I’m so shallow

Some time ago I bought a set of oil pastels. I haven’t really used them, I just bought them ’cause I love the colours. Like, cadmium yellow and cerulean? My sweet Lord! For the same reason, I love flowers. And beautiful textiles. If I had the money, I’d buy reams of silk and wool in every miraculous colour!

Also, I like looking at myself in the mirror. I have pretty good skin (probably ’cause I eat more carrots than a platoon of rabbits), and I like how it looks. I also like looking at pictures of pretty people. I’d do it live if I could, but for some reason, people tend to freak out when you stare at them.

So yeah… I’m shallow. I’ve got no problem admitting it, and I don’t feel ashamed of it, either. And why? Because being shallow is the only way to exist.

What do I mean? Well, just that. The depth of things cannot be known except by studying their surface.

We see what other people think, which groups they belong to, how they feel about themselves, how they live – all very deep things – based on what they wear, how they move, how they look like.

There is no “inner beauty”. I mean, if you cut somebody up, all you end up with is an icky pile of viscera and most likely a dead human. The souls of others are in their words and actions, which are superficial.

That is why the only way to be is to be shallow.

I was thinking about this, and maybe it has implications for that old hack, “show, don’t tell”. Maybe we’re told to abhor telling because it tries to bypass the shallow bit? Showing is all about the surface, where the reflection of the truth lies. To straightaway tell tries to move past the surface, but hey, there’s nothing there! (Except the pancreas, which kinda looks like a dick made of fat. Ew.)

Don’t know if that’s right, but that’s the idea that came to me as I was thinking about my shallowness.

Another thing that relates to writing, however, is far more important.

Many writers seem to have a subconscious pressure to write stuff that is “deep”. You know, to write “intellectual” stuff. To write scintillating text that promulgates complex and original thought, or summat.

They – we, really, since I’m not immune to those pressures – seem to abhor shallow things. They can’t write about giant robots, or knights with blazing swords, or flying dinosaurs that shoot laser. Or, if they do write about those things, they seem low-key apologetic, or at least don’t group themselves with “the serious writers”. (Who the hell are they?)

Here’s the thing though. If you like writing about giant robots, that’s the truth. That is your world. That is where you are meant to be. You like giant robots for a reason.

I don’t know what that reason is, and you may not either, but it’s there. It’s deep inside you. It speaks from your very centre. It says, “This is what I am. These are the things that matter.”

And if it speaks in the language of giant robots, hey, so what? There are tons of languages in the world. That’s one of ’em. It’s by no means inferior to the language of, say, Renaissance art, or Christian mysticism.

So yeah. Be shallow, and write about the things you really like.

Even when those things are robots with drills as big as galaxies.

Am I doing my duty?

Hello, my little apricots! Alice here.

I’ve been doing a bit of serious thinking for a while. I know, I know, how untypical of me! But this one thought has been bothering me, and it’s bothering me in part because I so rarely hear it voiced: are we writers doing our duty?

Like, a while back I was foaming about how no man is an island. And this is kind of a follow-up to that.

You see, the way we talk about writing is making my stomach queasy. Writing is about the individual, the writer, and what they get out of writing. Writing is all about what you wanna do. Writing is self-expression, like! (God, how I hate that phrase.)

Like, ugh, I can’t phrase this well. The way we talk about writing makes it seem so… me-centered. It’s all about what the writer feels good about, and what the writer needs to do to be successful.

Okay. Now I wanna spin that train of thought around and derail it right down the gorge.

Writing is a great thing. Writing is beauty, writing is magic, writing is rosemary shining in the sun, writing is a sword sunk in wet beach sand, writing is the night sky opening up from a rooftop. Writing is power.

Never doubt that – writing is power, and you who write have it, in whatever small measure. But a small measure of power is still power. And those who have that power are a bunch of blessed bugs, because, peeps, most people in the world cannot write. Not the way we do, anyway.

