"Writing" by Talking

Writing with voice recognition software?

How could that be called writing, first off; I know. But it’s been an intriguing prospect for me for many years. It’s probably been that way for me because I didn’t pay much attention to Mrs. What’s-her-face in keyboard class in junior high. That’s the IBM Selectric keyboard as opposed to the Korg or Steinway varieties, to be clear. Anyway, typing is not my strong point. I’ve managed to get this far by using two or three fingers on each hand, and going back to the proper method would be quite painful.

All this to say that I’ve been waiting, pretty much ever since the time I got my first digital watch (as a reward for winning a T-ball game at eight or nine), to command my computer a la James T. Kirk: with my voice and not my clumsiness.

Enter the Dragon. Nuance’s Dragon Naturally Speaking, that is. This software is in a class of its own, really, as there don’t seem to be many competitors out there. According to the company’s Web site, Dragon is 99% accurate “right out of the box,” and works with your iPhone or iPod as the microphone (eliminating the need for a sexretary to take dictation), or you can use it to input directly into Word and other MS Office applications, “turning talk into text.” That’s more exciting than an early Christmas morning in the Richie Rich household.

Since I’ve not yet tried this particular nugget of tech though (and since I‘m deeply suspicious and hateful of technology in general), I won’t presume to provide any kind of review on its functionality. I’m just speculating here—because if the ad copy hype is anywhere near accurate, the learning curve would be quite easy, methinks, and in no time at all I’d be turning out 10,000 words a day. This blog, for instance, would be done by now.

But that raises the ultimate question. What effect would this technology have on the creative process for writers? Don’t think I’ve not noticed that there are times when my fingers cannot keep up with my brain. There’ve been times that I’ve lost completely the train of thought I wanted to record on the page simply because of butterfingers. And after all, we writers are just storytellers anyway, and weren’t Homer and his ilk orators in the final analysis? Too, and obviously, one would not be able to use this kind of software in all the indie author’s usual haunts; the coffee shop, the library, the kitchen table with the children buzzing past making WW II bomber noises. But think of all the places it could be used, and quite effectively. Like in the car. On a walk, perhaps. At the gym? That would be brazen. You’d make no friends that way.

I don’t know if I would use Dragon—or even try to use Dragon—to write a novel. And obviously the editing process would involve a keyboard still. But for blogging? Short stories? Dragon might just be the ticket. They’ve even got a social media plugin; woo-hoo. Before the year is out, I’d like to give it a shot. I think, used properly, voice recognition software has the potential to increase efficiency for most of the things I do as a writer, and that means I’d better try it and find out if my hunch is right.

No Blog Today

There's no blog today because of summer vacation, outdoor fireplaces, cigars, rum, sleepless small children, and my body, which is no longer eighteen. See you lovely people Wednesday.

The Passage, by Justin Cronin

I have a confession to make. This book just irritated me. No, scratch that: I hated it. Why? Because it had no purpose. Maybe I’m just too stupid to comprehend it. If I was, I wouldn’t know. But I waited for hundreds upon hundreds of pages for Cronin to get to it, to make some kind of point with this avalanche of words, and it never came. It was a huge disappointment to me, just the prototypical template for postmodern futility. I’m over all that bullshit; it’s so been done. Art is meant to have a purpose in the life of the beholder these days. Novels are meant to pose universal questions and then answer them. It’s like this story was written by a roll of the dice; it’s insufferably random and not even the title makes any sense at all.

I originally borrowed this book from the library quite a while ago, returning it after a few pages. Call me capricious. Call me an acquisitions editor; call me jaded and predisposed to judge a manuscript by its first three chapters. Or pages, as the case may be. In other words, it just didn’t grab me by the collar and make me beg for more. I don’t mind being manhandled by a book from time to time; in fact I rather enjoy it. I guess I should have stuck with my gut.

