Writer's Notebook

Some days, there's just no fuel in the tank

Does this happen to you?

You sit down at your desk, turn on the PC, and finally you have some free time for your writing. Yet, you have nothing to say. I'm not talking about writer's block here, I'm talking about a pure vacuum.

After spending the last week writing a 4,500 word article about Glacier National Park, I was looking forward to catching up with my blogs today. I haven't had time to post anything. Now that I have time, there's just no fuel in the tank.

This used to frustrate me a lot. But I'm accepting reality a lot better these days. I understand the need to get Glacier National Park out of my head for a few days and then allow space for something new--other than thoughts about why Natalie rather than Russell won "Survivor Samoa" or what we're having for dinner tonight.

My muse and I need to recharge. Is this how you experience it after a rush project? I've decided I'm not going to worry about it. If I were writing something new, I'd probably miss Christmas. I'd be going around in my writer's fog, oblivious to everyone around me. My eyes would be open but nobody would be home.

Whether you're busy or sitting back and recharging your batteries, have a Merry Christmas.

--Malcolm

Frivolous Friday

No, Frivolous Friday is not a new meme, challenge or competition. It's my current frame of mind.

After fighting ants in kitchen cabinets and one of the bedrooms all day, I'm ready to sit back with a glass or two or Merlot and do something frolicsome, lighthearted and astoundingly flippant.

Low grade flippancy is, in fact, boring. So, I can't sit here and kill a couple of hours playing Free Cell, hearts or solitaire. A little bridge, maybe, but the other players in my Bicycle Games cards package do stupid things. (If you're a bridge player, you'll cringe when I tell you that the computer-generated players all lead kings from their hands and take them with aces in the dummy.)

A great movie might work. Something unexpectedly good like, say, "Moonstruck." Even a bad movie works, because as I watch it, I think of the ways it could have been better. Suddenly, I'm busy creating new scenes in my mind, bumping off annoying characters who say "Like, you know" 20 times a minute, and maybe adding some aliens from the far reaches of the universe.

Being frivolous is an art, I think, and when frivolous Friday afternoons are well played, I'm all the better for it. Without intending to put too strong a spin on the matter, I'm better off than I would have been if I'd spent the afternoon hard at work.

It's as though I've taken the casual Friday some corporations permit and turned it into a transformational retreat without the need for anyone to sing Kumbaya or share feelings with sock puppets or, worse yet, their oldest friends. Right now, I don't have any feelings other than the beautiful malaise of pure inconsequential modes of thought.

Surely you will tell me "I've been there and done that." If not, it's a pity. Some of a writer's best moments come when he or she is goofing off. Suddenly, the muse speaks and the world is reborn in a new book.

--Malcolm

Writing: The Place is More Than Scenery

“The breakout novelist does not merely set a scene; she unveils a unique place, one resonant with a sense of time, woven through with social threads and full of destinies the universe has in store for us all. She does not merely describe a setting, she builds a world. She then sets her characters free in that world to experience all it has to offer.” –Donald Maass, “Writing the Breakout Novel”

In his 1974 classic “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance,” Robert Pirsig said that he disliked traveling across country by car because the world outside the windows was too much like television. Pirsig preferred a motorcycle because it placed him solidly within the place as an engaged participant rather than a passive observer.

Young writers often focus on plot and characters, viewing the setting’s importance as minimal, a dated nineteenth century writing technique or filler to be skipped over in a modern novel. Their resulting fiction resembles a cheaply drawn animated film with talking characters in the foreground and sequence of meaningless doors, trees, and buildings scrolling past in an endless loop in the background—like the Pirsig’s unimportant scenery outside a car window.

Maass writes that “In the twenty-first century, we may have less patience for scenery, but we certainly expect a novel to show us the world as a vital force in which the characters move.”  The reality of this vital world is built on specific detail that goes beyond unsupported assertions such as “a grand old house” or “a lovely meadow” to the very heart of the place the characters willingly or unwillingly find themselves.

Place, like everything else in a story, is filtered through the character’s point of view. This makes it an interactive tool that engages all of the senses. It facilitates the creation of three-dimensional characters, a harmonious or counterpoint tone and mood, and a dynamic plot and action. Readers see, hear, touch, taste and feel only what the character perceives and believes about places. One character sees the forest as random trees, another knows their names. One character sees house as structures, another notices architectural styles. One character running from a pursuer finds a random boat and causes it to founder, another understands how to escape in it.

Detail supports assertions about the place, bringing an otherwise vague setting into three-dimensional authenticity. What–within the POV character’s knowledge and experience–makes the house grand and the meadow lovely? Symbolically, psychologically or empirically, place always tells the reader something about the character, plot and theme.

