Protecting the Writing: a Quick How-To

I'm hard at work writing THE ORCHID THRONE, the first in my new trilogy for St. Martins Press. So, naturally, I had to impulse-buy this gorgeous orchid from Trader Joe's. It's my new desk ornament, following the USB-plug in Christmas tree, cherry blossom tree, and foaming cauldron. This one notably does NOT require electricity, which seems appropriate for the world I'm writing. However, it does require attention to be kept alive. So far my record with orchids is pretty abysmal. (Don't tell this gal!) We shall see. Any tips for keeping orchids alive in a desert climate?

Last week I traveled to Phoenix to give a presentation to the Desert Rose Romance Writers. This one was "A Taoist’s Guide to Staying Sane in the Writing Business." I talked a whole lot about how the relentless push to get rich can make us crazy, and how to find a peaceful place of sane creativity in the midst of that. But, during the great discussion at the end, one gal asked if I had advice about family who don't believe in your career, who actively interfere or dis what you're doing, or who won't approved of your eventual story.

This is, of course, not an easy question to answer, though several gals in the room had advice for her, too. It's also our topic at the SFF Seven this week: How much space do you give non-writing emotional labor - or how do you save mental space for the work with a head full of mortgage and other people's expectations? I'd call this a coincidence, but I'm a Taoist I know it's not.

Everybody struggles with this. It's an issue that affects everyone, not just writers, and not just creatives. Unless we're hermits, life is a balancing act of what we do to please ourselves and what we do to please others. At one end of the extreme, we have the sociopath (or hermit) who cares nothing for other people's needs or is completely isolated from them. At the other end is the doormat, that abject individual who lives as a metaphorical slave to the needs of others, to the point that they have nothing of their own.

The answer - as with all things of the Tao, since I'm already coming at it from that angle - is finding the middle way.

This is easier said than done. Like so many aspects of finding the middle way, it takes constant re-evaluation and adjustment - and honest self-examination. What we can depend on is that things will always change. Sometimes people in our lives honestly need us more than other times. There are illnesses and emergencies - emotional and physical - and times of crisis.

The trick is to differentiate the real crises from the over-dramatized kind. Because we all know those people, right? The ones who have daily crises, if not more often, and for whom EVERYTHING is a MAJOR HUGE DEAL SO YOU MUST PAY ATTENTION TO ME RIGHT NOW.

And I'm not just talking about cats!

So, how do we deal with this? By drawing boundaries and sticking to them. Make your writing sacred and build a fence around it. And a big stone wall. Maybe add a lava moat, too. Post the rules for entry clearly. If someone fakes their way in, then they get stiffer rules and penalties going forward until they prove they can be trusted again. Treat it like a game if you have to, but erect that fortress and defend it vigorously!

This goes for your own worries, too. Give those distracting thoughts names and identities and make them obey the rules, too. They don't get to come into the fortress. Everything and everyone gets their time and place.

Under heaven some things lead, some follow, 
some blow hot, some cold, 
some are strong, some weak, some are fulfilled, some fail.

So the wise soul keeps away
from the extremes, excess, extravagance.

Chapter 29, Tao Te Ching
by Lao Tzu, translated by Ursula K. Le Guin

That's how you do it: draw the boundaries and know that you'll have to defend them. And also know to keep from the extremes. Find the middle way.

Third Rail or Manipulation?

If you're old enough to remember seeing Jaws for the first time (while the CGI and special effects still held up) do you recall whether or not you were traumatized by watching blood spread in the water as people were ripped to shreds by a pissed off shark? I know it's hard to take seriously after nearly a half dozen Sharknado movies, but Jaws was pretty damned trigger-y for its day. Lots of people DID NOT go back in the water after watching that film. Because the movie touched what was a hot button at the time: killing innocent little kids in brutal fashion and showing it on screen. Well. And maybe because our animal brains have a thing about being snuck up on and messily devoured. The thing is that you can look at the film today and see how manipulative the scene with the boy is. It didn't really further plot. It was included solely to illicit horror from an audience and maybe to erase any sneaking sympathy you might have had for the shark. You can dissect the visuals from the John Williams score and neither works quite as well. Combined they are a masterstroke of manipulation.

