The cover art for my upcoming book has arrived! A hearty thanks to Ebook Launch for their great work and professionalism. They were a joy to work with.
A God Walks Up to the Bar, my very first published book, will be available later this year. Stay tuned!
So, I sit down, turn on my computer, pull up my story file, and start writing. All is well. What will I have my characters do today? Dialogue. Action. Characterization. Building a world from words. I’m king of this world. Everyone has to do what I say. Right?
Hang on. Why did Bob say that? I didn’t tell him to say that! Who does Bob think he is? I didn’t write him to be such a jerk!
And why is Tiffany suddenly a lot snarkier than I imagined her? And since when was Arnold so philosophical? I’m writing a thrilling adventure, not an excuse to sit around and contemplate our navels!
It’s happening again. My story is coming alive before my very eyes. And it does not recognize my authority.
It happens to the best of us. We outline our work, we prepare, we research, then we sit down and actually start writing – and it all gets away from us. Scenes don’t play out the way we planned them. Characters put words in our mouths, rather than the other way around. The story shifts and rumbles, it wakes up, and our creation becomes a living thing. IT’S ALIVE!
But how can this be? How can the imaginary have a will of its own?
Don’t look at me. All I know is that I had no idea Hermes liked tequila when I started writing A God Walks Up to the Bar.
They start talking to you, these characters. They start telling you their likes and dislikes, their hopes and fears. And when you acknowledge that they are real people, or as close to real as is possible, you reach an epiphany. Your story is better for it. Like the journalist who sits down for an interview with questions prepared and is sidetracked by the subject’s fascinating anecdotes, the population of your created universe reveals new and tantalizing quirks that flesh it out.
Still, it is somewhat bewildering when your story gets away from you. Even when your cast deigns to submit control back to you, you can’t always shake the feeling that you’re just along for the ride. You’re graciously being allowed to witness events as they unfold. A giddy experience, to be sure. I don’t entirely know what to expect when I begin a writing session. But doggone it, these folks need to have some respect! Stop pulling me off-track. We have a story to write! We have deadlines! I can’t be distracted by Alice’s unfolding tragic backstory and face the temptation of adding another 3,000 words! I’m writing genre fiction, not Les Misérables!
And so it goes. The writer lays the foundation, the characters give their input, I tell them what I want them to do, they push back, I push back, and somehow, out of this beautiful mess, a story is born.
I love being a writer.
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Achilles was a paragon of ancient Greek heroes. He was nigh-unkillable, an unstoppable juggernaut on the battlefield, bloodthirsty, battle-hungry, feared and respected in equal measure. So, what did this warrior do when he ended up on the losing side of a quarrel with the Mycenaean king Agamemnon during the Trojan War?
He ran to his mommy to cry on her shoulder.
Yes, really.
For all its larger-than-life characters and some truly surreal stories, there is a basic spark of humanity in Greek myth. That’s why people love it, I think. Heroes fight and conquer, sure, but they also cry, get frustrated, get tired, and pine for their loved ones. They feel anger, joy, regret, fear, love, pride, and just about everything else. At their core they are, in fact, people. Just people. Like you and me.
Why do old myths endure? I believe it is because they share universal human themes that we empathize with, even when we’re looking at them from atop our perch in the 21st century. Who hasn’t wanted to find a shoulder to cry on after losing a bitter argument, like Achilles did? How can we not feel a twinge of sorrow for Orpheus, who, after journeying into the underworld to retrieve his beloved Eurydice, felt just that slightest bit of doubt on whether she would follow him back and risked a glance over his shoulder, dooming himself to lose her forever?
Beneath the layers of the fantastic are stories that are very much human. People experiencing the hard knocks of life. And like in real life, sometimes they triumph over adversity … and sometimes they don’t.
