There was quite a saga for me to get my review copy of Wise Man’s Fear.
Nevertheless, I managed, and I even wrote a review of it.
As I was doing so, I realised that there were many conditions that needed to be met in order to obtain the optimal reading experience. So I decided to make a roadmap for the uninitiated:
I’ve been waiting for Patrick Rothfuss’ new book, Wise Man’s Fear, for some time. Then, one day, something wonderful happened. I’d been sick for the previous few days with the flu, but had been going to work because we were busy and short-staffed, so I wasn’t in the best headspace.
Then it happened.
I heard.
A release date.
Something happened deep inside me. Birds started singing Meatloaf ballads. I saw new colours. All was well.
Then a tripped-out Unicorn appeared. Having been awake and on my feet for something like thirty-five hours at that point, my grip on reality was slipping. Nevertheless, I stood my ground.
After much awkward discussion with the Unicorn, I eventually determined that it was trying to tell me that my destiny was to buy and review Wise Man’s Fear as quickly as possible.
But there was one small problem. I live in Australia, the ass-end of the world when it comes to releases of anything. If I was lucky, I’d get my hands on Wise Man’s Fear a few months after the rest of the world.
Luckily, the Internet was on hand to save me. The Master Himself directed me to the first stop in my quest.
The Signed Page was selling copies of Wise Man’s Fear! I could get them signed, too, and even dedicated. The international shipping cost nearly as much as each book did, but was determined. So determined, in fact, that I ordered five copies. Why five? My thought process went something like this:
“Wow, I can’t wait to read this book!”
“Hmm, I should get more than one copy. Wise Man’s Fear is a book I’m going to want to hold onto for ages. So if I read one now, then I’ll get a spare that I can keep in good condition.”
“But then if I read it and want to give one away as a prize or something, I’ll have to give away my good copy! Better get a spare.”
“But then what if something happens to the house? I should get another spare to keep somewhere safe, like my friend’s house. That way, even if the house catches fire or floods, I’ll still have a backup.”
“But it doesn’t make sense to just have one copy at my friend’s house. I should have two backups, one to read and one to keep.”
And that is how I ordered several hundred dollars worth of the same book. Now, some part of me knew that the books weren’t going to get to me with lightning speed. After all, Mr Rothfuss had to sign them all, and then they’d have to be mailed out. A Herculean task. Nevertheless, I was certain that I could wait until the books reached me to read them. The delay wouldn’t be that long.
I ticked off the days.
On the first of March, I got a phone call from my bookseller, Sprenty. Sprenty and his bookstore live in Tasmania, which is a little triangular island on the bottom of Australia. I grew up there. It is nice. It is also very far away from Sydney, which is where I live now.
It is approximately 1,000km (650 miles). The world marathon record is a little over two hours. At near-Ethiopian speeds, it would take me at least 50 hours to run/swim there, not to mention having to fight off sharks, snakes, and the Kraken that guards the river Derwent’s entrance to Hobart, Tasmania’s capital.
Hell, I’ve been out of the state for a year. That’s long enough for them to consider me an outsider, and set the Tasmanian Dragon onto me.
Between the thought of dozens of desert marathons, fending off the Kraken, and then dealing with the Tasmanian Dragon…
I decided not to go.
“Do you want me to mail you a copy up?” Sprenty said. “If you pay for Express Post, it should reach you tomorrow.”
Perfect.
I slept a fitful slumber, dreaming of Patrick Rothfuss sitting atop a pile of money and reading to me in his booming, melodious voice. About halfway through the dream, BRIAN BLESSED barged in and suggested he take over the narration. The two of them talked of manly things. I tried to join in, but they mocked my pitiful beard, and I woke up, left unfulfilled and with great beard envy.
The next day went by at a snail’s pace. Every few seconds, I would sprint to the window, convinced that a car driving past was the postie van, bringing me my long-awaited book. It was not to be. The post came and went. No book.
It was Friday. The flights down to Tasmania were $250. I couldn’t both fly to Tasmania and eat for the next week, and my virus had left me thinner than an orphaned supermodel.
Something inside me snapped, very gently.
I was going to read that goddamn book.
So I did the only thing a mostly-sane, still-slightly-hallucinatory man-fiend would do.