Now, I’m a firm believer in chivalry. And the core of chivalry is this: if you have a power that others don’t have, you should use it to help the weak.

What are we writers doing with our power, then? Are we doing our duty? Or are we just running around like hamsters, filling our own cheeks with goodies?

“Uh, Alice. What does ‘helping the weak’ even mean?”

I dunno. I mean, I dunno who you think the weak are. But there are enough down-trodden people in this world to fill up the side quest lists of every goddam RPG ever invented.

Reader, I just don’t know. You could take a stand for the poor. You could speak up against the injustices suffered by aboriginals. You could defend the dwindling biospheres. But please, do something.

I don’t care how you do it, either. Just that you do it.

“But Alice, writing should be free! Each writer should be free to choose what they write about!”

That’s bullcrap, honey. Imagination is a bloody chained creature to begin with, and even if you discount that, there are tons of institutions that tell writers what, how, where, and when to write – and writers heed them.

What’s a bit of help-the-weak goodness added to that mix? Not a whole lot of extra constraint, I think.

“But Alice, I’m just writing for the fun of it! There ain’t no duty, since I’m just having a bit of good time!”

Fair is fair: if you’re writing solely for yourself, never intending your texts to leave the confines of your skull, desktop drawer, or hard-drive, then you can pretty much do as you please.

However, most of us, I feel, plan our words so that others will eventually see them. And those of you who claim to write “pure entertainment”: there ain’t no such thing.

I didn’t choose to make it so, but all writing, no matter how shallow, will send some kind of a message. You can pretend it ain’t so, that I ain’t sending no messages, girl! But all you’re doing then is puttin’ a blindfold on and doin’ the ignorant bidding of somebody else.

“Fuck you, Alice. I’m free and I can do what the fuck I want.”

Yeah, sweetie. So you can.

Anyway, in conclusion I wanna say this. Sometimes, if you feel like you’re up to it, think another way. Instead of thinking about scoring with a big publisher, or increasing your sales, or getting lots of great reviews, think about duty.

What is yours? And are you doing it?

Specialisation: for insects!

Hello, my fellow seashells! This is Alice.

Sometimes I play this game of make-believe where an evil dickhead casts a magic spell on me that makes me unable to write – for good. Y’know, that for the rest of my life, I can’t write, like, ever again.

What do I do then? Well, I shrug and do something else.

I kinda wanna leave it at that, but just for the sake of being a dork who loves the sugary-sweet sound of my own words, Imma give y’all a few more.

So, you a writer? In that case, don’t fix your identity on being a writer, or on writing. Ideally, keep your identity fluid, but at the very least recognise that writerhood and writingness alone cannot form your foundation.

You always have a plan B. You also have a plan C, D, and maybe E. And each of those plans is as good as plan A!

For example, my plan B is drawing, specifically, line drawings. Plan B-2 is painting, specifically, watercolours. Plan C is acrobatics. Plan D is farming. Plan E is bein’ an airborne ranger, born to kill but never will! (…is how the rhyme goes, right?)

Anyway, I recognise that I have no special gift in writing, even though I say I’m a writer. Hell, I could be equally talented in carpentry. I probably am, too.

Any day, theoretically, I could leave writing behind me and focus on the next item of the alphabet.

The good thing is that there ain’t a damn dickhead in the world who could cast a spell on me, though! Also, MANUSCRIPTS DON’T BURN, HONEYPIES!

It doesn’t belong to you

You’ve done it! You completed your novel. And you got a publishing contract! Now your novel is out. You’ve really done it. You’re the peach, you shine!

So… what now?

Get ready for the interviews and the fans, I guess? Prepare a set of answers about your novel, describing what you meant with this and that motif, what themes you integrated, how you crafted your characters? Hit the social media to chat up readers, enlighten them about your research process, and share details about your world-building?

Just basically enjoy being in the limelight of a newly-minted book, right?

Well, how about no, for a change.

