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Engineers Without Borders: Outside Looking In

In my last blog I mentioned that EWB "galvanizes young people to engage in work that has the potential to bring about significant change, particularly in Africa". That only describes part of the organization's focus. Their mission does involve "creating opportunities for rural Africans to create positive change in their lives" and much of this is accomplished through linking volunteers with agencies in certain African countries, and motivating those volunteers to become deeply engaged with the people of rural Africa. But there is another side to EWB's work, which is to raise awareness and understanding of African issues in Canada.

I'm wading in here from a position of relative ignorance. I haven't attended any EWB workshops or seminars. I've explored their website http://www.ewb.ca and read some of the volunteer blogs. I've listened to my son and other members of EWB talking about their experiences and their goals. I'm not sure exactly what they are accomplishing in Africa, but from my vantage point, they are doing an unusually effective job of raising awareness in Canada, without even really trying.

Perhaps that is part of the key to EWB's power. They don't pontificate. They don't directly attempt to institute change. They don't rush in with solutions to problems or try to supply resources to African communities that they think will help. The volunteers immerse themselves in the culture of their host country. They do their best to live like those around them in order to experience their struggles and joys in an immediate way. Volunteers seek to understand the root causes of problems affecting the people with whom they live and work, so they can attempt to address those causes, rather than the symptoms. They also try to discover ways to help Africans help themselves - so they can take ownership of the change they're involved in initiating. As least that is how I understand it, on the outside looking in.

The experience is profound and individual - and dramatically changes the way the volunteers think about Africa. There's a remarkable commonality in the blogs: the volunteers have deep respect for the people with whom they engage - for their courage, their optimism and the simplicity of their lives. Of course the volunteers also develop an intense awareness of the struggles, the limited opportunities, poverty, disease, and lack of education, but they feel immense hope - and repeatedly reiterate that there is much more to Africa than poverty. They love being there, they want to return, they believe the people of Africa will find their feet, in their own way.

When my son went to Zambia for 4 months, I worried. It seemed so far away, so potentially dangerous, so foreign. How would he, at age 22, manage?

Now, as he prepares to head off to Ghana for two years, I feel differently. I will miss him, of course - it's a long time. But his first experience in Africa was so life-changing and enriching that I embrace this second opportunity for him to grow.

In the same way that the experience of being immersed in African culture changes the volunteers, so my experience of their transformation has changed the way I think about Africa. Like them, I want to learn more and I feel hopeful. If that is one of EWB's goals, they're achieving it.

I am fascinated by the way EWB inspires these young people and prepares them to be so open to and reflective about their experiences in Africa. There is some magic at work here and I want to learn more about that, too.

I welcome your input!

Change (Mid Life Crisis)

I'm changing the focus of this blog because my life has changed. My youngest son has just left home to study in Montreal - an eight hour drive from Stratford, where we live. My oldest son will soon be departing to spend two years in Ghana, Africa, on a volunteer placement with Engineers Without Borders. The nest is empty.

For the past ten years, I've served as trustee on the local public school board. I chose not to run again because my children were grown and ten years seemed long enough - but it will leave another hole in my life. I published my first novel, a ten-year work in progress, last fall. Although it has received modest recognition, it hasn't changed my life.

I'm astonished to find myself at sea, with time on my hands and no clear purpose. I always thought I'd revel in such freedom. Instead I feel aimless - and ridiculous about it. What a luxury of freedom. How many people in the world are caught in situations where they have no freedom and an all-absorbing purpose: to survive?

Yet it is intense, this sense of meaninglessness. For my whole life I have been driven, mostly by personal concerns: getting an education, earning a living, managing a home, raising a family. I'm educated, make enough money to live in relative comfort, my children are launched on interesting lives, my home is as well-decorated as I care for it to be. What now?

It is important to have a reason to get up in the morning.

