• About
  • Biography
  • Black – From the Book: Colors
  • Children’s Fiction
  • Clean Slate a Very Short Story by Jay Magidson
  • Excerpt from the book – “Threshold of the Mind”
  • Fiction
  • Gauze – Excerpt from “Colors”
  • Nonfiction
  • Poetry
  • Videos

Jay Magidson – Author

~ Books by Jay Magidson

Jay Magidson – Author

Monthly Archives: October 2013

The Writer and the Critic

29 Tuesday Oct 2013

Posted by Jay Magidson in books, fiction, Madness of the Muses, writing

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Charles Dickens, Critics, Goliath, madness of the muses, Oscar Wilde, Stephen King, Theodore Roosevelt, Writing

Too often, the critic stands on the shoulders of the artist.  Perhaps it is set up that way.  We write for years, then send our work to agents, publishers, critics, reviewers, contests, to judge our work, certain that they know if it’s good or not.  Haven’t we, in a way placed their opinions above our own, made them smarter than ourselves?  And when we read a bad review of our work, perhaps we take it hard.  Why?  What makes the critic so much smarter than the author?

File:Oscar Wilde portrait.jpg

Why should the artist be troubled by the shrill clamor of criticism?  Why should those who cannot create take upon themselves to estimate the value of creative work?  What can they know about it?  If a man’s work is easy to understand, an explanation is unnecessary… And if his work is incomprehensible, an explanation is wicked.

-Oscar Wilde – The Critic as Artist

How necessary is this insatiable need to criticize anyway?

When buying a book on Amazon.com, I look to the reviews for guidance.  Will it hold my attention, is it my taste?  I’m not really looking for an in-depth critical review, I’m there to find out more about the story.  Since I don’t have the book in my hands, I need a little more than the publisher’s fluff description.  Right?  Probably like you, I find many scathing critiques of the writer’s work.  Even some of the classics get torn to shreds by so called critics.  And why?  What is the point of all these destructive reviews really?  Isn’t it about the critic trying to sink his teeth into the writer’s neck while everyone looks on.  “Yeah get him, pull him back into the mud with the rest of us.”

File:Andrea Vaccaro - David with the Head of Goliath.jpg

The bigger they are, the harder we want them to fall.

The best example of scathing critical reviews by anyone and everyone, surrounds the works of Stephen King.  So many feel the need to bring this extremely popular writer down a notch.  But frankly, I enjoy his writing and find him quite talented.  There are some elements of his writing I don’t care for, but so what, he didn’t ask my opinion, and I don’t see what good it will do to offer them up.  Reading is often done for education, but fiction is read for pleasure.  At its best, it becomes literature and art; at its worst it is simply ignored, then forgotten.

Charles Dickens was wildly popular in his time, serializing his works and releasing them a chapter at a time in popular publications.  We just take it for granted that he was always regarded as one of the great writers.  But this was not entirely true.  There were many critics who found fault in his writings and said so quite loudly. wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Dickens  Sorry to compare King to Dickens.  I only make the point that criticism is nothing new for popular writers, that their skin must be as thick as an elephant’s hide to plow through the insults.

What of the rest of us trudging novelists?  Do we take the criticism and crumble under its weight because the critics are so brilliant, or do we shrug it off, knowing that what we write is our small leap at the moon.  The critic is only heard so long as he clings to the neck of his prey.  You certainly know who Stephen King is, but how many of his critics can you name?

Here’s another quote to firm your spine should you find yourself bending against the gale force of the critic’s foul wind:

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles…the credit belongs to the man in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who at his worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.

– Theodore Roosevelt, 1910 speech at the Sorbonne, Paris

* These and many more inspiring quotes from Madness of the Muses, the Art of Ingrid Dee Magidson

Madness of the Muses

Share this:

  • Email
  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • Pinterest
  • Reddit

Like this:

Like Loading...

Writing Your First Book

26 Saturday Oct 2013

Posted by Jay Magidson in books, fiction, Threshold of the Mind, writing

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Critics, fiction, New Books, on Writing, Threshold of the Mind, War of Art, Writing a Book

It took me 12 years to finish my first book, 3 years for the second one, 9 months for my third, 6 months for the fourth, and 3 months for the fifth.  At this rate, I’ll be writing a new book every week, right.  Not quite, but it does get easier and certainly more pleasurable.  My first book, Threshold of the Mind (formerly In the Image of God) is my first book, even though it was published as my third.  The first version was complete in about 8 years, after 3 complete rewrites.  It weighed in at a whopping 200,000 words (approx. 700 paperback pages) and included every idea I had ever had about the future, politics, human relations, and yes, the kitchen sink.  It was dense and rambling, not altogether bad, but not what I had hoped for.

