Passion

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I’m not talking about romantic passion now.  I’m talking about the passion an author has to have for his novel.  It really is essential!

About a year and a half, I started writing a novel which struck me as a good idea.  When I got about 30% of the way through it, a friend who had been reading it said, “it’s boring!”  The wind went completely out of my sails and I set aside the work I had completed.  I wrote another novel in the meantime, and when I finished that one, I decided to have another look at the ‘boring’ one.  My friend was right; it was boring.  But, I felt that the ideas behind the book were good.  I had just executed them poorly: without passion.  So, I set to work again: reorganising, clarifying, deleting and adding material.  I think it will turn out well if I maintain my current level of passion.  Passion for what? you might ask.  I think that in a good novel, the author has passion for three elements: a character or characters, the story, and the message.  Passion for a character means that the author really knows him or her, and really wants him or her to come alive for the rest of the world to see.  Passion for the story means that the author loves the idea of his story, and wants to tell it in such a way that the reader will be captivated by it.  Passion for the message means that the author feels strongly about the meaning he’s trying to convey to the reader.

I think it’s fair to say that not all novels have all three elements.  Many novels lack a messages or an ultimate meaning, but all novels have character(s) and a story.

Let me give you some examples:

Here is Bettina, the  character most readers love to hate, being interviewed by me at the end of Sin & Contrition.  She’s self-centered and very narrow-minded:

William:  Tell me about Franciska and Fredek.  (her children)

Bettina:  Well, Franciska is a successful modern artist, as you know.  I don’t understand her paintings, but some people apparently do, and are willing to pay good money for them.  She’s moved to a larger, more comfortable apartment in the Village, but she still has her art studio.

William:  Is she still living with Florence Donovan?

Bettina: (sharply)  What do you mean?

William:  Well, Franciska’s gay, isn’t she? . . . There’s nothing wrong with it, of course.

Bettina:  What do you mean there’s nothing wrong with it?  There’s plenty wrong with it, and the Bible forbids it!  (This from a woman who renounced her Catholicism to join a ‘more fashionable church’)

William:  As I understand it, being gay isn’t a choice that people make.  It’s just their . . . nature.

Bettina:  That’s ridiculous!  Of course people make a choice about their sexuality!  And no daughter of mine would ever choose to have sex with another woman!  It would be disgusting!

William:  OK, Bettina.  So Franciska’s doing well?

Bettina:  Yes!

William:  And how about Fredek?

Bettina:  Haven’t you heard?  He’s a smash hit!  He’s now playing Billy Flynn in Chicago.

William:  That’s wonderful!  And does he have a girl friend?

Bettina:  Of course!  He’s been going with Mary Anne for several years now.

William:  When you say ‘going with’, you mean they’re living together?

Bettina: (hesitantly and softly)  I suppose so.

William:  As far as I know, the Bible doesn’t approve of sex outside of marriage.

Bettina: (leaning forward and glaring at me)  Are you implying that I apply a double standard to my children?

William:  I didn’t say so.

Bettina:  Yes, but that’s what you meant!  (sitting back and considering me)  Well, not all sins are equal.  Fredek will get married some day soon, and, in my opinion, sex between a man and a woman is OK.  It’s sex between two men or two women that’s the problem.

Here’s an example of story-telling from Fishing in Foreign Seas.  (John, Jamie’s brother, is celebrating his election to the US House of Representatives.  He is on crutches because his leg, which had bone cancer, has been amputated.  John’s girlfriend, Michele, a nurse, had left him because he would remind her too painfully of a one-legged uncle who had abused her.  Caterina, Jamie’s wife, had tried to convince Michele that John was not her uncle.)

Jamie saw her first, and he nudged Caterina.  From across the room, a solitary figure in a blue and white striped uniform and wearing white pointed cap was slowly approaching John.  Her demeanor was reserved yet determined.  It was Michele.  She stood slightly behind him and to his left, waiting patiently for him to notice her.  The two men to whom John was talking kept glancing at her until John turned to see who they were looking at. 

“Oh, Michele . . . “ he said.  The two men moved away.

“Congratulations, John,” she said, nervously clasping and unclasping her hands.  “You did very well!”

He said eagerly: “It’s great to see you, Michele.”

At that, she dissolved and the tears started.  “Oh, John, I’ve been so stupid. . . . So very stupid.  . . . . Will you forgive me?”  She stood looking at him, her cap slightly awry, dark streaks of mascara on her cheeks, her hands at her sides and an expression of pure sorrow on her face.  John leaned forward on his crutches and embraced her.

“I’m so sorry, John, I’m so sorry!” she said softly.

