Turning and Turning the Widening Gyre

...the author cannot hear the reader.

For years, Yeats' "The Second Coming" has echoed in my head as the drumbeat of the ontological shift, the slide into the postmodern. Perhaps, this constant [mis]reading of the poem will aggravate some, but it's my battleflag. A battle flag rooted in a British Literature Survey class with Doc Marsden back in 2000. Back then, John Barth was about the coolest thing I'd ever read, and 'epistemology' v. 'ontology' was a war I only vaguely understood. But the visceral image of Yeats' poem--"the widening gyre...the center cannot hold" drove me to imaginings of black holes, to the embrace of plurality's structured chaos, and now a decade later, I still hear the echo of this poem, but it's feel is changing.

I'm teaching a comp class focusing on the death of the newspaper, but it's not too far to see a similar corollary in the literary journal realm. This isn't the first time I've visited the topic, but recently if:Book ran an article on Ted Genoways' essay in Mother Jones recanting "The Death of Fiction?" Barring the fact that the notion of fiction dying is probably the most overqualified argument ever--Barth covered it back in the 60s, and if I were to dig, I'm sure I could go back to the beginning of the written word and find someone who proclaimed "everything that can be written has been written." (But as a thoroughly postmodern aside: Doesn't everyone have to eventually in one of their infinite versions of themselves proclaim that fiction is kaput?)

Despite the tiredness of Genoways' argument, he wrangles some truly frightening numbers:

Last summer, Louis Menand tabulated that there were 822 creative writing programs. Consider this for a moment: If those programs admit even 5 to 10 new students per year, then they will cumulatively produce some 60,000 new writers in the coming decade. Yet the average literary magazine now prints fewer than 1,500 copies.

That's a recipe for a whole lot of letdowns. And while I think it's both sobering and important for all aspiring writers to face such facts, Genoways like many doomsayers, doesn't really give us much hope for change. He concludes:

To pull out of this tailspin, writers and their patrons both will have to make some necessary changes—and quick. With so many newspapers and magazines closing, with so many commercial publishers looking to nonprofit models, a few bold university presidents could save American literature, reshape journalism, and maybe even rescue public discourse from the cable shout shows and the blogosphere. At the same time, young writers will have to swear off navel-gazing in favor of an outward glance onto a wrecked and lovely world worthy and in need of the attention of intelligent, sensitive writers. I'm not calling for more pundits—God knows we've got plenty. I'm saying that writers need to venture out from under the protective wing of academia, to put themselves and their work on the line. Stop being so damned dainty and polite. Treat writing like your lifeblood instead of your livelihood. And for Christ's sake, write something we might want to read.

To which I say, No shit Sherlock. Genoways' solution echoes many others I've seen, and it really does very little to help solve the problem. Ok. We get it. Too many writers writing things no one wants to read, and not enough readers reading in the first place. Personally, I see contemporary realism's inability to compete with visual media as one of the cornerstone problems surrounding today's fiction industry. But my problem isn't necessarily your problem, and to sit here and whine about perceived problems with the industry isn't going to really drive any sort of solution from anyone.

So let's do something.

For hundreds of years, since Gutenberg actually, we've relied on the printing press. But now we have the Internet. And despite what the technological curmudgeons, the Neil Postmans, the Sven Birkerts, might say, our wired world is here to stay.

But it's a young, angry baby. It eats everything in its path. And it grows, oh it grows so fast that you can't keep it in fitting clothes for more than an eyeblink. But it's our baby. And as parents, we are beholden to it, and it to us.

It's time to start modeling, molding, shaping. The Future

Relying on the printing press for anything is increasingly antiquated. You won't find many arguments touting increased reading rates for kids these days, unless such arguments are about reading Facebook walls, fashion blogs, and online news.

Which brings me back to Transmedia.

As the Internet grows, so too do the number of writers trying to make it big. More of us are getting published online, and more journals are either going straight to online only or offering a hybrid between print and online. While print fiction still offers more clout, conceivably this could change. And Transmedia fiction can help usher that change.

With so many new writers emerging onto the scene, and publishers literally buried under a slushpile of [bad] fiction, Transmedia fiction offers perhaps one of the best solutions for our growing problem.

Let's examine its boons:

1. It fosters a community of writers -- As writers, we don't operate well in a vacuum. The more people we have to discuss our works with, the better said works become.
2. As a community, Transmedia groups would build thematic collectives, which would easily cater to a wider audience -- Think about this. I've spent considerable time trying to find literary journals that write what I want to read. It's hard work, especially if you're on a budget. But online Transmedia collectives can easily be controlled by tags and keywords. Looking for some metafiction? There's a tag for that. How about post-apocalyptic salon/day spa drama? There's a tag for that too. Very easily like minded people can gather and produce consistently interesting and tightly focused fiction. This is far harder to accomplish in the print world.
3. There are no boundaries on the internet. We don't have to deal with pretension. An ass-good 14 year old can be giving constructive criticism to captain three-PHD and be none the wiser. The abstraction of the Internet facilitates fierce collaboration without traditional stigmas of race, education, age, nationality, and gender.
4. People like free things, and Transmedia exercises should inherently be Creative Commonsed and more or less free to be consumed. Most emerging writers aren't making money on their fiction anyway (as most publishers just do the contributor copy thing these days), so it shouldn't be a hard leap to make your content available free of charge. Plus somewhere down the road, if/when you do get real popular, I'm sure someone (if not just LuLu) will want to sell your internet-published serialized book. And then you'll have your $20 monthly royalty checks.
   
