The Bitter Quill

As of last week I’m officially a full-time freelance writer and editor, with a couple of part-time jobs on the side to keep my animals in feed and the rent more or less paid. Thus far I’ve done a preliminary telephone interview for an interview article for Videomaker, and put together a couple of pitches that I hope to get out the door early next week.

Also, health insurance is a bitch.

Signed a contract last week to edit some books for a small RPG publishing company. Nobody gets rich publishing a role-playing game, but it’s an industry that I love and so I’m willing to take a hit in the pocketbook to work with material that I’m passionate about.

So what happened to The Bitter Quill?

Well, the short answer is attrition.

The long answer: After a promising start, for seemingly unrelated and entirely legitimate reasons, four of the eight contributors to the site told me that they couldn’t spare the time to contribute anymore, all within the space of just over a week. One might suspect some sort of strange conspiracy, but I’m still friends with all of them, and to my knowledge I didn’t throw any Anna Wintouresque editorial hissyfits to drive them off, so I can only call it a highly unfortunate coincidence. It’s either that or my so-called friends actually burn with malice and harbor a well-hidden hatred for me, which I suppose is entirely possible as well.

Of the remaining four contributors, two never contributed more than one or two pieces each — essentially they had quit before they had even begun — and the remaining two, I among them, just sort of… lost heart. A good blog needs regular fresh content to keep going, and we just didn’t think we could keep it up. I really ought to have made some sort of official announcement, but I kept thinking I’d get around to restarting it one of these days, and the days turned to weeks, and the weeks to months… So the site languished for almost two years, unloved and unupdated.

Now, as I’m poised (at 5AM, flu-feverish and insomniac, but poised nevertheless) on the eve of trying to make it as a freelance writer, I think I’m going to repurpose TBQ as my personal writing blog. I’m going to track my submissions, writing progress, link to clips and published work and otherwise fill this space with the minutiae of my life in words and letters.

Or at least that’s the plan. Stay tuned and see how it goes.

The great repurposing is nigh.

Ahem. Did I say four posts a week? Clearly, I meant just one. I’ve been guilty of neglecting this blog for the last few days, and so have the rest of the BQ contributors.

It seems like I only have so many words-a-day in me. I spend all day coding ColdFusion at work — not writing, exactly, but still words on paper — then I come home and write the occasional review, and THEN I research and write a couple of blog posts at the Other Blog. Add all of that up and I don’t have a lot left in me for the Bitter Quill, let alone my other writing projects. I’m prioritizing the writing that actually pays me, but that means that the writing that I actually enjoy suffers.

Any suggestions on how to break the cycle? Maybe an enforced period of BQ-and-ancillary-projects-writing on a regular basis? It’ll be just like when I was a kid my mother would make me memorize my multiplication tables for two hours every Thursday, whether I liked it or not, only now it’ll be me I resent, not her.

Yes, my friends, it has indeed been a while. I plead vicious stomach-flu — the last several days have seen my schedule full of things like “vomiting”, “sleeping”, “moaning in agony” and less-mentionable things.

I did, however, have a chance to catch up on my reading, and an interesting little tidbit from the inimitable Quentin Crisp caught my imagination. Mr. Crisp was talking about the dangers of “comparative originality”:

If a man were to look over the fence on one side of his garden and observe that a neighbor to his left had laid his garden path round a central lawn; and were to look over a fence on the other side of his garden and observed that the neighbor on his right had laid his path down the middle of the lawn, and then were to lay his own garden path diagonally from one corner to the other, that man’s soul would be lost. Originality is only to be praised when not prefaced by the look to right and left.

With respect to Mr. Crisp and his literary stature, I don’t know if I buy that. Is it more impressive when someone comes up with something completely original without being aware of his competitors in a field? Sure, absolutely. But Mr. Crisp would have us believe that a work — indeed, an author — is somewhat lessened if a piece is deliberately constructed so as to be different. While I will admit that quality will often suffer when someone’s main purpose is to transgress the strictures of a genre or form, lack of quality doesn’t necessarily follow such transgression, and furthermore, there’s nothing inherently ignoble about striving to be an alternative.

I don’t know for sure, though. What do you folks think? Am I totally off-base, or perhaps misinterpreteing Mr. Crisp’s intent?

From time to time, while working on the Exalted setting, I’ve incorporated real-world details into my writing. (For the record, Exalted is a high fantasy rpg that attempts to combine the best of high fantasy, anime, magitech, wuxia, low fantasy, and plenty of death-defying dramatic moves.) This brought home to me the difference between giving players the true version, the interesting version, and the version that they want.

The true version is obvious enough, and is often exemplified in GURPS sourcebooks. Here, the facts have been meticulously researched, the dates are correct, the bad points of the history and location and culture are stressed as well as the good points, and factors which might prove a disadvantage to specific types of PC are noted down without any attempt to soften them. (Such as the lower place of women or foreigners in certain cultures, for instance, or the fact that you can’t just buy a gun at the nearest shop in that particular country.) Sometimes
sourcebooks of this sort also provide guidelines for how to adjust the background or remove certain options if they are inappropriate for a particular campaign, but this is far from the rule.

