Fiction Filter

From Weekendletter.com

Last Sunday, I finished Poke Rafferty book #5, THE FEAR ARTIST.

It did not want to get written.  In fact, during the last eight months, nothing I've worked on has wanted to be written.  Here I am, someone whose creative motto is, "A writer is someone who finishes," and I abandoned my initial attempt at Poke #5 after writing more than 40,000 words.  That really hurt.

So when THE FEAR ARTIST threatened to congeal and die on me, it was high drama.

It's no wonder there are so few movies about writers.  I spent three of the worst months of my life pushing this book uphill, writing anything at all, no matter how ragged, improbable, or boring, to try to get the characters from Point A to Point B, to try to bring to life the world they were attempting to traverse.  Every day, seven days a week (even during Bouchercon), failing, failing, failing.  Becoming increasingly certain that this time failure was permanent and that I had written my last novel.

And what would the film camera, dollying in for the dramatic high-point closeup, have seen?  A guy staring at a screen.  Who once in a while bit his fingernails.  Occasionally, in the privacy of my home, I would vent a bit, in a moderate, suburban Anglo-Saxon manner.  My wife, normally the most understanding of women, called me a drama queen.

From sarahsfate.wordpress.com20110513writers-block

I define myself as a writer.  It's not something I do for fun (although it is fun at times) or for money.  It's -- burst of music -- what I am.  I'm someone who regards real life as interesting in direct proportion to how useful it is for fiction.  Real life, to me, is potential material.  I'm a fiction filter.  A story sifter.  Even if nobody ever reads me, my job is to try to make some kind of sense out of my world and express it as story.

It means a lot to me that I create something where nothing was before, even if what I create isn't all I would like it to be.

All of that part of my life really did -- without any intended hyperbole -- seem to be over.  Every day I hauled myself to the chair, turned on the computer, and, as William Gibson says, "hoped the part of me that writes fiction showed up."  And it didn't.

Except that it did.  What I had six weeks ago was long and fifth-rate, but it was about 75% of a not-very-compelling story.  And then the magic happened, and the Bangkok floods started to weave their way into the book.  The story's setting turned out to be a world threatened by rising water, unstoppable, deadly, and completely unmalicious.  The book isn't about the flooding; but the threat of flooding, so mindlessly unselective in what it destroys, turned out to be the metaphor I needed, a natural-world complement to the story of someone who's been caught up on the outer margins of the war on terror.

Suddenly, everything I'd written made a kind of sense.  It required total revision, but now the story had a sort of sound track, the music of fast-flowing water, the music of rain, and that helped me find the language and the rhythms I needed. And lo and behold, I had moved the characters and the world from Point A to Point B, and the journey turned out to be interesting after all.

Interesting to me, at any rate.  I'm currently entering my agent's suggested revisions and reading the manuscript aloud to my wife as a way of laying bare things that don't work and need improvement, and spending about ten hours a day in fine-tuning, but I think there's a book here.

If there's a moral to all this, it's two things I already knew.  First, write even when you don't like what you're writing, because you don't actually know while you're laying the words down whether it's good or not.  Second, be open to the material the universe sends your way.  Sometimes, when we're weaving our story, we'll suddenly be presented with the strand we need most, but we'll walk right past it if we're not open to it.

On Tuesday, I'll send it to my editor, and we'll see what she says about it.  Thanks for listening.

"So, What's Happening in Greece These Days?"

I really didn’t want to be writing about Greece this week.  It seems every email I receive these days starts off with, “What’s happening there?” or some more or less energetic (vituperative?) variation on that general theme.

I certainly don’t fault anyone for showing interest.  After all, how can sane people not want to know why the birthplace of reason and democracy is running a Grand Kabuki length production of classic Greek_____ [Ed. Note: Here’s the audience participation part of this week’s rant.  Choose and insert “drama” or “comedy” here­—as much as that choice might seem a distinction without a difference vis a vis the performance under review].

Forgive me for not jumping right to my answer for “what’s happening.”  You see, I’m pining away at the moment for the good old days, ones I described just a couple of books back (Assassins of Athens) when “[T]he rest of the world doesn’t give a damn about what goes on here.  Unless something is burning, Greece doesn’t make the international news.  Even then, not for long.”

Greece's Parliament

Not sure when those days will return, but that failing puts me in the illustrious company of every politician in Greece, because if one of them has any sense of when that will be, it (I’m purposely using the “neutered” pronoun) sure as hell is keeping that wisdom secret from its government colleagues, the Greek people, and the rest of the world.

