Art and Truth

There are bars on the window of my hotel room.

The room sits on the sixth floor of an older building, and the brass framed windows open large enough to slide through, without a screen to feign the idea of security. Three white bars stretch across only the opening, bolted to stone and porcelain, with a bold-type logo stretched across the bottom reading ‘Guardian Angel.’

The bars make me want to jump more than the inviting cement waiting at the bottom of the six-storey drop.

Not that I want to die, mind you. I actually enjoy my life and am quite happy with the way things go, most of the time. But it’s difficult to fight that urge to leap from a rooftop, to play chicken with a transit train and lose, or to pull the steering wheel and send my car into a tree. I think it’s that adrenaline of oncoming death, that brief moment before tragedy hits where everything seems to hang still, that I’m really aching for. Something beyond the mundane, the trivial conflicts and strife that do more to drag you down rather than make you feel alive.

Of course, it’s not something that I talk to many about. Urges of destruction are rarely a socially acceptable topic to entertain at tea time, and yet these impulses are very real, and very there. It joins the many other dark little secrets of mine that are not tea-time worthy, and despite the fact that I know others face similar demons and entertain morbid thoughts, we all keep them tucked away, out of sight and out of mind.

But things don’t stay buried. Not in the mind and not in the world. And when wild dogs dig up our skeletons, we have no choice but to answer for them. I believe the more frightening option, however, is that these skeletons stay buried, that we harbour them in secret until the day we die, and those we leave behind have no idea what really took place within us.

Unfortunately, or fortunately, I am not able to silence the demons for long, or keep these morbid thoughts from bleeding out. Most often these themes and ideas creep out into my art. Stories of war, racism, utter despair, and struggle are those that I’m drawn to write. I want to look into the abyss and see what looks back. I want to know what’s hiding beneath everyone’s tea-time demeanour. I don’t want those secrets to stay secrets.

And today, as I leaned against the bars of my hotel room, looking out over the gloomy downtown Seattle and imagining a moment of free falling, I realized: you can’t lie in art. It is pure truth, and the things you create are a reflection of all you are within, the nice things and the not so nice things. It is impossible to create art without truth. Whether that truth is a well-known and accepted one, like the love between a mother and child, or something not so talked about, like the daily struggle against depression, you cannot make art without a reflection of soul taking place.

And perhaps that’s where I’ve gone wrong for the last little while. It’s difficult as a writer to sometimes share your work with others, as that is a piece of raw, unprotected soul that you are offering to them. It can be crushing to have others dismiss or criticize it, and I believe as we grow older, it makes us more guarded and less willing to show those pieces of ourselves, whether in art or otherwise. Without realizing it, we quietly censor ourselves more and more as life goes on, until we are nothing more than our tea-time demeanour, our polite little masks. For me, it’s become more and more difficult to share and create my work, being so overwhelmed by the opinions and criticisms of others, not necessarily about me or my writing, but about what I’m actually trying to say.

Is my message too dark? Will people be offended if I talk about these subjects? How do I portray this in a way that doesn’t make people think that I’m a monster?

On a walk with my boyfriend the other night, we discussed art and what made something “real” art. He made the point that art wasn’t to be shared, that “real” art was something created by the artist, for the artist. And though I argued vehemently, (“Of course art should be shared! It can’t be locked up in a box and forgotten!”) I think there’s definitely some truth in there. When you become so overwhelmed by what everyone else wants, which is very common when getting into the business side of art, you can’t hear your own inner muse. You can’t find your truth, because it gets mixed up in everyone else’s truths. And when you lose your own truth, you either can’t produce anything, falling prey to the devil’s “writer’s block,” or you lose all love for the craft.

I like to think diversity in art isn’t just about the artists themselves, but what you’re really saying. I like to think that the stories and truths within need to be as individualized as the artists, and we should be mindful of looking over each other’s papers too much. When you have too many people trying to stick their thumbs in the pie, you only get a crust full of holes. Inspiration is great, but there’s always a balance to things, and too much outside influence dilutes your individual style.

So, at least for me, that’s what I need to do: write truthfully. Be honest about what I feel and experience as a human. There are always those out there who feel just the same, who need those stories or that art to make them feel connected to someone else. To make them feel not so alone.

At the end of the day, what keeps me from pulling the steering wheel, from taking a swan dive, from leaping to dark impulses, isn’t some stupid ‘guardian angel’, but the fact I know I’m not alone. I know there are others out there like me, because I’ve shared my art and they’ve shared theirs. I know the world is dark and morbid and so am I, but it’s also full of incredible people, whom I hope to understand and who can understand me.

