Surround yourself with people who support you

When I say "surround yourself with people who support you", I'm not at all being cliché. The fact is that if you're creative in any way, you have to have a good support base - not because you need them to be creative, but because you need to them to help in the creative process, in the editing, in the feedback, in the final polish.

I had a friend who wrote a short novella which he asked me to proof-read and to design a book cover for, and I did. While the story wasn't really my thing, because the author was my friend I felt a responsibility to give him my support by doing both of the tasks he asked me to do (and for free). I wanted his story to be the best it could be - and I made sure my feedback was constructive, pertinent and honest. And he said he really appreciated it - even telling me that I should be an editor because he had really benefited from the feedback and the support I'd given him.

When I asked him to read my story and offer feedback, though...the support wasn't there. Several years ago I'd asked if he just wanted to read it - no need for feedback, I was just excited, like a little kid, and wanted to tell my story. He agreed to read five pages only - and then picked it apart, giving me what he deemed to be constructive criticism. And constructive critique is fine, but it's like advice: if it's given when it hasn't been asked for, it rubs people up the wrong way because it comes across as preachy and has a very strong element of "oh, you poor thing. You don't even know you're doing it all wrong. Here, let me salvage this train wreck for you...". In this case I hadn't asked him for criticism in any way - so perhaps you can imagine my irritation. I got over it, and actually did take some of the advice, which included "don't use so many m-dashes or semi-colons" (it's good feedback).

About a year ago, having proof-read and designed a cover for his work, I sent him mine...and he procrastinated. He had issues with me wanting to protect the security of the file (which I'd worked on for many, many years already at that stage) by having it a non-editable and non-printable pdf; so I changed the letters to shapes and made it editable/printable with a password, again in an effort to protect it should my email be hacked (I don't see myself as a hacking target, but if you create something then you take steps to protect it. That's just prudent). But this wasn't okay, and nor were any of my subsequent efforts to make the process easier - and in the end my "friend" had a go at me, telling me that he wasn't even sure he wanted to help me as I'd been pissed off at him when he'd offered feedback (unasked for) last time and that he didn't want to waste his time or energy. He also (so very kindly) said that I wasn't Stephen King and nobody cared about my writing enough for me to act like it was worth stealing by protecting it with passwords, and basically making it seem as though I had been totally unreasonable to expect him to put aside time to do the same thing I'd already done for him - especially since I just "refuse" to use Word, like 90% of the rest of the world.

I replied, saying that actually my computer didn't come with it built-in and so I'd been using InDesign, a far more intuitive (as far as I'm concerned) and powerful programme to write in, but that I didn't appreciate him finding excuse after excuse to not look at my work - and that I didn't want it to be soured by his attitude towards helping me the same way I'd already helped him, and that I'd now prefer him not to read it, knowing that he clearly found it too great a request of me to make.

He referenced it a few times in subsequent months, first by saying he'd find time, and then by saying he'd give me general feedback, rather than editing suggestions (I'd gone through his story with a fine-toothed comb), and each time I repeated myself that he'd already made it clear he didn't want to proof-read it and that I didn't want him to either anymore. Asking a friend to do something shouldn't be a big deal, but he'd made it into one - and I no longer felt as though our friendship included such elements. I wanted us to drop it, because if we didn't I'd get angry again that the work I'd put into his creative process had not been reciprocated.

Eventually he said it was probably a good thing he didn't proof-read as he'd looked at it and seen that my writing style was a bit "old-fashioned" and didn't flow like modern English, and he wasn't sure what kind of feedback he could offer that would be helpful when that wasn't his usual choice of style. Again, he'd found another reason to not live up to being a decent friend.

More recently he sent me a book he'd read once and thought I'd appreciate - Stephen King's On Writing, which interestingly says in the second foreword that all unnecessary words should be cut out, before (apparently not ironically) advancing to a third foreword. I thanked this "friend" for the book and he said it was partially a guilt gift for him not having read Silverwater. I told him that I didn't want him to feel guilty, but that I appreciated the book. His reply was "You do want me to feel guilty, or you'd let me read Silverwater". At this point I wasn't going to bite, and said definitively "Actually no, that's not about you at all. That's about me and how I feel about it."

And that's really what it boils down to: creativity isn't easy, and if someone's around to help you then excellent - but ultimately if someone is prepared to be there in name only, their involvement in your creative process is of no assistance to you. And it has to be. I am more than willing to assist in some way if I can to someone else's creativity, but ultimately it isn't about me at all - and I wouldn't ever want to make it so with my attitude or with my words. Me helping isn't about exacting payment in some other way, but I do think that as a friend I should be able to give assistance and to ask for it in kind if I ever do need it. That's what friendship is. And frankly, I was too good a friend to this person - and I realised that the moment it became clear to me that the effort I had gone to in order to provide help was not going to be reciprocated, and that rather than him telling me "I can't, I'm sorry", I was told the reason for him failing to help me out was, basically, me. Me telling him in the end that my decision to move on from asking for his assistance was about me and had nothing to do with him or how he felt about his own behaviour was my way of setting my own limits and denying him the ability to have a negative impact on my creativity.

He did try to have that negative impact again, however. After the horrible shootings in an Orlando gay club recently, he messaged me on Whatsapp with an anti-religion message and a link to a CNN article on the events. Rather than agreeing with his divisive, antagonistic stance, I told him that the shootings were the fault of extremism, and that he should be spending his energy mourning the victims rather than opportunistically using it as a soapbox moment to promote his personal crusade against religion (which is actually the subject of his novella. I'll return to this in a moment). Rather than taking a moment to think things through, this "friend" told me that "[I]'m a creep and [I]'ve turned into a real cunt", saying "no wonder [I] don't have any friends", and requesting I not contact him again. When I refused to engage beyond commenting on his behaviour by saying "You're a child", he said "You're a friendless asshole who only feels good about himself by pitting [sic] others down all the time. You really should become a critic, especially since your fiction sucks pretentious ass" - and then blocked me. It was a BIG case of projection, as far as I'm concerned, as I've rarely been baited into yelling matches with him and at all times try to see multiple sides of things. Even in this instance, I can really only guess that he felt me telling him that this wasn't the time to promote an anti-religion agenda was some kind of personal attack on him, when it mentioned noting about him at all. The only time I said anything about him ("You're a child") was after he'd launched himself into calling me names and trying to make me feel bad by making baseless claims about me not having any friends, like we're in a schoolyard playground. After the effort I had gone to in order to be a good friend and to help him create something he could then proudly show the world, not only did he not help me in a similar fashion but the one lasting piece of feedback he wanted to leave me with about my work was that it "sucks pretentious ass". As I said, I was too good a friend to him, and that frustrates me.

What frustrates me more is that the novella he wrote in which Christianity was the antagonist has proven less of an exploration of a concept or an idea and more of a reflection of how he really feels about religion in general - and I don't subscribe to that ideology. I'm not religious, but I'm more open to the notion that other people see the world in ways different to how I see it than I used to be. And it sucks to know that so many people out there are caught up in the antagonism of "us versus them", as demonstrated here. And this is where me being too good a friend comes in again - I designed the book cover for the novella. Knowing that I thought it just a modern interpretation of the underlying ideas behind 1984 but with religion as the antagonist, I didn't feel it was really "my" kind of thing - but I gave constructive feedback on it, and agreed to design the book cover. Looking back I wish I hadn't. Feedback would've been fine, but (unless he reissues it with a new ISBN and a different cover) my name will always be used in association with the project as the designer of the cover. In a way I feel as though that could be taken to mean I endorse the message the project bears, which I don't. As a fictional story it can be taken at face value, but as a piece of the antagonistic rhetoric between different ideologies I feel I should have refused to design anything for it. I suppose I can't really change that now. If there were any decency in this "friend", he'd refuse to use the cover I designed now anyway. Chances are, though, he won't, and my name will forever be found in the small print of the book. I was too good a friend, and I regret that.

The perils of seeking information

I've been working on repainting the 19 pictures for my children's book a fair bit this year, and in doing so have de-prioritised my current writing project. I feel so guilty about it. I've managed to knock out about as many words of the first draft as I've written for the entirety of my first manuscript, but this story isn't more than two-thirds of the way to the end (and it feels like less than halfway, if I'm realistic about my plan)...but I've managed to advance it significantly beyond the initial point where I left off last year, at what felt like the end of the first "act" - a completely arbitrary point, really, as I'd never planned it in parts, but it really felt like the conclusion of some part of the story. In short, it's languishing a bit in the dusty corner of my memory stick, from where it sends little messages to ask me why I've spurned it, why I've forgotten it, whether it's just another of those misbegotten attempts at telling a pointless tale that'll go nowhere. No, little story. I'll come back for you, and I'll take you out for ice cream to make up for it, I promise.