I set the book down for about two years and beat myself up for being a hack.  In the meantime I wrote newspaper and magazine articles, short stories and poetry, things I could complete in a few days.  The opposite of a book.

But in the back of my mind, my book kept whispering to me, “I’m not done, rewrite me.”  No way, not after close to a million words piled in a drawer, backed up on 42 floppy disks (remember those?).  It seemed indulgent, the book that would never be done, just writing and writing, until one day it would be 27 volumes completed the day before my death.  My children would shrug when they saw it, then stuff me and the volumes into a casket.

Finally, I woke up ready to face it.  Enough time had passed.  I promised to be objective and honest about it, throw it away if it was no good.  I would approach it as if someone else had written it and needed my help editing it.  I sat down and read it cover to cover, without a pen, thoroughly subduing the desire to cringe and make notes.  I just read it like a reader would.  Hey, it wasn’t so bad, really good in spots, but there were problems.

I spent the next 3 months outlining the book, one chapter at a time.  Who were the characters, the scenes, the action, the place, the plot developments?  I used a spreadsheet to see the book in a logical way.  It was a good exercise, one I hope never to have to do again.  It was pretty tedious work.

When this was complete, I realized many things about my book.  It had: too many characters; things I loved, but didn’t make any sense to the reader; action that was exciting and well presented, but didn’t advance the plot; and other stuff that didn’t help the story.  I kept the core and began rewriting…again.  It took about nine months this time.  I went through again and cleaned stuff up (another couple of months), but essentially it was done.  It was half the size now, 102,000 words, (310 pages).  And best of all, I loved it, not liked it, loved  it.  That was my first book.

When I finished this time and showed my wife, strutting and proud of myself.  She said, “good for you, now go write another one.”  She had just read The War of Art too.

After that it got easier, much easier.  The whole idea of a book being this enormous project that could take years and millions of words was behind me.  I did it, I finished the first marathon and my feet didn’t break off, I got stronger instead.  One step at a time, as they say.  And that’s exactly what a book is, one word at a time.  Find an idea, a story that you love and start it; don’t worry about how long it will be, or how long it will take.  Don’t worry about doing it the way the experts tell you to, or agonizing if you should have a detailed plot or outline before you start, or if you should know the ending before you begin.  None of that matters.  It only matters that you do it.

Here’s another bit of advice, don’t tell anyone anything about it until you’re done (at least the first full draft).  Maybe don’t even tell them you’re writing a book.  Just pull it out one day and say, “hey you want to read my book?”  Enjoy the jaw-drop effect.  Because if you share it too early, your friends or family, or whomever you show it to, will have all kinds of helpful advice about your plot or characters.  Or they’ll tell you it sounds like someone else they read, or the lead character reminds them of their ex-wife (whom they hate) or some other idea freezing crap.  They can’t help themselves, they mean well, but everyone is a critic.  And you’ll stutter or stop, and your great idea won’t seem so great anymore.  Undeveloped ideas are like snowflakes, very, very fragile.

Share this:

  • Email
  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • Pinterest
  • Reddit

Like this:

Like Loading...

Do We Over Emphasize the Value of Originality?

24 Thursday Oct 2013

Posted by Jay Magidson in books, fiction, writing

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

art writing, Cavemen, creativity, fiction, imagination, Originality, primitive art, Shakespeare, Writing

Artists, writers, all creative persons struggle with the question of originality.  “Am I creating something unique, earth shattering?”  And the chances are, you’re not.  But is that really all that important?  Consider what would happen if everything we did was unique, new, never seen before.  It would likely be incomprehensible.  Concepts are built on a foundation of past ideas.

The visual arts provide the simplest example.  Primitive art eventually led to realism, which led to impressionism, which led to abstraction, which led to minimalism, which led to conceptualism.  Obviously these movements have branched in hundreds of tangential directions too.  But the point is, one needs a reference point to step to the next level.  The abstract movement would have been completely unique in the 19th Century, but would have also been discarded out of hand.  Why, because there was no foundation yet, it was too big a leap, it needed the smaller steps that got us there as a society to appreciate it.

