The Hero in the Book

This post is a continuation of the discussion we're having about heroes of fiction. Have a read, and then join us on this post for the rest of the story.

While the original post asked for comments about a work of fiction that impacted/changed/inspired you, I received an anonymous reply that was got me thinking.

Here is the reply:

"Many of the works of Mark Twain, Charlies Dickens and other great authors were satire. Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin demonstrated the problems of slavery. I believe there are a couple of reasons why we don't see this type of thing today. First, the publishing industry is overloaded with authors and self-publishing is taboo, so it is difficult for a satirist to receive recognition. Second, we have such a "can't we all get along" attitude today that anyone with an original thought in his head is thought evil. Third, today's authors must be able to show that their work will sell, whereas the old satirists often had contracted blank pages that they were required to fill. Fourth, today's fiction is not aimed at the influential people. It used to be that only the influential people were able to read, but today, fiction is aimed at people who appear to have time to read. There more reasons, by I will cut it short."

The more I think about the points brought up in this reply, the more my head spins. There's a lot to unpack here. As I said, the post was anonymous, so I don't know who posted it. I'm hoping he/she will post again so we can unpack this together. But, alone, I'll forge ahead!

I'll come back to the subject of satire as a critical form of literature which is being overlooked in modern publishing.

First, I want to look at the statement, ". . . []the publishing industry is overloaded with authors. . .[]"

I don't pretend to know the ins and outs of the publishing industry. I'm no titan of books. I've never worked for a publisher. But, lately, I've been thinking about the whole system.

Publishing is a business. I get that. But it is much more than a business.

The system is set up in such a way that we have allowed a handful of people to become "gatekeepers" of intellectual thought. A very few people (relatively speaking) have been put "in charge" of deciding for us what materials will become available to the masses, and which will not.

Now, before you freak out entirely, this is not a post railing against the evil publishers, or any such nonsense. Publishers aren't evil. They are people, just like you and me.

Rather, I'm making an observation about our culture. We seem content to let a handful of people decide what we should read and what we shouldn't. What information should be out there, and which should be held back (for whatever reason).

The anonymous commenter said the industry is overloaded with authors. But I wonder if the industry is really suffering from a lack of publishers. Over and over again I've heard staggering statistics from publishers on the number of books published each year, the volume of manuscripts piled on editors desks, the number of "unsuitable" manuscripts that are tossed on a daily basis (in truth, its not that the manuscripts weren't good. They were just missing something - like an agent to pitch it, or it wasn't double spaced, or any other number of variables that a manuscript could be rejected because of), the unrelenting wave of words that haunt publishers on a daily basis. It has to be disheartening to walk in your office each day and see a huge pile of fresh manuscripts burying your desk when you had just finished (finally!) a pile just like it late last night.

Authors have frustrations too. The high volumes of manuscripts mean longer wait times to hear back from publishers. What's an author to do? Ya gotta pay the bills, so, an increase in simultaneous submission. Authors everywhere are hedging bets and submitting their manuscripts to several (sometimes dozens) of publishers at once. Hmmm. . . I wonder how this practice is playing out in publisher's offices around North America?

At the same time, publishing, like the record industry, is in the midst of a systemic shake up, and no one knows for certain how the industry will look when the dust settles (although, if certain mega online books stores have their way, it will look like a giant monopoly swallowing everyone and everything in its path).

Okay, it's obvious I have no quick solution here. But these are all things we need to be thinking about. You don't need to be a publisher or an author for these things to affect your life. The books you read, the books available to you, have been hand picked for you. They have been chosen because you've demonstrated in the past they are the ones you are likely to buy. It sounds vaguely like pandering. Another point which was brought up by our anonymous commenter. And the topic of my next blog.

I'd love to hear your thoughts on the issues facing the publishing world, from which ever perspective you come from. Feel free to leave a comment, or you can e-mail me at bcg@bonniegrove.com
Peace.

Your Comments about Heroes of Fiction

This has been an interesting and exciting exchange. I've asked about your fiction heroes and the responses so far (there is still time to get in on the conversation, so feel free to post a comment or you can e-mail me at bcg@bonniegrove.com) have been diverse, introspective, and fascinating.

I wanted to share with you some bits and pieces of responses, and add my thoughts to yours. I thought about jamming every one's responses together in one long post, but that idea ended up offending me (way to go Bonnie, you manage to offend yourself with your own brain!).

Your responses, each one, while very different from each other, were obviously deeply thought out and felt. Our heroes, or lack thereof, have shaped us in ways that are difficult to talk about, only because it is much like talking about ourselves - complex, changing, shifting, unreliable, and doomed (we fear) to be misunderstood.

