"Write what you know"

The age-old advice that I've heard since I was a wee little Jeffling, is to write what you know.

Seems pretty sound. Don't you think?

It should go without saying (except that I'm saying it now) that experience enriches writing. You can know about a thing, study the subject all you like, observe it or watch it done, but unless you've actually gotten your hands dirty and gotten up close and personal with it -- if it's a verb, then, unless you've actually done it -- then it could be argued that you can't accurately impart the experience onto the reader.

For example, if you were a construction worker with literary aspirations, you could write pretty authoritatively about the trials and tribulations of construction workers. Your characters would be based on the people you knew. You can make the reader understand the full weight of your sledgehammer, the heat and the sweat, the long hours, the anger and frustration you feel over your corrupt boss and your weak union. You could fill your story with all the beautiful minutiae that we outside of the construction field might miss, that make a story real and true.

Okay, maybe you could risk a little extrapolation -- maybe you're a nurse but you know enough about doctors, or vice versa -- but the old adage "write what you know" taken in its purest and most literal form, pretty much limits us to writing our biographies. And, to paraphrase an old commercial, would you want to read a book about your life?

I don't like to be that restricted.

I don't want to write a book about, say, political and legal theory, small businesses, drives through Appalachia in a very small car, or over-brewed tea. Yet, by the literal definition of writing what I know, those and a handful of other minor misadventures are all I'm qualified to write.

Instead, what I'm writing, Project: Oz can loosely be described as a "fantasy western." There may be some over-brewed tea in there, but not much else that I've personally experienced.

Or is there?

The book has a theme, and that theme relates to that political theory that I mentioned above -- not in so many words, but the relationship is there. The book has characters; some of those characters are based directly on people I've known well, while others are composites. I've had to create a world that strongly resembles our own world in the Nineteenth Century, with a similar society and government, which relates to my backgrounds in political theory and also in history, a topic I've studied both formally and informally for years. Genre-wise, the book would obviously be found in the Science-Fiction Fantasy section of your local bookstore (or just plain fantasy if you've got a really good bookseller), and that's a genre in which I've read extensively for about as long as I've been able to read, so generously we could say that I'm more than passing familiar with its tropes.

Taking a looser definition of the "write what you know" adage, I'd say we're off to a good start.

I've never ridden a horse, but I could just drive up the road and learn. I've never shot a gun, but I know someone who could teach me. I've never been to Texas, but I could hop on a plane tomorrow, survey the Hill Country, and eat some barbecue.

That's all well and good. But one of my main characters is a wizard. Not just a main character -- a point-of-view character. Which means that he's casting spells, using magic. He's using it a lot. He's talking about it. He's thinking about it. And during those portions of the book that he's narrating, you, the reader, are casting spells with him.

Which means that I, the writer, have to know what that's like.

As far as we know, magic of this sort does not exist in our real, mundane world. Okay, well, neither do dinosaurs, but Michael Crichton wrote Jurassic Park (Knopf, 1990). To prepare for Jurassic Park, I figure Crichton either built a time machine or researched the topic. I can't do the one thing, but I can do the other: I can read up on magical practices throughout history (there's that history thing again!), from prehistoric shamanism through Middle Age alchemy to modern neo-paganism, Simon Magus and Nicholas Flamel and Aleister Crowley. Fiction and myth are practically filthy with wizards from whose experiences I can learn: Circe, Merlin, Morgan le Fay, Prospero, Thoth-amon, Gandalf, Raistlin, Zed, and even Harry Potter are all fine role models.

Clearly, I can know about magic without ever practicing it myself, since that's impossible.

Or is it?

Enter my third-favorite game of all time, Dungeons & Dragons. Dungeons & Dragons, along with its myriad of technology-based followers (World of Warcraft, the increasingly inaccurately named Final Fantasy series, and Fable come to mind) allow one to swing a sword against an angry ogre, match wits with a devious archfiend, and sling fireballs at an evil god, all without ever leaving your chair.

