Tag: Stephen King

Boosting Creativity by Ditching the Video Poison

Jeffe Kennedy / / Blog

10_29_15I’m back from a lovely Thanksgiving holiday and buckling down to seriously crank on THE EDGE OF THE BLADE. Since I’ve been writing full-time, I haven’t consistently hit the hit word count goals I’d like to. In fact, I’ve felt like I’ve been writing more slowly since summer and I haven’t been sure why.

(Though I told writing buddy Anne Calhoun that I felt like I spent all of July sitting in the grape arbor, doing nothing, and she said, “Amen, sister,” so it might not be just me.)

Still, I’ve got a January 1 deadline for this book, so I’m out of arbor-dawdling time. Plus it’s too cold out for that. So, on the drive home yesterday, I constructed a new daily schedule and looked hard at where I could improve productivity. And I realized a Huge Thing. In midsummer, I stopped listening to music while I ran on the treadmill in the mornings, and started watching videos on my iPad mini instead.

There were good reasons for this at the time. I was doing very particular research and watching the videos killed two birds with one stone – entertained me while I ran and provided time to watch the stuff I needed to. After that, I kept going, watching various musicals, as I could find and stream them.

No harm done, right?

WELL.

A lot of you know I gave up watching TV a long time ago. Wow, like almost twenty years ago, we ditched the cable, happy to save that money. The cost savings was a side-benefit, however. My main reason was because of something I read in Stephen King’s ON WRITING. I was trying to work out how to be a writer and consumed all sorts of craft books like that one. I’m paraphrasing here because I can’t find my copy (did YOU borrow it??), but he said that it’s no accident he grew up without TV and became such a vivid creative writer. He called TV poisonous to creativity and urged all writers to give it up.

So, I did. It was a pretty easy choice for me, as the sound of the TV going in the background always irritated me. I was born to a mother who claimed the way to meet the ideal man would be in the Tattered Cover Bookstore during a Broncos game. Fortunately the man I had found (though not in Tattered Cover) fully supported the idea. My teenage stepdaughter not so much, but she was gracious about it.

And it worked!

At least, I felt like it did. Enhancing creativity in oneself is not a clear-cut enterprise that can be measured quantitatively. However, over the years, we never regretted the move, and often counted our blessings not to be subjected to the sensationalized news and pharmaceutical advertising so many complained of. As time passed, we were able to access Netflix and Internet streaming. We watch a lot of movies and sometimes TV series. No more than one movie or two episodes of a show each evening, after my writing day was over.

Until I started on my video-watching while running kick. Could that have impacted my creativity and productivity? Surely not! And yet… the timing worked out.

So, today I went back to running to music. And my productivity zoomed up. Maybe that’s a coincidence. Maybe it won’t be reproducible. Still, I believe that watching those videos before my morning writing put my creative mind in the wrong mode. Music it is, from now on.

Something to consider, if you’re struggling with ways to clear your writing mind!

On Not Treating Bookstores as Temples to False Gods

Jeffe Kennedy / / Blog

001Me at the Lori Foster Reader and Author Get Together with Stephanie Collins of Book-A-Holic Anon. She won my Ruby basket in the raffle, so this is the triumphant celebration.

So, I’m going to go a bit eBook ranty today. Those of you sick of hearing about this from me may be excused. It’s Friday, after all, and the middle of June. Go frolic!

What triggered me this time is Stephen King. (Yet again, really. Something about this guy and his attitudes gets under my skin. I know this isn’t a popular position, since everyone seems to regard him as a demi-god who can do no wrong.) He announced in May (yeah, I’ve been brooding about this for a couple of weeks) that his new novel will be available in hardback only.** He retained the digital rights and so there will not be an eBook version soon, if ever. At least, not a legal one.

**UPDATE: I’ve been corrected on this. I read the article wrong and it’s “hard copy” only, not hardback. Apologies!

He said “let people stir their sticks and go to an actual bookstore rather than a digital one.”

