To the surprise of absolutely no one

I was a prolific sonuvabitch as a kid. I shared some college stuff last time, but here's work from even earlier, high school and junior high, in particular. Some fragments in this bunch, but the prosody is surprisingly solid. Might be worth revisiting and editing. Soontm. Oh yeah, and also, prose poems. Hell fucking yes, I actually wrote prose poems. And they are like astoundingly religious. I tell people how close I came to becoming a priest, but I've apparently blocked out most of the memories of my piety. This is like discovering a thousand shares of some tech stock if only that wasn't nothing at all like this. Lastly, ellipsises are used to indicate fragments. And yes, I'm aware that isn't a word.

"enthroned"

stretches a cat before the fire
  his eyes rolled back reclined
no sight in nature so deceives
  as the languid lion thus defined

the king upon a velvet throne
sipping bloodred wine refined
his tyranny veiled in tears of gold
his ruthlessness denied...

"eventide"

the sun falls from the sky
a dropping diamond from on high
brilliant with the brilliance of forgotten years
burning with the fire flame ablaze in stolen tears
whisked away by the wind at dawn and dusk
scattered to the morrow in rain and dust
the sun is only just as bright
as all the stars shining at night

"mimsy in the barrowgroves"

a witty man once told me
the toucan knows--

i asked the man just what he meant,
he said it just goes to show
i cannot guarantee you anything
that birds all swim or fish have wings
they might, who knows,
what the future brings
or what might come with tied shoestrings
and long nights of Paris flings
everything that might with reindeer ring
these are all the sorts of things
of which a poet often sings

"a rocking chair"

It's the autumn afternoons I miss the most. Just sitting in a chair, surrounded by nothing and everything, by morning and by evening, by all my fears -- which were few -- and all my hopes -- which were so many. Innocence, I remember. I didn't know but I didn't care and it was the second that was the more important.

I would watch the smoke from the tar fire, burning illegally but I didn't know. Watching birds fly fleeing from the smoke--I might have guessed but didn't care.

Then I looked into the smoke and saw a dream--and I smiled. Now I look into the wispy screen I see a dream and cry.

The quiet fear of suspicion. The brief, furtive longing of kindled hope.

See the smoke roll across the lawn, on wheels turning as inexorable as time. In the tendrils of burning leaves are the ashes of forgotten dreams, scattering to the four corners of an ever-collapsing globe, scattered by the wind that wears away mountains into valleys. A complement to passing time, the breath of her exhalation as her indrawn breath summons storms to suck away years so does her wind wipe away any hope of a future.

What can be built to survive time? Our hands are not so able as the fists of our creator. No, man cannot create save God destroy. Only one aspect of our person can endure. It is that which concerns ourselves, the cog in the machine of our story. It is that which permits one of us to live and threatens another with untimely death. What can be made, can be unmade. But what we feel can never be taken away.

A thing to survive centuries, in songs, poems and memories. An emotion that endures beyond reason.

"gardening"

A flower, an ancient flower. An eternal flower, like the rose in our hearts it does not wilt. In our hearts the flowers still grow, in an everlasting spring. They do not know winter but for the cold chill that brushes them when we stray. They know only spring, which, though the wind blows, is always bright and green. The flowers in our heart are blooming, waiting for the day you come to claim them. Until that day the sun of your smile beams down on us from afar. Like this flower, the pink everlasting, the rose in our heart will never die. So it waits, that you might pluck it, and wear it as you will that our love joins you, bound to the flower in our hearts and this gift of an eternal flower we give you now.

"love poetry for christians"

i'm wasting my time
    trying to find other ways to heaven
while there are a thousand ways to fly
all of the best ones linger in your eyes

"that's a hell of a volta"

do not follow the lilied path
there is no rose in the garden;
only the petals of dead blooms
with the brown dirty ground around them

there is no water in the fountain;
only the tears of those who walk by
and cannot see the sky above them--
do not fall in the drowning pool

in your arms are the memories
of warm summer days at your home
where we wrestled in the piles of leaves
and never left the other alone

"where"

only in the mirrormere
is your reflection truly pure--
peerless, gazing in the waters of your soul--
there's an artistry to your face
a vaulted beauty held in no other place...

