Dave's Anatomy: My History as a Writer #2: Creating an Ongoing Character

 

Janis Joplin

After the initial publication of a fiction story, I began to write more. I had learned to write about what I knew, and what I knew was music. I began to think of characters and character profiles and thought, simply by accident, that a female blues player would be an intriguing figure. Not many women do blues. Of course, there are notables: Bonnie Raitt, Janis Joplin, and, going back a few years, the incomparable Memphis Minnie. Still, blues is largely a male domain. And in the pop music scene of modern times, few people, male or female, play blues, so it seemed like a good role if I wanted to make a character unique.

Next I had to choose a name. I came up with a name I thought was unique:  Sossity. Those who are Jethro Tull fans know he had a song called "Sossity, You're a Woman." Ian Anderson, lead singer for the group, said he got the name from a yacht a friend of his owned and says the name is quite common in Scotland. I've since researched the name and found it is rare. Most people who name their girls this usually do so because they know the Tull song. I have never confirmed that it is popular in Scotland, though I do remember seeing a British movie once and, in the credits, about three women named Sossity were listed. But it was a good name, like April Dancer or Pussy Galore (both Ian Fleming creations). I stuck with it.

I would go on to publish over thirty stories about Sossity Elizabeth Chandler. The next four stories I got in print or online were about her.

For any character, you've got to create a character biography. Hers came slowly, and I won't try to rehearse it all at once, but a couple of things come into play. Sossity comes from a fairly wealthy

middle-class home. Her dad is a patent lawyer. Her mother stays at home but is trained as a nurse. Her mother is British, her father American. She has four brothers and she is the oldest and the only girl in the family. Like most first-born children, she is an achiever. She does well in school and is a capable athlete. She is beautiful. Her parents want her to become a doctor (her father's brother is a doctor) and she enrolls at Purdue University in their pre-med program. She also wins a track scholarship so that paying the bills is not an issue (though this would not have been an issue any way because her family has money).

There is one glitch, however. At age ten, Sossity's father takes her a to John Denver concert. She is enraptured by the singing and says she wants to learn to play the guitar. He buys her one, she learns to play it and begins to sing and play at school and, later, around town in coffee bars and at events. When she goes to Purdue, she begins to play even more. Halfway through her sophomore year, she drops out of school to pursue a career as a singer.

Needless to say, her parents are not happy. A violent rift develops between her and her father. And things are not easy for Sossity. She has to struggle to get enough money. She has determined she will not work part-time or get public assistance. She will make it as a musician on what she earns as a musician. The first several years, it is a struggle.

Sossity Chandler is wild at heart. The first story I published about her, "Son of a Preacher Man," catalogs her lack of inhibition. Another story, "Norwegian Wood," talks about the rift with her father. After that came "The Snow Demon" and "Retreat at Abby Path." I had struck on something with the character of Sossity Chandler. Her character biography became more complex.

And, with the story, "The Snow Demon," I began to write horror stories with her as the main character. This trend would continue.

If you want to read the stories, here are links. "Son of a Preacher Man," unfortunately, was printed in a journal that is now defunct and does not maintain an archive. So was "Retreat at Abby Path." "The Snow Demon" appeared in a print publication. But below are links to one of the stories I mentioned above and a couple of more I feel were good. I won't talk about all the Sossity stories. There are too many of them to do that, but I will have a couple more blogs on her. So more to come. 

Here are some Sossity stories for your reading pleasure.

Norwegian Wood is the first story I published featuring my on-going character. Scroll past the poem (I hope you like the poem too) to read it.

The Loss of Good is said by many of my friends to be the best "Sossity story" I've written. Judge for yourself.

Bambukos is also a favorite of many of my friends. 

Check out my Facebook Writer's Page for information on recent publications.

Find more information here.     

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Dave's Anatomy: My History as a Writer, Number 1: First Fiction Publication

Hemingway

In outlining his development as a writer, Ernest Hemingway remembers his early days in Paris:  "Up in that room I decided that I would write one story about each thing that I knew about. I was trying to do this all the time I was writing, and it was good and severe discipline." When I began writing fiction, I followed that path. I had read the quote and thought it was a good idea. I, too, began to write about the things that I knew.

One of the things I knew was music, and I thought this was a good bet. The first story I published was a story about music and musicians.

I play guitar. I've played in pop bands, cover bands, folk ensembles, and I've done blues and ambiance music. It seemed logical to write about music and musicians. And I also knew a lot about the music scene and some of the artists who made it great. There are artists whose lives are upfront and public. The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Cream have been in the public light for so long there is little mystery about them. But other artists are mysterious and intriguing. That is why I chose to write about Nick Drake for a story I began working on back in 2008.

Nick Drake ranked as a great songwriter and a marvelous guitarist. His music, however, did not do well. He released two albums that did not sell. After a third release met a similar fate, he became depressed. Reclusive and private, he eventually refused to perform or be interviewed. He died of an overdose of antidepressant drugs. Whether the overdose was accidental or a suicide has never been determined. A small but loyal fan base kept his music alive, and artists in the 1980s began to notice and admire his recordings. The popularity of his music increased. By the 1990s his music had become popular again. By the new millennium all his recordings had been re-released.