It’s a barometer indicating a character’s circumstances and attitude. For example, a snow-covered path is exciting during a sleigh ride but grim when one is lost in the woods. Frightened characters experience dark houses differently than confident characters. Same woods, same houses, different interpretations.

When place is utilized as a vital component in fiction, the characters experience, interpret and interact with settings like men or women on motorcycles rather than bored kids staring out the window of a car on a family vacation. Whether authors write about clean, well-lighted places or dank, dimly lit places, they’re not showing readers random backdrops. They’re showing worlds that mirror the characters’ moods and circumstances, worlds those characters must often navigate or fail to navigate en route to the climax of the story.

When readers hear the oak falling in the forest, feel the harsh limestone cliff below a mountain’s summit, and smell the dank stink of Cyprus swamp, then the setting has been well conjured, the spell properly cast, and the magic of enchantment into an imaginary world has been accomplished. At this moment, the novel’s world is more real than the reader’s comfortable chair.

-

This post first appeared as a guest article on author Pat Bertram's blog.

Copyright (c) 2009 by Malcolm R. Campbell, author of "Jock Stewart and the Missing Sea of Fire."

Tuesday Teaser: 'When Mermaids Sing'

"With her elbows out, and the white dress below, she reminds me of a swan stretching her wings. When she stands back, the dress falls to the ground and looks like a white puddle around her ankles."

--When Mermaids Sing, by Mark Zvonkovic

Since I just finished reading this book, I've included my GoodReads review of it below.

To get involved in Teaser Tuesdays, ride out to Should Be Reading and get started. It's a great way to learn about new books and find out what others are reading.

When Mermaids Sing by Mark Zvonkovic

My rating: 4 of 5 stars Larry Brown's musings about life as he observes it are insightful, humorous and often jaded. Outwardly, the protagonist of Mark Zvonkovic's gently written novel "When Mermaids Sing" is a pleasant, unassuming Medford, PA high school English teacher who tries to get along with everyone and avoid conflicts.

He often feels manipulated by the requirements of his teaching job and the endless expectations of his parents and his girl friend Millie. Brown's parents, both college teachers, expect him to play a role in their world, while Millie--an actress who might be cheating on him--expects him to make dutiful appearances in her social and family life. At work, where he may not really be happy, he's hoping to be granted tenure. And, his cousin Bradley has joined a cult and might have lost himself in the addictive peace it provides.

Brown can ponder the humor and the irony of such realities because he has a "cure." He copes with the chaos of his job and his relationships by retreating into memories of the halcyon summer days of his youth at a Cape Cod vacation house with his siblings and cousins. Those were the best years of his life. The present cannot compete with them. He doesn't want it to.

Henry David Thoreau once said of Cape Cod's Outer Beach, "A man may stand there and put all America behind him." Likewise, Brown retreats to the house of his youth to put all of life's troubling challenges behind him.

While making an obligatory appearance at his father's annual party for freshmen college students, Brown meets a personable young woman named Jenny with a strong aversion to cults. Her brother Josh has joined the charismatic Path to God, the same group to which Bradley as sworn allegiance, if not his soul.

Jenny complains that Josh has repudiated their father as Satan and "become a different person." A psychiatrist at the party remarks that the sudden personality change exhibited by cult members is due to brainwashing, not hypnosis. This, and the lack of fences and armed guards at an ashram, make it difficult for families to intervene.

Brown vacillates about the difference between the freedom to choose a path others don't agree with and losing one's freedom through brainwashing and choosing the same path. Jenny's family is no longer splitting hairs. They've engaged the services of a well-known deprogrammer to help them extract Josh from the Cape Cod ashram even though everyone involved might end up being charged with kidnapping.

When Jenny points out that Bradley and Josh are together at the same place and enlists Brown's help, he can no longer ignore the issue as a mere philosophical topic for debate.

Will Brown help Jenny, Bradley and Josh? He would rather not, because if he does, he will have to admit there's more involved here than the rescue of two impressionable young people from the brainwashing of a cult. He will finally have to take a stand on something and answer a lingering question. Is escaping life by running away to a cult different than running away to the past?

The title of Zvonkovic's carefully written novel is suggested by a line from John Donne's playful "Go and Catch A Falling Star." Catching falling stars and hearing mermaids singing are, in Donne's thinking, rather unlikely events. Readers of "When Mermaids Sing" may wonder whether substantive change in Larry Brown is also unlikely. As literary fiction, the story relies heavily on theme, interior monologue and a strong sense of place rather than non-stop action on its introspective journey to a powerful conclusion.

--Malcolm R. Campbell for POD Book Reviews & More

View all my reviews >>

First Look: 'A View Inside Glacier National Park'

My copy of "A View Inside Glacier National Park: 100 Years, 100 Stories" arrived in today's mail. What a treasure trove of personal recollections Kassandra Hardy and the park's 2010 Centennial Committee have compiled as a celebration of the park and as a fund raising tool in support of next year's programs.

