Tag Archives: creativity

Stop, Collaborate & Listen: Five Points about Collaboration

Posted on by

Lisa L. Hannett and Angela Slatter are both Australia-based speculative fiction writers. Hannett is the author the short story collection Bluegrass Symphony and Slatter is the authorof Sourdough and Other Stories, The Girl with No Hands & Other, and Black-Winged Angels. They are currently collaborating on Midnight and Moonshine, a collection of stories due out in November 2012.

For the most part, writing is a solitary activity. An idea strikes and you mull it over, jot notes, think about character and setting and plot. You may surround yourself with the company of other people, other writers — go to workshops and critique groups, to coffee shops with your laptop, or travel with notebook in hand — but when it comes to turning vague ideas into a story, when it comes to actually writing, it’s all about you and the blank page. No net.

Writers often prefer it this way. Some of us are natural introverts; we like solitude and the quiet processes of creating narratives, well-turned phrases, and engaging characters. Many of us squeeze writing in between jobs, family life, friends — so we steal a few moments out of our days to retreat into our imagined worlds. Others simply like to keep their work to themselves until it’s completely polished, until all the embarrassing plot-holes are filled and the clunky writing all tightened up. Also, the majority of writers are control freaks — we are gods in our own little cosmos.

When we think of writers, the image is of someone hunched over a typewriter or laptop, maybe in a garret, or a lavish library, but always alone — and always churning out a bestseller, of course!

So people are always curious to find out how the collaboration process works for us. How do we work together to create a cohesive narrative? How do we blend our styles and voices? How do we decide what stays and what goes? What happens if there’s a disagreement? Is it quills at twenty paces? We’ve talked a lot about why this works for us and for today, we’ve narrowed the collaboration process down to five points…

1.      How does the process actually work?

We usually start with an idea sparking an excited What if? discussion; an image or concept that leads to a flurry of questions like, “what if this happened” and “what if she does this” and “what if they do this because of that — oooh, and then that…” This ultimately shapes the story’s plot. Since we live on opposite sides of the country, this is done via email, text messages, Skype or phone. Next, notes are compiled and shared so we’re both on the same page. From there, one of us will start a draft of the story — and how far we go with each draft changes from story to story. If we’re feeling inspired, we might scribble down a whole draft before we send it on; if not, we write until the words run out. Sometimes the story comes out chronologically, but sometimes we’ll build it all out of sequence, jumping between early scenes and later ones, until the whole thing comes together. The story flies back and forth until it’s done.

2.      Brainstorming

Coming up with ideas doesn’t necessarily stop after the initial session. One of the best parts about collaborating is that you have someone to bounce ideas off of, which is fantastic when you can’t figure out what happens next. Both of you have a vested interest in the story, so mid-writing brainstorming can be really productive. When the story starts to take on a life of its own, no amount of planning can prevent the tale going where it needs to go, so it’s great to have someone to talk to about where it goes from here… The excitement of starting a new story is multiplied when you work with someone else — and even better, when you hit a snag, your writing partner is there to cheer you on.

 3.      Not being precious

Writing with someone else means that you can’t be precious about what you’ve written. You have to be willing to let them change words, phrases, paragraphs and even whole scenes. Darlings may be killed and details added or deleted. The wonderful metaphor you spent hours polishing simply might not work once they’ve tweaked the context. The story belongs to both of you, and any changes are not personal insults — they are making the tale the best it can be in and of itself. So before you embark on a collaborative project, you should have established one important thing:

 4.      Trust

You will never be able to let someone else “kill your darlings” if you don’t trust their writing and editing skills. We forged this in a Clarion crit-pit and built upon an initial respect for each other’s writing, then learned to be better editors from being first readers and editing for each other. The fact that we’re friends helps, and the fact that we know we’re both really serious about good editing and good writing. Our separate works are very different — Bluegrass Symphony is not Sourdough and the two could never be mistaken for each other — but when we write together the effect is a seamlessly blended third voice.

 5.      Communication

Like all good relationships, the secret is communication: talk about the process beforehand but also while it’s happening, so there’s an ongoing dialogue. In addition to chatting and emailing, we use track changes and comment bubbles — the best invention ever — to explain why we’re changing something, to make sure we each know the overarching concepts and can maintain the same goals for the story. Be flexible; there needs to be “give and take” to collaboration, and if you feel strongly about something then be prepared to compromise on another aspect of the story. Trust your co-author and think carefully about whether it’s worth fighting over the placement of a semi-colon.

 

Perchance to Dream: Tapping Your Infinite Creativity

Posted on by

John R. Fultz is the author of the novels Seven Princes and the forthcoming Seven Kings, both from Orbit.  A native of Kentucky, he now lives in the North Bay Area, California. 

