Books are Dead – Long Live Stories

15 Wednesday Mar 2017

Posted by Jay Magidson in books, fiction, Science Fiction, Threshold of the Mind, Virtual Reality

Tags

audiobooks, creativity, future, libraries, Sci Fi, Virtual Reality

I love books. I have hundreds in my library, have read hundreds more. I get a warm comfortable feeling when I go to a bookstore or public library. But I also know that the end is near for books. I’m not sad or nostalgic about any of it. Things change.

Tens of thousands of years ago, long before speech, man told each other stories through pantomime and play acting. They acted out their hunting adventures or mishaps, probably laughed when Grog hit his head on a rock. You can feel the truth in this, have this genetic memory as I do.

Thousands of years after that, our brains developed speech and the stories got more sophisticated, more detailed. They were passed around, embellished, exaggerated until they became myths and legends. Really exaggerated, like Atlas holding the world on his shoulders and Apollo pulling the sun across the sky.

Mankind lived on the earth for hundreds of thousands of years telling stories without books. Then some clever fellow in Mesopotamia scratched symbols in the dirt and invented writing. Someone else smeared these symbols onto parchment (no fun for the lamb by the way) and presto we have scrolls, and if they are long enough, are really just rolled up books.

Thousands of years after that, Gutenberg figured out a way to make multiple copies of the bible and by the 20^th Century, we’re neck deep in books. Millions and millions of them. Even Hitler couldn’t burn enough to make a dent in the growing pile.

But if you look at the bigger picture, the history of humankind at approximately 500,000 years, books are still pretty new. Writing is barely 5,000 years old, printed books only about 600 and the novel as we know it, less than 300. And sad, though it may appear, books are going to disappear, are already disappearing, or more accurately, evolving.

Do you have children? If not, have you ever seen one? They love video. In my day it was TV, “Gilligan’s island, Lost in Space.” Horrible stuff. Now it’s six second vines. Amazing really, that you can tell a story in only six seconds. YouTube, Amazon, Netflix, Hulu, Vimeo, Facebook, video is king. We love them, devour them like chocolate on Easter. They’re stories.

Oh I know the argument, video and movies do the imagining for us. Books make us create the pictures in our own head. “The movie was pretty good, but the book was great.” But someone had to create those stories, imagine them and how to present them. Grog didn’t worry about that when he acted out a good hunt in front of the fire half a million years ago. Plays are high art and movies are not? Nonsense. It’s all just human beings telling stories to each other. And that’s what matters.

Not long from now, we’ll agonize over the displacement of video and movies too. We’ll watch and interact with Virtual Reality or maybe someday images will be beamed directly into our minds. We can’t live without stories. Marshall McLuhan coined the phrase, “The medium is the message.” I think it misses the point. We are not that different from Grog in front of the fire, maybe no different at all. I think we’re all just kids begging dad to tell us a goodnight story and don’t really care how it gets into our heads.

Threshold of the Mind by Jay Magidson a novel about mankind addicted to Virtual Reality in the near future.

Available on Amazon.com in print, kindle and audiobook. Buy it today!

Through the Blackness of Fear – Origins of a Short Story

17 Monday Aug 2015

Posted by Jay Magidson in colors, fiction, Horror, ideas, writing

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black thoughts, colors by jay magidson, dreams, fears, ideas, inspiration

Colors by Jay Magidson

Sometimes an idea builds inside like a kind of spiritual pressure, threatening to overwhelm the holder, even consume him. This happened to me about ten years ago. I had been writing short stories over the past year. There was no thought to what they might be used for or why I was writing them, just when they came up, I would commit them to paper. It was only recently that I even understood their purpose, and their power in my life.

Each story had a single color as its title. The first was Gray, the Kafkaesque tale of a man lost in a featureless city. Another was Yellow, about an antique’s dealer consumed slowly each night by a dead cat representing his contradictory life.

The story that began to overwhelm me, I later called Black. It started as only a seed of a feeling, a bit of undefined anxiety. I would wake at night with a deep, unexplainable fear. Everything was going well in my life and I had no reason to feel this way. I pushed it aside, ignoring it as just general anxiety about life. But it grew stronger until it began to consume me, holding a kind of opaque fabric in front of my vision.

I lost quite a bit of sleep, lying there, desperately trying to push the horrible feelings away, running from this undefinable dark fog. Out of desperation on the third night, I got up, my stomach in a deeply clenched knot and sat in front of my computer and began to write. Without thinking about it, the words began to pour out of my fingers and instead of feeling relief and peace, the way I usually do when I sit down to write, the fear grew worse. I realized there was no way around this feeling, that the only way out, was through the blackness. I was terrified.

