Author Archives: D.A Lascelles

Terry Pratchett: Tracing the evolution of a writer

24 Thursday Nov 2011

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This is something I have been thinking about for a while now. In fact, I’ve been thinking about this ever since I started reading fantasy and science fiction. I have been pondering the ways in which a writer develops. Not particularly thinking about how they improve their writing to the point where they become good enough to be published but rather considering what happens to your writing after you get published.

After all, none of us are static. No one is born a great writer and it is ludicrous to assume that the progression of the writing craft simply comes to a stop once the first novel hits the shelves. Instead a good writer is always looking to improve on what they did before and this is what I want to discuss today. To do this, I am going to use the example of Terry Pratchett.

Now, for those of you who have been in a cave for the last 20 years or so and don’t know who Terry Pratchett is, I suppose I should enlighten you. Those already up on Britain’s most popular and prolific fantasy comedy writer may feel free to skip this paragraph altogether and move onto the good stuff later…

Terry Pratchett is the writer of far far too many to count novels set in the  Discworld – a fantasy world which sits on the back of four elephants who are sat on the back of a turtle. As a world with such ludicrous metaphysics, naturally strange things happen there (many of them powered by that elusive element never found in the real world – Narrativium) and this leads to comedic situations. Pratchett has also written a number of novels set in other worlds – Strata, the Bromeliad trilogy (Truckers, Diggers and Wings), Nation and, of course, The Carpet People (his first publication in 1971). He has an OBE, a Knighthood and a number of publishing awards to his name. He is largely considered to be a very prolific writer with an average speed of one book a year. In 2007 he announced that he had been diagnosed with Alzeimers and, as well as making generous donations to various charities for that disease he has also stated his support for the right to die. He has stated that he intends to take steps to end his own life before his disease progresses to a critical point.

So, brief biographical information out of the way. If you want to know more, feel free to look him up on his Wikipedia page Time for the real meat of this piece. How has Pratchett developed as a writer since his first publication?

In order to keep things simple, I am not going to discuss The Carpet People or any of the non-Discworld novels. I am keeping thing solely in the province of his best known creation. The first Discworld book was entitled ‘The Colour of Magic’. It was published in 1983 – which totally blows my theory about the origin of its name being due to either a pun on the title of the novel, The Color of Money (published 1984), or the Robert De Niro film of the same name (released 1986). The Colour of Magic introduces us to the Discworld as a vibrant and chaotic fantasy realm and takes us on a travelogue which spans a significant part of the disc. We meet one of Pratchett’s most memorable characters – the cowardly wizard, Rincewind – and are introduced to a plethora of characters and plotlines, each of which parodies an element of fantasy literature. For example, the character of Hrun the Barbarian is your typical  musclebound thug of an adventurer, the classic Conan the Barbarian stereotype, while Bravd the Hublander and the Weasel (two characters who have brief appearances in the story) are clearly derived from Fritz Lieber’s Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser. A part of the intention behind the Discworld is also to subvert many of the fantasy cliches and so Rincewind, our main hero for the first few books, is a wizard who is neither brave nor capable of casting spells. Admittedly, the last one is due to him being unable to learn spells due to one of the eight, great spells that helped create the universe being stuck in his head, but even after he later gets rid of that impediment he still has a major problem actually using any magic. We also later (in the sequel, The Light Fantastic) get Cohen the Barbarian, the ludicrously wonderful subversion of the Conan schtick in the form of a barbarian hero who is still adventuring well into his eighties.

From these parodies in the early books, there slowly develops a complex and involved world. As the series develops we see more and more of the world and meet more characters. For many of the early books there is still the sense that Discworld is a parody of a fantasy realm and that Ankh Morepork, Pratchett’s fantasy city, is a play on the concept of Lieber’s Lankhmar.