The stories of those who grew up around the park, traveled there or worked there are grouped thematically into five sections:

1. Backbone of the World focuses on the inspiring landscape
2. A View From the Backyard features stories from people who grew up in and around the park
3. Charismatic Megafauna is composed of stories from year around employees
4. Show Place of the Rockies presents the impressions of seasonal employees who worked for one of the concessioners
5. Heaven Speak, a play on words for the dominant mountain Heavens Peak, closes the book with words of inspiration.

In his introduction, Ranger Naturalist Bill Schustrom writes that it's gratifying to see visitors returning to the park year after year. "There is a spirit or an intangible aspect here drawing us back. As we return there is a community of share experiences--stories."

Anyone who has visited Glacier National Park shares a common bond with the writers of these stories, even those based on events from years ago...Susanna Anderson's memories of a trip to the park prior to World War II...Verna Jarrow's hike to Sperry Glacier around 1930...Joyce O'Neil's recollections of the 1929 fire...Jan Mertmaker's 1938 CCC story...Anne Marie Broenen's experience at St. Mary Lodge during the flood of 1975...and my own memories of Many Glacier Hotel during the flood of 1964.

I am happy to see a story about the fire of 1936 by the late Ray Kinley, my old friend and long-time Glacier employee.  John Hagen, founder of the Glacier Park Foundation, remembers hiking the North Circle Trail. Tessie Bundick, historian for the Glacier Park Foundation, has written of her experience as a "Texas flatlander" working as a seasonal employee at Many Glacier Hotel in 1962.

Of his vision quest along the Backbone of the World, Ken Camel writes, "I was surrounded by a powerful landscape. The Spirit was now talking directly to my soul. I didn't need to hear any words as he who opens his mind is ready to learn. His message: 'My young soul, look around you; seek not to look to other lands for your Dream. Look to our land, and the lands of your ancestors. This is where you belong, and your People need to Share this vision.'"

Those of us who have shared this vision and told our stories of the last 100 years hope more will come and experience the Crown of the Continent each in their own way and their own time during the next 100 years. Surely, their own stories will follow.

Copyright (c) 2009 by Malcolm R. Campbell. Campbell is a member of the Glacier Park Foundation and the author of two novels, "The Sun Singer" and "Jock Stewart and the Missing Sea of Fire." "The Sun Singer" is set in Glacier National Park.

December 1 Teaser Tuesday - Stieg Larsson

Suddenly he heard a sharp crack and the grey concrete wall next to his head exploded. Then he felt pain as fragments of concrete and shrapnel tore a deep gash in his scalp.

This teaser comes from the late Stieg Larsson's "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo." Originally published in Swedish in 2005 as "Män som hatar kvinnor" - "Men Who Hate Women," the novel is the first of the award-winning Millennium Trilogy featuring an asocial investigator named Lisbeth Salander. The novel was made into a Swedish film in 2009 starring Noomi Rapace as Salander.

The New York Times review said, "Combine the chilly Swedish backdrop and moody psychodrama of a Bergman movie with the grisly pyrotechnics of a serial-killer, then add an angry punk heroine and a down-on-his-luck investigative journalist, and you have the ingredients of Stieg Larsson's first novel."

-

For more information about Tuesday Teasers, see Should Be Reading and see how easy it is to get involved and learn about some exciting books.

-

Coming Thursday, December 3 on Malcolm's Round Table, a guest post about the writing life by author Chelle Cordero (Within the Law, Forgotten).

--Malcolm

Place Settings Mirror a Character's Circumstances and Attitudes

Most readers' eyes glaze over when they encounter more than several lines in a novel about the place setting. Chances are, this happens because the author's eyes were glazed over when he wrote them.

Proactive description serves many purposes. Perhaps you've heard gurus say that the world around you mirrors who and what you are. You may not believe that about real life, but it's true of the fictional world surrounding the characters in a novel. What the characters think about what they see, tells you more about them than the scene itself.

Let's look at several mercifully brief examples from my novel "Jock Stewart and the Missing Sea of Fire."

Jock is a cynical character. I constantly reinforce this idea by having him look out windows with a bad attitude about what he's seeing:

1. He looked out the kitchen window at the crumbling remains of long-neglected four board fences, bird feeders and a child's swing.
2. He took Pica back to his office. There was nothing outside the window except for the usual city scenes populated with white collar criminals, assholes, con men, whores, pick pockets, hookers, and bodies riddled with bullets.
3. From his ringside seat looking out over the evolving afternoon, Jock noticed that the storm had moved eastward at enough of a slant to include Prairie View. Perhaps Monica "Trail" was looking out her own window, and if she was, Jock wondered if the storm looked the same to her as it did to him.

