Tag: Fiction

The Young Adult Novels That Shaped My Childhood

by James Wallace Harris, 7/22/25

I’ve been amazed by how fanatical young people have become over their favorite pop cultural icons. My wife and I watch Jeopardy every day, and the clues are often based on successful pop culture franchises. Comics and young adult novels dominate, especially at the movie theater. Billions of dollars are spent by their fans, and children and young people often identify with certain characters.

At first, I thought all of this was new. The Beatles had worldwide fame, but I can’t think of any fictional characters that were as popular in the 1960s as those that have emerged in the 21st century. Star Trek and Star Wars fandoms began to evolve in the 1970s, but it wasn’t until the advent of the World Wide Web that they achieved pop culture universality.

Many consider science fiction fandom the first. It began in the late 1920s and by 1939 had its first World Convention. However, we’re only talking hundreds. I considered myself a science fiction fan in junior high, but it wasn’t until the 10th grade that I met another fan in person. That was 1967.

Looking back, I realize it was YA novels that made me a fan, too. At seventy-three, I wonder if I would have had a different life if I had discovered the works of another author first.

I realize now that reading books was my way of coping with the stress of growing up. Just after JFK’s assassination in November 1963, my family began to fall apart. In 1963-1964, I attended three different 7th-grade schools, and two 8th-grade schools, in two states, and lived in four different houses. My parents became obvious alcoholics, their marriage began to unravel, and my dad had his first heart attack. Somehow, I remained a happy kid.

Just before I turned thirteen, when I began the 8th grade in September 1964, I discovered the young adult novels of Robert A. Heinlein. They didn’t use the term young adult back then, but called them books for juveniles. Juvenile delinquency was also a common phrase back then. Before that, they were called books for boys. There were also books for girls. Gender roles were specific back then. This was when newspapers divided job listings into “Men Wanted” and “Women Wanted.”

Discovering Robert A. Heinlein and science fiction gave me a positive outlook on life and my future. I especially identify with the Heinlein juveniles. I remember at the time believing Heinlein would have a literary reputation similar to Mark Twain by the time the 21st century rolled around. That hasn’t happened. Heinlein is often shunned by modern readers of science fiction. I accept much of the criticism regarding his adult novels published after 1960, but I still embrace his young adult novels and other work published before 1960.

Charles Scribner’s Sons, famous for publishing Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Thomas Wolfe, first published the twelve Heinlein juveniles between 1947 and 1958. The Heinlein juveniles were highly regarded by librarians and schools. I discovered them because my 8th-grade teacher put them on her approved reading list. She required our class to read three novels, three magazine articles, and three newspaper articles every six weeks. If we didn’t, she lowered our grade one letter. If we read five of each, she raised our letter grade by one letter. I always read the five of each because I’m terrible at diagramming sentences and understanding grammar. That upped my C to a B each report card.

For over sixty years now, I have been grateful to this teacher. Sadly, I can’t remember her name.

I keep hoping YouTube book reviewers will read Heinlein’s juveniles and reevaluate their judgment on Heinlein. Over the decades, I’ve read memoirs by scientists, writers, and astronauts about how they loved the Heinlein juveniles when they were young, and the impressions the books made on them.

I’ve been meaning to reread all the Heinlein juveniles again and judge them without the influence of nostalgia. Has sentiment clouded my perspective? I fear my love of these books is similar to how people embrace religion when young. Ideas often brainwash us in youth, and it’s almost impossible to deprogram ourselves. Our species suffers from delusions. No one is free of being fooled by beliefs. For every individual, it’s a matter of how delusional.

At seventy-three, I’m taking a hard look at what science fiction did to my mind and personality. I’m starting with the Heinlein juveniles because I believe they were at the Big Bang of my becoming self-aware.

Before I got into science fiction, I consumed the Oz books by L. Frank Baum. I read an article in my thirties about how some libraries pulled the Oz books off their shelves because the librarians worried they gave children unrealistic expectations about life. At the time, I thought that was silly. However, I realized I had grown up with many unrealistic beliefs about life. At the time, I believed the Heinlein juveniles had made me more realistic. Four decades later, I know that was wrong too.