“I love you, Michele!”

She began to weep in earnest: “I don’t know why. . . . I don’t deserve it.”

He led her to the far side of the room where they sat talking.  Elena, overcome with curiosity, wandered nearby, pretending not to listen.

“Elena!” Caterina called.  Reluctantly, she obeyed her mother and came to the table.

“What are they talking about, Mommy?”

“That’s none of our business, Sweetheart.”

After a time, Michele came to the table and put her hand on Caterina’s shoulder.  Caterina stood and looked at her with a gentle smile: “Your face is a mess, Michele.  Let me . . .”
Michele interrupted, embracing her: “I don’t care . . . “  She looked earnestly at Caterina: “We’re getting married. . . and . . I want to thank you . . . for making me think.”

And here is the principal message from Sin & Contrition:  (Ellen and Gene are two principal characters; they’re adult children are Elisa, studying for the ministry, and Joey, an engineer.)

“But, Mom,” Elisa wanted to follow up on her mother’s last statement, “Why not?  If you’ve been going to church so long, why aren’t you a ‘true believer’?”

Ellen considered this, her head on one side.  “I don’t know.  I guess something has never really clicked for me.  I think to myself: this is such a good story! but then I think: but what if this was all made up by some religious people centuries ago?”

Joey said: “I think what it is, Mom, is that you and I tend to be sceptical about things, and we like hard facts.  That’s why I like engineering and you like designing clothes.  Whereas, Elisa, and Dad are not as rigorous with facts: Elisa likes religion, and Dad tells stories on TV!”

“Joey!” Ellen was shocked, “Your father does not ‘tell stories on TV’!  He gives people factual news!”

Joey cringed in mock apology.  “Just kidding, Mom!”

Gene said, “Well, I think Joey has a point.  I think it’s probably true that some people are more disposed to suspend disbelief and take things on faith.”

“It’s not just a matter of taking things on faith, Dad,” Elisa said, “Two religious scholars, Kreeft and Tacelli, recently compiled a list of twenty arguments for the existence of God.

Joey said: “Give me an example.”

“Well, many of them involve complicated concepts in logic,” Elisa replied, “There is the Argument from Efficient Causality, which basically says that everything is the result of some cause, and if we trace far enough back the chain of cause and effect we will come to an Uncaused Being which has to be God.  And there is the Argument from Degrees of Perfection, which says that something is always better than something else in some sense.  Again, if we trace the stages of ‘betterness’, we will come to the Perfection of All Perfections, which is God.”

“Sorry, Elisa,” Ellen interjected, “I can’t get my head around that stuff!  If God is real, why can’t He just tell us, ‘here I am guys!’?”

“Mom,” Elisa replied, “Do you believe in free will?  That is do you believe that we, as human beings are able to choose the path we want to take?”

“Yes, I think so.”

“OK.  Well, if God were to say ‘here I am guys!’ free will would be gone!”

“Why?”

“Because, if we knew, for sure that God is there watching us, and if we knew – as we would – what he was expecting of us, and if we knew pretty well – as we would – what would happen to us if we didn’t meet His expectations, do you think any sane person would not choose the right path?  There wouldn’t be any options.”

Ellen leaned forward.  “So, are you saying that God gave us free will, and we’re here as a kind of a test?”

“I don’t know.  But it is a possibility.”

For more about my novels, see www.williampeace.net.

E-books

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In May of last year, Amazon announced that it sold more e-books than printed books.  Specifically, it said that it was selling 105 e-books for every 100 printed versions.  Moreover, Amazon sold 8 million Kindles last year.  That amounted to 5% of its book sales.  Amazon is estimated to have a 58% share of the US e-book market.  (Barnes & Noble has 27%; Apple 9% and others 6%.)

Interestingly, in the UK, 92 our of every 100 books is a printed version.

But, clearly, the e-book is becoming very important indeed.

From an author’s perspective, one has to publish in e-book format as well as in the  printed version.  If only a printed version is available, one can lose out on sales.  When Fishing in Foreign Seas was first published in a hard back, printed version in 2009, I didn’t see the need for an e-book version.  E-books were available then, but not such a big chunk of the market.  So, earlier this month, I’ve changed my mind and the e-book version of Fishing in Foreign Seas is available.  Sin & Contrition (published last year) is available in electronic and printed versions, and I expect my future novels will be available in both versions.