This kids' book is something I've had in my mind since I was maybe 13 or 14 - so it's been a great idea in my head for over half of my life. Not just in my head, actually: after the end of a fairly significant relationship way back in 2008, I realised I had to make time for myself and for the things I wanted to get done - rather than focusing all of my energy on trying to sort out the mess of that ended entanglement. And I did - I spent the next two years working piecemeal on deciding which words to use and crafting pictures. By some time during 2010 I had a retinue of watercolour paintings depicting what I wanted to show - and I was really pleased with the result. Looking back I can see the flaws and the faults; I'd never really been into painting very much prior, so it was a bit of a learning process for me - but then, for the first intimidating attempt at committing paint to paper as more than a last resort I had done pretty well.

In 2013 I returned to school to study graphic design, having successfully trained and worked for three years as a registered nurse. The two are completely related, obviously. I devoted hour upon hour to achieving results in that course, and felt overwhelmingly as if I were doing what I should have been doing from day one vocationally. One of the projects was the creation of a book - and most of my classmates chose to create a children's book. It seemed a fairly universal desire among us to write and illustrate a book, quite apart from learning the basics of book-binding as well as page imposition, how to create book signatures, how to design dust jackets, and so on. I created one of the by-then several kids' books I'd made plans for since 2008, and then returned to it and created another book for my end-of-year project - and painting approximately 35 painted pages across the pair of them, taking perhaps 25 days for each set of illustrations.

You can probably imagine that I didn't have time to choose actual watercolour paper, to stretch the low-quality paper I had to use, or to even get excellent photos/scans of the pages. While I was extremely pleased at what for me was a monumental effort and its outcome, I've known since I completed them that as first editions of these books they were good as concepts - but not really market-ready. Quite apart from that, response to them has been mixed: some, like my design tutor, spoke nothing but praise for them, while others, such as a manuscript assessor I engaged with, offered less encouraging critique. And that's fine - I wouldn't want stuff that could be improved to not be brought up, even if I don't agree with it in the end. I appreciate feedback.

In any case, as I mentioned I've been working this year predominantly on redoing the paintings for the original story, which was the "other" book I produced as part of my end-of-year project - and this time on watercolour paper that I've stretched myself. So far the paintings have turned out (as expected) a great deal more refined and polished - though I wouldn't make any claim to be a watercolour master, the pictures are in a style I've become comfortable with. I have 19 to do, and have completed a third of them - which is well on track for having them finished before the end of the year (though not for having them finished by the end of June, as I'd wondered about doing).

But what then, when I do finish them? Well...I guess here again falls the shadow of self-publishing. Did I ever tell you about that one time I sought information from a self-publishing company and ended up regretting it, a whole freaking lot? Yes? No? Well, just in case I haven't, I'll tell you again.

I made the mistake some time in 2014 of searching for self-publishing companies on the internet. I should probably take that back, really - the mistake wasn't searching, but rather the assumption that I made that if a company has a web address that ends in ".co.nz" then it's probably more aligned with my outlook as a New Zealand-based or a New Zealand-associated company. Why was that assumption made in error? Well, mostly because it's a marketing tactic - on the one hand it appeals to nationalism, and the idea that if it's locally-made or locally-sourced then it must be better (I don't subscribe to this notion, or to nationalism as a mindset); on the other it counts on the consumer's feelings of trust or mistrust, because if a company is based closer to home then it will operate under socially-recognise rules of fairness, be more accessible, and have the interests of the locals at heart, right? Well, perhaps - after all, I might be able to speak in real time to a person representing a local company and a certain (false) sense of camaraderie might make them less officious and more prone to want to solve problems I might have or seek the best outcome for me. Or maybe not - but those are the assumptions that people make (and often why so many people are against outsourcing, quite apart from their notions that a company outsourcing their customer service department, for instance, takes jobs away from the local economy [even this is a bit of an assumption - after all, perhaps the company just can't afford to have a local department due to overheads, due to how many employees, infrastructure...who knows?]. Unfortunately it starts to go beyond nationalism and into outright xenophobia - but that's a subject for some other time, and maybe some other blog out there).

In any case, I selected one agency with a .co.nz, and made an enquiry - basically just wanting to find out more information on what services there were available. In the enquiry I asked to be emailed, but for some reason or other I supplied my mobile phone number - either because I was required to, or because I tend to provide extra information even when I don't have to. I'm a real dork like that.

Not long after, I received a phone call from a "publishing agent" (i.e. a salesperson) who proceeded to try to sell me a deal they had. I said to him at the time that I had really only wanted to find out information, but I also made the stupid mistake of not saying "I was not wishing to buy anything at this time and this conversation doesn't appear to be about providing me with information, so I will be hanging up now. Thanks, goodbye". Instead I stayed on the phone, politely saying "that deal sounds interesting, however I would like to receive information in written form so could you email it to me so I can have a look at what the deals are?" for 40 minutes. What really got me was that rather than being listened to (and this is said with full recognition that the guy was trying to make a sale and earn commission, and that I should have terminated the phone call when it became clear that it did not meet my needs), the sales rep heard my lack of enthusiasm as "I need more convincing, so convince me". I'm sure you can imagine the lines he started reeling off to me: "I have every faith that your book will be amazing", "I love children's books. They really fire the imagination. I would love to read yours to my kids" and "I don't want you to miss out on this opportunity. If you never take the plunge it might never be published and everyone will miss out". And I'm sure you can imagine the tone in which everything was said - that I'm-insincere-but-I'm-trying-to-sound-as-if-I-mean-it tone that I think is more offensive than if someone is clearly not interested and isn't going to pretend otherwise, because they go from knowing you can see they don't care to appealing to your vanity, for one, and treating you like you're an idiot who can't see through their act. It wasn't as if the guy had a sample of my work, or knew anything about me - and yet there he was on the other end of the phone telling me he knew in his heart that my book would be a success and that he wanted to read it himself.

At length I managed to conclude the conversation, appreciating the assurance of this sales rep that he would wait for me to be in touch if I "had enough faith in my own book" to go ahead with it. He sent me the information, which I skim-read - seeing it was clearly not information I really had use for - and decided not to reply. Not long later I received another phone call - same guy, same situation, same amount of time wasted on the phone. I should know, really, that if I don't want to be on the phone then I don't have to be. I have respect for others enough to know that a conversation just abruptly terminated without a conclusion is downright rude - so I never just hang up the phone. However, again I should have said to him "this conversation is not one I feel meets my needs, so I will say goodbye. Thanks for your time", and have hung up then - clearly letting him know why I were hanging up. But no, instead I listened to him, repeating myself over and over again about how it wasn't the right time for me to be pursuing any of these deals, and that the deals didn't match my needs. I got more of the same lines, though I remember them being more skewed towards "well if you haven't got the faith to stand behind your book..." - clearly the company in question, and certainly their sales rep, thought that manipulating someone by calling them spineless in the face of opportunity was a great way to secure a sale and make money. The conversation didn't really advance, though I did tell him at one stage that I didn't want to spend as much money as the deals required when I wasn't ready to publish and that I was still at work on my book - and that again I had really only wanted information at this stage. So we terminated the conversation at that stage, and I felt I had respectfully made my position clear.

I heard nothing until one evening I got another call about six months after my initial enquiry. The numbers had always been preceded by 001 (the US calling code), though for some reason the sales rep had always spoken of calling from Australia, and I have several friends who live in the US - so I assumed that after six months of non-contact that it might have been someone I knew calling from a different number. Nope, it was the same guy.

"Hello, Simone? I'm calling to let you know we have 50% off our deals at the moment. As soon as I got the memo today I thought of you as I know you'd said one of your concerns was the price of our deals" he said. It took him till the third time of saying my name to get it right (apparently "Simon" is a fairly unusual name, though with the number of times I've encountered others with it in my lifetime I'd not have assumed so), and at this stage I was fairly unimpressed. I remained polite, but I kept the conversation short this time - after all, how honest can a person claim to be in their statements of "as soon as I was made aware of this I thought of you, though I couldn't for the life of me remember the pronunciation of your name"? Made worse, of course, by the fact that he would have had my file on his screen, so his mispronunciation really wasn't excusable. I said to him that he was welcome to send the information to my email (where it would go directly to my junk folder) and that if I were interested I would get in touch with him.

After that I saved the number under a name I knew not to pick up to, and further received perhaps five or six calls from it. After several I was emailed about not missing out on the opportunity to self-publish, and am in fact still, two years after I initially requested information, receiving emails trying to convince me to buy-in: "Please let us know if you would like to embark on the journey of self-publishing with us". I'd say my over-all lack of response at this point should be indication enough that I am not interested, but after the second phone call I had ignored (and fifth call in total) I had also sent an email to the general contact address asking for my information to be taken off their system as I was at this point feeling moderately harassed. Clearly I wasn't listened to - and that makes me think that the sales rep was and is actually following company policy by becoming so insistent about me becoming a customer and not letting me return to them when and if I were ever ready. And if this is company policy...well, it doesn't inspire confidence in their overall business model.

