As I am swamped with school work this will be a brief post. But I wanted to take a moment to just appreciate writers. I saw Drive this week and I was blown away by how well the story was told. There wasn’t much dialogue, many words, rather it relied on showing things through camera shots and used settings and soundtrack to set the mood. When it ended I sat there for a few minutes processing it. I rarely have that reaction to movie.

I often react like that to the end of a book however. A story that is told with nothing but words, no visual or mood setting music to accompany it can move me in a way high cost movies with hundreds if not thousands of people working on it rarely manages to do. 

So this is a writer appreciation post. You are all brilliant. You create worlds and characters out of nothing but words and that is really rather magical.

Getting Criticism

Accept criticism. Seek it out, in fact. I have, over the years, formed trusting relationships with several high school teachers, and now, college professors. I debate whether or not to confess to them that I write (as if I were suddenly ashamed of the thing I am proudest of). When I do, they always seem interested, and I always present them with some of my work. I do this expecting and hoping for criticism. And I receive it. Whereas my friends and readers of my work online may have nothing but praise for a piece, someone with a critical eye can look at it unbiased and tell me exactly what needs improvement. Sometimes it is more than I noticed. Sometimes I hang my head in shame, realizing that a work I thought fantastic was simplistic and childish. Often I learn that my work could become even more fantastic through changes.
It’s not easy to open yourself up to criticism. Many people avoid it. There are some artists out there who, upon receiving honest opinions claim “artistic license” and shut themselves off to all helpful advice.
The first mark of becoming a great artist is admitting and acknowledging that you are not one. If you want to be an artist, it is absolutely necessary to learn to not only respond well, but to desire earnest critiques of your work. If everyone praises you, and you are not truly deserving of that praise, you will inevitably have a rude awakening.
If you do seek out advice, criticism, and earnest commentary, you will find yourself all the better for it

Writing Advice - Using the Internet as a Mentor

I remember when I was a teenager, just starting to write seriously, and I would watch all these shows about young writers who would, by incredible strokes of good fortune, find mentors and with the mentors help they came into their own and grew up to be great writers. The one that most profoundly affected me was Finding Forestor with Sean Connery. I swear I watched that movie at least once a month for years. And I was so jealous of the kid in the movie, all I wanted was an old writer with strange habits to decide I was brilliant and teach me to write. 

Now years later, I’m still wishing for this to happen, though to a significantly lesser degree. Because I discovered the internet. The internet has lovely writing communities and is a wonderful resource for all writers. There are numerous sites and I won’t bother listing all the ones I can think of because each is tailored to different things and you would have to choose on your own which is best for you. I started with an account on Deviantart and stuck with it for years though it took an exceptionally long time to reach large number of followers. It’s not about the number though, it’s about the quality. I have over a hundred followers on that site but only a handful that give consistent and well thought out critique as well as support. I still remember fangirling a little bit when a writer who I had been following for years found me when I switched to a new account. I guess when I added her to my new watchers list she checked out my gallery. The fact that she decided to follow me as well at the point felt like a great testimony to my growth as a writer. And after that she continued to consistently have lovely things to say about my writing and gave good advice on the pieces.

Which leads me to another important thing. If you have a physical mentor he/she can get up in your face, possibly rant and fuss till you listen to what they have to say. Online people usually leave one comment and let it be. If you ignore their advice or get upset with them or overly defensive about something they voiced an opinion on odds are they won’t bother to critique you again. They may not even keep reading your work. So remember to be nice to your readers, particularly the ones who leave feedback. 

Very importantly, remember you are not the only writer on the internet. Don’t forget to seek out other writers and interact with them and their writing as well. It’s only polite to give back to a community, especially if they’re helping you at as well. 

The benefits of using the internet as a mentor is that you get not one person’s perspective but many. It takes patience and perseverance but it’s well worth it in the end.

Genre Limitless

The soundest advice I can ever give an artist is don’t limit yourself. When you limit yourself, your art also becomes limited. If you feel that you can only write science fiction or only paint unicorns, then by all means don’t stop writing science fiction and painting unicorns, but never limit yourself by thinking that you cannot also write great realism or paint landscapes. It is true, everyone has a niche or a particular talent, but shoehorning oneself is no way to be an artist. Too few artists, seem to realize that art is, after all, about expanding, not folding in on oneself.
Take, for example, a writer like Edgar Allan Poe. He is now mostly famous for Gothic horror tales and dark poetry, which he did extremely well. But just because he did that one thing well did not mean he limited himself to that. Poe wrote everything. He wrote romantic ballads, he wrote biting criticism, he wrote science fiction, he wrote hilarious parody. Poe did not pen a single horror story and then think, “This is the only thing I am good at, I will end it here.” Arguably, it is because of his work and study of other genres that his horror is so very good. He understood what went into writing and what went into horror in particular that made it work because he could compare them to other genres. And Poe certainly was not the only one. Many filmmakers who have a particular style, say, J.J. Abrams or Tim Burton, will surprise their audience by their work in a completely different film that seems completely out of line with their style. Art, as I said, is an exploration outwards. The world is vast and complex, and so should your art be.

