M. Jones's Blog

Original article @: http://inabsentia.bloodlettersink.com...

It's true. I have an ugly baby. Its name is 314 Crescent Manor and it has a snotty nose and its eyes are kind of crooked and I'm pretty sure it has colic. I did everything I could to make it a pretty baby. I edited it until my eyes bled, I reformatted and experimented and redesigned it until it can finally now travel across different ereaders with impunity. I burped it and fixed its typos. I hammered at it and sweated in coffee shops and obsessed for weeks and months, I hand picked character pictures based on DNA, I studied and scraped inside the marrow of quantum suicide looking for ways to exploit it with authorial psychopathy. I envisioned, chipped at and melted my characters and the setting down until they finally fit the shape they were meant for. I worked hard, and my baby was born. But not many people love my baby. They think it's ugly, its face a mish-mash of caricatures, the very fact I had it in the first place irking many. Just who is its father, anyway? How dare you create that ugly looking thing by yourself. For a while, I was thinking maybe they had a point. Maybe my baby should have been an abortion that happened somewhere around chapter ten. But I can't help it, I look at that baby and I realize, even though it isn't appreciated or understood, it's still my baby and it's still my proof of success.

I'm not saying the premise was easy, because I certainly wasn't going for simple. It's about quantum suicide and many worlds theory, taking it a step further and assuming that if many worlds are possible, they must be in some sort of order. If an event happens where that order is disturbed and those many worlds are shuffled, what happens to an existence that tries to thrive within it? The result in the 314 world is fragmented universes blending into each other, where gender, location and human interaction become a mess of shattered mirrors, each world reflecting another reality, these possibilities superimposing themselves on daily life. Accusations of it being too confusing are duly noted–it's supposed to be confusing. You can't turn the workings of a linear world into a non-linear one without mucking about with perception. I imagined that worlds toppling into each other are messy. So, really, all those negative reviews about my ugly baby saying it's too confusing puts me in the strange position of telling that reviewer, yes, you get it. You're right. I wrote it that way on purpose. One gold star!

Maybe I should be more clear about my influences. I was pretty sure I said in my author bio that I'm a big fan of Richard Brautigan, William Burroughs and Philip K. Dick. I'm not as good as them by even a molecule, and I doubt I ever will be, but I am telling lies if I said their unhinged, skewered perspective on the world didn't influence me in a big way. I love books that make me think, that distort reality and make you look at it from beyond the back door of your expectations, books that are like Escher lithographs and as detailed and strange as a journey through Bosch's garden. I wanted to walk with those who are the formation of my creative ideals. I feel confident that I did so with the best of my ability.

So what if I stumbled here and there? A misstep is not the end of the world. Besides, I wasn't aiming to please the masses, this was a homage to the creative work I loved. 314 Crescent Manor was a web serial, written episodically and a grand, happy experiment. It wasn't supposed to be commercial styled fiction and that's okay. 314 Crescent Manor will not sit on a shelf with Sue Grafton, nodding at me while my head swirls with sales numbers and spreadsheets. That's not where I wanted the book to be, but I keep getting the feeling that people want it there, put on a shelf, making perfect sense and being a boring love story. I didn't follow the rules properly, bad author me.

When did we become so enamoured with doing what other people tell us to do just because they say it with bitchy authority? Hello world, please fit into this box labelled 'B', for Box. Those who know me understand that I'm not in a box. I'm not even the same room as a box. I'm still from that world where indie actually meant something. The word indie is just a short form of independent, which according to this dictionary is defined as "...1. not influenced or controlled by others in matters of opinion, conduct, etc.; thinking or acting for oneself: an independent thinker. ..."

Okay, okay, I give, I'm a special snowflake and you think my work melts on impact and is irrelevant but really, I don't care. I did something, for me, without anyone else's influence, and that's something I'm very, very happy about.

Making other people happy shouldn't be the goal of a writer, in my opinion. Studying how the market is going and how to force your book into that niche isn't a pathway to great writing, but it is a good way to gain commercial success if what I'm hearing all the time is true. I don't think it's where a good book should come from. I can't help but notice the more I visit bookstores the more I see millions of words saying the same things, the same themes and the same judgements within the pages, the same polished style, the same, the same, the same. For all of our war cries for standing out and being unusual there's this huge fear of independence that lurks in coffee mugs with Motley Crue and Clash logos printed on them. It's more than just books where this generic sameness is creeping in, it's in our grocery stores, in our clothing lines and in our choices of music, none of which really are choices any longer. There seems to be this collective comfort being taken in generality and any tipping of what's good for us or 'right' is reacted upon with anger.