The funny thing is, the Greek gods have as much humanity in them as the humans they rule. Perhaps a bit too much, even. It make sense, because to the ancient Greeks, the gods were just people with special powers and their foibles and strengths cranked up till the knob broke off. When they get angry, they get VERY angry. When they are generous, they are VERY generous. They flit between emotions with ping-pong frenzy, changing moods in an eyeblink. Unpredictable? Yes. Cruel? Absolutely? Relatable? Well, just maybe.
Are you familiar with the smith god Hephaestus? He’s famous for being lame and crippled. Do you know how he was crippled? When his mother Hera and Zeus got into a fierce argument, he tried to intervene on her behalf. Zeus angrily tossed him out a window and off Mount Olympos. He fell a whole day before hitting the ground.
Well, that’s one version anyway.
A single story filled with things we can all relate to: parental love, anger, good intentions gone awry, even the specter of domestic abuse.
Maybe the Olympians really are too much like humanity.
They certainly are subject to quite a bit of criticism by today’s standards, and for good reason . The gods of Olympos are a bunch of arrogant, vindictive, oversexed, brutal, vengeful jerks. Get on their good side, and they’re your best friend. Get on their bad side – and there are oh-so-many ways to do that – and they’ll make you suffer.
And yet, don’t we see shades of ourselves in them? Maybe our dubious opinions of the Olympians come from seeing all-too human qualities in them. Maybe we get nervous at the thought of what we would do if we had absolute power and few restraints. Were the ancient Greeks projecting their own worst and best traits onto Zeus and company? Were they trying to craft an ideal, one that was blurred by shifting moral mores and the clashing of many different city-states with their own opinions on what constituted a “correct” society. Or did they witness a thunderstorm, imagine Zeus throwing his lightning bolts, and imagine that a god must be like them but just a bit MORE in every way?
On a sidenote, did you know that the human brain is trained to recognize the basic features of the human face? Look at a cloud or a rock or a splash of spilled soda on the sidewalk. Look hard, and your mind will find some way to see eyes, a nose, and a mouth.
How is that relevant? It’s what the Greeks did to nature. They gave it a face. They gave it humanity. Zeus is the storm and the sky. Hephaestus is the fire of the forge. Poseidon is the ocean and the earthquake. And that is barely scratching the surface. Every natural element and abstract concept you can imagine had a personified figure. It made them easier to understand and relate to. It probably made them easier to worship, too, when you knew that the object of your devotion was more than a vague, amorphous divine glob. And what we relate to, we empathize with.
Empathy is a natural building block of storytelling. We don’t tell stories about things we don’t care about. This mythology that endured from the Bronze Age all the way into the 21st century is one that resonates with us. It carries the spark of universal appeal.
Greek myths speak to us. They stir up emotions in ourselves because those are the emotions the characters feel. Their experiences are our experiences. Heroes and gods overcoming monsters. The triumph of overcoming great challenges. Going to war. Family drama. Romance. Tragedy. Comedy. Life.
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We’ve all been there. The nagging in the back of your mind telling you that you’ve skipped out long enough on finishing that one last chore. Time to write out that shopping list for the big party next weekend. Time to balance your budget. Time to write thank-you letters to everyone who sent you house-warming gifts. Time to do your taxes.
“But I don’t wanna!” you say. “I can do it tomorrow!”
Tomorrow! Tomorrow! There’s always tomorrow!
And tomorrow comes, and you say, “Naw, I don’t feel like it. I need to be in the right mood.”
Sit down, shut up, and do the work.
Knuckle down and buck up. Your taxes aren’t going to do themselves. Letter self-writing technology hasn’t been invented yet. And you must be lucky if you’re rich enough that you can’t balance your budget in one afternoon. Grab a pen, or power up the computer, and get cracking.
Little chores are like gnats. They hover about you, buzzing incessantly, annoying you with the fact of their incomplete existence. Leave too many of them unfinished, and you have a real swarm of tasks waiting for the inevitable. They have to get done.
“I don’t wanna!”
Yeah, but you gotta, don’t you?