All human beings are also dream beings. Dreaming ties all mankind together. –Kerouac

It occurs to me that the act of writing, especially in the fantastic and speculative genres, is very much like the act of dreaming.

When we sleep, our subconscious mind constructs vignettes, narratives, adventures, terrors, and dramas for our dreaming mind to inhabit. The architectures of our deepest selves come bursting to life, and even though we sometimes feel at the mercy of our dreams, it’s worth recognizing that it is actually we, the Dreamers, who create our dreams.

In this respect, everyone is a writer. A writer of dreams, if nothing else. Scientists tell us that dreaming is an essential human function–those who cannot dream eventually go mad. Dreaming allows us to confront our deepest fears and desires, often without realizing that we are doing exactly that. It’s as if something essentially human inside us is writing stories that are crucial to our spiritual, mental, and emotional health.

We are born dreamers; in that same vein, we are born storytellers. What could be more human than telling stories? It’s one of our oldest and most primal skills…from fireside grunts to cave drawings to stone tablets and right on up to paperbacks and best-selling fiction.

The same deeply ingrained creativity that subconsciously creates dreams also creates the stories we write in our conscious hours. I know writers who have dreamed entire novels before (or while) writing them. Robert Silverberg’s SON OF MAN was written in this way. I’m sure the same has been done with short stories. How many of you reading this have turned the nugget of a dream into a full-fledged story–or a whole book?

I am accustomed to sleep and in my dreams to imagine the same things that lunatics imagine when awake. –Descartes

There is a definite, if mysterious, link between our ability to create convincing, immersive, powerful dreams and our ability to write fully realized fiction. In effect, when we write we are dreaming while awake. Our conscious mind shapes, hones, and transcribes these dreams, but it is the infinite font of creative consciousness that dwells deep inside all of us that serves as the soil in which these stories grow.

In other words, every story or book you write is a combined effort: the conscious and subconscious mind working in tandem to produce the desired results. Often, writers find themselves on a journey of discovery. Many of us know where we’re going, but are surprised at how we end up “getting there.” We tap into our subconcious–which taps into the great Idea Pool–the Universal Consciousness–Jung called it the Collective Unconscious–and we “fish” for ideas, scenes, plots, characters, entire WORLDS. We are the miners of dreams, turning raw stones into diamonds with our dedicated efforts.

When we write, we dream. When we dream, we write–if only for an audience of one.

Isaac Asimov once said “Writing, to me, is simply thinking through my fingers.” I submit that writing, for us all, is actually DREAMING through our fingers. Undistilled dreamstuff, flowing like lifeblood from the center of our being along the conduits of our arms, into our fingertips and so into the keyboard (or pen). That immortal flow continues, right onto the printed page (or screen), and directly into the heart-minds of our readers.

Therein lies the magic and majesty of the written word. It’s how we share our dream-visions across space and time. It can even provide us with a certain kind of immortality; the writer’s words often live far longer than the writer.

Dream no small dreams for they have no power to move the hearts of men. –Goethe

When I’m deep into the writing process on a novel (or even a story), my conscious mind is so involved with the story I’m weaving that when I go to sleep my dreaming mind often takes over. I write stories over and over in my dreams… often watching them play out before me in part or whole. Sometimes I emerge from this state of dream-writing and I’ve suddenly solved a problem in the narrative, or “caught” a great idea that seemingly came from nowhere. When your mind is in “high gear” crafting stories, it doesn’t want to stop–even when you sleep.

All of this culminates in some valuable advice for writers: Pay attention to your dreams.

Listen to that Sleeping Narrator because it is your direct line to the source of infinite creativity. If you’re having trouble with a story, try sleeping on it. Let your unconscious partner, your Sleeping Narrator step in and give you a hand. You can also try some transcendental meditation for tapping creativity…but that’s a subject for another day.

Dream On, Brave Dreamers…

Man is a genius when he is dreaming. –Kurosawa

Writing and Racial Identity Versus the Spinrave

Posted on by

This is writer Nisi Shawl’s last post for Booklifenow, and I hope you’ll join me in thanking her for her great posts, this one included. Nisi is the co-author of Writing the Other, with Cynthia Ward, who will be contributing a last post later this week. I’m very grateful to both of them for such thoughtful and useful words. – Jeff

A subscriber to the Carl Brandon Society list serve asked for specific criticisms of the Spinrave recently published in Asimov’s SF Magazine. That is work. Just reading it is an effort, let alone trying to translate into something resembling sense. Hence my response below to the request for “specific criticism”:

“Okay, I would take the time to analyze the article if someone paid me for it. My rate is $50/hour.

“As a sort of free sample, I’ll say I agree essentially with (another poster to the list serve): consider the source. The source being Norman Spinrad, who not only doesn’t know anything about the subject upon which he bloviates for page upon page, but who seems to be inordinately proud of his ignorance. Norman is like this. My short response: tldr.

