Category Archives: On Writing

When Art Turns to Contempt

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The fundamental unit of Art is Truth. 

A person can labor to create something but unless it is grounded in something true sharing that creation with another will be difficult if not impossible. The things that are true are the only things we can really share. Art that lacks truth has no shared threads to connect artist and audience and becomes an entirely subjective mess, something to argue about or project oneself onto rather than a vehicle to communicate the deepest concepts of the human experience. 

It’s not impossible to express truth about something that inspires contempt. In fact, contempt is often born from a specific piece of truth that inspires disgust and eventually, yes, contempt in the people who learn it. The problem is that contempt then warps everything we know about a person. Perhaps we learn that someone’s car broke down because they never changed the oil in it. (I am changing the oil in my car every six months, dad, please relax.) Someone who hears this may begin holding this negligent fool in contempt, because obviously they don’t take care of their possessions and who can trust someone like that? 

The problem is, while the negligence is true, there are other truths. A family member was in the hospital and all their time was consumed in caring for them. They were too strapped for cash to afford a visit to the mechanic. Their hospitalized family member was the one who was in charge of scheduling the car maintenance in the first place and they didn’t know where things were in the cycle anyways. All of this truth is overwritten by contempt. The psychological mechanics of contempt are undoubtedly deep and complex, and perhaps it has a greater purpose in our minds, but that’s not really the point I’m here to discuss today. 

Modern art is driven by contempt. 

From cinema to sculpture, painting to prose, all our cultural centers are populated by people who hold their fellow man in contempt. Our cultural betters are contemptuous of the poor, and will pay them to rot in their homes or on the streets, so long as they stay out of the way. They see the impact an expanding civilization has on the planet and assure themselves it would be better if people just stopped having children and families. Most recently, we discover they don’t even want to breath the same air we do. 

The exact source of this contempt is hard to place and is probably as irrelevant as the mechanics and role of contempt because the real problem with all this contempt for art is that it warps a creator’s concept of truth. (There are other problems for society at large, of course.) When your sense of the world is badly distorted, to the point where most people you meet transform into jingoistic caricatures in the very moment you speak to them, you cannot put truth in your art. Yet such is the behavior of our cultural betters. 

The result is art and story that looks like a funhouse mirror. We’re encouraged to refrain from judgement and look at the circumstances of a person and how they influence moral choices. But the only moral subject we discuss in fiction is race. We’re told people need to be in control of their lives and be strong. But in fiction we’re told that strength is mourning how we are victimized by forces beyond our control. We’re told it’s important to build our own identity. But many who attempt to do so are shamed for abandoning an identity they supposedly share with dozens of others strictly on a basis of genetics and place of birth. 

Contempt has convinced our cultural betters they can simply talk down to us, telling us stories full of contradictions and nonsense, and we’ll eat it up. To an extent, they’ve been proven right. But their myopic vision is poisoning their art and it’s quickly falling apart under the strain of its own nonsense. We’re navigating a horribly depressing artistic world these days. But my purpose isn’t to spend a long time commiserating over the decline of our entertainment and culture. My purpose is to chart the dangers so I can effectively navigate around them. And I am a writer, so I write the process down and share it to help me understand what I am seeing. 

So this is my thesis for the fall. Contempt has warped our culture and we must unpack all the damage it is doing so we can avoid it. What is it hiding from our view? What do we have to reinfuse to our storytelling to restore the balance? Hopefully we will come out the other side wiser for the exploration. 

Writing Vlog 09-29-2021

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My latest writing Vlog, ending one project and talking new ones:

Night Train to Hardwick – Afterwords

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Well, after three and a half months we’ve reached the end of another one of Roy’s strange adventures. Hopefully you all enjoyed that smaller, more intimate tale. One thing that writing these pulpy stories has really clarified to me is how fluid the process of crafting a story is. I spent a lot of time jumping from one thread to another. You can generally break down a story into: characters, events and themes. As a writer I’ve always found events come the easiest to me, with characters and themes building out of them. I have occasionally started with an idea for a theme that birthed a scene I really wanted to write, and built the characters and events to go with that. But generally I assemble a story from a bunch of different ideas for scenes that coalesce into character beats and generate a thematic through line as they get refined. 