Novels don’t write themselves, either. That great story that’s been brewing in your mind since you were twelve – nobody else is going to write it, are they?
But what about my favorite show coming on in ten minutes? What about that cool video game I just bought? What about a walk in the park on this great sunny day? What about …
Life is full of distractions. What you do with your time shows what you really value. Want to write a book? Or just want to pay off your taxes and then go to bed? Then do it. Don’t wait for the perfect moment. Those moments are rare and usually exaggerated by the now-successful author when he pens his autobiography. Hindsight makes everything look easy. There’s a direct correlation between effort put in and results achieved.
So it all comes down to this: Sit down, shut up, and do the work.
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Where does inspiration come from? Where do the writers and artists of our time get their ideas? I can’t speak for others, but I get mine from everywhere imaginable. I’ve had weird dreams at 3 AM that stick with me and coalesce into workable material. Or maybe I have a particularly memorable conversation with a coworker that captures my attention. Or maybe I’m just going for a walk and a stray thought drifts into my brain. That happens a lot, actually.
There’s nothing in the world that has a stranglehold on the source of inspiration, and there is no “wrong” place to draw ideas from. In the end, all ideas have already been thought up, every story has already been told, and, as King Solomon says, “There is nothing new under the sun.” What there is, is taking a preexisting idea and molding it into a new shape, dressing it up in different clothes, and presenting it with your own unique flourish. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, and we all imitate what we know to some degree. In a sense, artists and writers are scavengers, but ones who learn to refine their tastes. We look through all kinds of sources and draw an element here and a concept there to incorporate into our own works.
I’m not talking about plagiarism, mind you. Plagiarism is lifting somebody else’s hard work wholesale, changing a couple names, and claiming it as your own. That’s just a lie, and it’s lazy to boot. Inspiration is an influence, not a theft. It gives you a core to build your own story around and craft into something that is still very much your creation.
Inspiration is everywhere. What you see depends on who you are and how your mind works. Don’t be afraid to be inspired by something that others look down upon. Inspiration can come from the unlikeliest places. An old video game from the 90’s, a funny webcomic, or an action figure – these are just as valid as classic literature and theater. I’m not ashamed of it. I absorb as much as I can, from as many places as I can, and with these I fill a deep well. When writing a new story, I can dip into that well as I need, and pull up all sorts of surprising ideas.
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Myths have been around a long time. They’re old. Really, really old. Like, carved-onto-stone-walls-inside-pharaohs’-tombs old. Or even, predates-written-language-altogether old. But if they are so old, why do we still study them? Heck, why can any movie aficionado and bookworm recognize characters like Heracles, Apollo, Thor, Osiris, Gilgamesh, and Amaterasu? And why do we still enjoy them even if we know how the story ends?
After all, we know Heracles will slay the Hydra. And we know for a fact that most of the Norse gods will die in the world-ending event known as Ragnarök. Osiris is killed and cut to pieces by his traitorous brother Set, but no worries, because Isis will put him back together and bring him back from the dead. And here’s one you may have heard before: Saint George slays the dragon and rescues the fair princess. Sound familiar?
Every culture, every nation, every people share something in common, and that is the archetype. Every nation throughout history has a Hero, the valiant warrior who slays the monster, saves the city, rescues the princess, defeats evil, etc. Often with enchanted weapons and other gifts from the gods and/or other supernatural forces. That Hero almost always has a Mentor who guides them along the way. The Mentor’s death is an optional bonus (the world “mentor” is an interesting case of word evolution. It originated from Homer’s Odyssey, where Odysseus’ son Telemachus receives advice as he grows into a young man from a trusted old friend whose name is – Mentor).
And there’s the Trickster, the Lover, the War God, the Love Goddess, the Hunter, the Dragon, the King, the Queen, the Rival, the Fool, the Prophet … Yup, they’ve all been around since roughly the same time that dirt was invented. Stories are repeating patterns being retold over and over and over.
