Yearly Archives: 2018

Voyage to Alaska—Day 3

Today I’ll continue with the partially true tale of my cruise to Alaska with my wife, Jean, and another couple—Mike and Brenda. I made up many of the names in this narrative (including those).

Seattle Train Station

We rode a shuttle bus from our downtown Seattle hotel to the train station on King Street. I admired the station’s beautiful interior with its intricate white, carved walls and ceiling.

Trains much like the one we rode to Vancouver, BC

We boarded the Continental Train (ConTrain) Line, Train 516 (the Salish) bound for Vancouver, British Columbia. Everyone in that area always specifies which Vancouver they mean, because there’s a Vancouver in Washington State, too. The train proved to be comfortable, with large windows and spacious seating.

Somewhere along the train ride, our ever-joking conductor announced we’d be passing Chuckanut Bay, and rumors spoke of a Chuckanut Sea Monster lurking there. Passengers should get their cameras ready, he said. Sure. A sea monster. I kept my camera packed away. Within moments, though, I saw a long neck and small head protruding from the water on the train’s left side. When it became obvious it wasn’t moving and was a fake, we passengers laughed.

Then a strange thing happened.

A swarm of gigantic tentacles emerged from Chuckanut Bay and amid them, a fearsome head with colossal, glaring eyes. The tentacles flailed, then shot toward our train and got a grip on the first passenger car—our car. Tentacles, with those huge gripping suckers, were all we could see through the windows. The engine strained and the wheels made ear-splitting screeches against the rails. Finally, our entire train began to break free, and the beast’s arms slid off our streamlined car and vanished to the rear. Though we passengers felt shocked and distressed by this, the conductor made no announcements about it, and I suspect ConTrain will try to hush up the whole thing.

Arriving in Vancouver, late, we ate a quick lunch and took the SkyTrain (Vancouver’s elevated subway) to the Waterfront station at Canada Place beside the quay. Signs there directed us toward our ship. I’d like to praise the quickness and efficiency of the boarding process. I really would. Instead, some masochist had devised an endurance test to see how many escalators, back-and-forth lines, long waiting stretches, and passport viewings people could stand before either collapsing or screaming in agony. The four of us made it through, after stepping over the twitching bodies of many who didn’t. Toward the end, even I felt an agonized scream coming on. In fairness, the authorities had to process three cruise-ship-loads of passengers at one time, and shepherd them through both Canadian and U.S. Customs.

Finally, we crossed the gangway and boarded our ship, the MS Hellandam of the NetherStates Line. Helpful crewmembers directed us to our cabin on Deck 6, the Verandah Deck, on the starboard side, forward of amidships. At 3:45, the ship held a scheduled “emergency” drill requiring all passengers to muster at their lifeboat stations. Considering the chaotic way that went, I vowed, in an actual emergency, to take the quicker route and swim to shore.

Leaving the pier, as seen from our verandah

The ship got underway at 4:53 pm. From our verandah, we marveled at the view, with lush, green mountains rising to majestic snow-topped heights under cloudy skies.

Unfortunately, some misguided crewmember had assigned the four of us a dinnertime of 8:00 in the Main Dining Room, and by then I could have walked to every table and devoured snatched everyone else’s meal. Luckily for all but a few diners, I have deep reservoirs of self-control. Designers had furnished this gorgeous two-level dining room with large chandeliers, a ceiling with blinking stars, and wrap-around stern windows. The chefs’ skill equaled that of the room’s designers, and I can heartily recommend the Beef Stroganoff.

A bird only a female Horned Grebe could love

Back in our cabin, we noted how late the sun got around to setting in these latitudes—after 9:00 pm. I liked the efficient arrangement of our cabin; it came equipped with everything we could want. Beyond that, two very large pictures by Audubon hung on the wall opposite the bed, with near-life-sized paintings of two Turnstones and two Horned Grebe, watching us in bed. That male Horned Grebe won no beauty points from—

Poseidon’s Scribe

 

 

 

 

 

 

May 19, 2018Permalink

Voyage to Alaska—Days 1 and 2

Starting today, and for the next ten days, I’ll be charting a new course for this blog. I’ll tell you about a cruise I took to Alaska, along with my wife and another couple.

