Many thanks to Robert Jolles and Heather Flaherty for giving me the opportunity to be interviewed on this podcast!
I think I may have to take Rob up on his suggestion for a re-launch party.
Many thanks to Robert Jolles and Heather Flaherty for giving me the opportunity to be interviewed on this podcast!
I think I may have to take Rob up on his suggestion for a re-launch party.
Art often imitates life. In searching for stories and ideas, they often come from real life. Real people, events, situations, whether from the author’s life or from others’ experiences, make excellent soil to plant story seeds in. Sometimes the real story is told through the lens of fiction with fictional names for people and places (known as a roman à clef, or novel with a key; film à clef for movies), which allows for stretching of truth a little more. Yet this calls into question how close to the truth should a writer stick. What’s more, how will the people upon whom characters are based react?
If characters are not composites but primarily based upon specific individuals, there is a risk they might not like how they are portrayed, especially if it is in a negative light (such as caricatures, a technique used by a fictional writer in the mystery shows Magpie Murders and Moonflower Murders who wasn’t a good person). Ernest Hemingway has been accused of antisemitism due to the character Robert Cohn, based on his contemporary Harold Loeb, in his roman à clef, The Sun Also Rises. As revealed in Ken Burns’s program, Hemingway used people’s real names in his first drafts, but he changed them so as not to be sued.
If people’s real names are used, even if it’s just the first name, the risk is even greater that they will be forever associated with the fictional versions. It was true for Peter Llewellyn Davies, Alice Liddell, and Christopher Robin Milne. Even aliases in nonfiction/memoir can be viewed negatively, as it was with Donald Sinclair and the family of Fritz Pfeffer, respectively, over “Siegfried Farnon” and “Albert Dussel” in All Creatures Great and Small and The Diary of Anne Frank, or if unflattering names are used for fictional characters.
Then, of course, it’s not just themselves but those they care about, and trying to say counterparts aren’t the real people may not matter. William Randolph Hearst not only disliked that his life was the main inspiration for Citizen Kane, but he also hated how the counterparts to his mistress Marion Davies and his mother were depicted. He used his influence to sabotage the film’s box office success.
Of course, when telling a fictional narrative with fictional names, one can always claim plausible deniability. Plus, hopefully most people won’t mind, especially if the writer is on good terms with them. Nevertheless, it is always something to bear in mind when fiction is drawn from reality. There is a boundary regarding fact vs. fiction, and it should be taken into account when crossing it.
Many thanks to Melissa for this opportunity to talk about my books and my writing!
Telling a Story Well: An Interview with Andrew McDowell
Years ago, I talked about the influence of Joseph Campbell’s The Hero with a Thousand Faces (one of my recommended resources), and how I saw Mystical Greenwood as the Departure phase in the hero’s journey. Thus, I planned for Beneath the Deep Wave to be the next phase, known as the Initiation. Likewise, I sought to look for little ways to stand out from the traditional storyline.
The “Road of Trials” is most prevalent in this phase, so I knew there would be a lot of traveling like in the first book. However, when I look at both books together, in terms of plots spelled out in another resource I recommend, 20 Master Plots and How to Build Them, I see Mystical Greenwood more of as an actual “Quest” story whereas Beneath the Deep Wave is much more an “Adventure.” The seeking more aligns with what the book refers to as the MacGuffin (made famous by Hitchcock). It makes sense, I suppose, since the Trials are meant to prove the hero’s worth.
I knew going in also that Beneath the Deep Wave was going to include romance, so this would tie in more with the “Woman as Temptress” rather than “Meeting the Goddess,” as I’d imagined Dermot might be faced with a dilemma: would his love compromise his vows to his magical order? Then, of course, there’s the “Atonement with the Father.” By the end, I don’t know whether this is a combination of “Apotheosis” and “Ultimate Boon,” but in some ways, akin to Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code, I thought about physical vs. symbolic treasures, in this case tying them in with the elements and the natural world. I shouldn’t say any more, for fear of spoilers.
