Phantomimic's Blog

I Have Many Muses Part-2

1/27/2012

In a previous post I went over the fact that I have many muses, which provide me with a steady stream of writing ideas and as a result of this I never experience writer's block. However, I stated that this creates a big problem for me.

My problem is that, as a result of my muses, my writing is eclectic. It's all over the place, from romance to horror, from fiction to non-fiction, from fantasy to science fiction, from wholesome family stories to naughty stories. Thankfully I can pick and choose which stories to write and, of course, to publish. But if I were to restrict my writing to say only the Nell stories that many of you have loved reading in The Sun Zebra, I would not write much. The Nell stories are just a fraction of who I am, the rest of what I write is very different. And herein lies the problem.

The cardinal rule of this business is: writer, know thy reader. If you write wholesome family stories and your readers expect more of that, you cannot put out say a horror or erotica book. It would drive your readers away in droves. Well this is just the problem I have.

The stories in my book The Sun Zebra are about family and love. But I have stories about murder, mayhem, monsters, and ghosts. I have stories overflowing with sexuality, and stories with bleak "unhappy endings." I even have a collection of essay and poems! How am I supposed to publish all this without rubbing my readers the wrong way? Some people have suggested that I create a new alias for myself but that would just multiply the work I have to do, which is already far too much on top of my day job.

So I wanted to know about others in my situation. Are you an eclectic writer? If so how do you deal with publishing in several genres? Please leave a comment and let us know.

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I Have Many Muses

1/20/2012

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You know how most writers have a muse? Well I have a confession to make: I have more than one muse. All in all (as far as I can tell) I have figured out I have nine muses. Let me run you down the list.

The Little Girl: This muse is a magical child. She is adorable, very intelligent, and looks a lot like the child in the cover of my first book The Sun Zebra. In fact, she is the chief architect of all my Nell stories. I love her dearly, but if I wrote exclusively what she inspires I would only write children's books.

The Comedian: This lady is all fun and laughs. It is impossible to engage her in a conversation without her going on a humorous tangent. If she were to take over my writing it would look like a cross between the Marx Brothers and the Three Stooges.

The Clergyman: This muse looks very much like a rabbi but he wears a cassock like a Catholic priest! He is constantly questioning the ulterior motives of every action and measuring them up to the highest moral standards. If he were to take over my writing I would not write.

The Bard: This guy looks and dresses like Shakespeare. He has had a heavy hand in all my poetry.

The Professor: This guy sports a bushy beard and looks like one of those German scholars from the days of yore. He is only concerned with academic discussions and favors the adventures of the mind. He is responsible for the scientist in me.

The Hero: This swashbuckling muscular dude is dressed like a Roman centurion and is always on the lookout for quests and adventures. He is like Conan the Barbarian on steroids and looks suspiciously like Arnold Schwarzenegger.

The Sweetheart: This one is the quintessential hometown honey. The type of girl you break up with to go see the world but then end up marrying when you have grown up and return. She is into romance, happy endings, and keeping things tidy. If I were to totally embrace her, my writing would be Lake Wobegon-perfect: something that I try to avoid at all costs.

The Slut: This muse is the type of woman my mother warned me about. As you would expect she wears fishnet stockings, lingerie, and high heels, and she is sizzling hot. If I were to allow her free reign over my writing I would only write erotica.

The Death Lady: This one looks very much like the grim reaper. She comes to me in my dreams under the faint glow of the moon. She opens the mausoleum doors and beckons for me to follow her to some of the darkest places that have ever existed.

The way my mind works is that these muses team up and then produce ideas for me to turn into stories. Each team effort is heavily slanted towards one or two muses with the rest adding a little touch of their own. For example, my first book The Sun Zebra was the product of a muse team commandeered by the Little Girl but you can detect the influence of the others including the Death Lady, the Comedian, and the Hero. My muses provide me with a steady stream of ideas that I write down in a list that keeps increasing all the time. As a result of this I have never experienced writer's block. The only time I've come close to experiencing writer's block is when I tried to force my muses to deliver a certain type of story. This doesn't work, and I have learned to just let them be.

The above may sound good but it creates a big problem for me, which we shall talk about in my next post. In the meantime I would like to hear about your muse. Do you have one, or more? How does it look? Does it come and go, or is it with you all the time? Please leave a comment and let us know.

