The Evils of Smoking

Let me get one thing out of the way immediately: I am not a smoker, have never been a smoker, and I detest everything about smoking. Maybe that’s three things. I detest the way smokers demonstrate a complete disregard for the people and the world around them. I sometimes have to sit here in this study while my neighbour pops outside for a smoke—mustn’t smoke in the house!—only to have his poison drift into this room and up my nostrils. I don’t want to smell his smoke any more than I want to smell his farts. I know when someone three doors down lights up a smoke.

But it’s not only the smoke. It’s the way smokers toss their butts on the ground. And unless you have never done this, or never smoked within ten metres of someone else, please don’t claim to be a ‘considerate’ smoker.

There. Now that’s off my chest.

Despite all this, I find it extremely odd the way that smoking has been singled out for attention by legislators, at least in this country. Smoking, after all, is not illegal. Yes it harms the health of the smoker. Yes it harms the health of others around. Yes it represents a great burden on the public health system. But so do junk food, gambling, our present government and, above all, alcohol. So why, then, do smokers and the tobacco industry come under what seems to be such a disproportionate amount of pressure?

I’m not sure I have the answer. The comparison with alcohol is the most obvious. Alcohol consumption is dangerous in both the short and long term. It is at the root of many fatal vehicle accidents; it is the cause of many associated risky behaviours; it is the basis for a great deal of violence in the home and on the streets. Not to mention the direct health effects and costs. Yet alcohol is still freely available. It is still advertised. Alcohol consumption continues to be regarded generally in society (as demonstrated by its actions if not its words) as ‘harmless fun’. Why this contrast with smoking? I don’t know.

This reminds me, in some ways, of the gun debate, and probably says a great deal about our society. It seems fairly clear that a large section of American (USA) society, regards gun ownership, not simply as a right, but as normal. As normal as owning a car or a dog. People have cars. People have guns. This is part of the American culture. Life without guns would seem odd, if not, somehow, incomplete and unsatisfying. I suspect something similar is true of Australian attitudes towards alcohol. The consumption of alcohol is completely integral to Australian society at almost every level. To attack alcohol is, in a very real way, to attack what it means to be Australian. Sound a bit like attacking gun ownership in the USA? I think so. I imagine people in Turkey, where it is probably considered antisocial (for a man, at least) not to smoke, would start a revolution if the government attempted, directly or indirectly, to restrict tobacco sales. Someone in a strict Islamic nation (at least in theory) would look in contempt at our consumption of alcohol. From their perspective, alcohol consumption here in Australia probably looks much like gun ownership in the USA looks to many of us: ‘What’s wrong with those people? Can’t they see the problems alcohol [substitute here, ‘guns’ or ‘tobacco’ according to your preference] causes?’

It seems that in each culture or society there are some obviously dangerous and harmful behaviours which that culture not only tolerates, but embraces. Societies appear, by and large, to be willing to pay the price that inevitably accompanies such activities. Why these but not others? Who knows? To each their own poison, I suppose.

Why tobacco has become the thing to hate in Australia remains unclear. I know why I hate it (he says, closing his window as the neighbour has another fix). But why society as a whole has so turned against it remains puzzling.

'Good for the Economy'

What’s good for the economy? This seems to be the driving question behind every decision governments make. Lobby groups within society are forced to adopt this line of thinking if they are to have any influence on government policy. So, for instance, no environmental group can argue for the intrinsic value of taking care of the environment, let alone the obligation to do so. It is no longer possible to argue for ‘saving the tiger’ because it is the right thing to do. It is necessary to demonstrate, for instance, that tigers are a tourist attraction and, therefore, preserving them makes economic sense. We can’t argue for clean air because it is intrinsically more healthy and leads to healthy people; we have to add the argument that health care is expensive and that, therefore, preventative measures, such as removing pollution, make good economic sense.

But what does it mean to argue that something has intrinsic value? What does it mean to claim that an action is intrinsically right or wrong, and is not just to be measured in terms of its benefit to the economy (or, indeed, according to any other utilitarian criterion)? These are extraordinarily difficult questions to answer. Interestingly, a morality based on divine laws does not really allow for such intrinsic value. A thing is ‘good’ or ‘bad’ because divine law proclaims it so. An action is ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ because a deity says so. Even to claim that the deity does so because the action or being has some intrinsic value is to deny the supremacy of that deity: it would imply some kind of external constraint upon that deity’s power. In theory, a supreme deity can pronounce that murder and rape are righteous acts, and they will become so. It doesn’t quite work, though, does it? We would (some of us, at least) remain unconvinced, being persuaded that there is something intrinsically unethical about those acts. This is not just random or arbitrary. I suspect that only a humanistic, rationally based system of ethics can really recognize intrinsic worth in actions and things, although it may not. It, too, can be based on utilitarian criteria. (Although, isn’t there something intrinsic underlying even such values? Choosing a path that causes the least harm to the smallest number of people, for instance, implies that to do so is intrinsically better than not to do so.)

