Someone dropped me a note to ask about ‘show don’t tell’ in fiction writing, and rather than reply to him specifically I thought I would discuss the subject here, since it is a principle that lies at the heart of good writing.

Fiction, and I would suggest poetry as well, is all about sleight of hand.  What the writer knows is not the same as what the writer is prepared to reveal to the reader.  Every detail considered demands a decision: does it go in or doesn’t it?  What is the effect of something acting upon a scene when it remains invisible, unspoken?  What is the effect of revealing it, including it in the narrative?  How can a scene carry more weight than what’s set down on the page?

Imagine starting a puzzle in reverse.  It lies complete on the tabletop, and now you begin removing pieces, while still ensuring that the subject illustrated in that puzzle remains coherent should anyone walk into the room and glance at it.  How many pieces can you remove, and how long does it take before you begin weighing thoughtfully the extraction of the next piece?  You reach a point where pulling the next one collapses any hope of comprehension, at which point it’s time to stop.  It’s hovering on the very edge right now; let concentration slip and the image dissolves.

This is how I learned to write short stories, and it is probably my failing in that I carried that over into my novel writing, effectively unmodified as a writing technique.

Language can ever only suggest.  It is descriptive but that description is always selective.  At its most basic level, it is marks on a page or a spoken word structured and defined by rules of syntax and other stuff having to do with cognition, pattern-recognition, and so on.  If one were to attempt to write a scene drawn from reality, the potential level of description is infinite, and for all the detail given, right down to, say, the molecular level, that multitude of words will not achieve what the simple act of seeing will achieve (in an instant).

Yet writers use language to invite a reader into a collection of scenes, bound by an illusory but comforting narrative thread, and in the description of these scenes, perhaps cursory, perhaps detailed, a reader gains an impression of that place, those characters, the atmosphere and, possibly, the meaning behind it all.

I know, all this is sounding obvious, but what isn’t so obvious is what drives the decision-making process when constructing that narrative.  You want to suggest the image in the puzzle, but you cannot reasonably include all those pieces.  The more you ‘tell’ the less you suggest; the less you suggest the more you insist; the more you insist the less you trust your reader; the less you trust your reader the more likely you are to lose them.

This is, of course, assuming you want to engage your reader on as many levels as possible. It can be argued that you may not want to; you may instead want them to ride along, effortlessly, with only the minimal engagement, in, say, a tale of unquestioning (and unquestioned) heroes and bad guys.  In this case, you ‘tell’ to get out of the way the necessary details, so that you can get back to entertaining the reader (there is a place for this, no question, and not just as whole narratives, but also as timely segments within a narrative – when the shit hits the fan in terms of action, for example; although, ideally, you want to have gotten all the background stuff out of the way before then).  Some readers don’t want to work hard, and a writer who makes demands will lose such readers: it’s the bitter pay-off and believe you me, I know all about that one.

But in terms of narrative, the real danger of ‘telling’ is twofold.  On the one hand there is the matter of pace.  Exposition not bound to a particular point-of-view can result in what we all know as ‘info-dumps’.  They are stylistically awkward; they interrupt the story’s flow; and they impose an authorial will and the longer that will holds forth, the worse it gets.

The second danger is the undermining of the author’s authority: info-dumps are a failing of the author’s skill.  What information needs to get in there has to do so almost seamlessly, and it works best when serving another purpose (exposition providing a pause between dialogue, for example, to stretch out an exchange or lend weight to words just spoken; or as a framing device for a scene; or to put in place objects of symbolic significance, including the proverbial gun-on-the-wall).  In the best examples of this (see the first few pages of “The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber“) the exposition is terse, flat and quickly done-and-out-of-the-way.  It is ‘telling’ at its bare minimum.

So, here’s a vague rule.  Physical details needed to set a scene can be ‘told,’ but it is best to do so via the point of view of a character in that scene.  I note this as being ‘vague’ because sometimes the narrative voice is itself a character, a shaper of how events are supposed to be seen, but that’s a different kind of storytelling.

If details are linked to a point of view, a character in the scene, then it can serve more than one function: it can tell the reader something about that character (what interests them, what’s relevant to them, what they’re deliberately avoiding in their own description, and so on).  But once you do this, you quickly discover the limitations imposed by a particular point of view.  A character who is, say, a fisherman, who walks onto a factory floor where cars are made, cannot reasonably tell you details about the machinery at work (unless you’ve previously established that, say, that character once worked there).  You are limited by what the character knows, or is purported to know.  This is not a bad thing: you can work it to your advantage.

All of this is prelude to talking about showing not telling, but it hopefully sets up my principle point, which begins and ends with the stance a writer takes in delivering a narrative.  To ‘show’ your story is to respect the reader’s ability to read into the narrative all that is necessary to make sense of the scene, and the story.  It’s to stay ‘collected’ at all times, ensuring that the beast (that unruly bag of skin crammed full of all that you know)  never runs loose under you.

There are always at least two levels of communication going on in a story: what appears on the page and what doesn’t.  Both are essential to a good story, and the purest tension is the one set up between the two, between the written and the unwritten (just as in real life, if you listen in on a nearby conversation, your sense of it is formed by the spoken and unspoken).  Just as good dialogue weighs more heavily on the unspoken, so too good writing weighs more heavily on the unwritten.

This is where, at least until you’ve got the knack, editing comes in.  Read over what you’ve written and be ruthless in what is extraneous, what can go (no matter how well written); and in this way of thinking about your own work, you will exercise your sense of what’s important to the story you’re telling (the famous workshop question: what’s at stake?), and it may be that you begin this process not actually knowing the answer to that question, and that’s fine.  You’ll find it, eventually.  The process determines the answer.

If, on the other hand, you ‘tell’ your reader, the first thing that will change in your writing is the tone of the narrative.  It becomes insistent, and can come across as authoritarian (without being reassuring); and because the pace also slows down, those sections of ‘telling’ become more obtrusive to the reader, and the flow becomes turgid and pained.

I recall an exercise I was given years ago when I first began writing.  Basically, I was challenged to write dialogue without any emotional tags, yet still convey the emotional context of the words being spoken.  It’s rather hard to do.  Instead of ‘he said defensively’ it was ‘he said, crossing his arms and looking away.’  The former example is telling the reader; the latter is showing.  The former is obvious and insistent; the latter is suggestive and subtle.

Exercises for theatre students cover this ground in much the same manner: for the writer, however, the task is to convey the gesture and its context through description without authorial commentary.  You just state it flat out and leave it at that.  The reader ‘reads’ the emotional context and the meaning from the gesture.

One can become very terse writing this style, and personally I do find it preferable (my early novels had a lot of the ‘telling’ stuff, as far as I was concerned, but it was at the time deemed useful and ‘reassuring,’ in that it was a technique common to the genre.  With successive novels, however, I slowly swung back to that terse approach, to the ‘showing’ over the ‘telling,’ and admittedly was a much happier camper).

The key to successfully doing this is to become a camera, recording what you see (while knowing more under the surface) and only what you see.  You can always dip into someone’s head for getting at what’s hidden from view, but if you do, be sure that you hold to the limits of that character’s point of view, their specific beliefs and interests, motivations and fears, etc.  Internal monologue is guided by un-uttered conclusions and proceeds accordingly, on its own slick surface of thought, and should emotion grow fierce, then words should fail – even internal ones – because, well, they always do.

Some readers of the above might get pissed and conclude from the style conveyed that I’m arrogant and prone to pontification.  I would suggest their reaction is because I’ve just used up a few thousand words ‘telling’ you about ‘showing-not-telling.’  If you want to see me ‘showing’ instead, read my stories.  I’m not be flippant here: my point was to ‘show’ how ‘telling’ can irritate a reader, even when the author doesn’t want to.

Sleight of hand.

Cheers
SE

Photo Credits

“Creating shadow art by projecting images of carefully arranged trash ”

Ignoring this sense of backing into a corner, I have decided to write about theme. This is dangerous territory, one in which a good many of my opinions and thoughts on the subject are likely to irritate if not infuriate some of my readers (and those fellow writers who happen to look in). Well, it’s not like I have anything to lose, all things considered.

I generally begin a story with an idea of what it’s about. I might think this story is about heroism, or grief, or siblings, or motherhood. I might think this is about feeling lost in the world, or the search for meaning/love/God/hope/faith. Or I might think this series will be about the struggle of all of the above. What I don’t think is this: that this story is about how stupid and useless left-leaning liberals are, or how only gun-toting Republican Americans can defeat the alien hordes, or that you can be a good Waffen SS as long as you don’t hate Jews … and still defeat the alien hordes.

If you think I just made up those story ideas, you haven’t read John Ringo and friends.

A theme is not a position, not a political slant, not an agenda, just as a work of honest fiction is not propaganda, polemic, or didactic diatribe. What theme is, among other things, is an area of exploration. And ‘exploration’ is a journey into the unknown, one that breaks down and discards preconceived notions. Exploration involves courage and determination, often verging on the obsessive; as many historical accounts of past explorers will attest. Your enemy is the unknown; your fear is the unknowable, and the peace that follows – if it follows – only comes when the fear goes away.  Note that I do not mention wisdom, since as far as I can tell wisdom is another word for world-weary exhaustion, and every wise word uttered is born from bitter experience, and upon hearing such words, one chooses to either take heed or not.  Accordingly, bitter experience breeds anew with every generation.

I recall that in creative writing classes, people were often afraid to tackle theme, as a subject for discussion, or as a point of contention. It seemed to be held as somehow sacred, forever ephemeral, not to be approached in the same profane manner as one approaches point-of-view, or dialogue, or sentence pattern. Those few of you reading here who knew me in my workshop days, may (or may not) recall the numerous occasions when I got rather rabid on issues of theme in someone’s story. It’s like reading a landscape: it helps to know the underlying geology that gives it shape, and if no-one else is prepared to wield a pick, well, I am. Why? Because I use that same pick on my own shit, that’s why.

