine once said after seeing me reading a Butler novel: "Nothing like a writer of color to show us a devastatingly bleak future." I liked the second in the series, Parable of the Talents, less well. I think because it is slightly less bleak, and I could never figure out how we moved from the chaos of the first into the (relative, but still brutal) order of the second.

Things go Badly with the Best of Intentions

I like seeing how badly we can muck things up, especially when we're trying our very best to make things better. Again this connects to my love of dystopias, and my love of retellings from new perspectives. If we were omniscient maybe we wouldn't make the mistakes we do, but because we're often trapped in our own limited perspective we get ourselves into lots of trouble.

Favorite examples:

The Sparrow and Children of God - Mary Doria Russell. You need to read both of these to get the full effect of the stunning miscommunications and misunderstandings between a Jesuit interplanetary expedition and the two species they encounter on Rakhat. A splendid, cautionary, anthropological tale.

Ender's Game - Orson Scott Card. Another cautionary, anthropological tale. When the pequeninos try to honor the xenologers later on in the series? Now there's a misunderstanding. A while back, Scribblerati were talking books, and Ender's Game came up. And I asked, all naive-like, about it. And Shawn said, "Oh, you really should read it; it's one of the classics of Sci-Fi." And although he said it in the nicest, non-shaming way, I thought "I am not worthy. I have not read the classics...I do not yet deserve a geek-grrl badge of honor...." But lo and behold, as I started to create my list of books that have inspired my writing, Ender's Game was right at the top. I read it long, long ago, and my mind wanders back to it often. But did I remember the title? or the author? No, I did not. After a bit of web searching, it all fell into place: I AM worthy, I DO deserve a geek-grrl badge...the badge of forgetfulness.

Unreliable Narrators

Narrators who don't know the whole truth. Or who won't tell you the whole truth. I guess I like being messed with a bit, but only when I know full well that I'm being messed with. There's something special, I think, about a narrator who has a bit of character, some flaw or feistiness to them.

Favorite example:

We Have Always Lived in the Castle - Shirley Jackson. You probably had to read "The Lottery" in High School. Castle is Jackson's brilliant novel. Narrated by Merricat, now an 18-year-old, who lives alone with her reclusive older sister, Constance, and ailing uncle, Julian. Merricat just might be magical, just might be insane, and just might have poisoned the rest of her family as a child when she was sent to bed without dinner. I love the slippery feeling I get reading this;I'm wrapped up in Merricat's perspective, but because her narrative is unreliable, I'm never on secure footing. But that's a good thing. A very good thing.

So how did the above influence my WIP? Once We Were Bears isn't a true dystopia, but it does have three Armageddons. And because I've loved how Butler and Atwood take from the now to give me the future, I've pulled most of the dystopic elements straight from disturbing environmental news stories I've heard on NPR. Next, although Beryl keeps destroying the world, she has the best intentions: to save her beloved wilds for the Animal Nations. But, oh my dirt clod, does she make some mistakes along the way. (Did I mention the Armageddons?) Finally, while Beryl's not the novel's narrator, she is an unreliable diarist. She just doesn't understand the limits of her own understanding of the human world, or the likely consequences of her actions well enough not to be. (The actual narrator of the novel is a potato--I hope a potato with a lot of character.)

You are what you read (Lisa's version)

Mark is brilliant. After surveying my dearest reading memories, it is so obvious that the writers and novels I've loved have absolutely filtered into the ways in which I'm telling Beryl's story. (Or at least the ways in which I'm trying to tell it.) And now, after following Mark's lead, I see my own history as a reader and a writer much more clearly. Again, that Mark: brilliant.

Creating my list, I realize that I'm drawn to certain types of books, certain ways of telling stories. Specific themes/ideas/narratives just push my pleasure buttons. So rather than a listing of authors, you're getting Lisa's First List of Favorite Literary Features (hereafter: LFLFLF). Subsequent lists will be forthcoming.

Telling The World from A New Perspective

These are stories that we all know. We probably know them by heart. Our elders told them to us; we tell them to our young. We know everything about them. Or so we think. Until we are told the story from the perspective of a minor character. Someone who hasn't yet been allowed to speak, someone we haven't been listening to. Like the story of the current world from, say, the perspective of a bear. And then we see the story, our world, with new eyes.

