{"id":24701,"date":"2014-09-08T21:27:00","date_gmt":"2014-09-09T01:27:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/?p=24701"},"modified":"2014-09-08T21:27:00","modified_gmt":"2014-09-09T01:27:00","slug":"robert-jackson-bennett-the-shape-waiting-in-the-stone","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/2014\/09\/08\/robert-jackson-bennett-the-shape-waiting-in-the-stone\/","title":{"rendered":"Robert Jackson Bennett: The Shape Waiting In The Stone"},"content":{"rendered":"

Okay, so, if you don’t know RJB here, he’s basically one of the most amazing writers out there. Years from now, when humanity has been reduced to its barest cinder after some self-made cataclysm or another, the remnants of this world will find his books and elevate them to the religion they deserve to be. He’s also one of the most batshit Twitterers (tweeters? twatters?) around. Anyway — his newest is out today, and you should read this, and then go get a copy. Or stick around and grab a free one in the giveaway below.<\/em><\/p>\n

Also, here’s a video of him you should watch because<\/strong><\/span><\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

<\/em>* * *<\/p>\n

Last week my wife did something that I suspect counts as a transgression to most writers: she pulled out an audiobook of a novel of mine from 2011 and put it into our home stereo system. Suddenly I was hearing words I\u2019d written three or four years ago echoing throughout the house, and I was unable to escape them.<\/p>\n

The book was The Company Man<\/em>, and I feel like most writers have a leery relationship with anything of theirs that\u2019s over two or three years old. Reading your own old novel is essentially like looking at a photograph as yourself when were a kid: you immediately spot all the juvenile, ridiculous affectations and gimmicks that you were stupid enough to think might work back then. Only it\u2019s, \u201cI can\u2019t believe I didn\u2019t realize that was the passive voice!\u201d versus, \u201cI can\u2019t believe I thought overalls were actually cool back then!\u201d<\/p>\n

But I had a special animosity for The Company Man. <\/em>Sure, some people like it, and yeah, it did win an Edgar Award.<\/p>\n

But I\u2019ll let you in on a little secret: I fucking hated <\/em>writing that book.<\/p>\n

Why? Well, some of it was bad timing. It was my sophomore effort, which is a tricky place to be in. When you\u2019ve got one book going out and you\u2019re working away on a second, it feels like everyone\u2019s asking you, \u201cYou did it once, kid. Can you do it again? What kind of a writer are you actually <\/em>going to be?\u201d You have to prove you weren\u2019t a fluke. You have to do the second thing better, bigger \u2013 and it can\u2019t be the same <\/em>thing you did before. Yet it feels sure to disappoint. The sophomore slump, as they call it, feels inevitable.<\/p>\n

So I had that hanging around my neck. But the real problem was that I wasn\u2019t really sure what I could or couldn\u2019t do in a book.<\/p>\n

Every choice I made in writing my second effort felt totally ridiculous. My first book had some SFF elements, but not nearly as many as I was putting into The Company Man<\/em>. I\u2019d write a chapter, sit back and read it, and think, \u201cThis isn\u2019t going to fly. None <\/em>of this is going to fly.\u201d<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s go ahead and run down the list of the stuff I was doing in there:<\/p>\n

Psychic detective. Steampunk-ish 1920\u2019s. Alternate history that completely rewrites the history of Washington (a state I\u2019d never visited, at the time). Apocalyptic visions. And spycraft and convoluted conspiracy stuff out the wazoo.<\/p>\n

I\u2019d go to bed at night and lay awake thinking, \u201cI am writing the biggest piece of shit that has ever been put on paper. This is going to get published, and I\u2019ll get tarred, feathered, and run out of town on a rail.\u201d<\/p>\n

So it was with an intense, unspeakable dread that I started doing laundry the other week with The Company Man <\/em>in my ear\u2026<\/p>\n

\u2026and to my complete and utter shock, it didn\u2019t completely suck<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Now, I\u2019m not saying that it was, like, fuckin\u2019 Margaret Atwood level brilliant, but it was pretty decent stuff, I thought, especially considering a 23 year old wrote it. (Especially a 23-year-old-me<\/em>, which is a dumber than normal version of a 23 year old.) The characters had interesting dialogue, and the atmosphere of the setting worked pretty well, and so on.<\/p>\n

But here\u2019s the thing: the stuff that worked the best, from what I heard, was the super pulpy, genre stuff that I jammed in there at the last minute, thinking all the while that I was putting the final nail in its coffin of suck. I remember thinking, \u201cIt\u2019s too pulpy! It\u2019s too ridiculous! It\u2019s too unbelievable!\u201d<\/p>\n

But that was just what the book needed<\/em>. It needed to embrace what it really was, a super pulpy genre romp. And I think I knew that, somewhere in my brain: my instincts were telling me, \u201cStop trying to write a realist noir story! Go full genre!\u201d but I was doubting them and fighting them every step of the way. \u201cI can\u2019t do crazy genre! I\u2019ve never done that before, and my last book wasn\u2019t like that at all!\u201d But in all honesty, the book could have used some more <\/em>genre elements, the wackier the better.<\/p>\n