I leapt on my goddamn unicorn and rode into town. (In hindsight, it may have been my bicycle.)
The journey was more hazardous than Frodo and Sam’s stroll into Mordor. My unicorn stubbornly refused to obey even the simplest of commands. I couldn’t tell the difference between oncoming traffic and hordes of Orcs. It was 45 degrees and about 80% humidity.
By the time I’d biked for thirty minutes into town, I’d shed 4kg in sweat and other vital fluids.
I kicked down the door of a boutique bookshop.
“Do you have Wise Man’s Fear in stock?” I bellowed.
The clerk stared at me blankly.
“Maybe out the back?”
“GO AND CHECK!” I bellowed again.
Then it happened.
The holiest of holy moments. (Sorry, wife)
They had just got their shipment in.
The manager came out from the back and glowered at me.
“This book doesn’t go on sale for another few days….”
I gave him a ferocious eyeballing.
He looked at me. Reeling on my feet. Muttering about a mythical ungulate under my breath.
“But we can sell you this one now.”
The world faded to slow motion. I stumbled my way across the road to a ramen restaurant. I think I ate a bowl of ramen. I left my unicorn/bike in town and caught the bus home, reading as I went.
Then I got home and, one-handed, made myself a litre jug of tea and sat on the couch.
Some time later, my wife got home.
“Oh, you got the book? Great!”
“Mmstwrfl.”
Time passed.
Then it happened.
Around 3am that night, I finished Wise Man’s Fear. One sitting. Ten cups of tea. Three bathroom breaks.
I dutifully went to bed and tried to get to sleep. I couldn’t. My mind was full of Rothfuss’ poetry.
I tossed and turned for an hour or two before doing the only logical thing.
I got out of bed and started reading it again.
My wife found me passed out on the couch at noon the following day, having made it through a second time.
It took two days for my sleep cycle to return to normal.
For the review itself, read this.
Rachel Aaron is the prolific author behind the Eli Monpress series of fantasy novels. Write-Thing has reviewed the first three books, The Spirit Thief, The Spirit Rebellion and The Spirit Eater. All three are highly recommended! Rachel has graciously spared some of her time to answer a few questions, as well as some exclusive release dates and hints about her upcoming books!
Rachel Aaron hides her magical abilities, swordswomanship, and thievish ways under the appearance of a mild-mannered author.
Rachel: No worries!
W-T: Now, the Chronicles of Eli Monpress has grabbed our attention as an excellent, break-out fantasy series. Three books in one year! That’s a mean feat by anyone’s standards. How did you manage that?
Rachel: At the risk of ruining your opinion of my mad writing skills, I didn’t actually write all 3 books in one year. Orbit, my wonderful publisher, likes to release books in sets if they can.
It’s a good call, the publisher can use the ad budget for all three books at once (which gets a lot more bang out of each buck), readers get sequels quickly, and the author gets three books out at once! Of course, I went and ruined it by writing a five book series which everyone now thinks is a trilogy, but that’s on my head.
In real time terms, my agent sold The Spirit Thief toward the end of 2008. I wrote the next two books between late 2008 and 2010. This meant I spent nearly two years in the pre-published limbo with three books under contract and nothing on the shelves, but it was actually pretty fun. I got to spend my first two years as a professional writer focused only on the books rather than books and promotion, and since all three came out at once I had a chance to go back to The Spirit Thief and add in stuff to foreshadow events that happened in The Spirit Eater like I’d planned it all along. These were both fantastic luxuries that were well worth the 2 year wait to see my book in the store.
W-T: Two more books, eh? Do you have rough release dates for the remaining two books in the series?
Rachel: The release dates for Books 4 and 5 are being pushed back to 2012 to go along with a re-release of the first 3 books in omnibus format. I’m getting new cover art, new quotes, really a second release. This is awesome for me, but I feel terrible making my fans wait another whole year for the end of the series.
However, books 4 and 5 will come out right on the heels of the omnibus, so when it comes it’ll all come at once and you can wallow in Eli to your heart’s content! Stick with me, I promise it’ll be worth the wait. You’ll get some beautiful books and what I hope will be a very satisfying, climactic ending.