The royalties for an author on an e-book are typically in the range of $1 -$2 per copy.  For a printed version royalties can be about 3 – 4 times as much.  When one looks at it that way, e-books are not so attractive for an author.  But international sales of e-book titles are considerably higher than printed titles: shipping is next to nothing for an e-book sold overseas.  I also wonder whether it isn’t easier to make the decision to buy an e-book than to buy a printed copy.  Generally, a printed book will cost about twice as much as an e-book, when shipping is  included.  So, I’m inclined to think that when a serious reader is shopping, s/he will buy 2-3 e-books instead of 1-2 printed books.  And if s/he decides s/he doesn’t like the e-book, s/he’ll just delete it.  (Instantaneous recycling!)

Some of the advantages of e-books are:

  • they take up a negligible amount of space
  • they are readable in low light or even total darkness
  • text-to-speech software will mean that the book can be read aloud
  • there is the possibility of translation, via software, into another language
  • printing of e-books does not consume paper and ink
  • additional software permits searching the text, and looking up definitions

Some of the advantages of printed books are:

  • they have the traditional, comforting feel of a real book
  • they are tangible and easy to give as a present
  • books with large pictures (such as childrens’ books) are more suitable in a printed version
  • because of data rights management it may not be legal to sell or lend an e-book to a third party
  • the content of a printed book may be taken more seriously, while there may be a temptation to skim an e-book or to use it for reference material

A few days ago, it was reported in the British press that Waterstones (the UK equivalent of Barnes & Noble) had signed an “e-book deal with ‘devil’ Amazon”!  The deal is that Waterstones will sell Amazon Kindles in their shops, and permit their customers to purchase e-books in their stores via WIFI.  This made news because, unlike Barnes & Noble, Waterstones had no ability to sell e-books.  2000 bookstores in the UK have closed in the past 6 years, but that trend has nothing to do with e-books.  It’s to do with the Internet being the perfect place to shop for books.

The Novelist as Historian?

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Can a novelist also be an historian?  There are plenty of historical novels published every year, and some of them are very popular.  Some of them may even be quite accurate in representing the events, the culture, lifestyle, technology, and even the key personalities of the subject time frame.

I very much enjoyed reading the Sharpe series of novels by Bernard Cornwell.  Richard Sharpe was a fictional soldier, then an officer, in the British Army from about 1790 to 1810.  The novels follow his progress from raw recruit (his mother was a woman of easy virtue in East London) until he is a lieutenant colonel at the  Battle of Waterloo.  He overcomes many obstacles (military, romantic and social) on and off the battlefields in India, Portugal, Spain, France and Belgium.  I didn’t read the novels as history, although the descriptions of the battles are said to be very accurate, and that Cornwell carefully researched his material.  What I enjoyed about the novels were Sharpe’s talent for surviving  in difficult situations and Cornwell’s array of good and bad characters.

I also enjoyed the Aubrey-Maturin series of novels by Patrick O’Brien.  Captain Jack Aubrey had command of a Royal Navy ship during the Napoleonic Wars, and Stephen Maturin was the ship’s surgeon and Aubrey’s good friend.  The 2003 film Master and Commander: the Far Side of the  World  with Russell Crowe as Captain Aubrey drew material from several of O’Brien’s novels.  Most of these novels reached the New York Times best seller list, and were acclaimed internationally.  Again, I didn’t read these novels for their historic content; I enjoyed reading how Aubrey and Maturin would triumph in the face of adversity.  My impression is that the descriptions of life aboard Royal Navy ships in 1800 is quite accurate as far as it goes.  Winston Churchill once described shipboard life at the time as “rum, sodomy and the lash”.  There was undoubtedly more to it than that brief, brutal summary.  O’Brien does mention the daily (and coveted) ration of grog (rum) issued to the crew, and there are several passages dealing with floggings (which neither Aubrey nor O’Brien, apparently, liked.)  But sodomy is never mentioned, and it must have been prevalent among all male crews from poor, illiterate backgrounds who were cooped up on board ship for years at a time.  In fact, the scene which O’Brien paints is of a very hard but somewhat romantic life.  That’s fair enough; would we be anxious to read about the true brutality of the life?  For example, falls from the rigging were quite common on sailing men of war.  The consequences of such falls were usually severe if the sailor landed on the deck below, and almost always fatal if he fell into the water: rescuing a man overboard was not the norm.

As an author, I have occasionally inserted historic material into my novels.  For example, there are LaMarr’s tours of Vietnam and Somalia as an enlisted man and an officer in Sin & Contrition.  But these passages are not intended to be read as history, but rather as the setting for events in the life of a character.