A Roy Harper adventure presents different issues. While I’ve written a trilogy of books and used recurring characters before, the Sumter novels were planned ahead of time and the characters had defined arcs throughout and my recurring characters did fine on their first outing but I struggled with them afterwards. So telling a series of adventures that had separate settings, supporting characters and thematic elements to work with is a new challenge for me. Hopefully I’ve done alright. 

Most people say you should start with one of the three factors I mentioned and of the three characters and themes are the most often sited. Events – or what many people would call the plot – are often a distant third in the trifecta of story. I’ve often felt like an anomaly among storytellers given my intense focus on them in writing although I recognize the emphasis on these elements may just be the influence of highly intimate storytelling mediums like movies and TV on the modern zeitgeist. Either way, I’ve persisted in my own style until now. 

And I don’t expect I will change much. But I have gained a new appreciation for the care needed when working with an existing character. Roy has strong character elements like regret, a desire for penance and redemption, and a single minded focus on what’s in front of him. These grew as much out of what Firespinner needed him to be as any intention on my own part. However, as I put together the events of Night Train to Hardwick I found that many of the events clashed badly with Roy’s character. His natural response to them would draw him away from his strongest character elements and force me to ignore them, downplaying what made writing him and (hopefully) reading him interesting. Alternatively I could introduce new character elements to examine through the lens of events or I could modify events to suit Roy better. 

Introducing new character elements risked diluting what I already had before Roy was firmly established in my mind and that of the audience. So I decided not to do that. Which really only left me with the option to modify events. 

I didn’t want to the situation to suit Roy too closely, so as to avoid contrivance. In the end, I may have failed at that. However, the new series of events matched Roy much better and I feel we got a great chance to see his deepest foibles play out in new and interesting ways. Exploring the relation between the three big story elements was definitely fun but also an exercise in storycraft that I think was good for me as a writer. In all this I consider Hardwick to be a success not only as a story but as an opportunity to develop my skills. 

My goal with the Roy Harper adventures is simple, fun storytelling. I hope that you enjoyed this outing with the character and that you’ll return for my next fiction project. In the mean time, as is my habit, I will be taking the next week off as I prepare my next project. There will be about a month of essays between now and the launch of that project, so if you like my thoughts on fiction there’s something to look forward to in the interim. Until then, take care! 

Writing Vlog 07-28-2021

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Latest writing vlog, talking over some worldbuilding and other adventures in writing!

Weekly Writing Vlog 05

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Latest writing vlog from me – more rambling about upcoming projects.

https://youtu.be/u0pGv0lACoQ

New Writing Vlog series!

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Hey folks! I forgot to mention this last week but I’ve started doing a weekly writing vlog! If you’re interested in the status of my projects or just want to hear more about my process give them a look!

JK Rowling and the Ongoing Iconoclasm

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An iconoclast is a person who opposes long held, widely established cultural figures, beliefs or institutions. While the term typically invokes the image of statue smashers or book burners, everyone from the self-styled New Atheists to the feminist movement could fall under the term. While it doesn’t necessarily imply someone who destroys culture for the sake of having no culture I won’t deny that most people I’ve seen or met who are iconoclasts seem to have that motivation underlying their behavior. And iconoclasts don’t refer to people who only seek the overthrow of a single aspect of culture – they’re usually after broad chunks of it – so broad destruction is the outcome either way. 

The desire to change a widely held belief or system isn’t bad by default, but when the urge moves beyond removing one or even a handful of cultural institutions it becomes dangerous. Culture is what binds groups of people together, and if its destroyed we’re left with individuals who must sort each and every conflict between one another in detail. You get anarchy, and in anarchy the powerful always wind up pushing around the weak. Culture must be changed carefully, and only when some new system is on hand that can fulfill the role of the old system being removed as well or better, otherwise collapse is immanent. We see this over and over again through history, most strongly in the French Revolution but in many other revolutionary ideologies in other places. 

In modern Western culture we seem to be undergoing an iconoclasm, a wholesale destruction of institutions on all fronts. Family, marriage, religious organizations, longstanding cultural traditions, respected historical figures and even gender roles have come under the lens of the iconoclast, singled out as backwards and old fashioned by vandals who mouth platitudes to justify their gleeful destruction of things precious to others. In the midst of this mob, J.K. Rowling has an interesting place. 