I recall one very well-written story by a fellow student. The tale was set on a farm and involved a wife abandoned by her husband. There were, I recall, a couple other male characters in the tale as well, and each and every one of these men were reprehensible, portrayed with open venom. The story climaxed (and I use the word deliberately) in a scene where the main character takes a cleaver to a turkey’s neck on a chopping block, aptly describing said neck as looking like a flaccid penis. Now, don’t get me wrong: it was a great story, technically, and she was and no doubt remains an excellent writer. But it was false. It was a world created by a blinkered god (the author). Not all men are pricks.  Maybe 97 percent of them are, but not all. What I was witness to, then, was the author’s agenda, and that agenda, no matter how truthfully arrived at through personal experience or whatever, became a suspect manipulator of truths, and its fuel was bitter anger.

Who sees clearly when bitter and angry?  There was no exploration here: it was a hack at old ground, one over which the author paced back and forth as if caged by the world.

And I suppose she was. Caged. But the story didn’t rattle the bars, didn’t look for a way out, had no time at all to even think about escape. It liked where it was, even as it hated it.

I have (I think) written about ruthlessness before, the force that must be turned not only upon a work of fiction (or art in general) but also upon oneself: upon one’s own most cherished beliefs. If I haven’t, well, there it is. Agendas that survive their iteration in fiction are, to my mind, evidence of failure; specifically, the author’s failure. They wrote how they want it to be, not how it is.

This brings me, at long last, to my portrayal of the Empire of Lether starting in the fifth novel in the Malazan sequence, Midnight Tides. The reason this subject is on my mind is that, once again, I have been asked in a Q&A whether that empire and its political and economic system was intended as a commentary on the United States. Each time I am asked this question, my response is no. So, let’s take this as definitive: there were two major themes in that novel, the first being about siblings and the journeys made by two sets of three brothers, and the second being about inequity.

It’s likely that one would have to go back to the Paleolithic to find a human society not structured by inequity, and even that is debatable, given the social characteristics of our nearest relatives, chimpanzees and gorillas. Without question, the agricultural revolution early on, which established sedentary civilizations, went hand-in-hand with the creation of a ruling elite and an emerging class system. The crust needs sludge to sit on, and the more sludge there is, the loftier the crust. Maintaining this system is made easier by inculcating the notion that the best rises to the top, and that opportunities always exist for it to do just that, although one could argue that these latter notions are more recent manifestations – certainly, the slave or serf in antiquity would need to step outside of the law to achieve wealth and comfort (and it’s no accident that such laws are both created by, maintained, and enforced by the elites).

I set out to explore inequity (as an aside, I have travelled through socialist countries and fascist countries, and guess what, shit smells like shit no matter what flag you stick it in), and one thing Midnight Tides taught me was that once a certain system of human behaviour become entrenched, it acquires a power and will of its own, against which no single individual stands a chance. A rather dispiriting conclusion, I admit.  To this day, I’d love to see proof to the contrary.

I did not know I would reach such conclusions – well, not so much ‘conclusions’ as grim observations, and I wasn’t particularly pleased to find myself where I did.

Every social construct now in existence among humans is founded upon inequity of some sort. People of one political persuasion or world-view will tell you it’s some kind of natural order, and thereby justify whatever cold-heartedness they harbour; others on the opposite end will decry the evidence and call for a leveling of humanity devoid of individuals. Both have had their day in history, and any particular pitch at present is, as far as I can see, a minor blip on the screen.  We’re nothing if not headlong.

Themes. Themes can hurt. They can cut deep inside. There’s a reason why the subject is often taboo in writing workshops. Stripping back the façade can reveal unpleasant things.

And the next time someone asks me if the Empire of Lether was a direct riff on the United States, I will say no, and mean it.

Dubious writing tip #7; subject: theme: Find out what you want to write about. Choose key words and stack them in your head, leaving them to do a slow-burn through the writing of your story. Don’t look at the light, don’t fan the flames, don’t flinch when they burn. Write around the fire, circling, ever circling, working to edge closer as the story progresses. Drive for the moment when you get singed, scorched. Then pull back, smarting. Study the red welt. Good enough? If it hurts like hell … probably good enough.
Heal. Start again.

Cheers,
SE

Photo Credit

“Alchemist Killing Hamlet” h.koppdelaney @ Flickr.com. Creative Commons. Some Rights Reserved.

I’ve chosen this scene for a number of reasons: firstly, it’s relatively short; secondly, it fuses character, character action, and dialogue in a way that is, I hope, both interesting and readily explicable.

Alas, because of length restrictions, I can’t include the excerpt here. You’ll need to find a copy of Gardens of the Moon; the section is about three pages, beginning with ‘The Lady Simtal paced…” If you don’t have a copy of the novel, you can try the local library. I can’t give specific page numbers because different editions have different pagination.

Many writers use dialogue for purposes of conveying plot elements, providing basic information and advancing the story. Often, among unmindful writers, this takes the form of Question and Answer, interspersed with exposition. I spent the last few minutes working up egregious examples only to find I can’t do any – I’ve lost the knack, if I ever had it in the first place. But I am sure you have noted examples of this kind of dialogue while reading books you later wish you’d never read. They come across as clunky, wooden, and sometimes ridiculously obvious – in other words, the dialogue doesn’t sound like ‘real’ conversation.

At the same time, there are instances where it is nevertheless necessary to convey plot elements through dialogue; the problems arise when that imperative overpowers other essential requirements: specifically, the need to convey a sense of the ‘real’ and the authentic; and of conveying character. These are people talking, after all, and each holds to his or her own needs, wants, fears, motivations and attitudes. Revealing these is achieved by the writer through describing action, thought, and dialogue. Granted, exposition supports all of this, but we’ll talk about exposition at another time.

But even then, the key to writing decent dialogue is, for me at least, found in working against all the currents of necessity. What do I mean by that? Well, let’s take the above-noted requirements one by one.

1. Conveying Plot Elements

A certain amount of information is necessary, to maintain a sense of cohesion. There’s a sliding scale here. At one end you have writers like, oh, I don’t know, James Michener, whose novels read like text-books vaguely dramatized and stylistically suggestive of a roomful of hired researchers collating their notes (which, if the rumours are accurate, is precisely what they were).

On the other end, Cormac McCarthy, whose most recent writing seems to have taken the paring down into a form feeling both obsessive and compulsive, with the result so bereft of internal emotion that even reading it makes me feel repressed (yes, I know, I’ll take a lot of hits for this, and hasten to point out that it’s my opinion, no more and no less. The Road was for me an anorexic novel, so starved down all I could see were the bones of its construction, glaring out at me as if to say I’m still fat, I’m still eating too much, got to lose more weight, got to…

Oddly enough, I lean more towards McCarthy than Michener on that sliding scale. Even when I know that I need to give out information (dammit), I resist, push off in the opposite direction, fighting against the current of necessity. Which is probably why I lose readers early on in Gardens of the Moon. Not only do I not spoonfeed, I’ve taken a hammer to the spoon. It’s not just for reasons of personal taste, either.

These books are fat enough – I can’t even imagine how big they’d be if I did the info-dump thing – so there were practical reasons for staying terse. It’s also a matter of focus. Keep it tight and the big picture only shows up in the faintest hints, vague shapes sensed only peripherally. Until it’s time to look at ‘em.

The excerpt provides plot elements. The political consequences of the assassination that preceded this scene; a few details about other events (the arrival of Moon’s Spawn and the efforts to make contact with its inhabitants); and an indication that through these two characters schemes are at work that place other players at risk (ones we happen to like). But they are all subsumed, almost incidental to what’s driving the scene.

2. Conveying Character

Nobody converses from a position of unchecked openness. Ever. We are biologically designed to hide most of our inner world from the outer one. Sociobiologists might call it a survival imperative, slave to the necessity to ensure the continuity of our genes. Even without the genetic angle, being social creatures encourages us to hold back most of what we think and feel. We do this to get along. If we were truly open, oblivious to any notion of inside or outside, or barriers, we’d be ants.

At the same time, our biology maintains some essential holdovers we relegate to the ‘subconscious,’ to help us ‘read’ fellow humans. And that of course is all the nonverbal communication going on, which often belies our spoken words. As with any and all social creatures, we really only fight one war, and it is an information war, in which we are lone soldiers, where every alliance is shaky no matter how necessary. And we’ve been fighting it forever (who knows, maybe death is nothing but the collapse of those barriers, where we all flow into one single form of all-knowing. Called God, I suppose. An end to the war, a kingdom of peace. Nice thought).

So, we’re cagey, and that needs to play a role when presenting a character. Cagey is my byword on dialogue; and for those for whom I offer no internal point-of-view, cagey is the byword for character, too. Cagey cagey cagey.

You know the classic fantasy scene from AD&D where you walk into a tavern and ask somebody something and they actually tell you everything you need to know? Hate ‘em. No, hate’s too gentle a word. Despise. A perfect example of using dialogue to convey information – at the expense of character, realism, even imagination. Awful. Lazy. Insulting. Has this character no life beyond sitting there waiting to tell you all you need to know? No motivations? No secret likes, dislikes, fears, loves, weaknesses, hidden scars, sad memories?

Some beginning writers create these characters and then manipulate them solely to help guide along the hero(es). Might as well be automatons. I used to set up players in my role-playing games with just that scenario – tavern, some guy in the corner looking mysterious, and off the players would troop, sit down at his table, and start up a conversation. Or try to. This man has just had his false teeth stolen and not even a tyrant’s torturer could make him open his mouth, since he’s both vain and embarrassed, and you’d be, too, in his shoes. So, I made a point of confounding players’ expectations. This is what comes of being evil.