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Coming Out of The Pseudonym Closet

1/4/2012

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I want to thank all my readers for their support and encouragement since I've started writing. I began publishing my work on Scribd under the Phantomimic pseudonym more than 2 years ago, and I continued using it when I opened a Twitter account, when I created this website, and in the publication of my first book, The Sun Zebra. The pseudonym and the "hands" avatar have served me well for many things, and I know some of you have encouraged me to keep it. However, my alter ego has some limitations that are holding me back in things that I want to achieve. Therefore the time has come to step out of the pseudonym closet, so to speak.

So to all my readers and followers I want to let you know that my real name is Rolando Garcia and from now on I will go by the name R. Garcia. It will take me a while to leave my "Phanto" alter ego behind and make the necessary changes to reflect this in my social media platforms, but this is my resolution for this New Year 2012. Otherwise everything will remain the same.

Take care and I hope you have a great year.

R. Garcia (Phanto)

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Will writers be replaced by machines?

12/2/2011

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I came upon this document recently, although it was published back in 2008. It is about a computer that wrote a novel! The program was put together by a group of IT professionals and language experts in Russia. They uploaded several literary works into the computer and 72 hours later the gizmo brought forth the novel entitled "True Love". According to the article it is a variation of Leo Tolstoy's Anna Kareina written in the style of the Japanese author Haruki Marakami.

This type of news gives rise to the question of whether computers will replace writers. Towards the end of the article several people claim this will never take place. One draws a parallel to how computers composing music have not replaced musicians. I believe this is the case. Writing is such a complex and multifaceted activity that it seems to me no computer would be able to reproduce it successfully.

However, I lived through the times when chess playing computers were on the rise. In those days I read many an article claiming that computers would never be able to beat the strongest chess players. Nowadays those pundits have long been proven wrong. Computers have been able to defeat even world chess champions.

You can argue that playing chess is nothing compared to writing. I would agree with you but I can't help but shudder at the thought that one day computers will be able to replace us writers. Such a writing machine would have several advantages over us. It would not despair over receiving negative reviews, or worry about whether its work is not selling well, or ask itself whether it would be ever able to quit its day job. But to quote former world chess champion Garry Kasparov after he was defeated in 1997 by a computer: "At least it did not enjoy it!"

That may be the key difference. Even if a machine can write as well as we do, it will not enjoy it, and that is not writing.

What do you think?

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Typos from Hell

9/29/2011

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In this digital age spell checkers have made typos come to the forefront as the bane of writers. Typos arise when we miss a letter (our massage treatments help relive your pain), replace a letter with another (we feature some-day shipping), switch the order of letters (I know judo, karate, jujitsu and other forms of marital arts), or even when we miss a space (the penis mightier than the sword).

Many typos are particular to each author. I, for example, tend to write "bellow" instead of "below", "were" instead of "where", and "of" instead of "off". In my book The Sun Zebra, I caught a typo that I had overlooked despite a few rounds of editing. I wrote "stripped quadrupeds" instead of "striped quadrupeds". Although finding typos may bother some people, I don't mind a few. In fact, I think they are fun to discover.

In some books I have read recently I have found some fun typos like "god judgment" instead of "good judgment", "roll model" instead of "role model", and "fir" instead of "fur". But the most unfortunate and hilarious of typos is probably what happened to the hero in a book by Susan Andersen.

Leave a comment and share some typos, they can either be your own or someone else's.

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How Much Artistic Capital do You Have?

7/7/2011

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The writer Herman Melville of Moby Dick fame is one the most famous cases of writer's block that is often mentioned. Melville wrote a series of books in the late 1840s and early 1950s that made him famous but then was unable to write anything that could reproduce this literary success. However, it has been suggested that what happened to Melville is not that he developed writer's block, but rather that he exhausted his artistic capital.

At the time Melville wrote, many thought that he was making up his stories. As it turn out this was not entirely the case. Melville based his most successful books like Typpe, Omoo, and Moby Dick on his real-life seafaring adventures, and this is what his readers liked to read. What seems to have happened to Melville was that he ran out of experiences. These experiences were his artistic capital, and once he converted this capital into books he went broke.