With a deep breath, I dove into the bleak feeling and for the first time, touched it. The best I can describe it, was like a kind of river flowing beneath the surface of my life, a river of unexplored pain. I dipped my hand into that river, touching its icy thickness. The fear and anxiety only grew worse, and I knew what I must do in that moment. I had to jump in.

The story began to flow like nothing else I had ever written before, nothing related to my life, as if I were a completely different person releasing this horrible and dark crime that had been eating at me, consuming me with guilt until I couldn’t bear it anymore.

The entire story came out that night, in one marathon sitting. And when I laid done the final period I was free. The fear had left me, replaced with a deep sense of gratitude and wonder at life. I had dove through that river of pain and had been cleansed by its fire, rising up on the other side a different, better person.

I’ve put the short story online here, if you would like to read it. It is surreal and personal, without any reference in my life. I read it now, still wondering where it can from, or why I wrote it, not really sure what it means. I only know that I had to write it, had to release it, or would have been consumed by it.

I think we misunderstand fear, shying away from it, avoiding the pain it represents. And when that suggests bodily injury, that’s probably wise, a mechanism for keeping us safe, built into our DNA. But there is another kind of fear, that which we need to embrace. It holds a deep kind of meaning on the other side of its invisible veil; we must leap the chasm with only our faith to keep us aloft. And on the other side is peace, growth, understanding, and maybe if we are lucky, a bit of wisdom.

When There was an East Berlin

24 Wednesday Jun 2015

Posted by Jay Magidson in books, colors, discovery, fiction, Science Fiction, writing

≈ 1 Comment

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Berlin, Berlin Wall, Checkpoint Charlie, Copenhagen, DDR, East Germany, Eurail, Soviet Union

The dark sky overhead threatens snow as I walk the nearly deserted streets. Ominous gray buildings with their unlit windows reflect the steely sky, glowering down at me. Out of nowhere, a lone man rushes by, I can’t see what he looks like, the collar of his long wool coat pulled up to hide his face. He moves close enough that I hear his accented whisper, “Go home, this place is not for you.”

That was winter 1980 in a city that no longer exists today. Well, it does exist, but not its name, East Berlin. This is the real story of how I found myself in a city surrounded by razor wire and land mines.

Copenhagen

I spent my final year of college in Copenhagen, Denmark, a fantastically beautiful city, full of charm and history. In between semesters, many of the foreign students traveled, bought ridiculously affordable Eurail passes and used them to go as far and as wide a possible during the two week break. I went with a friend to Germany, along the Rhine visiting castles and breweries. We parted ways to travel alone and increase the adventure. You meet people when you travel alone; you have to, or you go crazy. I learned quickly that language isn’t the biggest barrier to communication, fear is. I found that if you try to talk to someone, whether you know their language or not, you can communicate pretty well.

So somewhere in Western Germany at a youth hostel on my winter break, I decided to go to Berlin. Sounded good, why not. After World War II, Germany was divided into two countries, West Germany and the DDR (Deutsche Demokratische Republik), or East Germany, as everyone outside of the country called it. They were still divided in 1980 and I wanted to see the scary half. West Germany was like the rest of Europe, easy travel, friendly people and they honored my Eurail passes. But East Germany was verboten, off limits, a Soviet state, unknown and tempting. So crazy 20 year-old me had to go.

By this point in my European travels, I had been to Poland, Hungary and Yugoslavia, also Soviet block countries. I didn’t know it at the time, but I think I had a sense all of this would disappear in time, the separateness, the old countries held onto with the iron grip of the USSR. And I wanted to see it before it went away.

Berlin

Berlin, the giant decadent German metropolis, was also split into East and West, a city arbitrarily cut in half. The strange thing about this arrangement was that West Berlin being in the Eastern part of Germany was surrounded by East Germany, essentially an island in another country. So when I and my fellow travelers took the train from Western Germany to West Berlin, we traveled through miles and miles of East Germany. The train was like a space craft, rushing through the forbidden void, where we were allowed to breathe the air, look out the window, but nothing more.

The train stopped just before entering Berlin in a kind of special security station. The doors were not opened and no one was allowed off the train. Soon, black uniformed police officers and dogs (yes, German Shepherds) worked their way through the compartments, inspecting bags, lifting seats and pulling parts of the ceiling down looking for illegal and smuggled substances, drugs I assumed, since I didn’t speak any German.