Favorite examples:

Till We Have Faces - C. S. Lewis. A retelling of the Cupid and Psyche myth from the perspective of Psyche's ugly sister Orual. It was Orual who convinced Psyche to look on Cupid (forbidden!) because she was so jealous of her sister's beauty and her scoring the luscious Cupid. Except that's not what REALLY happened, which you would know if you'd heard Orual's side of the story. This was the first book I read that switched a familiar story. It twisted my mind and it felt so lovely, twisted up that way.

The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing - M. T. Anderson. A retelling of the Revolutionary War from the perspective of a black boy/young man. I always catch myself trying classifying this series as an alternative history. But it's not an alternative history. It's my American history, fictionalized, yes, but not alternative history. But I never learned my history this way, from this perspective. So my brain has to do this dance with itself: Woah, imagine if this was our history. Uh, Lisa, this IS our history. But in high school I learned... and everyone always says...and we won the revolutionary war and.... Lies, Lisa, half-truths: Who won that war? Who was freed from imperialism? Not all of us. Woah, everything I thought was true.... Yup.

Nested Stories

Stories inside stories inside stories. Layers. Chocolate Cake, Ganoche, Raspberry Jam. So, so yummy. Obvious connection to Once We Were Bears: A potato tells the story of three teenagers who are reading a journal written by Beryl.

Favorite examples:

Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell. Six different stories, times, places, narrators, and even genres. Wildly different (futuristic sci-fi to mystery to farce to....) Each story emerges seamlessly from the previous until you've gone from the past to the distant future (which resembles the past in some very unsettling ways) and then back again. And throughout them all, a sustained exploration of a single set of questions.

The Orphan's Tales - Catherynne Valente. The most intricately interwoven stories. An orphan tells a story, the character in her story tells a story and on and on and on. The stories dive downward through many storytellers and then come back up through each again, only to dive down again. As I was reading them, I pictured the structure as a score, with notes running down and up a music graph. Down, down, down, up, down, up and up and up and down. Up. Down. File this one also under stories that twist, retelling familiar tales (princes questing, for example,) but turning them inside down and upside out. Breaking them in ways they were aching to be broken.

Choose Your Own Endings

Choose Your Own Adventures: a series of books first published in 1979 (I was eleven). The reader is the protagonist; you read a scenario and then get to choose what action you will take. I had this one (and many, many others):

I am giddy writing this! I so loved these books. I devoured them. I inhaled them. I systematically went through them to make sure I read every possible scenario--my system involved using my fingers as bookmarks so I could trace where I'd been, and where I still needed to go. It might seem hard to read a book when you've got all your fingers stuck into it in various places, but it sure didn't bother me one bit. What will happen if I make this choice? The logical choice seems to be the first option...oh no! Let's try the second option..ok, better, but now which option? Again, the connection to my WIP a strong one: when things go bad (very, very bad,) time travel allows Beryl to try another option by erasing her journal, (rather than flipping back pages.) Will she choose better this time?

I'd pretty much forgotten all about these books, until I saw a promo for a graphic novel that uses the technique: Meanwhile, by Jason Shiga. I'll be reading it soon.

Okay, I gotta close with that one. My brain is doing cartwheels. Whee!

You are what you read (The Jon version)

Awhile back, as you long time readers will no doubt remember, my fellow Scribblerati Agent Mark Teats wrote a blog titled: “You are what you read”, listing some of his long time favorite and most personally influential authors. A fun and insightful read, I thought it was a fantastic idea, one I fully intended to copy as soon as it was my turn to blog again.

Then I forgot all about it.

I forgot a couple of times, in fact, but now—thanks Google Calendar!—I have remembered!

Let’s begin:

(And, of course, there are many other authors and books that I love, even though they are not included on this list, which is transient and appears here in no particular order. Mmm-kay?)

Some of My Favorites, a list by Jonathan Hansen

1. On the Road: Kerouac

There are some who have a problem with this book and its style. There are some who have issues with the culture he helped create (issues I share), but still, this book speaks to a part of me, to who I used to be, to who I wanted to be, and I’ll always love going back to read it again. It’s like visiting old friends and good times.