“I will also add that his positioning of Mike Resnick, a very good writer, as an African writer, is so insanely disorienting as to induce vomiting. And comparing him to Octavia E. Butler, who never, as far as I am aware, ever claimed to be an African writer, is an action on a par with opening a chest full of tokens and rummaging around blindfolded in it, and pulling one out at random to toss onto the hearth of rhetoric.”

The subscriber requesting explication declined my help. He thought my fee was too high—though another poster advised me to double it—and made do with the numerous other posts available on the subject.

Among them we find N.K. Jemisin, who deals with one specific point. It takes her 500 words, not counting her contributions to the post’s comment threads. Imagine if she had attempted to render the entire Spinrave comprehensible. How many short stories and/or novels of hers would we be doing without while she whacked her way through his thorny densenesses?

My offer stands.

Ante Spinrave, I expected to devote the whole of this final guest post for Booklife to analyzing a panel I recently pulled off at Radcon, an SF convention held in Eastern Washington. The panel was titled “Writing and Racial Identity.” Besides myself the participants were Eileen Gunn, Alma Alexander, and Bobbie Benton-Hull. Here’s the description I gave programming:

“What does your race have to do with what you write? Depending on your race, are certain topics forbidden to you? Obligatory? None of the above? If your race matters, how do you know what it is? By what people see when they look at you, or by what you know of your genetic background? By your cultural upbringing? By what you write?”

We had a grandly civil hour-long discussion about how our racial identities did and did not contribute to what we wrote, did and did not determine what we wrote, about how we dealt with others’ expectations of us as writers based on what they knew and/or assumed about our racial identities, how we constructed those identities for ourselves with our writing and in other ways. I loved that we spoke as equals, according each other and the subject all due and appropriate respect.

Because it is a complex subject, one that deserves careful thought.

One white panelist related a classroom encounter with Faulkner in which her instructor held up this famous white male’s avoidance of a black female character’s interior life as an ideal to emulate; to write some things she has written, the panelist has had to unlearn what she’d been taught. Another spoke movingly of the ethnic and religious distinctions that formed the core of her upbringing in Central Europe. I wondered aloud if my difficulty placing stories with white protagonists was due to editors wanting “more black for their buck;” that felt risky to me, since one of the field’s top editors sat in the audience’s front row, not five feet from my face.

Our fourth panelist had been raised as an American Indian and spent her life knowing absolutely that this was who and what she was. Then she discovered through genetic testing that her biological heritage is a mix European and Sub-Saharan African. No American Indian. She still struggled with integrating this knowledge at the time of the panel, framing her thoughts on her identity as a question, referencing a female character in the movie “Dances with Wolves.”

It was all most interesting to me. Way more interesting than the Spinrave. In my description and in my moderation I had aimed to show that race is an issue that affects writers of all backgrounds, all races, that racial identity is labile, is inflected by more than one sort of information, and in turn has complex and complicating effects on what we say, how we say it, who we say it to….We touched on each of these subjects with a sure touch, though in some instances only a brief one. There’s so much to talk about.

There are so many smart people to include in the discussion. I want to hold this panel again someday soon. Maybe at WisCon? The panel will give its participants and our audience much to think about. And they will think, and do research, and speak carefully. And it will make sense.

Writing the Other–Continuing This Week

Posted on by

Later this week, Nisi Shawl and Cynthia Ward return with more guest blogging, in part based on their book Writing the Other.

In the meantime, check out this essay by Shawl on “Appropriate Cultural Appropriation.

For some of us, the attractions of another’s culture can hardly be overrated. Within the context of speculative fiction’s reputation as “escapist” literature, getting away from one’s own traditions and background may seem like a good idea. Surely to find that much-prized “sensawunda” sought by genre afficionados, we must leave behind what British fantasist Lord Dunsany called “the fields we know?”

But what if the realms beyond these fields are populated? One person’s terra incognita is another’s home. What are we to make of the denizens of these exotic lands? And what will they make of us, tramping through their yam patches in search of the ineffable, and frightening their flocks with our exclamations over their chimeric beauty?

To collapse the metaphor, readers looking for something “different” in fantastic fiction, and authors who attempt to supply them with it, often turn to mythologies, religions, and philosophies outside the dominant Western paradigm. Then, not too surprisingly, people who practice these religions or espouse these philosophies or descend from those who constructed these mythologies object. Their culture, they complain, is being misrepresented, defaced, devalued, messed with. Stolen. Often, said culture is the only resource remaining after colonialization has removed all precious metals from the ground, or the ground from under its former inhabitants feet, or, as in the case of the African slave trade, when it has assumed ownership of those feet themselves.