Why We Need Creative Writing

Sechin Tower

@SechinTower

With each passing year, greater numbers of students arrive at Day One of my high school writing classes already questioning the value of what we do. Even in the honors classes, I’ve noticed a growing trend of students seemingly waiting to pounce on the moment when they can boldly declare how much they hate reading novels or how useless it is to practice writing.

“It’s fine for you,” a student told me just a few days ago. “You write books about robots and adventure and stuff, but I don’t care about that. I already write good enough. [sic] I’m not going to be a writer, so none of this will help me in real life.”

These doubts deserve honest analysis. What if novels and fiction and essays really have been made obsolete by video games and texts and Facebook posts? If these new media are the future of human communication, is it really worth students’ time and taxpayers’ dollars to teach them such outdated forms? Or even that it’s worth spelling “you” with three letters?

The answer can’t rest on mere tradition. Just because we’ve always done things this way doesn’t mean we always should. If that were the case, we’d still be boxing children’s ears every time they emerged from the coal mines before the end of their fourteen hour shifts. And it should also be noted that these students aren’t arguing for illiteracy, just that they’ve already learned the rudimentary mechanics of reading and writing, and they believe that’s enough. Why learn more?

Across this country, Teachers of literature frequently find themselves answering this question, and not just to students. They must explain to parents and school boards and legislators that literature is more than an idle pastime because it teaches us different perspectives from our past, present, and future. Furthermore, students who regularly read also score higher on every important exam, including those outside the humanities. Scientific research also confirms that reading challenging literature strengthens the brain.

I wholeheartedly agree with all those arguments, but I feel that there’s at least one more point that needs to be made in defense of writing, and specifically creative writing at that.

Naturally, reading and writing can’t be split apart any more than you could yank the north pole off the top of a magnet. They are Yin and Yang, and every author knows that to be a writer, one must also be a reader. But most classes still revolve around which books you’ve read and how much you remember about them. Maybe this is another artifact of past educational systems, or maybe it’s because English teachers are always passionate readers but not always passionate writers. Whatever the case, the skills of writing for different purposes, different audiences, and in different forms are all too often forgotten or assumed, and then teachers and professors are shocked when even graduate-level students struggle with structuring their essays, let alone with forms of writing other than the essay.

Writing takes practice, but even in our world of texts and emails it’s still worth taking the time to master some of the skills required to be better understood. We don’t have to write like Shakespeare, but we should have the power to express ourselves in writing so that others can understand us—or, at the very least, so that others won’t think we’re idiots.

Anyway, that’s what I’d like to tell the kid who thinks writing is a waste of time. I  know he’ll never read this (and I won’t assign anything I’ve ever written because it just seems too narcissistic), but as final proof of the power of the written word, far more people will hear my side of the argument because of this post than will ever hear his opinion. And if he disagrees, he’s more than welcome to leave a (written) comment on this post!

Be good, and dream crazy dreams,

Sechin Tower is a teacher, a table-top game designer, and the author of Mad Science Institute. You can read more about him and his books on SechinTower.com and his games on SiegeTowerGames.com

My Recipe for (mis)Adventure

I like to cook.  I like to write.  These two passions have a lot in common.  When I cook, occasionally I follow a recipe, most of the time I just throw the ingredients together willy-nilly.  When that happens the results range from good, to very good, to not worth the energy it takes to throw the meal away.  So it goes with my writing.  My tendency is to write like I cook--by the seat of my pants.  I'm thinking it may be time to change my approach to one of these passions.  And it isn't my cooking.

When I cook by the seat of my pants the basic assumption is worst case scenario is this: the meal is awful, in which case I call Dominoes and no one starves.  The risks are the ingredients, the time I spend cooking and the time I spend cleaning up.  When I write that way, the risks are essentially the same if you allow that the ingredients are my creative juices.  The key difference involves the question of time.  It takes me thirty-minutes to an hour to perfect or ruin a meal.  Clean-up is twenty minutes depending on the pans I use.  It takes me a year (or more) to cook a novel.  And the clean-up?  Well, I'm learning the hard way that it can take years to recover from a book that doesn't sell, or in keeping with the analogy:  from writing a book that no one wants to eat.