What lesson did I take from this? Well, mostly: do not seek information from companies which wish to sell something - this will be taken as a sales lead. Personally I felt so hounded that I have become a dedicated non-customer of this particular self-publishing company, and will discourage others on a person-to-person basis from contacting them or engaging with them. Certainly this is a technical loss of business for the company in question, but obviously their tactics of hounding people into being customers work on some level - or they'd change their approach. I'm not suggesting people are necessarily being bullied into buying - if they're anything like me, even their desire to maintain respectful communication and their wish to remain polite won't result in them spending money they do not want to spend. But I do wonder whether sometimes people who don't know better do feel pressured, coerced and manipulated by sales tactics like this; after all, enough people must respond to flattery regarding how their book just must be made available for the world because it's certain to be that special (even though it has never been seen by the person paying such compliments) by buying a self-publishing package that this approach helps to keep the company afloat.

What I also learnt is that if I do not wish to speak to someone about something then I don't have to. I'm usually pretty good at concluding phone calls I don't wish to remain participant of these days, but every-so-often I remember the two 40-minute phone calls I had with the sales rep from this company and it re-steels me against wasting my time and my energy on things I know I'm not interested in.

So, what am I doing at this point? Not investigating what my options are. If something crosses my path I might make note of it and secrete that information away somewhere for reference later on, but for now concentrating on what I need to get done at this point is probably the better thing to do. Don't try to run before you can walk, as the saying (sort-of) goes: do what must be done and then do what must be done next, rather than trying to get everything all lined up ahead of time. Early preparation is a good way to approach things, but things can change. Like aeroplane ticket prices, for instance. The best idea is to have a plan and a timeline of sorts, otherwise you end up being chased and pressured by parts of the process that shouldn't even be rearing their heads yet. I still have painting to get done.

On how to tell a story, whichever way you choose

There are many different ways of telling stories. Or showing, if you accept movies and games a storytelling media - which they are, for sure, as far as I'm concerned. Sure, movies take shortcuts and sometimes if you sit down and think about what you've seen it isn't really logical or sensible, but overall the story is what you're going to watch - even if it's all about explosions and sudden scares, there has to be a framework for everything to operate within and occur because of, and that's the story. Games are often viewed as an escapist way to not deal with serious things, but people expect games to have more than just a superficial reason to exist (mostly). Absolutely many people will say "well, you have to accept things as they are in games - they're not real", and to a point that's true - but more and more people don't just accept things as they are because they're not real in the media they engage with. There has to be sense and cohesion, even when something's utterly fabricated.

Some people like to tell a story by details (for the billionth time I mention J.R.R. Tolkien) that enrich the world but don't allow much reader speculation. I mentioned this in a "recent" post (because really, it's been a little bit of time since I last updated): Tolkien doesn't seem to like the reader to imagine anything he doesn't wish to expound upon. The opposite of Tolkien would be From Soft with their Dark Souls/Demon's Souls/Bloodborne games: the plot is given as a vague basis for the action, and the details of events that have occurred that provide other non-player characters with their motivations and justifications are left excessively blurry.

The juxtaposition between the two approaches is fairly stark.

One creates the impression of a fleshed-out world wherein the characters exist by way of extra detail that squares everything away as a locked-down definite. The characters exist as a product of that world because not only their immediate setting and how they interact with and influence (and are influenced by) it is clear, but also the delineated history of that setting and its reason for existence is given, as well as the ancestry of the character as a person is given. There can be no mistake: if one does not know who the mother of a character is or was, it's only because of what I deem to be a weird and archaic focus on patrilinear succession and descent - not because such a detail hasn't be thought of and decided upon by the author (in this case Tolkien, but really any of his general discipline). One certainly knows the father, the father's father, and the often the father's father's father by name or, at least, title.

This puts the reader in a position of omniscience. A huge number of people like this approach: it really does give the world in question a richness and depth, and I appreciate that as much as anyone else does. Most people out there in the world aren't historians, linguists or anthropologists, and yet an extraordinary number of us will spend hours reading the histories of made-up peoples and their cultures. It's just interesting. Stories are interesting, and the fuller the story, the more story is told.

The downside to this is that it also creates a certain detachment in the audience. We all read, feel invested, and support the goodies while decrying the baddies. But we have a false sense of understanding of the world presented: we're told things are a certain way, and we read them in the most objective way we can...but as the adage goes, history is written by the victor. The author is a stand-in for such a victor, because it is their vision that we see. We're told who the good guys are and who're the bad, and we just have to accept that (and we willingly do), and invest in the success of those we're told should succeed and the failure of those we're told should fail. In a way it's a very propagandistic way to view the world: we aren't given any conflicting information that demands we must consider multiple viewpoints at once. In fact, we're often given multiple plots to follow, but because we're told everything in such immense detail there's really nothing we have to process beyond the words on the page. We have our hands held so tightly that we're not allowed to imagine anything. Even items are described in such glorious detail that we're told what precise hue the metal has in seven different kinds of light, including sometimes no light at all, because it glows when there's evil a-lurkin'.

Being able to enjoy the full expanse of a world means one has what one considers a full understanding of its reaches and its reasons, but it's what could be called objective subjectivity: such a detailed and easily-seen example of Everything creates the impression of everything being out in the open, but it's still fed to us through the firm grip of a singular guiding hand whose design is anything but objective and nothing but subjective due to their own desires and motivations for communicating the story to begin with.

The opposite approach provides an equally fleshed-out world, but it does so through suggestion and implication. Perhaps this is more the approach of visual, experiential storytelling (as in, you discover as you explore, i.e., play a game) than it is the non-actively-participatory storytelling of books and movies, because as with life if one doesn't encounter a certain situation one cannot learn from it or understand it. It would depend on how linear or non-linear the experienced story is made to be, for certain - a character in Demon's Souls, for instance (and yeah, the name is spelt with a possessive apostrophe despite there being many beings one might describe as demons. It always has bothered me. The final boss isn't really made a big enough deal of in the game to warrant the assignment of all souls as belonging to it - but perhaps this is an instance of non-definite storytelling?), may never be encountered if one doesn't know to look and doesn't stumble upon them by accident, and yet the story remains the story. That character is still there, with whatever knowledge/perspective/skill they possess in isolation from you, the player, and their own story, or the suggestion of their own story, remains as well. Your story may involve encountering them, but if it doesn't it's still a complete story, insofar as your story can be described as complete(d). Life is exactly that - encounters happen or don't, but for all the opportunities taken or missed the life "story" of the person living it is still complete unto itself.

I quite enjoy stories that work based on this premise, as it reflects the uncertainty there always is in reality (which many people prefer to pretend doesn't exist, unfortunately. After all, their understanding is the fullest, most sensible and in all ways the best, and if war should be declared based upon that understanding then of course only a fool would fail to see the justice in such fighting). No person can ever hope to have anything more than a viewpoint of the world as seen through their own filters, and no person can ever hope to know another anywhere near as close as they know themselves. Backstories are related from subjectivity to subjectivity - and a story that is told in such a style creates a more realistic impression because of the sophistication in recognising and creating a subjective, limited and therefore limitless reality. Stories that take this approach encourage the audience to engage in speculation and become part of the storytelling process themselves, going from a passive absorbent sponge with reading (or viewing) ability to an active contributor to the shape of the story as they understand it - which again reflects the nature of the world and of experience, and also of being presented with a framework upon which to build understanding. There's room for uncertainty and that creates room for imagination and a feeling, potentially, of cracking a code when everything starts to slide into place.

The problem, though, is that if a story is to be told with the approach of "well, I don't know that because I'm just the storyteller, not the person living it", the idea of cohesion can become a bit weak. Details that don't match between events may be interpreted as different perspectives of connected situations, or misremembered hand-me-down tales; but they might also be accidental contradictions that weren't caught in the editing process because details are so nebulous as to be almost unhelpful. And maybe slightly more distressingly, it may afford the opportunity for the storyteller to not really bother to create a real version of the story that is the "true" account of events upon which the told story is draped. There are two types of "not knowing the details" - the kind wherein everything is set in stone but the story released to the audience is filtered and skewed, asking them to engage and piece the story together from what is shown or told to them, and the kind wherein not everything makes sense because it doesn't quite fit together due to bad planning on behalf of the storyteller.

Just as a fully-detailed world creates a kind of objective subjectivity, an "unexplained" world creates a sense of subjective objectivity: each person gleans what they will from the evidence presented, but is left unable to make absolute judgement calls because they're forced to recognise that there is a plurality of perspectives which are unknowable and unable to be experienced.

There's room for both approaches, for sure. People crave details and really enjoy gaining ever more full understanding of things they're invested in; but people also enjoy being able to help make sense of a story for themselves and the suggestion that there are things to be discovered that are by definition undiscoverable.