When I took computer programming classes, they taught us the term GIGO – garbage in, garbage out. Have all the pop cultural fantasies we’ve consumed caused our delusional adult beliefs? Humans have always been susceptible to religious fantasies. Haven’t we just replaced those with pop cultural fantasies?

I love the Heinlein juveniles. Why? If I understood why, would I still love them?

JWH

Should I Overcome My Prejudice Against the Undead?

by James Wallace Harris, 6/24/25

I truly dislike vampires. Ditto for zombies. (Although I sometimes like ghosts.)

My short story reading group is discussing the stories from The Best Fantasy Stories from Fantasy and Science Fiction, edited by Edward L. Ferman. I must admit I also have a prejudice against fantasy in general. On the other hand, I want to participate in the group. I want to be positive in my comments. I don’t want to constantly whine about my annoyance with the common themes of the genre.

The second story up is “My Dear Emily” by Joanna Russ. It was first published in the July 1962 issue of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. (You can read the story online.) F&SF provided my favorite genre magazine reading while growing up. I’m so fond of this periodical that I’ve collected an almost complete run of issues from 1949 to 1980. So, how can I be so prejudiced against fantasy?

I imprinted on science fiction when I first discovered reading. I consider science the only cognitive tool for understanding reality. Fantasy is based on magic and the love of the magical. Magic and science are polar opposites. I’ve never understood why people love fiction about beings that never existed. I will admit that science fiction is about beings that might exist, but are probably no more realistic than fantasy creatures.

My first impulse after reading “My Dear Emily” was to post this comment to the group: “Mediocre vampire story obscured by dense prose.” But would that be fair? Joanna Russ is a well-respected writer, even outside of science fiction. Within the genre, she is known for writing such classic feminist SF as The Female Man. Does “My Dear Emily” anticipate second-wave feminist themes in this 1962 story?

The story is set in 1880s San Francisco. Emily is returning from school in the east and bringing her friend Charlotte with her. Russ says, “They had loved each other in school.” Russ was a lesbian, but the story doesn’t appear to go in that direction at first, although in 1962, we might have been only expected to read between the lines. Emily and Charlotte do sleep in the same room.

Emily has returned to San Francisco to her father and Will, a man she is engaged to marry. Charlotte laughs at Emily’s endearing words about Will, and Emily wonders if God will strike her down for being a hypocrite.

However, Emily comes under the influence of Martin Guevara, a vampire. Why bring in the undead? We have the beginning of a good story with hints that Emily loves Charlotte but must marry Will in 19th-century America. My standard theory about why there are fantasy elements in literary stories is that it was easier to sell to genre magazines than get published in literary magazines. Literary magazines paid in free copies, but were usually a dead end for a story. “My Dear Emily” has been frequently reprinted in genre anthologies, earning additional payments and readers. In other words, would-be writers had a strong incentive to add fantasy or science-fictional elements to their stories.

Would I even be writing this essay, or have read “My Dear Emily,” if it hadn’t had a vampire in it? However, does Joanna Russ intend Martin Guevara to be meaningful in this story or just an in with the editor at F&SF?

Martin Guevara offers to get Emily out of her engagement to Will, but he exerts power over Emily, taking physical control of her. Emily already seems to know that Martin is a vampire. Did she know him before she left for school? And she leaves her house and finds me. How did she know where he lived?

On my second reading, this story seemed less murky, but it suggests things that aren’t explained. Emily tries to kill Martin with a silver cross, but he isn’t vulnerable to the power of that symbol. In fact, he isn’t affected by several of the classic defenses used against vampires. Martin tells Emily, “We’re a passion!” about his kind, and “Life is passion. Desire makes life.” He says desire lives when nothing else does.