Some writers do not seem to have this problem and are capable of creating stories in a manner that is by and large independent of their real-life experiences. These writers have an unlimited artistic capital. Other writers, however, base their stories at least partly on their real-life experiences, which are finite. These writers have a limited artistic capital. Once they exhaust these experiences writing on a particular topic they are unable to write anything else that is similar. If their readers then clamor for more, the writer will be unable to deliver.

One obvious way to deal with a dwindling artistic capital is to accumulate more of the type of experiences that you are writing about. But very often this is not feasible or desirable. Another option is to get in touch with or research the experiences of others and base your writing on theirs.

As a writer, especially if you have become successful writing about a particular topic, you should examine the nature of your artistic capital and become aware of its limitations and potential.

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Bad News for Writers

6/29/2011

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A study recently published in the American Journal of Epidemiology may mean bad news for writers. The study analyzed the relationship between time spent sitting, physical activity, and mortality. About 50,000 women and 70,000 men participated. The subjects were free of disease at the time of enrollment in the study and their level of physical activity and time spent sitting were gauged by questionnaire. The authors of the study followed the subjects for 14 years recording a total of about 11,000 deaths in the men and 8000 deaths in the women.

The authors found that the least active of the women and men that also sat for more than 6 hours a day, were 94% and 48%, respectively, more likely to die compared to the most active women and men that also sat more than 6 hrs a day. In other words, physical activity decreases your chance of dying. However, the authors also found that, physical activity being equal, women and men that spent 6 or more hours a day sitting were 35% and 18%, respectively, more likely to die compared to those that sat for less than 3 hours a day. The cause of death that was associated the strongest with the mortality was cardiovascular disease.

So like other previous studies, this study confirmed, that physical activity decreases your odds of dying. However, the novel finding is that sitting more than 6 hours a day, regardless of your level of physical activity, can increase your odds of dying compared to people with a similar level of physical activity that sit for less than 3 hours a day. In other words, time spent sitting was independently associated with total mortality.

Since we writers spend a lot of time sitting down this may mean we are at increased risk of dying.

But such are the risks we take for the pleasures that come with the act of creation.

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Reader Respect and Rewriting

6/18/2011

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There are many quotes from notable writers to the effect that "writing is rewriting". Although I agree with this to a certain extent, there are many people that take this to an extreme. For these people, writing is a seemingly endless process towards perfection where the writer writes and rewrites what he/she has created going deeper and deeper into the heart of the story. Many claim this IS the way writing should be, and others claim that writers SHOULD do this out of respect for their readers. If you don't rewrite what you wrote dozens of times making it more and more perfect, then you are disrespecting your readers.

I don't get it.

Let me be clear, if you are writing the next "great American novel" and you are aiming for immortality among the all time greats in literature yes, by all means rewrite your stuff a hundred times. Or if you write for a select group of demanding readers, or you can't help being a perfectionist, yes, go ahead and strive for perfection.

But what if your goal is just to sell books? Let me ask you something. Suppose you write and rewrite your book making it say 80% perfect, and you sell an average of one hundred a month. Now suppose you write and rewrite your book even more making it 90% or 95% perfect and you sell the same amount. What does that tell you?

The way I see it, it tells you that within this interval (80-95%) readers don't care for a 10% or 15% increase in the perfection of the book. In fact, the time that you spend writing and rewriting your first book is time that you can spend writing your second book while earning money from your first book. Why rewrite more when you can rewrite less and make money. Doesn't this make sense to you?

Furthermore, by delaying the publication of your book while you make it needlessly perfect, you are denying your readers the pleasure of reading it in a way that would be perfectly acceptable to them. Doesn't this show disrespect for your reader? Why delay and impose perfection on a reader who doesn't care for it? Some people will reply that this is to "educate" them. Wow, talk about respecting your readers! And even worse, after putting so much effort into making your book needlessly perfect you may want to charge more for it. Where is the reader respect in that?

Up until recently the above questions were moot as it was the publishers/editors who decided whether your work was perfect enough to be published. But with the advent of e-books, authors have been liberated from the grind of senseless writing and rewriting of their books. Authors are now free to take their work directly to the readers, and let said readers decide what level of perfection is acceptable.

Of course I understand we all have personal standards, but if our goal is to sell books, then we must also be practical. However, at the same time we should understand that there will be a threshold of imperfection that no story, no matter how good, will manage to overcome. Obviously readers will balk at reading sloppily written books full of spelling mistakes, garbled grammar, and typos.