W-T: We’ll have to hang on until then! The series originally seemed to be very much about Eli. The other characters have started to have stronger stories. How’s this shift happened?
Rachel: The Eli novels have always been just that, Eli novels. He’s always been the star of the show, but as much as Eli remains the core that holds everything together, it seemed only natural to me that the focus should move to other people sometimes, if for no other reason than to give the poor reader a break from Eli’s relentless self promotion.
By the time I’d finished The Spirit Thief, I knew that every character needed their own book where their crisis would be the focus of the plot. The Spirit Thief is an introduction to the world, The Spirit Rebellion is Miranda’s book, The Spirit Eater is Nico’s, Book 4, which was The Spirit War but might be retitled, is Josef’s book, and the final book, which I’m writing now, is all about Eli.
Of course, each book features all the characters in almost equal measures, but I really wanted everyone to get their chance to face the knife test. Writing character is the most fun part of writing for me, and so of course I would structure the series around that. Stick with what you’re good at 
. That said, the center of the books is, and always will be, Eli. He’ll get the last word, make no mistake. Probably the last dozen words, knowing Eli…
W-T: What’s influenced you in writing this series?
Rachel: A lot of things, but mostly fighting anime (which I’ve been a huge nerd about since high school), witty BBC comedy, my absolute addiction to trashy 80′s and 90′s fantasy, and the five billion times I watched the movie The Sting, which I consider to be the best movie ever made (followed closely by Ocean’s Eleven).
When I sat down to write this book I’d already tried to write two very serious fantasy novels, one I finished, one I didn’t. I’d also read a lot of very serious, epic, issue-driven fantasy, and I was getting a little bored. What I really wanted was something dramatic that was still light and fun to read. Something that skipped along and built unapologetically to enormously dramatic climaxes.
This was what I set out to create when I started the novel that became The Spirit Thief. From the very beginning, the Eli novels have been about fun, fast fantasy. Fantasy that makes people stay up all night because the book is simply too much fun to stop reading. Those are my favorite kind of stories to read, and that’s my ultimate ideal with Eli. Pure, unadulterated fun that sucks you in.
W-T: Your fantasy is very ‘clean’ – nobody swears, there’s no graphic torture or violence, despite dealing with some pretty serious topics. How did you balance that out?
Rachel: You are actually the first person to notice this! Yes, I did this very deliberately, and it was a pain. There were several points where I had to get very creative, but I’m glad I did. You see, I keep the novels clean for two reasons.
One, my mom reads these books, and while I will curse in front of my mother and most of the dirty books I’ve read were stolen from her library (she was a big Mercedes Lackey fan), I somehow can’t bring myself to curse in novels I know she will read. Makes no sense, but there it is. I don’t understand it either.
Reason two is more rational. While the Eli series is for adults, I wanted the books to be accessible to anyone who wanted to enjoy them, no matter their age or who was censoring their reading. I would have loved these books as a kid, and while my parents didn’t ban books, other kid’s parents do. Libraries won’t carry them, or won’t let people under a certain age check them out.
Every part of a creative work involves a decision, and keeping my books clean wasn’t one I made lightly. It all comes down to the reader. When you add cursing and serious gore to a novel, you limit the readership. I want everyone to read my books, so I decided that, unless cursing or extreme blood explosions were necessary to the scene I was trying to write, I wouldn’t put them in. So far, I’ve never come across a scene that needed cursing, so it hasn’t gotten in. You can look at this as self censorship, but I prefer to think of it as making my work as accessible as possible. I want to feel at peace telling everyone in the world “you like magic, sword fights, and charming thieves? YOU WILL LOVE MY NOVEL.”
W-T: So, do you swear in real life?
Rachel: Yes. Drop in on me when I’m doing PVP in World of Warcraft and you’ll hear language that would make a sailor clutch his chest in horror.
W-T: Is Eli growing up?
Rachel: I hope so. I’m trying to make him. For all his frivolity, complete irresponsibility, and general disrespect for authority, Eli holds some unshakable moral values. You can’t keep that sort of dichotomy up forever. Sooner or later you’re going to run into a situation where you have to stand up for your morals or betray them, and that’s what adulthood is – not just knowing right from wrong, but taking responsibility to make the right thing happen. With each book, Eli has to do that more and more, and hopefully that’s making him grow up. He’s still a wise ass, though. That will never change.
