Demosthenes: Blog

AKA "It's not the idea, it's the execution."

Last weekend I found myself in the interesting position of contributing to seven different SOL stories very nearly simultaneously. All of the tales are in various stages of completion, from rough initial sketches to very nearly complete first drafts, but I found myself unable to concentrate on any single one of them for more than a few minutes. It was a very creative time, but vexing: coming up with scenes, dialogue, and plot ideas is terrific fun for me, while writing the narrative to get the reader from point A to point B and polishing sentences until they gleam is more like actual work. I wonder if other writers have encountered this?

After that feverish exercise, I've found myself settling back to finishing off Longshot, which is now at 70,000 words. I expect to write another 30,000 before it is finished, making it the first novel-length piece I will have published here. I expect that publication won't happen until the summer; if I finish it early, I'll continue to write the sequel to Resonance and the other stories, so that they might be published around the same time.

For those interested, I've posted an author profile for myself on SOL. My writing of new stories continues, albeit at a slower pace due to the fact that I've now returned to work.

Work on Longshot continues apace, albeit slowing slightly over the last few days: the manuscript is now at 68,000 words, spread across 40 chapters. That makes the story considerably lengthier and more complex in plot, characterization and structure than my previous work, including Resonance. At the same time, I'm also striving to make it better than my earlier stories. To that end, in addition to general research for the novel, I've been reading to improve my writing: fiction, non-fiction, and work specific to writers. Within the latter, I found the following, from Stephen King's On Writing, particularly useful, and thought others might appreciate it also:

1. If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot.

2. Stories consist of three parts: Narration, which moves the story from point A to point B; Description, which creates a sensory reality for the reader; and Dialogue, which brings characters to life through their speech.

3. The situation comes first. The characters - always flat and unfeatured to begin with - come next.

4. Whether it's a vignette of a single page or an epic trilogy like Lord of the Rings, the work is always accomplished one word at a time.

5. The most interesting situations can usually be expressed as a what-if question.

6. The best stories always end up being about the people rather than the event.

7. With a passive verb, something is being done to the subject of the sentence. You should avoid the passive voice.

8. Talk, whether ugly or beautiful, is an index of character.

9. Description begins in the writer's imagination, but should finish in the reader's.

10. The road to hell is paved with adverbs.

11. Never use "emolument" when you mean "tip".

12. Set a daily writing goal. As with physical exercise, it would be best to set this goal low at first. I suggest a thousand words a day.

13. Call that one person you write for "Ideal Reader". He or she is going to be in your writing room all the time.

14. If you can do it for joy, you can do it forever.

I'm maintaining a pace of writing 2,000 words a day for Longshot. By the time I'm finished, the story is likely to be at least three times the size of Resonance, full novel length, and by far the longest piece of work I've ever shared on SOL. I hope to have it completed and edited in the next month or two: I can't wait to share it with you!

When Longshot is finished, it's my intention to return to the sequel to Resonance at the end of this year.

An aspect of Resonance that I left unaddressed at the time of publication, but that I've decided to come back to now, while I'm working on several(!) new stories. Potential spoilers for Chapter 4 of Resonance and onwards follow.

So the question has been asked: is Yael's father racist for insinuating that he objects to his daughter dating a non-Jew? Is Yael herself?

The answer, as with most things, is "it's complicated".

(Note that the usual disclaimers apply here with extra force: I'm not Jewish, but have familiarity with the faith; all errors are completely my own. If you want an authoritative answer to this question, ask a rabbi!)

As I comprehend it, the question of Jews only marrying other Jews comes down to a question of whether being Jewish is an ethnicity, a culture, a covenant, or some combination of the three, and the weight or importance each of these is given.

The very concept of "race" is huge, complex, and questionable in and of itself, and I'm not going to be able to address it adequately here. But in brief, someone in a socially dominant culture (say, a white person living in Canada) saying that they would only ever marry someone from what they perceive to be their exclusive racial group ("I would only ever marry a white person") would generally be considered a racist statement.

But with Jews, there's no one "race". There are certainly distinguishing genotypes (Ashkenazi Jews, for example), but there are many "races" in Judaism: there was a recent black Miss Israel, for example. Traditional concepts of race don't tend to sit well with the reality of modern Judaism. There's also the fact that you can convert to Judaism, as Joshua mulls over, whereas you can't convert into another race (at least as most people understand the concept).

Then there's Jewish culture, or heritage. One can identify as being Jewish and have relatively little interaction with tradition, festivals, etc., but still be part of the culture: for example, many Reform Rabbis would argue that you can be both Jewish and an atheist. Therefore, being Jewish can be an identity that a person can relate to, in different ways.

Third, there's Judaism as a covenant, a sacred bond with God. This one ties Judaism to a belief and set of practices, followed to different degrees. Again, this allows for Judaism to be adopted… although rabbis usually take the approach of trying to dissuade conversion.

So (from my perspective), there's several ways one might be perceived as being Jewish: one that you are conceived in (the "racial" part), one that you grow or are adopted into (the cultural part) and one that you believe in (the covenant). "Being Jewish" may be all three, or a combination, depending on who you ask.

Marrying a non-Jew becomes complicated depending on what the parties involved believe "being Jewish" implies. Racial issues can certainly be present in the marriage if the parties believe the first part. And how to raise children becomes an issue with the second and third. But it's not clear which Yael's father believes, and Yael herself appears to think that just the second, and maybe the third, apply for her.

It's interesting to note that outside Israel the number of cross-cultural interfaith marriages can be very high: the last statistic I looked at claimed that some 40% of Jewish marriages in the US were to non-Jews. This has raised concerns for some in the community, as they perceive this trend to be a "dilution" of the race, culture, or faith (again, depending on what they believe "being Jewish" to consist of). I had a friend who's father sat shiva for her - literally acted as if she was dead - after she married a Filipino non-Jew, and wouldn't speak to her for 10 years.

Given their history, Jews have a completely justified fear of being threatened with extinction, so the response by some to anything that they perceive as threatening the continuation of the Jewish people, as they conceive of the term - including marrying outside the faith / culture / race - can be reflexive and passionate. Personally, I wouldn't categorize most of these reactions as racism, but I can certainly see why outsiders might perceive them that way.