Because, you know, those of us reading eBooks do so from sheer laziness. And you can’t buy hardback books online. Oh wait…

So, his ostensible reason is to support Independent Bookstores. I’m sure the fact that he and his publisher and his agent make the most money off a hardback is irrelevant. No, this is about sacred principle people. In fact, one of the bookstore folks quoted in the article said that unfortunately, many people would rather purchase books from their computer or mobile phone, than browse a bookstore. He went on to say, “I’d just as soon not have people buy their books while typing a thank-you note.”

Because buying a book is such a Special Thing that it’s rude to multi-task? Should we perform ritual cleansings first? Perhaps sacrifice a small mammal?

See, what irritates me about this is the underlying assumption that paper is what makes a book valuable and that bookstores should be treated like temples of the book. In fact, when I tweeted about this, someone replied that they had practically worshiped their hometown bookstore.

I get that. I really do. I loved loved loved my hometown bookstores – and my hometown libraries. They were places of refuge and they gave me what I desired most: books.

The thing is, however, that worship was never about the STORE. It was about the STORIES. It makes me think of the whole concept of false gods. There are many parables in religions all over the world of people focusing their prayers on golden idols, instead of on the concept of god. That’s always been the danger of the temple or the church – that the physical housing outstrips the reason for going there in the first place.

I like bookstores and I like paper books, but what’s important to me is the story. The medium of delivery is unimportant to me. I prefer eBooks because I can keep them without my home looking like it should be on Hoarders. I resent the implication that I somehow owe it to The Great Book God to “stir my sticks” and go to a store and buy a story on paper, because that’s somehow holier and more reverent.

I call B.S.

And what this reminds me of is that cray cray interview with Prince in Billboard. (I would have linked to the original article, not Gawker’s summary, but Billboard has it so buried there’s no evidence of the actual article on the direct link. At any rate, Prince spend a lot of time ranting about how his music will never be available digitally and that digital music is a fad that will die away.

I also have a friend from Texas who won’t get a website for her business because she thinks the internet is a fad and will disappear soon.

People don’t like change. I get that.

But let’s be realistic here. It’s not about the stores. It’s not about the paper.

Beware the false idols.

Twixt Thee and Me

admin / / Blog

It’s always interesting to me which posts get people’s attention.

Or their responses, at least. Which I tend to assume is the same thing and that may not be necessarily so.

But my last post stimulated quite a few reactions. Several people commented. More sent me IM or email notes. The general consensus among my support network is that I was grumpy and had been on the road too long. Reading back over it, I suspect it was my tone that came across grumpy more than the content.

Be that as it may.

It was funny to me yesterday, as I took my three plane flights home, wending my way back west, that the messages and comments on my blog post (including one from my mom showing that Barbara Kingsolver took seven years to write her latest) were comingled with a discussion thread on one of my writers’ loops regarding this article which trashes Dan Brown’s new book. And someone else contributed the Wikipedia link to Literary Criticism of The Da Vinci Code that trashes Dan Brown in general. And an address by Stephen King where he implies that Dan Brown is the intellectual equivalent of Kraft Macaroni and Cheese.

Stephen King has been cutting a bit of a wide swath lately, as I’ve mentioned before. It’s ironic to me that he feels comfortable making pronouncements on who writes well and who doesn’t, when I’ve often heard King’s success held up as the perverted triumph of genre over literature.

I know you’ll be shocked, but I don’t have much of an opinion there.

I’ve read a bit of King and didn’t love it, but then, I don’t really read much horror. I have never read Dan Brown, but I liked the movie fine. I liked Meyer’s Twilight books — I thought she did interesting things with the stories and she kept me hooked.

What I see happening is the “win by putting others down” trend. Also known as, for those of us who labored under grading curves, “it’s not so much that you succeed, but that others fail.” We’ve all known people like this. People who attempt to pump themselves up by putting others down. If King can sneer at Dan Brown and Stephenie Meyer, then he’s clearly not part of their club. I remember a while back when Anne Rice was big on letting people know that her books were being taught in schools, as a way of legitimizing them.