Success

One of my favorite books growing up was called Taxi Cat and Huey. It is a magical story of friendship and talking animals and a cat who sincerely believes he is a ninja. It was a fun tale to cut my reading teeth on. The reason it stands out so strongly is because it was the first book I read where I really remember picturing the characters and setting distinctly in my head. It was the first of many, and one of the first books I ever really loved and replayed in my mind. Taxi Cat and Huey has been out of print for decades. It was out of print when I discovered and was enchanted by it.
When I turned 13, my brother got me a book entitled Tales From Evermore, a book that had a mere 100 copies printed. It was a breathtaking allegory featuring medieval knights and fantastic adventure, and was eventually expanded into the even more epic Knights of Evermore which had a much wider print- a few thousand copies. The books are all but unknown. And yet they carried my imagination away, and they moved me to tears through powerful allegory and tight, unobtrusive writing.
Several years later, my high school history teacher loaned me a wonderful adventure fantasy book called One for the Morning Glory. To this day, he and I are the only people I think have ever read this book, and yet I relieve key scenes from the story, adventures with a half-invisible boy and an underground battle with goblins, and the storming of a castle...

But what of these books? I constantly lament that no one has read or heard of them. I long to see them rise from obscurity, to suddenly gain the readers and the respect they deserve. Idly while reading them I would utter “it’s such a shame...”
Is it really a shame though, when a book accomplishes what it sets out to do? It tells a story, it is meant to send a message. And while these have not reached popularity or fame, they have told interesting, lasting stories, and their messages have stuck with me, at the very least. If these books were never written, that would be the shame. Because no matter how they have or have not succeeded commercially, to me they are the most successful of books.

Children's Stories and Friendly Monsters

Recently I’ve gotten my whole family into the wonderful, BBC show Doctor Who. The children who have more time than my parents have watched all the seasons on netflix already and my parents, who do the best they can, have just jumped in on season five and watched from there. Though when I say my whole family, it’s not quite my whole family. My seven year old sister hasn’t been allowed to watch it, as the monsters in the show scare her. And I make the argument that it’s a family show in England, the little children there watch it, they just hide behind the sofas when they get scared. My mum’s argument in return is I don’t live at home and she’s the one who has to stay up with Becca when she can’t sleep.

So how scary should children’s stories be? I am a firm believer in monsters and dragons and ghosts and Daleks in children’s stories. Having scary things in the stories teaches them that there are scary things in the world. Having a creature that is bad and has to be defeated by the hero teaches them that they have to be brave and if they are then they can over come the baddies that they will find in their real life. Having scary monsters teaches life lessons. Instead we have cartoons and movies and books where the dragons are two headed, singing bickering but overall friendly, the monsters are fuzzy and cuddly and power their worlds with children’s laughter. And children are too scared to watch what is considered a family show in which the good guy always wins.

I personally believe that there should be a shift back to when monsters are scary and our children learn at a young age to be heros.

What is realistic?

When I was in high school I took AP English. In one of the classes we read works like Macbeth, Wuthering Heights, Heart of Darkness. They all had very little in common, really. But our teacher insisted they were all works with literary merit. This sparked a discussion of what literary merit really meant. Why was Lord of the Flies in the canon, but not Lord of the Rings?
As a writer, I took the discussion all too personally. Not because it was directed at me, but because it made me question whether, as a person whose writing teetered on the edge of fantasy, science fiction and horror, I wrote anything worthy at all.
This question plagued me further in college, when I took a creative writing course in which we were barred from writing anything not “literary”, and therefore unable to write anything but strict realism. Even happy endings were questioned for realism.
The question shifted imperceptibly in my mind from “am I writing anything worthy?” to “am I writing realistically?” to “what is realistic anyway?” The issue for me stopped being about whether I should give up speculative fiction. For me, works with fantastic elements have been some of the most influential. Of course they touch me in a different way than a piece of realism, but that did, in no way, remove the merit. Point in case is Lord of the Rings, which moves me to tears upon every viewing, and sobs upon reading. Because of the grand scale of the events, the story swept me up more than a slice of life, two character drama. Fantasy and other speculative fiction can reveal greater truths about life for the simple fact that they are not realism, and can therefore speak more frankly than realism in many cases. In adding the element of the fantastic, these separate us from the subject matter enough that we can look at them more objectively than if they are set in our own situation where we come in with our own thoughts and prejudices.
So to those of you who thrive on writing the unreal, take heart, you are are writing something just as important, and on a deeper level, just as “realistic” as literary fiction.

The use of archetypes and symbols is one of the oldest tools used in writing. In our society today there is often a great emphasis on on overthrowing clichés in art, writing, et cetera. My question is whether or not this is a good idea. 

Archetypes are one of the easiest ways to subtly communicate something to your reader. When a character dresses in all black or the setting is dark, the reader knows, on subliminal level, that they should at least be wary the person or place. It sets your reader on edge without requiring explanation, without having to come out and say it. There are older but less apparent archetypes that are used as well. For example, one of the biggest symbols in The Great Gatsby is the green light that could be seen by Gatsby from the across the bay where Daisy’s house was. The reader knows instinctively that a green light means go. They are expecting something because of that green light. In H.G. Wells’ The Time Machine the Time Traveller lands next to a statue of a sphinx. Most readers recognize the sphinx as a creature from greek mythology that harasses travelers and often doesn’t let them pass, thus inhibiting their travel. The sphinx in The Time Machine, though an inanimate statue, also causes for the Time Traveller. This symbol was used as foreshadowing in the story.

So tell me, what do you think, is the use of archetypes a good tool for writers or, rather, an outdated one?