"before it's where"

before Thumenicledes breathes northern air
before the pillowed sky falls down
it is in the grass whispering there
where the earth curls close around

before the truculent sun rises in the east
before her palette spills across the page
it is in the thunderous breast of the priest
where commanded to the stage

before the morbid dawn of uneasy summer
before the flowers begin to bloom
it is in the eyes of a mighty gardener
where he sinks slow in gloom

before the birds begin to sing
before all the world shakes off its sleep
it is in the moment of dancing
where for a season we forget to weep

A Single Shot, No Chaser -- 7/28/2012

The very first version of this website, which I am fairly certain no one ever read--you owe it to yourselves to check out the archives, I left them there--included short little essays about writing, characterization, plot, and all of that.  Now I'm going to do more.

When a famous, even not so famous, writer talks about style, they tend to focus on crafting a natural sounding tone and method of expression that grows organically from the writer's deep rooted literary sensibility.  Basically, if you ever find yourself in one of those seminars, you get handed a copy of Strunk & White, maybe a Manual of Style or two, and told to figure it out for yourself.  While this is useful in its own way, it doesn't actually help someone trying to transform their flaccid prose into query-slaying priapic textual genius.  There does need to be a starting point, though, so for this first post, I'm going to share a few of my rules for writing, and later on, I plan on making fun of them mercilessly for your amusement.

* "You have to know what the rules are before you can break them."

* "Avoid conjoining conjunctions."

* "Present tense, active voice."

* "God hates serial commas, and so should you."

* "There is nothing that can be said in a thousand words that can't be said in a hundred."

* "If it doesn't make you laugh, cry, poop, or scream, and it's supposed to be entertaining, get rid of it."

* "Thought-provoking digressions are fantastic if you are sitting around a campfire high as a kite or if you are hanging out in a coffee shop looking to get laid, but otherwise, keep that shit to yourself and away from your manuscript."

* "The deus ex machina was invented in the days before Michael Bay started blowing things up and a kid in a garage could design decent sfx.  This is important: it was used because it was awesome, and you don't need it to be awesome anymore, all you need is more NPH."

* "Cliches are cliche for a reason, but that doesn't mean you should use them.  In fact, just don't.  Except in dialogue, if the character would."

* "By the same token, if a character would do something, don't stop them just because it doesn't make for good writing.  Being honest with yourself means letting someone drop a few more f-bombs than you would prefer, because the motherfucker fucking loves swearing."

And, I figured out that my list is longer than a single blog post, so we'll make it fun for next time.  More rules, and more commentary, and maybe even a few more pictures with funny captions.  I know the Internet loves humorous captions.  It told me so once.

Poem of the Day #1: "Cold Eyes"

The "Poem of the Day" is a new feature that will appear, you guessed it, daily.  All are original works and may be accompanied by short essays or random thoughts about either the poem itself or the nature of poetry.  This one isn't, because you get this instead.  Whoohoo.  Aren't you excited?  I know I am.

And the men--

All shrouded grey--

Did through the mist appear.

And though the fog hangs heavy there

Their forms seemed all too clear—

The memory of faces

Shrouded cold

And those grim visaged eyes

Strike terror

In my bones

Their frozen laugh still makes me cry.

Though many years have passed since

Last I saw that host

I shall, I fear, never forget

The time I saw those

Wicked ghosts.

©2003 by Benjamin Snyder

YA? Why Not?

The inimitable Ferrett Steinmetz, whose list of credits now includes a prestigious Nebula nomination, posted a link to a rather embarrassing New York Times piece that decried The Hunger Games as puerile trash.  Now, I agree with the columnist that The Hunger Games is worth about as much as a Thallid, but I fundamentally disagree with the contention that YA as a genre should be read only by, well, young adults.

This is a thallid, and no, it isn't worth anything.

Unlike the author of the New York Times piece, I've actually read most of the notable YA series, and the reason that Suzanne Collins' meal-ticket is bad is because it is sloppily written melodrama that has an infinitely superior contemporary work to compare to.