I loved Nick Drake's music, spent time learning his guitar style, and had all his recordings. And the mystery of his short, secretive life produced intriguing questions that could become plot lines. Had he loved anyone? Was there a woman in his life? People researched Drake's life. Occasionally someone would discovery new photographs or, more importantly, new songs. A minor Nick Drake "industry" existed consisting of people who wrote on Drake and recorded his music.

Thus was born my first fiction publication, "The Girl Who Knew Nick Drake."

The story is about a guitarist who plays Nick Drake's songs a lot and has discovered some photographs of him. One is of an unknown woman photographed with him during the time he spent in Morocco. The artist gets a call from a woman who claims to be the figure in the photograph and also says she has a set of songs by Drake that no one but she has ever heard. She would the artist, Martin Rollins, to visit him.

Good so far, but what else? Well, what else did I know?

Henry James

I've taught literature all my life. I've read a lot of books, and when I contemplated this tale of never-before-heard songs, it brought to mind a story by Henry James called "The Aspern Papers," about an editor who is trying to get his hands on a cache of letters by a deceased English author. The letters are in the possession of a woman who hints she was his lover and has a whole trove of his unpublished writing. I deliberately modeled my story on this one. The editor in James' story runs into a complication; so does the main character in "The Girl Who Knew Nick Drake." This complication, as in the Henry James story, is the woman's daughter.

I'll leave it at that. There is a link if you want to read the story. Two elements went into it:  music and my knowledge of literature. They produced a long story that was accepted by a journal called Amarillo Bay. I was elated to get the news. I had published poetry and scholarly articles; I knew the thrill of getting a positive response and having things published. But this was fiction. It was about things dear to my heart. So my response held more emotion and excitement than my previous writing successes.

I go back to the story and think it's still pretty good. And it teaches me a lesson. Hemingway was correct. Write about what you know. Rely on your foundations as a writer. I am tempted to say write about what you love, but you will most intimately know what you also love. This may not be your job. Though I love music I have never made a living playing it. I became a teacher instead. But the love is there. In my early career as a writer, I wrote almost exclusive about music and musicians. And still do, though that is not the only thing I've written about.

My love of music made me create an ongoing character about whom I have published thirty stories. More about her next time.

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More anatomy to follow.

Death of the Novel Part III: Gutenberg Mind

Marshall McLuhan—what ya doin’?

                        ----poem from the TV comedy show

                                    Laugh-In, 1967

I recently read two articles that proclaimed the death of the novel. One of had the title “The Novel Is

Marshall McLuhan

Dead—This Time It’s For Real.” Both writers mention the Canadian communications philosopher Marshall McLuhan’s idea of the “Gutenberg mind” as a primary reason for the coming demise of the novel. The Gutenberg mind is a way of thinking that sees a text as a codex—a book, an entity of print and paper—and sees the functioning of knowledge as, book to book—codex to codex, printed entity to printed entity.

Of course, in our digital age this is not how knowledge works. Many texts are on screen and notes immediately connect us to other on-screen texts. A few years back, I encountered an online version of Milton’s Paradise Lost. It had links that explained obscure words, references, and allusions (there are lots of these in Milton); it also had links that took you to illustrations by Doré, Blake, and other artists. It rather amazed me, who grew up with a Gutenberg mind, and who remembered constantly glancing down to footnotes at the bottom of the page when I first read Milton’s epic. I would say note/links is a vast improvement. But how does this kind of digital technology spell the end of the novel?

One of the authors, writing for The Guardian proclaims, “the advent of digital media is not simply destructive of the codex, but of the Gutenberg mind itself.” The book will go the way of the scroll and the sun-baked cuneiform tablet. The destruction of the book by things shown on screen will also mean that readers will not think of other books in cross-referencing literature, they will think of other screens. The author is vague, and his article a bit desultory, but I get the idea that he equates the death of the novel with the demise of the paper book.

As I said, the article is desultory—it jumps from point to point, and though it is written in precise and entertaining prose, its thesis is not as clear as the author’s prose style. It goes on to talk about changes in the publishing industry, and makes the usual references to reading “serious novels.” It also takes aim at the condition of the publishing industry and the idea that “solitary reading” is necessary for in-depth understanding. In other words, it points to a number of failings, weaknesses, and anomalies in publishing and writing but does not successfully demonstrate (at least to me) how this will bring about the demise of the novel.

I say this because all the things that may be done with a codex—a book printed on paper, bound, with a physical weight and presence—can be equally done with a digital book. Some would object to this. I once heard a book seller, in the early days of e-books, tell me that nothing could ever replace the “kinetic pleasure” of reading a book. I thought this was a delightful way to put it. And I know the pleasure of feeling the weight of a book in my hand, the pleasure of turning pages . . . and yet I do those things on my Kindle Fire as well. It has weight and I swipe the screen. There is a physical aspect to it. The material may be a little harder than a well-worn paperback. And yet the leather cover feels nice in my hands. I can’t write in my Kindle, but I can put notes in it.