I read The Passage on the recommendation of my brother, a voracious reader in his own right. He’s more into Sci Fi and L. Ron Hubbard and the like, whereas I’m into dictionaries and literature. Anyway I trust his judgment and he said it was really good, so I acquiesced and took home with me the paperback that he lent.

And right off the bat I have to say this: there wasn’t a single time that I sat stupefied by some example of glorious prose, lowering the book in reflective semi-awe as I soaked in the spell of profundity that some authors are gifted enough to provide. This book didn’t deliver that to me. It’s just that the book happened, sort of. It just ambled along in front of me, and I followed along obediently behind its clumsy cow-like hindquarters, both expecting and hoping for more, at some point.

To add to my irritation, Cronin seems to be particularly fond of two words: “thrum” and “spangled.” He uses them quite often, veering dangerously close to overuse. I’d think maybe twice each in a book of this size (enormous) would be sufficient, personally, but they kept popping up, like curious plants that are interesting the first couple of times they’re encountered, but eventually become annoying and are prime candidates for being rooted out. I would have expected a professor of English at a major university to have a better handle on it. That may sound harsh, but hello, wouldn’t we expect a petroleum engineer to be an expert in his field?

You know what else? Whenever I turned a corner in the book and started to get into the story again, a blaring phrase in passive voice would pop up and scare the bejeezus out of me—never mind the “virals” (the primary antagonists in the story). I mean, if the characters walk into a room that “appeared to be like a garage,” for instance, just tell it to me like it is! Tell me that they walked into a freakin garage! Not that it appeared to be like a garage. See how irritating that is? And wow, is this a long read. It just does…not…end.

Was I supposed to be scared? Okay, a few times I was, but that was when I was bedding down after spending the day reading it. Normal and passing. Given the subject matter, would I have liked to have been more scared? Well yeah. Yet again, it didn’t reach out and yank my chain. Maybe it’s because I’m a writer and I know how these things are made, but the book wasn’t a thriller—not for me. It was a future-shock post-apocalyptic Mad Max-meets-Dracula kind of hybrid, and I wasn’t into it. Why? Because it’s not really original. It’s a rewarmed rehash of all kinds of stuff that’s already been done.

The world really didn’t need another vampire novel anyway, especially one this badly executed.

The Passage, with its innumerable faults, its many plotlines left adrift and wandering, and the mildly repugnant nature of its entirety, is nothing I can recommend to anyone. If this is the kind of stuff the Big Six are investing in, no wonder we're seeing the rise of the Indie Author/Publisher. 

Writing from Soundtracks and Other Oddities

I know all kinds of creative people. Writers are an interesting bunch because we have all kinds of ways we engage the process of our art. Some people like to sit down and crank out ten thousand words in a day. Others like to chip away at a novel in bites of three to four chapters. Some of us prefer procrastination, and whatever the case I’m sure I’ve been all three of these before.

But there’s one question about creative methods that really intrigues me because of the magnitude of the response usually given to the question…and that question is, “Do you write to music, and if so what?” That gets an undiluted reaction every time.

It’s usually an enthusiastic yes or a condescending no. Let’s explore those, shall we, because I’m both. Really.

First, the quiet-lover. I get this. I bought noise-cancelling earphones when I bought my laptop. I go to the public library to write quite often. And I have become an old fuddy-duddy apparently, because I give sternly crushing glares to the stupidly ignorant people who insist on having loud cell phone conversations in the fiction stacks. Sometimes I wonder what has happened to us as a nation, and then I remember: it’s the teachers’ unions, plus young skulls full of mush, plus an abandonment of Biblical truth that equals this, the youngest American generation. Ah, but I wore ridiculous clothing once myself, ‘tis true. ANYWAY. I sometimes like to write in dead-quiet environments. Rare as they have become. Especially since I have children of my own. Destruction, thy name is boy.