One response to the post came via e-mail. It was a fantastic note about childhood, friendship, tobogganing, and Tolkien. The Hobbit - and books following - changed this person's life.

She told me about how she and her friends, imaginations captured and held by the larger than life characters inhabiting middle earth would mount their trusty steeds (toboggans [sleds] they loved and even named as one would a trusty steed) and fly down snowy slopes together. They formed a secret club (oh, how I remember the heady joy of belonging to a secret club!) based on The Lord of the Rings and its inhabitants.

Fantastic stuff, that. As I read her e-mail I was transported to my own childhood and, I confess, teen years, where fantasy made up at least 75% of what I did each day. The author of this note is a fantastic writer, and even her e-mails contain a sort of power, or movement, or convincing voice that makes you want to go where she takes you, and I went - slogging down the hills with her and her friends, calling out our fictional names, giggling when others looked at us with questioning faces, wondering what these girls could be up to.

But Bilbo and pals played a role in her life beyond childhood fun - she read and re-read the books throughout her teen and adult years. Always finding some spark of truth, some archetype of virtue by which she could learn, ape, and admire. She lists these for me, and I find myself nodding in agreement. Yes, these pages are filled with characters, both minor and major, who display for us the finest of humanity - the deepest of confusion (he who is passionate about life must learn to kill in order to preserve it), and passion, the longings for greatness, and the searching in small places to find it.

It was enough to make me want to swoon. But, since the days of swooning women is long gone, I smiled instead. She ended her all to short e-mail with a vibrant quote from one of the books. You see, there is this fine lady in the books, one Lady Eowyn who, royal and grand as she is, follows her heart into the grit and blood of battle in order to fight for what she believes in. I'm quoting my friend as she writes about how a fictional moment has helped shape her self understanding:

"Oh and how could I forget Lady Eowyn who masquerades as a man to follow her heart into battle? As she dares to step outside the norm for her gender, she kills the evil Lord of the Nazgul who according to prophecy will not be killed by any living man. In one of my favourite fictional moments, the Nazgul says, “No living man may hinder me!” Then Eowyn removes her helmet and says “But no living man am I! You look upon a woman,” and then delivers the death blow. I found this heartening as a young woman who often found herself outside typical gender roles."

There is a complex depth to how this scene makes its way into the hearts and minds of those who read it, and, in some way, identify with it. My e-mailing friend is no sword wielding killer, no marauding warrior. She's a nice person with a good job, a family, and a heart for Jesus and people. But, something fantastic in Lady Eowyn reached into this woman's heart and gave her a drop of outrageous courage, gave stay to the idea that she could be who she felt called to be, even if that meant leaving certain expectations unfulfilled.

And, after I had read her e-mail, I was left thinking: There are heroes in fiction.

Fiction that Matters

Recently, I asked a group of writers, "Can fiction truly change a persons life?"


I had been thinking about the written word, the power of thought, and how we've shared it over time. I suppose the fact that I'm diving back into New Messenger Literature in English again (a happy anthology that begins with Caedmon and ends with the the 1960's (Alice Walker and the gang) has got me thinking. It's the sort of tomb that shows up in University bookstores and is used as a doorstop by English professors, but I like it.



And when I wander down it's pages, I'm reminded that fiction has always been an instrument for which thinkers and lovers have laid out their ideas for the world to see. Politics and religion, science and philosophy, the nature of God and humans all debated in the pages of those who brought the word to print.



From Chaucer's nearly endless and unique poetry, to Alice Walker's stripped bare first person narrative (if you write in first person POV you must study Walker's steady hand), From Barrett Browning's naked love, to Robert Lowell's stark testimonies of the American Civil War - it is our stories that change the world.


One life at a time.


I was at the book store yesterday. I pursued the fiction shelves (there were several), looking for the book that would change my mind, my feelings, my world.


I bought four books yesterday. None of them fiction.


My examination of the offerings on those wooden shelves made me feel - hmmm. Vaguely bored.

Don't get me wrong, I'm all for entertainment. I think it's important and I can think of several times in just the past month when I've sought out the fun and ease of something entertaining. A fluffy movie, a quick read book. Ahh, the oasis of it.


But, I've found a hole in the shelves. The books that resonate a measure of movement, of pushing forward, of calling the masses to look up, look over, look beyond.


They are out there.

My point is, they are getting more difficult to find.

I recently heard that there are somewhere in the vicinity of 200, 000 books published each year. I'm thinking those are North American stats. And they cover the gamut of subjects, uses, genres and mediums. Still, that's a lot of books.


So, where are the heroes of fiction?

I'm asking a real question.


I'm asking you.


Where have you found your heroes of fiction? Which books have changed your mind, made you turn around, made you look up, made you pray, made you hurt?

