Category Archives: Great Writing

6 Common Traits of Successful Fiction Authors

Thought experiment for the day: Let’s call your present state You 1.0. Imagine a future version of yourself, You 2.0, a very successful author, climbing toward the top of Wikipedia’s list of Best-Selling Fiction Authors.

Why is You 2.0 so much more successful than You 1.0? Perhaps the 2.0 version developed new traits, new approaches to the craft. What might these traits be, and how can You 1.0 attain them?

Vivian Giang and Robert Greene might show us. Ms. Giang wrote a blog post summarizing some aspects of Mr. Greene’s book Mastery. Greene interviewed and researched those he considered masters in their fields, and came up with six common traits or habits that differentiated those people from others.

Greene’s analysis considered masters across a wide variety of fields, but I’ll concentrate on fiction writing. What follows are the six traits from Ms. Giang’s wonderful post, put in my own words and geared toward the craft of writing.

1. Bleed and weep over your keyboard

That’s my way of suggesting you should have a passion for writing. You should care about it, love it. You should miss it when not engaged in it. You 2.0 thinks about writing nearly all the time.

How might You 1.0 develop this trait? According to Greene, you should look deep inside yourself, perhaps using a journal to discover and explore your strongest feelings.

2. Grow rhinoceros skin

This means to stop caring so much what other people think of you. Remember, You 2.0 is one of the greatest authors of all time, so is quite a bit different from everyone else. That sets up You 2.0 for criticism, for derision. Does You 2.0 care? Nope. That version of you uses others’ disparagement as a prod for future improvement, not as an excuse to slink into a pool of self-pity.

How did You 2.0 grow rhinoceros skin? You 2.0 learned not to take criticism personally. You 2.0 values the craft of writing far more than the opinions of others.

3. Forge new calf-paths

Here, I’m referring to the poem “The Calf-Path” by Sam Foss. Don’t let your brain get stale. Think differently. Carve out and explore new mental routes. This is and especially valuable attribute for a fiction author, who must get into the minds of a variety of characters.

You 2.0 developed this habit through constant striving to: learn new things, meet new people, study new fields, try new activities, and read books in unfamiliar genres.

4. Outsmart your smartphone

When did that phone become your boss? When it rings or vibrates, do you feel an overwhelming urge to answer it, no matter what you’re doing? And after you answer, do you take the time to wander the tangents of social media, check email, catch up on news?

You 1.0 can break this bad habit by going without the phone for a day or more. Just turn it off. Funny how life will still go on, and you’ll concentrate better on what you’re doing. Remember trait 1 above: you love writing more than you love your smartphone.

5. Go to your focus cave

Great authors find a place, a time of day, a mental state, where they wall off the world and become one with their writing. Within that private niche, they become laser-focused on writing, and words flow with little effort. Here, no distractions tempt them, no interruptions disturb their work. Their life isn’t about reacting; it’s about creating.

This focus cave is different for everybody. You 2.0 found it by experimenting with different routines in different surroundings before discovering the one that worked best.

6. Push beyond success

After an author gets a book published and enjoys some earnings, there’s a strong urge to build on that success by writing a similar book. After all, that’s what the publisher wants, and what readers seem to want. That’s just resting on laurels.

A truly great author such as You 2.0 will avoid that comfort-zone thinking and strike out in a different direction. Challenge yourself. Keep growing as a writer.

There you have it. Six attainable traits that may well propel you from You 1.0 to You 2.0. Good luck! Still holding at Version 1.1, I’m—

Poseidon’s Scribe

October 6, 2019Permalink

Write Like Mozart Composed

No way, you’re thinking. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was a genius, a child prodigy, a composer whose fame will endure forever. There’s no way you could write fiction one eighth as well as he composed music.

Mozart

Maybe not, but I’m suggesting you could aim for that end, strive to emulate his method. To the extent you can do that, you might well end up writing fiction beyond your current abilities.

How did Mozart compose music? He said, “I write music as a sow piddles,” which speaks to how naturally it was for him, but gives no hint of method. There is evidence he used sketches and did his main composing at a keyboard, but it’s also clear he had an amazing memory.

A scene from the 1984 movie Amadeus provides a hint of how he might have composed. I know it’s fiction, a movie, but it’s based on reality. I’ve long admired the scene; you can see it on YouTube, though you should watch the whole film.