5. Such communities can operate/become part of your favorite social networking application. Why not have a Facebook group dedicated to writing stories about people with chronic nightmares about having a bad case of Pickle farts?
6. And when Joe Average starts reading these facebook stories, perhaps, he too will join our ranks and churn out his own pickle fart nightmare. Even if Joe's story isn't destined for a Pushcart, it's a lurch in the right direction, a win for literacy.

No, Transmedia isn't perfect. There are lots of potential pitfalls here as well. But the scope of our problem with fiction isn't that it's dying, rather the format we are used to is starting to break down. Too many people are too connected to the Net to be bothered with print reading. Fiction isn't dying, but a change in gameplan is needed. And as I continue to mull over the status of my own writing, and where I want to see myself as an author, more and more the thought becomes--Transmedia is the only way to go.

Novels, November, and TransMedia

Back in July, I posted this bit on TransMedia and fiction. Since then, I've continued to mull on the subject, and much to my happy surprise, I got into a pretty cool email conversation with Scott Walker, one of the founding members of BrainCandyLLC, an online startup that does exactly what I was talking about--facilitates world-building for all sorts of media, and unlike the Harry Potter fanfiction type stuff referenced in the Henry Jenkins essay that kicked my mind off on this whole thing in the first place, Walker's flagship at the moment is a custom fantasy world, Runes of Gallidon, with a surprising breadth of detail and contribution. So from what I can see, this sort of collaborative setting is working out to be a very successful force even outside the already successful fan-fiction realm. And this is a good thing for fiction. Good because:

1. In an increasingly electronic world, classical literacy is decreasing, so an increase in these types of sites, fan-fiction, or not, will help combat this loss of literacy.
2. I'm deeply bothered by people who casually say, "I hate writing." Often I think this stigma is created by bored teachers in the public realm, who lack either ability or energy to properly motivate students to write. Online collaborative communities change that.
3. If traditional print fiction is languishing, fan-fiction, and now other types of fiction are demonstrating that a new collaborative home on the net, may be the spark to kick things into a new renaissance.

So, coupling in with National Novel Writing Month next month, I've decided to start pushing my own brand of collaborative openness. Here's how.

I've been a D&D gamer since way back when. 5th grade maybe. And in those many many years, I found that as a DM, I've always gravitated away from official gameworlds to my own, Ae'rinus. I have a wiki: http://aerinus.wikispaces.com, and an Ae'rinus related blog, neither of which have been all that active in recent years, but I've always wanted to do something with them. So here's the gameplan: I'm going to start writing the fantasy novel I've always wante to write. The one that I've forever put aside for the silly notion that literary fiction was what I needed to do. And while I won't be posting it as I go (because good god, my early drafts are bad), but I do plan on posting both environmental information about Ae'rinus, side stories, as well as other relevant material as I develop the main novel. When the novel's sections reach "publishable" form, I'll post them in serial, and hopefully one of two things will happen:

1. People will read and enjoy what I've written
2. People will feel motivated to start adding to this ontology of Ae'rinus.
3. (with a 3rd pipedream goal of: I become a rockstar D&D DM/writer and get to tour the country running gaming sessions, writing books, and having plenty of time with the family without having to have a soul-sucking dayjob..oh and medical benefits too [hey If I'm going to dream, might as well dream big.]).

Here's a blurb of what I'm working with. A sort of half-assed preface if you will:

Deep-seated in the heart of history there is always the blemish of darkness, dark times, of painful memories and hearts hardened—winter for the soul. Every age knows these stories, of overcoming darkness, transforming a landscape, but stories embellish—they forget the depths, the lows we sink to when faced with demons on all sides. They celebrate the outcome as an inevitability, as if men and women are born heroes destined to save us all. Stories are a point of convienience; they have the vantage to see the whole process from afar. But sliding within the morass, buried in the deep-gut-drop stink where your life is entrusted to a dagger blade so chipped and stress cracked you're pulling your thrust a bit and hoping to hell you don't catch it off a rib or hidden hauberk.

To a great many, Nigel Caedman was a hero—involved with bringing the gods back to the land, becoming one himself, slaying demons. Spread the growth of independent guildhalls, which led to safer roads. He fought in the civil war to overthrow the corrupt Dirulean crown. He traveled the planes. Found lasting love, married, and raised seven children. How could he not be a hero? Unblinking, he murdered men, women, and children if they crossed his ideals. He lived by gypsy code to point of fault; respecting nothing, taking everything from food and lodging to sex. He raped. Pillaged. And even despite the grandeur of ascending to the role of deity, this two he has squandered again and again, opting to cast it all off for a few more years wandering a land that he loves. A land where he has no permanent home. Surely no hero does these things. Heroes are just and pure. They stand for light and hope. Faith, humility, honor and love. Heroes are legendary and celebrated, like Cersee Nailo Caedman—Nigel's wife. But this is not the tale of a true hero. This is the story of that which creeps in the shadows, the bloody knife blade, the stink of whiskey-breath in the morning rain wet from another night under the stars. Doing what needs to be done, whether or not the people agree or realize what horrors are kept at bay by his stained hand.

More on the future of fiction

Apparently the topic of my Ontologica essay is on a lot more minds than my own. American Book Review just did a big bit on Fiction's future. Many of the authors quoted there echo a lot of what I was talking about in my essay. (By the way I'm writing this, you'd think I inspired people [I didn't though {wouldn't want to set the wrong impression}]). Though I did particularly enjoy Larry McCaffery's quote: "I have seen the future of fiction, and its name is Mark Z. Danielewski."