At some point, however, things change. It is a slow change and a subtle one, taking place over a number of novels and with the development of several storylines and characters. I think it begins properly with the first Night watch book, Guards! Guards!, as Pratchett clearly needed a grittier and more realistic setting for the somewhat noirish adventures of Captain Vimes and the members of the Night Watch. This series takes the ruler of Ankh Morepork, the Patrician, and turns him into a more rounded character by planting him in the position of the ‘City Mayor’ as popularised by many a US cop show. It also rounds out the city, letting readers see the seedier side of the streets and goes into more detail regarding the role of the Thieves Guild in enforcing the law. At some point between Guards! Guards! and the latest offering, Snuff, Ankh Morepork ceases to be a parody of Lankhmar. Instead it becomes something more akin to a strange hybrid of Lankhmar with London and New York of the early 19th Century. The characters take on a decidedly Regency cast to them, something which is emphasised in Snuff’s parodying of Austen’s Pride and Prejudce, and there are themes inherent in the storylines which harken to concepts of the industrial revolution and the social, political and economic changes which eventually led to the Victorian era. These issues are especially apparent in the Moist books – Going Postal, Making Money and the soon to be released, Raising Taxes – where Vetinari is seen to be actively in the process of modernising the city and such issues as mobile phone companies and the gold standard are challenged with satire.

In other words, Discworld represents Pratchett’s evolution as a writer from someone who only wants to poke fun at the fantasy trends of the time to someone with the confidence and ability to tackle serious, real world issues by poking fun at examples from literature and history.  I believe that all writers undergo this process of maturation. Initially, in a desire to get published, many writers are conservative about what they want to write about – seeking popular topics which may allow good sales. However, post publication, they begin to gain more confidence and feel as if they can stretch their muscles more and be experimental in what they write. In Discworld, Pratchett gives us the opportunity to see that process in action in a way that is not possible with many writers. We have 28 years of books, all set in the same world by the same writer, to show it.

Guest Post: Dr Hansen’s REmedies for curing Writers’ Block

16 Wednesday Nov 2011

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I would like to introduce to you all my first guest poster (you may applaud). For this slot, John Hansen is supplying some words of wisdom on Writers’ Block, that insidious syndrome which afflicts all writers at some point in their career. Since it is now about half way through NaNoWriMo I imagine a lot of writers out there are feeling the sting of this affliction.

As authors, we all become ill, at some point in our lives, with the highly contagious writers’ block epidemic. This irksome disease is often transmitted through mad and unsuccessful attempts at writing stories and, sadly, there is no vaccination for it, nor can one build up immunity to it. It lurks in words and soon-to-be-formed pages, watching, waiting, prepared to infect yet another helpless writer. And as much as we, as writers, try to prevent writers’ block from infecting us in the first place, a vaccine has yet to be developed, but it will never. So if we cannot prevent writers’ block that begs the question: how can we cure it?

There are a number of successful home remedies used to cure writers’ block, but you requested Dr. Hansen’s opinion and it’s Dr. Hansen’s opinion you shall get.