‘…in his shoes.’ That’s the key to all this. As writer it’s like this: you invented them, now you owe them. You owe them their space, their lives, their humanity. Maybe you won’t show much of all that, but it still needs to be there – or, of not there, then what needs acknowledging is that character’s right to that life, a right that must be respected. Writers who manipulate characters probably manipulate real people, too. I say ‘probably’ because, really, I haven’t a clue. Well, call it a suspicion. Comes down to respect, anyway, either way.

There’s an interplay of power going on between Simtal and Orr, and it switches back and forth multiple times, spelled out through non-verbal cues, silent interplay of actions, and spoken words (which mean one thing on the surface but something else under the surface). Simtal is actively engaged on all fronts and accordingly uses every trick. Find them. Her final gesture is overtly sexual (because sex is how she got all her wealth and power in the first place), and echoes to the scene’s pre-opening (the sex that has just occurred off-stage). Turban Orr is alternately unmindful of her efforts and cynically all-too-aware of them, and while arrogant it’s that arrogance that ultimately makes him vulnerable to Simtal’s manipulation.

So, there’s varying levels of self-awareness, gender-specific in some ways, with Simtal internalized (and it’s her bedroom, not his – imagine how different the scene would feel if it was his bedroom instead) with her ambitions, and Turban Orr externally directed with his (politics, etc). For him, the sex is a diversion also useful in terms of potential alliance; for her, sex is her only source of power. She wants him to arrange the murder of her ex-husband. He wants the power to indulge her wishes, with all the ease that he indulges his own (as he has just done).

The entire power play proceeds on distinct levels that still fizz on contact with each other: her non-verbal argument – which is all about who is in charge, post-coitally – which she almost loses (he ignores her to tie on his leggings) only to get back when she sprawls on the bed at the end – catching his eye one last time; and her interplay with him on subjects ranging from politics outside her interest (yet she uses the subject seeking to puncture his swagger, while he fends off her efforts almost haphazardly, which in turn leaves her on shaky ground, which then ups the venom of her words and makes more raw and obvious her nonverbal stuff) to the one subject obsessing her (her ex-husband).

The two are conjoined but their motivations are not. This is how you can get conflict from just two characters (never mind the only adage about three characters being the minimum). They want different things and most of what goes on between them is the economics of sex and power. Because those are what obsesses these two characters.

So, how does a writer go about making full use of all this? Here is an exercise I gave my workshop students a couple years back: two characters in a room at night, between them a dead body lying on the floor. Write two pages of dialogue with minimal exposition, under the following rules:

1. They never mention the body.
2. They never directly answer each other’s questions.
3. No-one else arrives on the scene.

At the end of your two pages the reader should know who the dead person is, his/her relationship to the characters, and how the victim died. Let’s see some of your work in the days to come, and I’ll comment as best I can.

No-one likes being asked direct questions – that’s why courts have all those swearing-in rituals and perjury laws. We’re naturally evasive. We don’t like to get pinned down. We often lie and with good reason, too. The writer has to think about all these things when creating dialogue, so that everything a character says is squeezed out reluctantly, from that hidden reservoir of fears, desires, etc. People don’t really talk to each other; they talk past each other.

Conversely, a person can talk endlessly – this too is a defense mechanism. Who pays attention or makes the effort to find the gems amidst all the detritus? Kruppe is that kind of character; everything he says is misdirection, so in that sense he is giving voice to the very evasiveness I’m talking about here. And he does so entirely aware of what he’s up to, and it amuses him. I guess in those instances, Kruppe is me.

Every time you have someone ask a question, draw up short and consider how the character being addressed can evade answering directly. If required, have them answer but only in their heads (so we don’t see it) and then have them utter a statement based on that hidden, unspoken, unknown answer. Leapfrog the dialogue so that we know stones have been jumped over even though we can’t see them, and we know the importance of each stone by how high the person jumps.

Get into the habit of this and you’ll be amazed at how dialogue just sings along, and ‘sounds’ almost natural (but not so natural that we die of boredom – condense reality to keep it lively). Obviously, there will come moments in the story when things get raw, when all the subterfuge is torn away, but the dramatic impact of those instances is entirely dependent on all the times when it’s all stayed under the surface, molten, bubbling away – the longer you hold back on the explosion the more powerful it will be when it finally comes.

There’s a style of writing (Carveresque) where the explosion never comes; where it’s all just ratcheted up and up and up, and then suddenly the story’s done. Works best with short stories. In novels it just makes you want to scream at the last page. Or there is a style where the eruption is exclusively in the reader’s inner world (I did plenty of that in my series, say, with some scenes closing Deadhouse Gates, Memories of Ice and House of Chains, and, finally, The Crippled God – the characters stayed tightly bound, transferring the anguish to the reader, but each time, the scenes needed to be carefully worked towards, so that the collusion of circumstance and character serves to deliver a single crushing blow. Which is why I consider what I write to be tragedy).

Anyway. As you can see I didn’t do a line-by-line analysis here. You can do the work with what I’ve provided, if you’re so inclined. The process of deconstruction is one every beginning writer should work towards mastering, as a way of demystifying the process of writing, and of moving past the ‘I write from instinct’ rubbish I recall hearing from fellow students back in the writing programs I attended. Instinct only works until something goes wrong, at which point you don’t know how to figure out what happened, much less fix it. It’s not a magical process, this writing. It’s the brain working on every cylinder, full tilt, max RPMs, until you start bleeding out the ears.

What could be more fun than that?

But as readers of my fiction should know by now, I rarely come at things in a direct fashion, and while it may appear at first glance that I’m talking about this, in truth I’m talking about that.

This is actually about a journey taken and written about in its midst, qualifying in every sense as a journal. Today, I reached a place in the tenth novel where a very personal truth was revealed. And such was its shattering impact that I am forced to pull away from the story, to try and give shape here to what I am feeling.

I will warn you now, what to come is brutal, and all those fun-loving folk content to skip and dance through life, evading all that might sting, for the sake of your ease of mind, read no further.

Life As A Human has in the past few months invited contributors to write essays to commemorate Mother’s Day and Father’s Day, and many of these essays have been profound and moving. Both times that I received that invitation, I did my own sliding away, for reasons I was not yet ready to face square in the eye. In a more critical moment, I might call it a failing of courage.

I am told by those closest to me that I have not been the same person since my father’s death. Was this just a measure of some protracted grief, verging on the aberrant? My father was a gifted but also deeply flawed man, and long before his death I had made my own peace with who he was, and the last years of his life I was pleased and proud to share my time with him. There was nothing left unresolved about our relationship.

So what, precisely, is going on here?

As much as one engages in that dance of evasion, things sneak through, and for me it is the dark aspect of my writing that I am relentless and remorseless regarding the world of sensibilities from which I proceed to create and imagine on a daily basis. Today, not 20 minutes ago, one of my characters put into words a truth I was not ready to face. But here it is now, and what lies beyond remains unknown and unknowable.

I was in my second year at Iowa, and my second year of marriage, when my father called me from Winnipeg.  My mother was in the hospital – but that had occurred a few times before, as her blood disorder slowly advanced into full-blown leukemia. But this time, when he had come into her room, he’d seen that she had removed the rings from her fingers and they waited on the bed stand. By this gesture he knew that she had realized that this time she wouldn’t be coming home.

It was a cold winter that year – we’d not come back for Christmas so my last memory of her was hugging her goodbye outside the house before driving down to start my year in Iowa – and I remember crying as I drove away, since she’d felt so frail in my arms.

Over the phone I told my father that we were on our way.

I phoned the department at the university and said I’d be gone for a week, and then my wife and I got into the car and began the drive north.  We pushed as hard as we could, staying in a motel somewhere in Minnesota before continuing on the next day.

Crossing the border, we stopped at a gas station and I managed to get a call through.  My brother had flown back from Vancouver.  The word was she was fast fading, and from what I got from my brother, he was horrified at her deteriorated condition.  Things were fraught over there.
We were driving into the outskirts of Winnipeg when she died.

My brother has since said he considered me the lucky one – to have not seen her in those last moments. I understand his conviction on this matter  My last memory of her remains that goodbye hug on a warm September morning.

Let’s call that … gentle.

Without doubt, her last 10 or 12 years of life had been good ones – the years poverty were behind them, and she and my father were content together. There were grandchildren to visit, relatives to see back in Sweden. We’d all known the mortal clock was ticking, and we made of it all that we could.

She was 69 when she died.

_____

Track forward a span of years. My own family is settled in Victoria, my brother over in Chilliwack, and my father is sharing a new life with a woman in Nanaimo, a two to two-and-a-half hour drive up-island from me.

Following a tragic and infuriating misdiagnosis from his GP, the cancer in his bladder has metastasized to his bones and the oncologist informs us all he had at best three months to live. In that time, we drive north again and again to spend time with him. It is a relief that he is not alone and that he is being cared for (I won’t even get into the twist in that aspect of this tale), but those visits are nevertheless hard, and hard to bear.

Our son goes off for the summer break and my wife prepares to fly to the UK to visit family. Daily the calls go back and forth between me and my father’s partner as we track the swiftness of his fading away, as we try to find comfort in the details of the things done and the things still to do.

One evening I get a call – my father has not spoken all day, and when the phone is held close him I can hear his labored breathing. Yet, when I speak to him, he stirs to answer me. Just monosyllables. Weak ‘yes’s and no’s.’ I ask him if he wants me to come. He says ‘yes.’ From his partner I hear the shock in her voice – she’d not expected him to hear me, much less find the strength to speak.

I tell him I will come in the morning.

_____

Let’s pause there. I am pretty upset at that moment – there is the grim war of the waiting and wanting it to be over. There is a kind of exhaustion that leaves one numb. I can list these things and recognize their truths, their validity for that moment. And I was later told that he’d fallen unconscious shortly thereafter, never to reawaken, so it was likely that even had I immediately departed for Nanaimo I would have found him already in a coma – though in truth I can never know that. I can’t know that he wouldn’t have risen up from the depths again, as he’d done over the phone. I can’t know.