So, let’s forget about gaining any meaningful insight into how Greece will weather its crisis from a national, macro-economic point of view.  The place to find such a clue is at the micro-economic, down home level; for history has shown that no matter what law or system is imposed upon them, Greeks find a way to survive and flourish. 

Any such analysis, of course, must start with Greeks who (still) have money.  That narrows the size of the group considerably, since it generally excludes most public employees these days, as well as luxury goods and other industries facing shuttering taxation—as in closing their businesses.  And the word “industry” in Greece does not include any meaningful manufacturing base for that fled the country long ago.

Today, industry in Greece means just one thing: tourism.  It’s the only game in town.  It floats everyone’s boat.  It puts psomi on the table.  It…well, you get the idea.

In other words, when tourism works things happen.  Let’s take Mykonos for example.  The tourist season this year wasn’t great.  But nor was it as bad as many feared.  And since Greeks are by nature optimistic, when they see an opportunity they jump at it. 

Themis, ancient goddess of Justice

Enter the Greek government with a recently passed law having an admirable purpose.  It allows landowners who built illegally on property they could have built on legally, but failed to obtain the necessary official approvals and sign-offs (for various reasons), the opportunity to legitimize what they built.  They simply pay a fine roughly equivalent to what it would have cost had the structure been built in compliance with all applicable laws.  For example, a 100 square meter (1,076 sq. ft.) home built without legal permission on an otherwise legally zoned spot is legitimized upon payment of a 36,000 euro fine ($50,000).  It was intended to be a win-win situation.  The owner avoids further official harassment and can now freely sell his property without complications, and the government raises much needed cash. 

But there’s always a wrinkle.  And where there’s a wrinkle you can be sure that the Greek entrepreneurial spirit of some (both private and public) will find a way to iron it out.  

A key requirement of the new law is that the structure to be legalized must have been built on land that was legally zoned for such construction at the time it was built.

In Mykonos, for example, a change to its zoning law did not allow construction to proceed in certain areas after 2005.  In other words, no structures could be erected legally after that date.

Mykonos is currently in the midst of a building boom.  (Like I said, it wasn’t that bad a season).  There’s not a carpenter, plumber, or electrician to be found, and I hear many of them are working on property where new construction is forbidden by the 2005 zoning law.

So, why are so many building so frantically in places where even legal construction is forbidden?  Simple answer: Someone hit on the idea to build now and say you built before 2005.  Ingenious, huh?  Well that’s one word. 

I’m sure you’re dying to ask how could anyone expect to get away with that on a small island where everything you do is someone else’s business?  And why bother to build at all in the face of such dire financial predictions for your country?

My answer to those questions is the same as the one I have to “what’s happening there?”  Don’t bother trying to figure it out unless you’re born and raised there.

Accept it world, some things are meant to remain incomprehensible.

Jeff—Saturday

London from the Sky

The Occupy London stand-off at St Pauls continues, the church having seen sense and recognised that forcefully evicting peaceful protesters from near a place of worship might not garner the kind of attention they would wish. More to follow on that, I'm sure. But this week my eye has been taken by a remarkable set of aerial photographs taken of London in 1909.

The photographs are remarkable for several reasons. First of all, that someone was able to get 500ft in the air back then to take them, eight years before the first official aerial survey of the capital. The photographer was Norman Lockyer, who is widely recognised as the man who discovered helium, and used that discovery to ride a helium balloon above the city armed with a Victorian box camera.

Secondly, as the pictures, show, particularly the one above of Buckingham Palace, is how London's major landmarks have barely changed. The same goes for the shot below of Trafalgar Square.

But then you look closer and you think, 'Where's all the traffic?' The streets are comparatively deserted. London has always been traffic-choked, whether from horse and carts or cars, but these pictures seem to show that a modern Londoner might have found the city eerily quiet compared to today. Or at least alive with different noises. There would have been the cries of street vendors, human sounds, rather than mechanical ones. In contrast, on the picture at the top of this post, of Westminster glistening in the sun, the Thames looks far busier than it is today, a reminder of when the river was the lifeblood of the city, a thriving artery and London was a major port.

My particular favourite is the the one below of Stamford Bridge, home of Chelsea Football Club, now one of the wealthiest clubs in world football but back then only four years old, with only one stand for spectators. The club still play at the Bridge, albeit in rather more comfortable surrounds, but it's still next to Brompton Cemetery. Fans from opposing teams will testify to the fact that the cemetery often boasts a better atmosphere given the funeral silence that accompanies most Chelsea games, even when they're winning.