  1. Don’t force yourself to keep writing – This, surprisingly, is a very common mistake. When some authors get writers’ block, they seem to think that by forcing themselves to continue writing, they will overcome the writers’ block. This is not true at all since that is not how writers’ block works. It’s like saying that if you break your leg, the best way to heal it is to force that leg to be constantly active as if the pain would suddenly go away because of this. It just doesn’t work.
  2. Relax, take a deep breath – So if you shouldn’t force yourself to write, what should you do? Well, first of all, don’t worry too much about writers’ block. It will go away soon, I assure you. Instead of cursing at yourself to come up with the next sentence and the next sentence and the next sentence (this does not make for quality writing), I advise you to sit back, turn away from your computer and take a deep breath. Don’t get worked up over writers’ block – that never helps – just calm yourself, clear your thoughts and pay no heed to the blinking cursing on your computer screen that seems to be sneering at you.
  3. Walk out of the room – The best cure for writers’ block seems too easy to be effective, but it is. After your have relaxed, stand up, stretch your legs and walk out of the room. I recommend walking around your home for a few minutes and then return to your computer afterwards. This will help to rejuvenate the creativity within in you, dispel all that anxiety, and a little fresh air – not the stuffy atmosphere of your room – will clear your head of those irksome cobwebs.
  4. Splash water on your face – You wouldn’t believe how well this works. If writers’ block has you so stressed out that you can no longer concentrate, simply go up to your sink, fill your hands with cold water and splash it on your face, again and again. This will help to revive your sleepy muses and invigorate your creativity. Cold water does wonders. After several splashes of that icy water, you’ll be ready to conquer that gosh darned writers’ block, guaranteed.
  5. Find something to distract yourself with – A great way to rid yourself of writers’ block is to find something else to occupy your time for awhile, even as short as a minute. Talk to someone, watch a funny YouTube clip, visit those beloved online forums, admire your blog site stats – do anything you want; it doesn’t matter as long as you are distracting yourself from writers’ block with an alternate activity. The advantage of this is that it will help to clear your brain of all thoughts, worries and whatever else lurks within the confines of that messy head of yours and will allow for a fresh start when you return to your computer.
  6. Don’t be afraid of failing: just write! – Once are finally ready to conquer those malicious words, it is time to return to your computer. Do not let your computer’s imposing presence deceive you; you are its master, you are its keeper, you control it and all of the words it will form. As frightening as it may be, to overcome your writers’ block don’t stray away from your computer; just strut right up to it and write. And write. And write. Once you have done this, you can kiss writers’ block goodbye. At least for the day…

John Hansen is the author of several short crime stories and an unpublished crime fiction novel. He has a very interesting, unpredictable (sometimes good, sometimes bad), creative, disturbing, random, insightful and humorous mind. You can him at home, cursing at either his computer. Or sometimes you can find him on his couch, staring at the blank TV screen as if it is some magical, awe-inspiring promiseland. But in most cases, it isn’t. John’s blog, The Incessant Droning of a Bored Writer (http://incessantdroningofaboredwriter.wordpress.com), is a book blog with an edge of mystery/thriller/crime fiction that includes book reviews, author guest posts, author, agent and publisher interviews, (somewhat) insightful posts about writing written by yours truly, along with its fair share of cool facts, randomness and all around insanity. Be sure to subscribe to it if this post was of interest to you since you’ll get much more like this!

Review: Deep Black Beyond

11 Friday Nov 2011

Posted by in Reviews, Secret Project of Secretness

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It’s review time again and this one is of a short story collection by Annie Bellet.

The review may be found here

In other news, you may remember me mentioning on Twitter as part of my regular word count updates that I was doing ‘audition pieces’. Well,  I have just had word that those auditions were successful and I will be starting on a ‘work for hire’ project next week. Details are currently secret but if it goes as planned the outcome should be rather cool and will allow me to achieve the unthinkable – make use of skills I have been developing for decades and actually get paid for using them.

Feel free to speculate wildly in the comments about what this project is if you wish.

Reflections on Self Publication

10 Thursday Nov 2011

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There is apparently a war going on in the writing world between ‘traditional publishers’ and ‘self publishers’. A lot of bad blood is being spilled, a lot of blogs are being written about how one way or the other is ‘the only right way’ and there seems to be intense polarisation between those who support ‘ye olde fashioned way of publishing such as how our forefathers have been doing it since ye time of Caxton’ and ‘the hip new thang which has become possible cos we has the internets and stuff now’.

I am not going to delve too deeply into the arguments for and against self publishing, I am not even going to talk about the apparent evils of traditional publishers or how it is possible to make millions of dollars by publishing your own book (if you happen to get lucky and have a good product to start with and do a lot of work…). Those arguments have been done to death and people are still flogging them, despite the fact no one seems set to change their positions. Instead, I am going to reflect upon my own opinions of self publishing based on my experiences as both a reader and a writer.