Second, the Stephenie Meyer. She famously writes to music. Muse is her muse. How quaint. I get that, too, because most of the work I did on Airel was to music; specifically movie soundtracks. One of them was Howard Shore’s brilliant score for The Lord of the Rings. Writing fight scenes with that kind of accompaniment, the imagery simply pours out in a torrent of words. Plus it's easier to write scenes that are supposed to be frightening when you've got appropriate music blasting in your ears, and there are some of those in Airel. I also stuck some Switchfoot songs on repeat all day, and more than once. The Hello Hurricane record (2009), if it would have been vinyl, would have been worn out on Sing it Out, Red Eyes, and Stitches, and quite a few of the more intimate moments between Airel and Michael received their treatments thanks to another song on that record, Yet. Still more musical inspiration helped me out on another book: The Marsburg Diary (coming soon). This music, however, came from another modern genius: John Williams, the man behind the music for movies like Indiana Jones and Star Wars. His score for Memoirs of a Geisha has been motivating my writing off and on for the better part of a year now.

So writing to music or writing to silence—as for me, I can do either. It just depends on my mooditude. If you’re a proponent of either camp, I’d encourage you to test the waters on the other side and see how things get on over there. I personally was amazed at how music greased the creative skids for me.

Independence and a Declaration

"Uncommon valor was a common virtue." ~ C.P. Nimitz at Iwo Jima

On this Independence Day it’s more than appropriate to define the word, because meaning is the foundation of sense.

Independence. n. The state or quality of being independent; absence of dependence; exemption from reliance on others, or control from them; self-subsistence or maintenance; direction of one’s own affairs without interference. ~Webster’s Unabridged (1890)

The entry above also includes a reference to our own Declaration of Independence: “The solemn declaration of the Congress of the United States of America on the 4^th of July, 1776, by which they formally renounced their subjection to the government of Great Britain.”

Such language resounds deep with the heart of those of us who see the evil that threatens our very lives even today, and at the hands of our own government. Who would have thought that we would capitulate to socialism, to dictatorial authoritarianism, to the backward idiocy of Keynesian policy in such a feeble and docile manner, like sheep: too dumb to know, too stupid to care, trodding underfoot the solemnity of that Declaration.

Today I make my own declaration, because I have seen more than enough: That the government under whose thumb we now scratch out our meager living is guilty. I level the charge that our American government has taken by force of law, by crooked and subversive means, and by crony conspiracy, our God-given right to “exemption from reliance on others,” our God-given right to “self-subsistence or maintenance and the direction of our own affairs without interference.” I declare that our government is guilty of these things and therefore has ceased in any way, long ago, to be a servant of the public—as was its original design. I therefore also declare that it is our God-given right as a free people to throw off the bonds that our own government has laid upon our necks by refusing to be pilloried by it any longer. I trust that those who do not know the definition of pillory will have the sense to look it up; it is indeed instructive.

One might ask, “how then do we go about throwing off these bonds?” I have one idea, and like the best inspirations, this one came to me in the course of a day’s work in the Idaho countryside. I think part of the solution to our many national and cultural problems can be found in a return to the economy of Madison, of Jefferson, of Washington. These were actual men; not the effeminate wraiths in man-costume we see paraded before us today. There was a time in America when we used to not be helpless—that which we needed, we made, or made do, or made do without. We used to produce things, not only consume them. And we used to barter these, the fruits of our labors, for goods or engage in the trade of skill. There was no contractual exchange of consideration (favors), but trade based on debits against equities for which no books can be kept, at least not by honest, forthright, sensible people. That’s how Washington lived; it’s how men in his day thought. Everyone pulled together for the good, for wherever their interests, skills and goods overlapped and became common: where the sum of the parts is greater than the whole. They did it not by coercion, not under duress or for fear of punishment. They did it with joy, magnanimity, with no expectation of undue return. There was not some great scramble for riches and power, in other words.