I do think, though, that the need to give details to flesh out a story is something that a lot of people fall trap to. I remember reading a draft of a story a few years ago and feeling really jarred by the sudden removal of myself from the flow of the story to be told that the event a character had just mentioned was known as _____, a situation that had lasted however-many-years and had been resolved by whatever. It was a first draft, of course, but my first feedback was that details like that are great to have as part of the story, but if they are to be included they have to have a natural place, or they can be added as a footnote or as part of an appendix section. I don't think the feedback was appreciated, and I felt bad for having stepped in to say anything at all - I hurt the feelings of the author and he stopped talking to me. I hadn't been rude but I had overstepped a boundary, I figured, and it bothered me that I'd had a negative impact in that way. As a reader, though, I didn't need to know the particulars of that piece of history at that time, and I felt really removed from the story by the sudden appearance of superfluous information placed to flesh the world out more. Unless the information is included to enrich the story itself it ends up creating a more expansive world at the expense of the story itself - and that shouldn't be something that happens. People love their details, but if they want to include them (which they should feel free and proud and empowered to do) then the way to do it best would be by following the example of Tolkien: finding ways to create a culture that involves reference to forebears, or history, as a natural part of its ways, so that details are found out as the culture is demonstrated.

And then there's exposition, another matter altogether. In my novella manuscript I use exposition a lot - because I'm telling a broader story as experienced by many characters whose thoughts and considerations the audience is privy to. I'm sure some people won't like having so much set out before them, and that's alright. The story I'm working on right now (still at 35,500 words because slow is the progress I make sometimes) takes are far less "I can read your thoughts" approach - because it's a lot stronger on telling the story as it happens as opposed to how each person is affected by it. However...this is probably best left for another post.

Seriousness vs. frivolity, and other dualisms (in brevity)

I'd quite like to secure for myself a copy of Moominland Midwinter by Tove Jansson. It was one of my mum's childhood books; both she and the book were published in 1957 and both have withstood the test of time pretty well, I think.

In seriousness, though, and as I think I've mentioned before, the thing about Moominland Midwinter is that it really gave me this sense of wonder as I read it. I suppose it sat well with some kind of not-yet-identified affection for weird and magical things that I'm quite well aware I have these days. Magic and weirdness are amazing things, all in all, and even in my earlier years when I was hyper-sensitive about my red hair and never had confidence in myself as a person who was (and is) allowed to be as I wished myself to be I guess magic and weirdness were already fitting pretty well into my worldview.

The problem is that I'm looking for one edition in particular - one with a light purple-blue cover and the image of Too-ticky (one of the book's characters) sitting upon a bridge over a small stream, and Moomintroll standing on the snow nearby looking up at her. That was the edition I first read when I was perhaps 8, a full 36 years after first publication of the title, and I have sentimental attachment to it. The story itself wouldn't have altered at all, I realise. But, you know, sentimentality.

But you know, I reckon it's that fondness of weirdness and magic that drives me to draw and paint and write these days. I have a set of kids' books that I'd love to actually finish illustrating which focus on magic as a normal part of the world - as in, freeing the mind from the prescriptive and proscriptive ways we're all trained to think and having a sense of wonder. We all tend to take for granted that we know things, and we understand how things are, and that's all there is to them - but that's a very adult way of being, and kids aren't born with that need to categorise and describe and be correct according to observation. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that there's anything amiss with being accurate - but striving only for accuracy tends to result in a loss of subjectivity and an inability to enjoy the wonder going on around us.

A good example is the idea of plant neurobiology. For quite a while I've held a fairly alternative perspective that while science is a grand thing and can explain a lot, we shouldn't forget that it should be challenged. Most people would assume that because there are no nerves in plants that plants have no neurobiology to speak of, and sure, if one demands that animal nerves are present for nervous impulses to travel through in order for an organism to qualify as innervated, one might say so. But who says an animal nerve is needed to carry nervous impulses? I've thought on this a fair bit over the past several years and really can't see how a narrow set of criteria is supposed to reflect a broader image of reality. Many scientists (far from all, of course) are challenging the idea that plants have no nervous systems. A key piece of evidence is the alterations in behaviour observed in roots of germinating seeds when the root cap is removed: when it is intact, the root grows and every so often seems to pause and apply pressure to the substrate to assess how appropriate it is to grow into, whereas without the root cap the root is less organised, growing faster but without seeming direction or drive to find good growing conditions. Does this indicate a nervous system akin to a mammals? No, I'd say not - but it does indicate that there are alterations in behaviour that occur when the root cap is injured which may be broadly similar to alterations in behaviour seen in animals whose nervous systems are also compromised. In short, a brain and its constituent nervous system don't necessarily equal the only form of nerve web an organism can have in order to have nervous sensation. Science can't see animal nerves in plants, for sure - but perhaps it needs to broaden its definition of what counts as a nerve, and how signals might be relayed.

In any case, imagination is a great thing, and I think we become a little too focused on describing how things are or must be at times, and this leads us to lose our ability to describe how things might be. I don't necessarily envy children their ability to present a coherent version of the world that doesn't really possess cohesion (the sum of the parts is greater than all of the separate parts put together is maybe a good way to interpret it), because I think understanding the way things are as well as we can is important...but I do think that taking some time to forget how things are and imagine how things might be through art and through storytelling is important as well. Storybooks are really only regarded as childish because they simplify things and propose nonsensical explanations for the world, but who said that nonsense and simplicity has to be childish? Nonsense and simplicity sound fun. Why promote serious adulthood vs. irrational childhood when we could promote fun personhood instead?

And if anyone knows where I can get a copy of Moominland Midwinter with the cover I fairly generally described, it'd be swell if you could let me know!

Confusion; otherwise known as intellectual property rights and copyright law

Recently I've been operating under my designer/artist role more than I have my aspiring author one, and for good reason: I've been working with a group of people to get a map designed that provides both the local and tourist populations with a free guide to some pretty cool stuff in Wellington. The city is pretty well-known for its eccentricity in some ways - born in part of its diminutive size and the "you can walk anywhere you want to go" reality that lends, meaning that everything is readily accessible and people are able to actually interact with each other face-to-face rather than through the windows of their cars. It's got a great creative scene and what's known here as a "café culture"; the city is about people and people interacting with one another, at least in some ways, and the experiences that this interaction enables. The chance to do some design work focusing on the local atmosphere has been quite enjoyable, to say the least.

This focus has sapped a lot of my freer time and energy, though - to the point of having to write a list to tick things off just to make sure I'm getting somewhere with the numerous things I want to do. Have I mentioned that already? Maybe so. One of those things has been the legal registration of intellectual property rights to a design of mine - something I, and many others, might not think to do as the first step in a creative process, but one which must surely be easily-enough completed.

As it turns out...no, this isn't necessarily the case. I found out today from a friend I'd been discussing it with that registration of intellectual property rights over a design in New Zealand is, in fact, only possible if the design has not been published publicly. As told by the report they were issued recently, even if something is original and its only instance of publication has been by the individual/company seeking to register it as their intellectual property, the fact it has even been published negates any ability to register it as such.

It's really quite strange - especially considering that on the great wide internet the only instance of their design ever having been published was on a profile associated with them alone. I suppose I understand it, in that once something is out there in the world it's seen and interpreted by many eyes and minds, and so loses its absolute "newness" - but it doesn't really make any sense, given that they, the designer and publisher of the design, were the one seeking to register the intellectual property rights they already had (and have) over it. Part of me is led to think that paying to register one's intellectual property rights is held in some way to be equal to the publication of an idea under one's name - i.e., once the design is published under one's name the intellectual property rights are asserted.

Whether this is the case, I'm not sure. My friend possesses those intellectual property rights, absolutely, just as I do over my unregistered design. And they possess a report saying that the reason they cannot register those rights is because they've already published the design under their own name - meaning that a search was conducted and the design was found to exist under their name already. The report might be seen thereby to reinforce those rights. They just can't register those rights under New Zealand law. It all seems a little weird.

But this leads me towards another conundrum regarding legal possession of original information: the New Zealand stance on copyright.

The crux of the situation is this: if you possess the manuscript to written work then you hold copyright of that work. There's no need to register it or complete a formal process of declaration of your possession of copyright because possessing the physical or electronic manuscript is enough.

But...is it? For instance, if you send a piece of work to someone for review, do they then possess copyright to it as well? Or does it come down to keeping track of all letters, emails and other forms of communication which establish who sent what when? It all seems a bit easily subverted, really. And then of course one must consider that if one does not wish to put stock in such a process lending any legal support to one's actual claim of possession of copyright, in New Zealand one doesn't actually have any other option by way of legal process: there is no way to register copyright in New Zealand to any written work. As stated by the Copyright Council of New Zealand,

Copyright comes into existence automatically under the Copyright Act 1994, when a work is put into material form e.g. manuscript, audio/video recording.

No registration is necessary (or even possible), nor is any other formality required for securing copyright protection.

As I'm sure anyone out there who has written anything ever might wonder, how does non-registration establish possession of copyright, exactly? The simple explanation of it as far as my worry dictates is, well, it doesn't...maybe. Actually, this is what leads me to think publication of a design under one's name asserts intellectual property rights: if you can demonstrate you did it first, then you did it first, at least according to New Zealand law. Whether it actually does is for the silly people out there (like me) who want to be able to create things and not have someone out there swoop in and try to take those creations away.