So I’ll be honest, even when it’s not easy. I’ll try to remember the feeling of art as a child, when it felt like my skin was as thick as steel. Because, let’s face it: I will have zero control over my demise when the time comes. I could die tomorrow, and I couldn’t bear to leave anything left unsaid.

Marketing vs Writing: Where Categories Fall Short

During my daily browsing, I came across a rather rude article about young adult fiction entitled How to Write a Shitty Young Adult Novel. Now, aside from me calling it rude, it is just a satire of many troupes and cliches found in young adult writing. It makes some very solid points, and there's a reason why nearly everything the writer outlined strikes a familiar chord with readers of YA. It left me between a rock and a hard place, because although I was raving mad and spouting my usual "YA is not a descriptor of quality!" I also saw that there was some valid points being made.

I was stuck. What to do. I could have gone to Twitter to post rants squashed down into 140 characters, or I could've ignored it entirely, choked it up to someone else's opinion and moved on with my day. But as I pondered, it occurred to me: why do I feel I have to defend myself? Why do I have to defend YA?

I could scream it until my face turns blue. YA, MG, NA, or adult is not a descriptor of quality. There are bad books everywhere. The title of that article could have been changed to at least a dozen other things. After all, isn't SF/F mocked for being "unrealistic" and "using magic or science to solve problems without difficulty"? Isn't romance and chick lit often thought of as just as wooden and hollow? Isn't literary and contemporary mocked for being dull or pretentious? It doesn't justify it, and mocking any genre or niche of fiction seems like the childish thing to me. Do you really have to elevate yourself above others just to feel good about what you enjoy? Then perhaps you need to reevaluate yourself before you start looking at others.

But why do people feel the need to dictate for others what is appropriate and not? 

We're told to avoid trolls. The internet is full of them, as well as real life, and they only wish to make people angry with whatever fodder they can come up with. Articles like this are no different. Sure, they may be accurate in their criticisms sometimes, but I fail to see what is being gained by shaming others for what they like. Whether its reading YA or MG, or enjoying My Little Pony, or falling in love with 50 Shades of Grey, or playing video games when you've become "too old" for something so silly, we all have or do something others may consider "childish" or "inappropriate" because you are not the target audience.

It comes down to, in my opinion, a lot of marketing bleeding into our perception of what is "normal." The marketing department of a publishing house decides vampires are the new hot ticket and begins to sell them to teenage girls, but when teenage boys begin reading them-- or adults, or even young children-- suddenly there's a societal problem. The books were not made with teenage boys or adults or children in mind, so it's not approrpaite for them. We use different shaming tactics--"Kids shouldn't have access to books with content like that." "Do you feel smart reading that book? Because obviously it's meant for kids and kids are stupid." "Ew, you actually want to read about ponies/vampires/X, isn't that for girls?" At the end of the day, content is content, and people don't fit into neatly made categories. Again, everyone else seems intent on deciding what is right for you.

Yes, there are people with their own opinions, and though they don't have to be wrong, it doesn't make the opinions of people who love, read, and write YA any less valid. Just because someone sets up a blog or works as a journalist does not mean they know what they're talking about. Hell, that includes me. I think it is important to remain aware of the effect categories, trends, marketing, and "target audiences" have on our writing. When we only focus on the idea of categories and what's appropriate for who, we forget that our art needs the freedom to grow and change, just as we do. If we get used to our comfort zones and never try to break boundaries, try something different, try to create something instead of just manufacturing something, then teen fiction has already been left to rot.

Ursula Le Guin said it best in her acceptance speech at the National Book Awards:

"Right now, I think we need writers who know the difference between the production of a market commodity and the practice of an art. Developing written material to suit sales strategies in order to maximize corporate profit and advertising revenue is not quite the same thing as responsible book publishing or authorship.

[...]

Books, you know, they’re not just commodities. The profit motive often is in conflict with the aims of art."

 Don't create the "Chosen One" story because you know it will sell. Don't sacrifice the needs of the story because someone else gets squeamish. Create art, then worry about where it fits later. Once you publish something, it's in print and there forever. Would you rather your debut be something you really care about, or an old story repackaged with different names?

If you're practicing art and not producing products, then you'll never have to defend yourself, because if you care about the craft, you'll always intend to improve. In my opinion, it's the beauty of art: it inspires growth, change, and emotion. But products don't inspire anything. They fill a need and are forgotten about when it no longer has use.