Let me illustrate with an example. The day that provided me with the inspiration for today’s blog was spent not long ago in a small town in Idaho’s countryside, where neighbors are neighborly, and living day-to-day is a team effort, one that requires all hands to carry the load. One of my friend’s neighbors, Rick, was working on his irrigation pump; he maintains a large acreage and raises cattle. A fitting on the irrigation line had punctured from fatigue; a funnel-shaped housing that isn’t simply stocked on the shelves of the small local hardware store, about a 30 minute drive away. Another neighbor stopped by and lent a hand. He’s an expert welder. As the day wore on and the situation was assessed, he ended up welding two large steel plates over the fitting’s weakest areas, mending Rick’s pump, allowing it to be reinstalled on the irrigation system, saving Rick’s alfalfa fields from the hot dry Idaho sun. No money changed hands. No “favors” were performed or called in. It was simply two men helping one another as God had designed.

Let the IRS bear the burden of proof so that these men can be taxed on their industry—if such a thing is possible. I will only add that We the People are not required to volunteer to pay as much tax as possible, contrary to the opinion of our sitting Vice President, who views it as our “patriotic duty.” In fact it is our obligation to minimize the tax as much as legally possible, and there are U.S. Supreme Court decisions that say as much, which is further in keeping with our founding principles and traditions.

I was struck by the simple order of nature that day. Surrounded by mountains in a high rolling plain, we were outnumbered not by bureaucrats but by the dragonflies, the field mice, the raptors that hunt them. A man’s handshake is firm there, his smile is genuine, and self-interest couples unparadoxically with selflessness. A man takes care of his business, and when circumstance overwhelms, his neighbor steps up to the plate and gives that heavy mistress a good hard shove in the back. Hands join in strength to overcome obstacles. Work in the working season begins at sunup and doesn’t stop until sundown, because good hard work is what good men understand they need most. That’s the objective. The purpose of it is to grab hard to life and suck the marrow out. Start early, finish strong, invest well.

This Independence Day, remember. Do not let the toil endured, the risks taken, the grief borne, the blood shed, the work performed by those brave ones who have gone before us rise up in contempt against this generation in witness against her own laziness. Honor the America that was founded as a Union of independent States who formed a government that would provide for the common defense and the impartial regulation of interstate trade, and insist that that government today toe the line; force these “servants” to either serve or vacate the office they defile with the excrement of their works. America, we are more than we have become. It is time to rise up and declare it to be so, to throw off the bonds of our would-be masters and assert our God-given right to self-govern as We the People.

Dial "M" for Murder

Since this week focuses on plot, I thought I’d further illustrate good plot with an old classic film from Alfred Hitchcock. This one’s based on a play, and it’s obvious because there’s not a whole lot of scene changing going on in it—which better illustrates one of my assertions about good plot; that the writer doesn’t have to go all Hollywood 3D on his readers in order to tell a cracking good story.

Ray Milland plays Tony Wendice, the villainous cuckolded husband, a former tennis pro. He runs into an old college chum, Lesgate, and manipulates him into going along with a carefully constructed “perfect crime”. Wendice wants to off his own wife, Margot Mary, played by none other than the legendary Grace Kelly. The plan involves a late night phone call and a roll of the dice on our oh-so-human propensity to live our lives by a set routine. I don’t want to spoil things if you haven’t seen it, but suffice it to say that there’s plenty of twists and turns as the perfect crime comes unraveled and improvisation comes into play.

I love the way the villain, Wendice, is written—and acted. He’s a cool customer, a man probably descended from aristocracy (though he’s far from an aristocrat in the story—he’s rather motivated by money). He never loses his cool, he always has a plan, and he’s not accustomed to being refused by anyone.

The sub-villain, Lesgate, is also perfectly presented to us. He’s the ultimate compliment to Wendice, very much his opposite and therefore indispensible to the plot. He comes off slightly dirty and common, and it’s his eagerness for easy gain that makes him what he is. His character is the wild card on which the plot turns, in fact.