Doesn’t mean they aren’t fun, though. After all, we wouldn’t tell the same story if it didn’t entertain us. Or affect us in some special way that breaks through language and culture. We identify with archetypes. We’re brought up to recognize the patterns and know what sort of story we’re being told. We know who to root for, who to boo at, and how the story is supposed to end. We know that Perseus will slay the monstrous Medusa, whose gaze can kill, and that Susanoo will slay the great eight-headed serpent Yamata no Orochi, but we’re still on the edge of our seats with anticipation. We know that the Trickster will, through bumbling and cunning, give humankind something that will benefit it: Maui fishes the islands of Hawaii out of the sea, Hermes invents the lyre and gifts it to his brother Apollo, Robin Hood always steals from the rich to give to the poor.
These stories are universal. They speak to basic needs and wants. The dragons of our lives can be defeated. Justice can be obtained. There is a reason why things are the way they are. Mythology is universal, and therefore, it withstands the tests of time. We are still enamored with the ancient tales of the Greeks, the Norse, the Japanese, the Egyptians, the Native Americans, and many more.
That’s not to say that stories are static. They don’t freeze and refuse to change. Sensibilities and cultural mores are constantly shifting, and archetypes are reinvented to suit the times. Heracles was a buffoon and hedonist in the old stories, did you know that? A bit of an idiot, and a hotheaded one, too. He killed his music instructor in a fit of rage. Not very heroic, eh? But take a look at Disney’s animated film, and see a hero who is much more ideal for our modern times. Here is a Heracles (or Hercules, his Roman name) who is gentlemanly, selfless, and clear-cut good. A far cry from his original incarnation, but it’s still recognizably the same character.
But let’s go a bit further. Heracles the super-strong, who slays monsters and thus protects civilization from their predations. Give him a desire for justice and peace, evolve him a bit. He’s a demigod, right? He’s otherworldly, part of something beyond normal human experience. Maybe he’s from another world altogether? An alien, but one who is on humanity’s side. Unstoppable, invincible, and one who represents the values of the culture that tells his stories. Give him a new name. Let’s call him – Superman!
I may be reaching with that last paragraph, but you can see where I’m coming from, right? Superheroes are modern myths. Or, perhaps, just the old myths with a new coat of paint. The Flash wears a winged helmet and is a swift runner – not unlike Hermes. Green Arrow is an expert archer – Robin Hood? Or perhaps a male Artemis. Batman is flat-out called the Dark Knight, and the black knight motif is very old, indeed. And what better villain for a noble knight who upholds social order than a maddened jester who calls himself the Joker? And the Mighty Thor is, well, Thor.
The old formula gets tweaked constantly. The myths endure, the basic structure is always the same, and on some level, from years of exposure to the stories in one shape or another, we recognize the underlying patterns. But that doesn’t stop storytellers from playing with the formula. In point of fact, taking apart an archetype to see what really makes it tick, or just disassembling them to bare all the flaws, is as much a part of modern storytelling as the straightforward “hero slays the dragon” gimmick. Maybe we like to question the status quo. Maybe the Hero isn’t so heroic. Maybe the Trickster is just an idiot who got lucky. Or maybe the world has just gotten cynical and doesn’t believe in heroes anymore.
But that’s okay, because eventually we’ll get tired of cynicism. We’ll get tired of heroes who aren’t heroic and evil triumphing over good. It doesn’t sit well, does it? People want someone they can trust to destroy the big bad evil. So, we get tired of having our favorite characters deconstructed and start crying out for the old stories to be played straight again. Played by the book, just like the stories we learned as kids. And eventually, after a couple generations, we’ll get tired of the same old, same old, and want to see someone mess with the pattern again. And so on and so forth.