Even then, I can't bring myself to mock a book I feel is nothing more than a product. The business is subjective and there are many people who were touched or inspired by books that have put me to sleep. That's the magic in reading and the shortcoming of categorizing. A category only tells us the most basic of information. A shirt may be orange, but there are thousands of shades of orange. We put words like "Sunset orange" or "Urban fantasy" to try and narrow it down, but just as it pales in comparison to actually looking at a colour, a category cannot begin to encompass what's really found between pages.

Let Sleeping Books Lie

Photo credit goes to Adrian Gaucher (@nobidieshero) Check out his site www.tencrazyminutes.com

A good friend of mine who also doubles as my extra special beta reader loves to hang around bookstores with me and discuss what we're reading. Who doesn't? We often refer things to each other, but try, try, try as I might, I could never convince her to read Scott Westerfeld's Leviathan series. (Which is amazing if you enjoy steampunk.)

She absolutely refused, not because of the genre or content, but because she had been burned by Scott Westerfeld once before.

She read his Uglies series and absolutely loved it. Originally, it was set to be a trilogy, but somewhere along the lines Westerfeld decided to write a fourth book in the series, after the trilogy had seen some success. She loathed this fourth book and claimed it completely ruined the series for her. She refused to read anything else he'd written because, as we began coining it, he was sure to pull another "Westerfeld."

We'd used to the term to refer to writers who couldn't let a series lie, and that term got much use in our conversations. Which author had pulled a Westerfeld? Was it someone we adored? A series we loved?

Recently, while perusing through Chapters, I came across the newest book to the Shiver series, Sinner, which features around a character in the Shiver series, Cole St. Clair, and follows him and his love life after the end of Forever. I have yet to pick it up, but I know I will. Because first of all, I don't believe in judging books before reading them and because I absolutely adored the Shiver series.

Which made me kind of angry, standing in that bookstore and facing a new book in a story I thought was finished. Did Cole St. Claire's story leave questions unanswered? Oh hell yes, but not in any way did I feel like I needed to know more. It felt finished, and I had a sense of closure reading the last book. He still had things he needed to accomplish in his world, but they didn't seem focal enough to need a whole book about it.

Both in the Uglies series and the Shiver series, the fourth book was an after-the-fact addition. It appeared after a grace period where there was little to no lead in from the book previous to it. It's a case of what I consider "not letting go."

Another case could be seen in the Daughter of Smoke and Bone series. Though the "trilogy" ended, most of the end of the final book was used to set up conflict for the next series. This sequel baiting gives you an "ending" that isn't complete, that has raised just as many questions as it answered. This, sometimes, I feel is a bit more annoying, just because it is more in your face. It's as though the author or publisher promised you an ending by calling it a "final" book, only to pull out the rug at the end and say, "If you want closure, you have to read this next series of books." It feels a bit more like trickery, not so much in the storytelling as the way that it's marketed. At times, I feel like if it just called itself a series or a saga and then the writer produced however many books were needed to tell the story, it wouldn't be an issue.

Why do writers do this? What's with the obsession with trilogies when some stories just don't fit in three books? There are probably a million answers, some more justifiable than others. But no matter the quality of the follow-up book, it will ruin the series, because the story was finished. This new story? You're slopping fresh clay on top of a finished statue. And why?

Because fans, and authors, love the world. Let's face it, fans can't let go. All you have to do is look to Firefly to understand that. Often, fans will respect a proper ending, but the real hardcore fans, the ones every author dreams about, the ones that create art of our work, write their own fanfiction, who stay up all night dreaming about where your characters will go after the end, will never be happy. In some ways, these fans are toxic. Because even when you present them with the utmost perfect ending, they still want more.

But how can you shame them for that? Fans want more of your art because they love it. That's the dream.

The publishing business, as well, loves to see writers keep writing. At the end of the day, publishing is a business and houses want to be in the black when it comes to sales. What makes the most money in books? Series. Hook a reader with your first book, and they'll gladly buy a second and third and fourth. I faced this a little myself when I got my own agent. I had written a stand-alone book to sell as my debut. There was no way to continue this story. I massacred one of my main characters, I obliterated the villain and completely resolved the conflict. There was nowhere, NOWHERE, for the story to go without feeling horribly contrived, and yet my agent still pushed for it to be turned into a series, as it would "sell better." But, caught up in the glitz and glamour of agent life as well as being a little young and naive, I said, "Of course I can turn my single book into a series."