I didn't anticipate the hate with 314 Crescent Manor, and that is what I find most disturbing and disappointing. I've learned that people get angry over any cracks in their concrete definitions, even if those definitions don't truly exist. Things like gender and how the universe is supposed to be arranged. I'd thought we'd evolved further than that, but I guess we've swung backwards when I wasn't looking. The conservatism is spreading throughout our lives like a virulent, banal leukaemia, blanching all in its path. I learned after writing this book that the expectation of certain structures, be they social or environmental, are things that many cling to with a very tight grip. Chipping at it causes controversy.

I didn't go out of my way to have an ugly baby. I just wanted to try something new and interesting and hoped there were others out there who shared in that ideal, and there are and they did enjoy the book. The things I learned about human nature, however, were disappointing. Very few people want to be challenged by something they read, and whatever you put onscreen or on paper had better have clearly outlined reused plots, sparse description and characters that aren't as vibrant as they could be. I learned my lesson. Subsequent works don't challenge the envelope as much. I try to be more linear, and use less confusing themes in other projects. I'm not selling out so much as acknowledging that not every project needs to rewrite the rules of the universe, and I do understand that 314 Crescent Manor will be flawed because I am flawed, and no amount of editorial hand wringing is going to cure the fact that a flawed person wrote a flawed book. These days, imperfection is the same as murder. Still...So what if I'm standing beside the guillotine? I love my ugly baby. If you have one, you should too.

original article @: http://inabsentia.bloodlettersink.com...

It's very rare that I tell someone I'm a writer. I can take criticism, I can take the whole 'you're not a *real* writer because a major publishing house hasn't bought your book' thing, I can take the 'It's not a real book if I can only buy it online' routine. I can even take the bitterness of professionals who immediately start telling me to whore myself to agents and write query letters all day long and beg for forgiveness so I can get on a Chapters shelf. I'm confident in where I'm going and in what I'm doing, and I love my freedom. It's a comfortable niche for me. However, what I can't take, and what sticks in my gut like a fourteen day old hamburger left in the sun and eaten on a dare, is this: "Oh, you're a writer? That's nice. I'm writing a book too!"

Now, if I'm in a room full of other writer people and it's a given that most people there are writing books, my bad hamburger queasy hackles don't go up and I'm more than happy to exchange triumphs and woes among the guilty. After all, these people do understand that writing isn't easy. Writing is HARD. It's WORK. So why is it when you tell people you're a writer, suddenly everyone else becomes one too?

It's a strange phenomenon. I do believe it's the only profession where this happens, and I wish I knew why. When someone says they are a surgeon, there are no closet surgeons who claim to be one too. I don't know of anyone dabbling in reconstructive spinal operations on the side. This lack of respect for the writing craft is difficult to define. Singers don't have this issue, nor do visual artists. Why does everyone and their dog want to claim they are a writer?

It is very nice that a common ground tries to be forged, where eager voices tell you how happy they are to hear about your completed book, but their new autobiography is going to rock the world's socks off and how great things are going to go for them, they got an agent waiting on it already, and how they have the whole thing outlined 'in their head'. I tend to stand there during these conversations, thinking, "I didn't write a book because I wanted to one-up you. I wrote a book because I just wanted to write a book." There's this strange competition that happens and I hadn't realized there was a contest. It's no big thing, really, to say that writing a book does take a certain set of skills and a whole lot of discipline and no, not everyone can do it. I can't sing, paint, draw or perform complex acts of neurosurgery. In fact, I pretty much suck at every profession I've had save for writing, and it's possible I suck at the latter most of all. There is always need for improvement. Writing, most of the time, is like bashing your head against a rock in the middle of the desert. You're compelled to do it and there's nobody around you who cares enough to stop you.