As all my steadfast readers know, I write fiction. Some parts of these blog posts may tack a bit downwind of the truth. For example, I traveled with my wife, Jean, and the other couple—Mike and Brenda Knyght. None of those is a real name. I’ve changed a few company brand names, too.

Our plane flight to Seattle went without incident. Why we flew to Seattle to board a cruise ship departing from Vancouver, BC will remain one of the universe’s mysteries. There being four of us, we rented a large SUV. Black and rugged, it resembled the Batmobile, and I signed a form promising to use its Bat-missiles only for fighting crime.

We checked into a hotel in downtown Seattle, chosen since it was near the train station. You may only reach this hotel via a series of right turns so labyrinthine I had to leave a trail of Bat homing devices to find my way out. An antique flying saucer loomed overhead, or maybe it was the Space Needle. That night, we enjoyed dinner at the delightfully quirky 5-Point Café.

Love & Loss, in Olympic Sculpture Park, Seattle

Due to clever prior planning, we’d left the next day free for us to explore the wilds of the Seattle area, since Jean and Brenda had never been there.

Steampunk art in Olympic Sculpture Park, Seattle

Mike and I woke early, and walked to the Olympic Sculpture Park and marveled at the artwork.

For Mike, marveling at artwork consumes very little time. After our wives woke up, we drove the Batmobile aboard a ferryboat bound for Bainbridge Island, across Puget Sound.

Viking mural in Poulsbo, WA
Seattle to Bainbridge Ferry

After a brief drive, we walked through picturesque Poulsbo, a village founded by a band of Vikings whose longboat got terribly lost. For lunch, we had Mexican food at the Hop Jack, a nice restaurant at the edge of Dyes Inlet in Silverdale. The ferry brought us back to Seattle, where Brenda and Mike met some local friends for dinner while Jean and I dined at the Green Lounge, nearer our hotel. The salmon portions there may be small, but given my over-fondness for food, that’s a fortunate thing.

Then a strange thing happened.

With the sun still up, Jean and I walked down toward the shore of the Sound. Jean spied a corner of some object sticking up from the ground. I dug it up and it proved to be a tan leather parcel or satchel, cracked and flaking with age. With care, I opened it and extracted a folded and mildew-damaged flag—a British Union Jack—and a page of parchment. Despite the paper’s torn edges and faded ink, I made out the following: “…do hereby claim the entirety of this continent, from its western extent to its eastern, for England in the royal name of Queen Elizabeth, said continent to be called Nova Albion. Set by my hand on this 4th Day of July, in the Year of Our Lord 1579. Sir Francis Drake.”

I looked at Jean and she looked at me. We discussed the matter, imagining all the consequences of finding this and of showing it to others. We did what any two Americans would do: without taking any pictures, we set fire to satchel, flag, and parchment. Having no regrets, we walked away, Jean and—

Poseidon’s Scribe

May 18, 2018Permalink

The Dawning of Solarpunk

The Punk Family just keeps on growing! Its new addition is Solarpunk, a subgenre and movement pointed out to me by a kind fan on Facebook.

The Punk Family

The Punk Family started with Cyberpunk, which spawned a series of literary subgenres. Of those, the most popular is Steampunk (a favorite of mine). Most of them are marked by a prime mover, an energy source or main motivating agent, that is part of each one’s name. They all incorporate a ‘punk’ aspect, that is, that at least one character rebels against some aspect of society. Finally, each one comes with its own décor, or visual style and clothing design.

As near as I can determine, Solarpunk started with a post by Olivia Louise in 2014. She envisioned a world of renewable, sustainable, ecological green energy where people are closer to the earth and specialize as craftspeople and artisans. She proposed an aesthetic along Art Nouveau lines.

Others took up this theme and incorporated related threads of thought into Solarpunk, including:

  • Transcendence beyond war, aggressive violence, and scarcity;
  • A culture celebrating ethnic and sexual diversity and inclusion;
  • A decentralized society, including micro-farming, with individuals not dependent on a commercial, global economy to furnish their needs;
  • A technology level we already have; no new breakthroughs required; and
  • Glass structures and ubiquitous solar cells.