But every time I sat down to write the sequel, I ran into walls. It felt contrived in every way. I wrote that book, scratched it, and began again at least three separate times. But the book wasn't to be written, because there was no story left there.

Can I blame the agent for pushing a series where there wasn't one? I feel like I can, because although everyone needs to eat, the bigger paycheck should never be the thing driving art. When all you're looking at is the income, you forget about the bigger picture, the story, and it is so easy to lose it to cliche or crappy, half-formed ideas. Art that is rushed or forced isn't art anymore, it becomes a product. If that's what you want to be at the end of the day, someone like James Patterson who pumps out books like they fly out of his ass, then by all means. There are many others out there with similar views of books as something to be mass produced.

Then there comes the authors, the writers, those of us who can't let go. I can hardly fault a writer being in love with their world or their characters. After all, isn't that why we do this? But, I think the inability to let go of something you've written is not done so much out of love, but out of fear. This world is established, these characters are flushed out, the plot makes sense, and if you're published and selling well, people really like it. It's so much easier to come up with new conflict for characters that already exist than to start from scratch with a new idea. But that is what we must do.

There are so many ideas out there, so many stories to be told, and so many that aren't being told, because people favor the hero's tale, the simple plotline, the easiest path from A to B. I feel, as authors, we have to have the strength and the knowledge to know when to stop. To know that the series you've written is finished, and it's time to move on.

If Maggie Stiefvater had spent all her time writing more Shiver books, she never would have created the Scorpio Races or the Raven Boys. If Scott Westerfeld never let go of Uglies, we wouldn't have Leviathan. Not to mention, if they had clung to these ideas, they would have long ago faded away into obscurity. No idea lasts forever, no matter how many books you can pump out of it.

How do you succeed in this business? How do you create a really good story?

1) Know Where To End A Story

2) Always Try Something New

I may be the minority here, but when I sit down with an amazing book series, I want closure. The end is always my favourite, and it leaves me feeling empty when the story is left half-done or a finished story is revived, to walk amongst other books like the living dead. Endings are hard, because after we reach it, there's no going back, no adding to it, no time to fix plot holes with more story. It is a finality, and it opens the door for criticism, as there's no more hiding behind the mystery of "more to come."

"To live a creative life, we must lose our fear of being wrong." Joseph Chilton Pearce.

I think Pearce puts it best.

Cheers,

-Katie

When Books Take Flight

Photo help/credit goes to Adrian Gaucher (@nobodieshero). He's got skillz!

In meme theory, there's this idea that ideas are alive, subject to evolution, reproduction, death and extinction like any other creature. The theory can sometimes be questionable at best, but I think in the case of stories and books, it is absolutely true. Any reader will tell you a novel is alive, that a story has the ability to completely transform them and their worldview, as well as remain alive in them for many years.

A good book, story, snippet, quote, semblance of words, whatever, has the ability to touch on deep human emotions. It inspires and sparks something in you, even if it's as simple (and "simple" is of course taken with a grain of salt) as your enjoyment or a love of a character's witty or sassy voice, something resonates there. The best books stay with you for years, you dwell on their ideas and characters, spend time creating fanart or participating in discussions, write fanfiction, reread the book, and most importantly, talk about it with those you care about. When we find something really special, we want to share it with others around us. This is where the meme theory comes in. Truly well-composed books that resonate and inspire want to be shared, and meme theory argues that it is not us sharing them, but the stories controlling us in order to live on and reproduce, like any other creature.

Not long ago I took a look at my bookshelf and noticed something odd. Almost all my shelves were filled with books I didn't particularly enjoy, or that I had given up on, or that I read but hated. But, when I thought about my reading experience, I didn't remember bad books. I remembered all the wonderful stories that I had read, the ones that truly made me feel and motivated me, and realized that, one by one, I had given them all away.

There are some collectors out there that are probably aghast at the thought that I have lost so many books simply by "lending" them out to people and then never seeing them again. Some were given away with the knowledge that they weren't coming back, such as with giveaways, where I get so excited about a book that I have to give it to someone, anyone, so long as they'd appreciate it. I like to think of it as the best books growing wings and taking flight, ideas growing and wanting to spread and evolve. The ones that are the most alive, the most vivid, end up flying off in the hopes that someone else will be touched and inspired by the story.