Archetypes are resilient. They withstand all this reinvention and deconstruction. Take a god like Hermes and put him in the modern world, and he’ll thrive. Oh, sure, his fashion sense will be different, and he’ll be a little more savvy with modern tech, and he’ll be carrying a lot more experience and maybe a tad more maturity (maaaaybe…), but he’s still Hermes the Olympian god, the Trickster. He knows who he is. And we do, too. We know him down to a tee. His face is plastered on pottery, and his biography is thousands of years old. We know the pattern of his story. If there’s one thing humanity has become an expert in, it’s understanding the patterns of archetypes. Their stories aren’t going away anytime soon.
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When I first started writing my book, I labored under a misconception. It was an easy mistake to make. I made an assumption about writing, one that, by all outward appearances, is apparently true. When you pick up a novel in the store, whose name do you see on it? The author’s. Maybe a few more names listed on the dedication page, a word of thanks to friends and family, but not much more. Oh, maybe the publishing company’s name, too, but that’s a business, not people. The writer is the one who gets the credit for the work.
As a self-publisher, I thought that writing was a one-person deal.
I am happy to say that I was very quickly proven wrong. Authors are not islands unto themselves, safely isolated from the hassle and responsibility of working with others, nor are they alone and dependent solely on their own skill and luck. Behind an author’s name are many, many other names, most of them willingly anonymous.
I wrote the book. Then I hired an editor to review my work. And I’ll contact an artist to create the book’s cover art. And then I’ll purchase my ISBN number and my business license so I can legally publish my work. And there is the commercial outlet through which my book is made available to the public. And yes, there are the friends and family who support me.
And let’s not forget the most important ones of all: the people who actually buy the book!
Even you, dear reader, are part of this process. Your very presence on this blog means that you’ve shown an interest in my work, maybe a passing interest, or maybe you’ll stick around for a while. Either way, you’re sharing in this journey alongside me. Interesting thought, isn’t it? No writer can truly say they made it by themselves. I find that oddly comforting. Writing isn’t lonely. It draws in folks who share a common interest and goal. It’s an unexpected side of the literary industry that I never expected, and I’m happy to have discovered it.
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It’s a question we all have from time to time. Why do we do the things we do? I’m not talking about jobs or chores. That’s just stuff that needs to be done. I’m talking about what we like to do. Why do you write? Why do you paint? Why do you fish? Why do you do yoga, or boxing or football?
It’s like the climber who was asked why he wanted to climb the mountain. “Because it’s there!” he replied. Well, while my answer isn’t quite as glib, I can sympathize with that sentiment.
Why am I pursuing a writing career?
I can’t claim to speak for everyone, but this is how I perceive it. The best way to describe it is an itch. I have to write. It’s a necessity. It’s a little nagging feeling in the back of my skull that can’t be ignored, and the alternative is … madness! Okay, okay, I exaggerate, but I’m not kidding when I say that the desire to create is very, very strong. I think everyone has a bit of it in themselves, whether they know it or not. We all want to look back at our lives and say, “Yeah, I did what I loved. I made something I’m proud of. I accomplished something that I value.” A 9-5 job may pay the bills and support a comfortable lifestyle, but that’s not everybody’s idea of fulfillment, is it?
When you have a good idea, a good story bubbling up inside you or a great masterpiece that you want to paint, or even if your dream is of the perfect fish to draw out of the lake or that Holy Grail of puzzles found in some hole-in-the-wall dollar store, then you have your goal. You pursue that goal. It makes life fun, don’t you think, having something to achieve? So, my goal is to publish good, entertaining stories. There you have it.
A tad melodramatic? Yeah, maybe. And if you’re thinking, “Gee, you kind of sound like you’re describing an addiction,” then don’t get me wrong. It’s not that kind of tyrannical need that bullies you into submission. It’s a passionate need, an act of joy. And hey, if I’m going to write, I might as well as write for an audience, yeah? Where’s the fun in creating if you can’t share it with others?
Which is where this website comes in. I’m just getting started , so things are a little spartan around here at the moment. But it’ll grow. I’ll publish stories and trace my writer’s journey through this blog. I hope you’ll tag along for the ride.
Jake W. Powell 