On the Institute of Historical Research website there is this commentary:

“The relationship between academic history and historical fiction is a subject of great interest to historians. Major academic conferences . . . have included papers and sessions on the subject, and they are proving among the most lively and well attended. There are numerous examples of historians who have successfully moved into the sphere of fiction, and conversely of authors whose fiction is underpinned by rigorous research. The large and growing public interest in history in Britain takes in both historical fact and historical fiction. And it is clear that many historians were at least in part inspired to pursue historical research by novels that they had read, or indeed are currently either planning to write or are writing their own works of fiction.”

It goes on to raise the following questions:

  • “Why have historical novels become ‘respectable’, and why anecdotally are historians being encouraged to write them?
  • What is the difference between historical fiction and academic history, and how rigid are the boundaries between the two?
  • How good are readers at differentiating between ‘fact’ and ‘fiction’ and how much does it matter if they don’t?
  • Does the success of historical fiction benefit or threaten academic history, and what can literary authors and academics learn from each other?”

Perhaps I am a purist, but I believe it is very important to distinguish fact from fiction.  Some of the most egregious examples of fiction parading as fact are the history text books for children in communist states.  These text books of ‘history’ inflate the government’s successes, and, if they deal with failings of the state at all, the picture is rosy and sugar-coated.  How are we (and, more particularly our children) to learn right from wrong if we are intentionally told lies with a smiling face?

The Novelist as Philsopher?

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Should a novelist also be a philosopher?  Just to be clear about the point, Wikipedia defines philosophy as “the study of general and fundamental problems, such as those connected with existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind and language.”  It goes on to say that ‘philosophy’ is derived from a Greek word meaning ‘love of knowledge’.  Plato, Socrates, and Aristotle were among the first Western philosophers.  More recent  philosophers have included Sarte, Camus and Malraux, and all three were also novelists.   Most living philosophers today teach at large universities, and I can think of no one who is both a well-known author and a prominent philosopher.  Interestingly, Ernest Hemingway wrote a number of novels and short stories in which deeply philosophical issues are addressed, but Hemingway certainly would not have considered himself a philosopher.  Rather, he was a writer who had tremendous skill in presenting the fundamental issues surrounding what it is to be human.

Clearly, most novels which are published today have little, if any philosophical content.  This is largely true of  romances, detective stories, science fiction, spy stories, thrillers, and books for children and teen-agers.  Biographical fiction, war stories, political fiction, and historical novels may only touch on philosophical issues.  Does it matter?

I think we have to  ask ourselves why there appears to be a convergence of these two trends.  One of these trends is the absence of a modern philosopher of stature – a man or woman who regularlycaptures the  interest and attention of educated people.  The second trend is the apparent reluctance of philosophers to venture outside the university or outside the professional society meeting to write interesting novels with real philosophical content.  Neither trend, it seems to me, is caused be a shortage of professional philosophers.  While the American Philosophical Association does not publish information on the number of its members, I have the impression that there are at least 25,000 members.   Has the ‘market’ for philosophical discussion dried up (except among college students who are pursuing a liberal education)?  This, I think, may be the answer, and the key word is ‘discussion’.  It has become unfashionable (except, again, among college students) to discuss the key philosophical questions, such as:

  • what is the nature of man in the universe?
  • in the context of the universe and eternity, why is man’s existence so short and his power so small?
  • ultimately, what is the purpose of man’s existence?
  • what is the nature of faith?  of reason?
  • what is the nature of the relationship between man and God (if He exists)?
  • what is the relationship between good and evil?
  • what is more important: knowing or doing?

Various commentators have suggested that our culture of mass understanding of technological, social and psychological issues has insulated us from the assault of these questions.  We are deluged with information of all kinds by the media, much of the information is presented as ‘true’ or as ‘most people believe that . . .”  Our values have become propped up by commonly held assumptions which define our comfort zones.  We have become reluctant to consider, thoughtfully, questions like these because we are afraid of losing our comfortable props, and having to confront what may seem like (and which may in fact be) a terrifying void.

Art, it seems to me, is somewhat ahead of literature is dealing with philosophical issues.  On 3 May 2012, Edvard Munch’s pastel The Scream was sold by Sothebys for just under $120 million to a private buyer.

 The Scream

This pastel cries out with philosophical significance.  It expresses man’s anxiety about his existence in the universe.  The artist said this about the inspiration to do the work: “I was walking along a path with two friends – the sun was setting – suddenly the sky turned blood red – I paused, feeling exhausted, and leaned on the fence – there was blood and tongues of fire above the blue-black fjord and the city.  My friends walked on, and I stood there trembling with anxiety – and I sensed an infinite scream passing through nature.”  In fact, much of modern art represents a commentary on philosophical issues, representing in various ways, the broken world, lost or shattered man, curious values, jumbled communications, and so on.