Instincts are some of the hardest things to hone when you\u2019re first writing. Instincts thrive on experience, on constant immersion in the conflict inherent in writing: trying to realize abstraction, to take an idea and make it solid. The best metaphor I\u2019ve heard for instincts is that it\u2019s like a sculptor sitting down with a block of stone, and just knowing <\/em>the shape of the sculpture waiting inside, understanding that there is a thing <\/em>waiting inside of this raw material, and it wants <\/em>you to carve away the excess. The unrealized work has a definitive self-identity: your job is simply to take all the stuff that it isn\u2019t and remove it, to separate chaff from wheat.<\/p>\n

But instincts are often torpedoed by doubt, especially at the start of your career. Your instincts will propose what feels like a completely arbitrary leap \u2013 Let\u2019s throw in some homeless prophets! <\/em>\u2013 and you\u2019ll think, \u201cWell that obviously came out of nowhere and could never work,\u201d while not realizing that, actually, it didn\u2019t come from nowhere. Some subconscious part of your brain has been doing your work for you, and you ignore its advice at your peril.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m currently writing a sequel to my fifth book that\u2019s coming out in September, City of Stairs<\/em>. Its sequel, currently titled City of Blades<\/em>, originally had a device in it that fundamentally functioned as an obstacle: the main character had to run a difficult intelligence operation in an impoverished region where a massive construction project was taking place. The overseer of this construction project was primarily going to work in opposition to the MC: in other words, both the project and this particular character would exist to make the MC\u2019s job harder, and otherwise did very little else.<\/p>\n

I wrote a third of the book, and stopped for a while. And I realized my instincts were telling me, \u201cThis isn\u2019t working. No one will want to read about a character and<\/em> a place whose sole purposes are to make the main character\u2019s life harder.\u201d<\/p>\n

And then I realized my instincts were telling me something else: this construction project and this character could <\/em>operate on a much, much broader thematic level. What was being built in this region \u2013 a massive harbor and shipping channel , bringing wealth and resources to a place that desperately needed it \u2013 had the opportunity to literally change the world, to upend global economies, to bring a better future.<\/p>\n

So my instincts were telling me: \u201cWhy the fuck are you staging this as just a problem?! <\/em>These things aren\u2019t obstacles, they\u2019re the promise of innovation, the opportunity of the new!\u201d<\/p>\n

So I went back and essentially rewrote the entire first third of the book. And I\u2019m really glad I did, because now all the characters are much, much clearer, the plot is much more streamlined, and I\u2019m pretty sure I just shortened the book by 10,000 words. It\u2019s clicking along merrily now, whereas before I felt like I was just hacking away.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m glad I listened to my instincts, who knew all along that there was a shape waiting in the stone. All I needed to do was to stop telling the unrealized work what I <\/em>thought it was and listen, because it knew what it wanted to be all along.<\/p>\n

Win A Copy Of The Book!<\/h2>\n

Chuck here.<\/p>\n

Time to give away a copy of this bad-ass book.<\/p>\n

How?<\/p>\n

It’s easy.<\/p>\n

Comment below with a fantasy book you read and loved.<\/p>\n

We’ll pick a random commenter tomorrow morning (US only, I’m afraid) and get you a free copy of\u00a0City of Stairs.<\/strong>\u00a0It couldn’t be easier. Well. I guess it could? SHUT UP THIS IS EASY.<\/p>\n

* * *<\/p>\n

Robert Jackson Bennett<\/strong>\u2018s 2010 debut\u00a0Mr. Shivers<\/em>\u00a0won the Shirley Jackson Award as well as the Sydney J Bounds Newcomer Award. His second novel,\u00a0The Company Man<\/em>, won a Special Citation of Excellence from the Philip K Dick Award, as well as an Edgar Award for Best Paperback Original. His third novel,\u00a0The Troupe<\/em>, has topped many \u201cBest of 2012\u201d lists, including that of\u00a0Publishers Weekly<\/em>. His fourth novel,\u00a0American Elsewhere<\/em>, won the 2013\u00a0Shirley Jackson Award for Best Novel. His fifth,\u00a0City of Stairs, <\/em>is out now.<\/p>\n

He lives in Austin with his wife and son.<\/p>\n

Robert Jackson Bennett: Website<\/span><\/a> | Twitter<\/span><\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

City of Stairs: Amazon<\/span><\/a> | B&N<\/span><\/a> | Indiebound<\/span><\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Okay, so, if you don’t know RJB here, he’s basically one of the most amazing writers out there. Years from now, when humanity has been reduced to its barest cinder after some self-made cataclysm or another, the remnants of this world will find his books and elevate them to the religion they deserve to be. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-24701","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"hentry","6":"category-theramble","8":"no-featured-image"},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pv7MR-6qp","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24701","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24701"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24701\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24710,"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24701\/revisions\/24710"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24701"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24701"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24701"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}