In that scene, Mozart is gravely ill, bedridden, too weak to write. With the assistance of rival composer Antonio Salieri, he’s trying to compose the Confutatis movement of the Requiem in D minor. While Mozart describes, and sings, the various parts, Salieri scribbles as fast as he can. Repeatedly, Mozart asks, “Have you got it?” and Salieri keeps saying, “You’re going too fast.” In the background, the audience hears an orchestra and choir performing the fast-developing piece.

Mozart seems to be conveying a piece already fully formed in his mind. His task seems not to create or invent, but to capture and document. Speed is of the essence to him, not because he will forget any part of the piece, but because his health is failing and he’s running out of time.

One could surmise his entire composing career might have gone at a breakneck pace, even during his healthy times. He only lived to age thirty five, and it seems as if he were born with a century of music in his mind, but permitted only a third of that time to document it for others.

Here’s a thought experiment. Imagine if that were also true for you. What would it be like to have short stories, novels, and novellas already finished in your mind, every word clear and instantly retrievable? You don’t face a quality problem, for all those tales are perfect in structure, irresistible to readers. Nor do you have to struggle to invent characters, plots, or settings, let alone agonize over word choices or sentence formations. That’s all done.

Your only difficulty is writing them all down. You only need one draft—no editing—but there are too many stories. You have three lifetime’s worth of tales to scribble, but your hands and fingers will only last a single lifetime.

That was an enjoyable daydream, wasn’t it? However, you’re no Mozart, and neither am I. We toil away on draft after draft. The stories in our minds are but half-glimpsed, ghostly figments of perfect tales, and our attempts to recreate them in text are pitifully botched versions of those images. Our lifetimes of writing are spent slowly learning and honing the aspects Mozart found trivial.

At least we can envision what it might be like to be Mozart. If we can envision that, we can strive toward it, work to approach closer to it. It seems to me there are three aspects of Mozart’s abilities to work on: (1) attaining complete works in your mind, (2) ensuring those visions are in final form, and (3) conveying the vision to text rapidly.

Here are some exercises to develop each aspect:

  • 1A. Do as much story planning as you can—setting details, character traits and appearances, major plot points—before writing anything down.
  • 1B. Get the next sentence fully formed in your minds, and memorize it, before writing it down.
  • 2A. Practice editing a sentence at a time in your mind, trying various word substitutions, word orders, and structures, before writing the sentence down.
  • 2B. Work on limiting the number of drafts you go through before declaring a story done.
  • 3A. Participate in NANOWRIMO, and write a novel of at least 50,000 words during only the month of November.
  • 3B. Try writing software such as Write or Die or Flowstate, word processors that penalize you for getting distracted while writing.

I’m not guaranteeing these exercises will enable you to produce stories on par with Mozart’s music. Still, what if they made you half as good? Even a quarter as good? Writing stories one eighth as good as Mozart’s musical pieces is a lofty goal for—

Poseidon’s Scribe

July 15, 2018Permalink

Write More or Write Better?

Choose one: you could write the most novels ever by a single author, none of them great; or you can write only one, but it’s the best novel ever. Most of us would choose to write one standout novel.

It’s not a realistic choice, though, in guiding how you should write. A novel doesn’t get to become a classic until after its publication, and often not until after the author is dead. In other words, at the time you’re writing it, you don’t know whether your novel will stand the test of time.

But we do face the real problem of deciding whether to spend our limited time being prolific (writing a lot), or polishing a small number of stories.

We need to manage what I call our 1/E Ratio. The ‘1’ is the time we spend writing first drafts, and the ‘E’ is the time we spend editing those drafts.

At one extreme, 1/E could be very small. In this case, you might spend twenty years polishing a novel, editing and re-editing draft after draft. Your final product might be very good and might become a classic, but you couldn’t repeat your success too many times.

Or your 1/E could be very large, nearly infinite. You could spend all your time writing first drafts and never editing them. Just self-publish them immediately. You’d be very prolific, limited only by the number of story ideas you have and your available time.

Writers at both extremes seem to have solid rationale:

  • For Writer One, a small 1/E ratio is best. She seeks top quality with small quantity. After all, editors always say they want your best work. Writer One finds her story improving with each draft, greatly increasing its chances of entertaining more readers. Few people remember the most prolific authors, she says, but everyone can name some great ones.
  • Writer Two keeps his 1/E ratio large and goes for maximum output. He claims he’s honing his craft with every novel, and believes it’s still possible that one of his many books will strike the right chord with readers. In fact, by writing so many books, Writer Two thinks he’s maximizing his chances of being successful.