My son Mike is a source of inspiration. A recent graduate from the University of Toronto in engineering science, he has found a calling with Engineers Without Borders (EWB.) This extraordinary organization somehow galvanizes young people to engage in work that has the potential to bring about significant change, particularly in Africa. When Mike was in Zambia last summer, he wrote a fascinating blog about the experience http://reflectiveaction.wordpress.com/  which changed my view of Africa, of aid, of how change can be effected. I continue to read blogs written by EWB members. I'm interested in supporting - and further exploring - their cause.

In Canada, I have long held strong feelings about two particular laws that I think deprive people of personal choice, the law prohibiting assisted suicide or euthanasia and the law that makes possession and personal use of marijuana illegal. Laws against. Theoretically they're intended to protect people, but actually they deny people the right to make personal choices that impact only themselves. I'd like to see these laws changed - although I know there are many, many people who would oppose such change.

So maybe these are the reasons to get up in the morning. Maybe these are things to write about.

Online Critique Groups I: The Internet Writing Workshop

Having completed the first draft of my novel Goddess Fire, then titled Beneath the Vleth (try saying that five times fast and you'll know why I changed the title), I wanted feedback on the novel as a whole. A new member of my local writers group suggested I try an online full novel critique group to which she belonged. Excited, I checked it out and submitted a writing sample. The owner rejected me, describing my writing as clichéd (to my horror!) She recommended I join the IWW (the Internet Writing Workshop http://www.internetwritingworkshop.org/) novel chapter critique group, which required no application. Once I'd recovered from the blow to my ego, I did.

This time I got plenty of ferocious criticism. At the time, the Novels group of IWW had ninety members. It took me a while to figure out how to negotiate, let alone get the most out of, this group. Everyone posts everything to a list-serve and members must contribute at least twice a month. Contributions consist of submissions or critiques. Anyone can choose to critique anything they like. At first, it seemed like a terrible mishmash. I read posts and, at first, critiqued people whose writing appealed to me. Then I got into correspondence with a woman whose writing I admired who also provided meaty critiques to others. She explained that the key to obtaining quality critiques was to critique the work of strong critiquers and hope they would return the favour. I changed gears and instead of reading submissions, I avidly pored over the critiques. Then I selected people whose crits had depth, and started critiquing their work, modeling my crits on the best of theirs.

It worked like a dream. I soon had half a dozen people who critiqued everything I submitted and I faithfully followed their novels. Occasionally I critiqued other people's work too, and I received sporadic critiques from people I did not know. When they proved helpful, I'd return the favour. It was a huge amount of work, but a tremendous learning experience. It is ever so much easier to detect flaws in someone else's writing than your own, and as you become accustomed to eliminating adjectives and passive constructions when reading someone else's work, you start to monitor such tendencies in your own.

Members of this group provided me with incredibly in-depth critiques. Some rewrote virtually every sentence and suggested changes to plot and character that appalled me. But I learned to create story goals for my characters, to build in conflict and reversal, to ground my fantasy in absolute logic and to show rather than telling. I rewrote whole scenes, dramatically altered my characters, created subplots and developed a world that made consistent sense.

The plot of Goddess Fire in its published form is not dramatically different from that of the first draft. Plot seems to be my forte, which is somewhat ironic given that I used to fear I'd never be able to come up with a story. (I attribute my plotting strengths entirely to my Dungeons and Dragons experience, where plot is everything.) However, the way in which the plot is conveyed, the character's motivations, the twists and turns, chapter structures and actual writing changed enormously, due to the invaluable advice I received on IWW.

In my last post, I said face-to-face groups tend to be more social than online ones. Although it's true that one tends to chat more in groups that meet physically, I developed some real friendships through off-list communication with my regular group of critiquers at IWW. When we received particularly harsh crits, we could express our outrage through private emails. Over time, we also shared aspects of our personal lives, often in relation to our writing or our attempts to get published. Again, I found the writers I met through IWW tremendously supportive. Many of them also had very helpful first-hand experience of publishers and agents and the process of marketing one's work.