I believe the maxim "writer know thy reader", should be approached from both ends. Don't overdo it, but also don't under do it either. For me, understanding this is what respect for your readers is all about.

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Nobel Laureate Says Women are not Good Writers

6/8/2011

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The writer V.S. Naipaul made his mark writing primarily about British colonialism. He won many awards including the Nobel Prize in literature in 2001, and he has been called "the greatest living writer of English prose". This is why, when he was interviewed on May 2011 at the Royal Geographic Society, there were many people listening. After all, when a Nobel laureate speaks, we assume that he/she has something to say. And maybe he did, but alas, whatever he said of substance was lost amidst the furor created by some comments he made.

In a nutshell Naipaul considers that there are no women writers who are his equals. He says that this is because women writers are "different". He claims that when he reads something written by a woman he can immediately tell that is the case. He believes this is because of women's sentimentality and narrow view of the world, which makes their writing inferior to that of men. The fact that they are not complete masters of a house comes across in their writing too.

He mentioned that when his publisher, who was a great editor, became a writer, all that she produced was "feminine tosh". And of author Jane Austen in particular, he said that he could not possibly share her sentimental ambitions and sense of the world.

Upon learning of his comments the first thing that came to my mind was to ask what would Mr. Naipaul think of the Erica Jong quote:

"Beware of the man who denounces women writers; his penis is tiny and he cannot spell."

Would he consider this particular world view to be sentimental and narrow?

It would be easy to end this article here with this naughty quote, but Naipaul's comments stirred in me again something that has always bothered me regarding writing. However, before I deal with that let me point out two things regarding his comments.

The first thing I would point out is: Even if it were true that women have a more sentimental and narrow view of the world, what is wrong with that? Emotions are a fundamental component of the human experience, and always seeing the forest, but not the individual trees, blinds you to important aspects of reality. To quote Erica Jong again:

"There is still the feeling that women's writing is a lesser class of writing, that what goes on in the nursery or the bedroom is not as important as what goes on in the battlefield, that what women know about is a lesser category of knowledge."

If women are indeed more sentimental and have a narrower view of the world, then their point of view is necessary to complement that of men's. But I think that Naipaul's implication that, if we allow part of what we are to "contaminate" our writing it will make it "inferior", only makes sense if these traits that he associates with women are something he lacks. I will not engage in armchair psychology here but you can google the details of his personal life: it's not pretty. In my opinion this guy is a character who could benefit from some sentimentality and a narrower view of the world himself.

The second thing I would like to point out is that women have come a long way from the time of the latter Erica Jong quote. Women are heads of state, captains of industry, Nobel laureates, professors, pastors, and even warriors in battlefields. What they say and do goes beyond the bedroom and the nursery: it affects the life of billions. By not admitting women to be the intellectual equals of men Naipaul is going against the facts.

So why do I waste ink on this clown? It's because of what bothers me about the nature of writing.

I believe good writers have a gift. They have a unique way to view the world, grasp its realities and then communicate them to others. Nobel laureates, despite all the criticisms levied at the Nobel committee, stand out among all writers as the very best examples of what can be done with this gift. So, call me naive, but I am shocked every time a Nobel Prize winning writer comes across as no more enlightened than the local drunken bum down the road.

I may not be a good writer, but writing has made me discover new universes in me that I didn't know existed before. Writing has enriched my human experience, and has made me a better person. Therefore I tend to believe that writing does this to every writer. Although I know this is not true, I would expect that this would be the case at least at the very top: that all writers of Nobel class stature would find that writing turns them into better persons.

That obviously is not always the case, and I don't know why. Perhaps for many, writing is not the magical process that I idealize. Writing may be no different than playing golf, collecting stamps, selling cars, laying bricks, or cleaning toilets. You may excel at these hobbies or occupations but they are just that: a hobby or a job, which can be totally divorced from what you are or become. And that is sad.

What do you think?

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Q & A with Jackson Pearce

6/8/2011

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Jackson Pearce author of Sisters Red (a modern retelling of Little Red Riding Hood), answers questions from Figment.com users. She answers a question about self-publishing around min. 1:45. I don't agree with her but she is both engaging and fun to hear & watch.