Classic genre tropes

Brief thoughts this afternoon about some classic plot devices and what they meant at one time or another:

Individual v. vampires: fear of the unknown, death, or foreigners

v. werewolves and mutants: fear of one's self, typically brought on by adolescence

v. mummies: fear of past burdens

v. Frankenstein's monster: fear of science

v. computers, robots: fear of the future and our own inhumanity to each other

v. zombies: fear of each other, plague

Forgotten Pieces

[Deep in the process of revising Games of Chance, amalgamating secondary characters and streamlining subplots, I stumbled across this stub of an article in the early pages of the journal I'm using to write this particular novel. It's unfinished, and I believe it's from August 2004, since I remember writing it at a cafe over breakfast in Montreal, a city I visited in 2001 and 2004. I still believe the problems addressed here are among the major problems facing Calgary, but I was struck by the recognition that I felt "aloof" in Calgary, as that feeling of "aloofness" is a major theme of Games of Chance.]

Another City, Not My Own

My wife and I had been planning a trip to Montreal for quite some time. It was the only place in Canada that we could agree on as interesting. We had been to Montreal once before and enjoyed it's streets and shops. It was the antithesis of my home town Calgary, in the West of Canada.

Please note that I have used the awkward phrase "West of Canada." I have picked my words deliberately here, avoiding the semi-republican separatist connotations of "Western Canada" and the historically colonialist implications of "Canadian West." I like "the West of Canada" as it alludes to the sprawling nature of our country while turning Western Canadian alienation into an amusing Elmer Fuddism.

I must admit, growing up in Calgary, I never felt alienated. Quite often aloof though, as if Canada was something that happened over there, somewhere else, but not around here in Calgary, with its new suburbs and wide open spaces. There was never anything that tied me to this thing called Canada and I often longed to be a part of something more than vast empty prairie.

To me, Montreal was where Canada happened. Maybe I'd viewed too many Expo posters in the childhood bedrooms of my aunts and uncles; but everything about Montreal whispered "Canada" to me. Quebecois separatistes might disagree and say that Montreal is an integral component of their "distinct society"apart from Canada. Historians too,might point to Montreal and say that is unique to all of Canada, with its blend of French and English, Europe and North America, but to me that's what the rest of Canada should have aspired to become - neither old world nor new, a phrase too often taken to imply our cousins below the 49th Parallel and their state of perpetual "now-ness."

This has been my problem with Calgary. Both Calgary and Montreal experienced tremendous periods of growth after the Second World War. Montreal, already sitting at close to a half million citizens, exploded with suburbs and then reinvented the inner city neighbourhoods, superimposing modernist structures, like office buildings and expressways on pre-modern urban landscapes. Calgary, on the other hand, had very little to build upon and so just built out with reckless abandon. there was nothing to preserve and so my hometown has preserved nothing. Forget trying to find a building that dates from Calgary's incorporation barely over a hundred years ago, it's hard to find something from before the Second World War. The downtown core has been completely worked over, save for two or three blocks and every year hundreds of pre-war homes are run into the ground to make way for in-fills and condominium complexes.

I am not against modernism, or the march of progress, and I know that some Montrealer's feel that the same processes of historical erasement is underway in their city too. Leonard Cohen complained that the construction of bland square box offices over top the Victorian houses on St. Laurent were destroying the soul of the street - over fifty years ago. I am sure there are those who say the same about the many condominium conversions going up all over the place now. What bothers me is that despite all of its modernization, Montreal as managed to maintain its identity and character whereas Calgary's identity and character is becoming synonymous with its sprawling soulless suburbs. The sprawl creates problems, many of which Calgarians want to ignore, such as the environmental resource mismanagement that results from having the lowest housing density in Canada with one of the lowest occupancy rates at 2.1 people per dwelling and 1.2 automobiles. This sparseness prevents small residential businesses from succeeding, keeps public transportation from having the necessary critical mass to become cheap, efficient, and allow for anything but rush hour delivery of workers to and from the city's core. The net result is the direct inhibiting of the type of great city character that Calgarians so desperately want.

What Naheed Nenshi's Victory Means

The tyranny of the baby boomers is over. But is generation X done as a political force too?