Today, I finally understood my unwillingness to leave for Nanaimo that night. I have had to face the failing of courage that was that moment – the fear of yet another hopeless drive, the fear of finding in my father what my brother said he wished he’d never seen in my mother. My imagination is more than sufficient for that transformation; I didn’t want my memory to suffer the same. Fears held me in place, and in some ways I am still standing there, phone in hand. I’ve yet to take a step past that moment. And I wonder now if I ever will.

_____

So, how does all of this relate to my writing? Today, a fictional character uttered the opinion that the only worthy place to die is in someone’s arms. And in the wake of that utterance, everything just sort of tumbled down inside.

I am a living with a regret. Whether he ever knew it or not, he should have died in my arms. And I had the chance to do that.

That same character, almost in the next breath, then went on to say that ‘to die in someone’s arms – could there be anything more forgiving?’
If I am to take the full meaning of that odd choice of word (forgiving) – and it’s a word that in that context demands considerable thought, then … well, we will see where I stand when this last tale is behind me. Maybe I’ll be ready to set the phone down. Take that first step.

But that is my struggle, to deal with as best I can.  So, what is it I have to offer you readers after this modest little confession? Just this. Should you face that time … be there if you can … and take your loved one in your arms. So often the bed the person is lying in – at home or in the hospital – is viewed as some kind of sacred place, an island to be waded around but never touched. But it’s not the bed that’s sacred, it’s the person lying on it. It’s not the bed that is forgiving, it’s your embrace.

Could I go back for another chance…

Photo Credit

“Abstract texture” ReadySetGo @ Flickr.com. Creative Commons. Some Rights Reserved.

There are readers of my novels who despise Badalle and the whole story arc that is The Snake. One recent comment on the fan-site had someone calling her ‘that poet bitch’ or something similar. This seems an especially bitter growl, but I admit that I’m kind of used to it now. Happens all the time, this heat, this nastiness. The internet is one giant mouth and who knows what’ll come out from it at any given time.  And as for one’s writing triggering high emotions among readers, well, that’s sort of the point, isn’t it?

Regardless, there are times when the narrative in my novels scrapes hard at the veil separating that internal world with that of the reader in this one. Another way of saying that is that there are metafictional elements to what I’m up to, and they’ve been there since the very beginning.

Gardens of the Moons, the first novel in the series, is clearly framed as being the beginning of a ‘book’ which is opened to reveal all that follows.  The pretense we’re invited to accept is that the person ‘opening’ the book-within-the-book, is someone much closer to the history about to be recounted; is, in fact, someone living in the Malazan world.  But of course no such person exists.  Instead, the reader here in our world stands in for that pretend-witness. If there is one central key to the cipher of this series, that’s it.

Time and again, I cut little slits in that veil: I acknowledge the audience without ever fixing in place its details, meaning it could still be that fictional Malazan one, or it could be you. If I get specific on that count, the fictive dream is shattered and there’s no going back. So I have stepped carefully throughout.

But one element holds to both options: and that is that this audience is human and as such shares the human condition. Accordingly, I do not hesitate in using a narrative point of view to directly challenge the reader – the witness to this history – and, in the one novel where I made that a central point to the entire narrative (Toll the Hounds), why, the fur did fly.

I knew the risk I was taking, and to this day the jury’s seriously divided on that novel.

I don’t care. I’m prouder of that novel than any other I’ve written.

The poet bitch of the excerpt plays a mental game, beginning with this paragraph:

“In her head, Badalle was singing. She sensed the presence of others – not those ahead of her or those behind her – but ghostly things.  Invisible eyes and veiled thoughts. An impatience, a harsh desire for judgement.  As if the Snake’s very existence was an affront. To be ignored. Denied. Fled from.”

In the context of what I said above, who are these ghostly invisible presences in her head? And more importantly, how many of them want to be there? A few are content. Others would, if they could, unleash venom and spite. Still others will skip right past Badalle and her tale.

But she knows her own story, and in the lines that follow she makes claim to her right not only to exist, but to tell that story.  In fact, she demands that they listen, pay attention and, dammit, feel something of her world. Or, for fuck’s sake, to just feel anything, anything at all.

Within the fictional setting, it works. But it resonates beyond that, too. People are quick to judge. Some people take pleasure in cruel thoughts.  It gives them a feeling of superiority, maybe. Who knows? Still other people cringe and look away, as if to shield one’s own eyes yields the magical effect of obliteration – poof!  The unpleasantness vanishes! Pour me another beer, Madge, American Idol’s on.

One truth of this crisis upon me, here at the sun’s setting on this series, is the one that whispers what’s the point? Words are powerless.  Nothing changes and the only change still waiting to find me is accepting that, leaving me to then slink off into the night without another murmur of protest.  Is it nothing but conceit to want to wring emotion from people – those who are my readers – and really, where do I get off thinking I’ve the right? And in those times, it’s invented characters like Badalle who turn to me and tell me to wake the fuck up.

So here you were all thinking that those ghosts in that paragraph were you. Maybe they are, but before they’re you, they’re me. I’ve been talking to myself for nine thousand pages, and still, it seems, I remain not quite convinced. Of anything. Accordingly, I can hardly mind the naysayers out there, can I?  Sometimes, in my bleaker moments, I’m right there with ya, mate.

But luckily for me, most of the time people like Badalle shake me back to some semblance of humanity, and I look at the pronouncer of the poet bitch and I think: man, you are one tragic wasteland. Not because you don’t like a character I’ve created. Not because I bore you on occasion. No, it’s because every wasteland is tragic and right now somewhere in the Sudan children are lying down on the ground to die, and not one of us (me included) seems to have the time to spare them a moment’s thought.

So how does this work for me? Badalle is my reminder, and her cry to be seen is my admonishment to myself. Can it not work for you, just this once?

___

In the writing of The Crippled God, the last novel in the Malazan Book of the Fallen, the players are burdened beneath a vast weight of helplessness.

Is it any wonder?

The great thing about fantasy literature (and maybe all literature, to some degree) is that one can take characters (people) from this world and transplant them to another, and in the process give them the one thing they don’t have in this world: power.

If I had simply transposed the plight of refugee children in the Sudan, into the Malazan world, and left them as powerless as they are in this one, then in effect all that I am doing is exploiting their existence. I am borrowing their tragedy for the sake of fiction. If, however, I empower them, give them a voice and a will that won’t be denied, I am asking my reader to not turn away, and if I work hard at imagining their moment by moment existence, I am telling myself the same thing.

This could be attacked as facile on my part.  After all, if I really cared as much as I seem to be saying here, why am I not over there saving the lives of children?  Fair question.  I’m afraid I know myself too well, and my tendency to feel things too deeply (touched on via the T’lan Imass).  I can imagine wearing myself down to nothing working to save lives only to, eventually, put a bullet in my own head (ever take note of the suicide rate among photojournalists? What you see can kill you and what you cannot reconcile will kill you).

Over the years I’ve learned to put on armour to protect myself, but for all that it inures me to external dangers, it does nothing for what’s going on within that armour. And for that, I need a way out for what I’m feeling, and that way out, thus far, has been my writing.  And that is self-serving, but without it, I wouldn’t be here right now. Not a chance.

I’ll resume the more specific deconstruction stuff next time.  What you saw here was deconstruction of my motivations as a writer. But I thought I should get it out of the way. I’ll try not to touch on it again. Promise.

Photo Credits

Bantam Books and Wikipedia

But today I fluffed around for a bit, waiting for something to come to mind. My creative machine wasn’t quite engaged. So I decided on an excerpt instead, and wrote this:

“It is said the stars are without number, and are in eternal motion,

and that the heavens forbid all comprehension. It is said that

the universe breathes as would a bellows, and that we are now

riding an exhalation of a god immeasurably vast. And when all

these things are said, I am invited to surrender to the immensity

of the unknowable.

“To this I do rail. If I am to be a mote lost in the abyss, then

that mote is my world. My universe. And all the great forces

beyond my reach invite neither despair nor ennui. In what I

am able to measure — this is the realm of my virtues, and here is

where I must find my reward.

But if you would mock my struggle, crowd not close. The

universe is without measure and the stars are without number.

And if I invite you to explore, take no offence. Be sure that I

will spare you a parting wave as you vanish into the distance,

never to be seen again.”

(If I was to edit that passage now, I’d invert ‘despair’ and ‘ennui.’ See why?)

But, looking over it, I decided I wasn’t happy with the tone, hinting as it did of belligerence. As I wasn’t in a belligerent mood, I decided against it. I include it here to give you some idea of the process I tend to follow. Each chapter epigraph is invented on the spot, whether poem or excerpt, and when it works, it’s because it has captured my mood at that moment.

Oddly enough, I often start a chapter with a sense of mental exhaustion, as if I’ve run out of places to hide and besides, I’m too tired to run anymore. This is when I find my best writing — all the conceits and intellectual crapology have withered away, and I feel emptied from the inside out.

An old friend into such things has suggested that I am then ready to channel someone else’s voice and vision — that I simply become a conduit without static interference. I’ll grant that occasionally I stumble out of the zone,  look back on what I’ve done and have no idea where it all came from. But mostly, I suspect what I’m tapping is raw creativity, unfettered, uncluttered. I don’t care whose it is, so long as I can get to it.

The poem I then wrote to start the chapter, after discarding the excerpt, was a perfect example of this. It follows here in its entirety:

Stone whispers

Patience

But we take chisel in hand

Child begs

Not yet

But the sands have run out

Sky cries

Fly

But we hold our ground

Wind sings

Free

But roots bind us down

Lover sighs

Stay

But we must be gone

Life pleads

Live

But death is the dream

We beg

Not yet

But the sands have run out

Stone whispers

Patience…

— Chant of the Living, Gallan of Kharkanas

Upon completing it, I saw that it was a round, and so titled it as a chant. And then, in my head, I read it ‘out loud,’ at first at a slow, measured pace, and then slightly sped up, more flowing; and then I imagined an audience out there voicing all the italicized lines, call-response, church-style.

