Be Brave Enough to be Boring

All---

There are worse things than being bored.  You could be trapped in a cavern of horrors behind a green door. You could lose a year of your life in which you might have committed murder.  You could be stuck in a heat wave, staring at a swimming pool that isn't clean enough to swim in.

I want my writing to be interesting, clearly, and as a writer of thrillers, a certain amount of excitement is rightly to be expected.  But if being bored isn't the worst thing in the world, why should I be terrified of it in my writing?  Do I want to write a boring story?  Um, no.  But do I need to fret over every little passage, afraid it might bore some readers?

No.

There aren't many books that I don't skip passages in.  I'm a terrible reader in some ways.  I have such a poor visual imagination that I skim through or skip over most lengthy descriptive passages.  I can't conjure the image in my mind, so I bore easily.

And what do I do when I'm bored?

I don't put the book away.  I don't stop reading the story.  I skim or skip.   I only give up reading if there seems to be no hope for a pay off.  If I don't have an investment in the story -- if I don't see an end to the boredom -- if I feel trapped by tedium -- then I might stop reading.

So, if being bored isn't the worst thing in the world and I know that my own boredom of the moment doesn't kill an entire work for me as a reader, why should I be afraid of it as a writer?

A couple of years ago, I entered a content that encouraged courageous writing.  My piece, "I Need This," was honored and I was able to publish, "Terminal Instar," in the Notes from Underground anthology.  It took some guts.  Some of it was what Rachel Thompson and Lorrie Moore would call, "writing something I would never show my mother or my father."  Some of it, though, was writing minor little digressions that might risk boring some readers.

In the end, it's often times the digressions that get me my most positive feedback.  It's taking a moment, amidst the adrenaline and emotional trauma, to philosophize a bit that I think gives my writing its special character.  I don't just write thrillers.  I write thrillers that linger and contemplate.  No, I don't linger in the moment like RJ Ellory does.  Instead, I linger in the ideas behind the scenes like Chuck Palahniuk might.  It's a recipe that I think serves me well, but it's a recipe that risks boring people.

And that's really the point.  It doesn't even matter if you're a writer.  For that matter, it doesn't matter if you're a creative person at all.    If you're an athlete you can't always go for the home run or the knock-out punch.  If you're a salesman, you can't always play for the big deal.  If you're an archaeologist you can't wait until you get a Phase III excavation.  If you're a forensic anthropologist, you've gotta do your metrics.

Whatever you do, if you put your all into it, if you try to own that thing you do, you need to show courage.  That doesn't just mean the adrenaline junkie kind of daring.  That means being brave enough to risk boring people.

You will probably manage to do just that.

But you will also reap great rewards.  And the truth is, most of the time, if you're good at what you do, you bore yourself more than you bore other people.

So.  As readers -- what do you do when something gets boring?  And, as followers of whatever path life has taken you down -- do you shy away from doing those things which might bore your clients?

.Nevets.

Approach Your Goals Like an Aikido Master

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If you haven't, please do check out the post I did over at the Literary Lab today.  It was entitled, "Write like a Sword-Wielding Martial Artist,"   The topic was writing bravely, and we had an amazingly open conversation about our fears in the comments thread, too.

I got a couple of private responses, as well, and one of those addressed something I'd actually like to go ahead and answer tonight.  Think of this as a companion post to this morning's.  The comment I got from my friend had a lot of window dressing on it, but boiled down to this (apologies to my friend for the coarse paraphrase):

"It's all well and good to be brave, but I can't bear to have the publishing industry break my heart again. I care too much, and it just cuts too deeply."

On the first day of aikido class, our master told us, "You want to know how to avoid getting beat up in the bar at ten o'clock tonight?  An aikido master will tell you to stay  at home at ten o'clock tonight."

Later on, when we were practicing the defensive application of some foundation movements, he had us work in pairs.  As half of us took blows to the face he said, "You know to avoid getting punched in the face?  Don't put your face where his fist is heading."