The story becomes more about vampirism. But is it really? Russ’s prose is far from explicit. Is the story a vampire fantasy or one of lesbian liberation? Are Will and Martin two poles of masculine power?

This story did not need a vampire. But to get published in F&SF, it did. Fantasy obscured the real intent of this tale.

Why does pop culture love the undead? Do they really add anything valuable to fiction? Or, are they just popular stock characters? At best, they might be symbolic, but isn’t that symbolism usually ignored?

JWH

STONE YARD DEVOTIONAL by Charlotte Wood

by James Wallace Harris, 4/12/25

Stone Yard Devotional is about how reality puts the peddle to the metal when life gets all too real. Stone Yard Devotional reads like a memoir, a diary, but it’s classified as a novel. The book was nominated for several awards.

The entire time I was listening to this book I wondered if Charlotte Wood was the unnamed narrator, however after reading “‘The shock was so deep’: Novelist Charlotte Wood on the experience that changed everything” in the Syndney Herald, I realized the novel was only inspired by her own life. Wood and her two sisters were being treated for breast cancer, while she was contemplating mortality and drafting this book.

I have no memory of how I discovered Stone Yard Devotional by Charlotte Wood. The cover and title intrigued me for sure. Maybe it was because it was shortlisted for the 2024 Booker Prize. The audiobook was part of my Spotify subscription, so I gave it a try, and I’m glad I did. It’s not the kind of book I normally read, but it’s wonderful to read if you’re getting old.

The story begins with the Covid pandemic. The narrator separates from her husband, ghosts her friends, and hides out in a guest house of a religious order, even though she is nonreligious. She wants to be alone. But after her initial stay, she returns to the order to live with the nuns. I was never sure if she joined the order or not. I have often thought the monastic life has certain appeals.

The story is about the narrator’s observations while living a contemplative life. These include the death of her mother, the remembrance of childhood, studying the nuns, working in the garden and kitchen, and the guilt of living with a woman she and her classmates horribly bullied as a child. The narrative is simple, like meditation.

The setting is Australia, which is exotic to me. As a kid I wanted to live in Australia. Over the course of the novel, there is a plague of mice that invade the convent. The mice are so numerous that they cover the roads in gray fur. At first, I thought Wood added this element to give her tale some excitement, but I researched and found that her part of Australia they did have a mice plague of Biblical proportions in 2021.

That made life in the convent extremely inconvenient. The mice ate electrical insulation, throwing daily living in the convent back to the 19th century. The illustration for the book’s review at The New York Times might have been another reason I read this book.

Much of what the unnamed narrator contemplates throughout the novel is what everyone thinks about as they get older. The fear of declining health and death, the regrets, the desires for wanting to have done things different, the desires to connect with others while also wanting to pull away, the changes we see in ourselves and others, the appeal of nature and living simple. Wood’s story explores all of that and more, triggering the reader to think about their lives.

Charlotte Wood was born in 1965, so she’s fourteen years younger than me. However, her battle with cancer has likely aged her perception on life. At 73, I’ve been thinking about the things in this novel for years. But I don’t know if everyone who collects social security meditates on these issues. Stone Yard Devotional is a great title for this novel. Even though the narrator said she was an atheist at the beginning of this story, getting old and dealing with people who die, pushes you to be spiritual even without a belief in God.

JWH

NO COUNTRY FOR A WOMAN by Jane Dismore

by James Wallace Harris, 3/30/25

In 1992, I read a one-paragraph description of a science fiction novel published in 1926 by a woman named Lady Dorothy Mills. The book was called Phoenix. The blurb said the book was about an elderly woman undergoing a rejuvenation treatment that made her look twenty again. Because very few SF books were being published in hardback in the 1920s, especially by women, I decided I wanted to find a copy to read. However, it took ten years of dedicated searching before a copy came up for sale. Along the way, I became intrigued by finding out more about Lady Dorothy Mills. It hasn’t been easy.