The photos, a set of 70, are about to go to auction and remarkably, are only expected to fetch £500. I might even go along myself and buy them.

cheers

Dan - Friday.

Is Juju the next Bob?

We all know how President Robert (Bob) Mugabe has been responsible for governing Zimbabwe into a country ridden with poverty, unemployment, and intimidation.  A country without free elections.  A country whose unbelievable potential has been squandered.  Yet for the first 10 years or so from when he took power in 1980 as Prime Minister, the country prospered.  It was rich in minerals, an exporter of food, and had an excellent education system.  In 1987 he became President, and the allure of power became too great, and he is still president 24 years later, well past his sell-by date.

Robert "Bob" Mugabe

Perhaps the issue for which Mugabe is best known is the eviction of Whites from their farms and the redistribution of the farmland to “war veterans”, apparently those who took part in the struggle against White domination of the country.  However, many of these “war veterans’ weren’t even born at the end of the Rhodesian Civil War.  The tragic outcome of the land redistribution policy was a catastrophic decline in agricultural productivity.  The “war veterans’ had no clue how to grow crops.  The once wonderfully productive land now lies largely useless.

On the other hand, South Africa, after the democratic elections in 1994, took a different approach.  Land that could be shown to have been taken by Whites from Black communities was bought at fair market value and given back.  Although this has also resulted in previously productive farmland declining in productivity, the method of redistribution has largely been successful and without major issues.

The question, of course, is whether this will continue to be the case.

Julius "Juju" Malema. Photo: Gary van der Merwe

What raises my doubts is the growing influence of Julius Malema, known as Juju, who is the head of the youth league of the ruling African National Congress (ANCYL).  He is charismatic and very confrontational.  He also purposefully appeals to the large number of unemployed and poor in South Africa – even while maintaining a lifestyle of which anyone would be envious.  He is building a large home in one of the most affluent areas of Johannesburg; he drives in some of the most expensive cars; and he openly says that the poor don’t worry that he is rich.

It is also unclear how he can afford such a lifestyle, because the salary of his job in no way could support it.  Perhaps that he is currently under investigation for bid rigging suggests how he has managed this.

But it is his position on a number of issues that raises concern.  First, he proposes nationalizing the rich mines of South Africa.  I certainly agree that the country should benefit from its resources, but history generally shows that government-run mines do not prosper. 

Second, he is now calling for the expropriation of land without compensation.  This not only scares all the non-Black South Africans (Whites, Indians, Chinese, and Coloureds (of mixed blood)), who comprise 20% of the population, but will certainly adversely affect investment in the country.  More worrying, his current position is that the whole country was stolen from the Blacks.  It is irrelevant to the situation that southern Africa was inhabited by the Khoisan before either the Blacks or Whites arrived.  It is also irrelevant that Blacks did not inhabit large tracts of what is now South Africa.  What is relevant is that his call appeals to so many who feel (erroneously, in my opinion) that they have nothing to lose.

Third, he now is calling for the nationalization of other sectors of the South African economy, which will also negatively impact outside investment.  Again, history shows that without external investment, countries like South Africa decline in affluence, and it is the poor who suffer the most.  South Africa’s neighbour Zimbabwe is the obvious and most recent example.

Unfortunately history and logic do not enter into the equation.  Juju appeals to millions of people who quite rightly have much to complain about.  Even though evidence that his approach will not work is right on their doorstep (for example there are an estimated 3 million Zimbabwean immigrants in South Africa, mostly illegally), their desperation makes them gravitate to Juju.  What have they got to lose?

And I think this is bad news for the country.

Juju

What is also troubling is that Juju is trying to export his brand of politics.  Recently he advocated that his Youth League actively support the opposition party in Botswana, another South African neighbour.  For the past 45 years since independence, Botswana has been regarded as one of the leading lights in Africa.  It is peaceful, democratic, and prosperous.  The government enjoys a 50-50 partnership with DeBeers in the mining of diamonds and has used the proceeds to improve the infrastructure of the country. 

Why does Juju want to change the Botswana government?  It is difficult to figure out.  Is it because the President, Ian Khama, is of mixed blood?  Is it because the country is peaceful?  Or is it because Juju wants to spread his influence.  It is hard to understand.  What is interesting is that final arguments are set for today in an internal investigation run by the ruling ANC that Juju has overstepped his limits and is bringing the reputation of the ANC into disrepute.  What this really means is that the senior ANC members are worried that Juju poses a threat to their own power.  We are all waiting impatiently to see what the outcome is.

