Monday, August 17, 2015

Reading on smart phones

Back in the day I wrote an article on evaluating smart phones for epub reading. At the time I think it was a lonely outpost in the reading and reading device world. Fast forward to this weekend and no less than the Wall Street Journal is hailing smart phones as the way to go for reading ebooks. Similarly, Fortune magazine, on August 12th came out with a piece noting that 54% of ebook buyers are reading their books on their smart phones. A couple more interesting data points in our ever evolving world......

Thursday, April 30, 2015

Z is for Zen

Zen. What is it? Officially, Zen is a school of Mahayana Buddhism. But it's so much more, at least in common culture. Taken from the above listed link to Wikipedia, "..Zen emphasizes rigorous meditation-practice, insight into Buddha-nature, and the personal expression of this insight in daily life, especially for the benefit of others. As such, it deemphasizes mere knowledge of sutras and doctrine and favors direct understanding through zazen and interaction with an accomplished teacher.." I don't know what zazen is, although it is an interesting "Z" word, nor do I feel like interacting with an accomplished teacher.

For me, Zen is a word that has come to describe the inner calm that is summoned when chaos is high and on the verge of overrunning your position. It's keeping your head in the game and being mindful of the present, when it would be all too easy to check out and give up.

In Zen, as in life, there is much to be made of staying calm and mindful.

Wednesday, April 29, 2015

Y is for youth

Youth. It seems to get all the glory and much of the oxygen when it comes to fiction and likely in reality as well. So being the rebel that I am, my fiction has always been centered around characters with a few road miles on them. My main characters, Cale and Lane, as well as Dana and Myra are all well seasoned. Cale and Lane have "aged out" of their program. Some of River and Ranch and nearly all of New Grass Growing is looking at what two men do in their retirement after a compressed highly charged career of kinetics and wet work for Uncle Sam.

It is interesting to read through your favorite characters with an eye on clues commenting on their age as well as on mentions of characters that are "older". Harlan Coben comes to mind first. He keeps his main character, Myron Bolitar, in touch with his parents. Myron from time to time goes back to his childhood house and roams his old neighborhood. I think this is a great way to keep a sense of intriguing reality woven through fiction. Put the characters in real time with characters from their past and their family. Not everyone is an orphan like Mitch Rapp (Vince Flyn) or Scot Harvath (Brad Thor). Hope I correctly spelled their names. Loved the books with those recurring characters, but the pace is breathtaking and in the present. Not a whole lot of "what came before". To be fair, both authors make an occasional reference to age. Vince Flyn also included a minor character, Stan, a nasty old relict from the Cold War, a chain smoking, dirty fighting, questionably ethical character as part of the Mitch Rapp ecosystem.

Anyway, my fiction is an homage to lives well lived. Sabé and Cassidy are high school kids and Peter and Perrin are elementary aged kids, but most of the characters are appropriate ages for parents and grandparents, with road miles to boot. River and Ranch and New Grass Growing are about late found love, raising teen agers, talking with families, and living a family-centric life in the flyover country of remote Idaho.

Along with a few chills and spills along the way of course.

Tuesday, April 28, 2015

X is for Xi Jinping

Xi Jinping competes heavily in the competition for "favorite piece of fiction that is based on truth". I have been shocked many times in the course of writing my fiction as research has discovered something completely unexpected that blends right in to the plot of either River and Ranch or New Grass Growing.

First of all Xi Jinping is pretty much the top dog in Chinese government. Let's call him the General Secretary of the Communist Party of China, the President of the People's Republic of China, and the Chairman of the Central Military Commission, all of which are his titles. Imagine the name tag he must have. At time he seems like a pretty decent guy, working hard to rein in corruption and introducing selected tenets of Western culture. On the other hand, he has also taken several steps to strengthen the Central Party leadership. He's a divided man. From what I can read of him though, he seems like a decent man with a near impossible job of maintaining control and order throughout China, growing the economy, and evolving China's place in the global economy.

Xi Jinping was an exchange student in Muscatine, Iowa during his university years. This was the surprise discovery that is one more of those "truth is stranger than fiction" moments that occurred for me while researching.

Monday, April 27, 2015

Right thing Wrong thing and Nothing

"..In any moment of decision, the best thing you can do is the right thing, the next best thing is the wrong thing, and the worst thing you can do is nothing.."

My favorite quote. It would seem to be the case that Roosevelt was a man of action. At some point he learned that he who hesitates is lost, or something like that. So he quit hesitating. Right or wrong, he did something. A man of action.

When I can't decide what to do, it's not too long before this quote comes to mind. It gets my feet moving in a direction. Hopefully the right direction.

Saturday, April 25, 2015

video into ibook

While Kindle seems to be leading the world in ebook reading, ibooks are adding a million users per week. I do both, but lately ibooks has been leading the race because I like that ibooks handles video within the ebook. Kindles, as far as I have tested, struggle with video. Nonfiction, instructional guides which are part of what I do benefit from including video snips. So ibooks, at least for non-fiction, are pulling ahead of Kindle due to their ability to handle video.