Remember, 1/E is a ratio, and there’s a wide spectrum between near-zero and near-infinity. You don’t have to choose one of those extremes.

In my analysis so far, I’m ignoring some factors that come into play when selecting how to spend your writing time. Some authors write for their own enjoyment, and aren’t aiming for high quality prose. Others don’t generate enough story ideas to write more than a few books, so their time is best spent editing the few stories they can write.

Your situation will be specific to you and will be constrained by your talents, your preferences, your end goals, etc. I have some general advice to offer, though:

  1. If you’ve been polishing and editing the same novel for over a decade and it’s never quite good enough, try dialing your 1/E ratio a little higher on the scale. Declare that novel done, send it out, and start writing another.
  2. If you’ve written a fair number of stories that just aren’t selling, try nudging the pointer toward a slightly smaller 1/E value. Spend more time editing each of your stories before sending them out.

Helping you adjust your 1/E ratio for optimum performance is all part of the free service provided by your writing mechanic—

Poseidon’s Scribe

June 24, 2018Permalink

Be Positive about Negative Capability

As part of our shared journey through the realm of fiction writing, let’s explore a few rooms within a stately mansion belonging to the English romantic poet, John Keats. In particular, what did he mean by the term negative capability, and how does it relate to creative writing?

photo By William Hilton – National Portrait Gallery: NPG 194

Nearly two centuries ago, on December 21, 1817, Keats wrote a letter to his brothers where he mentioned negative capability:

“…at once it struck me what quality went to form a Man of Achievement, especially in Literature, and which Shakespeare possessed so enormously—I mean Negative Capability, that is, when a man is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason—Coleridge, for instance, would let go by a fine isolated verisimilitude caught from the Penetralium of mystery, from being incapable of remaining content with half-knowledge. This pursued through volumes would perhaps take us no further than this, that with a great poet the sense of Beauty overcomes every other consideration, or rather obliterates all consideration.”

That may be confusing, but here’s what I think he means—If you want to be a great writer, be willing to:

  • delve into the essence of your characters (or objects, like a Grecian Urn),
  • shed your preconceived world-view,
  • abandon any search for meaning or the urge to fit things into a logical structure, and
  • accept any mysteries and ambiguities you find without trying to resolve them.

Keats praises Shakespeare for the Bard’s ability to show us his characters, through their speech and actions, as they would be, without the author’s heavy hand fitting everything into a coherent whole. Keats criticizes Samuel Coleridge for starting with a philosophical vision and fashioning poetic characters to illustrate that vision.

Why did Keats call this approach ‘negative capability?’ The Wikipedia entry offers an electrical explanation. However, I believe Keats was saying that a true poet should negate her own capability (to make judgements; detect patterns; deduce from, or induce to, general principles) and instead immerse herself in the object of study and absorb all that is there, with all its contradictions and inconsistencies.

For those of you still stuck on the word ‘Penetralium’ in Keats’ letter, let me digress a moment. The word refers to a building’s innermost part, like a temple’s sanctuary. By extension, it can mean the secret inner essence of a person—the soul. Keats thought in terms of rooms of the mind, as illustrated by a letter he wrote, which is cited in the Wikipedia article: “I compare human life to a large Mansion of Many Apartments…”

For another description of negative capability, see this video with author Julie Burstein, especially from 1:00 to 1:25. Also, check out this post at Keats’ Kingdom, and this one by Dr. Philip Irving Mitchell of Dallas Baptist University.

As for me, I take a nuanced view of negative capability, as it regards creative writing. I agree writers should empathize with their characters, to know them as directly as possible. That keeps all the characters from seeming to be slight variations of the author. I also concur writers should embrace “uncertainties, mysteries, doubts.” The worldview of any character and even the universe of the story itself don’t have to fit neatly together in every detail. The writer should approach the characters and story with an open mind, allowing things to develop as they would in their world, not necessarily in step with the worldview of the writer.