I did receive some brutal critiques, some unwarranted and, in my unbiased opinion, stupid, but others very insightful - tough and discouraging, but bang on. So I went back to the drawing board. With this group, I also submitted chapters weekly. As I learned more, I would rewrite the chapter before submitting it, knowing they'd be all over me for "telling" or failing to provide sufficient motivation or overwriting or ending a chapter without a hook. It proved to be terrific discipline. Once I pressed the send button, I'd hover by my computer waiting for critiques. At first, I revised as soon as I received the crits, but eventually I started saving the ones that made sense to me - and once I'd received crits on every chapter in the novel, I spent several months working through the critiques and writing my third draft. In the process, I added several scenes and still cut about 40,000 words (all those adjectives, passive constructions, repetitions etc.)

I sent out queries and synopses (oh dreaded items!) to agents and publishers and, with a sense of déjà vu, watched the rejections pour in. This time, I received some positive feedback: requests for the whole MS, encouraging feedback on the book, but no offers to publish. I let it sit for a few months, working on a new novel, and then decided I really did need a full novel critique group to help me wrestle the book into publishable shape. I was not prepared to shelve this one. I believed in it, many others believed in it, and I had to run it through the critiquing mill one last time.

A friend at IWW suggested I try a different full novel critique group, so I did - embarking on the final leg of what fortunately proved to be a successful journey.

More on that in my next post.

Writing Critique Groups

In my last post, I explored the similarities and differences between designing a D&D adventure and writing a book. My novel Goddess Fire is based on a dungeon I created for two high-level players, but it took years to transform the dungeon into a novel. I had a sound grasp of the plot, characters, settings and themes, but I had little real understanding of the craft of writing.

I doubt I would ever have become a writer had I not joined a critique group. I can't recommend such groups highly enough, especially for beginning writers, although all writers benefit from them. While it may be a frightening prospect to expose your humble and private attempts at writing to the eyes of critical strangers, it is a far less risky venture than submitting your creations to the ruthless scrutiny of agents and publishers. And if you do find the courage to join a writers group, you can improve your writing immeasurably.

Writers, especially writers willing to devote their precious time to helping others, are rarely harsh. More important, they provide feedback that can help you polish and refine your work before you try to get it published. In many groups, you obtain a variety of feedback. If several people think your protagonist lacks sparkle, it's a pretty sure sign you need to rethink the characterization. If one person doesn't like your dialogue, but everyone else does, you may not want to make changes.

Right at the time when I'd decided to attempt writing a novel, an ad appeared in my local paper, inviting writers interested in joining a critique group to a meeting at the public library. Feeling the stars had aligned, I printed out a sample of my writing - the prologue to my partially conceived novel and the only bit of fiction I'd written in years - and marched off to the meeting. So did about twenty other people; I knew none of them.

The gentleman who'd posted the ad was an accomplished writer with considerable experience of writing groups. Recognizing that a group of twenty was unmanageable, he organized us into two groups - one interested in fiction writing, the other in poetry. I joined the fiction group. We agreed to meet once a week and bring copies of our work - no more than 10 pages at a time - to read and discuss. Within a very short time, the group whittled down to about seven people, mostly unpublished. Instead of reading our pieces aloud (which took a lot of time) we sent them to each other by email in advance, so we could read each other's work and arrive at the meeting prepared to comment. Each week, some people submitted and others did not, but we all tried to keep up with the reading and critiquing. We had really only one rule: authors could not argue or defend their work, only listen.

I wrote my first novel one chapter a week, completing each in time to get feedback at the next meeting. I work well to deadlines, and this was no exception. Without the structure posed by the group, I might never have finished that book. No one else in the group wrote (or even read) fantasy, but they waxed enthusiastic, which boosted my confidence.

A face-to-face writers' group can seem more daunting than an online group because the participants are right there and you see their facial expressions as they comment. In theory, this might be more than a fragile writer could bear. In my experience, writers are kinder and more supportive in that context for precisely the same reasons. There is also a social element largely lacking in online groups. I became quite good friends with most members of that first group. We go to each other's book launches and still keep in touch, although I left the group several years ago. As a starting point, it was invaluable, providing me with stimulus and support when I needed it most.

