The Writer's Abyss

It's starting to hurt again.

Even before I am completely finished, like with revisions and editing, I feel that shadow creeping up behind me, ready to engulf me. 

It's the writer's greatest fear: the abyss.

What abyss?

You know: that one: the bottomless pit of deadly indolence, where writers who've just finished a book go to scream at the walls for another story idea and hear only the echo of their own pitiful voices. It's a curse.

You throw all of your being into promulgating a lie, a beautiful/hideous multi-layered intriguing tale of invented characters going about a make-believe world all to illustrate some esoteric point you decided had to be made, based off a spark of insight late one night long ago that returns in a flash as you sip your morning coffee, ready to go over that difficult chapter one more time. 

Then it's done and you have nothing. Oh, sure, you have your baby. But it's just a heap of words and punctuation that may make sense to a few people. But there it is. 

Now you have nothing. You stare into the mirror and see the abyss looking back. Did you actually write that book? Is it any good? Will anyone want to read it? And if any dare to read it will they bother to click on a star or even type a few words by way of sharing their opinion of the book? Will the words be positive or a sharp critique of everything you have ever believed about the world and all the beings in it and how they interact and whether you have plausibly represented them to such a degree that a reader will not only be compelled forward through the pages but perhaps be moved in some way, emotionally, spiritually, maybe get up and go do something helpful in the world, a turn in their life, something like that?

So you get a few words by way of a review. Good comments. Thank you. So good, in fact, that you want to read it, as though you are not the author but just another reader. You pick up your personal copy from your trophy shelf and begin. A number of pages in you find the first mine and it explodes in your face, rips your eyes from their sockets: the error, the most grotesque of all errors because a mere spellchecker could not find it and thrash it.

It reads "form" when, in the context of the sentence, it should read as "from".

And the shadow takes you completely. What is the use? Can never get it right. Why try?

Because without that compulsion to pound keys you are nothing. There is nothing else that causes you to awaken each day. Without an idea, a story to compose, you have nothing. You are an automaton, going through each day in the simplest routine of breakfast, lunch, and dinner, TV, naps and night sleeping, dreams abandoning you. You are a mere husk of your former self. Waiting.

Then, when you least expect it, a whirlwind of narratives spin up from the abyss, circling around you, closing in, rubbing your mind raw, until you see a ghost in the machine and you lean forward and you type again.

My latest effort is FLU SEASON, a pandemic trilogy, with Book 1 The Book of Mom available now. Books 2 and 3 are finished and will be available soon.

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(C) Copyright 2010-2023 by Stephen M. Swartz. All Rights Reserved. No part of this blog, whether text or image, may be used without me giving you written permission, except for brief excerpts that are accompanied by a link to this entire blog. Violators shall be written into novels as characters who are killed off. Serious violators shall be identified and dealt with according to the laws of the United States of America.

To Write PC or Not to Write PC?

Do you write what you preach? Are fiction authors supposed to promote their personal values? Or is the story a self-contained entity with its own political views? Must or should the author reveal personal positions on every social and political issues undergoing discussion in the public arena? Or is the story just a story and everything political is throw to the wind for the sake of the story? 

(Apologies for using a white, male, middle-class, heterosexual image.)

Once upon a time, a writer wrote a book. In this case, the writer is a "he" and the story involves a "she" as the main character. What could go wrong? one might ask. Many male authors have written female protagonists, and certainly many female authors have written male protagonists. Still, perceptions exist. "Write what you know" is an old axiom, and yet if that were to be followed religiously, a writer would only be allowed to write his (or "his or her") autobiography.

Conversely, the writer is supposedly imbued with a welter of imagination, able to leap tall plots in a single bound, about to stop dastardly antagonists with bare hands (obviously, on a keyboard). So it should go beyond the "write what you know"--shouldn't it? It is the mark of an author that he/she can make you believe he/she knows what he/she is writing about. So, if we allow for rule number 3, then anything goes. 

However, there are plenty of instances where readers get in the way. I mean that is a wholly innocent sense. If writing for a particular class of reader, the writer may shape the story in a certain way to appeal to that reader, say in genre-driven stories. Part of that may be, say, to use initials instead of a name or to use a pen name complete;y to hide the gender of the author. Because a Romance author cannot be a man...in theory. And a hardcore sci-fi author cannot be female...traditionally.

I don't intend to focus on, say, gender issues, but today we seem surrounded by issues of all kinds, political and social, which make me wonder. Do authors include their personal values and views in their fiction writing? For example, if you are opposed to same-sex marriage, do you write stories in which the traditional opposite-sex marriage is the only option? Granted, the world of the story may demand such, but if the author feels strongly about the issue, might there not be some occurrence in the story of a same-sex marriage?

If an author is against, say, guns...would the story be gun-free? If the author believes in a nation having a strong military and the government protecting its citizens by militarizing city police forces, would that idea be reflected in the author's latest book? If the author is a card-carrying conservative opposed to abortion, would the character in the story who gets pregnant have an abortion or, more likely, have the baby and offer it for adoption? It starts to get complicated. Or perhaps it's very easy. Do your characters act as you would act?

I have to say here that the examples in the preceding paragraphs were cherry-picked and do not reflect my own personal positions on those issues--or perhaps they do. You can never know for sure, because we like to keep our beliefs private. Or do we? Plenty of us speak up and speak out on whatever we believe is right or should be right, and we either find those who agree speaking with us or those who disagree trying to shout us down. The third column, which I suspect is the largest one, remains mostly silent--or dabbles in subtle sarcasm just to be able to vent when necessary to maintain personal mental health. 