But where Keats asserts “the sense of Beauty overcomes every other consideration, or rather obliterates all consideration,” I suggest this applies to the story as a whole, not just one character. Characters are not works of art for a writer to portray, however empathetically, in isolation. They are part of a greater whole, the story, and that whole—with its plot, themes, style, setting, and characters—is the thing the writer must strive to optimize for reader enjoyment.

I hope you liked our visit to this mansion of John Keats’ mind. It’s time to continue with the rest of the tour, led by your literary tour guide—

Poseidon’s Scribe

November 5, 2017Permalink

Are Your Stories Antifragile?

That’s no typo in this post’s title. Antifragility is a thing, and today I’m discussing the concept as it applies to fictional stories.

In his book Antifragile, Things That Gain From Disorder, Nassim Nicholas Taleb asks if there is an antonym of the word “fragile.” If there were such an adjective, he’d say it describes things that become stronger when stressed.

He doesn’t mean words like ‘robust,’ ‘tough,’ or ‘resilient.’ Those words describe things that sustain shocks without damage. He wants to describe things that improve their resistance to stress by being stressed. Lacking a ready word, he coined the term ‘antifragile.’

Can a story be antifragile? To answer that, we should consider the things that impose stresses on stories. These include criticism in negative reviews and mocking satire.

What would it mean for a story to become stronger? If it meant that the story became more widely read, more popular, with increased sales, then an antifragile story would be one that suffers negative reviews or even satire and yet its sales increase.

Are there any such stories? If I recall correctly, Nassim Taleb offered the more popular plays of William Shakespeare as examples. For four centuries, those plays have endured bad reviews and been mocked, but they are performed far more often and in more languages and formats than they were in Shakespeare’s time.

From an author’s point of view, antifragility seems like a wonderful property for a story to have, especially the increasing sales part, right? If you wanted to write an antifragile story, and perhaps lacked the skill of Shakespeare, how would you go about it? Are there tangible attributes of such stories? Is there a checklist to follow?

I hate to disappoint you, but there’s no checklist. Further, the only authors who really understand what it takes to make a story antifragile…well, they’re dead. That’s because stories don’t really demonstrate that property to the greatest extent while the author is alive.

Still, being me, I’ll take a crack at it, because I like a challenge. Here is my proposed checklist for making your stories antifragile:

  1. Create complex and compelling characters. They need to seem real, with strong emotions and motivations, with goals to attain, with difficult inner problems to surmount, and with bedeviling decisions to make.
  2. Appeal to every reader. That may be impossible to achieve in a single story, but in your body of work you should include characters of many types, in diverse settings. Include rich and poor, young and old, introvert and extrovert, city and country, etc.
  3. Explore the eternal truths about the human condition. You know many of these eternal truths—we’re born, we grow up, we have parents, we learn to relate to others and even fall in love, we have disagreements and conflicts with others, we become curious about the nature of our world, we deteriorate with age, and we die. When I say to ‘explore’ these truths, I don’t mean to write a philosophy book. Write a fictional story that entertains, but causes readers to ponder those deeper truths after reading it.
  4. Execute your story with style, flair, and creativity. Yeah, right. Simply do that. This one is hard to implement, but I’ll suggest some thoughts. Look for ways to turn a phrase well. Create a new word that English lacks but needs. Write in a manner that stands out, such that readers could identify your unique voice from a couple of paragraphs chosen randomly from your stories.

Okay, it’s not really a checklist where you mark off each item in turn: done, done, done. It’s more of a guideline with concepts to aim for. Who knows if it’s even accurate? After all, I’m not dead yet (as I write this), so I can’t possibly know.

Still, it’s intriguing to think that one day, readers may consider your stories to be antifragile, and when scholars trace it back, they’ll discover you learned how to do it from—

Poseidon’s Scribe

May 7, 2017Permalink

Writing and the Black Swan

My question is, once you understand how the Black Swan relates to writing fiction, will you be so dejected that you’ll abandon any idea of becoming an author?

black swanNassim Nicholas Taleb wrote The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable and it was published in 2007. A statistician, the author was trying to get readers to think about low-probability events and our estimation of their risk.

He defined a black swan event as having three properties: (1) it is very rare, to the point of being almost impossible; (2) it has a huge impact on people, either positively or negatively; and (3) people do not (or cannot) predict it in advance, but after it occurs, everyone sees that it should have been predicted since it was obvious all the time.