The quality of critiquing in any writers' group depends, of course, on the membership. A small, local group may provide focus, encouragement and a welcome opportunity to converse with people who share similar interests. However, it is less likely to attract serious writers than an online group, which can have dozens or even hundreds of members from all over the world, many of whom are published. The constituency of my local group changed over time. People left and others joined. Some wrote so well I felt like an ignorant hack; others produced much less impressive work. Some were incisive critics, others offered only vague feedback.

Still I learned a great deal. I was shocked at how little I really knew about fiction writing. I'd never thought about character point of view. A happy head-hopper, I felt dismayed when someone pointed this out as a fault. Another member of the group circled all my adjectives and adverbs, and I fretted for weeks about whether, and then how, to eliminate them. One session, I arrived feeling pumped. I'd submitted what I felt was a particularly inspired, luminous piece of writing, full of symbolism and depth. Some of the group liked it, but one member told me it didn't quite work. Crushed, I admitted that it was one of my favourite bits. He said, "Ah well, that's a danger sign. Whenever I become very attached to a particular passage of writing, I know it will have to go." I've found this true time after time. Now, when I feel that little rush of "Yes, That's it!" I know almost right away that the section in question will end up on the chopping block. And it usually does.

I completed my fledgling novel, The Villost Diamond, but I still had an awful lot to learn. This became obvious when I sent out my supposedly final draft and received a flood of rejection letters. I spent a lot of time revising and polishing, but in the end decided the story itself was too quirky to fly as a first novel. I embarked on another.

My writing had improved; the group loved the new book. But I'd also grown a bit suspicious of this praise. My confidence had grown, and so had my determination to finally see my work in print. I needed tough critical feedback. It was time to move on. I turned to online writers' groups.

To be continued…

From Game to Novel

I'm excited to announce that my fantasy thriller Goddess Fire is now available for order from the publisher www.comfortpublishing.com and for pre-order from Amazon. You can view the book trailer at http://vimeo.com/6540424

The idea for this book - the world, political dynamics, characters and twisted plot - grew out of a short Dungeons and Dragons campaign I created for a couple of friends. When designing the "dungeon" I had no thought of writing a novel. Yet in many ways, the goals of a dungeon master (DM) are very similar to those of a fantasy author. As DM, I wanted to create a scenario with sufficient suspense and mystery to grip my players and make the game exciting. I wanted them to be personally involved in the unfolding plot; I created a "story" in which their game characters would be seriously threatened and they would feel catharsis and triumph, as well as fear, pity etc.

Now I may not have thought about it in such Aristotelian terms while designing a rollicking good D&D adventure for my friends, but I did look for ways to introduce goal, conflict, obstacle, reversal - all the elements that make a gripping story.

A D&D adventure differs markedly from a novel in that the progress and outcome of the plot are not entirely in the creator's hands. Players have the ability to alter the course of the story. Their characters make choices and sometimes quite surprising ones, which may well alter the way other DM-played characters act. That's one of the reasons it's so much fun to play: you feel you are a character in a story, with at least some power to influence the outcome.

Creating a dungeon and writing a fantasy novel have an important similarity as well. In both cases, the scenario has to be believable. You may be in fantasy world, where the sky is red and people have magical abilities, but the sky must remain red (except maybe for the blue sunsets) and the magical abilities must have consistency, limits and logic. In a D&D adventure, the players force the DM to be scrupulously consistent in his/her logic. In a novel, it is easier to slip, leave things unexplained or include implausible events, but the reader will catch such lapses and be irked by them. Their willingness to suspend disbelief will diminish.

