feeding change

[via places for writers] Children’s writer Andri Snaer Magnason may be an award winning author in his home country of Iceland, but in Canada, his book The Story of the Blue Planet goes just too far:

When Magnason recently presented a manuscript to a Canadian publisher based in Toronto, they offered to publish the book provided he remove references to grilling a seal that had been hunted for food, as well as a scene where a grateful child hugs and kisses two other children who saved his life.

I’m not a big meat-eater myself, but when kids in Canada are offered this and this and this, then I think there is room for a little chowing down on seals and the occasional hug.

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Max Barry is a fine example of a writer who uses his website to promote his books, communicate with his fans and speak his mind. In his latest post he answers his critics who accuse him of being “anti-everything”, something that is regularly laid at my feet by people who should know better.

He has this to say on being anti-corporate:

“My attitude toward corporations doesn?t depend on whether they?re large or small, chain or independent, foreign or local. It?s certainly true that companies that serve the general public (like McDonald?s and Apple) act nicer than companies that don?t (like Monsanto and Halliburton), but this is no anomaly: it?s just further proof that corporations are only interested in public opinion when it affects their bottom-line. Fundamentally, all public companies are cast from the same mold. They are all machines, running different programs on the same operating system.”

When you speak out against things that bother you, it immediately pins you as being “anti-” that particular thing. That’s a convenient frame for people to put on anyone who disagrees with what’s happening. Personally, when I’m accused of being anti-this, or anti-that, I try to turn it on around and stress what I’m “pro-”. And that’s tough sometimes because it’s a lot easier to define yourself by what you are not, rather than what you are.

So, being anti-anti-everything actually means being pro-something. Like

a healthy environment, triple bottom-line economics, and crackin’ orc skulls in your spare time.

To name just a few.

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What’s Toronto’s answer to their littering problem? Bigger garbage bins! I’m talking 7 1/2 feet tall. With ads. Lit up (as in draining electricity from the already strained TO power grid.) That’s taller than Toronto Raptor Loren Woods, who is a measley 7 feet.

Instead of trying to get people to buy less junk, the Toronto city council is testing out the new “EcoMupis” bins, which will carry illuminated billboards selling junk and larger garbage containers for people to put all that added junk they’ll buy after seeing the new ads for the junk.

There are so many things wrong with this plan, that I decided to contact my city councillor, Bill Saundercook, and find out why he decided to opt in on this pilot project (councillors like Olivia Chow wisely passed on the whole plan.)

The conversation was as illuminating as the EcoMupis billboards promise to be. Councillor Saundercook gave the familiar wail of budget crunches, and savings etc. but failed to see how plastering our city’s streets with Raptor-sized ads, that suck electricity, block pedestrians, distract drivers and generally contribute a message of “buy more junk, we’ll take care of it!”, will cost more to the city in the long-run (through addeds strain on the powergrid, the inevitable medical costs resulting from pedestrians not seeing oncoming traffic as they cross, and more garbage going into our Michigan’s landfills.)

Basically the party line is: “It’s better to try these things out and see what the public thinks.”

In my opinion the councillor, and city hall are betting on the apathy of the residents to not say anything about the garbage cans disguised as billboards. I predict that there’ll be a counter-attack to the Monster/Raptor Bins. Toronto’s Public Space Committee will be meeting on Feb 2nd at City Hall. The bins will be high on the agenda and I’ll be there. If you live in Toronto and think we don’t need more ads littering our streets, then I invite you to come along.

Stay tuned for more on this. Today, the monsters are attacking Toronto. Tomorrow it could be your home town (cue B-movie music and sinister laugh.)

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Like many prolific authors, Philip Pullman doesn’t have time for writers who complain about writer’s block (as I’ve posted about before):

“I don’t believe in it. All writing is difficult. The most you can hope for is a day when it goes reasonably easily. Plumbers don’t get plumber’s block, and doctors don’t get doctor’s block; why should writers be the only profession that gives a special name to the difficulty of working, and then expects sympathy for it?”

I’m bringing it up again because I’ve just recovered from a very serious case of blockage to the writerly arteries. I’m not asking for sympathy and even after a week of banging my head against my computer, I’m still not sure if writer’s block even exists.

My writing task was to come up with a very specific story idea that was fresh, smart and engaging for young readers. After passing my deadline by nearly a week, I finally came up with the idea (not even the story yet, just the idea!)

The thing is, I didn’t sit around for a week with an empty head. I had many ideas, but the internal editor rejected all of them for various reasons (bland, done-before, and just plain stupid, you know the ones.) I can’t ever see using any of my rejected ideas but I was still generating stuff, just not the right stuff. So did I have writer’s block? Or was my idea flow bunged up with too much holiday eggnog?

“Writer’s write” is the famous quote aimed at those who moan about being blocked. And I agree with it completely. First drafts are designed to be horrible messes that should never see the light of day, but unfortunately many do. I think many people take the definition of “being blocked” too literally, as if it’s an on/off kind of thing. I find it very hard to believe that someone who wants to write has absolutely no ideas coming from their brain. They must!

We are constantly generating ideas, many of which we think are unbelievably bad so they get stopped by that sensible editor within and they shrivel up and die before they hit the page/screen. But the idea is generated and that is part of the creative process. We writers are an egotistical group of people and many of us feel that writing bad stuff is not writing at all. So they don’t admit to writing the crap copy that is essential to get to the final draft. They’d rather avoid writing all togehter and complain of a complete creative block.

As Pullman says, plumbers don’t get plumber’s block, but plumbers do have their good days and their bad days. A plumber having a bad day will still show up to work and fix your pipes. She just won’t do a good job and will have to return next week to tighten the pipe that she missed and do the job right.

And that, as the last week has taught me, is what writing is all about. Leaky pipes and bad ideas are not to be ignored. Either fix them or replace them.

Now that my writing ideas are back on track, I think we should work on a new idea together: redefinig writer’s block.

I’m sure there’s no shortage of ideas out there.

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