By the way, Taleb chose the metaphor of a black swan because most swans are white, and black ones are very rare. In fact, people were convinced that all swans were white, until proven wrong. That’s part of Taleb’s point. If a rare event hasn’t occurred today, or yesterday, or for your entire life, you come to believe it cannot happen. Since black swans have a massive impact when they do occur, there is a huge difference between impossible and improbable.

I read the book about two and a half years ago, but I recall Taleb discussing success in writing as a black swan event. For our purposes, let us define success by the amount of money earned from writing. Success in writing, therefore, is rare, has a huge impact on a few writers, and is difficult to predict in advance but obvious afterward.

Taleb would conclude that if we could compile the relevant accurate statistics, the resulting graph would look like this:

black swan and writingThe vast majority of authors earn very little money, while very few earn a large income from writing.

Why is that? I believe Taleb would say that an author’s income is related to the popularity of his or her books. That popularity is determined by readers when they hear about the book, learn that their friends like it, and when they read it and recommend it to others.

People hear about books from various media outlets, so the media plays into book popularity. Luck has a role too, since poorly written books sometimes become bestsellers despite the writing quality.

Let’s say you’re an aspiring author, and let’s assume all the above is true. Does it depress you to know how much the odds are stacked against your success? Does it make you want to give up on your dream?

If you truly are writing for the money, there are things you can do to position yourself for the black swan. You can become really good at marketing; you can seek out (or pay for) media attention. You can practice your writing until you become more skilled at it.

No guarantees come with any of that, but your odds of success will improve a bit. The trouble is, you could strive for years, doing everything right, and still not achieve success because that intangible luck eludes you. That’s disheartening.

Alternatively, you could redefine what success means for you. You could decide you’re not after money, but seeking the pure enjoyment of writing, or the thrill of seeing your name in print. That’s a much more probable event, not a black swan at all.

Still, it’s my hope that the black swan of financial success from writing pays a visit soon, to both you and—

Poseidon’s Scribe

July 12, 2015Permalink

When Good Authors Turn Bad

Arrogance is today’s topic. It seems to me that authors generally start out their career with a tentative and uncertain attitude, but sometimes become more conceited with time. Is this a bad thing? If so, is it inevitable?

No, I’m not naming names. If you follow any author blogs, you may have seen the pattern, and can think of examples yourself. You read an author’s early fiction books, or read their blogs or essays, and they seem unsure, qualifying their statements, admitting they might be wrong.

good - bad authorAt some point later, that same author gives more decisive, unqualified opinions. He or she makes some controversial statements, occasionally deriding some other authors, or publishers, or editors, or society in general, etc.

In the last phase, the author becomes insufferable. Conceited beyond measure, she or he has a provocative opinion on every topic. Protagonists in the author’s later books are always dogmatic firebrands, and they’re proven right in the books’ conclusions.

Why does this happen to writers? In my view, authors aren’t the only ones susceptible to it. The phenomenon of turning to snobbery occurs in every field, but is probably more noticeable for those in the public sphere, such as sports, politics, news, and entertainment.

My theory is that it’s part of human nature to believe your own hype. If you’re surrounded by people telling you how great you are, and you have statistics (book sales, blog followers, etc.) to prove it, you’re likely to start thinking you’re pretty special.

Is this egotism a bad thing? I have mixed feelings about that. The most important thing readers want from authors is well-written books. If that need is satisfied, readers can put up with a fair number and degree of personality quirks. There’s a saying that goes, ‘bragging’s okay if you can back it up.’

Of course, if we had our choice, we’d prefer our heroes not only super-competent, but also humble. But we’ll settle for the former, if that’s all we can expect.

Speaking of that, is it really too much to expect, that top authors display a bit of humility? Is it impossible to resist human nature, to retain some measure of unpretentiousness during your rise to fame and glory?

Of course it’s possible. There are many great authors who remain modest and unassuming, who resist the lure of becoming a pompous jerk. Such people earn extra credit points in our hearts. We’re comforted when we hear it said of our favorite authors, “He’s such a great guy in person,” or “She’s so down-to-earth when you meet her.”

The main thing, I believe, is what I mentioned earlier. Concentrate on writing well, on producing great prose. If you become famous for it, your personality won’t matter much. Should you change into an intolerable blowhard along the way, you might lose a few readers who care about such things, but those lost sales will be in the round-off error of the huge fortune you’re amassing.