2. In Cold Blood: Capote

This last school photo of poor doomed Nancy Clutter still haunts me, as does the kind of runaway freight train inevitability of this book, the horrible tragedy and sadness of it all. I came to this book late in life and it simply dazzled me. It is fantastic, one of my very favorites. Capote writes the wide open spaces, perfectly realized, perfectly executed, it is brilliant. Brilliant.

3. Catcher in the Rye: Salinger

So much has been said about this book, about this author, about the culture and hype that surrounds it, that there is little that I can add, except: I read this in fourth or fifth grade and Holden Caulfield blew my mind—like out the top of my head, blew my mind. The quote: “People never notice anything.” That was it, man. In my young head… that was it.

4. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: Thompson

I think all young men of my particular ilk have a Thompson phase. I know I did, maybe still do. The trick is, once you can see the other side of it, is to not spend the rest of your life doing a poor imitation of the man’s signature wild man style... most are unable to do this and spend forever wallowing in mediocrity, because no doubt the man was a unique talent, one sorely missed these days. This here: “And that, I think, was the handle - that sense of inevitable victory over the forces of old and evil. Not in any mean or military sense; we didn't need that. Our energy would simply prevail. We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave. So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look west, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark - that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back.” Brilliant.

5. Among the Thugs: Buford

Man, let me tell you—if you want crazy... Have you ever wondered what would happen when a man sucked another man’s eyeball out of his socket during a fight? No? Dudes... don’t read this book then. And that is only ONE of the crazy ass things these crazy ass, real life Man U fans actually did... in real life! They practically burned Juventus to the ground! Why? Because they were there! Amazing book! Amazing.

6. Lyonesse: Vance

As a kid, I was... restless... so Mom would ship me off during the summer. Sometimes, I would visit my Aunt in Los Angeles and she lived in a zombie proof fortress, kind of near Little Tokyo, on the corner of Crack Head Street and Staff Infection Avenue... so, I didn’t get to play outside much. It was always a fun visit, the loft was spacious and we did lots of fun stuff, but still, sometimes there was down time and LA had weird TV and I was like...9 and it’s not like I had brought a bunch of my toys and stuff with, so one day in a B Dalton, I wanted to buy a book. I picked one with a Green armored Knight riding a Purple striped Tiger and was like: “Oh hell yes, this one.” (Paraphrased). And my Aunt said: “But that’s number two... Here’s number one.” And she picked up this one:


“You should get the first one in the series.” And I said: “...” There was no denying the logic, so with slumped shoulders and a last longing look at the Tiger riding Knight, I got it (Holden Caulfield hadn’t taught me rebellion yet) and took it back to the Loft. Since then, I’ve probably read it two dozen times. I read my first version to pieces. The story of the slowly sinking Elder Isles, the invading Ska, the Sorcerer Murgen, and young Dhrun, poor Princes Suldrun, evil King Casmir and Prince Alias one day washing up on the beach is simply... Great. High Adventure. High Fantasy. Tons of characters. Jack Vance is a mad genius. It's a fantasy to be swept away in. It may have even been the first "real" book I read as a kid. I Loved it. It was way better than the purple Tiger book...

7. The Road: McCarthy

Cormac McCarthy is so good, I forgive his lack of quotation marks and dialogue designators. The Road and No Country for Old Man blur by, so spare and yet so richly illustrated, while Blood Meridian is a literary ass kicking. He is brutal and beautiful and his work is staggering. He is so good, it’s intimidating.

8. True Grit: Portis

I’ll make an admission... I’ve never seen this movie. I’ve heard it’s good and once I come across it on DVD, I’ll totally watch it, but yeah... never seen it. So I went into reading this with only a slight image of John Wayne in my head and honestly, this book is amazing. Amazing. It’s one of those books that came flying out of left field and landed in my lap and I was like: “Huh...” Nothing but fun and written like a house a’fire. A total blast. The most amazing part is how aware the book seems, how honest and insightful, all while maintaining the classic tropes of the Western. And now the Cohen Brothers are making it into a film that is supposed to be faithful to the book? Sweet...