I’ve always been a bit of a self publishing sceptic. To my mind, a book is not properly published unless it has been judged by someone with some expertise to be worth publishing and then given a thorough editing and cleaning and polishing before being dressed up in its prettiest marketing clothes to walk about in the public eye for purchase. Editors at publishing houses act as a filter – picking out the wheat of good literature from the chaff that makes up the majority of their slush pile. If you get past an editor then you have passed some form of test or maybe a rite of passage which proves you worthy to call yourself a Writer rather than someone who merely writes. With this mindset in place, I’ve therefore been somewhat derogatory of self published works. They’ve not passed the test, they’ve not had to convince an editor or an agent that their work is worthy. All they’ve done is rattle off a few thousand words, done some formatting and either sent it to Lulu to be printed or uploaded it to Createspace. Logically, therefore, this prejudice implies that all self published works will be badly written and not worth buying.

And this is where my brain goes ‘hang on, you’re being prejudiced’. This is where that argument falls down because I am indeed being prejudiced by assuming that everything in one category has the same characteristics – a major failure in logic. I don’t like being prejudiced. I am not sure anyone does and I really hate my brain when it points out these nasty little truths to me. More to the point, my prejudice was based entirely on circumstantial evidence with not one whit of actual evidence to back up my claim. You see, because I had the strong belief that ALL self published books were badly written and badly edited I religiously avoided actually reading any. Obviously, this sort of hypocrisy cannot stand!

So, I was quite pleased to be able to do reviews for the ePublishing a Book site. Because the site is quite self publishing focused they want reviews of self published books for preference and so I have been forced into reading and commenting on some self published books. I faced this task with a high degree of trepidation, not knowing what I would find in the darkest depths of hell that I imagined existed in the self publishing world.

I posted a request for authors with self published novels to contact me and tell me where I could get hold of their books for review and I got a lot of replies. So many that, at the rate of 2 reviews a month which I am obliged to do, I am not going to be short of things to read and review for a long time. I’ve read a few of these books now and written the review for one of them (which is due to be posted tomorrow – watch this space for details) – and I have come to a conclusion about self published books:

Some of them are actually not at all bad and some of them are even rather good.

I suppose I should not have been surprised at this revelation. After all, there are a lot of good writers out there and not all of them make it through the publishing filter. This may be because one of the flaws in the filter is that it doesn’t necessarily take out only those books that are really badly written. Quite often it takes out books which are very well written and merely don’t fit with current marketing projections. However, I was surprised which is why I felt it necessary to write this blog post to atone for my previously snobbish nature about self publishing.

Ok, here is the caveat… one of the books I read and reviewed and really liked was actually a previously published author who had recovered the rights to the book and decided to push out a reprint by themselves. This, of course, is one area where self publishing is potentially useful with publishers rarely wanting to touch reprints but you could argue that this might have skewed my subjective assessment of the books I read. I accept that and as a scientist I take it into account and will continue to collect data and testing the hypotheses until one of them breaks. However, given that all of the books I read so far have been enjoyable and I’ve seen no really terrible ones, I am going to read the rest of the ones I have on my list with an open mind and hopefully enjoy them without the trepidation that comes from expecting them to be awful.

Not really feeling it.

02 Wednesday Nov 2011

Posted by in Wierdness

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It may be the change in season – some form of SAD caused by it getting darker earlier after the change in the clocks – or possibly something to do with some other aspect of my lifestyle at the moment – diet, sleep patterns, something like that. It may simply be the cycle of the moon or some hormonal flip or even a low level flu or other bug. Whatever it is, I’ve not been feeling in the best of moods lately. Today seems to have been the deepest trough, however, and the major effect seems to have been on my own self esteem.