Friday, April 24, 2015

U is for Udemy

First of all I get a kick out of the name. Very clever. I think they morphed "academy" into a more individualized version of the word that does a great job implying a more personal version of a class. Great name. At least to me anyway. Udemy offers instructional videos, usually several in a series, that teach a certain subject. The subject matter expert develops the course and uploads it to Udemy. People interested in the topic, then pay a fee and watch the video series. One more step away from physical media like DVDs.

Paper books going to ebooks is quite similar to this leap from CDs and DVDs to online media watching. One less machine needed. One more password to remember. On the upside, watching the content can happen just about anywhere you can get an internet connection now.

Thursday, April 23, 2015

T is for Tense

Tense is one thing that influences a writing style and therefore the whole book. It comes in a variety of flavors from first to third. I choose first person tense because I want the reader to feel like they are there in the present, seeing the world through the eyes of my character as he or she sees things.

Choosing your tense is choosing your point of view. First person is a tense that is pretty much seen through the eyes of the character the author is inhabiting. I started writing my series of books in it and have not really strayed from this style as of yet. Maybe when I go backwards and start writing the historical part of my fictional world, things will change, but for now its all seen though the eyes of the person speaking the dialogue when there is talking. Outside of dialogue, first person reminds me of the voice speaking out of the clouds in "The Waltons", a show I seem to be remembering more and more for some strange reason.

It does have its limits though, as critics are quick to point out. To sty in first person means you can't really talk about things the character can not see, which I am OK with for the most part. My all time favorite authors James B. Parker and Roger Crais put their characters in the drivers seat and speak/write in a first person tense. Spencer and Hawk and Elvis and Pike would not be the characters they are if they were in third person.

Wednesday, April 22, 2015

S is for the Senses and writing for them

How to really hook up with your reader? There's the old standby "Show don't tell". And then there's "Write for the FIVE Senses". I like them both, but I tend to forget the five senses.

Writing for the Five Senses is all that and then some. It takes practice and constant awareness to write in a style that acknowledges all five senses, especially touch and smell, but when you can get in that groove it does add another dimension.

Some people learn by listening, others by doing and still others by reading or watching. I think this is true of reads as well. Some are drawn in by strong visual descriptions, others by taste or smell. It can be hard to describe something in any of the five senses, but keeping them all in play as you write, I think makes fiction more immersive and puts something in your work that appeals to all of the reader's tendencies, rather than just one.

So whether it is vivid, thunderous, lemony, chocolaty, or fuzzy add in something that all your readers can relate to with any of their five senses. Who knows? It might stretch your writing muscles as well.

Tuesday, April 21, 2015

R is for Research

Sometimes I feel like writing the fiction of River and Ranch and New Grass Growing is the underpinnings on a Master's degree in Idaho history and geography. It is still an ongoing process and throughout has been a compelling aspect of writing. I can't wait to get back to Idaho and (re)visit the places I have learned more about and discovered over the course of writing these books.

Sacajawea. Sharkey Hot Spring. Lemhi Pass. Tendoy. Viola and her store. On and on the list goes. Lemhi Pass itself. This is the place where Lewis and Clark first topped out on a pass and peaked into Idaho. The Last Chance vein has kept miners interested for most of the time ever since.

The fiction of River and Ranch rests upon Cale and Lane watching over a rare earth mine on Lemhi Pass. This is reality. That Last Chance vein is a gift that just keeps on delivering. One mining company has hoovered up many of the mining claims and is actively exploring the space. Their efforts are apparently enough to keep them going. The historical mining claims and grounds apparently include existing tailings piles, which apparently are containing enough rare earth rich material to make the tailings piles the first rare earth materials to be "mined" on the North American continent in quite a while, and they've been sitting next to the adit just waiting for someone to sample them. No need to mine them, just transport them to the processing facility.

Which brings up to the next interesting bit that research has uncovered. Not only does China have a large majority of rare earth reserves, China also has the relevant tribal knowledge and the only REE processing facilities on the planet. Everyone else is playing catchup on the processing front. China, meanwhile, just keeps pouring chemicals into shallow holes on the mountaintop and recovering what they can from trenches in the valley below. It seems to me that China has a lead on destroying their environment more so than processing rare earth ore. Research suggests that China just goes ahead and does virtually whatever they want, wherever they want, with little regard for future consequences. Somewhat like the US did a hundred (or more) years ago, during this nation's heavy industrial development phase.

Research is fascinating. It reminds me once again of what the U.S. did to its own environment and native populations in the name of manifest destiny and development. As I research the Chinese portions of this project, I frequently see that. Hard to call the kettle black when our own original kettle is as black as anything the Chinese are doing.

Research. Fascinating stuff. It makes me think about more than just the fiction I am writing.

Monday, April 20, 2015

Q is for Quest

Initially for this A-Z challenge, I thought the "Q" words would be the hardest to find. Then I remembered an awesome interview on NPR that Ann Strainchamps did with Elizabeth Gilbert on her new book, the Signature of All Things. Ms. Gilbert trotted out the observation that many stories were about "strangers coming to town" or conversely about leaving the homeland and "going on a quest".