As I realized on the drive home from my last D&D session, I had, through my character, Tym the gnomish sorcerer, used magic in a realistic, simulated problem-solving situation. Tym and I had done it with our staff in hand: engaged in combat, worked with a team, and completed a mission.

I couldn't know what it felt like to have the energy of the cosmos flow through me -- not without some pretty hefty drugs -- but through D&D I could test out the effects of sorcery in various situations.

While I already had a system of magic in place, it was all based on theory and explained how things worked the way they did, not how to implement them. I had, in essence, been doing it wrong. Well, maybe not wrong, but there were things I hadn't thought all the way through, and in doing so, I had made my wizard protagonist too powerful.

And that just doesn't fit: he's a flawed character, so shouldn't his magic be likewise flawed? Shouldn't his spells take time to cast? Shouldn't enemies present a dangerous and moving target while he conjures their arcane doom -- they didn't all graduate from the Imperial Stormtrooper Marksmanship Academy, did they? And does his lightning bolt automatically hit its target? What happens when his aim is off and he winds up setting the room on fire?

These are questions that I'd been periodically asking myself for over a year now. But Dungeons & Dragons let me put the answers into practice. As a character, Tym may not be anything like my wizard protagonist, but the latter -- and the world he inhabits -- learns a lot from the former.

Hopefully, Project: Oz will be a lot better for it.

Ch-ch-ch-changes

"I just think it’s better to have ideas. I mean, you can change an idea. Changing a belief is trickier. People die for it, people kill for it."
- Rufus (Chris Rock), Dogma, 1999

"I have scars bigger than you."
- Male protagonist, c.2000-present, Project Oz


The first glimmer came in the summer of 1995, when I heard The Eagles' Hell Freezes Over album in my mom's car. From a song, I had a vision that would remain with me for the rest of my life to date and has influenced me in countless ways. But the real root -- the first images, even a few lines of dialogue -- of what would, years later, become Project: Oz took hold in 2000 or 2001 when I became aware of such a thing as the Model 61 Skorpion machine pistol and thought: "Holy shit, a machine gun that fits into a pistol holster! What if somebody -- a loner, a stranger, a mercenary and drifter and Man With No Name -- brought that to an Old West-style gunfight?"

Coupling that thesis with the idea of damaged souls partnered against a cold and uncaring world, I had the primary colors with which I would paint my masterpiece.

Dear reader, it is now the Year of Our Lord Two Thousand Eleven. Do you think that what was true fifteen and a half years ago, is necessarily true now? Think about where you were back then. (Were some of you even born yet? God I feel old.) If you have the kind of consistency in your life where things are the same now as they were then, I'm not sure whether to congratulate or pity you.

The world is not the same now as it was in 1995 or 2000-2001. Neither am I, and neither are my ideas.

I don't listen to The Eagles anymore (not regularly, at any rate). As I type this, I'm listening to old-school Metallica. I'm not as fascinated now as I once was by automatic weapons (not as much, at any rate).

In approximately ten years, I've tried to write Project: Oz half a dozen times.  I've gone from something strongly resembling the merger between a 1990s comic book (the sort with which I grew up) and a 2nd Ed. Advanced Dungeons & Dragons campaign (the sort with which I was immersed at the time), to high fantasy, dark fantasy, steampunk fantasy, steampunk western, and some sort of unnamed hybrid thing that is all of the above and none.

The world-building process (and the research that has gone along with it) has been extreme and almost nightmarish. I've gone 'round and 'round with myself: Do I want magical, non-human races like dwarfs and elves? (The original idea with the Skorpion included dwarf merchant princes producing gunpowder in mass quantities.) What sort of technology and standard of living do the common people enjoy? Is magic common, rare, or nearly unheard-of? Do I want magic to be common or rare? Do I want fantasy, historical near-reality, steampunk, or even science fiction levels of strangeness? Is this book geared towards children, young adults/teenagers, or mature audiences?