In short, I have spent the last few days in the absolute and inviolable belief that everything I have written, am writing and will ever write is utter rubbish. I came to realise this when I found this thread in the Absolute Write  forums – Convinced WIP is awful. I also realised on reading this that it is not so unusual for writers to feel this way on occasion. In the rational part of my brain, I know full well that this is a ludicrous thing and probably indicative of a mild depression – possibly triggered by not yet adapting my body clock to the new daylight times. My intellectual brain is citing various pieces of evidence at me such as:

1) There are lovely, wonderful people out there who have said that they like your writing.

2) You have actual publications and apparently some people who are not you, your family or your friends have bought and read them.

3) Lots of other writers have the same feelings and it is not indicative of you, your writing or anything like that but merely an expression of some deeper neurophysiological issue.

However, as anyone with an endocrine system knows only too well, in cases like these the intellectual part of the brain never gets a vote and the rampant craziness is given free rein on the mind.

As a result of this, I have actually done very little writing today. I did achieve my daily word count goal but rather than write something interesting and creative as part of a story I slogged out 700 words on a guest post I have promised to another writer. And I wasn’t 100% certain that I liked those words. I’m still not. I may delete the whole thing and forget all about it at which point I may as well have not bothered writing anything in the first place. I had intended to go through some stories and chapters I had got some beta reader notes on and make the changes but every time I tried to do that I just could not summon up the enthusiasm. I’d also intended to schedule a guest post someone had kindly done for me, which should have been a 5 minute job and therefore an easy win and I couldn’t even do that.

Instead my day involved sitting with the dog on the settee and watching DVDs and surfing the internet. I suppose you could call that research but I never really ever intended to write a story about sitting on the settee with a dog.

So, here is the question. How do you get over these slumps? What techniques do you use to overcome the feeling that everything is futile and worthless? I suppose in my case my technique is avoidance. I have removed myself from writing in the hope that my keen will return following the rest. Are there any other methods?

Tomorrow I intend to be more proactive and actually do something. But then I said that yesterday as well.

Amazon wierdness

01 Tuesday Nov 2011

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This is just a short post to share my confusion with the rest of the world and to make sure I don’t get beaten up by another author who happens to have the same name as me (it’s already bad enough that I share a name with a Viscount! I mean, you’d think a surname like mine would be relatively rare, wouldn’t you?)

Yesterday I took steps to set up my author page on Amazon. Mainly because I was feeling left out because all the other authors on Pirates and Swashbucklers had cool linky things on their names and I didn’t and I wanted to be in with the cool kids. This involved contacting Amazon and telling then that I was a contributor to said book which therefore, apparently, gave me the right to set up an author page. I think they have to establish that this is indeed the case (and I am sure the fine folks at Metahuman Press who are no doubt getting an e-mail about this will back me up on this claim 🙂 ) but they’ve let me set it up anyway on spec until such time as they can confirm or deny my claim. You can find said page here – D.A Lascelles Author Page

Now, here we have the issue. Said page now seems to count me as not only a contributor to one book but also the author of two other books:

The Road to Quality

Self-assessment for Business Excellence (Quality in Action)

Ok, it is possible that I had some strange fit a number of years ago during which I not only wrote but apparently published two manuals on Quality and Business Excellence, despite having no qualifications nor experience in such areas, and then had the memory completely wiped from my mind. It’s a very slim possibility (up there with Albert Einstein being the love child I conceived with Elizabeth I) but I suppose it is possible. However, the more likely explanation is that Amazon made some form of mistake and linked another writer’s work to mine by accident. I assume it is because the author of these two books shares some thing in common with my name (though in both cases no one is listed as the author…).
Anyway, hopefully very soon Amazon will sort this out and assign those books to their correct author and this will no longer be an issue. In the meantime, if said mystery author is out there I would like to say ‘Sorry! It was not my fault! Please don’t beat me up!’
At least this is not so big a mix up as the one John Scalzi encountered recently… 
Edited to add: Got an e-mail this morning from Amazon. In 3-5 days the books will be removed from my site and thus will I be safe from being beaten up. For the time being…

The traditions of my people

30 Sunday Oct 2011

Posted by in NaNo

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I’m all for traditions – customs, rituals, holidays, celebrations, whatever. I love them and like to see them maintained. Events which happens every year and does so because ‘it’s always been that way’ touch me in a special place in my heart. So, I thought I would dedicate this blog post to one of the solemnest and most important traditions of my people.