And that is how the letter "Q" brings out today's word. Quest. If it pops up enough to inspire a Wikipedia article, there must be something to it right? Tolstoi is widely attributed as the originator of that observation on classic literature and in fact I think Ms. Gilbert mentioned Tolstoi as well in the interview. It turns out to be a common enough plot device that the IMDb has seen fit to make a list of the movies that fit this quote.

But all is not well in this world where strangers arriving or townfolk leaving are thought to rule the day. It turns out that MacGuffins can pop up on occasion to lessen the truth of Tolstoi's great observation. In the world of fiction, the pursuit of an object can often be used as a simple plot device. If this quest to find an object does not further the plot and is inserted as somewhat of an aimless device with a murky purpose, then problems can arise. Think the opening of one of the Indiana Jones movies, where he grabs the gold monkey off the altar. Indiana Jones gets away with it I think because this incident is a vehicle for an interesting delivery of character background. I do remember being confused though on watching that and wondering how it all fit together.

There's also a camp that does not agree with Tolstoi's observation. Some assert that not everything is a hero's journey. What their alternative to a "hero's journey" is remains unclear.

One size does not fit all, when it comes to master theories describing patterns in fiction. It is a fractured universe, filled with people whose ideas, plotlines and style can and often do defy the norm and go their own way. It is important to recognize that this is an author-centric notion of writing fiction. It seems to me that if fiction is viewed from the reader's pov, then the norm and tradition tend to emerge. It's human nature to try and fit things into patterns based on what they have been taught or what they have previously read, etc. To me this is the crux. Writers are urged to conform to the expected patterns found in genre fiction because most readers are conditioned to expect that, and most readers understand those traditional patterns. When authors stray from those patterns, then we see reader confusion and perhaps less uptake. We also see new literature breaking new ground. So go your own way. After all, with great risk comes great reward. Maybe.

Saturday, April 18, 2015

P is for partner

I confess. This notion of partner has been written about before, but I like it and since it is my blog, I am coming back to it because I continue to find it interesting how so many of my favorite reads (and authors) all opt to develop a partner to go with their main character.

The first ting I wonder is if MCs that are women have partners that are women. I don't read much written by women, other than Janet Evanovich and her main character, Dunk. So my knowledge is limited on this partner thing amongst female main characters. My suspicion is that female leads get caught up in the plot lines of the male leads. I hope I am wrong, but given the interesting light shed by the Bechdel test on current media, I would not be surprised if this were the case. Do men writing about men do this to female characters? Do women writing about women do this to their characters? An interesting topic and one that will require more reading on my part.

Clive Cussler has given the world Dirk Pitt and Al Giordino, Kurt Austin and x? Zavala. Harlan Coben gives us Myron Bolitar and Win. Roger Crais gives us Elvis and Pike. James B. Parker gave us Spencer and Hawke. All are my faves. I would not pick one pair without the rest of them. The dialogue, interactions, and plotlines have been well worth reading in part due to the MCs having strong partners.

Friday, April 17, 2015

O is for outward-facing

At this stage of my writing life, I tend to favor writing in the first person. Further, in my current series I have four main characters. Each character gets a turn as narrator. The commonly referred to problem with multiple narrators is how to make each narrator possess their own character. In other words how do multiple narrators each sound unique when they are written by the same person?

One factor, and yes there are many, has emerged that has helped me frame each character and further their own unique voice. It likely has an official term, but it seems to me that children start out self-centered. Let's call this inward-facing. As that child ages that inward looking tendency slowly starts to include other people and concerns. It becomes more outward-facing. As adulthood is reached that outlook on life may well be mostly outward facing.

Kids are all me me me me, right? Adults, most of them anyway, are more concerned about others than they are of themselves, especially parents. If the adult is seen to be self-centered they are commonly thought of as immature.

So in developing my characters, their interactions and their plot lines, I have tried to differentiate each of them by where they are on this "self-centeredness" graph. Youngsters are self-centered and inward looking, completely concerned about what happens to them and what they want to do. Adults and parents are more concerned about the welfare of their kids and less so about themselves. More outward facing.

Where do grandparents lay in this graph? Where do friends fit? While this "self-centeredness" aspect is not perfect and not always consistent, it does serve as an interesting thought that I deploy to help differentiate how each character talks, thinks and interacts with those around them. In this way I am aspiring to give each character their own memorable and distinct character. Their own voice.

Thursday, April 16, 2015

N is for narrator

The word narrator always makes me think of the closing scene from "Walton's Mountain", an OLD family friendly prime time TV show from back in the day of three letter networks. MTV wasn't even around yet. Archie Bunker may have been though.

Anyway, it's dark and the camera is outside John-boy's window looking in on him as he sits at his desk writing in his journal. Slowly the camera pans out. the view is wider and the voice (Earl Hamner I think) is talking, in the character of John-boy I think. Maybe the voice is simply reading what John-boy is writing. I don't remember. As an aside I do remember John-boy had a really hot sister. Mary Ellen if memory serves. She might have been my first crush. I wonder where she is now?

Anyway, I am using the narrator's voice to describe setting, feelings, and thoughts. Things that have no way of coming out in dialogue. Time will tell how it turns out.

Wednesday, April 15, 2015

M is for Meander

All the writing advisors out there exhort everyone to keep the thrills coming. One per page. Keep the reader at the edge of their seat. Everything needs to be a page turner. I say bull~!@#. I'm starting to think that writing advice blogs are starting to copy news journalists and they're writing for attention rather than truth.