Too often there’s big hullabaloo about the author once a book comes out. Everybody’s like, “How did you feel when you wrote that? Where do you get your ideas? What’s your diet like and how do you exercise?” Too few ask the book, “Who are you? And what can I do with you?”

If you look at it, though, who does the book belong to? The author? Hell no, they just farted that thing out. It may be of them – in a limited fashion at that – but it isn’t theirs. Whose is it, then? The publisher’s? Well, they desperately try to make money from it, but that’s just it, the only thing they get is the money.

Whose is it, then? Who is the book for?

Ya, you guessed it. For the people. For the readers. For the flies and the worms. And the thing is, it’s for them to decide what the book means. We writers ain’t got a vote. The authors don’t got no authority.

The book is read by the readers, and it’s that process that truly creates the book. That’s it. You dropped the fruit from the tree, but it’s for the animals down below to eat.

Let’s all try to remember that. If the limelight hits us, let’s try to remember that we’re not the item. The book is the item, and we ain’t got a handle on it. The book wasn’t born in our minds. The book is born, again and again, in the reader’s mind.

The book belongs to the world. And the world has every right to do with it as it pleases.

It’s like it’s autumn, the chicks are out of the nest and all growed-up, preparing to fly off. They’ve got to test their wings; it’s youth VS the world now. Us, the mama birds, ain’t got a say in anything anymore.

But… what do you do then, after you’ve completed your work? Well, you do what the mama birds always do.

You lay the next egg.

I want to disappear

Peeps, I know I keep harping on about this topic, but bear with me, okay?

For most of my adult life, I’ve had two guiding desires. The first was to write – to create and explore hidden worlds, to see the birth of strange heroes, to walk and suffer with them, to see them die or triumph, sometimes both.

The second desire was to be nobody.

I don’t really have the energy to explain that desire here at length, but I mean it literally. However, I wanna put it into context with that first desire, the desire to write.

How could these desires coexist in my single body? Because, the way I see it, to write is to eradicate the writer.

Writing doesn’t require the writer. Writing is art, and art isn’t made by its maker, nor does it need one. All art needs is an audience.

“Author” is just a fancy mask we writers wear. We wear it because we’re afraid of our true purpose.

Our true purpose is not to exist.

I want to move myself from the position of writer into the audience of my own works. The audience is nameless, while being intensely personal. I want to be the one who experiences my works. I want to be the one who learns from them, who suffers from them, who is at their mercy, who is loved by them, who is comforted by them.

That is the sweet, agonising destiny of the audience. And the destiny of the writer, the only real destiny possible, is to disappear.

Love sarcasm? Stop right there

Hello peeps, what is up? This is Alice.

So today I wanna talk about sarcasm. These days, it’s like everybody’s hot on sarcasm. And I think it’s not cool.

I know a lot of folks think otherwise. It seems you can get instant nerd-cred for being, for want of a better term, a kind of a jerk. You’re cool, clever, sassy, whatever, for just popping a sarcastic joke in a conversation. I repeat, it’s not cool.

In fact, I think sarcasm is pretty much among the foulest forms of humour I can think of.

For the record, I was taught in school that there’s a difference between irony and sarcasm. The way I was taught it was this: irony is a form of humour where, grossly simplified, you say one thing but mean the opposite. Sarcasm, on the other hand, is when you use irony to injure somebody.

That last bit there is why I’ve got beef. I know, I know, many folks these days use irony and sarcasm interchangeably as terms. But you can’t ignore the fact that many times, irony (or sarcasm, depending on how you define your terms) is used to hurt other people.

How, exactly, is that a healthy practice? How, exactly, is it cool that we get our kicks from sneakily stabbing at other people?

Before you knock me for being hypocritical: yeah, I get sarcastic too. Yeah, I laugh at sarcastic jokes. Yeah, I enjoy shows and comics fuelled by sarcasm.

I hate myself for it, too. But this isn’t about my self-hate, or how I should just be a stronger person and let go of sarcasm, or some shit like that. No, this is about a deeper issue. This is about how our society is so steeped in sarcasm that even if you, well, kinda hate it, you can’t avoid being sarcastic.