The coming month will see my people fasting and praying, working hard to appease their gods. They will go without sleep, without food and spend long hours in angst filled contemplation on the human spirit. When this time of trial is over, they will emerge from it as better people – stronger and more capable of dealing with the every day stresses and strains. It is a sacred time, a testing time, a time of enlightenment.

What am I talking about? Why, NaNoWriMo of course… 🙂 Possibly the most important celebration of geekdom and social mediadom ever, eclipsing even ‘International Talk Like a Pirate Day‘ in it’s importance. I may be exaggerating here, of course. As you know, nothing could possibly eclipse Talk like a pirate day… Well, except maybe Talk Like a Dalek day….

National Novel Writing Month has been around for quite a few years. In fact, it was first run in 1999 when it had only 21 participants. This makes it, in internet terms, an ancient tradition which harkens back to the days BF (Before Facebook). It has since grown in size to 200,000 recorded writers taking part in 2010. The goal is simple: write 50,000 words and report them on the NaNoWriMo website between the 1st and the 30th of November. It is possibly the largest (well, certainly the most well known) writer productivity challenge in the world. It is a great way to learn discipline – to try to dedicate yourself to writing every day not just when you feel like it. This is a good thing and should be encouraged, which is why I consider NaNoWriMo to be an important tradition in Geekdom.

However, I have a confession to make. I am a heretic. I do not follow the ancient tradition of NaNoWriMo as a true follower of the Path of Geek should. I spurn my geekish ancestors and bring shame upon those who follow the true path with my progressive and non-orthodox ways. I have never signed up for NaNo nor even made any effort to increase my writing output in November. It is shameful, I know, but I do have a very good reason and it is all to do with timing.

I’m a teacher. As such I tend to get some wonderful summer holidays to luxuriate in and get lots of writing done. Six whole weeks of it, in fact. Sheer bliss. However, once September comes, the school term starts and things get a lot busier. OK, at the moment I am what we call a ‘gentleman of leisure’ (which is another name for scrounging layabout) and so am not expected to be working in a school at the moment. However, past experience has taught me that November (which lands just after the first half term holiday of the school year) is often a busy time for supply jobs to start rolling in and that means I have no guarantee of free time between now and December. So, rather than commit to NaNo and risk failing because a big job comes in that sucks up all my free time, I prefer to keep writing as normal and be there in spirit for those who are suffering the months of privation ahead.

Of course, I am also supporting in other ways – including doing at least one guest post in the coming month so that someone doing NaNo can free up more time for writing…

So, to those who are about to write, I salute you. I’ll be here on the touchline with the half time oranges and the mixed metaphors…

Another guest blog – feeling like a big, fat fraud

27 Thursday Oct 2011

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In this post I talk about teaching and how (appropriately for Halloween) it can scare the hell out of you…

Feeling like a big, fat fraud

It links to writing as well, by the way. I’m making a subtle juxtaposition. Well, maybe not so subtle… Ok, a pretty blatant and obvious point.

It is, however, 100% guaranteed succubus free.

 

Guest postage – Horror

26 Wednesday Oct 2011

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In this post – Nothing to Fear but Fear Itself – I talk about how what scares us changes through history and through our lives. I mention Succubi because, well, I’m a man and I’m therefore always up for talking about hot, demonic women but don’t let that ruin your enjoyment of the rest of the post.

I have another review article lined up over this weekend as well for this site – epublish a book. This one will probably appear on Friday and will discuss the Urban Fantasy novel, Bloodlines by Skyla Dawn Cameron.