When I cook and stick with the recipe, two things happen.  For one, the process is streamlined because I have all the ingredients I need in the proper quantities.  The meal gets on the table faster and no one goes hungry.  The other thing that happens is the finished product is reliably good, sometimes amazing.  But rarely awful.  And nothing is more heartbreaking in a kitchen than cleaning up a mess from a meal that no one ate.  On the other hand the rewards of seat-of-the-pants cooking are potentially profound.  You never get the same meal twice, and no one can say, "This was better the last time you made it."
George R.R. Martin employs a different analogy, using architects and gardeners.  One is meticulous with every stage and step defined, the other favors the randomness and discovery of nature.  Since I am neither an architect nor a gardener, but I do like to cook and eat--I'll call this my recipe for (mis)adventure.  Without going into the gory details, I find myself in the kitchen cleaning up the writing mess of a less than satisfactory meal.  So this time around I am following the recipe.  I have outlined the heck out of my next book.  Every plot point is mapped, every beat of tension in acts I, II and III is identified, every character arc is defined.  I know I'm going to miss the delicious surprises that come with writing by the seat of my pants, but I'm hoping that the end product will be just as good, maybe even better.

So the table is set.  I'm at the stove, apron on and spatula in hand.  The garlic is starting to brown.

Dinner will be served in, oh, six months.

Trekking Through the ASHES Trilogy

I remember reading a scathing review of DRAW THE DARK a couple years ago where the person got all upset because I clearly hadn’t done my research or else I would know that Winter, WI (a real town, and a very nice one) is not even close to Milwaukee.  I think the person also complained that you couldn’t see Lake Michigan from there either, but I haven’t gone back to check because life is too short to indulge in masochism.

What I recall, though, is being a little ticked off because clearly the person hadn’t bothered reading my acknowledgements where I flat-out say that the Winter I describe in the book is not based on the real Winter, WI.  Really, I just loved the name and decided to go with it.  But that was my first clue that people take these things seriously, and I do understand that you need a certain amount of verisimilitude, particularly if you’re going to talk about a place, and most especially if the setting is a key determinant of the narrative’s direction.

I think it was Ben Winters talking about Concord, NH, the setting for his Last Policeman series, who said he really wanted folks to have a mental map of that town so that if they ever went, they could stand on a street corner and say, Yep, there’s thus and such.  People take Hobbiton tours and any number of Lord of the Rings tours; you can walk through the London neighborhoods where Holmes prowled, or—if your tastes are tad more modern—walk the beat around Lower Manhattan with Stabler and Benson from on Law & Order: SVU.

What we’re talking about here, of course, is setting.  Setting puts characters in context and, IMHO, ought to be treated as a character in its own right.  For me, if I can’t visualize or don’t know where my characters are, I really can’t construct them to be as real as possible.  People react to setting as much as they react to situation and other people, and in fact, setting can create situations and act to bring people into narratives.  Settings become so important that not only do people want to see where their favorite characters lived, but you--the writer--may even create a place your readers want to see for themselves.

I get a fair amount of fan mail about the ASHES trilogy, and many fans do ask about the places I mention in the books.  (I’m always particularly thrilled when folks who live in Wisconsin or Michigan say that they recognize a lot of what I’m talking about, even when it’s fictional, as the town of Rule is.)  But much of ASHES is based on real places, and so I thought that, over the next couple of weeks, I would take you on a bit of a guided tour through a few of the places mentioned in each book of the trilogy.  This way, if you’re ever in the neighborhood, you can decide for yourself just how accurate my descriptions are.  If they aren’t, please . . . don’t tell me.  It ain't called literary license and fiction for nothing.

ASHES
Sheboygan, WI: Yes, there really is a Sheboygan.  There are actually two; the other’s in Michigan.  The Everly Brothers did, indeed, write a hit song entitled, “Mention My Name in Sheboygan,” and it’s quite the catchy tune.

Alex's Aunt Hannah hails from here (and, yup, there are scads of Lutherans; Lake Wobegone hasn't got them all), and it's a beautiful place, right on Lake Michigan.

 

In the past, Sheboygan was a big manufacturing town for, of all things, chairs and ships.   I’m not kidding.  But it’s also heavily German, and so one of the other things it’s known for are its brats, something about which the New York Times wrote a nice article.  The places they list to get great brats?  Still here, and yes, Miesfield's makes brats to die for.  Purists soak them in beer first, and I’m completely okay with that . . . except it does seem like a waste of a good beer.


Rule, MI—Sorry, there is no Rule.  There are, however, scores of small towns that were wholly given over to mining (iron and copper), lumber, or grist milling once upon a time and which dot the Upper Peninsula.  There are six big iron-rich regions (ranges) in the area and one, the Gogebic, runs through the western part of the U.P. and into northern Wisconsin, and is where I envisioned Rule. Most MI mining these days is kaput, although there are a few active taconite mines.  Wander through any of these smaller towns, and you get a sense for how they were once quite well-to-do but fallen on very tough times.  Go through a tiny town with single traffic light or a four-stop at its center, and you’ve got Rule, in terms of what it once was, nailed.  Or tour through one of the U.P.'s many mining ghost towns for a taste of how busy and developed this area once was. (Fayette's fun while Mandan, a copper mining town in the Keweenaw Peninsula and further east and north than where I envisioned Rule, is downright spooky.) 