Next we have what one might call the interesting version. This, like the Ars Magica books, involves starting off with the truth and… improving it a little. Usually these are also meticulously researched, in order to get the basic grounding correct and the “feel” right, but not all the research is necessarily used. Such a book may start off with the principle of “Rome in the Dark Ages” and then add the twist of “and magic works” in order to produce something which is grounded in reality but incorporates further material. Another example might be the Full Metal Alchemist universe (anime or manga), which is basically early twentieth century with alchemy included and different geography. The basic accurate grounding is indispensable; it provides a genuine feeling of reality to the setting that should not be discounted. Other notes are added, accentuated, or adjusted later. Perhaps a cultural facet is edited to allow participation by both genders, or to permit some sort of acceptance for other races. Maybe there are notes about how Dark Ages Christianity really can coexist with magic under exceptional circumstances — such as those which the players will be participating in. It’s reality, but it’s been edited to allow for more play.

Thirdly is the version that everyone really wants to play in. If it’s India, then there must be elephants, and rajahs, and tiger hunts, and thuggee cultists, and cross-jungle chases in the monsoon. If it’s a boarding school for would-be wizards, then there must be boarding houses, and spells, and potions classes, and threatening teachers. These settings start with reality and then move into all the things that players want to encounter. Inspiration may be drawn from reality, or from books, or movies, or casual inaccuracy. Very few people would let an appearance by Sherlock Holmes slip by without an, “Elementary, my dear Watson!” despite the fact that the character never actually used the phrase. Pulp demands dark masterminds, two-fisted librarians, car chases, gunfire, daring reporters, mad science, and all the other usual memes. Tibet requires lamas, yak butter tea, weird Buddhism, snow, avalanches, and green gloves. It’s about giving the players — and, to some extent, the GM — the toolbox they want to play with. Realism isn’t the point, and cultural balance is only relevant where it contributes to the plot.

All these three options really do require a high level of research — either because the writer wishes to remain accurate, or because they want to find interesting titbits to incorporate. However, it helps the writer if they have an idea of which basic concept they’re going with, and how far they want to take it.W

I started a new project tonight and, in a feverish burst of energy, pounded out about six hundred words without breaking a sweat. This is an auspicious start! Now if I can only summon up the staying power to carry it through, I’ll be a happy man.

No, not a paying gig. I’m talking about something intangible.

See, it’s easy for me to lose confidence in my abilities. (I’m guessing other writers are also plagued with this sort of doubt.) So often, the constraints of time are given priority over the desire to produce work of quality. Sometimes, even when time is not of the essence, it can seem so hard to fight for quality when so many around you are choosing the polysyllabic and ugly over the simple and clear.

I’m not saying that all long words are bad. It’s just that people should not be allowed to make them up simply because their active vocabularies are limited.

Pardon my digression. Where was I?

Ah, yes. My big accomplishment for this week is finishing a short piece of science writing. For this piece, my work entailed:

• Finding articles in the scientific literature dealing with my topic of interest
• Reading these articles and gleaning the relevant information from them
• Summarizing the relevant information in a format that a general audience will understand what I’m talking about
• Presenting the background material that a general audience probably doesn’t have

Ideally, the process goes exactly as I’ve described above, and a decent product comes out. This time, I think that may be the case. Of course, it’s hard to judge one’s own work and easy to be too critical or too fond. I am sure that if this piece ever sees print (or pixel—it has been sent off to a webzine) I will be instantly dissatisfied with my work. Still, it’s nice to finish a piece, to believe that it doesn’t suck, and to believe that maybe I’ve got it in me after all.

I love a good pen; I love the heft of them, to roll them in my fingers and to compare how their nib feeds ink into various paper stocks. I also can’t tell you the last time I used one to write anything longer than a phone message.

Upon consideration, it makes sense; most of what I write these days is destined for electronic distribution, whether it be email or blog fodder or professional documents. However, there was a time when I happily filled lined notebooks with my wild ramblings. Maybe there would only be a single worthwhile idea or turn of phrase to pursue – and somehow with my hand trailing across the page as they were set down, I felt somehow connected to them. There’s something more sterile about typing ideas directly into well-formed, consistently-spaced black lettering against the white monitor screen. With their responsive keys, spell-checking and automatic formatting, sometimes it makes things too easy. Even typewriters, with their hard-pressed keys, their clickety-click and turning of the ink cartridge around the spool offers a much more sensational writing experience.

Yes, yes, writing is about the writing, not about the tools…but I do think the tools can make a difference. Computers especially, since they serve so many other purposes. My computer, in addition to being a word processor, also serves as: my gateway to the internet, my television, my organizer, my entertainment center and my main (and preferred) method of contact with the outside world. Staying focused is difficult enough some days; and the natural drive to multi-task when writing on a PC is an additional burden.

This past week, my internet connection and I have been at terrible odds; mostly about connectivity issues. And as I’ve spent hours wrestling with them when I meant to get other things done, I begin to wonder if this marvel of the modern age is not equal parts blessing and curse. At worst my pens sinned by running out of ink; it never took hours of my life away demanding complex (and inconclusive) diagnostics; and the only place it took my attention to was further in my head. Even now, as I write this, I have my modem and router shut-off in order to resist the temptation of quickly checking the weather, my e-mail or browsing the web while I collect my thoughts. And even with all that shut down, I cannot stop myself from browsing past MP3s as they come up on iTunes. I’m doomed.

I’m not sure I can go back to the pen, though. Like my memory, my handwriting (never good) has become lax to near illegibility due to lack of practice. I don’t know which is the better option…to write less hindered and more freely, or to be able to read the fruits of my labor once I’m done.

Hmm…maybe I need one of those digital notepads that translates your handwriting into legible text. That’d be sweet.