As I get further into my fiction and the world gets more solid and my characters acquire more personality, I'm seeing there is room to breathe. There is room to describe something. There is room for dialogue to solidify the plot and there is also room for main character monologue to describe a setting.

As in so many other things in life, I am realizing that not everything is true if you read it in the blog of an expert. Styles are individual. The story you know needs to be written according to you, not what some author architect asserts you need to be doing. Be your own writer. Read what others write, but stay in control of your own POV, when it comes to style and taste. Blogs are looking for readers and fans just like journalists. Their words are not written in stone nor are they absolute. Go your own way and seek to add to your perspective from what others write. Blind obedience is not needed.

Tuesday, April 14, 2015

L is for local flavor

"Keepin' it real" is a bit of a phrase I've heard some place, maybe multiple places. My suspicion leans toward it being a greeting by Randy Jackson on American Idol. Don't tell anybody I confessed that though. Actually, my wife watches it and I was in the same room at the time. That's the excuse...

It does serve as a nice segue into today's phrase "local flavor" brought to you by the letter "L". Two of my favorite authors, Roger Crais and CJ Box, write about what they know and a big chunk of that includes the urban and rural landscapes in which their characters live and the plots happen.

For me, RC does a phenomenal job writing about the canyon that Elvis lives in. He does just as well writing about the L.A. and southern CA countryside in which his plots involving Elvis and Pike all take place. Geographic descriptions, maps and freeway descriptions, traffic conditions, and shortcuts are all part of a Roger Crais book taking place in the fictional world of Elvis and Pike, which is an unknown (to me anyway) portion of the real world where I think RC actually lives now. Love his writing.

Writing this entry today, brings me to realize that not only is there a strong local flavor in RC's writing, but he also lavishes time and words on the meals and the food preparation that his characters on occasion indulge in. Further, Elvis has a cat that appears frequently in the Elvis and Pike series. I love these aspects of what RC does with his local flavor and the reality with which he surrounds his characters.

CJ Box writes about a Wyoming game warden, Joe Pickett, and a frequently included friend, Nate Romanowski. The Joe Pickett series is housed in the fictional setting of Saddlestring, Wyoming, even though Saddlestring could well be a real (if uninhabited) place. CJB's writing gets even better, at least for me, in that Joe has a wife and three daughters. The local settings in his books are all the more real because he's dropping his kids off at school in the morning or stopping in at a bar or restaurant or the library where his wife works part-time. Fiction based on reality, or at least bits and pieces of reality.

If you haven't read CJ Box or Roger Crais, give them a try. I think their fictional worlds are all the better to immerse in because they seem so real. You can live vicariously through the characters as they climb mountains, or drive old Forest Service roads, or sneak across back yards because the line between real and fiction that the authors write about so well is so blurry.

Monday, April 13, 2015

K is for Milan Kovacovic

Back in the day, when I was virtually carefree, I was prone to squandering my opportunities. Milan Kovacovic was one of the few individuals who knew me enough or had the right approach for someone living like I was. He looked me in the eye and told me I had to "try harder". As I recall it went over my head at the time. But here I am almost thirty years later and while I remember beaucoup de francais, or however it should be written, what I remember more is him saying that to me.

He was right. I wish I had a "do over", as my kids say. All these wise older folks may be right when they say that "youth is wasted on the young...". No doubt he has no memory of me. I was a "nothing" student by my own admission, intent on enjoying freedom and girls and living on my own. I should have taken a year off and learned the hard way about the importance of education. I did do that a few years later and it did teach me and I did actually come back to UMD and achieved the best grades of my time at UMD, but then I left again never to return. So.....Professor Kovacovic, I hope you have a Google alert set for your name. Thank you for those well intended words somewhere between fall of 84 and spring of 88. I still remember them. You were right. The more you put in, the more you get out.

He wrote his memoirs. While I am not prone to reading this type of work, I do look at this and read what there was in this article and marvel at the lives others have lived in the places and times they were in. Here I am in this plain old culture of the U.S. at its peak. Safe, stable, ongoing times of plenty, no war in my lifetime that affected me (although I did dutifully go to the USPS and register like I was supposed to as an 18 year old). What he remembers from his youth in WWII-era Europe is far different from mine.

Saturday, April 11, 2015

J is for Judaism

Judaism. A big word in history, replete with success and tragedy and much in between.

While most might be expecting something religious to comes next, I'm going to talk about swear words. Yes, Judaism in the context of its cultural picture I guess, is very expressive.

Also, if I am to believe what I read in doing research there are three languages close together. The one I think I am looking at most often as a source of rich cultural expression is Yiddish. This led me to wonder about the difference between Hebrew and Yiddish. In reading about that I came across Aramaic. I won't belabor this entry with details. Yahoo has an awesome Q&A answer board that provides some great background and explanation. I usually take Yahoo with a grain of salt. I at least try and confirm what I read there with another entry elsewhere. In any case, here is the Yahoo entry describing the differences. A good answer that makes sense to me.