It seems to me that economic (and other utilitarian) criteria have assumed a place in our thinking to which they are not entitled. To do the right thing only if it yields economic benefits or if, at worst, it is economically neutral, is pretty shabby ethics. There are, of course, spontaneous actions of bravery and altruism in human society: rushing in front of a bus to save a child, for instance, even at the risk of one’s own life. That action is okay, because it can be justified on economic grounds too. It makes good economic sense to risk the life of an older ‘economic unit’ to save a younger one, who potentially has many more years of productivity ahead of him or her. A twenty-year-old man rushing in front of a bus to save a ninety-year-old woman in a wheel chair, though? No. Definitely not a good economic decision. Fortunately, such spontaneous altruistic actions are not based on economic considerations.

It’s a pity that when we have time to actually think about things, this is rarely the case.

Review: Shattering Halos by Sunniva Dee

In this new adult, paranormal novel involving angels, of both the fallen and non-fallen variety, we meet Gaia Samuelle, an eighteen-year-old girl who miraculously survives a vehicle accident in which her closest friends are killed. In the course of her recovery, she becomes aware of an angelic figure that only she, apparently, can see. This, it transpires, is Gabriel, her guardian angel, who rescued her from the accident, an action which was clearly in breach of the rules. In a further breach of the rules, he continues to reveal himself to her, and they fall in love. This will have cosmic consequences.

The story is told in the first person, largely from the point of view (POV) of Gaia. However, there are also sections written from the POV of Cassiel, another angel who is fallen. He spends his time seducing women and girls, and naturally has his eyes set on Gaia. Both Gabriel and Cassiel are interesting characters, with a blend of supernatural powers and human frailties. Although fallen, Cassiel appears as mischievous and self-indulgent, rather than evil. Gabriel, while not fallen, is smitten with Gaia. This surpasses his understanding. He is confused by the fact that he is not punished for his behaviour.

Gaia is not as interesting as she might have been. There are moments, particularly in her interactions with Cassiel, when there is a nice ambiguity about her character. She struggles against her attraction to him. When she is with Gabriel, she is reduced, at times, to a gibbering idiot. The thing that most disappointed me about Gaia is that she doesn’t really get to play any active role in the story. She is merely a passive observer of most of what unfolds around her. This is true throughout, but most especially in the final battle scenes. She is able to do little more than watch the conflict on the angelic equivalent of television. I would have liked to see her with a crucial role to play.

The minor characters are interesting, including several other angels and, most of all, Gaia’s feisty Italian friend, Marina. There is a nice scene when Marina’s uncle, a former Catholic seminarian, tries to have his wicked way with Gaia.

The plot is fairly unremarkable. Good versus evil, etc. etc.; a pivotal point in history when the future of heaven and earth is to be decided. The battle scene is quite well described. There are moments in the middle of the book, as the relationship between Gaia and Gabriel is developing, when the story becomes a little slow and gets bogged down. Huge issues are avoided, in particular, the question of how Gaia and Gabriel’s relationship can have any real future. The old ‘I will become mortal for a time and age with you’ motif might have been called upon, but wasn’t.

The sex scenes between Gaia and Gabriel (and the almost-sex scenes between Gaia and Cassiel) are sensual and erotic. Humour is often used well. However, in some of Cassiel’s first person POV scenes his nonchalance and pseudo-teenage voice is a little overdone.

There is enough here to lift this debut novel slightly above the level of ‘good’. I will give it 3.5 stars, rounding this up to 4 stars where half stars are unavailable.

The Struggle to Create

I have been struggling to really get underway with my new novel. It’s not surprising, really. I have written five in the last two and a half years or so. Since I believe that writing is a creative process, I’m not at all surprised that my creative juices have ceased to flow for a while.

This creative process for me has three essential elements: plot, characters and ideas. I always have an ‘idea’ when I begin a new novel. It might be something like: ‘selfishness vs self-sacrifice’; ‘spirituality vs psychosis’; ‘how life injures us’… There is always an idea or theme behind my novels, although often the plot or characters can hide, obscure or transform it.

Characters often present themselves to me. Sometimes I am drawing upon my own personality, extending or exaggerating a particular trait. Sometimes a person I have known, whether briefly or otherwise, can provide the basis for a character. Usually a character is constructed from aspects of myself and several others.

And then there is plot. It’s clear that plot—a sustained and interesting story line—is the most difficult for me. I may have an idea and characters with which to explore it, but no story in which to do so. That’s where I am at the moment. Ideas and characters I have aplenty. But a story…? There I am struggling.