9. The Stand: King

So, maybe I’ve mentioned this before, either here or over at my own blog, but I love comics and one of my favorite things to do as a kid was when I would go visit my Grandparents in Boone Iowa, I’d slip away at some point with all of my crumpled bills and handfuls of coins and walk to “downtown” Boone to visit the Hallmark store. In the back they had the biggest shelf of comics my used-to-the-spinner-rack eyes had ever seen. In a time before my first comic shop... this place was heaven and I would carefully count all of my money, so I could buy the most amount of comics available. It took some time, effort, and arithmetic, let me tell you (especially since I was reading all the ones I couldn’t buy), but anyway, after much deliberation, I picked up my stack and started toward the front when a cover stopped me dead... "wha..?":


An extra 400 pages?!?! 400!?!? Now, you need to understand, this book, Star Wars, and the Road Warrior (I still didn’t have the guts, at the time, to watch Night of the Living Dead), they had awaken me to storytelling, opened doors in my head and lit my mind on fire. An extra 400 pages!!! I'd already read the edited version, devoured it, so without pause, without a thought, I left my comics behind and used my money to buy this book. I still have it too. The covers are gone and the first few pages of the front and back, I know it well. This is an end of the world, multi character, Good vs. Evil masterpiece.

10. A Game of Thrones: Martin

Here’s my second admission: I hate fantasy. I love Tolkien, because he’s Tolkien, but all the deformed bastard children he’s whelped in the time since... ugh. Bloodless, sexless, lame half wits, lacking... EVERYTHING that could be considered good...ugh... I had given it up, man. I didn’t want any more. I was done. I mean, I’ve since discovered authors who write kick ass, fantastic fantasy with realistic characters and are good and awesome and well done, like Joe Abercrombie or Richard K. Morgan, for instance, but George here, he was the first one on that road for me with this fat, sprawling monster of a series where powerful houses vie for the throne while an ancient evil grows behind a 300 foot tall wall of ice. The best part of these books is the fear, absolute best part... any character can die in these books, any one of them, and he’s more than proven his willingness to kill, maim, or just generally run through the ringer any character you might think would normally be safe... Let me assure you, they are not. Fantastic books, huge, involving, well-written, they are hardcore. If the idea of what hitting someone with a mace would actually do makes you squeamish, then don’t read these. Seriously brutal. But brilliant. The only (potential) problem is that there’s supposed to be six books and only four are out right now, and it's been awhile, so George is at that tipping point most long term fantasy series authors find themselves at eventually, the point where the story may spiral out of control and never end—fingers are crossed that he is able to land this beast, especially because HBO is doing a series next year. A season per book! WOOOO!

Winter is coming.

I’m so excited.

Anyway, what are you reading?

Jon

You Are What You Read

The old saying “you are what you eat” has some meaning for me as a writer, but I believe it’s more like, “you are what you read.”

Here is a list of my top 10 writing inspirations, the authors I admire and am thankful for, that I read and hope that in the end that some of their awesomeness has rubbed off on me and my writing.

Ten Authors That Inspire Me and My Writing

10. Neil Gaiman. I started reading his work with the SANDMAN graphic novels (OK, the art drew me in too), but I’ve enjoyed his screenplays, novels and short stories, too. What I like most about his writing is his ability to blend the real world and the supernatural into his works. He also looks good in black.

http://journal.neilgaiman.com/

Advice from Neil: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bpNb5NwxX_g&feature=related

9. Harlan Ellison. Any of you remember that show on the SciFi channel (not the hideous SyFy channel of today) called SciFi Buzz? I loved the segments Harlan did on that show. I also love his dark short stories mostly because they drip with attitude and secondly because the man can turn a phrase. Recommendation: “REPENT HARLEQUIN!” SAID THE TICKTOCKMAN.

Harlan's impressive credentials: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0255196/

8. Kurt Vonnegut. I had the pleasure of hearing Kurt talk at my alma mater years ago. I still remember some of the things he said. Almost everything that came out of his mouth was quotable—and isn’t that something a good writer should be? Here is one statement he made that night that cracked the audience up, “If you really want to hurt your parents and don’t want to be gay, go into the arts.” My fav book by him: SLAUGHTERHOUSE FIVE.

7. John Steakley. His books ARMOR and VAMPIRE$ (the latter made into a mediocre movie by John Carpenter) have a fabulous sense of adventure and bigger than life characters (and also some fun dialogue) which is why he’s here on my list.

6. Michael Crichton. In his autobiography “TRAVELS” he talked about how early in his life he wanted to become a doctor, write books and direct movies—and sure enough that’s what he did, in about that order. Any author with an iota of the drive of Mr. Crichton had would go far. My fav book by him: EATERS OF THE DEAD (made into a movie I have to watch anytime it’s on TV, THE 13^th WARRIOR.) And of course, where would we be without JURASSIC PARK ?