In the UK things are done one step better: to establish copyright one must take the completed manuscript of something and mail it to oneself and then never open the parcel. The date printed by a simple ink stamp at whatever mail hub it was which processed your mail that day is enough to establish that you are the originator of the contents of the package and when you completed its creation. That's what I've done with my novella manuscript. Someone I know overseas possesses a physical copy of an early draft of it I sent them back in 2012 (I believe), but I have the email trail saved to establish origin. The next step for me is registration in the US - where there is a way to register copyright.

It really does make one think, though. What are the laws that protect intellectual property rights and copyright doing if they preclude or make impossible any registration? The mind boggles.

Gatekeepers, part 2: yes vs. no

My last post was timed perfectly to coincide with the recent news that Authonomy.com, a site owned and operated by HarperCollins as a means to encourage community between aspiring authors (and to act as a means to expose themselves to those authors without the need to rely so heavily on literary agents, which is something more and more people are finding an impasse these days due to the "gatekeeper" phenomenon I mentioned last entry), is to close its metaphorical doors on the 30th of September this year.

It's a pity; I joined Authonomy many months ago, but hadn't found myself in a position to submit anything up till now (I'd like to blame a lack of time and energy for the process for this, as trying to gain a foothold in graphic design in a place like New Zealand, where the population and therefore the opportunities are rather limited [those gatekeepers again...] plus work as a neonatal intensive care nurse are both time-consuming and require a lot of physical and mental investment...but it's at least as much to do with my fear that my work just isn't good enough, and that hurdle is a far greater one to clear), and now I've missed the boat. As a means of access to opportunities for both HarperCollins and aspiring authors, Authonomy is an excellent idea - a community site actively run and engaged with by a publishing company in an attempt to overcome the roadblocks and naysayers that would otherwise keep good creative mind and skills shut away from the world seems perfect.

The trouble is, though, that as HarperCollins stated in their blog, over time community engagement has waned and the number of new titles that began as uploads to the Authonomy site and have become real-life books has decreased along with that. HarperCollins clearly isn't finding the community is fostering the opportunities it desires, and as any well-designed and well-helmed business knows, if needs aren't being met by an aspect of the business model but resources are still being invested into it, then it really is throwing good money after bad to keep it going. I'd like to assign human emotions to the corporate entity that is HarperCollins and imagine it actually doesn't like the idea of cutting Authonomy off - I truly believe it doesn't. But alas, even the most sentimental company has to be somewhat willing to dock useless appendages before they turn septic and start slowly poisoning everything else.

So where are the authors going? Or where are they not appearing from? Where's the new work? There's no way people just aren't writing, not telling stories, not putting fingers on keyboards and pens on paper. Stories are definitely being told. I can't help wondering that it might just be that the sheer amount of energy that seeking acceptance from a publishing company takes, as well as the overwhelming reality that most people will not be published by a reputable publishing house regardless of how well-written their story is (for reasons like demographic appeal, for instance; remember the Harry Potter reference I made last time? If the story is true it literally took a child saying they wanted it published for the book to be published, but prior to that it was assessed as not being appropriate for the target market. Unbelievable, right? I think this is the fourth or fifth reference I've made to the gatekeeper phenomenon in this entry so far), is working against the awesome efforts HarperCollins went to in seeking the establishment of a community-focused method of finding new material and new content creators, and is certainly working against those publishing companies who deem themselves more exclusive and don't have such initiatives on the go. Put it this way: sure, receiving a "thanks, but no thanks" in isolation isn't necessarily too hard to deal with, but in the face of rejection after rejection after rejection, not seeking that rejection (because that's what it starts boiling down to) is the far more sensible option.

And you know what doesn't offer only the discouragement of countless rejection letters? Self-publishing. There are drawbacks, as I touched upon last entry. There are the attitudes many people have regarding it, there are the limitations of exposure, there are the risks that a story that could be great if just given the right critique from industry experts will be sent out into the world in good form instead, and there are the tribulations of design (which is where someone such as myself would come in, just as a suggestion...), among many other things to consider when making the decision whether to self-publish or not - but in the end, the idea of feeling as though one has made a contribution to collective culture and the idea that one is at least marginally successful creatively are far more positive for a great many people. It's totally understandable.

For a moment there I was thinking to myself "yes, but if everyone self-publishes, then the checks and balances won't be in place. Horrific grammar and bad writing will proliferate. Surely society will collapse!" - and then I remembered that people communicate horrifically all the time, and bad writing already proliferates even with the current system in situ. And who's to say that writing a story and having it published need be a mark of brilliance? Nobody takes the attitude that someone who can paint a mediocre picture is somehow marring art; the entire point is that sometimes art is appealing, and sometimes it isn't, and whether it is or isn't depends on who views it and what they both give to and take from it. Maybe writing is the same, or it could be.

At any rate, the main point here is that I'm disappointed that Authonomy is shutting down, and I hadn't predicted it - but that I'm not surprised about it. It makes sense. Being the determining factor in one's own success is of huge appeal to people, and the undeniable truth is that by engaging with someone (or something, like a publishing house) who is 99.99% certain to tell you what you're doing or have done is not good enough, success is turned from attainable to unachievable. Success is a totally subjective thing, of course - one person's success may be selling 10,000,000 copies of their work, while another person's success may be just seeing a bound copy of the work they poured their heart and soul into while working crappy hours with high stress just to make ends meet. Who doesn't want success in life? Who wants to be told "no" time and again? Nobody. Kids hate being told no, and as it turns out so do adults, even if they understand it far better than they would have growing up. And rather than putting themselves out there to be told no - even if they might actually be told yes - they seek yes.

It's sad that the yes that Authonomy might have led to for a lot more people is being turned into a this site no longer exists. But that's what happens when people don't want to read another no. I'm absolutely assuming Authonomy is a casualty of the leap many people have taken into self-publishing, of course, and that may not be the entirety of the story - but it's a definite factor. If you seek yes and have a way to find it, that's the way you're likely to go, even if your yes is a lot smaller than that of a publishing company. A little yes is a great deal more success than none at all, isn't it?

Gatekeepers: the trouble with publishing (and self-publishing)

I may have mentioned it before (and also I may not have...), but recently I designed the cover for the book of a friend of mine, The Good Slave. It's going to be self-published, which I realise many people remain critical of because for some reason the business model of publishing, which is irrevocably bound up in the business of money-making, is taken to be bound up in the business of publishing good literature.

Not that it isn't, in some way - as in, certainly one could equate a book being published by a company that wishes to make money and therefore will only invest in quality products with a book being published because it is quality; and conversely, there are many self-published books that really might have benefited (greatly or otherwise) from being critiqued a bit more strongly and perhaps more objectively before they were published.

However...there is a certain amount of error in assuming that having money thrown at a product is the same as that product being certified of quality. We've all read books that serve a purpose and perhaps are over-filled with clichés which frankly wouldn't have made it through edition if the point of the endeavour wasn't part of a greater promotional model. I've read a couple of books associated with a certain franchise of games that has itself gained notoriety and reputation for being things of quality, give or take different definitions of "quality" used for each different game; the books themselves are entertaining enough, but they suffer the same predictability of phraseology that riddle so many so-called epic story-telling genres today. It detracts, at least for me, from the story itself - one can't roll one's eyes and read simultaneously, right? Not that I actually do roll my eyes, and I hope I don't sound like I'm being too negative - it's more that it's something I notice, and because I notice it I'm taken out of the story.

There's a lot of wiggle-room, of course - if a book is set in a certain time or is supposed to conjure up certain imagery, then use of language to paint that imagery and be indicative of the time makes total sense. It's when it comes down to a stilted sense of drama that it become an issue. It's when the word patterns becomes clichés in themselves - something which I've spoken about before. Resorting to the same old, same old by way of how someone speaks or how a secret is revealed isn't something that stories should do.

Ultimately I think that's part of the reason people shouldn't just assume a book is of lower quality because it's self-published, and it's certainly a great part of the reason people shouldn't just assume that a book that has been professionally published is good.

I'll absolutely offer the disclaimer that one person's good is another person's bad, and vice-versa. I'd never want to pretend that my opinion is more important or more justified than anyone else's - why would I? It's pointless trying to tell someone else who literally perceives something in an alternate way to me that their perception is one of error - because, for one thing, they could say the same of my perception, and for another, diversity of experience and perception is something that I don't feel is celebrated enough. But then...that's the point really: the old view of being published by a company of repute may be enough for some to regard a book as a thing of quality might mean they won't regard a self-published piece of work as comparable...but there are plenty of those out there who aren't so hung up on the status symbol of a publisher's logo on the spine or on the publishing information page.