At this point, the lines that didn’t work got some tweaking. Line 9 and Line 12. I didn’t make note of my original versions of those two lines, alas, but the new ones I found seemed to be right. The rest stayed intact (barring Line 18, which I’ll get to later). At this point, I still wasn’t quite sure what was going on with this strange, modest thing, but I felt I was close to something … unusual, a little frightening.

Then I repeated the silent ‘reading aloud,’ imagining an audience responding with the italicized lines. Ran through it for three cycles and then stopped. My heart thumping. And I thought:  Fuck.

It’s very rare (for me) that a poem I’ve written takes multiple run-throughs for even me to work out what it’s all about.

So … what’s buried in this chant (if you will excuse that choice of words)? I started with the first two lines.  ‘Stone whispers/patience” Had a moment of panic, thinking: those are short lines. Shorter the lines, the harder the whole thing is. Nah, not the one word stuff you see in modern poems — ninety percent of that is rubbish, trying too hard, etc. But short lines … decent lines … getting to a place where one word can actually have an impact, that’s hard. But I’d started and besides, I hate abandoning good stuff even when I don’t know yet what it’s getting at. Initially, I recall I was looking over my notes on the chapters ahead, and had an inkling to maybe indirectly advise readers to stay patient.

But then the third line landed, blowing all that out of the water (a good thing, I suspect. Hell, if my readers aren’t patient with me by this point, they’ll never be). It’s the anchor line to the first two, and just as stylistically I return to normal font, saving the italics for the ‘voices,’ so too I reinforce the back-and-forth nature of this poem. But I could have written something like:  ‘But we shape it as we will.’ Instead, we took a chisel in hand — it’s less abstract, of course, which is always better, but it also evokes something else — although by this point I wasn’t sure what, precisely. Sculptors use chisels; so do masons.

Now, with the first three lines set down, I had my hidden stanza to guide the poem’s structure. Hidden because I didn’t want any breaks; I wanted one to flow into the next (not yet aware that this was indeed going to be a chant, mind you).

In the café, two tables away, a harried mother was trying to manage her younger son, who was probably mainlining speed when she wasn’t looking. And despite wearing headphones, it wasn’t easy to ignore the battle of wills going on between them. Thus, trying hard to ignore it resulted in seeing the next lines spill out onto the screen:

Child begs

Not yet

But it wasn’t just the nasty little runt (and he was nasty) that triggered those lines. It was my recollection of raising my own son, and in hearing him say “Not yet,” so many times it became his mantra. “Get off the computer!” “Not yet.” “No more gaming — do your homework.” “Not yet.” “Do the dishes.” “Not yet.”

The runt in the café never said “Not yet,” but then, he didn’t have to. A memory in my head was saying it, and with that memory a sense of nostalgia, and, perhaps, regret. Childhood is all about not yet, after all, and that is its wonder. More than that, it’s the thing we all lose as we grow up, as we get tied up in the clock and time’s swift speeding past. A child makes time and then fills it, and lo, it is ever expanding. Us adults make time and it looks like a box and then we crawl inside and down snaps the lid. From all of this, then … regret.

Leading to the anchor line: “But the sands have run out”

I paused then, wondered where to take it next. Then I did what I often do: I mined my own stuff, in this case a poem written in an earlier chapter. And that bit came from a dream I had once, one of those flying ones, where the sky was actually calling down to me, inviting me to join it (them? Plenty of voices up there, I recall).

So I wrote “Sky cries/fly” and well remembered that dream, that voice so inviting, so filled with joy. But just as in the dream, “We hold to the ground.” I edited that line, first to work the rhyme (though I knew I wasn’t going to stick too tightly to that rule), and second to get in the dual notion that comes with the word ‘hold.’ Holding our ground, staying put, fixed in place (and time), and all for some stubborn, probably pointless cause; along with holding to the ground because, well, we ain’t got wings. Both ways, this knocks us back into the ‘adult’ sensibility, too, making distinct the ‘child’ (as ‘other’): I am advancing the years with the narrative.

Suddenly I had firmed up the point of view for this poem. It’s an older voice. It’s probably mine.

The next two lines came quickly. Wind/free. That one was fairly straightforward, but it also echoed my memory of those voices in the sky from my dream. Now, that’s strictly an internal linkage, but since there’s a simplicity to the lines over which no-one would be confused, I didn’t fear the hidden obscurity (besides which, if any fool does a manic analysis of my poetry en masse, they might find that linkage, and more).

The next anchor line I rewrote a number of times. The one version I remember is: “But (the) roots hold us fast,” but I wasn’t happy with it. Wrong rhythm (which in itself isn’t bad, if, say, I wanted to give the reader a jarring at this point, but that’s not what I wanted), and it was definitely not scanning right. But, by the point of that version, I knew what was going on in the poem. I reworked it, gave it some thought, reworked it again, found the rhyme, found the allusion I wanted. Set up a nice linkage between ‘hold’ three lines up and ‘bind,’ reinforcing the real meaning of the poem.

The next six lines came quickly, then. Lover and Life and what they had to say. The Lover speaks with longing (but by this point, even in that first draft, I was riffing with real purpose, real intent), and Life speaks in the only language it has: itself. The alliteration goes wild and perfect in this bunch, too.

The anchor line to close the cycle is ‘But death is the dream.’ I may have written ‘But we dream of death’ at first but as soon as I did I saw that it wasn’t right; while it is more personal, that becomes the problem: death is universal, and the line needs to knock the reader into that scope. At this point the poem should unfurl, fill out, fill up the whole fucking universe.

It also helps that this line echoes an earlier poem (in the ninth novel) and at least two prose sections in the last two novels (and no, I didn’t have to go back and check. I just knew).

After that line hit home, it followed simply to renew the cycle, only this time, everything has changed (at least, in my head it did, and does). It is not the child who begs: it is ‘we’ and that we is an adult ‘we.’

At the end line, I considered adding the anchor line “but we take chisel in hand” but if I had, I’d be doing the reader’s work when I don’t have to. Because it is precisely in silently adding that line that the reader should comprehend the meaning of the poem, but at the same time it invites the reader to take up the chant, and by the third or fourth time this poem ceases being a chant and becomes something else. I won’t say what: suffice it to say that I changed the poem’s title, though you won’t see to what until the novel comes out.

Not a sculptor. Not a mason. The stone being chiseled is a gravestone. This poem is about an entire life: childhood (be patient, child, one day you’ll grow up); lover (don’t leave), and finally one for whom life is failing. Round and round. The child sees. Lover and life, wind and sky all beckon, and then we beg, desperately, for more.

Death is the dream.

This poem broke my heart, folks.

Read more of Steven Erikson’s Notes on a Crisis. Visit his Life As A Human author page for more links…

Photo Credits

“The Thinker in the Dark” h.koppdelay @ flickr.com. Creative Commons. Some Rights Reserved.

“moon time” alicepopkorn @ flickr.com. Creative Commons. Some Rights Reserved.

“Magic Landscape 105” h.koppdelay @ flickr.com. Creative Commons. Some Rights Reserved.

Each section is treated discretely. It becomes a kind of mini story in itself. For a novel, just link them all together. Beauty.

I didn’t invent all of this, by the way. I learned it, back when I was writing short stories in the writing program at the University of Victoria. It happened because my mentor at the time, Jack Hodgins, was sly enough to see where I was at in the whole process, and guided me to the books on writing fiction written by John Gardner.

I still recall reading Gardner’s description of what he did with the opening paragraphs of his novel, Grendel. My jaw dropped to the floor and stayed there for about three months. Until then, I really had no idea just what was possible in writing.

Gardner didn’t talk about elliptical writing, and I don’t know if anyone has, apart from me. But what he showed me was how to use language itself, the precise weighting of word-choices, the way messing with rhythm can achieve particular effects. In short, he showed me just how thoroughly a writer can fuck with a reader’s head, mostly without them knowing it.

It’s diabolical and a little frightening. But you can easily look around, say, at the newspaper you daily peruse, to see how that power can be expressed to achieve what can only be called evil. So I don’t use the word ‘diabolical’ lightly.

The language of popular journalism invites intellectual laziness in the reader. The old adage about ‘just the facts’ is a whitewash. I can just state facts and still manipulate emotions — it’s easy, actually. Comes down to which facts one chooses to reveal, and in what order. The rest is all down to the reader.

In popular journalism, the whole process is cynical beyond belief, but it works (Fox news anyone?). Push buttons, trigger hatred, cold-heartedness, and fear. Easy peasy. Of course, what they’re really saying is: we think you’re a fucking idiot and you’ll believe anything, and then they smile sweetly and it’s time for our sponsors hallelujah amen.

I admit to being dismayed at how often it seems to work. I also admit that I hope there’s a special place in hell for those writers who reduced politics to sound bites, and for those on the tube who turn every tragic event into a television production, replete with billboard titles and juicy graphics. These days, we are all potential entertainment to an audience of millions. Who decided that was a good idea?

I’m reminded that I have actually met fans of the film Starship Troopers who didn’t know it was satire. Huh?

For this installment, as you may have noticed, I’m taking a break from deconstructing that excerpt, to see if there will be more commentary on whether I should resume the exercise, or not. So instead, this is mostly your average blog rant. Hey, I’m only human.

___

As I write this, I am about to head off to a conference in Orlando. The International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts. I’ve been going for a few years now, but I still feel slightly out of place there. The conference is an academic one, with a few token writers invited to give readings and just sort’ve hang around beside the pool.

Apart from one scholar who happens to be a good friend of mine (and hanging out with him is one of the main reasons I still go, along with Steve Donaldson regularly attending), I’ve yet to see anyone tackle my writing.