It is easy for me to dismiss Juju as a troublemaker and leave it at that.  But he is rapidly gaining in influence, which is very worrying for those of us who believe that the current government is doing a pretty good job.

Personally, I think that if Juju and his policies prevail, he could very well become another Mugabe – enjoying a lavish lifestyle at the expense of the well-being of the country and its citizens.

Will he prevail?

Juju will only gain in popularity if the ANC fails to address more aggressively issues of unemployment and poverty in the country and if it fails to hold him accountable for any transgressions, such as bid-rigging. 

He is thumbing his nose at the establishment, and I am nervous that he is going to get away with it.

Stan - Thursday

Book writing hiatus - The Northern Lights

The below was previously posted in December of 2009 - hopefully the last repeat posting of mine for many months to come:





The northern lights are a rarity of the sort that never ceases to amaze, no matter how often you witness their majestic, light-footed dance across the blackened sky. Maybe it has something to do with the unexpected aspect of their appearance; you can never be 100% sure to see them even if conditions are perfect. It could also be related to the fact that this is not a static phenomenon , the diffuse lights move in a manner best likened in my recollection to an electric ribbon, gently propelled into movement by a light breeze somewhere way up high in the ionosphere. This is further enhanced by an irregular, up/down motion of the individual rays that line up to form the glowing ribbon. Usually the shimmering colour is a multi shaded green but at times pink layers can be seen, adding flavour to the grandiose and surreal happening. It is on purpose that I am going to spare you the scientific explanation of what drives the northern lights, it is too boring and unworthy of the actual glory involved.

Seeing as how unworldly the northern lights are, I have often wondered why the old Norse mythology is relatively silent regarding this phenomenon. We have Þór (Thor) the god of thunder, but no god seems to have had the good sense to associate him- or herself with the northern lights. Explanations for earthquakes exist; bad, bad Loki causes them when poisonous venom from a huge snake occasionally drips onto his face while his wife is emptying the bowl she usually uses to catch it with. And why does Loki not move from underneath the beast’s fangs? Because the gods have tied him down using the entrails of one of his own sons – of course. It is obviously not for lack of imagination that the northern lights get no mention, neither can realism have cramped the Viking’s style much. The most likely explanation I have come across is that the magnetic north pole was located elsewhere at the time when Norse mythology was coming into its own and if I had provided the boring scientific explanation I purposely skipped you would know that this means the northern lights were turned off over northern Scandinavian at the time.

The above reminds me that Christianity stopped using lightning as a sign of the wrath of God during the early dark ages. Lightning was no longer mentioned and the topic avoided at all cost. This was due to the fact that church steeples were usually the highest urban points at this time, and therefore more subject to being hit by lightning than the local whorehouse or other such establishments of lesser ethical standards. Without question, placing a metal cross on the top did not help at all. One cannot but wonder what must have gone through the church officials’ minds while passing buckets of water between themselves to put out a fire caused by lightning. What the hell did we do now? It might explain some of the more bizarre bans that have been passed over to us by this establishment. Maybe it had something to do with people wearing a hat inside during mass?

Back to my original topic, if you ever have the chance to come to Iceland during the winter time, jump on it. If you are lucky and it is both cold outside and the sky is clear the northern lights will make your trip worthwhile, horrible security checks and all. We even have a hotel on the south coast that specializes in northern lights tourism – on their home page they have a video that gives an idea of what to expect even though it is pretty grainy:

http://hotelranga.is/video/271/video-from-hotel-ranga/default.aspx

Finally I would like to thank my colleague Málfríður Guðmundsdóttir, who lent me photos to accompany this post. Unlike me she is a great photographer and if interested you can see more of her wonderful photos from Iceland by following this link:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/fridamin/
Yrsa – Wednesday