Don't mistake me: I'd love to be published by a reputable publishing house, as it will mean the greatest possible exposure of my work to eyes and minds that might want to read it. Who wouldn't want a wide net cast on their behalf? The troubles with this are several, though, including that it's about as easy to win the lottery as it is to have something you've laboured over for years, possibly, deemed worthy enough of publishing. As I said, a publisher is only partially motivated by promotion of the literary arts in engaging in actual publishing; there's a large amount of economic toing-and-froing that must go on, and in the end if there's any doubt that a book will be a good investment, the publisher just won't invest. Everybody's heard of the Harry Potter books, and almost as many people have heard of the struggle J.K. Rowling went through before a publisher's daughter requested of her father that he publish the first instalment of the series. He wasn't going to, otherwise, because he didn't view it a wise investment - as didn't the however many authors (many, as my understanding goes) the manuscript had been sent to prior to that. Imagine if the series had had to be self-published? Would it have had the same success? No, probably not - but not because of quality of work, but because of exposure, or lack thereof.

Beyond this concern, though, is the fact that once someone entrusts a work of one's own creation to a faceless publishing house (for unless they're small-time they are indeed faceless, as any multi-national corporation becomes regardless of how much they might want to remain seen as a caring, personable entity that wants your money only because it costs money to love you so much), one actually loses creative control of the work. The words can't be changed (though changes can be requested), but the visual representation of the work in question becomes the task of a graphic design and marketing team, and is only partly, if at all, the business of the author. I'm all for giving graphic designers work (I've studied it myself and remain in the process of trying to break into the industry) - but the truth is an author's idea of how they'd like their story visually represented may be taken into consideration...or it may not. Ultimately the marketing team are going to be able to strong-arm most authors (or at least, new authors) into following their lead because, after all, they know best what consumers respond to.

I know what it's like - as a designer with freelance jobs I do invest in the projects I do in order to work in partnership with clients, because often clients have ideas but don't know the different aspects of design they must consider, or whether their design idea is the best to achieve what they want. But that doesn't mean it isn't a partnership - the designer is hired to design something, but good design isn't just the designer sitting down and drawing something out and then telling the client the design is finished when they've decided it is. Good design involves how they client sees their product, or themselves, or whatever it is the design is being created for, as well as the designer's skills, including their advice and their creative direction. Design isn't just about doing what the client wants without investment on the designer's part, and it definitely isn't about the designer telling the client what the client wants. When I designed my friend's book cover there was a lot of back-and-forth messaging - I felt I'd cracked it, but he wasn't quite as happy...and so I'd make another alteration. Long-distance this sort of fine-tuning can present hurdles, but they're cleared easily enough if communication remains free and open - and it did. I might have felt I'd arrived at a good outcome, but because he wasn't quite so pleased, there was more work to be done (a lot of it had to do with balancing brightness and tones in the art - the intent for now is for a digital piece ready for an e-book reader, and so the brightness on my laptop screen wasn't identical to that of the standard brightness it needed to be tailored for. The same thing happens for print design: you have something super bright on your screen and when you print it out it's dull and dark, purely because you're not dealing with the same parameters in one format as you are in another). In the end my friend, who was in this case my client, was the one who decided whether the cover was finished or not - because it's his story, and his vision. And I was able to deliver something he was extremely pleased with, and that made me feel I'd done a great job.

The question is, though, one of who gets to claim the title of client in the publishing sphere. Is it the author, who wants to be published and who has likely been turned down by other publishing houses before? Or is it the publisher, who gets to accept or dismiss manuscripts for publication? Power relationships, in which one party is in a far less powerful position in comparison to the other, are a real phenomenon even when it comes to writing and invention: after all, you have to be able to argue why someone should part with their money in order to get that money, and if you push it too far (say by refusing to acquiesce to your publisher's desires regarding the images on the cover of your book), you might end up being told to sling your hook. It's your product, but the fact is you're just another aspiring author and the publishing companies have their choice of investment. They hold the power.

As a friend of mine say, publishing companies (and companies like them) are gatekeepers: they get to decide who to let through and who to bar from entry, and they don't have to actually explain their perspective. It's a useful comparison, and a very apt one. It's also depressing, if one stops to think about it, to consider that the world loves creativity but the amount of artistic ability that gets ignored or dismissed by those who get to say yea or nay because of what their perception of market tastes are. That's a whole lot of stifled creativity.

Word up

I can't help it. I focus on detail, and have always been able to spell well, and that causes me to really pick out the errors in work I've read. It really grates on my sensibilities to see inappropriate word-use, grammar, syntax, spelling, punctuation...

Oh, and the rampant use of cardinal numbers when ordinals should be chosen is literally ire-inducing to me. It seems more common these days than it used to, as far as my memory goes - but then I'm only 29, so my personal purview may not, shockingly enough, encompass the entirety of modern written English. I see it a lot, though - and hear it. Air New Zealand has YouTube adds which utilise the cardinal (1, 2, 3, 4...) instead of the ordinal (1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th...) when describing dates of expiry of current flight deals - and while the narrator for such ads is clear enough in his intent, I don't believe being clear is an acceptable approximation for being correct.

And it's that which irks me so: certainly I can understand someone when they say "which I don't even know if that's a good idea"; they clearly think something may not be a wise decision. However...what sticks with me is the inappropriate appearance of "which". It doesn't make sense. For it to do so the rest of the sentence would require modification: "which I don't know is a good idea".

It boils down to pronoun redundancy: if you use one pronoun ("which"), you do not then need another ("that"). You could use both if one functions as a pronoun and the other a determiner (which both are): "Which is the one that you like?" is a clunky, rough-edged but grammatically-sound sentence. "Which is that you like?", or "which that you like" (as a statement, not a question) are perhaps more archaic versions of saying the same thing - the odd phenomenon of words losing their broader communicative ability in more modern times, requiring the addition of more words to say the same thing. But that's an aside - one I may come back to, because it really is interesting. Back to the topic a hand, though, "which that you like" can also be said "that which you like" - a seeming reversal in word order that means the same thing, but actually a nice little trade-in: the sentences both begin with pronouns and have determiners as their second words. Because which and that are both pronouns and determiners, and can be used in combination provided one acts in one function and the other takes on the empty role, either can occupy first or second position. The actual word order itself isn't reversed - just the choice of words used changes. It's quite a nice example of how things aren't so cut-and-dry on the surface but actually still are if one cares to think about them.

(And I know, few people bother. There are other, arguably better things to do with one's time than argue about how to speak.)

Of course, I realise that spoken, unrehearsed language is subject to errors and is defensible in its inclusion thereof - it's not proofread and approved before going live. It still irks me, but I'm more able to understand mistakes made in the moment - unless they're derogations relating to groups of people. I'll point out the error with that in a forthright way, obviously with the understanding that because pop-culture has made it "acceptable" to say "don't be a girl", "men are stupid", "that's gay" and so on, people don't always think that what they're saying has impact on others. Such understanding of the trend doesn't mean I think any of these things are okay to say, though - I just don't assume someone meant to be offensive, but rather was uninformed. If they then choose to be a total jerk about it and not modify their choice of words thereafter, then I'm left with no assumptions but the definite knowledge that they are indeed meaning to be offensive and seem to think that, while they make a definite choice as to which words they use, they bear no responsibility for that choice. But here's the key point to life in general: a person may have certain freedoms, such as the freedom of speech - and that's great. Freedom of speech doesn't mean freedom from responsibility for what is said, however, and it doesn't mean freedom from someone else exercising their freedom of speech by verbally tearing you to pieces for being insensitive.

That's a really good point for writers to remember, though: writers must know when to make it clear that their character thinks a certain way, rather than that they as the author do. As said above, while spoken words are not proofread (but should be chosen wisely anyway), written words most certainly are, or should be. It's easy to make a mistake by using the incorrect voice; if it's not clear you're describing something from the perspective of a character, you as the author risk describing it in the voice of the narrator - which is you.

I'm a type 1 diabetic, and have been since I was 11. I'm consistently amazed that people think diabetes in any form is caused by "eating too much sugar" - roughly akin to victim-blaming, for example: "if diabetics hadn't eaten so unhealthily they wouldn't have diabetes now, would they?" As a nurse I can unequivocally say that no, it isn't such a cause-and-effect situation. To say diabetes is caused by eating too much sugar ignores, for one thing, the sheer variety of diabetic conditions (type 1 is not type 2, gestational diabetes is not diabetes insipidus. Diabetes actually means "passer through", and medically communicates nothing more than the idea that large volumes of urine are being excreted); it also ignores the fact that our society/societies are not health-oriented, and don't encourage balanced lifestyles; it also ignores the fact that stress hormones decrease the efficacy of insulin, and stress also tends to be "coped with" by engaging in activities which further increase risk of ill-health: smoking, food-cravings, drinking, etc., etc.