Many writers dream of achieving immortality through publishing a book. Sadly, that seldom happens. Most books are first and only editions. Writers are remembered only as long as readers read their books. Dead writers tend to fade into forgotten writers as their books disappear from bookstores. Lady Dorothy Mills is almost forgotten today.

No Country for a Woman, a biography of Lady Dorothy Mills by Jane Dismore, might change that. (Amazon USA: Kindle, Hardback). I knew Dismore was on the trail of Lady Dorothy Mills when she published a two-page newspaper article about Lady Dorothy in 2014, where I learned more about Mills than I had in twenty-two years of research. I contacted Dismore. She replied that she was working on a full biography. I’ve been waiting years to read No Country for a Woman. I hoped it would do two things. First, it would answer the many questions I still had about Lady Dorothy Mills, and it has, and much more. Second, I wanted it to resurrect Lady Dorothy Mills. By that, I mean to get new readers for Mills. That remains to be seen.

Unfortunately, Lady Dorothy Mills’ books are out of print, and used copies are rare, so even if No Country for a Woman becomes a best seller for Jane Dismore, Mills won’t get new readers unless her books are reprinted. Dismore’s excellent biography chronicles Lady Dorothy Mills’ rise to fame in the 1920s and 1930s, but will it inspire publishers to reprint Mills’ books today? Evidently, Dismore is more realistic than I am. Her biography makes Lady Dorothy Mills into an exciting woman to read about, but nowhere in the biography does Dismore promote reprinting Mills or recommend reading her books.

Lady Mills was a fascinating woman. To be honest, I don’t know how well her books would be received today. I used to ask my friends: Which would you rather be, a famous novelist or an exciting person that inspired a famous novel or biography? Lady Mills achieved a level of fame in the 1920s and 1930s as a novelist and travel writer. However, No Country for a Woman, focuses on the woman, and not her books. The immortality that Lady Dorothy Mills ultimately finds might not be based on what she wrote, but how she lived. Jane Dismore pictures a woman worthy of a bio movie.

Lady Dorothy Mills’ real life upbringing rivals the fictional Lady Mary Crawley in Downton Abbey. Unlike Lady Mary’s sister, Lady Sybil, Lady Dorothy was cut off from her family when she married a commoner. To make ends meet, Lady Dorothy and her husband, Arthur Mills, wrote novels and travel books to make a living. They each spent three months a year traveling alone in exotic locations hunting material for their next book. Lady Mills first gained fame in the English-speaking world with her 1924 travel book The Road to Timbuktu. The press claimed she was the first white woman to visit Timbuktu alone; after that, it became a tourist destination for adventurous rich travelers.

Over the next ten years, Lady Mills visited several hard-to-reach and dangerous destinations in North and East Africa, the Middle East, and South America, publishing five travel books and one memoir. Newspapers in America, Canada, England, and Australia often ran sensational articles by and about Lady Mills. Mills even got minor respect as a legitimate explorer and was one of the early women accepted into the Royal Geographical Society.

Lady Dorothy also wrote nine novels, but they mostly appealed to shop girls who wanted to read about romances set in exotic locales. A couple of them were science fiction and fantasy. However, her heroines were progressive, promoting feminism and advocating diversity. Lady Dorothy Mills’ early novels dealt with upper-class England during the fading aristocracy. And Lady Mills hung out with many famous English people, including many in the Bright Young Things crowd. Unfortunately, even though her novels often got good reviews for being fun reads, they were never considered part of the English literary movement between the wars.

I hope Jane Dismore’s biography of Lady Dorothy Mills will resurrect Lady Dorothy so she won’t be forgotten. Unfortunately, the website I maintain, ladydorothymills.com, gets damn few hits. It averages about forty hits a week, with zero hits on many days. The only way Lady Dorothy Mills will ever be as famous as she was in the 1920s is if someone makes a movie out of No Country for a Woman. I doubt that will happen but there’s abundant content in the biography for several possible films.