You see where I'm going with this. Third rails topics generally feel manipulative to me - as if they're being brought into a piece of fiction, not because it's the only way to move the plot, but because it's shock value trying to dress in the grown up clothes of 'but this issue is important!'  That's not always the case, but I do find well done hot button topics are rare. Ursula K. Le Guin is a master at third rail topics. So is Margaret Atwood. Both, I think, are masters because the hot button issues are understated. Almost hidden. They underpin the world and the story, they're sort of the skeleton the stories hang on, but the stories being told aren't necessarily about religion specifically or what constitutes sexual deviancy. They're more about what become of humanity under the influence of those things.

On my more egotistical days, I say I want to be like the aforementioned ladies when I grow up as an author. The rest of the time, I acknowledge that might not be in this lifetime. :D IF there's a topic that gets a lot of knee jerk reaction and I want to pin a story on those bones, I do it. But not so I can trot out some bleeding edge attempt to be literarily relevant. It's because some tiny aspect of that hot button topic fires my imagination and infuses a set of characters with wild, weird life.

Certainly, it's my job to as respectful and careful as possible when I create a character who'd been adopted into the Navajo Nation but who was not, herself, Navajo. It wasn't done with an intent to be culturally insensitive - but I am not Navajo either, and an argument could be made that - because I'd written about certain traditions and beliefs unique to the Navajo as a means of heightening my heroine's identity crisis - I am touching the fiery hot third rail of cultural appropriation. Does that sentence even scan? It makes sense in my head. That may not be a good thing. In any case. I did my utmost to not be appropriative and to respect the beliefs and taboos that informed the culture my heroine grew up in but couldn't be a part of. I still had a massive case of nerves when the book came out, wondering if I'd get myself electrocuted or not.  (This is Isa from Nightmare Ink.)

And you know, what scares the crap out of me to write, may be totally mundane to some other author. I do suspect that third rail topics are subjective. Unless an editor stands up at a panel and says, "Incest. Brothers in bed in bed together? You guys have GOT to stop sending me that shit." Then yeah. That's for real third rail and that rail is electrified.

Elementary, My Dear

It always fascinates me when people talk about which fictional characters they'd want to be - I notice no one mentions Game of Thrones much. Not too many people opting for zombie books, either. Usually. I guess I'd always assumed that other readers were like me. I wanted to be the main character in whichever book I was reading at the time. Frankly, I spent most of my angst-ridden, middle-school, junior high years wanting to be someone else. ANYONE else. So the list of characters I would have given you was a mile long.

I mean, Meg from A Wrinkle In Time was super high on the list. Any of Ursula K. Le Guin's heroines are, too. But really. After examining all the evidence, there was only one possible conclusion for someone who desperately wanted to be to step into the shoes of a character far clever than she is herself: Sherlock Holmes.

Yes. Yes. Let's forget the whole 'he's a dude, you're not' BS. This is fiction. We get to be any freaking thing we want, right? And that's the whole point. Gender. No gender. Stripes. Polka dots. Aliens with blue skin and green eyes. No less probable than a secret agent with a license to kill who manages to single handedly save the world, sleep with anything that moves and avoid the clap all at the same time. Why should I not be Sherlock?

Oh, yes. I am aware that character is fraught with baggage. But to be that clever, that sharp. Not to mention intrinsically immortal. For a character conceived and created in the Victorian Era, he's looking awfully well these days. Despite some tragic reboots and reimaginings of his adventures.

Maybe the real answer is that the geeky little girl who curled up reading everything she could get her hands on because real life was pretty lonely also wants to be as popular and well-liked as a cranky gum-shoe in a deerstalker hat. The very best thing about Sherlock Holmes is that he is a misfit who had managed to make his misfittedness work on his behalf and to win him influence and acceptance. And while I'm not crazy about the notion of stepping into the shoes of a cocaine addict . . . I - Yeah, I dunno. I think I'm stuck on the fact that this character can be so beloved and popular, even with (perhaps because of) his foibles. That's mighty attractive.

Would you swap places with him?