The Best Flavor

I am finishing up Michael J Sullivan's Riyria Revelations and am pleasantly surprised by the quality of the story.  While I wholeheartedly endorse the series, the more interesting thing to me is the author's interview.  Most specifically, this:

           "For years now I have heard few...lament that repetitive theme....they are tired of the same old hero-               
            vanquishing-evil and want something new.  Something more real, more believable.  Which to me 
            sounds like someone saying they love chocolate, the just wished it wasn't so chocolatey and that it 
            tasted more like vanilla."


Having an established genre author admit to the feelings he describes is akin to NASA spontaneously admitting that we faked the first moon landing.

"Are you sure the wind rippling isn't going to give it away?"

It drives me insane that every new speculative fiction I pick up spends a thousand pages developing a deep, resonant theme that parallels the real world.  And there will be no MacGuffin.  If I found myself wanting to read Atlas Shrugged again, I would gouge my own eyes out with a rusty spoon.

As seen in the last reasonably tolerable Kevin Costner movie.

So, you see, I don't want to read it, I get suckered in by Tor's shield on the spine.  Then I read 300,000 words of political intrigue, conspiracies, and judiciary debate about the rights of the parasite wurms of Arenon IV.  All I really wanted was a wizard burninating some orcs.

Sullivan goes on to defend his own work, which makes his Oz-like unveiling a little less impressive.  But ultimately, the idea that someone can't just write a boring old hack n' slash novel is depressing.  Joseph Campbell described thousands of concurrent mythologies that all feature similar elements.  They endured because they were entertaining and popular.  We can read them today because they are always fun.  No, KJ Parker's Engineer trilogy isn't better than Brook's Shannara work.  But it is worth spending the few days it will take to finish the books.

Similarly, the constant quest to destroy any hope we might have that our future generations will even know what a poem is has become mindbogglingly stupid.  I've got a list, here's the order of the list that it's in.

It goes Reggie, Jay-Z, Tupac, and Biggie, Andre from Outkast, Jada, Kurupt, Nas, and then me.

1)  Poetry can rhyme

2)  It can even be iambic

3)  Nothing on your tumblr can be considered poetry.

4)  Poetry does not have to be spoken in front of an audience of students with suspect scruples.

5)  If you are doing a "slam" or "reading," keep in mind that talking like William Shatner does not turn your 

     diary into poems.

6)  Punctuation was invented for a reason.*

7)  No one likes an ampersand.

*This.  This is why.

I'm thankful that the bow-legged, greasy, bastardized version of poetry exists at all, but I'm not going to invite it in for dinner, because I don't want it to mess with my kids.  I don't have kids.  I once wrote a fifty page critical evaluation of Frank Herbert's Dune so I know all about sucking the fun out of a good story.  I just don't want that to become the only real way of interacting with a book.

The way the publishers and the market treat stories with too much cliche isn't like complaining the chocolate is too chocolatey, it's like banning chocolate and forcing everyone to enjoy their damn vanilla.

"You will like it, or you will be forced to keep publishing on Smashwords."

The Notebook

I love a blinking cursor and a blank page, but sometimes I wonder how pretentious my notebook appears whenever I'm sitting in a bar or a coffee shop, nursing a glass of whiskey or a hot chocolate I pretend is a macchiato if anyone asks--even though I don't even know what a macchiato is.

This, apparently.

It sounds vaguely like the sort of thing that gets bricked up in someone's wine cellar.

It's Not Just Words on Paper

Another piece of advice I hate almost as much as sparkly vampires is when I hear or read someone telling their "students" that all they need to do is "just write."  This is akin to telling a scrawny kid that all he or she needs to do in order to be Lebron James Jeremy Lin is go outside and shoot mid-range jumpers until his or her fingers fingers fall off.

Like this, but with more blood.

Ron "Squee" Jeremy the Barbarian

Grand Prix: Indianapolis Tournament Organizer Pastimes have found themselves in a bit of a bind over their recent promotion of BDSM Magic-gear.  Namely, at least five people were incredibly offended by the art on the playmats that were intended to be handed out at the GP.  Thanks to the diligent work of various eyes on Twitter, the mats are apparently headed for wherever they send the "We Won the Super Bowl" t-shirts made for the team that actually, cough, lost the game.

"You said, licking, right?  Right?!"