5. Christopher Moore. What can I say? Any author that can make people laugh is doing his/her job right. http://www.chrismoore.com/

4. Cormac McCarthy. A writer so good he can get away with anything. When I bought THE ROAD I couldn’t put it down, reading it after work on two consecutive nights. The thing I think I admire the most about this story and this author is that the details are so sparse, yet the story is so compelling. Cormac doesn’t even bother naming his characters (the Boy and the Man), he doesn’t get specific on the location or the year or exactly what happened to the world—and most of the book he seems to shun most common punctuation that gives this book an almost dream like quality.

3. Dean Koontz. Oh to master pacing and character like Mr. Koontz, or to be as prolific (I was aware of about 50 of his books, but it sounds like he may have written over 70). My fav of his works: WATCHERS (best dog character ever) http://www.deankoontz.com/

On creating ODD THOMAS: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DDupVfc7Rv4&feature=related

2. Stephen King. I’ve written about Mr. King on this blog before, and last Halloween I walked past his house in Bangor, Maine. To say I’m a big fan is an understatement. The reasons why? Again, to be so prolific (and sell so many books) would be an honor. He claims to write every day (something I aspire to but manage only 50% of the time). But I think it is his mastery of giving me characters I like and care about so much is what most inspires me about this writer. Upon completion of two of his books (at least), THE STAND and IT, I found myself a bit bummed out—because I wanted to know what was going to happen to those characters next—and the book was over.

http://www.stephenking.com/index.html

Advice to writers from King:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hqp7A0B7abc&feature=related

1. Ray Bradbury is at the top of my inspiring authors list. His books of short stories like THE OCTOBER COUNTRY and THE GOLDEN APPLES OF THE SUN were some of my first forays into science fiction and horror—and the imagination and poetry of his work has made a lasting impression on me. A few years ago I had the great pleasure to see him at an opening for something he believed in—a new library in St. Cloud, MN. After his reading that day I was literally the last person in line to see him and he stuck around, announcing an hour into the signing portion of his appearance (much to my relief) to all the waiting fans that he’d stay as long as it took to chat with everyone there to see him. When it was finally my turn in line he shook my hand and joked with me. I gave him a fan letter, thanking him for all his inspiration he’d given me over the years, me the novice writer. Six months later I was shocked to find a message on my answering machine from no other than Ray, wishing me a happy Easter and thanking me for the letter. A few days later an autographed copy of his book ZEN IN THE ART OF WRITING arrived in the mail to me from him. All authors should be so gracious and generous to their readership let alone be so talented.

Ray's thoughts on books, writing and life:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EzD0YtbViCs&feature=related

Thanks for reading!

Mark

In Praise of Time

"The people in this book might be going to have lived a long, long time from now..."

So starts Ursula K. Le Guin's Always Coming Home, a novel written as though it were a text created within a new discipline: an archaeology of the future. It includes the record of the poetry, stories, lives, mythology, philosophy, religion...of a peoples who are not yet living. The 525 page novel also includes maps, over 100 pages of glossary and index materials, and, in a box set, even a cassette recording of the music and poetry of the Kesh.

A critique session or two ago, Claudia mentioned that she couldn't figure out the correct verb tense to use for a particular spot in her novel, because her main characters are time travelers. (They are also interesting, stubborn, hilarious, and sexy; you will want to get to know them, trust me.) Anyway, when I picked up Always Coming Home from the library shelves and, on reading the first line, put it immediately in my pile to check out.

They might be going to have lived a long, long time from now.

Oh yeah. It sounds a bit off. It stops your brain from continuing on the paths that it wants to go along. It catches you up. And suddenly you are thinking. About time and reality and how you fit in, and then you're just loving Ursula for what she's done to you.

Soon after I started reading the novel, a student in one of the philosophy classes I teach said, and I quote, "If I have to think about time travel right now, I think my head is going to explode."

Which I loved, because that's my job: getting students' heads to explode. Getting my own head to explode. I speak figuratively, of course.

At core, philosophy should be getting our brains to wake up from the ruts they so easily get stuck in and start seeing ourselves, other folk, and world (aka: Life, The Universe, and Everything) in new and startling ways.