It was great to be part of a winning election campaign for the first time in my electoral life, but I can’t help wondering if it might just be the last time my demographic is considered part of the swing vote.

While Naheed Nenshi’s victory means different things to different people, as his ability to reach out to diverse communities was no doubt one of the reasons he was able to garner support across the city, the thing I will be watching closely is to see which political generation is now in the ascent.

It would be easy to suggest that the baby boomers are passing the torch to generation X, but that is not necessarily true. One of constant points of frustration for my generation has been the fact that we are outnumbered by both the boomers and the millennials. Thus, while it was clear throughout the campaign was that Naheed Nenshi dominated support among 18-35 year olds and a few reports even implied that anyone under 40 was part of the generic “youth” movement. The fact of the matter though is that there are two distinct generations throwing their weight behind Nenshi - the so-called generation X and millennials.

Over at The Daily Wenzel I’ve speculated that real political change could only occur once the millennials came of age, simply because of their numeric superiority. As with all generations, there may be lot of division over beliefs, but many of these beliefs are not being addressed in any meaningful fashion by the major parties, leading to their perceived disengagement in the political process. Nenshi has proven that they are ready and waiting. If I were a provincial or federal politician, I would be watching these results with a view to see where the support for Nenshi was coming from and comparing that with other elections happening today.

If the day really does belong to the millennials, then Stelmach and Harper have a lot to answer for.

Double Espresso Glory

This is the view of the cream swirling in my double espresso this morning.

(Ok, it's really from the Hubble.)

The Process, Pt.II

Growing up, I always thought that writing was a glamorous activity, something free of structures and the rhythms of nine-to-five work. Maybe that explains why my writing process is not the best. In writing this novel, I carried with me one my A9 Bluelines, jotting down a few paragraphs at a time whenever I had the chance or a good idea. Most of these early pieces are fragments, non-linear snippets, that I worked on over the summer trying to put them in order. I think I had forty to fifty pages worth of these pieces in my notebook. I spent much of the last year just transcribing these words and editing them on the fly.

Once the summer started I settled into an early morning groove, waking up at six o'clock every morning in an attempt to write a minimum of five hundred words before the other people in my house woke up. Within a few weeks I was doing a thousand or more words and appeared well on my way to achieving my goal of finishing the novel before September 1. However, as August approached the mid-way point, I began to suspect that I wasn't going to make it. My initial guess was that 65 - 70,000 words would suffice, and I believe I crossed the 65,000 word threshold going into the Labour Day weekend. The only problem was that my novel was going to be much longer than this. It took me another two weeks before finally completing the first draft at 83,000 words.

After taking a short break, I began the process of revising, which is almost complete. In the past, I used to hate revising, preferring to move on to my next project. This time has been different, though I can't imagine that I will continue to feel this way. What made it enjoyable has been watching the core of the narrative take shape, pruning and amalgamating minor characters and subplots, streamlining and strengthening the whole.

Pattern Recognition

In honour of completing the first full draft of my novel, Games of Chance, I celebrated by going and buying a paperback novel for the first time in years. Usually I get most of my books via Fast Forward or handed to me from my wife. When I do buy new books, it tends to be mostly non-fiction works, like the phenomenal Third Teacher. Buying a new paperback was a special treat.

So what did I buy?

I went up and do the aisles quite a bit, but ultimately chose William Gibson's 2005 Pattern Recognition. I quite enjoyed it's sequel, Spook Country, and especially the chance to interview Gibson about the book. There was a way that Spook Country conceptualized information-as-commodity that I found really intriguing. In Pattern Recognition it appears that part of the focus is on the relationship we share in the construction of meaning.

BTW, Gibson has a new book out, continuing to explore the ground laid out in these earlier two. It's called Zero History and Fast Forward has an interview (by someone else) here. At my current pace, I'll be reading it in 2015.

Fits and starts

I'm happy to announce that I've finished the first draft of my novel and am working my way through going over some initial revisions before turning it over to a couple of trusted proofreaders. In the meantime, as I work on cover letters, synopses, and other things associated with trying to figure out how to approach a publisher, I hope to be returning to some more regularly scheduled updates around these parts.