While I usually prefer hiding in the corner of the Twitterverse whenever someone starts talking about a subject that involves an issue where I am part of the unwanted majority, in this case, I'm fine with adding my own opinion to the largely ignorable conversation.

On Writing: Part Six

                “If we do not understand what would happen if everything went right, we are not going to care if everything starts going wrong.”  You may not have realized it yet, but one of my goals in this series is to explore common misconceptions about “good” writing and to try to explain why I find it so completely asinine to attend workshops or read the large majority of unpublished work (or even published work).

                I’m paraphrasing a quote that I cannot, unfortunately, place, but it is central to quite a few arguments regarding “background” in literature.  The idea seems to be that the reader must establish a logical attachment to the characters in a story based on the author’s ability to convey subtle contextual clues in a manner that is internally consistent and plausible—i.e., if you have enough money to build an immensely powerful space station, you probably have enough money to hire someone to double-check that there are no air-ducts that firing a proton torpedo into would result in the destruction of said station.

                In fact, the Star Wars corollary is particular apt because of its multitudinous plot holes.  Is the story “bad” as a result?  If you say yes, George Lucas has a few billion dollars that says you’re wrong.  The simple argument would be that we do know what would happen if the Death Star functioned, so we do care and cheer when the Rebels throw a spanner in the works.

                What about more egregious errors in literature, the hackneyed stories you read in your freshman creative writing course where the main character lacks even simple motivation and just gets thrown into situations beyond her control and responds to them like a third-grader muddling through his first Choose-Your-Own Adventure book?

                That is where it becomes more complicated.  To me, the best “inciting incidents” are fairly simple.  A character is driving his boss’s daughter to school but is car-jacked and forced to play the role of a get-away driver. 

Problems arise when you have a situation where a courier is carrying an unknown MacGuffin, but gets hit by a car and dies tragically.  This sends ripples through a chain of the police who process the hit and run, the crime lord who needs the MacGuffin to build his Earth-Destroying Laser of Deadly Doom, the unwitting private investigator who was trailing the courier on assignment from the courier’s wife who suspected an affair, and the brilliant but tortured inventor of the MacGuffin who had a change of heart and was trying to get it back for herself.  What would have happened if the courier did deliver the package or at least hadn’t been hit by the random car?  Who the hell knows?  I doubt the author of that story could even figure it out with so many moving pieces.*

                Still, I bet the second story would be awesome and Michael Bay would definitely buy the movie rights and it would probably involve Shia LaBoef and a Victoria’s Secret model. 

                The problem does not lie in the missing or complicated motivation, but in the execution.  Why didn’t the Eagles just fly Sam and Frodo to Mt. Doom?  Labyrinthine ret-cons aside, there really isn’t a good reason, but the execution of the story allows you to forget about the problem and enjoy the ride.  In the end, that’s the difference between “good” and “bad” story-crafting.  I don’t really care what would happen if it all went right; just make sure you do a damn good job of taking me down the path of how it went wrong.

*My guess would be that the PI would pose as the recipient of the package suspecting it was filled with evidence of the affair and the Criminal would see him.  Meanwhile, the Inventor knows that the package was delivered, so she goes to the Police to tell them about the Criminal.  The Courier goes on about his business and stops at Subway for lunch.  The Police ignore the Inventor and go to Chuck E. Cheese instead.   The PI realizes that the MacGuffin has nothing to do with his client’s affair, so he tosses it in a garbage can in the Bowery.  But the Inventor feels responsible, so she goes after the Criminal, encountering the PI accidently and falls in love with him.  After a while, the Criminal kills the PI, but not before asking him where the MacGuffin is, which the Inventor hears because she is hiding in the closet.  At this point, the PI couldn’t tell the Criminal where the MacGuffin is because he doesn’t remember, so if the Inventor just forgets about the whole thing, the story could probably end.  But of course, she can’t forget, so she starts looking for the MacGuffin, causing her to get arrested.  The Police still think she is crazy, so she gets sent to a psychiatric ward where she meets a fellow detainee who believes her.  Together they escape and go on a quest to find the MacGuffin, ad nauseum.  Remember, this is my interpretation of what happens if everything goes right in the first place instead of ‘wrong’.  You hear me, Michael Bay?  This script is a gold mine.