How To Write Again

I just read two books back to back, both on writing, and I wanted to say a few words about them here. I've written some about writing books before and if you've read those entries, you've seen my ambivalence.

On the one hand, many of the books I've seen trumpet advice so seemingly idealized or impractical that I can't bring myself to believe that the authors themselves actually write that way. It's a "write as I say, not as I do" approach. And with any form of advice, the person offering it needs to be convincing with their arguments for following it, otherwise credibility suffers and the advice is ignored. Beyond all this, the advice itself needs to resonate with the reader. Otherwise it's just a wasted one sided conversation.

And like the pick-a-book-and-copy-its-structure-in-your-book university curriculum I wrote about in an earlier post, some things simply smack of cheating. You have to work for your craft, you have to be able to meld your knowledge and ability of it with your own talent in order to produce something worthy of your gift. Seek shortcuts at your own peril. If you don't work for it, you won't feel it, you won't own it, and you'll never produce work worthy of your potential.

Or maybe you will. All this is just my own hardwired opinion; I don't choose to feel this way, this is just the way it makes sense to me. I am fiercely committed to doing things "my way," even if it turns out it's the same way as everyone else's. Reinventing the wheel? Possibly. But, damn, I will have mastery over the concepts and a corresponding feel for the craft, I will figure out to write to the best of my ability, and I will strive to keep expanding the boundaries of that ability. It doesn't matter to what degree I achieve or fail to achieve commercial success.

I feel guilty even contemplating reading someone else's book (and I would chop off my own head before enrolling in that university program) but there are truly benefits to be had consistent with my personal ethos. I pretty much only look at books that support notions or opinions I've already come to believe, usually through actual trial and experience. These books can then serve two valuable functions, one being simple affirmation that someone, anyone, has come to the same conclusions I have. This is an affirmation and always a nice thing to experience.

The other benefit can come from reading about someone else's adaptation of a concept or a principle and comparing that with what you're doing yourself. A meeting of the minds, if you will. It's possible I can find a method or technique I can adopt that will help my growth WITHOUT making me feel like I'm cheating.

I'm going on so much about my personal views because I've always believed that while the total collection of all our traits and attributes are what make each of us unique, none of us are unique in any one of them. In other words, if I think this way, other people out there must as well. So on to the books.

The first is "The Key: How To Write Damn Good Fiction Using The Power of Myth" by James N. Frey (who shares an unfortunately similar name with the recently exposed fraud). I wanted to read this book as a follow on to Joseph Campbell's comparative mythology classic, "The Hero With a Thousand Faces." Campbell describes what he calls the "monomyth," or the elements common to mythologies throughout history and different cultures. He shows how stories from different mythical collections, say the Bible and an oral story from an ancient African tribe, have many overlapping features and functions. Campbell shows how an archetypal hero goes through several stages of adventure in each particular myth, what kinds of trials he encounters, the help he receives, and what they all may mean to the story.

Whether this comes from a Jungian collective consciousness or common characteristics to our individual human psyches, no one knows. I read this book a while ago for obvious reasons. I wanted to learn more about what makes a hero a hero, including what he must go through and whom he must meet along the way. Campbell isn't easy reading but well worth the time and effort.

Frey's book takes his own how to write a book approach and combines it with the characters and events, "functions" as he calls them, detailed by Campbell's monomyth theory. He comes up with a blueprint for producing a novel with mythical undertones, one that should resonate with whatever human mechanism evidently responds to the common storytelling elements Campbell wrote about.

As a how-to, it would appear to be a good book. Frey gives an excellent, easy to follow plan for the creation of a fully realized novel, including tips on creating characters, naming them, and defining their characteristics and personalities. I've always written about my characters in order to learn more about them but I like Frey's advice on writing journals as the characters in order to find their particular voice. I spend a lot of effort on plotting and wooden characters will deaden anything I come up with, so this will help me with an aspect of craft that demands more of my attention.

Frey's approach is heavily outline driven, what he calls a stepsheet, and this is one reason that I as a writer could not follow his method. I can't outline, and I won't learn. If I were to outline a book, I wouldn't actually write it because I'd feel as though I already did. The energy and enthusiasm would have been spent. I don't talk about a work in progress with any depth for the same reason.

An outline would definitely help in some respects, however, but those same things can be addressed by better preparation for the writing of a novel. My current project ground to a halt because I didn't know everything I needed to know about my characters in order to advance the plot. This is a fault of preparation and I realized that more time spent pre-writing would inevitably speed up the writing itself.

This is the point that the second book agrees with, "Write Faster, Write Better" by David A. Fryxell. Whether you produce an actual outline or not, the point is that you know what you need to know so that the writing process is not interrupted later on. And worse, so that time eating rewrites and revisions can be avoided. Like Lawrence Block, he believes that multiple drafts and an over-extensive editing process are things that can and should be avoided with the proper planning and preparation.

A very readable and enjoyable book, Fryxell's methods are clear, concise, and obviously the work of a successful working professional. While he, too, pushes an outline, he's much less particular about its form. And while his advice is suitable for any kind of writing, it would be especially valuable for freelance magazine writing. Much of the book is a virtual primer and blueprint for that business and I'd highly recommend it to anyone looking to break in there

For those out there who haven't done the study or individual discovery I personally find so valuable, this book would be a huge shortcut, advice from someone who knows what he's talking about. It's not as much of a how-to as Frey's book but the advice it contains cuts a much wider swath across the business of writing. Frey's book can also be read by someone interested in the monomyth and not willing to put in the effort in to Campbell's "Hero"; it's much more accessible. Both these books are valuable to a cross section of writers and I've benefitted from reading them both.

Now I just have to not feel guilty about it.