Solarpunk is a reaction against a society marked by the burning of fossil fuels, hierarchal political arrangements, corporate greed, global warming, intolerance of marginalized groups, capitalism, and globalism. That, of course, is the ‘punk’ aspect of Solarpunk.

Given this description, you can understand the appeal of this movement. A quick internet search for ‘solarpunk’ reveals beautiful designs incorporating flowers and other plants, and utopian depictions of a near future within our reach.

Some great descriptions of the Solarpunk movement include posts by Connor Owens, Adam Flynn, and Ben Valentine. Goodreads has a list of Solarpunk literature here.

Solarpunk is still blossoming and forming itself. Its literary landscape is rather sparse, and there’s a clear demand for more Solarpunk stories. This represents a new and potentially fruitful opportunity if you’re a writer of fiction, like—

Poseidon’s Scribe

May 6, 2018Permalink

Suffering for Your Writing

You’ve heard the phrase “suffering for your art,” and you know the stereotype of the writer who’s deeply disturbed and probably insane. Let’s reason this out together.

First, I’d like to define some terms. Suffering means simply to experience something undesirable, some hardship. Given that definition of suffering, it’s something no human escapes. We all have undesirable experiences. Suffering is universal and inevitable.

An insane person is one who does not exhibit normal perception, behavior, or social interaction. Imagine lining up all people in order from the most sane to the most insane. Even psychologists would have a difficult time marking the boundary separating the sane from the insane, though most would agree about those at the extreme ends of the line.

For my purposes here, let’s consider insanity a rare condition. Let’s use the term as a psychologist might, and not like the hyperbole we use when seeing someone do something remarkable: “He’s insane!”

In this post, Wency Leung cites a study showing that creative people are more likely to receive treatment for mental illnesses, and likely also are related to people with mental disorders. The study specifically found authors to have high likelihoods of anxiety, depression, schizophrenia, and substance abuse, and to be more prone to suicide than the general population.

Michelle Roberts cites the same study, but her post details a similarity between the brain scans of creative people and those of schizophrenics. Both seem to have fewer mental filters, thus allowing a greater capacity for seeing connections between unlike things. Those two groups make associations and links not made by the general population.

Exploring the study’s implications for writers, Kimberley Turner warns against glamorizing mental illness, saying it can bring on depressions that are far from desirable. Given the higher incidence of mental illness with writers, she asks if writing causes the illness and its associated unhappiness, or if the mentally ill are more likely to take up writing. She concludes that depression is not a necessary condition to be a great writer, but that a writer must have endured some suffering to portray believable characters contending with conflict.

This post from Kevin T. Johns focuses on the suffering writer, without delving into whether that suffering results from, or causes, insanity. He contends writers must suffer for their art. However, they need not seek out suffering; life supplies enough suffering by itself. Writers differ from most people in that they use suffering. They don’t shy away from the hurt and pain—they write down every detail. They force characters to suffer, thus producing engaging literature.

Considering that question of whether suffering sparks people to write, or writing itself causes suffering, Mark McGuinness distinguishes between two kinds of suffering. Suffering from life, he contends, is different from suffering from your art. We all suffer the pain of living, so you must face and overcome it. Writers use it by learning from it and writing it down. However, he spares no sympathy for writers who suffer from their writing. He finds that self-pitying and unhelpful.

As for me, I agree life provides enough suffering for any writer to use. However, I recommend you not allow your writing to cause you undue suffering, let alone to drive you insane. Your readers await your next quality story, and you can’t deliver if you’re sliding into depression and madness.

Life throws bad stuff at all of us, but we get to choose how to respond. I’m in favor of remaining as optimistic as you can. That’s the best advice available from your fellow suffering writer—

Poseidon’s Scribe

April 29, 2018Permalink

12 Types of Combination Stories

The reading public raved about your book. Readers loved the characters, the setting, everything, and they’re asking for more. More? Yes, more novels with those characters in that world you created.