The region’s awash in mining history, too.  In the first book, I mention an iron mining museum, and there is a fabulous one in Iron Mountain, MI, where you can, indeed, ride an ore cart about 2600 feet underground into this drift mine.  (Yes, I’m jumping a little ahead of myself here since a mine doesn’t really become a “character” until SHADOWS, but let’s just go with it for a second.)  In case you can’t make it all the way to visit Big John himself, you can always watch this video of the entire tour.

As I recall, I believe that Alex mentions a big Cornish pump.  If she didn’t, shame on her, because this contraption, based in Iron Mountain, is an amazing piece of machinery.  Mines filling up with water was/is a huge problem in the area, and the pump, designed for the Chapin Mine, is the largest steam-driven pump in the United States and one of the largest in the world.  At the height of its operations, it removed about five million gallons of water (yes, that is million with an m) every day.  You can see, then, where I’m going with this and how I got the idea for stuff that happens later in the trilogy.  Anyway, if you’re in the neighborhood, you should stop by for a look-see.  There’s also a very nice iron mining museum right alongside.


 The Waucamaw Wilderness—nope, sorry, no Waucamaw either.  But there is the Porcupine Mountains Wilderness State Park—the Porkies, to those of us who love them—that run right into and up to Lake Superior, and I used them as the models for the Waucamaw.  Having hiked them a fair amount, I can tell you that what they may not have in height (these are pimples compared to the Shenandoahs, the White Mountains, you name it), these aren’t easy either.  My favorite treks include Lake of the Clouds,

the view  of Lake Superior from Summit Peak,

anywhere along the Presque Isle River and its gorgeous waterfalls,

Government Peak and Mirror Lake,

And loads more.  But nothing beats Lake Superior at sunset.  This photograph by Steve Perry really does capture just how breathtaking and magical this place is, too.

Next week, we wander through SHADOWS.

And a final note: only five days left to enter for your chance at a signed copy of MONSTERS and an ASHES backpack.  It's easy; just click the Goodreads link, on the right, top of the page!

Scarlett Letters And Concert Battle Scars

Concert season is upon us, or at least for me anyway. After catching The Lumineers on Thursday, it has taken me a little while to recover from the awesomeness that I had partaken in. My first outdoor concert was a success! Seven thousand people in a field was quite an experience, especially when a young man who was under the influence of more than one substance was waltzing about, dancing and singing in between songs.  Sure, there were many people who were just like him there, except this man was different. He ran right in front of me and stopped, then turned to face me and screamed "Morgan!" He stood for a moment after, then left to find someone else to talk to. I still have no idea who he was.

 Unfortunately, I must have a few --way more than a few-- annotated pages due tomorrow morning. But hey, I almost touched the lead singer so I am a happy camper.

Fan-girling aside, I get to enjoy the beautiful work of Nathaniel Hawthorne as you are reading this. First of all, I do not feel any sympathy for Hester Prynne. She enjoys putting herself in bad situations, or it at least appears that way. Second, this is nothing like Easy A. Very disappointing, but it was definitely expected to be different. Remember, this teenage girl mindset of mine scares me just as much as it scares everyone else.

Hester seems like she does not even want sympathy to be honest. She knew better than to do what she did, right? I mean, I get it. She thought her hubby was lost at sea so she needed to find someone else. That is fine and dandy. But, she could of waited just a little bit longer. It's been about two years, then he shows up as she is being publicly persecuted for adultery; great welcome home present. Oh, did I mention that she is dead-set on the idea that her child is some sort of elf-ish, demon-like being. Who thinks that way? Madness. This book is full of mad, estranged thoughts that I have yet to put together in my mind. I know what some may be thinking, "Morgan. Quit being judgmental. You did not live in that time, you do not understand what hardships she went through." I get it. There was no line between religion and law back then, I know that much.

Maybe it is just the way she uses her daughter as a walking symbol of her "sin" is what makes me not enjoy Hester as I should. She somewhat exploits her, even though she is the product of her wrong doing; she just takes it a bit too extreme. Making her standout even more than she already does is definitely going to make life a bit more difficult than what it will be. Like usual, I always judge a book that I am halfway finished with; hoping that I am proven wrong by the end of the novel. (I was completely on point with Catcher in the Rye, just to clear that up.)  

Judging mid-novel is a nasty habit; I most definitely do not recommend it whatsoever. 

DFTBA