But that is not the question with which we are here dealing. Will the novel die due to digital technology and due to the fact that digital texts will bring an end to the Gutenberg mind?

After considering, I have to say no. It is not necessary to think in terms of printed entities, tomes (to use an archaic word) to have intertextual reference. If I read (as I recently did) an obscure novel from the 1970s, Barbara Comyns The Juniper Tree on my Kindle, does that mean I can’t cross-reference it with Stardust by Neil Gaiman, which I also read in digital format? The books have little similarity and scant material one might compare, but they could be compared. A Gutenberg mind isn’t necessary to compare two on-screen texts or an on-screen text with a cloth and paper text.

I think the article to which I refer, which I’ll provide a link to at the end of my blog (a little irony here?) does not make clear the reason the author thinks the novel will die. The advent of digital technology and e-books does not seem a threat to novel-writing at all. What is done on paper can be done on the screen. Young people are reading more—witness the number of copies (paper or downloaded) for the Harry Potter series or The Fault in Our Stars. And digital technology demands that people read. Continuation of the popularity and the profundity of the novel does need people with Gutenberg minds. It needs people who read, and digital technology seems to have actually given that a boost.

More on the death of the novel to come.

Here's the article I reference in the blog. Read it and tell me what you think!

I have two new books released!

Brand new:  The Last Minstrel. Novel about a quest, evil and good goddesses, magic, and right and wrong. This story is family-friendly, G-Rated--or maybe PG-Rated due to some scary scenes.

ShadowCity is also newly released and available in digital and print format.

Death of the Novel Part II

The Death of the Novel continues to be broadcast. We surveyed the outlines of the “movement” in the last blog, and I want to get a little more specific in this one. What leads people to say that novel is dead or dying? Why did John Barth write something like “The Literature of Exhaustion”? And why were several other critics around that time asserting that the novel had come to the end of the road?

Barth’s essay spends a lot of time talking about creativity. He focuses a great deal on the writing of Jorge Luis Borges, an Argentinian writer Barth admires and on his innovations as a writer. He appended a preface to the article and says that it is often misquoted, and I’ll agree with him to a degree. He is speculating on where the novel will go more than saying it is dead; and he confesses that he isn’t sure. His most direct move toward the subject is when he says that the novel may be at the end of its primacy as an art form:  that like the epic poem or the sonnet sequence, the novel may sink to a secondary place in literature and not be the most read or admired art form. It may “die” in this sense. Still, he does seem to think it is in decline and danger due to lack of creative paths for it to take.

 

Barth holds to a modern view of the novel, and this is part of his concern over the continued life and health of the novel.  Modernism held to a sort of sacrosanct view of the literary canon. There were certain novels that were “serious” literature and certain novels that were “popular” literature. Popular literature did not really matter. The line of novels that began with Pamela by Samuel Richard and included greats like Dickens, the Bronte sisters, Joyce and Kafka, and all the other names that cluster around what was called “great” literature as Barth saw it, was starting to dribble out.

Borges

Barth sees some hope in the work of Borges. It’s creative, quirky, surprising, and innovative but still operates within the grand tradition of novel writing. But, he asks, how many people like the Argentine novelist are writing? And who could be as creatively daring as Borges?

I will agree that Borges is remarkable. His story “The Garden of the Forking Paths,” is one of the most amazing stories I’ve read and one of my favorites; the same is true for “The Gospel of Mark.” They are dazzlingly creative. I would have never thought of either of them, and they are written to surprise and delight. Very few people (certainly not I) could write stories as innovative and brilliant as these. This is the source of some of Barthes pessimism.

But is the grand tradition necessary? Does one have to write a certain way and create novels that carry on the tradition of Wuthering Heights or A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man? If the definition of what is a novel is restricted, there is not very much room to move around. You may be creative, but one can only imitate the "great" novels that went before your own. The canal gets more narrow and filled with more and more silt as time goes along. Not many will be able to craft a novel that will sail well in such circumstances.

So it is that the death of the novel seemed to loom. The idea of a grand tradition—the idea of “fine art” and “great novels,” as opposed to inferior popular literature limits the range of possibilities for new works of art. Hamlet lamented that virtue cannot “inoculate our old stock.” We think of vaccination when we use the world “inoculate.” Shakespeare (and his audience) would have thought about cattle breeding. To inoculate was to bring fresh, healthy, strong animals in to interbreed with a herd of animals that was becoming infertile from inbreeding. Barth seemed to think that the novel was dying out because it was to inbred, its possibilities almost exhausted, its creative resources growing thinner and thinner.

This could be the case—unless the old stock can be inoculated in the old sense of the word—unless new and healthier specimens can be brought in to restore life and vitality. More on this in the next blog.

Check out my newest short novel  ShadowCity, a paranormal story of a world that exists as a shadow of our own and the quest of three people to keep darkness from completely engulfing it.

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