So it'd be infuriating for me to read a book whose narrative voice described the eating habits of someone as those of a person heading for diabetic status. Luckily I never have read the words - it's just an example. Yet I'd be completely fine with a character who was otherwise presented as having little health-related knowledge saying such a thing - because the character is demonstrably ill-advised and ignorant. Neither being ill-advised or ignorant is a good thing, of course - but nobody has all information and knowledge. Even with the internet so readily available, knowledge is only accessible if it's meaningful and is sought out. An everyperson (which is a bit of a dismissive statement to those of us who are not average in every way possible) may not know what diabetes actually is - and so statements of ignorance are permissible because they demonstrate no truth other than that of that person's ignorance. The trick is to have that a defining feature of that character. A nurse or doctor should not be so characterised, but a politician, a stay-at-home parent, an artist or (ironically) a writer could be - because knowledge of diabetes would not be relevant to them. In any event, the author of the story is not permitted to be so uneducated, if they choose to write such things.

It's a matter of details. I might be focused on them, as I said earlier, but I would like to think that anyone trying to communicate in the wider world would be, too. It's just sensible to think that if one is going to write (or speak), one has some knowledge of what to write (or say), and how to phrase it.

I live in hope!

Some considerations for self-publishing

A couple of months ago I attended a talk by a local meet-up co-ordinator on self-publishing. It was an interesting semi-seminar; it didn't really tell me anything new, but it was still interesting to hear about this person's experiences with self-publishing.

I have mixed feelings about the process and the practice, I have to admit. The positives would include that I would retain creative control of all aspects of publication: if I chose a specific word with a specific spelling (or a specific mis-spelling) then I wouldn't have an editor making changes based on assumptions; I could be able to choose the typeface used (an incredibly important part of story-telling); and I would be able to decide on format, cover design, etc., etc. The negatives are that, dependent on who you speak or listen to, self-published books are deemed "lesser" by many because they have achieved publication without jumping the numerous hurdles put in place by publishing houses which frankly don't want to spend money on publishing books; and a self-published book is far more limited in promotional scope, because the author, as the publisher, won't generally have the same access to the same channels as, say, Harper Collins.

I already know how I'll style my novella, when I finally get my act together about it: I've designed the cover and the custom lettering for the title, and I've formatted the text in both typeface and layout, eliminating such grievous features as orphans and widows. It's basically 100 pages of story, ready to go...unless I rewrite sections. And that could absolutely happen. I don't want it to - I feel it's completed. But it could still happen. But it's difficult: I know exactly how I want it to be crafted, but if it were deemed worthy of publication by a publishing house, I'd likely lose that creative control. I'd have to choose: exposure versus creative say-so.

I read a blog recently that espoused belief that if you're an author, no matter how good you think you are, you should never design a book cover for yourself. A respondent said they'd trained in design and was confident in their own abilities, and the blogger pretty much told them that it didn't matter: they weren't trained in book cover design, and therefore shouldn't design their own cover. It's an interesting perspective; the blogger - who has self-published two novels which have done reasonably well, much to their credit - seemed somehow certain that designers weren't appropriately trained in book cover design and therefore should leave this area of design well enough alone. And sure, such a perspective is valid if the designer in question is a clothing designer. Or an industrial designer, perhaps. But the comment-making designer led with information which strongly implied they were trained in graphic design. There were no reasons to presume otherwise, and I wondered at the sense in the blogger saying "oh no, don't. Hire someone else", as if book cover design were a separate skill set altogether. It's not, in case you were uncertain!

As it turned out, the blogger then went on to speak highly of using sites which basically offer designers the chance to use their expertise to design for clients...who don't want to pay a whole lot for the work the designer will do. There are a few sites like that around: they ask designers who are often actually struggling to build a design portfolio or who are freelancing and don't have work to pay the rent to sign up, and then let people in need of design select the lowest amount to pay for the designers' skills and time. It's like saying to a teacher or a nurse "Okay. You want to be able to eat this week? I'll give you an amount I deem your skills are worth and you give me the best design. I might not select your design in the end, as I'll have others competing with you, too, and if so you'll have worked for nothing - all because I don't really want to go to a design agency and have to pay for the hours devoted to this project and engage professionals in their abilities and skills".

Does it sound as if I have an issue with this? I sure do. As someone who has worked for over a decade, I wouldn't ever wish to request anyone, trained or otherwise, work for me for free. It's unfair. Yet sites like these (and logo design competitions, as another example) basically encourage the diminution of skills that the person needing a designer doesn't have. It strikes me as a bit similar to the so-called 0-hour contracts so many people have to deal with: you're hired to work but given no guarantee of hours, so if you're offered no hours there's no breach of contract on your employer's behalf. However, if you can't work a set of hours of which you might have had a day's notice, you can be fired because you're not meeting their expectations. It's a very underhanded way to commit someone to a job you can't be bothered giving them any security in.

So no, I'm not a fan of sites that basically engage in crowd-sourcing and inspired competition. The practice diminishes the hard work, time and skills a designer puts into even having the ability to provide a service. It's a system of undervalue. And it really irks me.

You can possibly imagine how unenthused I was when the speaker at the self-publishing semi-seminar promoted the use of such sites. And of course I understand that often a self-publishing author won't have much money to spare in pursuit of their dream of getting their work out there. Except...well, you have to commit money to such pursuit. You can't take shortcuts. Or, you know, you shouldn't. If you have the skills yourself, then use them (you could of course hire someone. There'd be nothing wrong with that) - but if you don't have the skills you shouldn't be offering some paltry sum that you think is appropriate. You're not paying for a pre-finished product whose creation costs have been factored into the price you pay; and you don't know the extent of the work, the time, or the value of any other resources the designer may need to utilise. In reality, you pay for the resources, the time, and the expertise as well as the final product.

It's funny how you learn about such perspectives. People are more concerned with how they can benefit than thy are with how those providing the services they need might benefit. But also, people aren't concerned with making their work appear the best it can: I remember the speaker at this meet-up saying "fully-justify your text", which is well-and-good if you just happen to have a multiple-tens-of-thousands-of-words-long piece of text with just the right rhythm character-wise to have all lines optimally filled with whole words. In the far more likely case a story doesn't lend itself so graciously to such a format, hyphenation is the answer - preferably after at least the first three characters, or before the last four. An author may have to slightly alter words in order to eliminate large gaps between words so that spaces are consistent line-to-line. And on top of the typographic concerns, if stylistic choice dictates the use of certain glyphs to denote the end of the section or a chapter, they should be used at 300dpi - or the image becomes pixelated and loses its definition.

I hadn't actually intended this to be such a rant. Well, I suppose I had, really, actually, because such things really do annoy me; but I suppose the benefit to this rant is that it's a bit like a "what not to do" advisory. I hadn't wanted to engage in advisories in this blog, so much - so it's a non-advisory advisory, I guess. I hope at the very least it's something to think about - because realistically this sort of stuff should be thought about, whether for the writer's benefit or for that of the people employed to help craft the writer's vision. It shouldn't be about cutting corners or undervaluing. It should be about getting something out into the world with the care and attention it should receive paid to it - and that means recognising that it's far more than just a casual affair, and that the hardest, most important part is over. As it turns out, what gets written isn't the whole story at all.

A reading and an entry

I did a short reading the other evening. Quite short. And to a very small audience - just two others at a local writers' meet-up which, due to the weather being terrible this time of year, only had a total population of five this month - but still worth mentioning nonetheless.

It was a good experience in general, really: I got generally good reviews, and even the "critical" aspect of it wasn't in particular critical, taking the form of nothing more than "you've set the scene with the voice, which perhaps could be pared back just slightly, but what you've written is really effective". That's a paraphrase, of course - but specifically the words "pared", "back" and "slightly" did occur in association with each other.

And I'll be the first to admit it: the manner in which I tell stories is a little bit off-kilter with normal, familiar every-day vernacular. I don't have any issue with that; while I wouldn't set about writing a story set in the Dark Ages in language specific to the Dark Ages verbatim, I would want the language I were to use to fall within the perceptive bounds of the setting. The mode by which people communicate has as much impact on a story as what is being said, albeit in a different way; I'm certainly not suggesting a story can be told merely on the back of how someone speaks, rather than what they say. But it makes total sense: you wouldn't pick up The Odyssey and expect phrases like "How's it going?" to be all too common. Linguistic elements passively shape the perception the reader has of the world they're reading about. I'm sure I've touched in some way on this before, so I won't bother rerunning that race. But I'm open to that kind of critique; I'd rather know how people find reading it than pretend I don't need to know.

It was the first reading I'd ever done, I have to admit, so it was a good learning experience. I was aware the whole time of the speed at which I was speaking, making sure not to fall into the trap of going too fast which I know a lot of people find themselves doing. I've used Audioboo before to do a non-live reading of a poem-story I wrote (and which I'd like to do something with in the future), and I found myself struggling to speak slowly and breathe regularly due to the pressure of having a "perfect" recording. I didn't have that pressure when I did the live reading, oddly enough; I suppose the reality of the situation is that you can always stop and gather yourself while reading aloud in person, but if all you're leaving is a recording...you don't so much have that "hold on a moment" ability.