What I said to my friend was significantly less pithy, but perhaps got to the same point:  There's a difference between being brave and being reckless. If you're an athlete with a lot of concussions, and it's at that point where they're getting worse and more frequent, it's not brave to submit yourself to situations that make another one likely. It's just reckless.

Likewise, if you're a writer whose spirit is crushed by rejection, it's not necessarily brave to submit yourself to that. It might just be reckless. Especially if you are writing mainly for the sheer pleasure of doing so, and do not have a strong drive to be published.

I went on to suggest that  people treat ailments of the body very differently than ailments of the spirit.  We think the quarterback and the  fighter who get concussions every outing are stupid if they don't  retire.  But so often we think a person who opts to not pursue public acclaim for their creativity is weak.  In the way way, many of us are smart enough to protect our bodies when we're physically injured, but feel ashamed if we try to take care of our spirits in the same way.

That's not brave; it's reckless.

Bravery should always be exercised within boundaries of what you want to accomplish and what is a price that you are willing to pay.

I absolutely believe that bravery in writing is essential for the development of your writing.  Here's a quick hit-list, though, of what that does not mean:

1. That any given fear of mine has any particular relevance to any one else.
2. That anything that seems ill-advised is something which must be conquered.
3. That every writer needs to fully develop their writing.
4. That each of us is equipped right now to face confront every fear or obstacle.
5. That bravery in publishing has anything to do with bravery in writing.

Yes, I want every writer I know to be brave in their writing, because I want them all to be the best writers they can possibly be.  But I know that this is a lifelong process that takes steps.  We all have things we need to protect, and it's just as bad to brutally expose our vulnerabilities to wound after wound as it is to bottle up our writing.  And heaven forbid I ever equate bravery in writing with any part of the submission, querying, or publication process.  They are completely different.

So, dear writers, you need to look at yourself.  Know your goals.  Know the prices you're willing to pay.  Know what your fears are.  And then look at your writing and be brave, but not don't treat your own spirit with careless disregard.

.Nevets.

Soundtrack for writing this post provided by S. H. E. (Taiwan) and Chen Guo.

R. N. Morris: When There's Nothing Left but Guts

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Most authors have experienced rejection.  Many of us have faced it so many times we begin to take it for granted.  British author, R. N. Morris came face to face with the worst sort of personal rejection -- truly an author's nightmare.  He calls it his, "darkest moment," and now he's on the other side of that moment, with four published novels and another in the works.



I remember meeting my agent for coffee. He ‘d been my agent for a number of years but without managing to place any of my novels. I have actually lost count of the number of novels he’d tried – maybe three or four. Maybe more. It’s a blur. It wasn’t his fault. He’d been able to get the scripts on the desks of the right people but there had been no takers. Apparently I’d come very close a couple of times, but something had always got in the way. One editor’s reaction was typical, if brutal: “I won’t be able to sell enough copies.” That was for the novel my agent had just been submitting and our meeting was to let me know how things were going. Badly, was the short answer. “Your name is starting to meet with some resistance,” he told me. I asked what he meant. “Well, when I tell editors I have a new novel by you, they say, ‘Ah, yes, we know him – don’t you have anyone else?’”


That was pretty much the lowest point of my writing life. As far as I could see, this was the end of the road. Either I change my name, or give up. That was the way it seemed. I didn’t like the idea of changing my name – it seemed a deceitful thing to do. I also didn’t like the idea of giving up. I decided to try one last throw of the dice. I’d had this idea for a detective novel based on Porfiry Petrovich, the magistrate from Dostoevksy’s novel “Crime and Punishment.” I shared the idea with my agent. “Yes, that might work,” was all he said. But it was all the encouragement I needed.


Actually, I had two last rolls of the dice. There was another idea that I had to get out of my system first, an idea that had also been obsessing me for years. A story about a guy who went round collecting mementos from scenes of tragedy or disaster. I decided I had to write that first and then get on to the Porfiry Petrovich idea, which I felt would be harder and would require more time to research. I wrote “Taking Comfort”, my first published novel, in a frenzied eight weeks. Then I started work on the novel that would become “A Gentle Axe”, my second published novel, immediately.