It occurs to me that even within fantasy as a genre, there exist internal stigmas. As a writer of ‘epic’ or ‘heroic’ fantasy, well, unless one is a dead Englishman with J’s and R’s in his name, we don’t much rate as serious fare for serious discussion (of course, if I went in the opposite direction and wrote about adolescent virgin seduction fantasies and threw in a few moody vampires, well, I’d be fighting ’em off!). Sometimes I think about all of that and I sigh. But mostly, I just sit at the pool bar and have a good time not worrying about anything.

So perhaps I have an ulterior motive in analyzing my own writing here, as if to say: ‘Hey you, no really, I know what I’m doing. Honest. I even think about it. And look at this excerpt — not a sword or busty bodice in sight!’ (Good thing I didn’t use that other excerpt.) But if that purpose is there, it’s not the main one. Apart from hoping to inspire beginning writers, I might also be providing a kind of primer to my readers — not that most of them need it, as they’ve already discovered the pay-off in re-reads. Right?

To close, I’ll return briefly to that diabolical matter, to assure my readers that while I am entirely and absolutely engaged in manipulating your emotions through the stories I write, I won’t do it to lie to you. Ever. I am a believer in Aristotle’s argument on the value of catharsis in tragedy. We need to feel to be reminded of what feeling is like. Now more than ever. My novels are an invitation to compassion, for what that’s worth. And finally, I can’t make you feel anything unless I feel it first.

For Malazan fans: ten chapters left…

Read Parts I to IV of Steven Erikson’s “Notes on a Crisis”. Visit his Life As A Human biography page for links.

Photo Credits

“Monster in the Sky”sakura_chilhaya+. Creative Commons. Some Rights Reserved.

“Sean Hamity and Karl Rove on FOX!” dutchlad @ flickr.com. Creative Commons. Some Rights Reserved.

“Puppet or Puppeteer” Jonathan @ Flickr.com. Creative Commons. Some Rights Reserved.

Editor’s Note: In his latest blog post, bestselling novelist Steven Erikson gives us a glimpse into his creative process by deconstructing an excerpt from his much-anticipated next novel in the Malazan Book of the Fallen series.

This is a revealing look into Erikson’s process. Fans will love this glimpse behind the scenes and writers will love the insights into the thought processes and techniques of this fantasy master.

Wasn’t I going to talk about writing? As I make this entry, I am a little more than halfway through the tenth and closing novel of my series. Yesterday I wrote a section opening a new chapter. After reviewing and editing it, it struck me that this particular sample would work well in giving readers an idea of the process by which I create fiction.

I doubt it’s anything special, but I did say I would talk about my writing process, didn’t I? The section I’m referring to works because it needs little introduction, which is saying something after nine effing books.

The point of view is from a young girl named Badalle. She is a poet, and one of the leaders of a train of child refugees fleeing environmental and political disaster. Their tale is one of suffering and deprivation, as one might expect (think of the Sudan for a real-world corollary). Of course, this being a world of fantasy, Badalle’s language has power — magical if you will — and in this section she invokes a kind of sorcery, one capable of transporting all the children farther down the trail.

They don’t know where they are headed, only that the place where they came from is no longer tenable. This mass of wandering children is called The Snake, and with Badalle there is a boy named Saddic. The boy who leads is named Rutt, who carries a swaddled baby he has named Held.

‘Shards’ are carnivorous locusts. They are crossing a desert. I can’t see any other world-specific elements.

My initial requirement for this section was to move the group along, and in doing so to suggest the extent of Badalle’s growing power. The challenge was to make the section do that in an interesting and evocative way. So what follows is how I work out such things. But first, read the excerpt (for you readers of the series, there is nothing overtly spoilerish in this excerpt, since you pretty much know Badalle and the Snake’s plight. The only spoiler detail is [STOP HERE IF YOU DO NOT WANT ANY SPOILERS AT ALL] that they have left the crystal city, and that hardly seems an earth-shattering one).

Here is the excerpt:

White as bone, the butterflies formed a vast cloud overhead. Again and again their swirling mass dimmed the sun with a blessed gift of shadow that moments later broke apart, proving that curses hid in every gift, and that blessings could pass in the blink of an eye.

An eye swarming with flies. Badalle could feel and indeed see them clustering at the corners; she could feel them drinking her tears. She did not resent their need, and their frenzied crawl and buzz felt cool against her scorched cheeks. Those that crowded her mouth she ate when she could, the taste bitter when she crushed them, the wings like patches of dry skin almost impossible to swallow.

Since the Shards had left, only the butterflies and the flies remained, and there was something pure in these last two forces. One white, the other black. Only the extremes remained: from the unyielding ground below to the hollow sky above; from the push of life to the pull of death; from the breath hiding within to the last to leave a fallen child.

The flies fed upon the living, but the butterflies waited for the dead. There was nothing in between. Nothing but this walking, the torn feet and the stains they left behind, the figures toppling and then stepped over.

In her head, Badalle was singing. She sensed the presence of others – not those ahead of her or those behind her – but ghostly things. Invisible eyes and veiled thoughts. An impatience, a harsh desire for judgement. As if the Snake’s very existence was an affront. To be ignored. Denied. Fled from.

But she would not permit any to escape. They did not have to like what they saw. They did not have to like her at all. Or Rutt or Held or Saddic or any of the bare thousand still alive. They could rail at her thoughts, at the poetry she found in the heart of suffering, as if it had no meaning to them, no value. No truth. They could do all of that; still she would not let them go.

I am as true as anything you have ever seen. A dying child, abandoned by the world. And I say this: there is nothing truer.  Nothing.

Flee from me if you can. I promise I will haunt you. This is my only purpose now, the only one left to me. I am history made alive, holding on but failing. I am everything you would not think of, belly filled and thirst slaked, there in all your comforts surrounded by faces you know and love.

But hear me. Heed my warning. History has claws.

Saddic still carried his hoard. He dragged it behind him. In a sack made of clothes no longer needed by anyone. His treasure trove. His … things. What did he want with them? What meaning hid inside that sack? All those stupid bits, the shiny stones, the pieces of wood. And the way, with every dusk, when they could walk no further, he would take them all out to look at them – why did that frighten her?

Sometimes he would weep, for no reason. And make fists as if to crush all his baubles into dust, and it was then that she realized that Saddic didn’t know what they meant either. But he wouldn’t leave them behind. That sack would be the death of him.

She imagined the moment when he fell. This boy she would have liked for a brother. Onto his knees, hands all entwined in the cloth sleeves, falling forward so that his face struck the ground. He’d try to get back up, but he’d fail. And the flies would swarm him until he was no longer even visible, just a seething, glittering blackness. Where Saddic had been.

They’d eat his last breath. Drink the last tears from his eyes which now just stared. Into his open mouth to make it dry as a cave, a spider hole. And then the swarm would explode, rush away seeking more of life’s sweet water. And down would descend the butterflies. To strip away his skin, and the thing left – with its sack – would no longer be Saddic.

Saddic will be gone. Happy Saddic. Peaceful Saddic, a ghost hovering, looking down at that sack. I would have words for him, for his passing. I would stand over him, looking down at all those fluttering wings so like leaves, and I would try, one more time, to make sense of the sack, the sack that killed him.

And I would fail. Making my words few. Weak. A song of unknowing. All I have for my brother Saddic.

When that time comes, I will know it is time for me to die, too. When that time comes, I will give up.

And so she sang. A song of knowing. The most powerful song of all.

They had a day left, maybe two.

Is this what I wanted? Every journey must end. Out here there is nothing but ends. No beginnings left. Out here, I have nothing but claws.

“Badalle.” The word was soft, like crumpled cloth and she felt it brush her senses.

“Rutt.”

“I can’t do this anymore.”

“But you are, Rutt. The head of the Snake. And Held, who is the tongue.”

“No. I can’t. I have gone blind.”

She moved up alongside him, studied his old man’s face. “They’re swollen,” she said. “Closed up, Rutt. It’s to keep them safe. Your eyes.”

“But I can’t see –”

“There’s nothing to see, Rutt.”

“I can’t lead –”

“For this, there is no-one better.”

“Badalle –”

“Even the stones are gone. Just walk, Rutt. The way is clear, for as far as I can see, it’s clear.”

He loosed a sob. The flies poured in and he bent over, coughing, retching. He stumbled and she caught him before he fell. Rutt righted himself, clutching Held tight. Badalle heard a soft whimper rising from them both.

No water. This is what is killing us now. Squinting, she glanced back. Saddic was nowhere in sight – had he already fallen? If he had, it would be just as well that she’d not seen it. Other faces, vaguely familiar, stared at her and Rutt, waiting for the Snake to begin moving once again. They stood hunched over, tottering. They stood with backs arched and bellies distended as if about to drop a baby. Their eyes were depthless pools where the flies gathered to drink. Sores crusted their noses, their mouths and ears. Skin on cheeks and chin had cracked open and glistened beneath ribbons of flies. Many were bald, missing teeth, their gums bleeding. And Rutt was not alone in being blind.

Our children. See what we have done to them. Our mothers and fathers left us to this, and now we leave them, too, in our turn. There is no end to the generations of the foolish. One after another after another and at some point we all started nodding, thinking this is how it has to be, and so we don’t even try and change things. All we pass down to our children is the same stupid grin.

But I have claws. And I will tear away that grin. I swear it.

“Badalle?”

She had begun singing out loud. Wordless, the tone low and then building, thickening. Until she could feel more than one voice within her, and each in turn joined her song. Filling the air. Their sound was one of horror, a terrible thing – she felt its power growing. Growing.

“Badalle!”

I have claws. I have claws. I have claws. Show me that grin one more time. Show it, I’m begging you! Let me tear it from your face. Let me rip deep, until my talons score your teeth! Let me feel the blood and let me hear the meat splitting and let me see the look in your eyes as you meet mine let me see I have claws I have claws I have claws!