As a mere lad, back in my young and dumb years, I was a French major. I also took a few credits of Russian. I wish I had applied myself more back then. Now I realize what an opportunity I had then with the time to learn those languages. But I was young and dumb and not much of a student. I was also quickly realizing that the application of foreign languages was going to be problematic. As a student at a Midwest university, I was thousands of miles from anywhere that conducted business in anything besides English.

Fast forward 30 years +/- and I find myself still fascinated with languages and still faced with the same lack of pragmatic utility. However, my characters can speak in French and Russian and Yiddish, or at least use foreign words throughout their daily life as I write about it. Throw in some Mandarin and some Spanish and you have my cast of characters all schooled in foreign languages from one source or another, all using bits and pieces of these languages in dialog with each other, especially those swear words. Nothing better than a good foreign language swear word. Especially Yiddish.

Friday, April 10, 2015

I is for Indie Author

It's a business and you have control. That's an indie author in a nutshell.

Some contrast helps further define it. A traditional author may never get published. Most do not. But if they do then most, if not all, of the big decisions are made by others on your behalf. The publisher does most of the work and in exchange they keep most of the money too.

The odds of success are against you as an indie, but then the same is true as a trad author, only at a different stage of the game.

Success does happen, likely with the same odds as traditional publishing. Hugh Howey and Joe Konrath are a couple of big names in the indie world, well worth reading.

Now go write your book, and then start the business of selling your book. The world is your oyster.

Thursday, April 9, 2015

H is for Habits

Sometimes, rarely, success is a gift to the person receiving it. Call it luck. Like lightning though, the odds of being hit are highly unlikely and almost never in the same place twice. Better to develop a work ethic and rely on that for success instead. While it does not guarantee success, at least it is more consistent.

The "H" word was almost Harlan Coben. He's one of my favorite writers. Reading an interview of him got me thinking about "H" word habit. When asked about his success, he talked mostly about "hard work" involving his back side in a chair every day, with some sort of typing device in front of him. It seems he is also in the habit of writing about things he knows. Like basketball, life in New Jersey, kids, and the suburbs. He does an exceedingly good job. I do wonder though where he knows the sociopath that he based his character "Win" upon. That guy is a load. A load of strange attributes, but paired with Myron they make one of my favorite all-time set of partners.

Nothing fancy today. Habits are simple. I think writers need them, but more important they need to stick with them until the book is done. They then need to be resumed when the next book is started.

Wednesday, April 8, 2015

G is for Goal

I just read an article about one of my favorite authors, Harlan Coben. Hope I got this name right. A and E are hard to keep straight. An immensely successful author that keeps it simple in spite of his success. I would suggest the opposite - his simplicity in writing is what keeps him successful. His character, Myron Bolitar, is the only character I know, besides my group of Shoshone high school girls in the Lemhi Valley, that plays basketball as part of the setting in a book.

Goals are simple things, part of what I think every writer should use. Maybe Mr. Coben does too. An entry a day in the case of this 26 consecutive day challenge. The large size of writing a book is intimidating when viewed as a whole. The simple tool of setting a goal helps reduce that size and intimidation. One page today. One chapter this week. One thing at a time done over and over. Soon the habit starts and soon that big immense thing always murky and vague in the future is halfway done, because of the many small goals you set and achieved on the way to getting that novel of yours done. Try one. Set one. Complete one. And then do it all over again.

Tuesday, April 7, 2015

F is for female characters

Agency was the first entry in this category of writing about character-based issues. Bechdel test was an easy and related follow-on. Now the entry that, of all 26 letters, probably fascinates me most.

My adventures in writing revolve around a series of books that in turn revolve around the lives of a river guide on the Salmon River and a rancher who grew up on a ranch in the nearby Lemhi Valley. River and Ranch is the first book I've written but is the 7th +/- in the series. New Grass Growing is next in that line.

Back in the day when this idea of writing started to take hold, my kids were little. Those kids are three daughters. My wife and I were aware of them being every bit as active as the boys they knew and that lived in the neighborhood. The conscious realization of this was letting the girl "stuff" happen as they each discovered it, but also stressing "girl power" when we saw them in circumstances where we wanted them to be aggressive and "not back down", for lack of a better way to explain it.

That parent-based setting was the dawn of my awareness of strong female characters. The first thing I realized is that no matter how much we put "blue" stuff in front of our daughters, they all gravitated to "pink" stuff, without any dis- or en- couragement from either of us. My take away from this is that girls are different from boys. From day one. AND They are strong in their own way, unlike male connotations of strong, but strong nonetheless.

As a writer I find that significant, because the easy tendency when writing strong female characters is to put the woman in man's clothes and have them fight alot with swords or guns, etc. In other words make them like male characters, since strong is an adjective associated with men. For some characters in some stories that just might work. But for other characters and stories that "change of clothing" and a girl name likely will not.

As I have gradually drawn out the plot and the world in which my MCs live, the big thing I've come to realize is that too often female characters are in a book to fit the plot of another, often male, character. They are dependent on events written for that male character, such that the female MC is reacting to something happening to the male MC. This is, in part, what led to the Bechdel test I think. I want my fiction to be populated with women on their own plot line. Both plot lines intersect, boy and girl do meet and fall in love, but that ranch woman has her own story with her own set of subjects.