Keena commented on my last post that it’s the genre writers who become literary giants in later generations and she has a point there. Think Jane Austen, Tolkein and Arthur Conan Doyle.

And we’re witnessing a battle now: the literary writers facing precipitously declining sales, fighting to assert that THEY are the true writers, and the genre writers, fighting amongst themselves for the best seat at the mad tea party, all the while pretending they don’t care what the literary types think, yet secretly wishing to have that level of validation.

In the end, I don’t think it matters if you take one month or ten years to write a book. Your process is your process. What matters is what you’re trying to do. If you want to bring in the money, ten years is a stretch unless you’re living on decent royalties. If you’re going for art, maybe you don’t believe a few months is enough for that to occur.

But I’m pretty sure you won’t sell more books by trashing other writers. Just sayin’.

One More Fraught Thing

admin / / Blog

And then I’ll get off this rant for a while. RoseMarie took fraught further still with a couple of very interesting bits from the writing modern world and that of what sure seems like a better time. This nugget has Stephen King expounding on the relative success of J.K. Rowling and Stephenie Meyer. What really caught our attention was King’s assertion that “the real difference is that Jo Rowling is a terrific writer and Stephenie Meyer can’t write worth a darn. She’s not very good.”

Wow. Who knew we’d see the day that Stephen King would slam another enormously popular genre writer as not being able to “write worth a darn.” Way to forget the slings and arrows tossed your way, Steve.

I’m speaking here as someone who’s read all three authors. I’m also reliably informed that I’m a picky reader. Between King, Rowling and Meyer, I’d have to say that Meyer is the only one I really enjoyed. The only one who lit me up. Yes, I read a few of the Harry Potters and I believe when people said they got better, darker, more complex. But I found them derivative and not particularly magical. I’ve read some of Steve’s stuff, too. He writes a decent story, but he’s never been an author I sought out or passed on. Frankly, I like the movies they make of his books better than the books themselves – which is almost never true of any other book, so that says something, I think.

So why does King disdain Meyer’s books? He says:

“…it’s very clear that she’s writing to a whole generation of girls and opening up kind of a safe joining of love and sex in those books. It’s exciting and it’s thrilling and it’s not particularly threatening because they’re not overtly sexual. A lot of the physical side of it is conveyed in things like the vampire will touch her forearm or run a hand over skin, and she just flushes all hot and cold. And for girls, that’s a shorthand for all the feelings that they’re not ready to deal with yet.”

Makes me wonder what Tabitha’s sex life is like. Speaking as a woman, not a girl, there’s a hell of a lot to say for flushing hot and cold at the touch of a hand on my skin. And believe me, I’m ready to deal with the overtly sexual feelings that go right along with that. Nothing wrong with extended foreplay. Take note, Stephen.

It all comes down to what we love to read, doesn’t it? That’s the primary parameter. The verdicts of sales and of the artists follow behind that. I probably like Meyer best because I’m a fan of sexual tension.

Speaking of artistry, here’s the nugget from the past, that RoseMarie found in the Davidson archives:

The Willa Cather Creative Writing Award was created by William C. Doub Kerr in 1937. Doub Kerr, a member of the class of 1915, helped found the Blue Pencil Club, which later became a chapter of Sigma Upsilon, a literary honor society. The prize for the award was a copy of one of Cather’s novels. The first recipient was Gibson Smith, Class of 1937 for his work “Satan Snake.” The award was suspended after two years and returned briefly from 1955-1958. In the spring of 1937, Doub Kerr wrote Willa Cather seeking her approval of the award. She replied with wit and caution:

“My Dear Mr. Kerr;
Thank you most for your friendly letter. But, honestly, I think the “new sails” have a better chance of making port when they are not taught “creative writing.” It can’t be taught, for one thing!*

Sincerely yours, Willa Cather.
*Perhaps it can be guided a little, modestly? I don’t like to be too sure.”

Somehow, I don’t see Willa lining up to lambast those ships that do make it to port, especially the ones that sell their cargo for a pretty penny. But then, maybe it was a kinder, less fraught world then.