“Badalle!”

Someone struck her, knocked her down. Stunned, she stared up into Saddic’s face, his round, wizened face. And from his eyes red tears tracked down through the dust on his leathery cheeks.

“Don’t cry,” she whispered. “It’s all right, Saddic.  Don’t cry.”

Rutt knelt beside her, groped with one hand until his fingers brushed her forehead. “What have you done?”

His tone startled her. The cloth is torn. “They’re all too weak,” she said. “Too weak to feel anger. So I felt it for them – for all of you –” She stopped. Rutt’s fingertips leaked blood. She could feel crystal shards digging into her back. What?

“You moved us,” Saddic said. “It … hurt.”

She could hear wailing now. The Snake was writhing in pain. “I went … I went looking.”

“For what?” Rutt demanded. “For what?”

“For claws.”

Saddic shook his head. “Badalle. We’re children. We don’t have claws.”

The sun dimmed then and she squinted past Saddic. But the butterflies were gone. Flies, look at all the flies.

“We don’t have claws, Badalle.”

“No, Saddic, you’re right. We don’t. But someone does.”

The power of the song still clung to her, fierce as a promise. Someone does. “I’m taking us there,” she said, meeting Saddic’s wide eyes.

He drew back, leaving her to stare up at the sky. Flies, roiling in a massive cloud, black as the Abyss. She clambered to her feet. “Take my hand, Rutt.  It’s time to walk.”

Well then. This deconstruction thing to follow will use up more than one installment at Life As A Human. If it bores you just skip my entries for the next month or so.

The fantasy novels I write are character-based in that I hold to a single point of view for each section, although there are multiple sections. The challenge lies in stepping back into each character when it’s time for their part of the story, in finding their voice again, their way of seeing the world. I call it a challenge but in fact it’s what I love doing the most. It’s like sucking on multiple personalities sweet as candy. There are so many ways of seeing the world, and I want to experience every one of them.

In a general sense, I write elliptically. By that I mean I open sections with some detail I want to resonate throughout the entire section, and through the course of writing that section you can imagine me tapping that bell again and again. Until with the final few lines, I ring it one last time – sometimes hard, sometimes soft, depending on the effect I want, or feel is warranted. It’s become such a habit now that I often do it without conscious thought.

On a most basic level it shows up in paragraphs (and no, there’s nothing unique to me in any of this). Look two paragraphs upward on this screen. The opening line talks about multiple points of view; the last line describes the many ways of seeing the world. But that last line isn’t just reiterating the first one. Something is added (in this case, a personal comment on my desire to experience every one of them). It’s probably the only structural lesson I learned in school that I still use on occasion – the whole introductory and concluding sentences to frame a paragraph.

Anyway, extrapolating this pattern is how I write — within a scene, from section to section, from chapter to chapter, from novel to novel. While the narrative infers something linear, as in the advancement of time and a sequence of events, in fact the narrative loops back on itself again and again. And each time it returns, the timbre of that resonance has changed, sometimes subtly, sometimes fundamentally.

I read somewhere that Scott Bakker has recently complained that I’m repeating myself in my series, but he’s missing the point. It’s more that I return again and again to particular themes, from as many perspectives as I can. Maybe it still rates as a flaw in my writing, but it’s also my whole point in writing. Forget the conceit of hunting for the right answers – let’s start with trying to find the right questions. Personally, I doubt I will ever get past that stage; for me, the more ways I discover of looking at something, the more humbling the whole exercise becomes (Think you got the answers? Sorry, don’t believe you. Never will).

Elliptical. Looping back. It can be an image, a detail of setting, a mood or flavour, a particular action, or an idea. There’s countless ways of coming round back to where you started, and I admit I like the sly ones, though sometimes it pays to be more obvious.

So, let’s get practical with that excerpt. There are multiple loops in that section. In fact, if you want to, you can make use of one of the recurring images in that section: flies. The way you shoo them away, only back they come. Badalle’s internal narrative is a buzz of flies, persistent in its obsessions. (By the way, as my students in my last workshop already know from me, I do go on about making the physical details of the scene serve the internal drive of that narrative: so of course I used flies, and not just because I wanted to echo certain elements of the second novel, Deadhouse Gates, but also because I wanted them buzzing in the reader’s head, just as they’re buzzing in Badalle’s.)

I am writing this right now with considerable hesitation. There’s a feeling of self-indulgence here, or maybe a sense of blowing my own horn – it’s one of the reasons I have avoided writing blogs up until now. It’s one thing for me to know what I’m up to; is it really my place to describe it to all of you?

Tell you what. I’ll start mercifully small: tackling only the first paragraph of that section, and then stop there for this installment, to await reader comments. (Want more? Want me to get the fuck on with something else? Let me know.)

White as bone, the butterflies formed a vast cloud overhead. Again and again their swirling mass dimmed the sun with a blessed gift of shadow that moments later broke apart, proving that curses hid in every gift, and that blessings could pass in the blink of an eye.

A common rule to opening a scene is to set it quickly. I ignore that all the time. The only details here are butterflies and a presumably cruel sun. It’s got to be cruel because shade is a blessing. But there’s also something a little more ominous going on, since the whole section begins with white bone. Sure, it’s just a description, a simile. But no, it’s more than that. And less, since as a simile it doesn’t quite fit, does it? It’s texturally wrong. I could have written something more seamless. I could have written:

White as a cloud, the butterflies swarmed overhead.

But let’s face it, that sentence is flat. It’s lazy and just looking at it now makes me cringe. No, I wanted the simile of ‘white as bone’ to jar in its wrongness. It really is all wrong, but it’s also dreadfully right. Because ‘bone’ is the first bell I’m ringing. But before I get to all that bell-ringing stuff, read that first sentence again. Read it out loud. No need to be mindful of alliteration and all that technical stuff: how does it roll off the tongue? How does the rhythm feel?

Badalle is a poetic character, and even though as a reader you don’t yet know it’s Badalle’s point of view, well, I do. And with that opening line, I’m there, into her head again. She has a rhythm to her thinking. For her it’s mostly unconscious, and actually, once I’m with her it’s unconscious with me, too. I look straight down and I’ve got her cracked, swollen feet, and I’m hurting as much as she is (sure, it’s all a conceit, but it needs to exist, and as a writer I need to feel it as honestly as I can, or I’m screwed).

That opening line has poetic elements that relate to the sentence that follows it, and the whole paragraph proceeds like that. It’s all in how the mouth forms those words, how the breath plays out in the voicing of that line. Poetic, but more suited to the oral tradition than the written one, which fits the whole Homeric thing I’m riffing on with this series.

At the same time the rhythm changes in that second line, even as I moved from the physical descriptive grounding of the first bit (real butterflies, then sun and shade) to something distinctly not literal, something thematic, something that in fact signposts the entire section (think opposites, beginning with blessing and curse – this whole section is about opposites, and moving from one to the other, but I’ll get back to that later).

The butterflies, related back to bleached bone, are death. It hangs over them, literally, and even the blessing of shade quickly breaks apart, heralding the return of the killing sun. And from that notion, the line moves into ‘curses’ and ‘blessings’ as the as-yet-unnamed point of view takes the environment and immediately internalizes it, which is what someone suffering deeply will do. The environment becomes symbolic almost without transition. The sun becomes that indifferent, relentless killer. The butterflies, as it turns out, will scavenge the dead down to their bones, and maybe death is a blessing and maybe it is a curse – she’s yet to decide, but she’s on the very edge at this moment.

The last key to take from this first paragraph is that we begin the section with ‘death.’ As an exercise for all you nascent writers out there, read through the excerpt again and see how many times I ring that bell, and try and work out how the tone changes as the section moves along.

All right, let me add this caveat. I can almost hear someone reading this and thinking … but … this is insane! I agree. I never said I was sane. But I do this section after section, novel after novel. I’ve done it with this level of pressure, on as many lines as possible, for so long now most of it comes naturally. So, no, I didn’t work out all that shit in advance of writing that opening paragraph. Not consciously. But subconsciously? I think the answer has to be ‘yes.’ And the test comes in being able to go back to what I’ve written, as I have done here, and deconstruct it – either it works or it doesn’t. That’s the test.

As an experiment, I have tested myself many times, by randomly selecting sections I’ve written in previous works (in fact, it’s part of my self-editing process). Occasionally I see where I could have made it more seamless, where I could have worked it better than I’d done. But not often, to be honest. Once it becomes ingrained in the creative process, it becomes the reason to write: this is for me the very act of creation — this layering, these looping of themes round and round and back again, the crazy cymbal clash of resonances all over the place. I feed on it like nectar.

Don’t be daunted.  You too can become an insatiable addict to the wonders of the written word.  Unless, of course, you happen to be overly fond of sanity.  Overrated in my books.

Need I repeat that last sentence?

Cheers for now.

Photo Credits

“Steve Erikson” © Chris Holt, All rights reserved.

Central Malazan Empire, Daelstorm’s Melted Maps

At that moment I was beginning to believe that this country was trying to kill me. My head was spinning. I was dripping in sweat. I looked at my ankle but could see nothing untoward, not two tiny puncture wounds, nothing at all. But I was having trouble sitting up straight.

I staggered outside, weaved my way over to the dig director. Told him I’d been bitten by a spider and asked if the first aid kit had antivenin, or even an epi-kit in case this went bad. He stared at the ground for a moment, and then broke out laughing.

I don’t blame him. The whole thing was absurd. Locals gathered to assure me there was nothing that poisonous this far north (except a snake or two). Thing is, their credibility was beginning to look suspect – they’d managed four-day old goat’s head soup, after all. And we appeared to have a first aid kit bought in Wal-Mart.

Well, no matter. At this point there was nothing to do but take things stoically. I was leaving in the morning. Assuming I made it that far.