After an hour or so of this unnerving experience, the train continued on to Berlin. It was about 4 in the afternoon, in late December, and like most of Central Europe in the winter, dreary and cold, but it wasn’t dark. Berlin was brilliantly lit and lively. That was a long time ago, but I assume it is even more so today. A big lively, energetic city in the middle of this other country. It was a strange feeling, like they were trying to make up for their oppressed brethren by being even livelier than they had to be. “Party like it’s 1999” and all that.

I didn’t have much money, so I stayed in some youth hostel or cheap hotel. The next day, I went to the American Embassy to get a visa to visit East Berlin, that’s why I came all this way after all. The young woman at the window asked me why I wanted to do that, did I have family, business, diplomatic interests? Nope, I just wanted to see it. “Are you sure?” She asked. “Yeah, I’m sure.” I replied, not at all sure. I gave them the $25 and got a huge colorful stamp in my passport that allowed me 24 hours in East Germany. “Be sure to be back before your visa expires.” She warned me. “What happens if I don’t make it in time?” I asked. “Just be back.” She said seriously.

Berlin Wall

Of course, I didn’t have a car and you can’t exactly hitch-hike across a mine field, so I walked. This part of my travels was worth the entire trip. Forget East Germany, Berlin, lights, and whatever was on the other side of that high cinder-block wall, just walking through a military check point will satisfy almost any travel junky.

If you are under 40 years old, you may have no idea what I’m talking about, but try to understand, West Berlin was big and exciting, tall buildings, music, food, beer, you know, a modern energetic city. And East Berlin was the complete opposite, gray and dark, no lights, low rise, oppressive Soviet style buildings and probably (just to torture the Germans) bad beer. Berlin is built on a slight hill, West Berlin was on the upper slope, so those in the Eastern half could see it, look up at all that shiny fun, they just couldn’t get there. That was just cruel.

Checkpoint Charlie

Friedrichstrasse or Checkpoint Charlie was one of the pathways from West to East. That’s what it was called before they pulled it all down and rejoined the two German halves back together in 1990. The two cities were divided by a tall, ugly cinder-block wall covered in graffiti on the eastern side. It was topped with razor wire and broken glass. After that, a wide, dead stretch of land filled with land mines ended in a tall chain-link fence, and also topped with razor wire, and you were on the western side of the city. Every 100 feet or so, a tower rose along the fence, each housed with soldiers armed with search lights and automatic rifles, and probably heavier weapons. Imagine guards in a prison tower and multiply that by 10. Checkpoint Charlie was the route through this dead zone. It was designed for vehicles, zigzagging, so you couldn’t force your way through. As I walked through this maze of soldiers and concrete, my visa and passport was checked three times. I was frisked, smelled by dogs, asked several times what my business in East Berlin was, and reluctantly allowed into the other side.

Checkpoint Charlie

Suddenly, and anti-climatically, I found myself in East Berlin with no plan, and no idea that my American passport with its current and legitimate visa was probably worth killing for. Only looking back now, do I realize how foolish and dangerous my actions had been. That scary wall and field of landmines was there for a reason, and people died regularly trying to cross it into West Berlin. But God protects children and stupid tourists.

East Berlin

They made me convert 100 of my precious US dollars into East German Marks. Two problems with that, 1) nothing to buy, and 2) you couldn’t take the currency out when you left. This was becoming an expensive trip for a poor college student. But I plunged on, there must be something to do here, it was a pretty big city after all. I walked into the bleak streets of East Berlin, heavy dark buildings greeted me on the wide boulevards, but there are no shops or restaurants, and more strange than that, no people. Everyone must be inside hiding from the KGB or something. I walked on, but the landscape didn’t change much and it was cold. No benches, no cafes or bookstores, no castles or even churches. This is where bad tourists go after they die, those who didn’t lead a good enough life to get into Paris. I looked back and there was West Berlin rising above on its hill, all lights and fun, and more importantly right now, food.A little bored, but not ready to give up, I walked on. That’s when the stranger passed me. “Go home, this place is not for you.” He said in a thick German accent, gone before I even understood what he had told me.