I’ve considered taking down the website I maintain for Lady Mills. The key information has been put on Wikipedia, and No Country for a Woman is now the best source of information for Lady Dorothy Mills. I’ve also thought of putting Lady Dorothy Mills’ public domain books online. I just don’t know if there would be enough interest to merit all the hard.

I do have one regret about the Dismore biography. During the 1930s, Lady Dorothy Mills disappeared from the spotlight of the popular press. She quit writing. Evidently, after inheriting a small amount of money from her mother’s estate after her father died, Lady Mills no longer needed to write for a living. Lady Dorothy eventually became a recluse, living in a seaside hotel. I wanted to know what she thought during all those lonely years.

It’s not Dismore’s fault for not knowing what Lady Mills was like during her fading years because I don’t think anyone knew. But if I had a time machine, I would visit her.

Further Reading:

My Collection of Books by and about Lady Dorothy Mills:

JWH

Novel Ambitions

When we were young we’d all dream of growing up to be in the movies, or rocking out on stage, or flying F-16s, or writing great novels, or rocketing to Mars – the kind of careers that look exciting when we don’t know much about how the world works.  Few kids achieve their childhood ambitions.  Most of us get regular nine-to-five jobs, and just daydream about the ways we’d really like to be spending our hours.

I always wanted to be a science fiction novelist.  Because I loved reading science fiction books I assumed I’d love writing them.  As a teen I didn’t know just how wrong that logic was.  I should have wished to grow up and become a professional reader.  Even as a teen I knew kids who compulsively wrote stories.  I didn’t, but I assumed one day I’d get an urge and start.  I should have known better – the only time I wrote was when I took a creative writing class in high school or college and deadlines forced me to write.

Around 1971 or 72 I went to my first science fiction convention in Kansas City, The Mid-America Con.  I was about 20 at the time and I met a lot of writers there.  But the one that impressed me the most was this kid who looked about my age who told me he had just sold his second story.  He was George R. R. Martin.  I was so impressed and jealous at this very young writer.  I felt like Comet Jo from Empire Star by Samuel R. Delaney, when he first met Ni Ti.  Comet Jo was a naïve rube with dreams that met a guy that had already done everything Comet Jo’s dreamed of doing. 

That was a revelation at that convention – writers write.  And if you want to grow up to write giant bestsellers you’ve got to start young and practice.  Delany was also a writing prodigy, and he dealt with the subject somewhat in Empire Star.

empire-star 

Those early experiences meeting writers should have convinced me to stop daydreaming about writing, but fantasy ambitions aren’t that easily destroyed.  And wanting to be a novelist is different.  Some people don’t start writing until late in life, so I figured I had plenty of time.  If I had wanted to be a football player, fire fighter or astronaut, I’d have known I was over the hill when I turned thirty.  Now that I hope to retire next year, my old fantasy ambition is returning.  I’ll finally have the time.  Probably lack of time wasn’t the real reason I never wrote, and it will be brutally revealed to me soon.  I have to be self-aware enough to recognize that wanting to write and not might be my natural state for my whole life.  But not giving up also seems to be a trait that never goes away either.

Lately, I’ve been thinking about what it means to be a novelist, the grittily specific job details.  I came across “Good Writing vs. Talented Writing” by Maria Popova over at Brain Pickings.  She quotes About Writing by Samuel R. Delany,

Either in content or in style, in subject matter or in rhetorical approach, fiction that is too much like other fiction is bad by definition. However paradoxical it sounds, good writing as a set of strictures (that is, when the writing is good and nothing more) produces most bad fiction. On one level or another, the realization of this is finally what turns most writers away from writing.

Talented writing is, however, something else. You need talent to write fiction.

Good writing is clear. Talented writing is energetic. Good writing avoids errors. Talented writing makes things happen in the reader’s mind — vividly, forcefully — that good writing, which stops with clarity and logic, doesn’t.