And thinking about the mechanics and paradoxes of time travel is a lovely way to make your brain swivel inside your skull.

In my novel, which also includes some time travel, I'm attempting to uncover non-human understandings of time. How would Beryl (a bear disguised in human skin) understand time? How would a tree?

Thinking back on my years in philosophy, I can see the history that has led me to become the writer I am:

In an African philosophy course I took as an undergraduate, I learned that not everyone thinks of time linearly: my instructor, Ifeanye Menkiti, talked about how time in some African understandings includes a distant past, a present, and a near future, but no far future, instead the line of time bends backward from the present/near future toward the past, rather than continuing on indefinitely into the future.

In my dissertation I examined the work of James Hamill, who studied Navajo logic and some of the ways their system of reasoning differs from Western/European systems, precisely because they have a circular sense of time, while ours is linear. Which again, in my very limited understanding, might imply that there is no far future, the present always circling back to the past, the past circling back toward the future/present.

I'm currently teaching Simone de Beauvoir in my ethics class. Beauvoir is very suspicious of too tightly holding onto a project. We act unethically if we hold on so tightly that we are looking only at the far future of the project's realization, concentrating so hard on that end, an end so distant from ourselves, that the present means nothing, that the means we use to get to that end are completely subordinated to that end, that we do whatever it takes, sacrifice whomever it takes to get to the end. Instead she suggests that we concentrate on the near future.

How cool is all that? Pretty cool if you're a sci-fi loving, philosophy geek.

In my novel, I've taken what I've encountered in philosophy about time, and used it to figure out how time might be understood by the more-than-human world. Especially the spiders. They've just got to have a super-freaky understanding of time. My bet is that of all of us they're the ones who see time most clearly of all, what with all the eyes and the spinning.

But like Claudia, I have to think hard about how to communicate other species' understandings of time in a human language. In a critique session that is coming soon to a cafe near you, I'll find out how well The Sclibblerati think I've done with capturing the spiders... But as a preview it goes something like this:

I'll end as I started. I end as I start. I will end as I will start. I will have ended as I did once start. I would have started as I will be going to end.

No seriously, I really mean it. I'll end as I started: with a little Le Guin Wisdom:

"What was and what may be lie, like children whose faces we cannot see, in the arms of silence. All we ever have is here, now."

Gratuitous Blog/Gratuitous Hero Worship Post

OK. So my blog at the end of this week will be about my writing. But—I’ve been a fan of Stephen King for years and years and tonight I finally got a chance to see and hear him in person at the Fitzgerald Theatre in St. Paul, MN along with Audrey Niffenegger (author of The Time Traveler’s Wife). If this isn’t a perfect excuse for a gratuitous hero-worship blog post I don’t know what is. Here goes—

Twenty Stephen King Observations 11/18/09

20. His first computer was a Mac (hey, mine too)

19. He uses Google, although it distracts him from his writing at times

18. He knows how to make funny faces while being interviewed. He’s not afraid to say when he’s goofed something up.

17. He is incredibly well read. He’s got a great vocabulary. He knows his poetry and music lyrics. (All things us writer types should aspire to.)

16. He likes to listen to AC/DC, Metallica and the like while doing his revisions (me, too, sometimes.)

15. He talks fondly of his wife “Tabby” and his kids and wasn’t afraid to share some personal details of his life.

14. His least favorite of his books is Rose Madder

13. His favorite movie adaptation of one of his stories/books is Shawshank Redemption. He also likes the film adaptation of Cujo.

12. His favorite book? Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings.

11. He thinks of writing as a kind of telepathy, although it is imperfect. The writer’s thoughts get picked up by the reader across time and distance. He noted that even though Dickens is dead you can still pick up one of his books and have a connection to that author.

10. He was never frightened by clowns, but he noticed other good little kids were. He never thought of himself as a good kid.

9. While answering audience questions he noted that if the upper balcony collapsed many, many people in the 99-year-old theatre would die. He said he would never sit up there.

8. He came out on stage in jeans and comfy looking Velcro tennies. His manner was pleasant—he seems like the type of guy you’d like to sit down and have a beer with. The audience loved him—and he knows how to make people laugh.