Anyway, I left the meet-up feeling really proud - the feedback was altogether very positive. The world in the story was correctly judged to be one of foreboding, and of a lurking danger, and of dread - and that really is a key psychological setting of the story. That I had been able to communicate that in the scene I read - or rather, that it had been espied - was really gratifying, particularly since the motive when writing the scene was not specifically to underscore those feelings at all, but to give a voice to a character to whom reference had been made but of whom no real exploration had been done. I feel really glad that the scene has proven itself well-situated enough for there to be congruence between its greater context and the message the scene itself in isolation communicates.

In an unrelated update, except regarding the shared medium (writing) and the notion of paring something down, I entered a severely shortened version of a story about the sea I'm likely to be perpetually writing the longer version of for that "short short story" competition I mentioned a couple of posts ago. I managed to get something several thousand words in length down to 300 (the absolute limit for any valid entry) and then got rid of one word for a grand total of 299. How much of a story can you tell in 300 words? Not much. Well, no, you can tell the entire story, but you can't tell much of it. In any case I'll wait to see whether I'll even generate attention. I have no idea of the calibre of other entries. I'd like to think mine's up there but it really might not be at all!

So, yes - two things writing related. It's good fun.

Lore in absentia

Something that I've learnt is that lore, whatever its form, has to be tangible. I say that because I think at some stage every storyteller has a bit of a moment wherein they think "well, this is how this story is because this is how I say it is"...and while that's true on the most basic and general level (a story is a story because the teller is telling it, and whatever happens does so because the teller says it does), it doesn't ring true when the reader suspends disbelief and lets the world being spoken of become a temporary reality.

We've all (I say, applying broad supposition to my actual and potential audience) seen movies, and we've all watched tv shows - dramas, comedies, mysteries, horrors, etc., etc.. And books, too - I'd say most of us have at least read one book, start to finish. And the thing is, unless we're either gifted with the most powerful of imaginations or cursed with no imagination at all, what happens within the story of a movie, a tv show, a book, or anything else has to make sense. There has to be a progression from A to B that can be demonstrated on some level that doesn't require too much effort to make plausible. The underlying lore of the tale, or the event, or even the characters must be capable of reduction to its most basic form and still make sense. There are notable exceptions, but these exceptions are the ones that lead the viewers or readers (or players) to search for more and to ultimately find it, not search and be given holes in plots and histories that just don't follow through.

A great example of one of these notable games is the Dark Souls series (if a franchise of two games can be deemed serial): the lore is present, but hard to find, in most parts at least. There are jumps one has to make but only insofar as things being all but said, so the logical conclusion is never stated outright for the sake of confirmation but the signs all point to it anyway. The games have earnt many people fame, at least in their respective circles, and have led to jobs regarding game guide content creation, as well as self-employment opportunities concerning YouTube content creation as well. The presentation of lore in the games and supporting material is done in such a way as to have it in some form of "plain sight", there to be found, but never outright confirmed. Tolkien's works are a bit of antithetical to these games in this regard, in that Tolkien didn't seem to want any guesswork being done - or at least, didn't like the idea of not having resources available to those who wished to engage in further research. The numerous appendices after The Return of the King tell the reader a more complete history of things related to The Lord of the Rings, and that has led the various multimedia works to have been built on the backs of the books being wrought with exceptional detail and richness. A sword is not merely a sword. But then, a sword is not merely a sword in Dark Souls, either; to know the absolute history of it, though, you might find yourself having to interpret hints and suggestions, rather than being told that this person son of that person son of another first obtained it from a smith who had beaten into the blade three different kind of ore sacred to this race, in order for it to be significant and have myriad different abilities. But the case remains that the lore is still there, just dependent on your ability or motivation to find it.

A bad story is, among other things, one that presents information without having set the stage for its inclusion. Well, perhaps not a bad story, but certainly a bad choice made by the author to depend so utterly on something without provenance. Deus ex machina it's called: the phenomenon of an event or plot point that is necessary for progression of the story to come out of nowhere. In terms of the author or creator, it amounts to something akin to throwing one's hands in the air and saying "this is the story because I say it is, and that's all there is to it". In one respect it might be deemed similar to one core aspect of the Anthropic Principle: that the Universe is as it is because if it weren't we wouldn't be here to observe it. That seems to amount to a big fat nothing, and indeed it does in fact amount to a big fat nothing: because it doesn't describe why the Universe is the way it is, but rather that the Universe can be observed as it is. In reality the Anthropic Principle has two major variants (and possibly others I'm not studied enough to be aware of): the Strong Anthropic Principle, which says that the Universe is the way it is and we can observe it that way because it is compelled to align itself with conditions that encourage or necessitate the evolution of life complex enough to exist within it and observe it; and the Weak Anthropic Principle, which says simply that if the Universe were any other way, we wouldn't be around to ask why it is the way it is, and that because we're in a version of the Universe that does allow us to exist then it's obviously a stable, realistic version, and we don't know of any other Universes that don't support life capable of observing it. It's all an interesting notion, but I have a bit of trouble seeing what use it has when trying to actually assess why the Universe has found itself in its current state unless we are to rely on saying "because we are reason enough", or at least, "because it must be observed by something". It's a bit cart-before-horse-ish, equivalent to a reversal of the question "how can we be here?" and its answer "because the Universe is hospitable to life in our form (in a general sense)".

With stories this doesn't really work. You can't just write something and say "well it had to happen that way because if it didn't, this wouldn't have happened, and the whole story would have fallen flat"; you can't say "the ends justify the means". The means have to lead directly to the ends, in summation at least, even if that means you have to invent means to get to an end that are beyond expectation. The means beyond expectation have to make sense in the world wherein they occur, of course - you can't go from everything being normal to suddenly everything being on its head at the end, as the crisis involved in this sudden change is really where a story might begin, or is the consequence of preceding events; deus ex machina isn't really the note to leave a story on.

It's a difficult one, though: how much of a plot does one have to give away without giving too much away or too little? I guess there's a real technique to that. I'm not quite there with the story I'm working on at the moment, but I will be...at some stage. But I've fallen trap to the "well, it doesn't have to make sense given the amount of information presented, so it's fine" thought process, too, particularly in my novella manuscript. I'm glad I saw sense regarding it, even if it doesn't change the ultimate outcome, and even if it's a minor set of details - because what if I were asked about it? What could I say? "I'm not sure myself"? Well...perhaps that would actually be a legitimate reason, provided it's not an excuse: some storytellers (Tolkien) take the position of being the be-all-and-end-all of knowledge on a particular story, while others (From Soft with Dark Souls) take the position of being privy to some information but not all, and thus the reliance on the "who knows?" excuse leads fan speculation, research and debate onwards without any yes or no from on-high. It's a bit of a ruse, of course - for a franchise like Dark Souls, so story-dependent, to make sense, an over-arching story must be fleshed out. Individuals within the story-telling team may or may not know all of the details, but the story is detailed, even if not shared. To be honest I do quite like the idea of a writer taking the perspective of "I am narrating a story, but what I know or don't know doesn't affect the story itself. The story is as the story is" - but the issue again is that when the story is supported only by itself and there is no tangible lore extra to the story...it begins to feel limited.

As I said, I had a case of this with my novella manuscript - not because it felt limited, and not because I took the "the story is as the story is" approach on any superficial level, but because what I did supply story-wise created the impression that the experiences of a certain character were the result of something in her past which she was only indirectly involved in, having been a child at the time. It was at that point I was prepared to say "that's all she knows, and since this is her (part of the) story, that's all the information I might have to go on in relating her thoughts and feelings". But...I thought about it, and realised that while on the one hand that's perhaps justifiable, on the other it perhaps isn't: I'm not writing an entire story from her perspective, as if I were her, or filtered only through her thoughts and feelings; I'm writing about her, her thoughts and feelings, and importantly about her history as well. Even if the reality of the story is never made clear, because she never knows it clearly herself...that doesn't mean the story doesn't exist by itself. So I had to actually decide what the details of that story were, and as a result I managed to alter what we do find out about the character from her own thoughts and feelings - and it gives us a greater appreciation for the environment she's in, too.

That's probably what it boils down to, really: not so much that lore need be readily accessible, or that it need be accessible in any significant way, but that it be accessible through its existence in absentia. If lore is non-existent, it can't tell anybody anything; whereas if it exists but isn't available, what it doesn't tell an investigator can be as important to the impression left or the information gleaned as what is told. It needs to be tangibly unavailable, I suppose. It can't be a case of "well, nobody knows", because if nobody knows then the story runs no deeper than the paper it's printed on, or the screen it flickers into movement across.

Again I guess this is an issue of how much of a story does one need to reveal without it being too much nor too little. And I guess the answer is some, provided there's more of the story that is actively being withheld as part of the storytelling process; some, as long as it's enough.

How's that for a definite answer? Appalling. But at least you know there's more to it than that.