While the artist may be very good at raising philosophical questions (as The Scream does); it is much more difficult for the artist to provide answers to these questions (as Sarte, Camus and Malraux did in the existential philosophies they presented in their writings).  It is relatively easy for the writer to ask (or to raise) philosophical questions in a novel, as Dickens did and as John Irving does currently.

Of course, it is difficult to paint or to sculpt – to depict – the answer to a philosophical question.  And to an extent, it is difficult to a writer to present his or her answers to philosophical questions in a novel.  The difficulty for the artist is how to communicate, visually, an answer to an abstract question: the viewer may be moved in some way by the depiction, but he may have difficulty understanding.  The problem for the writer is different.  He can set forth his answer quite clearly.  But having the reader take an interest in the answer depends on whether the reader feels any real urgency about the question.  Or is s/he oblivious to the question and insulated from it?

The fact that a simple, but colourful and expressive, pastel commanded a price of $120 million suggests to me that, on at least a subconscious level, people are attuned to philosophical questions.  The challenge is to use one’s artistic skill to raise philosophical issues to the conscious level, and to do so in a way that the reader (or viewer) is intellectually and emotionally captivated.

Place

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The place, or setting, where a novel takes place can be quite important to the reader.  It might be a place s/he always wanted to visit, and about which s/he wants to read.  Or,  it could be a location where the reader used to live; perhaps it has sentimental value.  Maybe it’s a mysterious, or even sinister, place.  The setting can have an effect on the characters’ behaviour or attitudes, because a place can have a distinctive culture.  And, of course, the setting can influence the plot.

My first two novels are set in locations with which I’m familiar.  Fishing in Foreign Seas takes place in Sicily and in three other US cities where the principal characters live.  My wife and I have a summer home in Sicily; we’ve been going there for many years, and some of its beauty, history and amazing culture are on display in the novel.  Caterina, a young Sicilian woman from a traditional background is very different from Jamie, an American man from a well-to-do, northeastern family.  Nonetheless, they fall in love, marry, and she moves with him to the States.  Boston (where I’ve visited many times) and Philadelphia (where I grew up) are their first two destinations.  Boston and Philadelphia are very different than Palermo, near which Caterina grew up.  But these ‘old’ American cities have enough of an ‘old world’ feeling and culture about them that Caterina does not feel entirely out of place.  It’s when they move to Atlanta that the trouble starts.  To be fair to Atlanta, the troubles have more to do with Jamie’s constant business travel than they do with the location.  But Atlanta is a modern city, and Caterina, as a foreigner, did not always feel welcome there.  My older daughter went to university in Atlanta, and her younger sister used to live there.  Neither of them felt out of place in Atlanta, but neither of them grew up in rural Sicily near Palermo.

Sin & Contritionis set primarily in Pittsburgh, and some of the characters move to New York City and Washington DC.  I’ve lived in all three cities: they’re very different in their styles and cultures.  In fact, Aspinwall, which was home to four of the characters and Fox Chapel, home to two of the characters, are neighbouring suburbs of Pittsburgh.   I’ve lived in  both communities.  Aspinwall is a working class area, while Fox Chapel is a well-to-do neighbourhood.  Yet all six of the characters attend the  same schools.  In fact, Pittsburgh is a kind of social melting pot.  New York City, where the two characters from Fox Chapel end up living, represents – for many people – the pinnacle of financial success.  And it’s Washington DC, where Gary, the poor boy from Aspinwall makes his mark as a US Congressman.

Efraim’s Eye,my third novel, which will be out this summer, follows a slightly different pattern.  It is a terrorist thriller with a romance between two of the central characters.  It is set in London (where I’m living now), and where the act of terrorism is to be carried out with great loss of life planned.  Londoners remember ‘7/7’, the day in 2005 when four suicide bombers attacked the London transport system, killing 52 and injuring over 700.  Much of the story takes place in Morocco, which my wife and I visited on holiday several years ago.  Morocco is a magical, mystical place – home to a mixture of Islamic and ancient north African culture.  It is in Marrakesh where a charity is being swindled to finance the act of terrorism and where the lovers make their discovery.  But to add to the tension of the plot, the terrorist travels to Pakistan, Afghanistan, Georgia, Azerbaijan, and Chechnya to gather his bomb-making materials.  I have been to none of those countries, and I’ve had to do considerable research about each place to make it real and to demonstrate the effects each place has on the characters.

(Efraim’s Eye has been published 24 September 2012.)

Some of my readers say that I am too detailed in my descriptions of places in my novels.  I understand their point, and  I try not to ‘guild the lily’ in my descriptive passages, but I think it’s important to the reader to feel that s/he is actually there!