What can you do? You could start a series, and I have a dozen suggestions on how to do that.

This ‘problem’ happened to Homer in ancient Greece. The Iliad was popular, and fans demanded more. So he wrote the Odyssey, very likely the first sequel in history.

But straight sequels aren’t the only type of combination novels you could write. There are many more, and I’ll define each one. I’ll use the term ‘base novel’ to mean the one you wrote first, the one fans loved so much. I’ve included an illustration that attempts to depict these types graphically.

  1. Sequel. This picks up where the base novel left off. It has most of the same characters and takes place in the same fictional world as the base novel.
  2. Stand-Alone sequel. This is like a sequel, but is so self-contained that readers need not have read the base novel.
  3. Threequel. This takes place after the sequel. It’s also called a second sequel.
  4. Prequel. This takes place at a time before the base novel, and establishes the base novel’s backstory. For readers who already read the base novel, there won’t be a surprise ending, so it can be challenging to keep prequels interesting.
  5. Interquel. This is set in a time between two already existing works of your series.
  6. Crossover. This is a sequel to two different base novels that weren’t previously part of the same series. Say you have a compelling character in Base Novel 1 and an equally compelling character in Base Novel 2. You could write a Crossover novel in which they meet and interact.
  7. Remake. This is where you write a new version of the base novel. You take the same concept but redo it, abandoning any connections to it, or continuity with it. It’s more common in the movie industry.
  8. Reboot. This is like a Remake, but you’re redoing the base novel of an existing series. Again, it’s more common for movies.
  9. Spinoff. This is when a secondary character stole the show in your base novel, so you write another novel featuring that character. It can take place at a time before, during, or after the base novel.
  10. Parallel. This is a novel that takes place at the same time as the base novel. It is set in the same world, but may involve different characters.
  11. Spiritual Successor. This doesn’t build on the base novel, but contains many of the themes, elements, and the style of the base novel. You write it in the same ‘spirit’ as the base novel. It’s also called a Spiritual Sequel.
  12. Companion Piece. This is associated with and complementary to your base novel. It needn’t take place in the same world, but it expands on ideas and themes of the base novel and you intend for your readers to think of it in the same context as the base novel.

You can write novels in any or all of those forms. There are so many ways to please your hungry fans. One problem can occur if your enthusiasm for the series wanes before the clamoring from your readers dies down. Let’s call that the Misery problem, and we’ll leave that for a future blog post by—

Poseidon’s Scribe

April 21, 2018Permalink

Your Antifragile Hero

Is the protagonist of your story antifragile? Should she be?

I wrote an earlier post on ‘antifragility,’ but there I applied the term to stories themselves. Today we apply it to heroes/protagonists/main characters.

Here’s a brief introduction to antifragility. In his book Antifragile, Things That Gain From Disorder, Nassim Nicholas Taleb sought an antonym of the word “fragile.” He didn’t mean words like ‘resilient,’ ‘tough,’ or ‘robust,’ which refer to sustaining shocks without damage. He wanted to describe things that improve their resistance to stress by being stressed. There being no such word, he coined the term ‘antifragile.’

What does this have to do with literary heroes? Remember, all stories involve conflict.The writer must subject the protagonist to a significant conflict. Stories are about the hero contending with the problems arising from this conflict.

Conflict needn’t involve bombs or guns, swords or knives. The conflict can be verbal jousting with another character. It can be internal, as the hero wrestles some inner demon.

Note the mention of ‘disorder’ in the subtitle to Taleb’s book. Often, a story begins with an orderly, logical world for the hero, a world soon thrown into chaos, subjecting the hero to confusion and unfamiliar surroundings. The story then becomes the hero’s struggle to contend with this new and disorderly world.

The best stories take some weakness in the protagonist’s psychological character or some aspect of the hero that deviates from the norm, and exploit it. That is, the author designs the conflict to attack that weakness or stress that deviating aspect. In this manner, the author fits the specific conflict to the specific hero.

Moreover, a good writer will show no mercy, and will ramp up the conflict throughout the story to the point where it seems the protagonist can stand it no longer. Authors do this, not because they’re sadistic, but to get the reader to care about the character, to want to read the story to the end.

