by Bruce BethkeI've dropped the exclamation point. While the "Name This Column" contest continues, it no longer seems to have that breathless urgency about it. The Sunday Morning Post? Phenomena, Comments, and Notes? Postcards from Edge? Sooner or later we'll either come up with a fitting name for this thing, or else we won't.
For that matter, sooner or later I'll make a practice of posting it at the promised time, or else I won't.
I didn't today. Some mornings you want to write. Some mornings you just want to stand before the picture window, savoring the dawn, and waiting for the percolator to brew up. The percolator?
Yes, I'm that much of a Luddite. My preferred portable always-on writing device is a spiral notebook and a pen. Despite (or perhaps because of) having made my living for the past thirty years using computers, my preferred way to write fiction is on a typewriter. We do have a Bunn Super Mega Turbo 9000, or whatever the heck they call that thing that Mr. Coffee only aspires to be, and it does spew out a perfect pot full of drip-brewed coffee in under three minutes, every time. But since the rest of the family drinks full-powered coffee, while I am only allowed two cups of caffeinated, max, I also have a clear glass stove-top percolator, in which I make my little pot of hand-ground decaf. The Bunn is for impatient types. I derive some strange satisfaction from all the fuss and bother of getting the percolator ready; from the cheerful sounds it makes as it reaches boil; and from the earthy aroma of coffee wafting through the house that tells me when it's ready.
Most people live by either "wake up and smell the coffee" or "slow down and smell the roses." I'm efficient. I've concatenated it to, "Slow down and smell the coffee." Besides, if I hadn't had to wait for the percolator this morning, I would have missed the wild turkeys slinking across the frost-covered cow pasture in the gray light of false dawn, and the way the first rays of light fell precisely from east to west at the crack of sunrise today, and the arrival of a mated pair of cardinals at the bird feeder, and later on, the way the yearling Holsteins came down to the south end of the pasture and split into two groups, with the heifers contentedly munching some dead grass that was still green while the three young bulls ignored the heifers and took turns mounting and humping each other.
On second thought, I'd rather not think about that last one.
I've also been doing a lot of thinking about The Friday Challenge lately, and in particular, the question of just what I mean to do with this thing. Yes, it may come as something of a surprise to some, but there is in fact a coherent theory and method behind this site: I'm just having trouble articulating it succinctly. This line of thinking has not yet emerged as a column because every time I start to write it, it keeps unfolding and revealing more layers.
Strange thing, writing. It's an art, a craft, and a business. The art part of it is what most literary types seem to lock-in on, or at least, they do seem to rather gas on about it at length. Me, I don't worry too much about the art aspect. Either you have some measure of innate, God-given talent, or you don't, and if you don't, there's not much you can do about it.
But—and this is the really important part—writing is also a craft, and craft skills can be turned into practices, and taught, and improved with study, practice, and effort.
Over the course of a thirty-plus year creative career, I have known literally hundreds of writers and musicians: maybe a thousand or more. The one absolute truth I have taken away from all this experience with all of these people is that raw talent does not matter. Good craft skills and good work habits beat gobs of talent and slovenly work habits six days a week and twice on Sunday. Especially on Sunday. Because on Sunday, the fantastically innately talented artist is most likely too hungover to work and sleeping in.
Anyway, if you're really interested in the art part of the equation, I recommend reading The Painted Word, by Tom Wolfe. Granted, it's about Modern Art, not writing, but the principles hold true. The question of what is or is not "art" is the domain of the professional critic, and professional critics by and large have a vested interest in slagging that which was popular previously and pimping new trends and fashions, the more outrageous and ephemeral the better. After all, how else are you going to convince people that you are an Important Critic, whose tastes are far more intelligent and sophisticated than those of common clods, and who therefore should be listened to with rapt devotion?
As for the craft and business parts of the equation: another book I've been reading lately is the long-out-of-print Seekers of Tomorrow, by Sam Moskowitz, which is essentially a collection of science fiction writer and editor biographies from the 1930s through the 1960s, written by a man who knew them all. I can only take this book in small doses, though, as it is so damned depressing. So many writer's careers have risen and fallen, not on the quality of the writer's work per se, or even on fan or critical response to the work, but on the petty piques, feuds, cronyisms, jealousies, and career ambitions of magazine editors.
I mean, consider an archetypical case: the newsstand sales of Stupefying Stories magazine have gone down, so owner Beatentua Pulp Publishing fires Joseph Blow as editor and gives you his job. Are you going to tell the publisher:
a.) "Blow basically was on the right track, so I'm going to keep buying stories and cover art from the same writers and artists he bought from"or
b.) "Obviously, the problem with our sales is that Blow was buying crappy cover art and crappy stories by lousy writers. I'm going to drop all those clowns right now and find all-new writers!" (And then as soon as the publisher is out of earshot, would you call your six closest writer friends and say, "Hey! I just got the greenlight to buy anything I want!")One of these days when I'm ready to finish committing career suicide, I will have to write the true secret history of science fiction publishing in the 20th century, at least as far as I've been able to put the pieces together. It's a tale filled with authentic nutjobs and weirdos galore and lots of riotous, if mostly unintentional, humor. However, that auto de fé will have to wait until I'm in a more combative mood, as right now there is no honest way to relate the history of SF publishing in the 1950s without going into detail about a certain litigious cult which purports to be a church, and I just don't have the patience to deal with those @$$holes this week.
And with that, I'm out of time. In lieu of a proper ending, then: To be continued...
~brb
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