So I didn’t give up. I don’t know what I did – or how I did it. I wrote the two books that I most needed to write – the two books, also, that I was most afraid of writing. Maybe I learnt, not to give up, but to let go.

R. N. Morris

R. N. Morris has written a contemporary thriller, Taking Comfort, and three literary mysteries set in Dostoevsky's Russia, the most recent of which is 2010's A Razor Wrapped in Silk, now available in  the UK and in the  US on Kindle and from resellers.  His previous novel, A Vengeful Longing, is available in Australia, and the first St. Petersburg mystery, A Gentle Axe, is available as an audio book in South Africa.

.Nevets.

Bravery, The Conclusion

All---

So, a little while ago, I posted about some of the things that I have been able to achieve by facing fear and beating it down.  Then, a couple days ago, I posted about some of the times I've faced my fears and still lost.  I want to post about the subject one last time.

I appreciate the kind words from everyone, but I want to stress this.  The point of all this hasn't been to tell stories about my life or to talk about how brave I am.  It's to make this point:

I'm just an ordinary person with physical, intellectual, and emotional strengths and weaknesses.  I'm not brave by nature.  And that's what I've learned.

No one is brave by nature.  Bravery isn't a lack of fear.  It's not an ability to compartmentalize fear.  It's not some adrenaline surge that helps you overcome fear.

I've experienced none of those.

Bravery is always a choice.  A choice to face the thing you're afraid of and act to despite it.  You will probably still be afraid the whole time you're doing it, but you keep going.

Generally, people don't have a choice about the fears they experience.

Generally, though, people do have a choice about how they respond to that fear.  There are biological factors that play into it, of course, but in the end there's almost always a choice: respect the fear or act despite it.

You can make the choice, too!

.Nevets.

When Bravery Fails

All---

So a good writing friend of mine e-mailed me directly after I posted about being brave and asked if I would still feel so strongly in favor of taking the brave chance if my bravery had come to naught.   I answered her but thought it was an excellent question and wanted to address it in some way publicly.

It's taken me a little while to decide how I want to approach this.  Finally, I decided to be straightforward up to a point and just beg your indulgence for the places where I fall short of complete vulnerability.  Because the truth is, I have been brave and failed.

There was the time when I showed a girl a group of oblique, experimental love stories to the girl they were about, knowing she was intelligent, and hoping she would get the message.  "I wish someone would write stories like that about me," she said.  "Someone did," I told her, holding my breath.  "I know," she said. Her eyes sparkled dreamily.  But my love was mature and adult and she wasn't ready for that.

There was the time I held a photography exhibition in college as a non-art major, something rarely done at my school.  It was the most public exposure of my creativity.  I took a chance in my subject matter and approach, sort of bridging the gap between art and photo journalism.  The exhibition was an utter failure, and I heard almost nothing but a week of terrible comments.  There were exceptions, a few who got what I was doing, but most thought it was boring, uninspired, unoriginal.

There was the time when I was a kid and I gutted out a surgery that had a long, painful recovery and ended up not resolving the issue.

There was the archaeology expedition in the middle of nowhere in Alaska where I fell and cut my neck open with a log in a river that was thick with bacteria and decay.

There is the list of foods that I still cannot eat because of smell associations from the maceration room.

There is all the work, dedication, and excitement that went into relocating from Alaska back to Indiana to go to grad school and pursue forensic anthropology, only to find out, at the end of an incredibly painful year that I have a long-diagnosed, severe learning disability that did not interfere with field work but made the graduate classes literally just about impossible, meaning that I had just short-circuited my entire academic career by taking a chance on a second masters rather than taking either a safer-bet PhD program or research assistantship.  My life, in many ways, remains in a vortex because of that.

So, yes, sometimes you act in courage and things don't work out.

But then, other times you act in courage, and you get to jump out of helicopters into swamps, dig in cemeteries from 3000 BC, evade a drug cartel in Mexico, help put away a man who killed three people on a whim, or marry your precious soul mate.

And when you don't win, at least you were brave.  Acting in fear, you never win, and at the end of the day all you have is your fear.

Even with the trade-off losses, bravery wins.

.Nevets.