A book is often not born of one person anyway. Sure, there is someone who sits down and pens the story, but writing a book, as the acknowledgements will show, is never a one man job. There are editors involved, agents, beta readers, friends and significant others and writing partners that offer tips and ideas and changes. All of these edits and ideas are offered through so many different lenses. Seemingly, a writer doesn't write the book at all, and it comes to being all on its own. Wouldn't that be nice. The metaphor definitely ends there, as any writer knows that though sometimes the ideas seem to come together out of nowhere, it definitely takes a butt load of uphill work before anything looks remotely story-like.

It may seem like a whimsical and silly way to look at writing and creativity sometimes, but often when I get touched by something really special, like Dreams of Gods and Monsters and the rest of the Smoke and Bone trilogy, it makes me want to believe in whimsy and magic. At the end of the day, behind every bit of magic, there is hard determination and passion. And as a fellow writer, I'm always trying to dissect what about a book makes it so magical, and how I can achieve similar responses in my readers. After all, isn't it every writer's dream to write something that has that bit of magic in it?

I've learned a lot of things from studying the books that have really touched me. What makes them so magical? Of course, they need to have the fundamentals down.

1) A solid plot with little to no flaws or holes with intricate devices that keeps the story interesting and interwoven. Loose ends and holes can sink even the strongest stories.

2) Dynamic characters with conflicts between each other that are both interesting and sympathetic. The best characters are those with well thought out flaws and strengths with places to grow and fail as the story progresses.

3) A consistent tone/voice that sets it apart from the competition.

4) They must touch on something real.

Real? What is real? It's that bit of magic that turns a good book into a great book. That bit of heart that takes it to the next level. Donald Maass, literary agent, once wrote that it involved touching on timeless human experiences that many people can understand or relate to. A superhero book by Perry Moore called Hero did this by touching on the real lives behind his superhero characters, the wounds in their lives, whether they were physical, emotional or otherwise, and his main character who learned the true strength of his healing powers. Though this story was told through the lens of a superhero world, it still involved real world issues that people can relate to, even just emotionally.

In Dreams of Gods and Monsters, many could say that Laini Taylor's Eretz and its struggles of independence are no different than any other major fantasy story out there. What truly sets it apart, of course, is the originality, tone, and its ability to really touch on why this dream is so important to these characters. Yes, they want to save their world, but at the end of the day they just want to be together, in peace, in a world where people didn't have to hide and fight and die. But the way Taylor presents it is such a raw, emotional way that you really feel the loss of war and the yearning for the dream. The heart behind it is what elevated this book out of good to great, from bookshelf quality to taking flight.

Whenever I sit down in front of my computer, or my typewriter (nerd alert) I always ask myself what feeling I intend to inspire with my writing. What piece of humanity am I trying to touch on? In this scene, right now, what is the reader feeling? Are you only focusing on entertaining them? Because that will always leave you on the bookshelf.

They say every idea has been done. And it has. The difference is the execution, and how much of a heart you give the creature you're creating. A story with a strong heart will fly from reader to reader so it can spread and live on for a long, long time. No heart? No life, and your book will face plant before it can ever take flight.

Peace,

-Katie

Creativity

Today, I found an interesting video on TED with Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat, Pray, Love, talking about Nurturing Creativity.

I don't necessarily believe in everything said in this video, as I believe people should take full responsibility for their work and their failures, but I also can't help thinking about an old movie that really touched me called 28 Days. I'm not good at asking for help when I need it, and I don't think a lot of writers know when to stop and ask for help, and take some of that reponsponsibility off their shoulders.

Our society is very much so success-based and I think tht can be detrimental to authors who do make it big. I've always said I've never wanted to be a hit sensation, because what happens afterwards?

Yes, its about your writing, and yes it's about what you can do to make it big. But I think becoming a world-renouned success is not just abotu the author or the writing. Sometimes, people get lucky. As Gilbert said, sometimes the stars line up just right. Maybe someone reads the book and becomes so in love with it, they premote your book more than anyone else.

But back onto the topic that Gilbert was discussing, which was creativity. She mentioned the genius and the daemon, and I think a lot of writers still use that idea of someone else helping them, but they call it a muse. I used to write heavy fanfiction in my early teens and you'd hear that word thrown around everywhere. It was all about your muse, where she was, what she was doing, why she kept leaving and coming at inappropriate times.

But as I delved into forums dealing with more mature writers and established athors, that word seemed to melt away. Why? Do writers find it immature to beg some supernatural being to "please be polite as I'm driving and please come back when I have a moment to write the idea down"? Is it ego? Is it childish?

A few conflicting thoughts, but it's interesting to think about.

Peace,

-Katie