This could go on and on. I find this subject fascinating in many ways both good and bad. If it interests you, the three articles below go a long way towards maturing my thought process on this subject. I still read and reread them. They might change your outlook on female characters as well. cheers.

characters that are women/girls/female
characters that are women/girls/female, #2
characters that are women/girls/female, #3

Monday, April 6, 2015

E is for editing

First draft, second draft. Write, rewrite. History records many many introspective thoughts made by writers as they look back on the time spent at the editing desk that was once their writing desk. Myself now included.

There really is no other way to learn writing other than by doing it. The consequence of writing then is that you now have something to edit. I admire writing for the near miracle that it is. The brain's ability to consume sugars, connect synapses, and adjust neurons all in the name of original thought, to me, is the most impressive display of biology there is. In the case of writing fiction, even in the presence of research material, that ability to take nothing, or perhaps a few tidbits of data and make that into something, is beyond description. How your brain does that is simply amazing.

Along comes editing after the fact of writing. Maybe editing is the coach to the raw talent that is on display in writing. Taking the raw bits and applying some polish, starting with the roughest grit and gradually working your way up through finer and finer grits as you get close to that final polished mirror-like surface in which the writer's true intent is finally displayed staring back at the reader.

By way of analogy, I write this a couple days after Wisconsin beat Kentucky to advance to the championship round of the NCAA 2015 men's basketball tourney. Sam Dekker is a native son bringing tremendous raw athleticism to the UW Badger's program. Now in his junior year, Dekker is emerging as the big, fast, point-scoring horse that UW has needed to get over the hump. Dekker lore includes numerous anecdotes about the dour, old coach grinding him down, the coach seeking to expunge all of the extraneous bits of athleticism that Dekker brought to the program, leaving only the slow, methodical bits favored by the crusty old throwback coach. To some extent that is editing, although I hope to leave the excitement on the page instead of the cutting room floor.

I love basketball. It is a central theme in New Grass Growing, the follow-on book to River and Ranch. I've always appreciated basketball as a running and scoring game, which is a chunk of the talents that Dekker brings to UW. The girl's game, in particular, has devolved into this grinding, plodding, physical game based on defense, which also seems to be what an increasing number of men's games are featuring. Defense sucks. UW's plodding, slow, half court-based game barely qualifies as entertainment. A point that Gino Auriemma, the UConn women's coach, recently trotted out, by the way.

Anyway, editing is to writing as coaching is to raw talent. It's a process of refining, of paring away the extraneous fluff, leaving only the bare, but well-written necessities on display. Much like what Bo Ryan is doing with this year's edition of the University of Wisconsin men's basketball team. As much as I do not like Coach Ryan's style, he has taken the abundant raw talents of the young men on his current team and channeled them into a team playing for a championship. He has edited the first round of writing and turned it into a polished piece worth reading that tonight will be on display in the largest of release parties, the NCAA men's basketball tournament championship. Featuring the first year writing of Sam Dekker honed into polished manuscript that is now Sam Dekker playing for a championship.

adieu jusqu'à demain.

Saturday, April 4, 2015

D is for Do Something

There are a few quotes I tend to keep top of mind. For me they serve not only in writing and thought but in life. My kids know it by heart as well. For me, the concept Roosevelt so concisely summed up is a simple one that provides the answer to many of life's issues. Teddy Roosevelt is responsible for my favorite quote of all time.

In any moment of decision,
the best thing you can do is the right thing,
the next best thing is the wrong thing,
and the worst thing you can do is nothing.
A wonderful antidote to the old "paralysis by analysis" that is so often seen by those in our society charged with the necessity to "do something".

Friday, April 3, 2015

C is for Core and Gap

Boscobel's famous native son gets full credit for today's phrase - Core and Gap. Where is Boscobel and who is the native son? Why am I writing about it?

Boscobel is an itty bitty little town on the Wisconsin River. Firmly in the heart of flyover country like most of the rest of the state. Pretty much due west of Madison, let's just call it southwest Wisconsin and leave it at that.

Thomas P.M. Barnett is the native son responsible for "Core and Gap". He offers up a pretty cool success story, maybe even the classic "country kid makes good" and goes to Washington, D.C., which is what he did.

Why am I writing about Core and Gap? For once I haven't digressed by this point in my harangue. Straight to it.

"the Functioning Core and the non-Functioning Gap" is a theory and a map (see the link to the left) developed by Mr. Barnett describing the state of the globe. It might be a view of the "have" and the "have nots", with some interesting exceptions. The civilized part of the planet that basically works, lives under the rule of law, and interestingly experiences more suicide than murder is the "functioning Core". The part of the planet filled with terrorists and sadness and moral decay (at least defined by western morals), not to mention anarchy, chaos, and evil (again from a western cultural reference) is known as the "non-functioning Gap".

River and Ranch and New Grass Growing are two books in a series revolving around the lives of Cale Thomas and Lane Nygard, two Special Operations Forces operatives, charged with unique special duties. In R&R they are on the cusp of retirement. In New Grass Growing, they are retired. In their careers though, they roamed the planet providing plenty of kinetics via their trigger pulling. In the course of researching these books I stumbled upon the Core and Gap. Fascinating. I'm incorporating this concept into the tactics, strategies and events in the lives of my two SOF MCs.