We see this in many other forms, certainly in writing.  How many ways can writers rearrange the several hundred thousand English words and still be unique.  Though the number is large, it is not infinite.  It is math, a finite number of words combine into a finite possible mix.  Yet, experience and intuition tells us this is not true.  We will not run out of new stories, new ideas.  This is because we are continuing to pile slight variations on top of a very broad foundation – a foundation that can grow infinitely.

Not all that long ago, most believed the sun and stars rotated around the earth.  Copernicus and Galileo proved otherwise.  Now, without individual proof or experimentation, we all “know” that the earth rotates around the sun, that the earth is round, that the moon is made of rock and not cheese.  A million little factoids like that.  They are our foundation, our jumping off point of a platform that continues to broaden.

Consider technology.   We take for granted that we can carry around a portable Television studio disguised as a phone in our pocket, that we can use it to speak to almost anyone in the world just by pressing a combination of numbers.  My parents grew up before computers.  They use them, but don’t quite have the easy understanding my generation does.  My children grew up with small portable devices and apps.  They have an ease with them I can’t match.  Their foundation is larger than mine.  They add to this broader base easier, not bogged down in trying to get their heads around what is now commonplace to them, but still new to me.

File:Pieter Bruegel the Elder - The Tower of Babel (Vienna) - Google Art Project - edited.jpgThese incremental additions are tiny bits of originality.  And they are very valuable both culturally and artistically.   Our whole base of knowledge is expanding, because we are a society and not just a mass of individuals, we share information, pass it not only to each other, but forward to our children.  And the larger the base, the more possibility for incremental original additions.   Think of our foundation of knowledge as a city.  Long ago, it was a tiny village, it grew into a town, then a city, now it is a teaming metropolis.  We can add a window, a building, or just paint a wall, but there are increasingly more ways to add to and change it.  And the larger the metropolis, the more possibilities for change, for originality.

Every once in a while, a brilliant man or woman adds something completely unique to the whole, people like Homer, Newton, Joan of Arc, da Vinci, Shakespeare, or Einstein.  But the geniuses stand out, because they are so rare.  Most of the originality we experience is not from these rare geniuses, but from small additions, the ones each of us contribute as microscopic bits of brilliance.

Share this:

  • Email
  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • Pinterest
  • Reddit

Like this:

Like Loading...

Where do Ideas Come From?

21 Monday Oct 2013

Posted by Jay Magidson in books, writing

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

artist, creativity, criticism, ideas, Steven Pressfield, The War of Art, Writer's block, Writing

Many people have asked me about writing, were do ideas come from, how do I find the time, etc.  I’ve been writing for decades, starting as a teenager.  I went many years without writing a thing, and many days in sequence being unbelievably prolific, writing one or more chapters at a sitting.  Lately I’ve been a lot more disciplined about it all.

Permission to be an artist

Several years ago I was introduced to a wonderful book titled, The War of Art by Steven Pressfield.  If you are an artist/writer/singer/etc. please buy this little gem of a book.  In a sentence: it gave me permission to be a writer.  From that day, I set aside the early mornings for my writing, 5 or 5:30 in the morning (occasionally 4am when I just can’t sleep anymore).  It is quiet and there are no distractions.  My children are up at 6:30 for school so it gave me an hour or an hour and half to work.  Doesn’t sound like much?  Add it up.  If I wrote a single page a day, that is a book in 9 months; 2 pages a day is a book in 5.  That’s pretty good and is exactly what happened.  But better than that, my mind became trained to create.  When I sit down, I’m writing a few minutes later.  What about writer’s block?  It can be a real thing, but only if you let it.  When good ideas are not coming, I go back and edit the previous day’s work.  It’s housekeeping, it’s true, but it has to get done too.  So I’m in the work, slogging away.  And often the simple act of staying connected gives me good ideas and I’m able to move forward again.  It all counts.  Just show up.

Where do ideas come from?

Every artist and writer is asked this question.  And it is unanswerable, not because the writer wants to keep it a secret or hide some special talent, but because none of us really knows.  We read a phrase, see a television show, overhear a conversation and bang an idea for a story or an action for our lead character pops into our head.  Maybe it comes from God, aliens, angels or from a very small man who lives in our ears.  We just don’t know, but it’s magical and every writer experiences this magic.  It’s like a small Christmas present in July.  Just say thank you and write it down.  I do.