The story ends soon after the resolution of the conflict. In a few stories, the resolution involves the death of the main character. Most of the time, though, the protagonist prevails in the struggle and wins the day. This occurs when the hero faces her fears, defeats her inner demons, beats the bad guy, etc. In the best stories, the main character learns something in the process, changes for the better, improves herself in some way.

In this manner, the protagonist exhibits antifragility. She encounters several stressful situations and emerges stronger from the ordeal. She changes and learns from the experience. She is antifragile.

Maybe this idea extends beyond the hero herself. In stories where the protagonist prevails in the conflict, we could say the protagonist is teaching us, the readers, about antifragility. To be more specific, as we read such tales, we learn how to become antifragile ourselves.

Maybe you disagree. Go ahead and submit comments disputing my statements. Such slings and arrows only serve to make me stronger. Antifragility is the middle name of—

Poseidon’s Scribe

April 15, 2018Permalink

How to Write When You’re Not Writing

This post’s title sounds kind of Zen, doesn’t it? What does it mean to write when you’re not writing?

Let’s say you’d like to be a writer, or a more prolific writer. The trouble is time. There’s not enough of it in your day. The rest of life sucks up too much time. Just when you find yourself with a few free minutes to write, the words won’t flow, or you’re too exhausted.

What if you could get some writing done during the rest of the day when you’re not writing? Moreover, what if I told you that if you could write when you’re not writing, you’ll write more and better prose when you do write? Is that even possible?

It is possible. I’ve hinted about it in previous posts, but today I’ll describe what I mean. First, I’ll discuss the available time, and then I’ll go into what you can do with that time.

List the activities you do during a typical week or month that have the following properties: (1) you are either alone or don’t have to interact with others, (2) you are performing drone work that doesn’t require full concentration, or you’re waiting for something to happen.

Examples of these activities might include:

  1. Cleaning your place;
  2. Commuting to and from work;
  3. Waiting in a doctor’s or dentist’s waiting room;
  4. Showering or bathing;
  5. Preparing or eating a meal alone, and cleaning up afterward;
  6. Sitting (ahem) atop a porcelain throne in the bathroom;
  7. Yard work or gardening;
  8. Exercising;
  9. Waiting to fall asleep;
  10. Etc.

Your list would be different, but you get the idea. That represents an amount of time when you’re awake and alert, but may not need to focus all your attention on your activity. (Be careful with the commuting one, though; that works best if you ride in a vehicle someone else is driving.)

That’s the time you have available to write when you’re not writing. What kind of writing can you do during that time? Especially if you can’t actually write anything down?

Here are some examples:

  1. Think of your next story idea;
  2. Flesh out a character, including her specifics like strengths, weaknesses, personality, quirks, motivations, life story, etc.;
  3. Imagine the details of a scene’s setting;
  4. Work out a solution to a plot problem;
  5. Do some people-watching, for appearance quirks, gestures, and speech patterns you can use for your characters;
  6. Lay out how the next scene will go, including dialogue and action;
  7. Etc.

This list will vary quite a bit, not just between different writers, but it will vary for you, day to day. These are the things you will think about during the times you’re not writing. Sometimes the process may be almost, or entirely, subconscious. You emerge with the problem solved in your mind even though you’d don’t recall thinking about it.

Oh, yeah. Remember I mentioned that writing when you aren’t writing will help you be more productive when you are writing? Here’s how that works. Since you solved some problems when you weren’t writing, you’ll sit down at the keyboard and you’ll know what to do right away. No need to ponder things. Those ideas you had will spill out.

Some ideas won’t look as good when you write them down as they did in your mind while you were showering. That’s okay; you can always modify and improve them.

By the way, this process of having your non-writing time influence your writing time—it also works the other way around, too. When you’re writing and you come across a problem, relax. You don’t have to solve it right away. Just file it away for future thought. That’s what your non-writing time is for. Simply move on. In this manner, your writing time also serves to prime the pump with problems to work on in your non-writing time.