What about me? If you look back over the span of my blogging and story-writing career, do I show the signs of turning into a stuck-up, opinionated braggart? Am I already there? That’s for you, my readers, to decide.

This is one of those blog posts I might regret later, at some future point when I’m a Famous Author being driven in my limo to my mansion while smoking a fat cigar I lit with a $100 bill. I’ll take that risk. After all, making bold, provocative statements is one of the most loveable traits of—

Poseidon’s Scribe

July 5, 2015Permalink

I’ll Never Write As Well As They Do

It’s easy for your favorite authors to intimidate you. When you grow up enjoying reading, and when you study fiction by the world’s best writers in school, it’s natural to put them on a pedestal. They are geniuses, titans, specially gifted demigods with an ability beyond your understanding.

At some point, you might be tempted to try writing fiction yourself. Immediately you reject the notion out of hand. In your mind, you compare yourself to those great authors and dismiss the idea of creating any fictional work. Impossible. Laughable. Pretentious. You’ll never write as well as they do.

I’ve mentioned this phenomenon before, but I’d like to explore the problem in greater depth.

Just for fun, let’s give our intimidating scribblers some names. You have your own favorite, famous novelists in mind, but we’ll say that you idolize Bes Werdsmither, Gray Trighter, and Rhea Noun Dauther.

Okay, not the funniest puns, but they’ll do.

When I mentioned this issue in a previous blog post, I made two points:

  1. You can’t know today, before you begin writing, how you’ll eventually stack up against your imagined pantheon of Bes, Gray, and Rhea. Remember, all three of them started out as unknowns, too, like you are now.
  2. Even if you’re right, and you never end up writing as well as Bes, Gray, or Rhea, remember that there’s room in the world for lesser-known writers. You don’t have to aim for eternal fame or a mansion on your own island. You can still write your own stories, reach some readers, and make a little money.

Great writer comparisonEven though you worship Bes, Gray, and Rhea, I’d advise you not to try to imitate them, anyway. For one thing, why should readers read your copy-cat stories when they can purchase the real thing? Also, it’s best to allow your own inner voice to emerge, rather than attempt to channel some famed author.

Sure, you adore the characters, style, settings, and plots of Bes, Gray, and Rhea, but I suggest you strike out in a different, but related, direction. Write in their genre if your interests reside there, but make up your own characters, style, settings, and plots.

If you find some success as a writer someday, I assure you it won’t be because you copied someone else. It will be due to the separate and distinct course you charted, or the path your own muse led you along.

By the way, when your muse does whisper something outrageous (and she will), listen to her. She may implore you to write a story quite different from anything in the bibliographies of Bes, Gray, and Rhea. The muse might pull you in a strange and new direction you never imagined. Don’t ignore her. She’s your inner creativity, the voice of your soul calling you, so don’t hang up.

You can still enjoy novels by Bes, Gray, and Rhea, without dreaming of writing like those three. Your goal, one you should visualize, is to become the best author you can. It’s a process of continual improvement.

My personal geniuses, titans, and demigods are Jules Verne, Isaac Asimov, and Robert Heinlein. As readers of my blog know, my stories aren’t like theirs at all. I’ve taken off in a different direction, a unique course steered by—

Poseidon’s Scribe

June 14, 2015Permalink

That’s Classic!

Today’s lesson is: how to write a book that becomes known as a classic. Good news—we can identify some attributes of classic literature. Bad news—no book becomes a classic in the author’s lifetime, so you won’t find out if your book made the list until after you’ve been dead awhile.

ClassicsI’ve blogged before about the attributes of good, quality short stories, but today’s question is about the few books that attain true classic status. These must pass a more stringent test.

Easy, but Unsatisfying Definition

Many people say that a classic is that which endures, stands the test of time, and which people still read long, long after the author is dead. In his book Antifragile, Hassim Taleb states that you can make a rough prediction about how long a book will remain in print. The average time a book will remain in print from this point on is equal to the time it has been in print so far.

To me, this definition of a classic, though true, doesn’t really settle anything. It begs the question, why do readers today still want to read this book? Let’s accept that a classic must endure, but I want to explore why this is so.

Other Folks’ Definitions

I’m not the first to knock on the door to this party; in fact I’m way past fashionably late. Many people before me have come up with great definitions of what makes a classic.