The problem with D&D as a creative exercise is that you design a whole world, people it with careful developed characters and spin elaborate plots - for a miniscule audience. Two people played in my Vleth dungeon. Although they loved it, it seemed an awful lot of work just to entertain a couple of friends. People gaped in disbelief when I told them about the time and thought I put into creating dungeons. Eventually I listened and decided to try my hand at turning a dungeon into a book.

I'd completed a lot of the groundwork. The settings were fully visualized, down to street maps of the city in which the action occurs. I had images in my head of the Vleth Complex, the Hall of Seers, the Library, the taverns where the dissenters met, the catacombs beneath the city. One of the first challenges I had to overcome was my tendency to set too many scenes in taverns. Taverns are a standard D&D feature. Players spend half their time in taverns, meeting each other, spying on others etc. Don't ask me why taverns are so integral to the game, but they are. I was oblivious to the inordinate prevalence of drinking and taverns in the first draft of Goddess Fire until an online critiquer pointed it out, coyly mentioning that taverns are all very well in RPG settings, but not so effective in novels. Chagrined, I immediately rethought a number of the scene settings.

I also had a fair idea of the how the main conflict, between the Vleth and the dissenters, would develop and play out. However, in the dungeon, the protagonists were player characters. For the novel, I had to create new characters. Once I had fleshed out the main characters, the plot started to change, because, for one thing, it only made sense for these people, in this world, to act in certain ways, not necessarily the ones that fit neatly into my plot.

One of the most fascinating aspects of writing the novel was that characters began to take things into their own hands, in much the same way player characters do in a dungeon. I'd be in the middle of writing a scene in which, for example, Taeja was going to turn her back on someone and suddenly I'd get this idea that she wouldn't actually turn her back because something else would happen, and before I knew I'd written quite a different scene, which seemed to have a life of its own.

In the end, the novel does not bear a huge resemblance to the dungeon, but the dungeon was certainly the inspiration. The hardest part of turning game into book was the actual writing: crafting language to convey my intention, to conjure that world or depict that character or moment. In D&D, no one is too fussed about the words you use. In a novel, they're critical.

The Lure of Fantasy

Why are we so drawn to fantasy? As children we play imaginary games. We read, and we continue to read as adults. Even if we don't read the fantasy genre, most of us read fiction, which is a form of fantasy. We watch movies and plays. We play video, computer and face-to-face role-playing games like Dungeons and Dragons. We daydream about becoming a millionaire, a movie star, the president.

Why are we so drawn to that which is NOT real? What value does fantasy have in today's fast-paced, concrete world?

Obviously it is a form of escape, and escaping from reality has been a common human pursuit throughout the ages. Some escape via drugs and alcohol, others through religion or art. Some would argue these are not vehicles of escape but of enlightenment: we learn about life through heightened experience or through art, which reflects reality back to us in stylized, altered, imaginative forms. No doubt this is all true, yet I would argue that in many cases it is the escape that appeals to people, as much as the enlightenment. It is a relief, even a joy, to put one's faith in something other than oneself (whether it be religion or some mind-altering elixir.) It is similarly a joy to immerse oneself in art - which may be why an unprecedented number of people strive to be writers these days. The experience/process is, for the creator, as rewarding/important as the product.

Some people believe that the pursuit of fantasy is a sign of immaturity, and inability to face the facts, grow up, etc. And no doubt there are people who do not like fantasy and have no desire to escape their own realities. I haven't met many of them, but I suspect they exist. On the other hand, I think for many people, fantasy is appealing as a break from reality.

I'm a serious person with lots of responsibility. I wear a number of hats: school board trustee, professor, parent, daughter, partner, writer, moderator, etc. I have a reputation as a capable, intelligent professional. I adore fantasy - in almost all its forms. I read voraciously. I write fantasy fiction. I used to work in the theatre and am still an enthusiastic audience member. I'm an avid, though infrequent, D&D player and my writing is often based on elements of D&D adventures. Fantasy feeds my imagination and my creativity.

In this blog, I want to explore some of these elements - in particular, my creative experiences with writing and Dungeons & Dragons. I look forward to your comments!