In that moment, I realized where I was and what danger I might be in. This stranger, too afraid to even slow down and talk to me, had warned me. It was like a scene out of a Cold War spy novel. I immediately turned around and walked back toward the transfer building, constantly looking over my shoulder, starting at shadows or any stray movement. An hour later, I arrived, relatively safe in the eastern check point building . There were lots of soldiers, and thankfully a diner. I spent as much of my play money on the food as I could. Unfortunately, it was as cheap as it was terrible. I gave up and went back through Check Point Charlie, somewhat disappointed and tired.

The thing about travel adventures is that they are always better in remembrance than at the time. I didn’t really give the experience much thought in my two days in Berlin, but only later when I saw myself standing in that empty bleak city with the gray sky. Everything about it was oppressive, as if it were designed to crush the spirit of all who lived there. I’ll never forget the feeling of that city, or the man’s voice who warned me.

Colors by Jay Magidson - Now Available in Print

Colors, the book

Prologue:

I told you this story so I could explain where ideas come from. This experience gave me the idea for a short story I titled, Gray, which I wrote 30 years later. While writing it, I hadn’t realized where I had seen the gray city or the steel sky of my story. But it had stayed in my consciousness, all those years, like a seed waiting patiently to germinate. That year, I wrote eight more short stories and combined them into a book called Colors. Only looking back now, as I write this, do I realize that all of it, the experience, the stories, even this essay is an attempt to understand and describe the feeling of East Berlin on that winter day, so long ago.

Government and Boiled Frogs

18 Tuesday Nov 2014

Posted by Jay Magidson in audio books, books, ebook, fiction, Science Fiction, Threshold of the Mind

≈ 1 Comment

Q: How do you boil a frog?
A: By slowly raising the temperature.

We are the frog, the government is the water, and corporations are the flame. Corruption of government is nothing new, as old as government itself. What tells me that we are near the end of having any influence at all, is how bold and obvious the corruptors have become. The bribes (campaign contributions) have become focused, obvious and enormous. The manipulators are out in the open, bold, unapologetic. Because they know it doesn’t matter, nothing can or will happen to them. The officials they help elect will protect them while continuing to enrich each other.

Since we love to blame someone, who shall we pick?

I choose us, the people. Sure, we’ve been manipulated, but it has always been our choice. We could shake the wool off of our eyes at any time, but we never do. Our obsession with money is why. We want more and more stuff: bigger houses, new cars, faster cell phones, splashier entertainment, etc. We worship those who have a lot of money, not because they are virtuous, inspiring, or even that interesting, but simply because they have more. They have beautiful homes, clothes, jets, they get on TV, are interviewed in glossy magazines, and have scandalous 15 minute relationships with other empty shells.

Our love of money (and consequently, fame) has brought us to this point – a near breakdown of democracy. Our voices no longer matter. Like us, our politicians have sold out to the highest bidder. Why bother trying to please us, the teaming millions, when they can please a few dozen and keep the power and money they so crave. We showed them the way, they simply obeyed. Those who have lots of money buy our elected officials, who in turn help them get more money. The cycle spirals upwards at the expense of the many, squeezing more and more wealth upwards.

Here are the dry facts:

The median household income in the US continues to fall, lower today than 20 years ago (US Census, Sept. 2014). In the same period, the wealthiest 1% has gone from owning 15% of the nation’s wealth to over 40%.

Then Why should the government be more afraid than its people?

Automation and technology will take us to new heights of corruption and abuse. If you are really, really rich and you want something, why bother with the government at all? Because, eventually, if you do something really terrible, you will get exposed and possibly punished. The government holds the ultimate card – force.

But for how much longer?

Our government officials blinded by their insatiable desire for money and power, continue to make choices based on one criterion – money. So they will always sell out. Morality based on money is no morality at all. Here are the steps to our ruination.

Our financial system is private, even our money supply is run by a non-governmental agency – the Federal Reserve. They finance the government, not the other way around. What is to say they can’t stop funding the government?
Our prison system used to be completely run by local, state and federal governments. Now it is mostly outsourced to private companies. And our prison population has skyrocketed – 5 times more people per capita are in prison today than in 1970 and most are minorities. Coincidence?
The military is beginning to supply local and state police forces with military grade weapons, serious and overwhelming firepower. Why?
Automation and technology are advancing briskly in the military, spy satellites, unmanned drones, extremely accurate rockets and even computer guided bullets. Next up are unmanned tanks, robotic weapons and soldiers, insect sized spy drones, etc.
Much of our military operations are already being supported and supplied by private corporations (food, fuel, infrastructure, transportation, even security). Outsourcing the actual military and police departments to private corporations is not a stretch of the imagination. They’ll be cheaper and more efficient

The End Game

Your clue to the timing of the end, will be when you read about a certain experiment, where a municipal police force is outsourced to a private corporation. Cash strapped municipalities will love the idea of stretching their thin budgets. That is the day our democracy as we know it ends completely. When the government relinquishes its only trump card, why would there be any need for corporations to bother with them any longer? Corporations will do what they want with impunity, as they’ll have private and competing police forces working for them. Government will be superfluous.