W-T: He’s an interesting character. Where did he spring from?
Rachel: The idea of a thief named Eli who wanted a bounty of one million gold actually came from my old friend Steven’s high school D&D character. I didn’t even know Steven at the time, and I didn’t know jack about the character Eli other than the basics, but the idea of a thief who dreamed of a million gold bounty, more money than anyone had ever had, grabbed me and ran. After that, my Eli developed almost overnight, emerging with his own voice to talk to a door. Everything else in the series fell into place around that.
W-T: I’ve enjoyed the world you’ve built immensely. The idea of universal spirits is fascinating. How did that come about?
Rachel: I’m a very nerdy person, and one of the nerdy things I do is make up magic systems. I don’t actually remember when or how I got the idea of giving everything a spirit, but I know I’ve had it kicking around for a very long time, and once I had my charming, magical thief, I knew I’d found the perfect home for a magical system built around persuasion. Also, the idea of talking furniture never fails to crack me up. I’m so glad you enjoy it!
A world where everything talks has spawned some truly great sayings around my house, though the best example came from my Devi, my beloved editor at Orbit. It was during edits for The Spirit Rebellion. We were working on how to make the villain more despicable when Devi told me I needed to “Torture more doors.” I did, and it worked perfectly. I now have this quote hanging above my computer.
W-T: What’s your writing routine like?
Rachel: I’ve shifted a lot over the years, but for the last two books I’ve fallen into a pattern that works really well. First, I set aside at least 4 hours for writing as early in the day as I can. The later it gets, the more tired I am, the harder it is to be good. That said, life gets in the way a lot, so I take what I can get (writing is way easier if I stay flexible about it). The only kicker is that the hours have to be uninterrupted. I’m the kind of writer who sinks into her work, and every time life pulls me out, I have to sink back in, which can take forever. So I sink in once and try to stay there as long as I can.
Four hours is enough for me to write 3000 – 4000 words depending on how awesome I’m rolling. I used to only manage 2000 words in the same amount of time, but then I stumbled on a trick. Before I write anything, I get a notebook and write a quick, short hand description of what I’m going to write. I write what happens, the order in which it happens, and if there’s dialog I write out the exchanges in the most bare bones way I can. Basically, I’m drawing a sketch of the scenes for the day.
This lets me spot trouble bits early and work them out in short hand on notebook paper when mistakes are easy to fix rather than meandering through it in the actual writing where I end up deleting paragraphs until I find the right way to go. In fact, I’d say the vast majority of my new found speed as a writer comes from the rather bland realization that knowing what you’re going to write before you write it will make you write faster, and the more you know, the faster you will write.
That’s the secret that doubled my word count per day without increasing the time I spend writing. Anyone looking for a way to go faster is welcome to use it. I hope it works the miracles for you it bestowed upon me.
Also, I write in a coffee shop where the wireless is password protected, and then never get the wireless password. This means I can’t get on the internet, and people are watching me, which keeps me honest. Both of these are vital to Rachel productivity. I’m an easily distracted animal.
W-T: What can we expect from the last two Eli Monpress books?
Rachel: Well, I’ve written book four and I’m well into book five, so I can safely say things get a lot more serious. Not the characters, they’re still the same people, but the situations get more serious. Josef especially has to step up to the responsibilities he’s been running away from as a wandering swordsman, and Josef has always been the backbone of the Eli gang. When he gets serious, Nico and Eli have to come along and bear with it.
Book four is also the longest Eli book, and book five’s most likely going to match it. This is only natural since the cast has grown and the situations are much more complicated. That said, book four is as fast paced and action packed as any of the Eli books, more so because I’m done with exposition at this point.
Book five is even crazier since it’s pretty much all climax for every major problem that’s been building in the Eli world since the beginning. So while the books may be longer and more serious, I can safely say that if you liked the first three Eli novels, you are going to LOVE the last two. It’s nothing but shit hitting the fan, questions getting answered, and characters doing awesome things. Book four is my favorite book I’ve ever written, and book five is pretty much just more of that. It’s going to be amazing.
W-T: Do you have any plans after that? Will we remain in the same world, or go elsewhere?