How fucked up is that? Peeps, sorry for all these bad words, but I’m pissed off. I hate it that we’ve come to a point where you can say a perfectly normal thing, and people go, “Wow, are you being sarcastic?”

Imma say that’s pretty damn fucked up.

Okay, let me draw a deep breath and relax. I’ve got some advice for you folks, if you’re like me and looking to survive in a world mired in this gunk.

1. When you use sarcasm, be prepared for folks to take it seriously. This goes two ways. First, sarcasm injures, so be prepared for reactions to that. Be ready to apologise. Second, be prepared for people to interpret you at face value. That will happen, because sarcasm is, by definition, elusive. So if I say, “Right, I’m a bitch now,” in a sarcastic tone, some people will be like, “Ah, so, she’s a bitch? She said so herself. What a weird person.”
2. Be kind. I can’t say “always be kind”, ’cause that doesn’t work, so I’m just gonna say, be kind. Try to be kind as often as you can. Failing that, try to be kind at least sometimes.

Okay. I’m done for now. Take care y’all, I know it’s a bloody awful world we live in, but hang tough, okay?

Oh, one more thing. If you’re gonna defend this whole thing by saying, “It’s just a form of joke, girl, take it easy,” then I’m gonna say NO. Humour is never just a joke. For that matter, jokes are not just jokes. Humour is a strong, deadly power. Jokes can be swords, shields, or salves. Humour cuts, topples, avoids, and negates.

All that, though, is a topic for another post. For now, peeps, if you love sarcasm, ask yourself: “Why do I love it?”

100% your responsibility

Hello! This is Alice!

So, the other day I ran into a particularly murky post on Facebook. I don’t remember exactly how it went, but it was packed with big-ass statements like, “Doctors don’t make you healthy. Teachers don’t make you learn. Trainers don’t make you fit.”

The point of the post was that you gotta take one-hundred percent responsibility for yourself. All that you do, all that you achieve, is entirely due to you.

So, how is that murky, and why am I pissed off as all hell?

First, anybody can see that the statements don’t make sense. Doctors are, in fact, a great help in defeating diseases. Kids don’t pick skills up from thin air, teachers have a lot to do with the process. And how many top-level athletes don’t have coaches?

I know what the post was trying to say – that we shouldn’t relinquish self-responsibility, and should instead focus on being self-reliant. Now, that brings me to my second point, the thing that makes me pissed off.

It’s this fucking godawful modern idea that humans are fucking islands. You know, this individual-worshipping bullshit. This idea that “YOU can create the PERFECT you”, or whatever shitty words the demagogues use.

Let me just come out and say this: nobody on this goddamn stinky planet is ANYTHING without other people.

All of us need help, in some way or other.

All of us were raised by the herd. All of us need the herd.

The herd is nothing to laugh at. The herd is power. The herd is glory.

And, since Alice’s blog is about writing, Imma turn this around to the writing topos, don’t ya worry. However, I’m not gonna say, “If you a writer, get help.” I mean, that’s pretty good advice, and it applies to all ability levels and states of health. But what I wanna say is far more important.

If you a writer, give help.

It’s nice if you wanna further your own career. I don’t blame y’all for that. Perfect your craft, amass readers, yeah, all that stuff. But realise, at some point, that we’re not here for me.

We’re here for us. We’re here for the great herd.

So go out and give help.

Don’t just look for beta readers for your novel. Be a beta reader yourself. Don’t just go asking for reviews, review books yourself. If you’re in a writing group, don’t smash the other members with your witty wit. Instead, brainstorm with them, encourage them, and comfort them. If you blog, don’t just fish for followers, but go out, read other folks’ blogs, talk with them, be with them.

Ask payment for your help if you feel like, but consider also giving it for free. And realise what “free” truly means here. It means “without any obligation to return the favour”. Too often, even a thing ostensibly given for free contains a hidden fee. I pat your back, so you must pat mine.