Why is that? They say ‘write what you know’—those mysterious voices which provide us with so much ‘wisdom’. I largely agree with this particular axiom, but mainly because I am lazy. Writing about something I don’t know requires a great deal of research. How would I write meaningfully, for example, about a doctor who botches a surgical procedure and then faces legal action? I can write about the impact this might have upon the doctor and his family. But can I write accurately and believably about medical procedures and legal proceedings? Not without a great deal of research which, I admit, I would probably find boring. So it’s much easier to write about being a theological student or a priest; a counsellor or a research scientist. The problem is, of course, that most of that is very, very dull. Not the kind of thing to keep the reader on the edge of her seat! So it is necessary to introduce something more exciting. And, since nothing particularly exciting has ever happened to me, that inevitably means writing something I don’t know. And research.

I suppose it is possible to gloss over the details. I’m sure many writers do that. And often the details are neither essential to the story nor interesting. Sometimes they are, though. And I remain committed to authenticity. This can bog the writer (and reader) down. It requires careful balancing.

So I am surrounded by characters and peppered with ideas, but the story eludes me. There is a certain faith required here: faith that ‘it’ will come to me. So my ears, eyes and mind remain open. 

Being a 'Good Writer'

The other day, someone included this in a tweet to me: ‘I’m an amateur writer, can you give me some tips about how to be a good writer?’ I would have liked to respond in some way, but in 140 characters? This request raises so many issues.

First, let’s not forget what the French word ‘amateur’ actually means. It means, first of all, a lover of something; in this case a lover of writing. An ‘amateur’ does what they do for love, pleasure, enjoyment. Hopefully, even professionals do this. It is wonderful when you are paid for what you really enjoy doing, but the enjoyment comes first. All things are difficult to do when the enjoyment has leached out of them. I can’t ever imagine writing because I have to, in the sense that I have to meet a deadline, or fulfill contractual obligations, or because I need the money. As much as writing might be a business and an industry in the eyes of some people, for me creative writing, at least, is an art. It is a form of self-expression. This cannot be forced. So an amateur is what all creative writers should be, first and foremost.

Never forget, also, that the first and perhaps greatest source of love and enjoyment is the act of writing itself. Of course it brings great pleasure when someone else also likes what you have written, especially if they are prepared to pay for it. But the love is essentially for the act of writing itself. This doesn’t mean that every moment of the process is enjoyable. It doesn’t mean that there are not moments of pain and frustration. Any worthwhile endeavour will have its challenges. These serve to heighten the pleasure of the achievement.

How to be a good writer? This is going to be different for everyone. There is no single formula that fits all. Don’t let publishers and market experts convince you otherwise. Of course, it is essential to master the basic elements of the craft. Spelling, grammar, and so on. How to structure a plot; how to build suspense: some of these things can be achieved by learning and applying specific techniques. If by ‘good writing’ my questioner means technically proficient, then this is the answer. But for me, a ‘good writer’ is more (though never less) than this. Someone can tell a good story, but not necessarily be a good writer. For me, a good story, competently written, does not automatically make the writer a ‘good’ writer. It makes them a competent writer. The additional element is not easy to define. It is also almost certainly somewhat subjective. This is always the case with any form of art. This is where the almost indefinable aesthetic quality enters in. For me, good writing is always evocative, rather than just informative. It makes me feel and experience: hence aesthesis, the Greek word for ‘sensation’ and ‘perception’. Good writing does not simply tell me a story; it enables me to live it. Of course there are techniques that can be used to achieve these effects. They are much more difficult to teach and learn; experience, both of writing and reading, are the best teachers. But the effect is always something more than just the sum of these techniques, as it is in our response to music or poetry or a painting.

So the elements of being a ‘good writer’ are these: To first of all be a lover of writing, an amateur; to secondly be a competent writer, having mastery of the craft; but finally to be an artist, using words to evoke and not just to inform. So, off you go!

Editor Bashing

I have been witnessing lately, in a few discussion forums, some fairly bitter attacks on editors. Many writers have clearly had what they perceive to be bad experiences with editors. Obviously I cannot comment on the quality of those editors’ work. No doubt there are many editors out there who don’t do very good work, as is true in any profession.

I have read many books by self-published authors who thank the editor in their acknowledgements; but I can see no evidence that their work has been seriously or competently edited. Is this because the editor did a poor job? Or is it because the author did not accept the editor’s advice? It’s impossible to say. I have also been approached to edit books which the author has already paid another editor to edit. They are not happy with the result. Perhaps the editor did a poor job. Or perhaps the author simply didn’t like what the editor had to say. Again, who knows?