Do you have a story in you?

I think there are a lot of people who have a story or two in them and are not writing it down.  Why not?  What is really the risk?  What, that someone might not like it, criticize it, tell you it’s crap.  Oh yeah, those guys.  There are a lot of them and only one of you.  Over time, you learn to say “so what” to their criticism and praise.  None of it matters.  The only thing that matters is that you are writing and writing and writing, numbing your butt cheeks, developing a concrete ass.  Maybe something great will come out of your pen or computer, but only if you write it down, only if you release it to the world.  And if not now, when?

Share this:

  • Email
  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • Pinterest
  • Reddit

Like this:

Like Loading...

New Video and Book Updates

19 Saturday Oct 2013

Posted by Jay Magidson in books, ebook, fiction, new release, Threshold of the Mind

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

distopia, future, genetic engineering, New Books, Sci Fi, Science Fiction, Strange Video

I made this brief video promo of Threshold of the Mind.  I think you will enjoy it: Video of Threshold of the Mind.

New Name – Same Great Story

Threshold-FrontCoverOK, that brings up something very important.  I changed the name of my book from In the Image of God to Threshold of the Mind.  It is the same in every other way, just a new title.  I debated long and hard about this.  It is not a small thing to change the name of your book.  It is like changing your own name.  Unfortunately, the old name was getting associated with religious books.  Of course, it is not about religion in any way.  So I changed it to Threshold of the Mind.  But it is not just changing the title, the book had to be republished in every form: that means in print, kindle, ebooks, new ISBN number, everything.  It took a few months, but the process is complete.  So I made a video to celebrate the new title, because I think it is awesome, just right, Sci-Fi, hi-tech, genetic engineering.

So, if you have a book with the old name, hang on to it, it will be a collectors item.  But you should also buy a new one, so you can be cool and up to date.

Here’s where you can get it:

On Amazon
On Smashwords (ebook/pdf/etc)

On iTunes: do a search for “Threshold of the Mind” + “Magidson”
On Barnes & Noble

Share this:

  • Email
  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • Pinterest
  • Reddit

Like this:

Like Loading...

Enter your email address to follow this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Recent Posts

  • Yellow Raft – a Poem
  • A Dark Poem for Saturday
  • Art is Not Elitist
  • Inspiration’s Muse
  • Sleep Well My Dear Friend

Archives

  • December 2017
  • September 2017
  • August 2017
  • March 2017
  • December 2016
  • November 2016
  • August 2015
  • July 2015
  • June 2015
  • May 2015
  • November 2014
  • July 2014
  • November 2013
  • October 2013
  • August 2013
  • March 2013
  • February 2013
  • August 2012
  • July 2012

Categories

  • art
  • Aspen Art
  • audio books
  • audiobooks
  • book reviews
  • books
  • colors
  • criticism
  • death
  • discovery
  • distopia
  • drowning
  • ebook
  • Explore Booksellers
  • fear
  • fiction
  • Gauze
  • Haleakala
  • Hawaii
  • Horror
  • humor
  • ideas
  • In the Image of God
  • ipad
  • Jeff Clarke
  • kindle
  • Madness of the Muses
  • Maui
  • mensa
  • N. A. Noel Gallery
  • Nancy Noel
  • Nausea
  • new release
  • poetry
  • Rabinow
  • Reviews
  • sandpaper
  • Sartre
  • Science Fiction
  • self-publishing
  • stratumentis
  • Threshold of the Mind
  • Time Machine
  • Virtual Reality
  • writing

Blogroll

  • Get Inspired
  • The Enigmatic Art of Ingrid Dee Magidson

Meta

  • Register
  • Log in
  • Entries feed
  • Comments feed
  • WordPress.com

Create a free website or blog at WordPress.com.

Privacy & Cookies: This site uses cookies. By continuing to use this website, you agree to their use.
To find out more, including how to control cookies, see here: Cookie Policy
  • Follow Following
    • Jay Magidson - Author
    • Join 56 other followers
    • Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
    • Jay Magidson - Author
    • Customize
    • Follow Following
    • Sign up
    • Log in
    • Report this content
    • View site in Reader
    • Manage subscriptions
    • Collapse this bar
 

Loading Comments...
 

    %d bloggers like this: