Kevin Harkness

The Spark, the Smile, the Work

(This post originally appeared on the Supernatural Snark Blog)

There’s a scene in a wonderful movie, Topsy Turvy, that captures my favourite part of writing.  Jim Broadbent, portraying the nineteenth-century writer of light opera, W.S. Gilbert, is playing with a sword he bought at a Japanese exhibition.  He swings it back and forth, pauses, then a small smile appears, and in his eyes you can see the birth of The Mikado.

That is the best part of writing.  When you have it, in that moment, you are Gilbert – and you are Mozart, Gaugin, and Einstein too.  You are genius.

Granted, the feeling doesn’t last, because now you have to remake that concept using words.  This was no problem for Gilbert.  He seemed to have an inexhaustible supply of lunatic humor under his Victorian tweed – the scene in which Broadbent does a straight-faced reading of The Mikado’s silliness for his partner-composer Sullivan is worth the price of the DVD alone.  Most of us, however, struggle to give some form to our grand ideas.

My YA fantasy novel, City of Demons, started with two such ideas.  The first was from a memory of my own childhood.  I was five years old, and something bad lived in my closet.  I’m sure this was a common problem, perhaps even a cliché for five-year olds across Canada, but it seemed very important and personal to me.  One day, after many weeks of almost, I opened the closet door.  That may have been the bravest thing I have ever done or will do.  It led my adult self to wonder who is more courageous, those who only fight or those who fear and fight – and if the weapon that monsters wield is first and foremost terror, who is best suited to fight it?

The second grand idea was born in magic, or more specifically a Magic, The Gathering card.  I was a teacher in a Richmond, B.C. high school at the time, and these were all the rage among the Grade Eight and Nine boys.  One such card was left in the class, and I put it on the corner of my desk, where it sat unclaimed.  Before class one morning I looked at it.  The card showed a wide expanse of prairie.  Golden grass swayed and grey clouds scudded over a distant horizon.  I began to wonder, who would cross such a plain.  Where were they going, and in what company?  Did they travel by choice or necessity?  My first grand idea about fear poked its nose in to have a look.

I smiled, and City of Demons was born.

Or at least conceived.  The pregnancy was difficult and the creature that presented itself at birth needed a lot of reconstructive surgery, but the concept kept me going.  With the help of wise and patient reading-friends, I improved my writing, learned plotting and pacing, and even some lunatic humor.  I still can’t read my own prose without wanting to fix it, but maybe Gilbert felt the same way.

And now for my point.

Don’t give up on a concept.  Work at it.  Rewrite it.  Edit, polish, add, cut – do whatever it takes.  You may never publish – I collected a fine set of rejections before Tyche Books saw something in my novel – but keep working.  That idea gave you one of the best moments of your life.  You owe it some sweat.

Rock, Paper, Scissors

Well, the second novel; Rock, Paper, Scissors, is done – until it needs to be edited, revised, rewritten or otherwise mangled.  I am searching for a literary agent to represent the novel.  I hope that is easier than finding a publisher for City of Demons!

This second novel started out as a very short YA fantasy.  After the three hundred pager that preceded it, I felt that a shorter novel would be a good experiment.  My protagonist, a teen named Jenny, would be adrift in a foreign land (Canada), beset by bullies, and helped by the strange artifact she stumbles across.  I finished it in ninety pages, basked for a moment, then made the mistake of showing it to one of my muses.  She, who shall remain nameless, said, “It’s not complete.  You have to finish it.”

Okay.  Back to the word processor.  Seen as part of a larger narrative – which took some squinting –  the story seemed to be heading for three parts, so only two to go, right?  The second part came easily.  The conflict of the first section could be taken up again without major contortions.  Now came the third part.  I knew what the relationship between the two main characters should be – the conflict dictated it – but I couldn’t set it down within an interesting plot.  I tried four different approaches, and they all failed.  Two died silently, one whimpered a bit first, and the last is still screaming in a drawer somewhere.  Tyrants have dungeons; writers have drawers.

That is how matters stood for more than a year.  I tried taking it to a writing class, bouncing ideas off friends, but I was still stuck.  About three months ago, an idea popped up.  What if the antagonist became the centre of the story in part three?  Is it crazy to change points of view, put the protagonist who we have been rooting for in the background and just plough ahead?  Yes.  Yes it is.  But I think it works.  The protagonist is still there as an influence, and we get to see why the antagonist is so . . . antagonistic.

So the moral of the story is: Don’t listen to muses, or don’t give up on a story if there is any hope of saving it.

I have a hard time balancing reading and writing.  When I’m working on a story, I don’t like to read fiction at all.  Magazines are okay, non-fiction books are fine, but fiction, especially good fiction messes up the process.  It feels like playing blues on the guitar while listening to Bach on the radio.  The rhythms don’t match.

Part of the problem is in the way I read.  I’m a no-holds-barred reader.  When I find an author I like, I have to consume everything they ever wrote.  I immerse myself in their prose.  I wallow in their plot points and snuggle up to their characters.  Kerry Greenwood’s Phryne Fisher mysteries are my addiction at the moment – an addiction I can only enjoy because I’ve finished (I hope) another novel.  So I read.  If another writing idea comes up, the novels are put down.

People think that writers should be expert readers – I don’t know if that is true – but, because I have written a fantasy novel, aspiring writers sometimes ask me what they should be reading.

The answer really depends on your own writing.  Are you a plotter, a stylist, or a conceptualizer?  Plotters can learn a lot from George R.R. Martin, Jim Butcher, and L.E. Modesitt, Jr.  Stylists can study Stephen R. Donaldson, Guy Gavriel Kay, Tolkien (of course), and Ursula K. Le Guin (always!).  And what are conceptualizers?  Well, there are some authors who are defined by the startling scope of their imaginations.

Cordwainer Smith is a good place to start for this type.  His concept of a logical, perfect race of future humans giving up that perfection for the messy glory of personality and culture set science fiction tropes on their head.  His short stories can barely contain the worlds he created; his ideas push at the prose, forcing it into a grand language you only thought you knew – and probably wouldn’t accept from other writers.  Next, how about a book about books?  And witches and spells and loss and redemption?  That would be Jo Walton’s award-winning novel, Among Others.  Now, who to end with?  Who is the grand conceptualizer of our age?

That would be Haruki Murakami, no question, no doubt.  I fall into his books, knowing that he will show me beautiful and terrible things, all new, all unimaginable – to me.  I confess that I never understand his stories, not entirely.  Murakami and his lovely translators somehow use language to move beyond language.  He is a writer whose stories can only be understood through instinct and trust, yet he seems to offer himself so freely on the page, hiding nothing.  I gush, but Murakami is the person to read if you want to see how far a concept can drive a story.  If you want a gentle entry into his world, try After Dark.

Well, there it is.  This is a very idiosyncratic list, but I hope its helpful if you want models.  Or just read what you want.  Most writers competently mix plot, style, and concept, but some do have an exceptional strength in one area.  Enjoy your reading, but don’t let it interfere with your writing.  I’ve run out of Kerry Greenwoods for now, so maybe a little Murakami next.  The wonderfully incomprehensible Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World is waiting for me to re-read.  Maybe I’ll understand it this time.

Reviews are still coming in.  The latest is a rather nice one from Long and Short Reviews and can be found here.