Made you believe?


I'm waiting with open mind and heart to hear from you.

Tell Your Story

I've been asked to be on faculty for Write!Canada. I'm teaching a workshop in using your strengths to become the writer you were meant to be.

I've been working on material for the workshop (how weird is it that I had to acquire publisher permission to use materials from a book I wrote? I had to laugh when it hit me that the tools I had actually invented - developed on my own, were not mine to use as I willed) and aside from a few funny stories (real life stories. My life has been one long "funny story"), the heart of the workshop is going to be how to find your true voice as an author.

The workshop isn't just for fiction writers. In fact, I'm feeling a bit of a fraud on this blog sometimes as my major publication is in non-fiction (through Beacon Hill Press - the book [working title: Living Out of Your Strengths] is due to hit the shelves March 1, 2009). But, I've had some fiction success as well, with two short stories appearing in two separate anthologies this spring and summer. (check out http://www.hotapplecider.ca/ for details about the first of these two books). Anyway, back to my point:

I've discovered, in this journey toward becoming an author, that there is one thing, one unshakable factor that determines an author's ultimate success: the ability to remain un-distracted from her goal.

Which leads to the question: What is your goal in the first place?

The 75 minute workshop I'm offering at Write!Canada (a conference put on by The Word Guild, held in Guelph, ON) will teach writers how to find his or her strengths, then use them to discover their true writing goals. From there, I'll show people how to apply their strengths to their true goals.

To be the best writer you can be means not getting distracted by everything that's coming down the turnpike at you. It's knowing what to say "yes" to and when to say "no". It's drawing clear goals so that when an opportunity presents itself you can evaluate it based on how well it fits with your true goals, rather than grasping at straws hoping that something will pay off, but not being able to tell for certain if it has any merit for you or not.

Great writers tell the stories they are passionate about. Stories they love. Stories they would pay to read.

They tell their true story.

Ask yourself: What's my story?

Jane Austin's Sense (and Sensibility)

Ahhh me, the classics.

Pioneers.

Cutter of new paths.

Innovators.

Frankly, some of them give me a stiff pain. I mean, have you read Milton lately? I did once and vowed, "Never again!"

I'm re-reading Sense and Sensibility. Uh, yeah, as a matter of fact I have seen Becoming Jane, and The Jane Austin Book club on DVD recently, why do you ask?

Okay, I'm acting like a media sheep. I admit it. I'm comforting myself with this thought: "Hey! At least I'm reading the book and not just watching the movies!"

Anyway.

An interesting contrast between Jane's style of writing and what editors/publishers say they are looking for today: We are told, as writers, to have a great "hook" as the first sentence of the book (actually, at the first sentence of each new chapter, and the end of each chapter would be best, but that's another blog). This "hook" should grab readers attention, and then the first page should draw the reader into time and place, setting and introduce characters, etc.

Good advice. Makes sense.

Then, there's Jane.

Page one she gobsmacks the reader by offering a condensed version of the prologue (The ancestral home of our heros - who we don't actually meet for a few pages yet, we first have to meet their father, stepbrother, sister-in-law, and mother - whew! The life and death of dear Papa, and learn the details of the poor man's will and the mental state of the son whose job it is to ensure the well being of his step-mother and her daughters. . . and on, and on). A no-no say today's publishers. But, somehow, reading this story within the story (within the story) flows like a river into the body of the novel. When we finally meet our two sisters, we feel fortified, ready to lead the parade for them, able to understand them because we know things about them that they, themselves have yet to discover.

And, oh, the extra words! Jammed full of adjectives, adverbs, asides, and shifting POV, it can be distracting to read until you get used to it. Jane jumps effortlessly from one POV to another (sometimes within the same sentence), but it isn't always so easy for the reader. But still, there is a kind of music that, once learned, can be danced to.

Maybe it's time to revisit a classic on your reading list?

Repair of Errant Ways

With a vast "Egads!" I return to this blog, woefully aware of my unannounced span of non-posty-goodness.

I went away.

But I'm back now.

My appologies for not saying so sooner.

I hang my head and announce I have no excuses. I plumb did go and just forgot to mention it.

*Bad Bonnie*

And so, with my being all back, the blog will continue until, well, until I have to go away again. But I'll try to give you some warning next time.

As for fiction that matters, I have more authors that I'll be highlighting in the next few weeks. I'll also be posting more about fiction, publishing from the perspective of an author, and writing.

I've been toying with the idea of blogging a series on how to develop a novel from conception to end.

Also swiming in the ether of my mind is a blog series on my journey of finding a publisher for my novel.

I'll also have updates on the two anthologies that feature my work.

Peace