Bibendum

Michelin's iconic Bibendum (resembling the Pillsbury doughboy) was born in 1899 and became Logo of the Century in 2000. Today the second largest tyre manufacturer in the world, Michelin started as a small rubber factory founded by André and Edouard Michelin in Clermont-Ferrand in 1889. The legend says that the success came with an English cyclist stopping at the factory and asking to have a punctured Dunlop tyre repaired. Edouard Michelin, the creative brother, spent more than 3 hours trying to fix the tyre that was the first version of the pneumatic tyre invented by Dunlop in 1888. Edouard came with a more handy version, the removable pneumatic tyre, reducing the repair time of three hours plus a night to dry the glue, to 15 minutes.
That was the start of a success story sustained by number of innovations. The 52-employee company grew up with the 20th century to a huge multinational company that employs more than 120 000 persons globally, 31 000 in France and owns 80 manufacturing plants in 19 countries. The company headquarters is still in Clermont-Ferrand but in the last twenty years, the production activity has been nearly entirely moved abroad. The town of Clermont Ferrand's industrial history linked with the pneumatic industry came to an end and the town is changing its production towards other industrial activities, such as pharmaceutical industry, electronics or agribusiness, or towards service sector after having gone through a tough time of economic crisis and chronic unemployment issues. Michelin is also well known for its publishing activity. In 1900, the company launched a guide providing drivers with recommendations on good restaurants and good hotels. Le "Guide Michelin" ou "Guide Rouge" (Red Guide) has become a prestigious "traveler's bible" and the Holy Grail for ambitious chefs. Le Guide Michelin came under fire when the famous French chef Bernard Loiseau committed suicide after he was rumored to be in danger of losing one of his three stars.
As early as 1910, the company published road maps and detailed regional guides. In 1926, the first "Le Guide Vert", a touristic guide is published making Michelin a brand we almost can't do without on the road.
Cara- Tuesday

Guest Author Martin Limon

I first read Martin Limon when his publisher sent me a sampler containing first chapters from a number of their authors. His work impressed me so much that I immediately went out and bought all of his books.

His next one, Mr. Kill, will be his seventh, and it's scheduled for release in December. I can't wait!

Martin has studied both Mandarin Chinese and Korean and usually sets his stories in Asia, where he spent ten years of his life.

But, today, he holds forth on something entirely different: the United States Postal Service.

Leighton - Monday

The Last Full Measure

by

Martin Limon

            When I started writing I lived and died by the mail.  I would send out an article or a short story to some unwary publisher and wait day-to-day for their response.  For years the response was always the same:  a photocopied rejection letter.  One publication received so many of my short stories that when I finally received a small envelope from them stuffed with more than one sheet of paper, I figured it was a bill for all the man-hours they’d wasted reading my stories and rejecting them.  Instead, it was a contract for my first published story “A Coffin of Rice” in Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine.

            During all those years of mailing manuscripts out and having them returned to me, I never once lost a story.  In fact to this day I can honestly say that the United States Postal Service never once let me down.  Still, for some reason, there are some politicians who are determined to murder the United States Postal Service.  This is no mystery.  Their motive is clear.  They claim it is losing money.

            But the Postal Service is not actually losing money, not year to year.  The reason they appear to be losing money is because of the Congressionally imposed accounting requirement that they set aside hundreds of millions of dollars to fund their retiree health care benefits for seventy years in the future.  That means they have to budget for people who haven’t even been born yet.  And all this from a Congress that is constantly blathering on about getting government off the backs of business.

            What is Congress’s real motive?  We all know the answer.  Their goal is to privatize the U.S. Postal Service.  Why destroy such a venerable and successful institution?  That answer is also clear.  Because a few of their country club buddies want to form shipping companies and make fortunes charging us poor starving authors ten times as much to mail our manuscripts.

            The U.S. Postal Service was established in Section 8, Clause 7 of the United States Constitution.  Our founding father realized that an honest and efficient postal service was important to the growth of our nation.  By enshrining a postal service in our primary legal document they thereby mandated that it should be a public utility, available to all.  I’m old enough to remember when many things that are now privatized were public utilities.  I remember when television was free.  I remember when radio had to broadcast both sides of a political issue.  I remember when telephones were plugged into walls and--miracle of miracles--they always worked.

            Those days are gone.  I mourn them but I cannot bring them back.  But I do think it is time that Congress stop undermining the U.S. Constitution and stop trying to destroy the U.S. Postal Service.  I also think it’s time people stop bad mouthing our government.  One Republican president famously said that government is not the answer to the problem, but rather that government is the problem.

            I prefer to quote the first Republican president.  He was dedicated to the proposition that our “government of the people, by the people, and for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”

            We the people must control our government and the instruments thereof and not let a few slick-talking “job creators” talk us out of what so many died to preserve.  Let us not betray those men and women who “gave the last full measure of devotion” so that our government would survive.  Let us not turn this cherished legacy over to corporations whose only “last full measure of devotion” is to lining their own pockets with profit, no matter how ill-gotten their gain.