April 2011 - Jeff Deck - Novel Writing Coach

Two Masters

Entertaining versus informing– which is the primary purpose of writing? Certainly there should be room for both in any quality writing, but sometimes it feels as though these two impulses are contrary, pulling in different directions and demanding that one choose between them. I don’t want to have to make that choice, in my own writing or the writing of others that I read. I want the factual and analytical pieces that I consume to have some narrative sense to them, some style and color. I want my entertainment to have some goddamn fiber to it– informing me not in the same way that nonfiction would be, but in the way of the heart, and understanding this world we live in. And dare I say moral thrust, or will that relegate it automatically to the dreary Inspirational or Religious categories at the bookstore (while such a creature still exists)?

This may sound like a reframing of the style vs substance debate in writing, or literary vs genre, but it’s not quite that. It’s lacing our chocolate with vitamins, and adding sugar to the bran. Plenty of great, successful examples of each type exist. Entertaining information can be found aplenty in the pages of New York, or The Atlantic, or New Yorker, or Wired, not to mention nonfiction books that have the pacing of fiction. Informative entertainment comes to us via Battlestar Galactica, with its meditations on war and fear, or the works of Michael Chabon (treatises on our impulses, suppressed or not) or Neal Stephenson (always eager to show us how things work, or worked at some point in history). This stuff is out there. It exists. I guess it just disappoints me how much of the entertainment out there fails to even make an effort at informing, and how we gobble that shit up en masse. Or at the other end of the spectrum, how useful information and insightful analysis gets imprisoned behind dry and needlessly abstruse academic language, or impenetrable coded scientific texts. How did we get all tied up in our specialty niches, unable to communicate with each other? How much could we share if we could speak a common language?

I’m not blind to market forces and popular demand. A lot of people would rather not think about anything deeper while being entertained. Perhaps the majority of the American public, if we’re going to face harsh truths here. Maybe I’m just a snobbish elite who should leave the tastes of real folk alone already. But Christ Almighty, we are ignorant in aggregate. Last year, only 58% of Americans reported believing that Obama was born in the U.S., despite ample supporting evidence. In 2006, 36% of Americans stated that they thought 9/11 was an inside job. In 2010, only 57% of Americans thought that global warming is occurring, dropping 14% since 2008 (what, does Al Gore need to release a movie every year to keep people interested?). In December, Gallup reported that 40% of Americans believe in strict creationism– that God created humans 10000 years ago. Those are the fact gaps. And as far as maturity of human emotion and understanding of our fellow folk… well, you don’t need stats from me to know how piss-poor those are right now.

So how about a little more vitamins in the sweets? How about more sugar in the muesli?

Aural Stimulation

I’ve got a commute of half an hour to work, a reasonable amount of time (especially considering the hour on the subway each way to get to my last job, in Boston), but still time that I prefer to fill with something constructive, or at least entertaining. The radio can offer some charms, if the station out of the University of New Hampshire is on a good tear or there’s some NPR on, but ultimately it’s unreliable. That’s where my GPS, also known as Authority, comes in– not for directions but for her mp3 capacity.

Back in the days when I was heading up here from Somerville every other weekend to visit Jane (a routine almost a year in the past, if you can believe it), I developed a regular stable of podcasts to load onto Authority for the trip up and back, some two and a half hours total. I’d start off with MPR’s Grammar Grater, then ease into NPR’s It’s All Politics as I approached 95N. Then it’d be time for Radiolab, WNYC’s excellent science program, and on the way back I’d dive into This American Life. Bringing up the rear (and often carrying forward into the next set of trips’ listening) would be the Slate Culture Gabfest, and a show about RPGs, Active Time Babble. There were others that cropped up from time to time, such as the programs that Nancy Pearl, librarian extraordinaire, would do with different Seattle radio stations, and Book Tour, broadcasts of author talks from the Politics & Prose bookstore in Washington D.C., both of which abruptly stopped for such a long time that I gave them up for dead. (Grammar Grater fell into that category a while back as well.)

Now I’ve been reviving some of the old podcast traditions, with my good friends Ron Elving and Ken Rudin keeping me up to date on politics, Jad Abumrad and Robert Krulwich doing the same with science, and Ira Glass and his team filling me in on just about everything else, but these excellent programs only fill up so much time, and there’s five hours to kill each week. I’d like for my listening to be more focused— to give me information that I could put to use in one of my current writing/editing projects.

With that in mind, I’d love to hear about your recommendations for the best podcasts out there in the following areas: technology (where our personal devices are headed), history (17th-century baroque and proto-American would be especially helpful), the military (standard practices and lingo), and Northwestern life (Seattle, Portland, etc.). Ones that can clearly explain economics and architecture would also be good, though the latter probably would suffer from a purely audio format. I can be drawn in by pretty much any compellingly explained information and explored quandaries, I suppose, and that’s always useful, but I’m constantly pouring this stuff into my head– I could really use some filtering!

Much appreciate your input, and I hope that if you aren’t already tuning into the podcasts that I mentioned, you’ll check them out. Quality stuff. Except when Steve Metcalf is being a little too bitchy about some book or movie not sufficiently rarefied for his taste.

