Twilight Paper

I don’t want to read Stephanie Meyer’s ‘Twilight’ quadrilogy. She would not be surprised to hear me say this: I am not a teenage girl; I am not a woman wishing to relive the high emotion and angst of my younger years.

I haven’t read any of the Twilight books, but I hear that they have sold very well. Some readers will have neglected their homework or skipped school in order to read these books. Some readers may even have neglected a screaming child just so they could find out what happened next.

There were people, respectable adults, who bought these books in electronic form so they could read them in public. These people sat in the park, reading Twilight, safe in the knowledge that there was no book cover to give them away. Their secret was buried deep within the circuits of their eReaders. Their secret was buried deep within the circuits of their own minds.

Lost in the pages of a Twilight novel, these devoted readers had escaped the mediocrity of their lives. They had become a part of something truly worthwhile: a universe-rending tragedy.

This is something most readers of fiction can understand.

My attitude towards the Twilight series hasn’t always been so relaxed. I was a scoffer, I admit it. But then I thought: who am I to sit in judgement of 116 million readers? It was then that I reached a sense of peace with the whole Twilight phenomena. This peace was sorely tested when, one evening, I was sitting in a movie theatre, waiting for my movie to start, when a trailer for the latest Twilight movie begin to play.

Forever is Just the Beginning, it declared without offering any further explanation as to how this might be.

No, it isn’t, I grumbled.

Stillness

Meditate within your heart on your bed, and be still. – Psalm 4:4

In a recent interview American novelist, Anita Shreve, was asked if she agreed with fellow author Jonathan Franzen, when he said: “You see more sitting still than chasing after.”

Shreve answered by saying: “…the word ‘still’ in that sentence is the most interesting to me because there is a place of deep stillness.”

Shreve says that finding stillness is an important part of her day. I think I understand what she is talking about.

It is like this: a group of sprinters are waiting for the starter to fire his pistol; they are silent and focused. The crowd is also silent. They are full of expectation. Time stands still.

Stillness is the moment before the starter fires his pistol.

Stillness is the moment before the Big-Bang creates the Universe.

Stillness is the space between the past and the future, and in stillness we find freedom from entanglement in both past and future. Stillness is the point from which an infinite number of possibilities could arise, but only one will.

Some storytellers pause in the moment of stillness. They reach into the pool of possibilities keeping their hand steady so as not to upset the surface. And from that pool they extract one single strand - a chain of events: a story.

Anyone who knows stillness can write their own story.

Notebooks can be a Barrier

A couple of weeks ago I travelled to Melbourne to attend a training course. My wife and I used to live in Melbourne so I revisited a couple of our favourite restaurants while I was there.

One of the best vegetarian restaurants in the world – well, in my world at least - is Soul Food Café on Smith Street in Fitzroy. I want to tell you that Soul Food Café, or Soul Food as it is affectionately called, is bohemian, but I don’t really know what that word means. Let me say this: Soul Food is a magnet for hippies of all ages. If you have dreadlocks and wear tie-dyed clothes you would not feel out of place there. If you forgot to change out of your slippers before going out to dinner, head over to Soul Food, you’ll fit right in.

I am not exactly what you would call a hippie. As I sat down behind a small table I realised that I did not fit right in.

I ordered the ‘Haystack’ and a salad. I pulled out my black notebook, the one I use for quick observations, observations that may later become the basis for a short-story, or a blog. I looked around, ready to make an observation or two before my meal arrived. It was then that I realised that I was not alone in my observing. There were a few of us, each sitting behind our own small tables, each with our little black notebooks, each ready to make quick and relevant observations about the world around us.

I saw myself in the faces of these other people.

I hastily put my notebook back into my bag and tried to look normal. I sat staring at the surface of the table in front of me, my mind racing.

I wondered: had I brought that black notebook to the café as a kind of crutch? Was it a thing with which I could pretend to have a purpose; a thing with which I could hide my trepidation at being in a cool café on my own? Was my black notebook a barrier, a barrier to the real experience of being in the café, a barrier behind which I could safely observe the world in the third person?

I was afraid the answer to these questions was yes.

Soon my meal arrived. I ate it. It was delicious. When it was finished I surreptitiously pulled out my black notebook and wrote, ‘Notebooks can be a barrier – blog concept?’

Intuition

I have just started to read The Idiot’s Guide to Writing a Novel by Thomas Monteleone.

I hadn’t intended to read this book. The author’s conversational style drew me in. Before I knew it I was up to page 10 and couldn’t put the damn thing down.