And of course Grace Kelly is golden age Hollywood glamour; the soft counterpoint both visually and structurally that helps carry us through the story. She shames the starlets of today, all of them too quick to disrobe, too stupid to understand proper nuance, proper femininity...and portray it with dignity.

That brings me to my Andy Rooney-esque point. They just don’t make movies like this anymore. Well, maybe they do, but they’re rare. I see an alarming overreliance on 3D and digital effects nowadays in our popular films. What’s worse is that most of the writing that forms the construct of their storylines is vapid, limp, disgusting warm air. I hope and pray that it’s not because we are considered by filmmakers too stupid to appreciate a properly stimulating and complex storyline. It's almost like Hollywood writers are making their movies for the kind of people who star in them these days. In others words, morons. But Dial “M” for Murder delivers good plot in spades. It’s just another example of why I love old movies. And why you won't  find me at the theater very often.

How to be a Good Writer, Part 7: Plot and Characters

For the rest of the week I want to feature plot as a theme. I’ve posted other things about this subject (Archetypes), and that’s because it bears study. A good writer is one who understands at least the basic elements of plot. For me, plot = characters in a lot of ways. But first, plot.

A good story has a skeleton in good order. If you break out the major events in any well-written story, you can build an outline around them. Sometimes we get a look at it in disjunct ways, a la LOST or The Prestige, which are great stories that keep us guessing—but they’re organized quite well in the final analysis. In other words, whatever happens in the storyline has a reason for happening (the fictional past) and a consequence as well (the fictional future). That’s what I mean by a skeleton in good order.

Good stories have certain elements that are universal, too. It’s been that way since the dawn of time. If a crowd can relate to part of the story, they buy in. And if it’s a book, they buy it. That’s the goal here, folks, and it doesn’t require selling out or ignoring/forgetting your principles. Contrary to popular belief.

Take a look at any Sherlock Holmes story. I still stand in awe of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s knack for this. I always wonder which part of the story he wrote first; as if he wrote it inside out and backwards, because how can anyone do that?! It's crazy good writing, with lots of layers, lots of interdependencies; like a combination lock on a safe.

A good plot has lots of layers, interdependent interactions between the characters and the story—because really, the characters are the story. And ideally, as we read, we shouldn’t be able to notice the plot happening. It should feel just like life; like we’re voyeuristically observing the characters moving through their virtual world. In other words, a good plot shouldn’t be noticeably fictional. You’ve gotta have real and believable characters. In other words, they’re flawed. They have issues. And those issues, which go hand-in-hand with a good plot, are compounded by the issues that are created by that plot.

Bills are hard to pay in real life, for example. People get divorced and their kids pay the price in one way or another for the rest of their lives. Parents raise kids that become psychopathic in spite of their best efforts to the contrary. Young people get shipped off to combat and come back changed. If they come back. Accidents happen. Factions within families grow like a malignancy. And still the world turns. What I’m saying is that you don’t have to have some unexplainable time travel event or some impossible meteor hurtling toward earth in order to write a good story, or even tell one. You just need something for the reader to hold onto. And arguably, the closer to home it hits (depending upon a lot of other variables) the more books you’ll sell. And that's the goal, if you're making a living as a writer. Ironically, the more successful you become, there's a danger of being more insulated from good material for inspiration.

I think that’s one reason why some writers at the beginning of their careers can produce better work than those who are a commercial success: they draw from real poignant conflicts, through which they have had to live. that's not to say Stephen King is an idiot. But Jane Austen was never "discovered" in her lifetime, and her work is delicious as a result. Real people live real lives that are marked and shaped by conflict, and they will be more apt to enjoy reading stories that have an air of familiarity, even if the setting is exotic or fantastic. We all want fiction to feel like the truth at its deepest levels. Remember V for Vendetta, where we heard the line, "writers use lies to tell the truth." Fabulous.