Laughing at the Abyss

Those of you who’ve read Laughing at the Abyss in the past may remember that my mother was one of the millions of Americans during the ’80s who were brainwashed by Pat Robertson into considering Dungeons & Dragons “demonic”. (Don’t laugh, those of you in Generation-Y or younger, there was a real hysteria in the Reagan years about this sort of thing. Before Tom Hanks was the new James Stewart, he starred in a made-for-TV movie called Mazes & Monsters, about a young man’s descent into madness due to being unable to differentiate the game from reality). I’ve actually never seen the whole thing, but it strikes me as the heir to the ’50s delinquency films and catastrophizing cinema a la Reefer Madness.

Nonetheless, I worked around her prohibition by playing the game after school with a group of friends. In the process, I came into possession of a borrowed copy of the AD&D Monster Manual. I hid it under my bed so she wouldn’t discover it. I came off the bus one day to find the aforementioned terato-tome on top of my bed, and my mother poised to ambush me with a Kafkaesque interrogation. She treated AD&D like some parents treated a dime bag of weed. As a result, the only thing I actually remember about D&D was rolling the dice to create my character’s ability scores. You know, strength, dexterity, constitution, charisma, and all that jazz.

By now you may be asking: “What does this have to do with writing?”

 Jeff Vandermeer’s Booklife: Strategies and Survival Tips For The 21^st Century Writer is one of my favorite books about the publishing business. In it, he recommends writers undergo a process of honest self-assessment (of strengths, weaknesses, and gray areas) as a step along to the way to self-improvement. For example, an author might excel at face-to-face networking at conventions, but struggle with adapting to new platforms and technologies. Short of some unforeseen genetic engineering that produces a “super writer”, none of us are perfect. Our professional lives are built from the scaffold of our character. Some wood in the scaffold is strong and helpful. Some wood in the scaffold is weak and detrimental. Some wood in the scaffold is in-between.

Recently, I’ve had the idea of merging Vandermeer’s self-assessment idea with the gone (but not forgotten) D&D character I created before Momma put the kibosh on my gaming career. Imagine using the D&D abilities as a schema for self-evaluation of one’s writing career.

How?

Okay, let’s take a look at the old D&D abilities (for the uninitiated, these are Strength, Intelligence, Wisdom, Dexterity, Constitution, and Charisma). What would these mean if translated to the context of the craft of writing and building a writing career? What follows is my attempt to perform just such a translation. All ability score definitions are quoted from the D&D Player Handbook as quoted by Wizards.com.

Strength – In the game, this refers to “muscle and physical power.” As a self-assessment of your writing career, this will boil down to an honest assessment of the strength of your work. Of course, this is one of the most difficult areas of self-assessment, because none of us can accurately measure it except in retrospect. But here are some ideas to start this assessment off. If you’re a newer writer, are you involved in a formal (or informal) critique circle? Are you taking writing classes from professionals, when they’re available (as they often are, at conventions)? If you’ve been around for awhile, do you have a subjective sense that your writing is changing or do you feel like things have gotten stale?

Intelligence – In the game, this refers to “how well a character learns and reasons”. We all make mistakes along the way of building our writing careers. Maybe we’re too imitative of our literary heroes and heroines. Maybe we over-think the market and try too hard to chase trends. Or maybe we still haven’t mastered the distinctions between lay and lie. For the purposes of this blog, an author with high “intelligence” learns from his mistakes (both in terms of craft and career). He is able to honestly see when he’s wrong so he can then take corrective action.

Wisdom – In the game, this refers to “a character’s willpower, common sense, perception, and intuition”. Translated to building a writing career, this amounts to savvy (regarding your work, the market, and where you believe the best opportunities are for the twain to meet). The wise writer knows what she can and can’t control. The wise writer creates a set of goals and sticks to them throughout the year. The wise writer keeps an ear to the industry grapevine (knowing that not all rumors are accurate, but also knowing that word-of-mouth is often the best way to determine the relative health of publishers and relative professionalism of agents). Perhaps most importantly, the wise writer understands that it’s important to be himself. The wise writer knows that chasing trends is folly.