In example one, Jock could have noticed many things outside the farm house window. But what he chose to see was a list of examples showing the place had gotten rundown and neglected. The mention of the bird feeders and swing makes it clear there had once been a family there rather than a single man's utilitarian farm.

In example two, the reader understands that the individuals aren't really outside the window: it's all figurative. Jock isn't seeing the real buildings and cars on the street, but an overlay of criminal elements and other lowlifes. I can show his attitude in a more powerful way with this glimpse out the window than to say "Jock saw the worst in everything and everyone."

In example three--which builds on all the other instances of Jock looking out his office window--Jock is watching a storm that I'm using to foreshadow an upcoming climatic event. Obviously, he misses Monica, but I don't want him to think "I miss Monica" because that's not only trite, it's not something he would ever overtly admit. So he ponders how she views the coming storm.

Unless the narrator is shown to be unreliable, the reader expects the actual place a character is seeing to be an accurate account. But by choosing what a character notices and how he feels about it, we can use place as a powerful tool to support our characterizations and our plot.

-

Copyright (c) 2009 by Malcolm R. Campbell

Jock Stewart in Operation E-Book Drop

Today's Gainesville (GA) Times did a nice story in the local section about my participation in Operation E-Book Drop, a volunteer program offering free e-books to deployed coalition troops. I hope this story will help get the word out to service men and women about the availability of e-books from the 230 authors who have signed up. Sixteen of these are from my publisher Vanilla Heart.

This afternoon, I received another e-mail from program founder Ed Patterson about a mother who is signing up for her son who is soon to be deploying. I sent her an e-mail right away. I've sent out over 60 of these e-mails in the last several weeks for my comedy/thriller "Jock Stewart and the Missing Sea of Fire." When a new edition of my 2004 novel "The Sun Singer" comes out next spring, I hope it will also be available in the multiple formats distributed by smashwords.com for Operation E-Book Drop.

--Malcolm

Review: Niffenegger's 'Her Fearful Symmetry'

Her Fearful Symmetry by Audrey Niffenegger

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Tyger! Tyger! burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?
--William Blake, "The Tyger"

When an acclaimed author (Audrey Niffenegger) takes a line from an inscrutable poem ("The Tyger"), readers (such as myself) are apt to expect a great story. Without a doubt Niffenegger's prose is elegant, her place descriptions (London and Highgate Cemetery) are exceptional, and her intricate plot has great promise.

That promise is not fulfilled.

We are introduced to several sets of twins who, as it turns out, are so focused on being twins that they (in one case) do fearful and silly things and (in another case) are relatively boring. In each set, one twin wants freedom and the other wants the status quo. Interesting? Could have been, but it wasn't.

At best, most of the characters are totally dysfunctional with the possible exception (oddly enough) of the man with OCD who lives in the flat upstairs, up above the American twins who come to London when their aunt (Espeth) dies and leaves them an apartment up above Robert who works as a volunteer at the adjoining Highgate Cemetery. He was Espeth's lover both before and after she died.

Like ghosts without sufficient practice and power to organize themselves and enjoy the afterlife (with or without haunting the living), the plot becomes weaker and weaker as the novel goes on until on the final pages it evaporates altogether. Yes, there's a grim resolution to it all, but it's a weak one and we no longer care.

I suspect the author fell in love with the cemetery and wanted to write a story about it. Naturally, the dead came to mind. But they weren't strong enough to frighten us or make us care about the symmetry.

Malcolm

Extraordinary Poems, Extraordinary Poet

big bad slam poet by Dave Campbell

My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Writing in his Orlando Sentinel "Word Count" blog, Tod Caviness had kind words for this posthumously published book of my late nephew's poems. Dave "STRAT" Campbell, who died in 2008, was a prominent spoken word poet in the Orlando hip hop, rap, and slam poetry community.

According to Caviness, "Strat was a walking blueprint of what performance poetry should be. He was literate, gracious and his loud, confrontational delivery never overshadowed the denser emotions in his work. Not surprisingly, he was just as well known and feared on the local rap battle circuit for the same reasons."

My brother Barry has taken great care in compiling this book of his son's poems and publishing them via Lulu and now available on Amazon. A CD of STRAT's work is also available under the same title.

Personally, I find the poems extraordinary, but an uncle's review would be considered highly suspect. Here are a few lines from an untitled poem that tell me all I need to know about STRAT and his art:

i can't be confined to a poem....
i can't be held prisoner to structure....
free verse....will not be enough....
i am about to perform emotions in their entirety because it will just not be enough....

View all my reviews >>

--Malcolm