Forget it, peeps. Do truly free work. Don’t expect even thanks. Expect nothing.

That’s the hard core of helping. You help, even when you know that all your efforts will be forgotten, and the one you helped will claim, “I alone made the perfect me!”

Even so, you help. You do it because at the bottom of your soul, beneath the layers of pettiness, beneath the layers of loathing, beneath the layers of me-first,

there is nothing but love.

To write like God

Why is there evil? Why did God, in omnipotence, create pestilence and genocide? Why do the weak suffer though God is said to be benevolent?

This is a topic I’ve talked about previously, though never from such a biblical angle. I beg you to bear with me. They say every artist only has that one painting in them, the one they keep trying to bring out in all their paintings. Maybe this topic is that painting for me.

So, why is there evil?

In short, because that’s how creation works. You, who create, understand this in your bones.

It’s not possible to create a thing that is good. Neither is it possible to create a thing that is beautiful. When you look at the naked core of creation, only one thing is possible for you: to create things that live.

That is why there is evil. Though good, God could not create a creation that was good. He could only create a creation that lives – and it lives by its own free will.

The creation and all its creatures just slipped through God’s fingers like so much fine sand. All he did was breathe life into them. He couldn’t choose. Choice was reserved for the created.

Like, think of motherhood. As mothers, we can’t choose to bear good children. The gametes join, and they grow into something. All we can do is hope that this something stays alive.

This concerns deeply all you artists. Ya wanna write, paint, or sing like gods? Then you gotta surrender to it. What you create will flow through you. It wants to live, so it cannot stay in you. It wants to be free. It wants to be unburdened by you.

The child cannot stay in its mother’s womb, and neither can the story stay in your imagination.

Once it gets out, you can rule over it no longer. In fact, it was never for you to rule. You were the seedbed. In you, the seed had a safe nest. In you, the seed drank the fresh rain and basked in the sun. Through you, the seed burst into the world. You gave it the foundation, the outlet, but the rest was up to the seed. The glory is not with the seedbed, but with the bright green shoots that reach toward the light.

Recognise your seedbedness. You are no author. You are not in control. When you know this, and accept this, you will write like God.

Hard work is a lie

Hello, peeps! This is Alice.

A short trawl through the quotesphere turns up a ton of sayings praising persistence. You know the type: Never give up. Work hard and success will follow. According to internet, if you just “stick to it”, you can achieve anything.

Well, guess what, peeps? Alice calls BS. If we’re talking ’bout success, hard work is not the way.

What is, then? Well, recently I read an interview of Kari Enqvist. She named the two main ingredients of the success soup. The first is networking. In short, knowing people gets you places. Being buddies with the boss. Drinking with the good ol’ boys. Makes sense, right? Humans work in herds, because the herd is a power multiplier.

The second is luck. People may not want to admit it, but life is pretty random. We live in an age of unprecedented order, so it’s easy to think there are clear rules in life. It is not so. Scratch the shining surface of orderliness, and beneath you’ll find the scintillating colours of chaos. That’s life. Luck rules.

Oh, there’s a third factor, too, pointed out to me when I read another interview, this time of a Swedish nobleman. Yes, you guessed it. Success is inherited. It’s easier to be rich if mama was rich. It’s easier to be famous if papa was famous. It’s, get this, even easier to be smart if mama was smart! The nobility lives, folks. Equal opportunity for all is a big ol’ lie.

So, to sum it up: You wanna succeed? Easy. One, be born rich. Two, know people. Three, get lucky.

Hard work gets the fourth place. Maybe.

All right! Depressing part ends here. There’s a silver lining, and I wanna look at it, too.

First, if you like doing something, like being an artist, but don’t like working hard, this is great news for you! You can flip the bird at all the anxiety-inducing persistence mantras. Instead, let yourself be a lazy loafer.

I know being lazy isn’t fashionable in our super-charged, by-the-minute scheduled world, but you know what, kids? Creativity is born right there, in idleness.