7. His idea for his latest book, Under the Dome started 30+ years ago. This gives me hope that the lengthy duration of time I’m spending on my book may not be in vain. (I also lucked out and got an autographed copy of the same—can’t wait to start it. May take me a while, at over 1,000 pages.)

6. His toughest character to write? “It” (Pennywise the clown) from It.

5. He writes every day. He writes from beginning to end of his stories, but it doesn't sound like he necessarily knows how they will end when he begins.

4. He has an appreciation for the old black and white movie Frankenstein.

3. He does not bother to keep a notebook of ideas. Good ideas stick with you, bad ideas (if you are lucky) go away and self-destruct on their own.

2. He believes writing is about language, and it’s a writer’s duty to be as specific as possible so that the reader sees exactly what you (the writer) intend them to see.

1. He has now written 51 books, including many of my favorites: The Stand, ‘Salem’s Lot, It, The Dead Zone, The Dark Half, Firestarter (and the list goes on and on.)

Sidenote: Now don’t get me wrong, I liked hearing Audrey Niffenegger tonight, and I enjoyed her first book (she writes beautifully), and I plan to read her next, but—I couldn’t bring myself to comment much on seeing her this evening. Even she noted during their onstage interview that appearing with King was a bit like the writing equivalent of “opening for the Stones.”

Writing Tips ala Swamp Thing

Last weekend I visited a lifelong friend who had just acquired a huge comic book collection. He had thoughtfully pulled aside all the Swamp Thing comics for me, remembering that this was one of my childhood favorites. (Thanks Peter!) Swamp Thing #6 was actually the first book I ever purchased as a kid with my own money (while at Wall Drug, no less). Of course I did whatever any comic book lover would do when offered free comics—I took them!

Now looking through these newly acquired treasures I am reminded of why I loved the Swamp Thing series (DC Comics) so much in the first place. The writing of the first 20 or so issues that hooked me is really quite good—the original team of Wein/Wrightson did some great work that (for me) later writers/artists in this series never quite seemed to match.

Writers are influenced by what they read and for good or for bad I know Swamp Thing clearly was one of my early mentors. Flipping through these comics I realize there are many things that anyone looking to improve their writing today can learn from the gnarled, green, mossy one. I give you:

How to improve your writing, Swamp Thing style:

· Have something exciting happen right away. In one of my favorites Swamp Thing is being chased by a T-rex on page 1 and is breaking the dinosaur’s leg by page 3. You don’t see that everyday.

· Give us an original, compelling main character. When a bomb destroys his bayou lab, Dr. Alec Holland is fused with the swamp around him to become Swamp Thing—a monster longing for his humanity. Good stuff.

· Conflict, conflict, conflict. Give your character no quarter. In every issue Swamp Thing is being persecuted, hunted, blown up, put in a gladiator’s ring, flung into outer space, and so on. Between episodes he hides in the swamp—but in each story he is wading chest-deep in action.

· Put your character up against strong villains. The mutated, mad scientist, Arcane, was Swamp Thing’s main nemesis, but Swamp Thing fought and won against devils, space aliens, androids, pitchfork wielding mobs, bounty hunters and several different varieties of undead (even Batman on one occasion.)

· Don’t get preachy. The worst thing that ever happened to Swamp Thing (again, my opinion) was the environmental movement. The original Swamp Things stories were never about having a spokesperson to stop pollution or to help us become better global citizens—it was about a cool character and the crazy things he was experiencing.

· Reveal character through their actions. Swamp Thing hardly ever says a word on the pages he battles across, yet you know he is a hero by what he does. He goes looking for his lost love, he helps strangers in need, he steps in front of bullets aimed at the innocent, and he rips the arm off a killer robot and uses it to bash it to pieces. You get the idea.

So how has Swamp Thing influenced my writing? Don’t know if I can pinpoint it for sure—like most writers I have many, many books, movies, life experiences and teachers that brought me to where I’m at today as a writer. I do know I took a great graphic novel class at the LOFT last year, and found out that although I still love reading a good comic writing them is not my thing. However, the main character of my novel BLACKHEART is a kick-ass antihero who doesn’t say much and enjoys punching out minor demons. Coincidence? Probably not.

http://bit.ly/SwampThingMT ß in case you want to check out the early Swamp Thing stories yourself

http://bit.ly/ZCannon ß in case you’re in/near MN and want to learn more about being a graphic novelist

Mark Teats