Which brings me to my next point, which is that writers tend to be solitary creatures. The live in their heads and they only pop out at odd intervals, act odd, and then dive back into their keyboards and pencilled scribblings. Many writers are arrogant assholes. Because it takes so much discipline and enforced loneliness and hours upon hours to write, most writers are not by nature social butterflies. There are exceptions to this rule, and they are the ones who can schmooze and go to parties and get written up in newspapers and go viral, and I do hate them with my black, oozing liquid charcoaled envy for their relentless PR skills, but the fact is most writers don't get out of their pyjamas unless they are forced to. As I type this article, I'm wearing a 'Still Brewin' t-shirt nightie right this damn second. It kind of goes back to that arrogant asshole comment I made earlier--all this enforced solitude and constant studying of human behaviour can leave you jaded about humanity. You don't want to be a part of it, you want to be outside of it, looking in, taking notes. Learning about people and how they tick and how much they hide when they think they are being genuine can leave you with a profound sense of everything being shit. (It's not true, of course, because the world is reflected through an author filter, especially when said author is writing an apocalypse novel and happy, shiny people aren't going to cut it in character development. This is a warning. You will get affected by what you write.)

Learning is what writers do. They read, they research, they learn, learn, learn. Because you can't write about a cop if you don't know a thing about his day to day job. You can't write about a murderous mortician if you don't know how funeral homes process a human body. Depending on what you're writing about, you may have to learn some extremely disturbing things. If you hate learning, researching, questioning--chances are you won't be writing. If writing essays and research papers in school made you want to drop laxatives into your professor's mocha latte, you won't write a novel. Writing a novel, a series of articles, an autobiography--it's all the same process. There is no magic button. Contrary to advice you may have heard, you can't just turn off your mind and write--you are the sum of what you educate yourself with.

Speaking of sums, there's been a lot of confusion about that among my non-writing writer peers. With the sudden advent of extremely popular authors, read by people who don't usually read, there is this very wrong idea that writers make a lot of money. I can fully attest that this is absolutely NOT true. You will never make money as a writer. Or you could. I know there are entire careers built on the concept that making a living writing is the only way, the only cure and thousands have done it and done it well. My hand is clapping. Awesome. (ed--arrogant asshole writer personality, creeping in). In this world, you won't be considered a professional *anything* until you get paid for it. Even then, it's not enough. Because writing has to be about more than the money. Or, it's all about the money. Writing bends the physics of human expectation, and both of these statements are true. You will never become top in your field no matter how many awards you win, or how many movie deals you seal. That pulitzer? Fucking garbage. Your ego is under constant assault. There will always be another writer who is making more money and/or who writes better than you. There is a constant state of not good enough living in the soul of everyone who writes for a living, and if you're looking for validation, wrap up that bad hamburger and throw it away. Validation does not exist. No matter what your ideals are, they will not be the right ones. Writing for money is crass these days. Writing for your audience is solely attention seeking. Writing for yourself is selfish. Writing for the sake of humanity's greater good is just madman rantings. You can't win.

Frankly, everything about writing secretly pisses people off. It's just about your ego, in the end, isn't it? Hell, if a jerk like you can write a book, why can't they?

The concept of actually working on your cerebral right hook takes on a hazy significance to the uninitiated. After all, to those who don't write, it's easy. Everyone knows the alphabet. You, big shot writer loser who has a minimum wage job to get by, you don't know nothing about writing. That book you say you wrote? Pish. Anyone can write that. Look at *my* book. It's a story about my life as a guy who built up a ball point pen empire and it's riveting! My book is going to be so much better than yours!

Look, I know I sound like a bitter bitch. It's very nice that you're also working on a book (pasted on, YAAY!). It's not that I don't care you are writing the next biggest seller since the Bible and it's as complex as the Upanishads--I want to know you're serious and not just on an ego high to play one-up on this dishevelled writery writer asshole you know who just wanted to buy a burger and fries. So, yes, I will ask questions about your book and demand to see chapters when they're finished, and I *will* help and guide you if you honestly are working on something and I think it has promise. But if it stays in your head and all I get is "Yeah, I haven't had time to write it out, but I got a callback from that publisher..." Well, I'm gonna smile and call bullshit and leave it at that.

After all, I don't have much time myself these days. I'm writing a book too.

original article @: http://inabsentia.bloodlettersink.com...

The sad fact is, we do care about what people think. If we didn't, we'd all be standing in the middle of our streets, wearing nothing but dirty underwear, drinking beer and belching. While there may be some of you doing that right at this moment, the sad fact is you probably have a group of friends doing the exact same thing, and thus, you aren't as socially edgy as you think, you've just conformed to the rules of a smellier group than those who use soap on a regular basis. We are, like it or not, just another piece of the machine in social conventions, be they part of a scrubbed executive elite or a fly swatting hobo gathering. There are few places to break free of these shackles, but for the sake of argument let's say the mind is the first haven for all things weird and wicked. Creativity need not have shackles, we've been told from infancy. What happens in nightmares is the stuff you draw inspiration from. It is sometimes a cold, dark cavern from which we draw all of our independent spark, a place where social conventions genuinely don't exist. You can snatch that creative spark up and burn your fingers on it, it's so powerful.

Just ask Henry Darger, one of the most infamous of the outsider art heroes. He wrote a 16,000 page opus dedicated to a story about little girls saving the world from evil blue meanies, and nobody was looking over his shoulder, his creativity had pure, terrifying free reign. He had subtitled it "In The Realms Of The Unreal" in case you didn't get the point the first time. Henry Darger didn't need anyone to give a shit to produce incredible works of art. What he created was made in the void placed between what others expect of you and what you can accomplish without external and internal critics.This was his imagination, completely unfettered, placed in collages and thick reams of paper. Some say he was crazy, but evidence doesn't necessarily point to that. Obsessive about his vision, maybe. He loved his work and he dove inside of it with a passion that, frankly, I find envious.

It's a passion that I find lacking in a lot of mass produced genre books these days. I've tried, but I have to say, writing for the masses is about as exciting as writing liner notes on a CD insleeve for Yawnie, master of the piccolo. Keeping an eye on 'trends' and following what the rote of What Other People Are Doing isn't truly a part of the creative process, in my opinion. Dumping your creative spirit into The Realm Of What Other People Think is like putting shackles on your words. It's easy to get blocked when your true voice is muffled. Let's face it, books written solely for the purpose of mass market happiness, devoid of inspiration, are just sad replicas of everything else. Standing out and talking about something with meaning takes balls. If you write for anyone other than yourself, no matter how brilliant it is, your balls are getting kicked by your own perceptions of that enigmatic group known as Other People. Giving Other People what they want isn't the same as giving them what they need. There's plenty of fluff that says absolutely nothing and leaves you with exactly that long after the words The End are typed. If that's cool by you, great. But if that legacy grates on every last shred of your nerves, going with the crowd isn't for you.

Thus, if going with the crowd isn't your style, then what would happen if you threw out the rulebook and made a WWDD? (What Would Darger Do?)bumper sticker out of black and green neon and placed it front and centre in your creative mind? In other words, what would you write if there were no repurcussions, no criticism, just you and a pen and a piece of paper and Hell boiling its way through your cranium? Admit it--you've done it more than once. There's that little scary piece you wrote hiding in the bottom of your desk drawer like a little moldy boil, the creepiness on its pages too much for Other People to bear. But you like it. You're confident it's the best thing you've ever written. It made your heart burst out in sinewy lines from your chest where the arteries snatched up the keyboard and tore off the keys. Imagine writing like that all the time. You'd have reams and reams of the stuff, you could bath in its inky blood and go mad with joy over it. People have. You'd write it because you don't give a shit and you could care less if Other People read it. Other People had nothing to do with it. They had no power over that work. There are two facts that need to be known--No one is going to like everything you do and secondly, writing doesn't cure cancer. What Other People think is flexible and mutable, as individual as every pimple. It just doesn't matter.

Take the elusive Them, the Other People, the Masses out of the equation of your creative process and free yourself to write authentically. Editing and critical thinking is what comes after you wake up from the dream and take a look at what it gave you. But there is no room for either of those things in the creation stage. Going for external inspiration when the process begins internally is killing your spirit. Get it out of the cage of other people's expectant gaze and set it free. Don't just stand in the middle of the street in your dirty underwear and drink beer and belch, stand there with an alien, Jesus and a fistfull of hogweed. There may be people who disagree with your methods, and certainly there will be some who don't like the point of this article, its font, or the meandering sentences.

Good for them. Myself, I'm practising what I preach. I don't give a shit.

It's a fine art.