For more information about my novels see www.williampeace.net.

Subscriptions to the Blog – RSS – Comments

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Some of my readers have complained that the RSS (by means of which you can be advised of new posts) is not working.  I have had my IT consultant check, and he has reported that the RSS is working. He has suggested the following for using the RSS:

To subscribe to a feed (RSS) Using Internet Explorer  

  1. Launch Internet Explorer 
  2. Go to  http://williampeace.bookblogworld.com/
  3. Click on RSS 2.0 in the right hand panel under Meta>>.
  4. Click Subscribe to this Feed. 
  5. Type a name for the feed and select the folder to create the feed in. 
  6. Click Subscribe.

To add a feed to the Favorites bar

To add a feed to the Favorites bar, subscribe to the feed, and then select the Add to Favorites Bar check box in the Subscribe to this Feed dialog box. If you’ve already subscribed to the feed, you can click the Add to Favorites Bar button to add the feed to the Favorites bar.

To subscribe to a feed (RSS) using Mozilla Firefox 

  1. Launch Mozilla Firefox 
  2. Go to  http://williampeace.bookblogworld.com/
  3. Click on RSS 2.0 in the right hand panel under Meta>>. 
  4. Click Subscribe to this Feed.

 Regarding Comments: I am now subscribing to Askimet which will automatically delete most spam comments so that they don’t get near the website.  In addition, I will delete, in bulk, all comments which make it to my spam queue.  I also delete, without reading, any comments in my pending queue which show a URL.  So, the get a comment published on the website, I suggest:

  • that you do not list a URL on your comment
  • I would like to see more, specific comments about a point or an opinion I’ve expressed in a particular post.  Critical, specific comments are also welcome. 
  • Please keep your comment brief and to the point.  I don’t think my readers are interested in a long wheeze posted by someone else. 
  • Please don’t include quotations from somebody famous in your comments.  I want to hear your opinions, not the ideas of the famous person. 
  • Some of my readers are not proficient in written English.  That is OK.  But I will delete comments that don’t make sense. 
  • Sweeping, thoughtless or malicious comments will not be posted, but as I’ve said above, thoughtful, specific and critical comments are welcome. 
  • Please feel free to suggest any new topics you would like to see me address.
  • I will try to respond to specific questions about my writing or my views on writing.
     

Characters

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Characters are an essential ingredient in any novel.  But what are the attributes of a character we like to read about?  It seems to me that there are several possibilities:

  • There are characters with whom we, as the reader, identify: we feel that he or she ‘is a bit like me’.
  • There are characters who are different and who stimulate our curiosity: we think, ‘I wonder how it would feel to be like him/her’
  • There are characters for whom we feel sympathy: ‘there, but for the grace of God, go I!’
  • And, of course, there are characters whom, for various reasons, we decide we don’t like, and we keep reading about them hoping that they will eventually be punished in some way.  We will probably be quite disappointed if these ‘bad characters’ triumph at the end.

 I have the impression that it is quite fashionable, nowadays, to write and read about deeply flawed characters.  The one that springs to mind is not a modern character, but he is a good example: Heathcliff, the central figure in Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights, a novel which was published in 1847.  The only redeeming feature about Heathcliff, in my mind, is that Catherine Earnshaw falls in love with him.  But, throughout Wuthering Heights,Heathcliff’s attitude and behaviour toward the other characters is reprehensible.  Heathcliff becomes a tragic figure with whom I, for one, have very little sympathy.  Still, it has to be said that he plays a dominant role in the novel, bringing misfortune to most of the characters around him.

 I find it difficult to invest emotionally in writing about deeply flawed characters.  In my two thrillers (one about to be published; the other just finished) there is an evil central character, but he is just evil.  I haven’t tried to develop excuses for his nature; I have only tried – in one case – to provide reasons for it.  Perhaps I am unforgiving, but I feel that anyone as bad as that doesn’t deserve to be made into a tragic figure.

 In Sin & Contrition, there are two characters that most readers dislike, but in each case there are at least a few redeeming things about them.

There is Bettina, the daughter if immigrant parents, who is determined to do better in life – socially and financially – than her parents.  She works hard to become the owner of a chain of lingerie shops, having never graduated from university.  She doesn’t marry the man she loves; instead, she keeps him as her lover, while otherwise remaining loyal to her husband.  She ignores her children, who manage to cheat their way into university and success.  She abandons her Catholic faith to join a more socially prominent church.  She argues with her brother about the care of her aging parents.  Still, she remains loyal to her friends, and she does repent some of her misdeeds.  She’s honest about some of her flaws, and one senses that she has limits to how far she will go.

