Robert Silverberg on learning to write

Another wonderful article from SF Signal is this interview with Robert Silverberg bu Bryan Thomas Schmidt. Silverberg talks about specific works (like Lord Valentine's Castle) and that's interesting, but for me the prize was what he says about learning to write. He encapsulates my experience as well:

I never have taken a writing course, and don’t recommend them.  Occasionally I would read a book about writing, like Thomas Uzzell’s Narrative Technique, but usually came away baffled.  I learned my craft by reading an infinite amount of fiction and trying to discover how the authors achieved their effects.  Where to begin a story?  How does one end one?  How much dialog should be mixed with exposition?  I figured it all out by the time I was sixteen or so.  I was a quick learner.   The problem was not so much to learn the craft of telling a story as to learn enough about the real world so that one had stories to tell.

I, on the other hand, am a slow learner, and I'm still working on figuring it out. But knowing how to put down one word after another is only the mechanics of the craft. If I were to give advice to a young writer, I'd say, Don't study writing. Take classes in history, anthropology, religion, astronomy, biology, economics, sculpture, physics. Play a musical instrument, even if badly. Volunteer at a soup kitchen. Go hiking in the highest mountains you can find. Learn a new language, preferably one that uses a different alphabet. Talk to people with whom you disagree, and listen to them, to the experiences behind the rhetoric. Study calligraphy and the history of writing. Dance under the stars. Fall in love, and get your heart broken. Learn to ride a horse (or a camel, or an elephant). In other words, Have something to write about. And read. Read widely and exuberantly. Read stuff that makes you furious and exhilarated and bored and sorrowful - and examine the why and how.

It would be a fascinating exercise to read Silverberg's novels in the order they were written, to watch the development of his craft. And besides, he loves museums and dinosaurs, so what more can one want?

Howard Jones on The Roots of Arabian Fantasy (on SF Signal)

Awhile back, I wrote about my experience moderating a panel on "Islamic fantasy" at World Fantasy Convention. On of the panelists was Howard Andrew Jones, whom I had not met before but whose name I recognized from the small amount of research I was able to do in preparation. Howard was a delight (actually, all the panelists were wonderful, but in different ways) and his knowledge of Middle Eastern folklore and the traditions of written literature of the Muslim world were a wonderful resource for the panel. I especially enjoyed how he would offer some bit of fascinating scholarly background and then apologize, with genuine modesty, for going on in such detail -- when the rest of us were going, More! More! I wished I could have taped or transcribed the whole thing to share with you.

Now Howard's article on Arabian fantasy is up on SF Signal here: so you can get a taste of the discussion, and an eensy bit of the benefit of his knowledge. Here's an excerpt:

[The] version of the 1001 Nights we have today is not the same as the version from the 10th century, or the 15th century. More and more layers were added by succeeding storytellers. A few generations after the 8th century when they lived, Haroun al-Rashid and his best friend and vizier, Jafar, were dropped into the story mix, sometimes adventuring in Baghdad in disguise at night. In later centuries, characters and place names from Muslim Egypt were added. When Antoine Galland assembled his collection of Arabian Nights in the 1700s and launched a sensation, he used some stories that he claimed came from a Syrian Christian. They're probably of Middle-Eastern origin, but perhaps it shouldn't really matter. (I'm not really troubled by this sort of "cultural appropriation" because it strikes me as essentially good natured. I liken it to someone excitedly joining a game that is already under way. Should that person be excluded because they lack the appropriate ethnicity? Should the Indians have excluded the Persians, and then the Persians the Arabs, from joining in the fun? Why then should we dismiss Antoine Galland because he is an 18th century Frenchman, even if he invented rather than found Ali Baba and Aladdin? All of the tales were created by someone, some time, and Galland's "discoveries" are pretty nifty.)

Doesn't that make you want to click over to SF Signal and read the whole thing? And then rush out and get Howard's books? It does to me!

RPGs: Controversies R Us

Over on BVC blog, I posted a response to a column on SF Signal on the relationship between RPGs and sf/f writing. My view is that there's an overlap but not a causal connection. I seem to have gotten a bunch of people upset (this is a good thing). Check it out and let me know what you think. It's not a matter of who's right and who's crazy, but that we all have different experiences and if we listen to one another, we can learn stuff.