Personally, as a college educated, white collar US citizen I find this view of the planet to be fascinating and quite compelling. He pulled it together in the years shortly after 9/11 and I'm sure it's been revised in the years since. For me, it remains the first thing I trot out when in the company of those wanting to discuss global politics as they intersect with culture and lifestyle. From my civilian perspective I've found the "Core and Gap" to be the best method of explaining global politics, and maybe even civilization.

Buy his first book or go to the library and check it out. It is a dense read requiring thought and concentration, but the outcome it 100% worth it. At least for me it is.

The fact this dude is from Wisconsin is icing on the cake :)

Thursday, April 2, 2015

B is for Bechdel Test

With the passage of a mere 85,560 seconds since the premier post in this, the thrilling 26 days of the A-Z blogging challenge, we now find ourselves at the post for the second day. I may have mentioned it explicitly yesterday, if not, for sure I hinted at it. Yes, the Bechdel Test is today's entry, brought to you by the letter "B".

Following on just a bit from yesterday's rambling discourse on "agency", today's word (phrase) comes from the fertile mind of a cartoonist, possibly someone who read the work of that cartoonist and was inspired to credit the cartoonist for something her cartoon characters said in one of her episodes. Check out the ever helpful Wikipedia entry on the Bechdel Test and all will become clear(er). The cartoonist is Alison Bechdel and the friend who may have noticed is Liz Wallace. The founding incident took place sometime in 1985, back in the halcyon pre-internet days when ink stained paper in a far larger volume than it does today.

In my media consumption world, the introduction of the Bechdel Test was quite revealing, and it continues to be. First of all, it has further dimmed my respect for mainstream media content creators. To be fair, they are under pressure to create revenue from their media creation efforts, so they are certainly biased in their efforts and hesitant to change anything that would lessen their success. Such is life in our capitalist frame of reference. Regardless of that though, the Bechdel Test reveals in a very interesting way, just how lopsided media tends to be STILL in 2015 when it comes to portraying women.

Inquiring minds want to know, assuming they didn't click away to the Wikipedia entry, just what is the Bechdel Test? It is a simple protocol consisting of three parts. The media in question:

  1. has to have at least two women in it,
  2. who talk to each other,
  3. about something besides a man.
That's it.

Almost half of all films made in the last 20 years FAIL this test. Going further back in time this ratio is worse, way worse, as you might expect. I won't repeat the Wikipedia article, I hope you will click on that link though and read up on this notion. For me it is eye opening. In a moment of self-congratulatory back patting, I am also EXTREMELY proud of myself for writing Dana, a main character in my books in such a way as to pass the Bechdel Test, before I even knew this test existed. You can bet that all my MCs with the xx chromosome are going to continue very much in this fashion.

One recent example of successfully passing this test, to me anyway, is a Sunday night prime time TV show we stumbled across, Madam Secretary, starring Téa Leoni and Tim Daly (of Wings fame). To my eyes, when it comes to passing the Bechdel Test and agency for its female MCs, this show PASSES with flying colors. That this is a Sunday night prime time show on an old letter network, CBS, makes it even more impressive. Once again, a well done Wikipedia entry on Madam Secretary informs the discerning media consumer that this show was created by a woman and is produced by a woman. There is one other producer surprise. Go read the entry....

As an aside, tiresome though they may be, I am shocked at how much I am using Wikipedia. I am going to have to make a contribution. The body of knowledge stored in Wikipedia gets more impressive by the day.

Back in the day when our college freshman was a mere lass of five or six, she began playing soccer, which remains a foundational part of her young life. In those early days, I remember watching her outrun the boys on the team. She was the team's leading goal scorer and quite the little athlete, small in stature and age though she was. Somehow, around that time in our family life, my wife and I began using the phrase "girl power" around all three of our daughters, even the littlest diaper filler, who was already hard at work keeping up with her older sisters. Dora the Explorer comes to mind as one possible inspiration. I cannot clearly remember how we came around to using that phrase, but it clearly had to do with our parental awareness of our daughters NOT playing second fiddle to boys. We really pushed this notion of standing side by side, not one in front of the other. Looking back, this is one of the things I am most proud of as a parent, even more so, when things like the Bechdel Test serve to remind us just how far in the wrong direction Hollywood continues to go in terms of portraying women.

Thanks for reading this far! Until tomorrow's thrilling diatribe on the letter "C", I bid you farewell.

Wednesday, April 1, 2015

Writing About Women? Consider the word "Agency"

Years ago as I started writing fiction, a question came up about adding more main characters into my series of books. It's true. I was asking it of myself. No one else was in the room.

Cale Thomas was rapidly filling out and developing as THE main character. The plot was coming along, aided by numerous research discoveries that left me shaking my head over how truth and fiction were colliding (more on that throughout this month). But Cale couldn't just talk to himself nor could the books rely on internal soliloquies as a tool to move things along. Enter more characters.