Sometimes authors do not like what editors suggest, or what they try to do to their work. Is the editor wrong, or is the author too emotionally involved in the work to accept any changes or criticisms? My first novel, Maybe they’ll remember me, which I self-published more than two years ago, has recently been accepted for publication with a small, independent publishing house. They will want to edit it, I’m sure. Because I wrote and published that book more than two years ago, I have no illusions about its quality. I think I am a better writer now than I was then, and I have no doubt that the book can be improved. Perhaps it takes this long, and several subsequently completed novels, to become sufficiently detached from my own work. On the other hand, if my most recent novel is accepted by a publisher, I accept it will need to be edited. I have no doubt there are elements that can be improved, and which I have overlooked. That’s not to say, of course, that I will automatically agree with everything the editor says. No one should!

The only reason I don’t have my own novels professionally edited (and as both an editor and a writer I know that I should) is that I can’t afford it. That is one of the great things about being published in the traditional way: I don’t have to pay for editing!

I know what it means as a struggling author to have to pay for cover design, editing, book promotion. With no guarantee of any financial return on my investment. I try to offer people an affordable editing service; but, even so, I know that some writers cannot afford it. I also realise that I cannot always make the author happy, particularly in the manuscript assessment/structural editing phase of the process. I cannot force people to accept my advice. And not even the very best editor can turn a sow’s ear into a silk purse.

My ‘Frankenstein’s Monster’

I’m fascinated with how writing works for me; and I’m not saying it has to work this way for anyone else. I’m so fascinated by it, in fact, that it sometimes becomes the theme of my writing itself. And not just in a blog like this. It is one of the main themes in the novel I have just completed, although I have transferred the ideas to painting.

I should say something about the genesis of this novel. Over the last two years or so, I have completed four novels. None of my novels are epics. The first was the longest, coming in at around eighty thousand words. The second and third come in at between fifty and sixty thousand words; the fourth is just about sixty thousand. Size doesn’t bother me. I usually have something to say, and when I’ve said it, that’s it.

These first four novels all seemed to flow fairly easily. Not that there wasn’t struggle and heartache along the way! There always is. But I never became completely stuck. But the fifth… the fifth was a different matter. Before I finished this fifth novel, I started four others. Some of them struggled into the high twenty-thousands before grinding to a painful halt. I was stuck, with nowhere to go. Stuck on all four fronts. I didn’t start all four at once. It was only when I became well and truly mired that I would start the next… and become stuck again.

This went on for months. Weeks would go by when I added nothing to any of them. Then I might add a chapter—or a paragraph—to one of them, and grind to a halt again.

Three of these proto-novels all contained thoughts, plotlines and ideas that I have been playing with for years, even before I completed my first. Some of them were even going to be in the first, until that took on a life of its own and went in a completely different direction. One of these novels began as a fictionalised biography, beginning with my childhood. Some of the chapters reflected real events, others were completely fictitious. I had no idea where this story would go beyond those early childhood years. My own life isn’t really that interesting. I didn’t have a story that would interest anyone else. The second of these proto-novels tried to deal with my years in theological college. As far as I have moved from that scenario, it seemed to me that there were still things that needed to be said. Again, though, I doubted that anyone would be interested in what actually happened. I did not have a story in which anyone else would be interested. The third of these aborted novels tackled the theme I have in mind here, namely, how a novel—or, in fact, a painting—comes into being. In this version, a kind of future, older version of me would be the protagonist.

The fourth of this—quaternity?—won’t get much of a mention here. It is still out there on its own, out on a limb. Maybe one day…

The breakthrough came when I suddenly realised that these three proto-novels were all, in fact, part of the same novel. Neither would tell a complete story on its own, but woven together in just this way, adding that here and leaving this out there, there just might be a novel here. Something that others might actually find interesting. Much to my surprise, there even re-emerged some elements that were going to be in my first novel, but which were abandoned long ago.

So there it is, finished. It is always possible that I may be deluding myself about whether it works. The stitches where I have joined these pieces together may still show. Perhaps what I have created is some kind of Frankenstein’s monster. It will take another, more objective eye to determine this.

I have been putting a few ‘final’ touches to this novel over the last few days, before leaving it to—what do they say about a roast?—relax for a while. And today, I suddenly had an idea for the next novel. And I am even beginning to see how the fourth, abandoned novel might, just possibly, contribute to its development.

What often happens is that I get an idea, nothing more than a germ of an idea. The idea that prompted me to start was this: Let’s suppose for a moment that what some people believe is actually true, and that we each have lived many past lives. Then, what if…? And that’s all you’ll get from me today. I have this idea, but I have no plot, no story, no characters. Nevertheless, I wrote the introductory paragraphs today. I have never planned a novel. I think a mother might emerge as a main character here, and she may take over the development of the story for a while. She may let me in on the secret. I have an image in my mind from an old science fiction novel by Robert Heinlein—Stranger in a Strange Land—which may influence the plot. But that’s about it. I have a rather irrational faith that the elements of this novel will eventually emerge. And if not…well there is still this fourth novel of the quaternity. I also have an idea for…