How will the Constitution protect you then?

Want to read more?

Threshold of the Mind by Jay Magidson gives us a hard view of a corporate controlled world in the year 2080. A world where everything is for sale – even your mind.

Available at Amazon.com: print and Kindle
On Barnes & Noble: print and Nook
On Smashwords: epub and ebook (iTunes)

and coming soon:
Audio Book on Audible.com
and iTunes

Threshold of the Mind in Audiobook Production

16 Wednesday Jul 2014

Posted by Jay Magidson in audio books, books, fiction, Jeff Clarke, Science Fiction, Threshold of the Mind

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acx, audible.com, audiobooks, Jeff Clarke, Sci Fi, Science Fiction, Threshold of the Mind

Threshold of the Mind will be available as an audiobook this coming August. Actor Jeff Clarke (Madmen, Zack Files, Chicago, etc) will be doing the narration. He has a fabulous voice and a great understanding of the story. It will be fun to listen to his interpretation.

The process has taken several months and has been relatively smooth. The production is being facilitated by ACX a division of Amazon. It was decided to go this route because of their broad reach in distribution: Amazon.com, iTunes, Audible.com, and more. This growing segment of the book publishing industry is expanding dramatically, though not without its challenges. The cost is too high for most self-published authors and the royalties have changed in the last few months. It is no surprise that the listening audience for audiobooks is growing rapidly; long commutes, airline travel, exercise, the ease of listening on mobile devices and the improved production quality make it a great boon for new books.

There will be audio excerpts from the completed book in the coming weeks. Stay tuned, it is a really exciting and rewarding project. Big thanks to Jeff Clarke.

Threshold of the Mind is available at Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble (stores and online), smashwords, iTunes and many other venues.

Writer’s Block and Root Canals

07 Thursday Nov 2013

Posted by Jay Magidson in books, fiction, writing

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Tags

Castaway, fiction, meditation, root canal, tom hanks, Writer's block, Writing

Lately I have been somewhat stymied by writer’s block. Not in all my writing, just with my fiction stuff. It happens sometimes and I don’t take it too seriously. I give it a break and work on other things. And when I’m back, I’m usually better for the time off.

A few days ago, I had a third surgery on the same tooth in three years. The patient refuses to get better or die quietly. So the Oral Surgeon is using heroic measures to save it. He is more tenacious than I would be. All I can think of is that scene in “Castaway” where Tom Hanks uses an ice-skate for his dental work. I should be grateful, right? Swollen cheek and a rack of stitches in my gum is pretty minor compared to that. But pain tends to focus the mind and good ideas are starting to come out again. I’m ready to write. Or more accurately, I am writing again.

Writer’s block is one of those strange events that happens to all writers, and in many forms. For me, it is not so much not being able to write at all. I’m always able to put words on paper, but the words that come out are trash and uninspired. I read back over what I’ve written and cringe. It just sucks. I’m not really sure if it is actually that bad. Maybe it’s just my perception of my own writing that sucks. Or I’m just being ultra-critical of my own work. Anyway, I don’t like it, and I can’t keep writing, so I stop. My real problem is that my objectivity is gone, my love of the work is on vacation.

I’ve learned not to push during these times, but also not to wait too long either. A week is a break, two weeks is an extended vacation with nagging guilt about piled up work, a month is a layoff delivered from an angry boss, and anything over a month is just self-pity. And nothing is as ugly as self-pity. Work is always the solution to unemployment.

Ever try meditation? It works wonders for anything involving self-fill-in-the-blank. The ideas tend to come when they’re not forced. Like playful kittens, run after them and you will never catch them, but dangle a string and they’ll grab on like the living Velcro strips that they are. Meditation is dangling the string. One’s goal is to stop thinking, to quiet the mind. Of course the mind hates that and starts laying out all kinds of goodies at the altar. Well, if you’re going to offer such treats, it would be rude not to taste a few. So pretty soon I’m writing again and everything is good.