There is Gary, the son of a working class mother and an absent father.  He has a bullying disposition, and he wants to make a name for himself.  He puts himself through Penn State, and has a disastrous affair with a fellow student.  Gary embarks on a career as a state politician, meets and marries a woman from a good family, but he is unable to resist starting an affair with another state representative.  His wife leaves him; he sinks into alcoholism, but, once rescued, he exercises restraint, is re-united with his wife and is elected to the US House of Representatives.  But he refuses to provide funds to the father who abandoned him, and is unable to face his mother’s dementia.  One feels that Gary will always be Gary, but at least he has learned from his mistakes, and he becomes a reasonably useful and honest citizen.

 (For more information about my novels see www.williampeace.net.)

Genre

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Each writer is supposed to have a genre.  (Genre – adapted from the  French – is “A category of artistic composition, as in music or literature, characterized by similarities in form, style, or subject matter.”)  I’m afraid I  don’t have a genre, as yet.  But then, I have to confess, this is typical of me.  For example, at university I had difficulty deciding on a major (principal field of study).  I started out wanting to do  architecture; then, I changed to mathematics, and after taking a course in set theory (which I didn’t understand at all), I ended up as a physics major.  Or, more recently, consider my track record as a management consultant.  I’ve worked in the health, financial services, retail, manufacturing, technology, engineering, and business services sectors.  And in terms of my assignments, they have included business process improvement, cost reduction, strategy, sales and marketing, service improvement, team building, culture change, and coaching/mentoring.  Not much focus there.  “Jack of all trades and master of none,” you might say.

Does it matter?

It didn’t really matter for me as a management consultant, although my colleagues considered me a little bit strange.  I generally took the assignments that clients wanted to give me, and made a decent living.  Besides, I rather enjoyed the changes that lack of specialisation brought with it.

But, for a writer, the situation is somewhat different.  The reputation of a writer is very clearly linked to his or her genre: romance, science fiction, mystery, etc.  People will continue to buy a particular author’s books, because they like them and they know what to expect with the next one.  J K Rowling and the Harry Potter series are good examples.

So, what about my books?  Well, the first one, Fishing in Foreign Seas, is in two genres: romance and business.  The second, Sin & Contrition, is a series of morality tales.  The third, which is about to be published, Efraim’s Eye, is a romantic thriller.  The fourth, which I’ve just finished, is another thriller about the drugs trade in Afghanistan and Iran.  I’m just getting started on a new novel, which is written in the first person, and is an interesting (I hope) philosophical biography, but not an autobiography.  So is there a theme that runs through these five?  Well, yes, there is temptation: not just sexual temptation, but human temptation; there is sex and there is religious/spiritual controversy.  I suspect that those themes would not constitute any recognised genre. 

(Efraim’s Eye was published 24 September 2012.)

(For more information about my novels, see www.williampeace.net.)

I rather enjoyed writing the two thrillers, but the trouble with most thrillers – from my point of view – is that the genre isn’t really suitable for promoting serious thoughts about what it is to be human.  Guns and debates about spirituality, values and morality don’t naturally fit well together.  But, I think most educated readers enjoy both excitement and some intellectual challenge in what they read.

So, I’ve got to keep working on defining my genre!

What does it take to be a writer?

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I don’t pretend  to have all the answers to this question, and it is a question I often think about.  But, I suppose it’s fair to say that I’m learning about what it takes, and trying to build the skills that I’m lacking.  Having said this, let me give you my current thinking about writing skills.

First of all, a writer has to be fluent in the language in which s/he is writing.  In my opinion, an extensive vocabulary and a thorough understanding of the rules of grammar and syntax are essential.  Vocabulary is important so that the writer can select the words that convey just the right nuance of what she is trying to say.  Because good writing is literature, making grammatical errors can make the author seem illiterate.  And if grammar is about the use of words and phrases, syntax, which is about the structure of sentences, is also very important.  Of course, the rules of grammar and syntax can vary from language to language.  In German, for example, the verb is often placed at the end of a sentence, after the subject and object.

It isn’t just about writing in one’s mother tongue.  For my two step daughters, their mother tongue is Italian, but from the ages of 7 and 9 they have been immersed in English: at school, with their friends, and their step-father.  Now, they are both totally fluent in English, and their mother says that their Italian vocabulary and grammar has not kept up.  So, if they ever decide to write, they will probably do so in English.

So much for the universal requirement to be a writer.  If one is  going to be a writer of fiction, several other skills become important: creativity and voice.  Creativity is about the ability to present interesting and different characters and situations.  Having a ‘fertile imagination’ would be a part of the creative skill, but, as I’ve said in other posts, the characters and situations should be interesting and different, but they should also be credible.  If they are not credible, the writer will lose the interest of her readers.  If the situations and characters are not interesting and different, they may well be just boring!  Voice is about the projection of the characters and situations onto the page.  It’s about the use of language to make them come alive.  Part of voice is the ability to project feelings, emotions, personalities and values: subtley but clearly.  Voice is also about being a good story-teller, about setting the scene so that it seems real to the reader, and about making the reader reluctant to put the book down.

As our publishers are constantly reminding us, being successful as a writer of fiction is about more than language skills and writing techniques.  It is also about marketing.  Successful writers have niches that they serve.  J K Rowling, the creator of Harry Potter, specialised in imaginative books for young people.  It will be interesting to see how she does in writing adult fiction.  The relationship between the writer and his niche is essentially a marketing relationship.  The writer understands that niche market sector, and he presents a brand that the market sector comes to know and love.  The author, whenever s/he is interviewed or appears before live media, is always selling her brand to her market sector.  (So a successful writer is also a good salesman.)

Finally, there is that illusive but all-important commodity: luck.  It’s about meeting the right person at the right time.  That chance meeting (all else being equal) can make the difference between a best seller and an also-ran!

Writing Schedule

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I am often asked, “How much time do you spend writing in a day?” and “What is your writing schedule?”

The answers are 4 – 5 hours per day; I write in the late morning and throughout the afternoon.

I have read about writers who lock themselves away for the entire day.  I couldn’t possibly do that, because when I try to write for more than about two hours at a stretch, I become mentally fatigued, and the quality of my writing declines.  My imagination and my critical skills must both be keen.  Imagination is essential to achieving an interesting, creative output.  And critical skills must also be operational to avoid putting something down which is ‘good enough’.  I find that when I am mentally tired, my imagination is less fertile and instead of being critical of my output, I get lazy.  So, every hour of two, I take a break.  I go out to do the food shopping, or I work on by blog, or check my email, or pay the bills or I play spider solitaire: anything which doesn’t use my brain in the same way as writing.

My wife and I have coffee at 7 am, and for about an hour I work on the sudokus in yesterday’s paper while she reads the paper itself.  Four mornings a week, I walk to the gym for an hour, and on the way back, I pick up the newspaper.  What follows is breakfast and a shower.  Then, I can sit down at my PC, and check my email.

If I’m starting a new chapter, or a new section of a chapter, I’ll look at the outline I’ve written for that chapter to see what comes next.  Often, I experience a ‘writer’s block’ where I find it hard to get started.  I’ve learned that it’s best to not ‘just plunge in’.  Instead, I’ll think about the character or characters, and put myself in their shoes.  ‘What would he or she do next?’ I’ll wonder, and I’ll look for a response which is interesting, in character, and moves the story forward.  Once the starting point has been achieved, the story will tend to flow until the next juncture is reached.  Actually, I find that ‘writer’s block’ is a good thing: it helps prevent me from producing low quality output.  After I write about a page (single spaced), I’ll stop and read through what I’ve written.  At this point, I bring my critical skills into play, and I’m alert to any word or phrase which doesn’t feel quite right.  I may have to consult my thesaurus to find a better word.  Once I’ve reviewed the text, I’ll run the spell checker.  My spell checker is set for UK English.  (Even though I’m American by birth, I tend to feel that UK English is more authentic.)  Sometimes my editor doesn’t agree, which is OK, except when the novel is set in the UK and may, therefore, have primarily a UK readership.

Usually, I’ll take a lunch break from 1 til 2, during which time I’ll read the paper.  Then, I’ll be back at work – with the occasional break – until 6, which is generally my quiting time.

During the average day, I’ll produce four pages of text, which I’ll re-read again before signing off for the day.  And at the end of a chapter, the whole chapter gets re-read, and when I complete a novel, I’ll re-read it in its entirety.  (I should mention that during the editing process with my publisher, I’ll end up re-reading everything again at least once.  Every time I re-read, I’ll find something that I find needs changing/improving.)

The other activity that can take up to half my ‘writing time’  is doing research.  My fourth novel (which I’ve just finished) is set in Washing ton DC (where I have lived), Afghanistan and Iran.  I’ve never been to those two countries, and to make up for that deficiency, I’ve had to do a lot of research – mostly on line, but I find that Lonely Planet guides are a big help, too.

Then, sometimes I’ll think of a (usually slight) change of direction, which requires that I revisit one of more previous chapters to make alterations.