This is very telling. The obvious reason why I’m not a writer is the lack the talent.  But what is talent?  Is it a gene?  Is it being born with a muse?  I am reminded of a book, Talent Is Overrated: What Really Separates World-Class Performers from Everybody Else by Geoff Colvin.  Talent is mostly hard work.  If I lack talent its because I’m lazy.  But we also know that some people work very hard and never succeed, even if they put in their 10,000 hours of practice.

But even this isn’t the issue I want to explore.  What skills are really required to write a novel?  Every time I try to write fiction I hit a brick wall.  Writing fiction requires having imagination the size of Jupiter.  I don’t know if you have ever wanted to write novels, plays or movies, but have you ever thought about what goes into creating a great story?   I’ll use movies and television shows for example over books because they are more familiar to people.

Let’s think about of some of the poplar shows on TV like Breaking Bad or The Game of Thrones and dissect how they are put together, and what makes them successful.  Both stories are incredibly addictive.  I believe each has all the elements that make for great fiction.  Maybe not Shakespeare great, but great for seducing people into their story worlds.

Story World

The first aspect of great fiction is creating the story world.  This goes way beyond setting.  And I’m not talking about the world building of fantasy and science fiction, but the creating of a whole fictional reality.  Even when a story is realistic like Breaking Bad, or To Kill a Mockingbird, its creating a whole story world, time and place, with endless defining details.  As much as we’d like to believe that To Kill a Mockingbird is an accurate portrayal of the past, it isn’t.  Every written story involves two imaginations, the writer and the reader.  With movies and television shows, the director, the actors, set designers, cinematographers, costume makers, special effects wizards, also add their imaginations to creating the story world.  But with novels and short stories, the author suggests everything in words, and the readers bring their own imaginations to decode their version of the story world.  Watching The Game of Thrones, meanings most everything has been envisioned for the audience, but readers of the book all imagine something different.

The reason why the Harry Potter books are so great is because of the complete story world that J. K. Rowling created.

If you ever think about becoming a writer, do this experiment.  Each time you read a book or watch a movie, try and list everything that had to be invented by the imagination of the writer.  Most stories involves thousands of imaginative decisions, and stories like The Game of Thrones or the Harry Potter books, involve tens of thousands of mental creations, maybe even hundreds of thousands.  These novels run 100,000-200,000 words, or more.  Thinking tunic or sword are small decisions, but thinking up the details of Quidditch takes some real work.

Characters

It’s hard to say which comes first, characters or story world.  Often writers create characters that generate their story worlds.  Other writers start with the story world first and then create the characters that belong in that story world.  Either way, creating characters is very hard work.  And the best stories seem to have lots of characters.  Would The Game of Thrones or Breaking Bad stories be so compelling if they only followed a handful of main characters?  Walter White is a tremendous creation, but the depth of his character works because of his relationship with Skyler, Jesse, Hank, Walter Jr., Saul, Gus, and so on.  Think about every detail that went into creating Gustavo Fring?  Does thinking up those kinds of character details come from genes, muses or what?  Most great writers are great observers of people.

One of the hardest things to create for your characters is their dialog.  Bad writers make all their characters talk like themselves.  Great writers make all their characters sound like diverse people from all over the world.  Listen to audio books, especially the ones that have narrators who do voices for each character.  It’s not just the sound of the voice, or the accent, but how each character phrases their words.

Each character has to have their own background and history, but more important than that, each character has to have their own motivations and desires.  When we read novels generally they are driven by one or two people’s stories.  But every character that walks into a scene has their own agenda.  Bad writers create minor characters to show off the main characters, but great writers create minor characters that want to make the story their own.  Every character should be trying to steal the scene for themselves, because in reality, every person thinks they are the center of the universe.  Nobody wants to be a red shirt.

Plot

Plot is what drives the story forward.  Will Walter make enough money to leave his family secure before he dies of cancer?  Who will take the Iron Throne from Joffrey Baratheon?

Writing a plot requires imagining a beginning, middle and end.  However, modern binge worthy TV shows have no end, but are sophisticated soap operas.  Readers want a satisfying conclusion at the end of the book, even if its part of a series.  Readers love feeling the need to keep turning pages hoping to find out what happens next. 