It's only natural that a lonely military guy camped out in the middle of nowhere needs to meet someone right? Sorry to be so predictable, but yes. Cale meets Dana, back in the beginning of River and Ranch, the book prior to New Grass Growing. So we have these two characters now. They are together BUT...they are also apart. And that is the segue leading up to today's letter.

Yes, the letter "A" is brought to you by the always fascinating word "Agency".

Just what is agency? Why is it the first entry in this 26 day A-Z blogging challenge?

It is the first entry, because the women that appear throughout this book series are complex strong, capable, and more than nuanced enough to carry their own plot lines. Does anyone beside me think of Prairie Home Companion, where "the women are strong"? Garrison Keillor's voice rolls through my head carrying that phrase, but I digress.

Thanks for hanging in there and tolerating my sudden left turns into trivia.

Back to "agency". Wikipedia's definition of agency is more than enough to start this ball rolling. Go ahead, click the link and read the definition. I'll wait, I need more coffee anyway.

Before I forget, I hope you will tune in for one of tomorrow's entries. Yes tomorrow is a double day. One of those entries is "the Bechdel Test", a neat way to consider agency, initially in female movie characters, but now used in fiction as well.

Turns out there's a ton of mostly relevant content you can find with Google's help on the word "agency". One that does not appear on the first page linked to above comes from Chuck Wendig's authorial wanderings. His version of the meaning of agency hits home for me. Agency implies strength, so initially you have strong female characters and this leads the reader's eye to somewhat expect men in women's clothing and character roles. I think The Athena Project from Brad Thor is a good example of this.

Chuck Wendig's blog entry (above) about strong female characters and agency does a superb job of working through this stereotypic treatment of women in lead roles in action type genres. I won't repeat what he writes and what the always worthy comments (and there are hundreds of them) further flesh out. Suffice it to say that "agency" as it applies to female characters, at least the female characters in my books, means more than just strong in a male definition of the term. I like "nuanced" and "complex" at least as much as "strong".

For me, the heart of this word agency is writing characters that are women leading their own lives, solving their own problems and happily enjoying the company of men all in such a way as to be human and independent, rather than falling back on the annoying tendency in fiction where most female characters fit in the narrative where the male characters need them to be. Think "Nell" tied to the railroad tracks in the old Dudley Do-Right characterfrom the Rocky and Bullwinkle cartoon back in the day.

Being the father of three daughters has helped me in understanding the balance that "agency" carries. My wife and I have raised and are still raising our three daughters to be strong and independent. One of the many meanings I take from this word comes from listening to my daughters talk about boys and their "hotness", "who is dating who" and "who said what". But in the next second, they are talking summer jobs, physics test, why a low cross is better or worse than a cross that comes off their foot and goes high, where the oldest one wants to live next year, and how can they find a room mate because one of them suddenly decamped to another school (sorry for the long string of dependent phrases there). In short, they are living their lives, much of which revolves around them and what they need to do to get by, and less of which puts them in an orbit around someone with a Y chromosome.

Tuesday, March 3, 2015

Why Writing?

So our youngest daughter is a ninth grader. First year of high school. She has a language arts class. Seems like a typical LA class, not much changed from the classes I vaguely remember taking back in the day. She comes home with an assignment to write three poems.

She does.

I know that as a parent I am hopelessly biased, but nonetheless her poems were wonderfully shockingly good. Heartfelt and well written, they were a view into the world of a young teenager.

Anyway, life goes on and a few days later we're talking again about something school related and she says, "...Dad that's all school is - is memorizing. We sit there all day. At night I memorize [x] and the next day we take a test...." Again, not all that far from what I remember of my days in the class room. By and large rote memorization and then regurgitation of said facts is what many think of as education.

I have a point and I'm getting to it I promise...

The 3/1/2015 Sunday paper comes along and "Pearls Before Swine" by Stephen Pastis, has Willy and two characters talking about studying for a history test. All three question the worth of history. The column ends with the mouse character whipping out his smart phone and googling the answers to the history questions that Willy asks. Ridiculously easy with a few seconds on a phone keyboard. The point driven home being one of the worth of traditional education, when in so many cases in these times, all you have to do is whip out a device and do an online search for the answer. Many would say that traditionally storing facts away in a young cranium is now of questionable value, as simplistically illustrated in this comic. That I really like by the way.

For me this is a valid point. Should the bulk of education still consist of fact recitation and regurgitation, followed by forgetting said facts and likely never using them again? If not, what should education become? A HUGE questions to which NO absolute answers have emerged, only a few smaller relative answers.

Now my point......

Why write?

Man, woman and child should write because the act of writing, simplistically and with much being left unsaid, is analysis and raw creative effort. Writing is not a fact you memorize and spit up on a test. Writing poetry is delving into your brain and creating something original and unseen. Some NOT memorized. In clichéd consultant speak you are "adding value". I think you are. I think my daughter did. She did it amazingly well and in a way that shows the power a young brain has when it leans into something and really wants to create in lieu of memorize.

To me that makes writing, one of humanity's first great creations and possibly our most used commodity, something that is special and worth the effort. You can't memorize, you have to sit there and work your brain until words come out on paper or screen. For me, in a time where so much education is still fact-based memorization of ever-lessening value, writing endures as a skill well worth developing in brains regardless of age or place.