  • Italo Calvino says you can’t feel indifferent to a classic. That definition makes it a personal connection between book and reader. However, that’s not so useful to an author trying to write a classic.
  • Blogger Chris Cox builds on Mark Twain’s definition. There are two kinds of classics, those we’re embarrassed not to have read yet, and those we nag others to read. Funny, but again it concentrates on the reader-to-book connection.
  • The French literary critic Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve said the author of a classic “….has enriched the human mind…caused it to advance a step; who has discovered some moral and not equivocal truth, or revealed some eternal passion in that heart where all seemed known and discovered…who has spoken to all in his own peculiar style, a style which is found to be also that of the whole world, a style new without neologism, new and old, easily contemporary with all time.” This is closer to what I’m looking for—let’s hold those thoughts.
  • Goethe said it’s not a classic because it’s old, but because it’s forever new. I like that one.
  • Some blog commenters have said a classic had some impact or effect on the age in which it’s written. That may be true for most classics, but not all such books endure.
  • Others say a classic is that which is new or innovative in its time. But, again, it’s not clear to me why such books would necessarily stand the test of time.
  • Jonathan Jones, a writer for The Guardian, says a classic must be elastic. That is, it endures despite plagiarism, satire, criticism, etc. Hassim Taleb would hasten to add that such pummeling of a classic makes it stronger, more enduring, and to use his word, antifragile. I like this attribute too, but it’s more about the reaction to a book rather than the writing of it.

My Definition

Borrowing the attributes I like and rejecting the rest, here are my rules. A classic for the ages must:

  • capture its time
  • be well written
  • say something profound and permanent about the human condition

There you have it. Write your book that way, and it might become a classic someday. Something for your great-grandchildren to enjoy. Currently at work on a classic, I’m—

Poseidon’s Scribe

November 2, 2014Permalink

Guess Who’s Author of the Week

Yours truly is the Author of the Week for Gypsy Shadow Publishing. For those of you who’ve been on the fence, somewhat undecided about purchasing one or more of my stories, this would be the week to buy one (or more). It’s a rare opportunity to purchase a book during the same period in which I’m Author of the Week. Very few people can say they’ve done that.

To celebrate the week, I am embarking on a world tour. Well, not physically, but virtually. For this whole week, I’m making this website available everywhere all over the world.

GSBannerBrdrFor this honor, I’d like to thank Gypsy Shadow Publishing, the company that has published a good number of my stories, all in the What Man Hath Wrought series. Among the company’s huge staff, CEO Charlotte Holley and Chief Editor Denise Bartlett deserve being singled out for special mention. Thanks to them, my rough manuscripts have become e-books of timeless prose with eye-seizing covers.

I’d be remiss if I didn’t also express my gratitude to all those who’ve influenced me in one way or another, helping me achieve this level of accomplishment. This list includes my parents, my critique group, and my spouse. Thanks as well to you, my legions of eager readers. I couldn’t have done it without you.

I’ve let it become known around my household that being the GSP Author of the Week comes with certain privileges, certain reasonable expectations of being catered to. These expectations include freedom from common drudgery work, absolute quiet while writing, the appearance before me of the beverage of my asking within moments of my asking, the use of respectful forms of address (such as Your Most Illustrious Highness, Author of the Week), and a polite bow or curtsey when approaching my presence.

To my amazement, my announcements of these sensible forms of deference have been met with very little interest, and even less obedience. This I find curious, and I’m sure you do too. Ah, well, I suppose greatness comes with the responsibility to educate the less deserving, to increase their understanding of the grandeur and glory of me.  It’s true that genius often goes unappreciated in its own week.

And, yes, to answer the question uppermost in your mind, it is wonderful for all of us to be alive during the very time that I’m the GSP Author of the Week. Someday your grandchildren will sit in reverential awe while you relate the sheer excitement of it.

Now that I think about it, being Author of the Week is the sort of honor that could go to one’s head. During weeks when it’s bestowed on lesser authors, that might well be a concern. But my unsurpassed humility and matchless modesty combine to keep me from becoming, in the slightest degree, egotistical.

No, fear not. I’ll go on, unaffected by the focused adoration of the Earth’s billions. To all of you, I’ll be the same old, unassuming—

                     Poseidon’s Scribe, Gypsy Shadow Publishing’s Author of the Week

 

 

 

 

 

April 23, 2014Permalink