Practice writing when not writing, my diligent apprentice, and you, too, will attain the skills of Zen Master—

Poseidon’s Scribe

April 8, 2018Permalink

Writing by Number, Part II

Are you the type of writer who measures progress through word counts? If so, here’s today’s question: how do you measure your progress in the second draft?

I first explored the metrics of writing in this post, but I was thinking of first drafts as I wrote it.

It’s easy to measure progress on your first draft. The manuscript was x words long at the end of yesterday, and y words long at the end of today; therefore, today’s word count is y – x. Any word processor can count those for you. There are several blog posts where you can compare your words/day count to those of many famous authors.

That’s fine for the first draft. There was a blank screen before, and there are words on it now. Easy to see and measure the difference.

What about the second draft, and all subsequent ones? For me, those are the more difficult and time-consuming drafts, and therefore it’s even more important to find a way to measure progress. But despite the crying need for a good metric in these drafts, there doesn’t seem to be a reliable one.

Let’s illustrate the problem with some numerical examples. Let’s say the first draft of your short story contains 6000 words. At this point, you don’t really know how long the finished story will be. That first draft might have been too verbose, so cutting will be necessary. Or you might have left out some key points, so it needs to be longer.

You start the 2nd draft editing process, using whatever technique you’ve grown accustomed to. At the end of the first day of this, you reviewed 1000 words of that first draft. To that, you added 100 words and cut 200. Those 1000 words are now 900 words (1000+100-200), with 5000 remaining to review.

How do you measure the work of that first day of editing?

  • Do you count added words as positive, and cut words as negative? That would be -100. On days when you cut more than you add, your ‘progress’ will be negative.
  • Do you count the percentage complete for editing the entire story (900 ÷ 6000 = 15%)? In that case, how long do you think the final story will be; what number do you put in the denominator? 6000 was the length of the first draft and most likely won’t be the length of the second.
  • Since both adding and cutting represent work on your part, do you add the adds and subtracts together (100 + 200 = 300)? That may not be easy to get your word processor to do.
  • Do you count all 900 words as the finished portion of your 2nd draft?

To me, the last option seems the best. It’s easy to get your word processor to count, and does represent completed work on your part. On the other hand, some days, you may not have much editing to do and will nevertheless get credit for quite a bit of work. On other days, you may cut most of what you read, and will end up with very little credit for all that work.

I offer the question up to the wisdom of the web. Comment and let me know how you measure your daily progress through 2nd and subsequent drafts. If there’s one writer you can count on who can learn from others, it’s—

Poseidon’s Scribe

April 1, 2018Permalink

4 Strategies for Coping with a Distracted Muse

Your muse gives you a great story idea. You just started writing the story and your muse arrives again and whispers about a second, completely different, story. “But I’m not done with the first one,” you say. Actually, forget both of those,” the muse says, “I’ve got a third story for you…”

Your muse, like all of them, isn’t the most focused entity around. Easily distracted by new and shiny objects, she comes up with fresh ideas all the time.

However, she never sticks around to help write the stories. She leaves that task to you. Moreover, her rate of creating ideas is far faster than your rate of story writing. As a writer, how do you handle this backlog problem?

Before I list various coping strategies, be aware that WIP is a term writers use meaning Work in Progress, the story you’re actively working on. Here, now, are some ways to deal with the idea backlog problem. You could:

  1. Start each story as your muse suggests it, and deal with having several WIPs at once.
  2. Make a list of all story ideas as your muse suggests them, and come back to that list as you finish each WIP.
  3. Ignore your muse while working on your WIP, accepting that you’ll lose some ideas.
  4. Restrict your stories to a series about a single set of characters or a single genre, and ignore your muse’s ideas that don’t fit those restrictions.

There may be other techniques as well, and I’d love to hear you tell me about them.

Many writers opt for the first strategy of writing several WIPs at once. They shift from story to story, progressing as their enthusiasm and focus allow. This has the advantage of starting each story when the idea is fresh, but the potential disadvantages of mixing up stories or never finishing any.

Others maintain a lengthening list of story ideas, updated each time the muse whispers. They work on a single story until it’s finished, then pick the next WIP from the list. This keeps the writer focused on one WIP without losing any ideas, but the writer might return to the listed story idea and not recall the muse’s enthusiasm that made it a good idea.