My only gripe so far is the author’s suggestion that some aspects of the writing process are down to the readers ‘intuition’. In my opinion, authors should use the concept of intuition in How-To guides in the same way a Monopoly player would use the ‘Get out of jail free card’: only when in real need.

I am currently reading the section within this book that discusses ‘Best Seller’ lists. I have an inbuilt aversion to bestselling novels; I am not sure why this is the case. I have listened to and loved chart-topping music. I have watched and enjoyed box-office smashing movies. But still the idea of bestselling books irks me.

There are two possible reasons why I don’t like bestselling novels: I am jealous; I am a complete snob. Both of these things could be true.

Or maybe I don't like best sellers because this is what I am told by my intuition?

Tolkienesque

Let’s say you’ve just finished J.R.R Tolkien’s epic fantasy ‘The Lord of the Rings’ and you want to read more of the same sort of thing. You could perform an Internet search on the word Tolkienesque, but you would be slugged with over 90,000 results. Perhaps a better search might be A style reminiscent of Tolkien, which returns a mere 3,000 results.

But do you really want to read something that is an imitation of an earlier author's work?

The book marketers say yes. You want to read a book that is very much like something you’ve read before.

You want to read a book in which Krodo, a short statured creature from a mythical land, goes on a quest to destroy an amulet that has amazing powers but a link with pure evil. There will be a tavern in this book and a long bearded stranger. There will be frozen nights sleeping under stars followed by a night in a huge mansion. There will be a refreshing bath and new clothes. These clothes will come from a mysterious but friendly stranger. This stranger will have the power to help Krodo in his quest, but will also issue a grave warning.

Okay, so you probably don’t want to read about Krodo. And, to be honest, I don’t want to write about him. But think about that earlier statistic: 90,000 results for Tolkienesque. You have to look at a number like that and think about how much interest there must be in the genre.

The aspiring author needs to think about who his readers will be. He can’t just dismiss a huge potential market for his work. One should not be too precious.

‘m I precious?

The Novel and the Deep Blue Sea

I have written almost 100 short-stories over the past six years but my goal has always been to write a novel. Writing short-stories is a way of practicing the craft of writing without the enormous time commitment that a novel demands.

I used to think that writing a novel was much like reading a novel, except in reverse: the story would spool out my mind and onto the page. This story would be a secret that I shared with the page until I was ready to share it with the world. This is not the case.

I am beginning to realise that writing a novel is not just a matter of time. It requires one to devote a portion of their brain to the task. I have been dreaming of words. I have dreamt that I am trying to fit sentences together. They resist each other like similar poles of two magnets.

I used to think that once I began a novel, with every word I typed I would feel a little closer to my goal. The opposite is true. I feel like I am swimming away from a comfortable shore. Every word is a stroke further out into an empty ocean. I may be swimming towards something that is just over the horizon. I do not feel this. I feel like I am out of my depth.

I have some determination that my novel will not join the millions of unfinished novels that abound in this world. And so I swim onwards. I swim through a sea of words. I cannot tell where this will lead me. I seem to have no choice but to continue.

The Feel of an eBook

An electronic book reader, or eReader as they are sometimes called, is a small handheld device that has a screen which is roughly the same size as a page in a paperback novel. The eReader enables its user to open text files and read them in a way that is not dissimilar to reading a paperback.

The eReader has a button you press when you want to see the next page. It may also have a button that lets you save your place. The eReader has a menu that lists all the books that are stored on it; from there you can choose which book you are going to read next.

There are thousands of books available for free on the Internet. You can store hundreds of books on your eReader at any one time.

Sometimes people ask me why I own an eReader. I tell them that I can download classic novels for free. I tell them that I can store lots of really big books on my eReader. I tell them that the battery lasts for ages and the words on the screen look like ink on paper. I tell them that the eReader is easy to hold, perhaps easier than a normal novel.

“But don’t you miss the feel of a paperback,” I am asked.

This question makes me think back to the first book I read on my eReader: Anna Karenina. Anna Karenina is not War and Peace, but it is still an arm achingly large tome that was not designed for bedtime reading. Reading Anna Karenina on my eReader was easy. There was no arm-ache, just 100% pure tortured-Russian-genius.

Do I miss the feel of a normal book? Well, no, because here’s the thing: owning an eReader doesn’t preclude you from feeling normal books if you want to.

In summary: owning an eReader can make it easier to read books; an eReader can make hundreds of books available to you for free; if you own an eReader you can still feel old paperbacks whenever you want to.

I’m struggling to find a downside.