And then there is the marketing question. If an author writes books in which the characters act as he/she would, espouse views the author would espouse, act as the author would act with regard to a whole host of political and social issues, views, and positions, where does that leave the reader? Could that reader like a story enough to buy it even though the reader and the author may have different views on, say, immigration reform? Or do we authors censor ourselves so as to be as mild-mannered as possible and not offend anyone who just might be tempted to buy our book? Tough questions--or non-issues?

Perhaps many writers, authors, dabblers in words, whatever the label, just don't care about such matters because just writing an interesting story is hard enough and we don't have time to be concerned about things outside the story. Or are we politely disingenuous, hiding our true nature and our true beliefs and values for the sake of that interesting story, afraid to speak out about something we feel strongly about because we worry about offending fellow authors and potential readers. 

Fiction writers, as a clan, do not generally deal with pontification; we do not write a work of fiction solely to push our view of how the world should be. Or do we? Or should we? Or...why shouldn't we?

In my latest novel, still in the final tweaking stage, my protagonist uses guns. She hunts for food. Later she is a soldier. (You may notice the pronoun "she"--which may imply to some that I have a second strike against me in that a male writer shouldn't write about a female protagonist.) Two valid uses of guns. However, the recent (yet again!) mass shooting on a school campus brings the issue of guns to the forefront once again. I almost feel the need to apply a "trigger warning" to a book where there is (or may be) the shooting of a gun. Is that where we are heading as writers? 

I am quite aware of the three strikes already against me as I step up to the plate with my book in my hands, ready to swing at an outfield full of readers (personally, I am opposed to sports metaphors being used in subjects unrelated to sports, but I do so here strictly for the potential humor): 1) I'm a male writer with a female protagonist; 2) I'm not the same ethnicity/race as my protagonist; 3) I grew up in a city with two married parents and I'm writing about an orphan in a small village. 

But let me plunk down that huge weight on the other side of the scale: imagination, research, and a beta reader who is female, the same ethnicity as my protagonist, and an orphan from a small village. I hope I got the story right--and by "right" I mean authentic, no matter what social and political issues are swirling around the social media forums and bookstores of this world as I write it and offer it to readers.


Sure, the literary canon is full of writers who pushed agendas, who wrote dogmatic tales, who left strongly-worded suggestions of how we should behave, what we should think, what we should do or stop doing--woven more or less subtly through a fictional narrative that served to entertain us long enough to get the message across. Or were they simply good stories which only in hindsight do we see a message or a warning? 

And yet, in this present day world of saying the right thing, being politically correct or decidedly not, what is the author's responsibility...or compulsion?



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(C) Copyright 2010-2015 by Stephen M. Swartz. All Rights Reserved. No part of this blog, whether text or image, may be used without me giving you written permission, except for brief excerpts that are accompanied by a link to this entire blog. Violators shall be written into novels as characters who are killed off. Serious violators shall be identified and dealt with according to the laws of the United States of America.

The Importance of Space

To start off this new year, I welcome my first ever guest blogger, fellow author Kate Bitters. I've been reading her debut novel Elmer Left. and thoroughly enjoying it. Being something of an old man myself, I could relate....

Here is some advice from Kate about a problem many writers face: space. 

The beginning of last month was chaos.  Boxes everywhere, an overly big (and accident prone) moving truck, piles of clothes and shoes on the floor, a huge gap in my room where a bed should have been...

Moving is tough.  Any kind of environmental change is tough.  When we are surrounded by disorder and newness, it is easy to lose ourselves in the offending space.  It is easy to become discouraged.  Earlier this month, I remember sitting next to a mound of clothing, sorting through it sock-by-sock, and thinking, "Good grief, when did I accumulate so many tank tops?"

But these steps are necessary--the sorting, the putting away, the ordering of toiletries, the creation of a system.  Without these steps, things get shoved aside for later and continue to linger in the backs of our minds.

The very root of Feng Shui (and if you don't buy into any other part of the concept, buy into this...) is the creation of order and the removal of clutter.  The idea is that human beings function best in a clean, ordered, and uncomplicated environment.  Our bodies relax; our minds are put at ease; we are free to concentrate on things outside of our space--higher purposes.  Like writing.

Unfortunately, my writing took a blow this past November (ironic, since it is national novel-writing month).  I had trouble focusing in my new space.  I struggled to carve out an area in which I could write and work and concentrate.  But eventually, it did happen.  I built a desk; I bought a chair; I found homes for all my dishes, sweaters, hair products.  The beast with walls and floors and ceiling began to feel less like a container and more like a home.

My Office

I found my mind relaxing, and then it went beyond relaxation: it started to think creatively again.  I started to see the world in colors and textures, instead of in a Sin City-type black and white (slightly evil, extremely jarring).  My mind was back; my motivation was back.  Words began to flow.  And I learned a valuable lesson about the importance of space.  It might seem like an insignificant factor in our daily productivity and creativity, but our surroundings can have an eerie kind of power over us.  Don't let it take the reins.  It is up to you to tame your space, make it your own, and make it work for you.

Happy organizing ;)

Kate Bitters is a novelist, editor, and ghost writer.  She is putting the finishing touches on her second novel, Ten Thousand Lines, and working on a third.  She resides in the magical and frosty city of Minneapolis, MN.

Website: www.katebitters.com

Blog: http://fightforthewrite.blogspot.com/ 

Twitter: @katebitters

Meanwhile, in a blog far, far away, Kate will be hosting my piece about the names we give story characters: fightforthewrite.blogspot.com. I shall return here forthwith.


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(C) Copyright 2010-2014 by Stephen M. Swartz. All Rights Reserved. No part of this blog, whether text or image, may be used without me giving you written permission, except for brief excerpts that are accompanied by a link to this entire blog. Violators shall be written into novels as characters who are killed off. Serious violators shall be identified and dealt with according to the laws of the United States of America.