I've contemplated such topics as dresses and dirigibles, tattoos and Tomes of Eldritch Horror.

There have been times when I've torn out my hair: what the hell is this thing I'm writing??!!

What's my point with all this?

That it's all fluid, to a certain extent.

As I grow, as I gain in experience, so does my work grow and gain. While I wonder sometimes just how different I really am, I know that I've seen things and done things that have fundamentally changed the outcome of my work. For the better, I hope.

"Hm. I think this ending I have planned needs to be a little more bittersweet."

"Perhaps my heroine ought to be younger and less worldly. Also, more of a masochist. That way, she can better serve as a foil for my hero, and the dynamic of her relationship with the antagonist is shifted towards the more intense."

"Speaking of my hero: I think he ought to be super-skinny. Jesus-skinny, '60s rock star-skinny. And also more of a prick to start out with while he's working through his own inner demons, so that he can change into more of a ... well, a hero. A skinny hero."

Over the years, my heroine has been based upon a number of models, both physically and spiritually. I based her upon a character from a movie, to start out with. Over the years, she's taken on the aspects of friends and lovers no longer in my life. As I think about her now, I think my girlfriend has rubbed off a bit on her, which leads to the possibility for even more depth and realism.

Every day that I work on this project, I think of something I hadn't thought of before. And that's really neat, folks.

But the roots that once planted themselves in my brain from their unlikely sources, are still there. The theme of two unlikely heroes saving the world while saving themselves and each other is very much alive, although I understand it now far better than I did at the age of ten. The idea of a powerful weapon in the hands of a stranger still finds itself at the center of my work, but the weapon has changed and so has its meaning.

But those kernels remain. Those are the belief system, around which the ideas of Project: Oz can grow and evolve, try and fail and try again.

Until I get them right.

Just a few thoughts

Hey there, folks. Just a few thoughts while I'm wrapping up this morning's writing session.

I've got a lot on my mind this morning from my personal life, and naturally that's affecting my writing. I'm not angry or upset about that -- these are important issues that must be addressed -- but I wonder how I'll look at my work when I get to the editing process. "Jeeze, what was going on in my head right then? Oh, right ..."

Distracted writing is dangerous writing.

There's also some really, seriously, wonderfully good things going on in my personal life, that are seeping their way into what I'm writing. And that's pretty terrific. If I can gather myself more fully this afternoon or tomorrow, I'll tell you more about that.

But back to that whole writing-it-now, editing-it-later thing. I just wrote a sentence, "X steeled himself as he rode up to the main house, where Y would be." And then I changed it to "... where Y would surely be." And then to "... where Y was sure to be." All of these ways sound perfectly fine to me; I only changed them because the latter two options are more in tune with the accent of this particular scene. The first option, though, has the virtue of simplicity, and for that reason, I'll probably wind up changing it back to "... where Y would be" when I go back and edit.

I hate second-guessing myself -- absolutely hate it, and I utterly reject the "wisdom" I was once offered, that said I should always second-guess myself. No. It's fine to look back and learn from your mistakes, because that's how we LEARN. (See how I used that word twice in the sentence? It's important!)

But don't overdo it. Don't beat yourself up or cut yourself down about it. Don't keep asking "What if I had done it that way?" or "Why didn't I do it right the first time?" If you did it the way you did, then it was either a mistake (those happen!) or you had a good reason for doing it that way.

(Behavioral psychologists, child development experts, teachers, parents, and everybody else, are free to disagree with me. But I sleep pretty well at night.)

And that's why I try not to look at the editing process as second-guessing, but as a sort of Gurneyan spiral: always coming back to where we were, but always moving onward and upward, too.

Hopefully I'll get to some book reviews soon, and as I mentioned above, a few other things. But I just wanted to share those thoughts for now.

Aaaaaaaaand we're off!

Howdy, folks!

My name's Jeff, and this is the online chronicle of my attempts to write and eventually publish a novel.  Stay tuned!