Alarmed by Fire

As you may know, I started a job recently that primarily involves editing fire investigation reports. All day, I read harrowing tales about malfunctioning space heaters, pillows that were left just a little too close to nightlights, and the depredations of red squirrels. My colleagues mentioned when I started that some increased fire paranoia would be inevitable. And indeed, I find myself wondering why we haven’t gotten around to getting renter’s insurance yet, and whether all the lamps were turned off before I left the house, and was that smoke I just smelled?

It was kind of a cruel twist, then, when on a recent morning the smoke detectors all started going off (or sounding, as house style would have it) while I was shaving in the bathroom. Jane woke up and joined me in trying to figure out what was going on. There was no smoke. Our upstairs neighbor wasn’t home, but I didn’t see any smoke or fire emanating from his place when I looked outside. Still– what if there was something going on up there? I knew already how quickly a fire could ravage a place if not acted on immediately. We tried to give the neighbor a call, but to no avail.

We didn’t want to call 911. It seemed silly with no evidence of fire. But those damn alarms were just sounding and sounding throughout the whole house, upstairs and down. We called the fire department’s regular number but nobody was there; it was around 7:30 am. So we called the police department’s regular number to try to get advice from someone, and inevitably a fire truck came blaring down our street a few minutes later as a result.

Luckily there were no actual emergencies that morning, and the firemen didn’t mind taking a ladder to the upstairs neighbor’s balcony and checking inside, just in case, as well as explaining to us that the fire alarms were hardwired together to an electrical feed and that we probably would not have a fun time trying to shut them off. We ended up having to call in the landlady and her husband to silence the damn things. It was a couple of them malfunctioning.

So no disaster there. But there very well could have been. I’m actually surprised that there aren’t more fires happening every day, just because of all the crazy shit that can go wrong. Thankfully, there are precautions that you can take to increase the odds in your favor. Here are some quick lessons that I’d like to share with you based on my brief experience so far with fire investigation reports:

* If you’re not an electrician, do not do your own wiring for your house. Yes, it’s more complicated than it looks.

* Just don’t smoke. Sooner or later, you’re going to do something stupid while disposing of your butts and ashes.

* Keep combustible stuff away from stuff that is hot.

* And for God’s sake, get a squirrel gun or something! It is indeed probable that those rodents in your attic are chewing on something they shouldn’t be.

Today Jane and I took a hike up Blue Job Mountain with her mom and surveyed the surrounding peaks and forests from the fire tower at the summit. I’m pleased to report that the landscape remained fire-free. This time, anyway.

Hour by Dark Hour

So let me just start by saying that, yes, Persona 3 is a Japanese RPG, or JRPG if you will, so there will be a bit of content here and there that may be geared to horny Eastern males. There are a couple of maid costumes (strictly optional). There is some occasional hypergirly cooing, not to mention an awkward scene at the hot springs. Don’t let this stuff distract you from the fact that the game has a fantastic understanding of the push and pull of daily life, hour by hour– the choices we are constantly making, whether or not we even realize it.

I’m talking about a video game for the PlayStation 2 that came out a few years ago, one that I’ve been playing intermittently for the past couple of years and am on the verge of finishing. Your main character goes to high school by day and fights demons in an extra-planar tower at midnight. The friendships that he maintains and the activities that he pursues during the day make him a stronger fighter at night, essentially, and as the player you make constant decisions about which things this guy will do each day. After school, will he spend some time with the old couple at the bookstore, or will he catch a burger at the strip mall? In the evening, will he get in some battling or will he take the dog for a walk? Late at night, will he do some studying or get extra sleep?

There’s never time to do everything in a given day, or a given week. Only by carefully balancing activities in different areas over a long period of time can you produce a truly well-rounded and powerful character. If that sounds a lot like life to you, then you can begin to appreciate what the game has accomplished. Sometimes I see a Persona-like lens over my days, now that they’ve begun to settle into a regular routine with steady employment. After work, will I do some writing or take a run with Jane? If the latter, can I fit the writing into a later slot in the evening? On a Saturday evening, which social link do I invest time into, that of my girlfriend or my friends? (Guess which is the safer answer, ha!) Or do I stay home and read?

Social choices are pretty cleverly implemented in the game, by the way. You have ongoing relationships with numerous friends and potential romance interests, each of which must be attended to and nurtured over time. If you are seriously dating someone and you neglect that person for a couple of weeks, the card representing that relationship will become “reversed” and you’ll need to devote extra time to appeasing that person before it can continue to level up. Ditto if you make plans with someone and then ditch them in favor of other plans!

I can see games becoming even richer in the future through the dual tasks of simulating some aspect of life in a meaningful way, and of causing us to reflect on our own lives through the very game mechanics that they present to us. For example, if someone who spends every weeknight watching TV for four hours could be reminded through a game like Persona 3 that she is continually making a choice, however conscious, of how to spend her time, then who knows what could happen?

And yes, there is a Persona 4 as well, and yes, I am hesitant to play it, considering I’ve already sunk about 120 hours into number 3. Considering that my old PlayStation 2 still has life in its limbs, though, I’ll probably grab it eventually.

Well, it’s early evening on Saturday, and now I’ve got to make a choice between doing some writing… or playing more Persona 3. Can’t there be time for both?