Rowling is a longstanding feminist, meaning she believes strongly in the movement most responsible for destroying the notion of family as a biologically knit, indivisible unit of mutual care and protection and replacing it with much flimsier notions of consent based emotional bonding. Now, understanding notions like emotional bonding and strong friendships (now mysteriously called ‘found family’) is very important but it doesn’t speak to the same kinds of relationships family does, the kinds of relationships that spring from a bond you can loosen but never sever, and which will mark you for good or ill for the rest of your life. The nuances of this could fill books, but such an endeavor is not my purpose here. Suffice it to say that, on this score, Rowling is herself an iconoclast, joining with those who have carved through old understandings of relationships and biological realities wholesale. 

Rowling is also a cultural figure in and of herself. She’s the wealthiest author living, possibly the wealthiest of all time, and her meteoric ascent atop the Harry Potter franchise has reshaped the publishing world ever since, likely continuing to have impacts for decades to come. She’s the reason publishing companies now account for theme park attractions in their contracts. Many of the current generation of iconoclasts themselves see her – or at least her work – as a cultural icon. 

Which is awkward, as Rowling is also a biological essentialist when it comes to gender. The modern iconoclasm has claimed even biology and sex as icons to shatter, and a feminist of Rowling’s stripe demands that men and women be separate and distinct things, opposed to one another in a constant battle of power and oppression. The two notions cannot coexist, and efforts to strip Rowling’s name from the cultural totems she set up are ongoing. 

In a way, it’s fascinating to watch. As an author myself I understand why it’s so hard to strip the creator away from her work. While I never followed the Harry Potter franchise myself I know that every creative work has a great deal of the author in it and that reality, combined with the fact that Rowling benefits from every new person who engages with her franchise in any way, leaves most of the modern iconoclasts divided with themselves. They still love Rowling’s work but now she represents an icon they must destroy. 

So far Rowling has weathered every attempt to tear down her work launched against her. But, given the attitudes displayed by so many of these rabid destroyers, it’s only a matter of time before the entire Potter edifice is thrown into the bonfire and all loyalty of youth and sentiment is lost. I strongly suspect that not even Rowling will survive that point, and her cultural influence will rapidly vanish unless she can find some new, more stable portion of the culture to anchor in. 

The lessons of this disaster are few and troubling. Even an author 100% in tune with the cultural zeitgeist can lose sway in an instant. There’s little loyalty to creators in the general public, only loyalty to creations. And destruction of old institutions is a very shaky foundation for someone looking to set up one of their own. These aren’t exactly cheery thoughts for those of us looking to tell stories that will hopefully endure into the future. While I doubt anyone reading this will ever have the level of cultural influence Rowling does, these are things worth thinking about. 

For my part, I hope that leaving iconoclastic fury to others and focusing exclusively on building and protecting my own corner of the cultural landscape will fortify my own work better. 

Speaking of which! The time for essays has come and passed. I’m preparing my next project for you all now! I’ll be taking next Friday off, then coming back in two weeks with the Forward of Night Train to Hardwick, the second installment of the Roy Harper adventures. If you read and enjoyed Firespinner I hope to have your attention here as well! Thanks as always for reading! 

Downfall of the Imperial Hollywood Media

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A lot is made of the fall of Rome and the dissolution of the Roman empire. A cultural touchstone that stood for hundreds of years was unseated, after all. But a closer study of what happened in the aftermath of the sack of Rome and the waning influence of its empire reveals the true horror. Monks in Christain enclaves had copied and stockpiled the most important cultural works. Scientific innovation skyrocketed as isolated regions began jockeying for position once again, rather than pretending to play nice so the Legions would leave them alone. And as for Italy itself? Truly tragic! It remained the center of wealth and culture for centuries to come, with Venice, Florence and Rome itself commanding huge amounts of trade and pilgrimages. 

The dominance of Italy only began to wane, ironically enough, because of an Italian man hired by the Portuguese. And he had to discover an entire unknown continent to trigger the shift. 

American media today is very much run like an empire. Where there used to be a great deal of small, local media companies running radio stations, newspapers and television, now a handful of major media conglomerates basically control everything.  

There are only five publishing houses for books, six if you count Amazon as the independent publisher. About four studios remain to make movies. Sony owns a large majority of music and music studios in the nation. TV was very stagnant under the three or four networks on the airwaves until cable came along and broke up the types of programming available but now almost all cable channels are as centralized as the three major networks were in the 50s and 60s. Even streaming boils down to Netflix and Disney, and one of those companies is also one of the only existing movie studios. 