I’ll end this post by saying that the last phase, the Return, will be and is an inspiration for the plot in last book in One with Nature. Happy Father’s Day!
I have a few author appearances coming up in the next few months. Mark your calendars!
In a few weeks, I’ll be participating in Balticon 59. This will be my second time at Balticon. I had a good time last year and hope I will have a good time this year as well. Here is my schedule:
I will be the moderator on the Name panel, a subject I was eager to contribute to, having done a presentation on it. And my autograph session will be alongside one of the guests of honor this year, Sebastian de Castell!
I also have an update on tickets for the Maryland Renaissance Festival, where I will be doing another author signing on August 30th, Labor Day Weekend, from 11-5pm. Tickets are required for entrance to MDRF and must be bought in advance, online only. Daily tickets will go on sale August 4th 10am Eastern Time, and multi-day passes will be available July 7th 10am Eastern Time. Also, the event is on Facebook.
On a last note, the Maryland Writers’ Association is accepting presentation submissions for their annual conference in October. The deadline to submit is at the end of the month. I hope to present myself, but I’ll have to wait and see whether that’ll happen.
Many thanks to Esther Chilton for giving me a guest writer spot opportunity to talk about the two mythical creatures I introduced in Beneath the Deep Wave.
Many thanks for author, blogger, and book podcaster Jean Lee for the opportunity to do this interview!
For those who haven’t watched it yet, here’s my presentation on word and page count last month at the Annapolis chapter of the Maryland Writers’ Association, shortly before Beneath the Deep Wave was published.
Here’s the handout:
And here’s the original post that inspired it:
Be sure to watch my previous writing presentations as well!
You may be surprised to see this again, after I’d taken it down yesterday, having already posted this month. But I will explain my reasons further down.
In terms of this post’s title, I’m not talking about Darwin’s Theory of Evolution. Instead, I’m talking about evolving as a writer. Every writer’s life becomes a journey in itself, and just as they grow as people, they grow as writers.
I’ve always struggled with perfectionism and getting things right, and it feels extremely frustrating when things turn out not to be perfect. This is true with writing. I felt bad as I discovered errors, typos, and flaws in published work, but I’ve also discovered that it is natural for typos to appear and gradually be fixed. It turns out that books can and have been changed post-publication. Even I had a preconceived notion that books are static once published. Now I know that’s not true. I’ve had to read more and more about how to use language, as I’ve discussed once before, such as when it comes to redundant phrases or even synonyms that are not always truly the same.
It’s like what Mark Twain said, that the difference between the right word and almost right word is the difference between lightning and the lightning bug. He was right. Now that I have another book, I have expected that the same process might happen all over again, but hopefully not to the extent it was with my first. One does indeed learn a whole lot with one book, just as one learns from attending conferences and conventions.
The simple truth is I care about my writing, and I am willing to invest my own time to making it better. It has felt like a ping-pong process going back and forth, figuring out what works and what doesn’t. But I’ve persevered through it. Persistence and patience, I know now, are essential. No writer should rush to publication. I also have learned and accepted that I don’t need to be perfect, perhaps more so than before. I am at peace with that.
Now, for the almost nine years that this site has been up, I have stuck to posting once a month. However, after mistakenly posting this yesterday, I had a bit of a mini breakdown. Anyone who knows me knows I’m on the spectrum, and thus I’ve always preferred patterns and routines, and leaving them has set me off. However, yesterday’s events were another reminder to me of how much anxiety I can have, and I’m happy to say that over the past year I’ve been able to break free of some patterns and overcome some preferences.
This is now one of them. I understand now that this pattern of once a month reached a point where it was controlling me, not me controlling it. Therefore, if I am to be more positive and less perfect, if I am to evolve as a person and a writer, it’s time to let go. So from now on, no longer always one post a month. Sometimes there will be more, maybe sometimes not. But I feel it is the right choice.
Many thanks to Jenny for a wonderful opportunity to promote Beneath the Deep Wave and another upcoming anthology from Fae Corps Publishing that I’ll be featured in.
Wishing all my fellow Americans a Happy Labor Day tomorrow.