Much later, in London, I trawled through Wikipedia. There are two identified species commonly called daddy longlegs. One is high venomous but has no fangs. The other less so but its fangs are too weak to break human skin. No search through Mongolian insect fauna could find me a picture of the creature that bit me. I was baffled and remain so to this day. That day, in London, it was something of an issue. I’d had a single day of feeling fine upon my return to the world, but now I was running a high fever and the gut storm had returned. I knew enough about venom to know that some forms attack systemically, over time, leading to organ failure and all the rest. But here I’m getting ahead of myself.

The day of my departure was one of genuine feeling. I’d made a few friends, but in truth all I wanted to do was get this on with. One of the Mongolian crew’s father was an archaeologist based in the capital, and through intermittent cell phone conversations it was arranged that he would pick me up at the other end and drive me to a hotel.

But there was concern. Flash floods had hit Ulaan Bator on the weekend and fourteen people had drowned. No one quite knew how bad things were. I probably shouldn’t have laughed.

The trip to the capital was long. By van to the nearest town with bus service, four hours. Bus down to Ulaan Bator, six to seven hours. Through it all I sat with a two litre bottle of coke for sustenance, about all I could manage to keep down. As far as bus rides go, it was pretty much standard for third world travelling. Crowded. Kids, grandmothers, young couples. Rest stops opposite doorless outhouses lined up in fly-swarmed rows, the men off pissing in the fields. Cigarettes smoked. Then back onboard.

Reaching the edge of the city, I thought I could make out some of the obvious detritus from the flooding, but in all honesty, Ulaan Bator kinda has that look anyway, so I couldn’t be entirely sure. My ride turned up at the depot and I was driven to a five star hotel.

Unless you have experienced something similar, it is almost impossible to describe the feeling at the moment I walked into that hotel. Eight-five US a night.  Fine, whatever. Laundry service? Perfect. Restaurant and bar? Excellent. Fuck yes.

While on the bus I had conjured up visions of the perfect BLT. I couldn’t quite manage that but I did dine on a chicken burger with fries on the side, which was awful but perfect. And a bottle of Guinness, always perfect. If I paid for the extravagance later that night, so be it. But it felt like the antibiotics were finally working.

In the bar there were foreigners of a certain type. Russians, Americans and Japanese: engineers and brokers mostly. And in the three nights that I stayed there, I got to know them in only faintly more detail – about as far as I cared to go. The loud late-fifties drunk hitting on the pretty waitresses and barkeep was American. The three Japanese suits with the young Mongolian beauties to keep them company held forth in a booth where they smoked Turkish cigarettes one after another while their ‘dates’ sat demurely and dressed to kill and were bored witless. The group of scientists in their Abercrombie and Fitch attire who worked too hard at being over-familiar with their environs, as if nowhere too remote even existed – well now, these descriptions have a cynical flavour, don’t they? Try sitting for a few nights in a five star hotel anywhere in the Third World and keeping alive the generosity of your own spirit. Just try.

This was sordid, and pathetic. I’ve never liked it, not in Central America, and not here. Those pretty young call girls were all looking for a way out. Their rich customers had something else entirely in their minds. We all know how money talks, and we all know that it never has anything good to say. Certainly not about us. The sooner I bailed from this bad movie set, the better.

Alas, my Aeroflot ticket was non-refundable and the dates could not be changed. If I wanted an earlier flight out I’d have to pay for it. Pay for it I did. Caught a cab to the airport at five in the morning and joined the crowds waiting for their flights. But the Russian plane never showed. No one had an explanation. I had a connecting flight in Moscow but with a five hour layover, so I wasn’t worried. For awhile, anyway. We left at four PM. Time zones were being crossed. I had no idea if I’d make my connection, but by that point I really didn’t give a shit. Get me outa here. Please.

At this point, all I am thinking about is getting to England, being reunited with my wife and son, getting settled down in Cornwall, and getting onto the tenth novel. Nothing else mattered. Not the madness of immigration in Moscow, not the dreadful food, not the 40 plus hours without sleep, not even the chaos of Heathrow (at least that chaos I understood and indeed welcomed with open arms). Upon seeing me, my wife said she barely recognized me. We’d been apart for what, two weeks? I was gaunter than usual (which is saying something). And I was yellow. Well, no, just seriously wind-tanned. It’s been a while since my face was as weathered as it must have been then. Anyway, relax, no hepatitis in sight, folks.

That first day back in London (after a twelve hour sleep) was heaven. BLT for breakfast. That night I was sick as a dog. Again. But this time with a raging fever tacked on for good measure. Oh, and this was in the middle of the Swine Flu epidemic and people in London were dropping like flies (so the papers wailed).

Welcome back.

Read more of Steven Erikson’s Notes on a Crisis on Life As A Human:

Part I: Mongolian Adventures and Goat’s Head Soup

Part II: A Stake Driven Deep

Daddy Long Legs Photo from Wikimedia, GNU Free Documentation License,, by Alvesgaspar

Feature Photo, Adult Male Hentzia palmarum Jumping Spider, Wikimedia, Creative Commons, by Thomas Shahan

Back in camp, the cook was busy inside and outside the kitchen ger, working his magic on that unvarying collection of staples that is the Mongolian diet: potatoes, rice, onions, turnips, mutton or goat (try coming up with new dishes using only those items, three times a day, every day. For the rest of your life).

He found me crawling. Not sure where I was headed. My gut was a knot of agony. Crawling was better than writhing, I suppose. At least it wasn’t raining.

People rushed this way and that. The old Hungarian van was fired up. I was half-carried to the back seat. There was a town. A Soviet-era clinic that served as a hospital. We were heading there.

The road forms where people decide to drive, across the rolling steppe. When the potholes get too fierce, someone veers off, beats down a new set of ruts. When that one gets as bad as the first one, they find another. These ribbon tracks weave across each other, ever spreading. A skilled driver can on occasion work the vehicle into third gear, but mostly it’s the lower two. Heads thump on the ceiling, people are thrown around, bits fall off the vehicle – just another outing – we’re always finding other travelers.

Two hours later we come upon the town. If one imagines the countryside as unfenced wilderness where sheep, goat, cattle and horses wander at will, broken up here and there by a huddle of gers and a log-notched winter lodgings with a kraal or two, then the town is a cluster of the same.

One or two half-derelict pre-fab Russian buildings here and there, falling apart in front of your eyes. A herd of cattle being driven willy-nilly through the lumpy streets by watchful youths on horseback. A dozen stores all selling the same stuff. And the clinic.

Translation is something of a problem. It’s now evening. The doctor has gone home. We find out where a nurse lives and drive to her front door. With me is our Mongolian driver, a Khazakstani and a Russian, and a young French-Canadian grad student. The agony had somewhat subsided – the roller-coaster ride had actually done some good, but I feel like shit.

Nurse climbs in. We drive to the hospital. Word has already gone out and the doctor arrives when we do. He’s pissed to the gills. He takes my blood pressure. Left arm. Then the right arm. He says something, shaking his head. Mongolian into Russian, Russian into English. Details gets lost in the translation. My blood pressure is ‘very low.’

What does that mean? I’m naturally at about 110 over 70, slightly below average. So … what’s low? I can’t seem to get an answer.  I want him to do it again, so I can eye the sphygmomanometer (yeah, it’s what they’re called, I still remember from Grade Eleven biology, thanks Mr. Weiss), and catch the pauses in the fall. Systolic, diastolic, let’s get back to that, shall we?

No. He gets me to lie down. Prods me here and there, and then writes a prescription for antibiotics.

The pharmacy has shut. We find where the pharmacist lives, drive her to the shop. She opens it up and we wait while she counts out five days’ worth of pills. I stare at a poster warning against rabies. Another warning against ticks and Lyme disease. There’s a box on the shelf of hair dye and some kind of surgical application kit.

Back into the van and the long drive home.

Around midnight that night, the crew’s drinking vodka by the fire. I’ve been thinking all evening. I take the project director off to one side. I’m pulling out. How soon can I get a ride down to Ulaan Bator?

• • •

This is the moment. This is the real crisis. It’s like a stake driven deep. I’ve been on all kinds of projects, all kinds of digs and surveys, in all kinds of wilderness. I’ve been chased off a cliff by a sow bear. Dragged over rocks towards killer rapids when trying to line a canoe. Been attacked by a fer de lance. By fire-ants. Got sick as a dog on a pit-roasted pig in Belize. Been through plenty. But here I am, two hours minimum to the nearest help – a drunk doctor and an absurdly reductionist three-way translation process. No air field, no evac at all.

There are moments to be faced, and faced down. Was I going to recover from this?  Probably. But then, it’s hard to be sure. And if I got hit again? After all, what I was looking at was either forcing down un-refrigerated meat, the very smell of which left me nauseous, or starving. The issue came down to recovery, reserve strength, and just how the fuck much did I want to keep doing this?

I had a series to finish. Nine books done. One left. One. Did I really want to risk not finishing what I’d spent 20 years of my life working towards? Sure, beautiful country. Beautiful people. But … a handful of cruddy unifacially flaked stone knives and blades? Fuck my pride, there was no real balancing of the scales here. I needed to pull out.

I am curious how others would feel, if placed in my shoes. I normally don’t back down from challenges, but I think sometimes I lose track of what’s important, versus what my stubborn will demands of me.

The next day, I was kneeling in my tent, packing. My socks were wet (raining again), so I’d left them off outside the flap. Sudden stabbing pain in my ankle. Once, twice. Swearing, I flinched to one side and shot my hand down, smearing something across my left ankle. Still swearing, I resumed packing.

Ten seconds later I was lying on my side, head spinning. What the fuck just bit me?

• • •

In the next installment, we leave the realms of possibility, of documented rigour, and enter the true but impossible.  Stay tuned.

Photo Credit

“Inner Mongolia” moniqca @ flickr. Creative Commons. Some rights reserved.

“Mongolian Steppes” Ed-meister @flickr. Creative Commons. Some rights reserved.