And if you go up the ladder a few steps, many of these various branches of media are ultimately owned and run by even larger media conglomerates. 

The Internet has offered some freedom in media, but as it opened the door to new creators the old guard got very jealous and started pushing the businesses that managed Internet communication and commerce to join them as gatekeepers. So far, old media has largely succeeded in transforming places like Amazon and Facebook into extensions of their gatekeeping agenda, ensuring that the growing conglomerates of media hegemony will continue to corner the market. 

The direct result of this is stagnant media. Comic books keep pasting a new set of faces on top of the same trite, boring, cookie cutter plots. Disney spends more and more of its time remaking old films rather than telling new stories, to mixed or poor receptions (plus some occasional mockery, as with Mulan (2020)). Neither network or cable television has launched a truly significant TV show in the last decade. (Well, almost. A quick check reveals that, as of this posting, Game of Thrones is not quite a decade old yet.) 

The thing about empires is they grow stagnant very quickly. The various imperial dynasties of Asia severely slowed growth and progress in the region, in spite of their fairly widespread access to the technology and innovations of Europe and the Middle East. It’s certainly reassuring to see a large, imposing cultural edifice but the problem with edifices is they tend to stay the same until they crumble. And our media landscape is crumbling before our eyes. 

Five years ago everyone agreed that Netflix and Hulu were all you were going to need to keep up with TV and movies. It was just a matter of time until everyone agreed to share their stuff with one of the two service and we’d be living in a media golden age. Then the Netflix Original jokes started. 

Sure, some Netflix shows were good. Great, even. But a lot of it was mindless, repetitive drivel going over the same tired cultural and political points in new packaging with new faces. Movies started on a fast downward slide about the same time. Where the early 2010s were full of great movies like Kingsmen: The Secret Service, Edge of Tomorrow, and John Wick, few films of comparable appeal have landed since then. Even the Kingsmen and John Wick sequels have felt like noticeable steps down, or even outright failures when compared to their originals. Imperial media is failing. 

Now that may seem odd, given how powerful companies like Time-Warner and Disney appear. And as I noted before, when empires fall the remains tend to be quite powerful and influential for a long time to come so it isn’t like we’re looking at a total reinvention of the media landscape in the next five years or something. But shifts are coming and the stagnant nature of the modern establishment is a major part of why we’re seeing them. The other two elements come from the dissent in the ranks and the barbarians at the gates. 

Roman generals were always one of the biggest threats to the stability of the Republic, and later the Empire. They could gain too much popularity and too much influence for Rome to control, eventually getting aspirations of their own. By the same token outside forces, though not as disciplined, well equipped or numerous as the Roman Legions, could still take advantage of the size and fractured nature of Rome to do significant damage to Roman territory. These challenges are mirrored in modern media in the form of Gina Carano and The Daily Wire. 

As I noted last week, The Daily Wire has released an entertaining, though imperfect, independent action film by the name of Run, Hide, Fight which has received good reviews from audiences and promises further entertaining work to come. Meanwhile Gina Carano grew quite popular in her role as Cara Dune in Disney+’s The Mandalorian only to run afoul of a Twitter mob and get fired. Now, Gina is working with The Daily Wire to produce and star in a new, as of yet unannounced film. This is a major crack in the wall of the imperial media. 

So what can we expect? Well, actually… not a whole lot, not at first. Carano’s next film will take a while to get made; we probably won’t see it for another year at a minimum. These things take time, after all, even if they find a script that works and start production in a week there’s still a lot to do. But more than that, a handful of films won’t drastically alter the media landscape. 

However, there is a shift underway. People rarely notice the fall of empires unless they’re in the capitol as it burns. They just change the faces on the coins and continue working on the foundations already in place, with a little less oversight and little more freedom to experiment. My hope is that, as rogue agents like Carano break away from the existing media monoliths and join with new, vital media groups like The Daily Wire, we’ll see a sea change that drags talent away from the mainstream into smaller, more agile and experimental media. I doubt the organizations that currently make up the imperial media will vanish, but hopefully they will join with the culture change in due time. 

In the meantime, for solo creators like myself, there’s only one thing to do. Keep creating, little by little, for a better world, one story at a time.