Second, if you wanna get good, hard work is totally your medicine. If I work hard twelve hours a day, can I become a master at spinning flaming poi, painting watercolour landscapes, or dealing with mentally unstable humans? Yes, I can! (Just recognise that being skillful and being successful are not synonymous.)

Third, hard work can be a pleasure all on its own. The same goes for, say, training. The best reason to work hard or to train hard is just that: because you love the work, or because you love to train.

Do it for love, peeps. Love the work that you do. When the chips are down, that’s the only real reason to do anything.

(Okay so I was kinda lying when I said hard work is a lie… but it is a lie the way people link it with success. So there. Imma stop my frothing now.)

Alice’s Idea Giveaway Sunday, vol. 9

Hello, fellow writers! Welcome to the jungle! It’s all abloom with ideas, all you need to do is reach your hand and pluck one!

As per the time-honoured tradition, I am giving y’all my best writing ideas for free, gratis, at no cost – though if you want, you can send me a postcard. Just kidding, don’t send me postcards.

Anyway, what do we have? Let’s see!

Mother Lord

So, I was reading Larsdotter’s Kvinnor i strid and I came up with a nice idea where I can use Eva, my unstoppable robot super soldier. So, let’s imagine the Eurasian steppe in the distant, semi-apocalyptic future. The Grandmaster, the invincible self-ruler of the north, is losing a war against a superior enemy. The Great Patriotic Army is crumbling. In a desperate bid to turn the tables, the Grandmaster’s daughter Pische is sent to ask help from one of the nearby neutral dominions (a region roughly corresponding to modern-day Kamchatka).

En route, however, the battleship escorting Pische is shot down. The ship comes under heavy attack, because the enemy has learned about Pische’s presence, and considers her a valuable hostage. The ship’s captain is faced with imminent defeat and makes a fast decision: Eva, the ship’s on-board “special unit”, is released from lockdown. Eva’s mission? Escort the Grandmaster’s daughter to safety through hostile zones.

A small band of marines join Eva and Pische, while the rest of the battleship’s crew engage the enemy as a diversion. They make their escape… and… various adventures ensue, I guess. I haven’t thought it through yet, but it’s like Halo, except Cortana is flesh and blood and not a sex object, and the story won’t suck the balls of alien superweapons. (Well, hopefully.)

Oh, and I want to have an all-female scout company assist Eva and Pische at some point, as a nod to Soviet snipers. And I’m still thinking about that whole mother thing, but maybe I’ll can it for now. I’m also canning the lord thing. Also for now. A new working title is to be expected.

The Moonlight Monastery

Do you know how much of our action entertainment is driven by the premise that the hero must avenge a wrong? Seriously, we’ve got films that classify as vengeance porn. Like, think of the first John Wick (eugh). We get handed two minutes of exposition where John’s dog dies, and then? The rest of the show he just shoots people.

Now, in The Moonlight Monastery (working title), the hero Aguilliere falls in love with the blasphemous vampire Arienne. Arienne’s kin, however, don’t take kindly to Arienne getting amorous with a human, and they butcher her to set an example. You’d think Aguilliere has now the perfect excuse for a vengeful reprisal?

She does, but she doesn’t do it. Sure, she’s heartbroken, and she’s angry, but guess what, peeps? She’s also a professional. She was gonna kill the vampires anyway. Arienne’s death doesn’t change it at all.

Now, the vengeance part comes along, but from a different angle. You see, Arienne’s furious spirit is bound to a sword, which Aguilliere wields to destroy the vampires. In this fashion, Arienne’s spirit wants to get back at her sisters – but the twist is, Aguilliere, the wielder of the sword, needs to fight against the vengeful urges that overtake her while handling the Arienne-charged blade. Otherwise she’d be consumed by Arienne’s rage, and what she needs in battle is not that, but what the boxers know: never get mad.

 

That’s it for this Sunday, fellow seashells! What are some of your best ideas? Give them to me!