As for the tooth, I’ve almost forgotten it’s there. Almost.

From Art to Author

01 Friday Nov 2013

Posted by Jay Magidson in books, fiction, Sartre, writing

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books, Bruegel, Falkner, fiction, Hugo, Kafka, Maugham, museums, on Writing, visual, Writing

I grew up with art, was surrounded by it, breathed it. My father is an art dealer, so our house became an annex for his San Francisco art gallery. At ten I took a book of Bruegel etchings from his bookshelf and began the laborious task of copying the images. If you are not familiar with Brueghel, his works are similar to Hieronymus Bosch, lots of strange little characters with animal heads and creepy figures crawling out of eggs. It is a child’s dream (nightmare) of strange creatures and imagination. I still love his work.

It was then that I decided to be an artist, to draw great works. Not painting, drawing, I loved the line and shading. So I continued copying other artists and kept it up until high school. By this time in my life I’d probably been to more museums and art galleries than all my classmates combined. But something inside fizzled. I didn’t want to be an artist anymore; the fire had burned itself out.

Don’t get me wrong, I still loved art, always will. It’s like a second blood supply for me. But the fire to create it had gone out. During this same period, I had been reading, reading a lot, fiction and science fiction mostly. There wasn’t really such a thing as young adult fiction at this time. There were just books that were a little easier for teenagers to read. I would find a writer that I liked, then consume every book he or she wrote. Clark, Asimov, Heinlein, H. G. Wells, Bradbury, Maugham, Golding, Salinger, and many more. I didn’t realize it at the time, but all those words sunk in, shaped my mind and eventually, my desire to create.

Strangely enough, I studied business in college. Oh it was tedious and awful as you would expect for an art lover. To make it bearable, I took lots of literature classes, Shakespeare, poetry – no business students in there. In my junior year, just as I was ready to drop out, I received a letter inviting me into the foreign exchange program. I grabbed it like a life-preserver to a drowning student, and spent my final year studying in Copenhagen, Denmark, then traveling around Europe. Wonderful experience, I recommend it to all students, drowning or not.

What a crazy thing life is, somehow everything comes around to be exactly what it was supposed to be from the beginning. After college, I followed in my father’s steps, becoming an art dealer and later a gallery owner. During this time, I wrote lots of things, mostly business related stuff, copy for ads and PR. Then I tried my hand at essays. I was invited by the editor of the Aspen Daily News to write a weekly column about art. I was given plenty of rope with which to hang myself.

I have never studied writing, had only a general idea about journalism. But why should that stop me. Unafraid, I just wrote about what I thought would be interesting. The articles were stupid sometimes, one was about art that had killed people (falling sculptures and poisonous paint), but sometimes it was very deep, a two part article about the Nazi plundering of artwork in Europe. I got plenty of good feedback, people liked my stories and I kept it up for about two years. Then the pressures of time and the demands of my art gallery forced me to quit.

But I didn’t stop writing. Fiction has always been my love. Sure, I love great science fiction, but my real love is 19th (and early 20th) Century literature, Dickens, Tolstoy, Melville, Falkner, Twain, Hugo, Kafka and dozens of other. It is difficult sometimes, paragraphs that span pages, descriptions that go into minute detail, but they are always rich with meaning and discovery. These giants could write. Great literature is the equivalent of seeing a great painting. That sigh that is released from your soul when you realize you are witnessing genius.

File:Ebcosette.jpg

So here I am, putting the two things together, art and writing. Sure, I could write about art, I still do that, but that is not really what I mean. Art has taught me how to see, how to imagine a scene, the characters, the situation unfolding in my mind. When I write, I literally see everything happening in the story and just describe it on paper. Many readers have commented how visual my writing is. I don’t see how it could be otherwise, that’s where it comes from.

Like I said earlier, life has a way of putting us on the path meant for us. I guess I should have gotten a degree in literature, studied writing, but it didn’t happen that way. I learned to write by reading (still do) and how to see by viewing and making art. Regrets are for the dead. This is how it is and I’m grateful I get to do what I love.

Even if it took a few extra decades…

The Writer and the Critic

29 Tuesday Oct 2013

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

≈ 1 Comment

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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?

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.”

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

Writing Your First Book

26 Saturday Oct 2013

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

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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.

Do We Over Emphasize the Value of Originality?

24 Thursday Oct 2013

Posted by Jay Magidson in books, fiction, writing

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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.

These 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.

Jay Magidson – Fiction

~ Books by Jay Magidson

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