Some simply ignore the muse while writing a single WIP. This is probably more common among novelists than among short story writers. Novelists must maintain total focus for the long term to finish their WIP. This allows that focus, but risks losing some good ideas.

If you can restrict your writing to one genre or setting or a set of characters, then you can disregard any ideas from your muse that don’t fit. This certainly works as long as you remain enthusiastic about your chosen niche.

Your chosen strategy will depend on your particular circumstances, including the persuasiveness and creativity of your muse, and your ability to focus or willingness to work on several WIPs at once. If one strategy doesn’t work for you, try a different one, or combine them.

Gotta go. My muse just whispered a great story idea to—

Poseidon’s Scribe

March 25, 2018Permalink

Sense, or the Censor?

Say someone just changed the words of your book because they were offended. Whether you call it censorship, expurgation, bowdlerization, or comstockery, this practice always seems so wrong…to authors. Is it ever the right thing to do?

Allow me to define what I mean by censorship. It’s the deliberate alteration of text, without the author’s permission, to make the story less offensive to the censor. This is not what a normal editor does. Editors collaborate with authors to correct errors, to make the book as good as it can be.

To me, changing the text of a book seems a little less egregious than banning the book entirely. Banning prevents readers from reading the book at all. With censorship, some version of the book’s thoughts gets transferred to readers.

Why censor at all? It’s usually for one or more of five different offenses: profanity, political, religious, racial, and sexual. Let’s call them 2P2RS for short. These five areas are likely the topics your mom told you to avoid at parties upon first meeting someone. 2P2RS can be sensitive for many people.

Throughout history, censors have altered books for each of those five reasons. They’ve taken strong curse words out and substituted mild ones. They’ve cut out the author’s political text if it’s not in keeping with government doctrine. They’ve removed religious references that cast certain organized faiths in a bad light. They’ve deleted words they interpret as racial slurs. They’ve eliminated sex scenes and altered the sexual proclivities of certain characters.

Examples are too numerous to cite, so I’ll merely mention the censorship inflicted on one work of my favorite author, Jules Verne. When translating it into English, W.H.G. Kingston cut out and rewrote much of Verne’s novel, The Mysterious Island. He likely felt the anti-British motivations of the character Prince Dakkar of India would be too objectionable to British readers, so deleted and rewrote those passages. Unfortunately, for English language readers, Kingston’s edition ended up being the predominant one for a century.

Publishers have treated the elements of 2P2RS differently over time. In the past, they permitted less sex and profanity than they do now. However, certain racial and religious slights used to be easier to publish than now. As for political censorship, that seems to vary from country to country and is roughly constant with time.

From the viewpoint of an author or a reader, a censor seems forever a villain. I can conceive of one narrow example of good censorship, but it must meet all of the following conditions. The publisher:

  1. wishes to put out a children’s edition of a book, and
  2. cuts out parts of the book deemed unsuitable for children while retaining as much of the essence of the story as possible, and
  3. is unable to obtain the author’s consent to the necessary cuts, and
  4. ensures the children’s version is clearly labeled as such on the cover, and
  5. ensures that the uncut, unabridged, version of the book is on sale and available to the public.

Of course, authors sometimes make it difficult to condemn censorship entirely. Writers occasionally push the edge of the envelope on one or more of the five aspects of 2P2RS. Some are out to shock, to make a name for themselves.

Editors and publishers once kept the more scandalous and shocking 2P2RS pushes away from the public by rejecting the authors’ manuscripts. Only when they deemed the writing excellent in quality, and when they felt the public might be ready for a new boundary line, did they release such a book. In these days of self-publishing, however, those gatekeepers can no longer hold back the pressing throng of writers who recognize no 2P2RS restraints.

I’m against most censorship, other than the narrow example mentioned above. Let’s treat the public like adults. Our self-publishing era may lack gatekeepers, but it teems with readers who can post comments. Let the ideas and counter-ideas flow, says—

Poseidon’s Scribe

March 18, 2018Permalink