Standalone stories, like non-series novels, and movies, have plots that lead to a satisfactory resolution of a problem revealed at the beginning of a story.  Soap opera like stories depend on a series of conflicts that get resolved from time to time.  Great stories will bring the story to a climax, and present an epiphany. 

I saw Star Trek Into Darkness yesterday.  It has the same plot every time.  Kirk and Spock play out their now famously cliché character traits while battling a almost impossible-to-beat foe, with all the minor characters also getting to reinforce their now standardize character traits.  And we love this because it reinforces the familiar and nostalgic essence of what we think of as Star Trek.  Sometimes plots involving giving the audience exactly what they want.

On the other hand, new stories must give readers and audiences something they never seen before.  Shows like Breaking Bad, Big Love, Deadwood, Shameless, Girls, etc. find ways to present new and very different plots.  Let’s face it, some of us are very old and have been consuming fiction for a very long time, and getting jaded to routine plotting is all too easy.

Conflict

Even though I greatly admire The Song of Fire and Ice for its story world, I have to nick it for stretching to the story out too long.  It’s one giant potboiler, generating a steady stream of conflicts and cliffhangers.  My favorite character is Arya Stark, who gets involved in one misadventure after the next.  She never seems to get anywhere, but she always has something life threatening to deal with.  But that’s how you keep readers and watches involved.  Characters need conflict to drive them forward in the story, and creating imaginative conflicts is another trait of a good writer.

To me, the masters of fictional conflict are the creators and writers of Breaking Bad.  Not only do they keep their characters busy, but they create original, unpredictable conflicts that we never see coming.  When I think Jesse is going to have a standard shootout with a villain, Walter shows up at the last second and runs the villain over with his car.  The cliché feeling is to want Jessie to kill the guy.  We the audience are aching for Jessie to kill the guy.  And then out of nowhere Walter runs him over.  That’s great plotting and creative conflict resolution.

Summing Up

I don’t know if creating imaginative story worlds, great characters, compelling plots and satisfying conflicts requires an innate talent.   Is it an ability that can be acquired through long study and practice?  Most books are not that creative.  Thousands of novels are published every year that don’t sell or find fans.  Many of them are competently written.  Delany might be right, that good writing is common, but bad, and talented writing is special.  Or it could be all those mundane story tellers just didn’t work hard enough to be distinctive.   Maybe creativity comes after ten rewrites, or twenty.

I feel all the stories I’ve written so far fail because I didn’t push myself hard to enough to be more creative.  I would like to know if I could push myself to work harder would I be more creative?  I have a novel I’m working on now and I feel it doesn’t even achieve 1% of what it should do.  And I have a sick feeling that even if I worked a hundred times harder it might only succeed at the 10% level.  Maybe if I had a natural talent for story telling I could achieve 90% success with far less work.  But I tend to think talented people are just people who wrote dozens of practice novels and earned their skills at faster creativity.

I have two challenges to test.  First, can I learn to write after I retire, when I have more time to work harder?  And second, is it possible for someone in their sixties to become creative late in life?  I’m not delusional, I know I’m in physical and mental decline.  I’ve already decided that writing a novel is too ambitious for this test, and that I should aim for success with short stories.

Since 2002 I’ve had a renaissance with my love of fiction because of Audible.com and audiobooks.  I have discovered that listening is the best way for me to study great writing.  Listening is like having a powerful magnifying glass for studying fiction.  And in the past year, I’ve gone back to studying fiction with eye ball reading.  What I learned from hearing lets me see words in a new way.  The more I study, the more I realize how little I knew about how fiction is put together.  I might have discovered that in my teens if I had actually tried to write fifty or a hundred stories back then.  You can’t understand fiction completely until you write it.

I don’t know if having all my time free is enough to find success at writing fiction.  Whether I succeed or not, the attempt will be a great learning experience.

JWH – 5/27/13