Dexterity – In the game, this refers to “a character’s hand-eye coordination, agility, reflexes, and balance”. Translated to building a writing career, the dexterous writer is a writer who is in a position to respond to market dynamics effectively. Often, this amounts to not having all of one’s eggs in one basket. Rather than working with one publisher exclusively, it’s far more dexterous to work with two or more. Opportunities in publishing emerge from interaction with others. So it behooves an author to interact with as many like-minded folks in the business as possible. Dexterity also applies to formats. For example, are you preparing to explore e-publishing opportunities, when they make sense in the context of the rest of your goals?

Constitution – In the game, this refers to “a character’s health and stamina”. Translated to the craft and business of writing, the writer with a high constitution is a writer who is able to approach her career with a long-term perspective. Obviously, this means the ability to forgo the temptation of grabbing at low-hanging fruit. Being poorly published is worse than not being published at all. The writer with a high constitution score also works at a sustainable pace, neither slipping into workaholism nor suffering extended writer’s block. The writer with a high constitution takes care of herself, her friends and family, and her health. This means putting real thought into writing goals to make certain they’re aggressive but also realistic, given the multitasking most writers have to do given the responsibilities of day jobs, families, and keeping up with what’s being written in her field.

Charisma – In the game, this refers to “a character’s force of personality, persuasiveness, personal magnetism, ability to lead, and physical attractiveness”. This definition could be used almost as-is when applying “charisma” to a writing career. But to flesh it out a little more, consider this. Are you comfortable at conventions? Are you considered likable? Are you at home with self-promotion and wear the “public figure” aspect of being an author like a comfortable garment? Think physical attractiveness doesn’t matter? I dunno…China Miéville’s photo takes up an awful lot of room on the hardcover edition of The City & The City.

Okay, so now the fun part begins…

You can take these ability scores and use them to create D&D-style character profiles of your favorite authors. For the sake of good manners, let’s restrict this to authors who’ve gone on to the big Con in the sky.

H.P. Lovecraft

Strength – The strength of Lovecraft’s actual writing varied significantly over his career. He’s a prime example of an author whose work (from my perspective) often struggled at the micro level but excelled at the macro level. In fact, “excelled at the macro level” just doesn’t do him justice. He changed horror forever by introducing the cosmic perspective. So we’ll estimate this ability level at 15.

Intelligence – Hmm…did Lovecraft learn from his mistakes? This is probably a question better answered by a biographer like S.T. Joshi. His later work seems to hold more appeal than his earlier work, for many. But I don’t think he ever really nailed dialogue. So I’m going to give him a middling score of 11 (in honor of Nigel Tufnel).

 Wisdom – This is another one that I can’t decide on. On the one hand, Lovecraft certainly knew himself, knew what he wanted to do, and stuck to his guns. He got that part of wisdom down. He seems to have not done as well as far as market savvy goes. The documentary Lovecraft: Fear of the Unknown states that even as a ghost writer, he didn’t charge the going rates for his services (and as a result sold himself short). However, I feel that the knowing yourself element of this is probably even more important than the knowing the market aspect (as least, in terms of evaluating Lovecraft). So I’m going to give him a score of 17 on this one.

Dexterity – I don’t think Lovecraft can be rated as a very dexterous writer. He sold much of his fiction to Weird Tales and maybe one or two other pulp magazines (correct me if I’m wrong). He never had an actual collection of his stories printed in his life time. He could have benefited from sound business advice. On this score, I’m going to give Lovecraft a lowly 6.

 Constitution – One gets the sense that Lovecraft had a long-term perspective toward his publishing goals, but he earns low points in this one for neglecting his health. Had he taken care of himself, ate well, and gotten treatment for his cancer much sooner, he may have lived much longer than he did. On this score, he gets an 9.

 Charisma – In this area, Lovecraft is bound to rate rather low. Although he did have acquaintances who were attracted to him on the basis of his brilliance, it doesn’t sound like he was a natural schmoozer. Cynical, aloof, and racist Lovecraft earns the lowest score in this ability area, a meager 5.

 Now it’s your turn. Your assignment is to score the D&D-style “abilities” of various authors of your own choosing. The only rule is they have to be deceased. The goal is to get us thinking about self-assessment (not to hurt the feelings of living authors by dissing them through this exercise). Feel free to give your own scores for Lovecraft, too. I’m wondering if other folks would substantially disagree with any of my rankings.