Rachel: The series is pretty much done after book five. There are more stories I can tell about Eli, Josef, Nico, and the rest, but I’ve been in the same world for a long time now and I’m ready to do something new. I’m not going to say that I’ll never write another Eli book, but for now I’m ready to stretch in new directions. I’m a young writer at the very beginning of her career. I have so many books to write, it’s not even funny – fantasy, scifi, YA, urban fantasy, even some main stream stuff. Time to get cracking!
W-T: Fantastic! It sounds like you’ve got a lot of great places to go. Thanks for talking to Write-Thing, it’s been great talking with you!
Rachel: Thank you so much for the thoughtful questions. I had a really great time. Again, thank you for having me. People like you are why I write.
Rachel Aaron’s website can be found at http://www.rachelaaron.net. Her first three books, The Spirit Thief, The Spirit Rebellion and The Spirit Eater have all been reviewed here on this site and are published by Orbit Books. For more on her books, keep an eye on Write-Thing or subscribe to the RSS feed using the butons in the top right corner!
In Short
The Spirit Eater, by Rachel Aaron (Book 3 of the Eli Monpress series)
Orbit Books, Fantasy, 422 pages, paperback edition.
My copy: Purchased.
Pros: Amazing worldbuilding, well-rounded characters, great pace.
Cons: Some repetitive, annoying behaviours from protagonists at times.
In a line: Gentleman Thief’s entourage battling to evade capture… And not blow up the world.
“I am The Lord of Storms. I cannot be killed and I do not give up.”
Score: 8/10
The Spirit Eater is the third book in the Eli Monpress series, and easily the most impressive to date. Aaron shores up the few weaknesses in her earlier books, expands her world, deepends her characters, and comes up with some excellent new challenges for them.
Aaron’s last book, The Spirit Rebellion, ended with a near-criminal level of cliffhanging. Awkwardly, The Spirit Eater doesn’t actually address how Eli manages to escape from the predicament he was in immediately. In fact, it’s actually not gone into in any detail through the third book at all. considering the suspense that Aaron built in the second book, this is a letdown.
The story starts with our heroic group – Eli Monpress, the thief, Josef the swordsman, and Nico the demonseed – tracking away victorious from their conquest over the Duke of Gaol. Miranda Lypress, the spiritualist, is given recognition of her work in Gaol by promotion to an unlikely area – a department within the governing Council that tracks down enemies of the state with signfiicant bounties on their head. Eli hasn’t made the top of their list yet, but the few in front of him are committers of atrocities and murders, as opposed to increasingly-popular thefts.
Eli heads Home to rest and recuperate before plotting his next move. Home is, in true Monpress style, a city that’s had its trade routes bypassed by the construction of the kingdom’s highway some leagues away. When the township fell on hard times, Eli sinmply bought the entire town – homes, people, livelihoods and all – and, in exchange for funding the inhbitants, has a town where he can let his guard down and relax for a while. Fanatically loyal and grateful, the people of Home welcome Eli and his crew back amongst them.
Their peace is hard to come by. The demonseed inside Nico is awakened and working vigorously against her. Her restraints, crafted by Master Shaper Slorn, were damaged in her previous adventures and need work. And the trio is still unable to find a permanent answer to the demon growing inside her.
The demonseed is not just a concern for Nico. Demons feature heavily in this book. We re-visit Slorn’s imprisoned wife, who’d been battling the demon inside her whilst trapped in a valley by her husband. Sted, the vicious warrior from The Spirit Rebellion who’d nearly killed Josef and Nico, seeks her out to try and gain the power of a demonseed for himself. The League of Storms takes an active role in this story, unleashing their fantastical powers. Things are certainly building to a pretty fantastic finale.
The scope of each of Aaron’s stories expands outwards with each novel. We’ve grown from a self-centered thief and his rompish adventures to something much grimmer and more gritty. Aaron’s lush and populous world is threatened, and the Gods of the realm seem incapable of taking decisive action, trapped into observation and inaction by their own peculiar natures. The enemies of spirits and free folk are amassing and multipyling, and even the Leage of Storms has limits on what it can hold back.
Coupled with the machinations of mortals, and dangerous cracks are springing up in the world. Miranda is sent with a team of unreliable, mysterious companions to negotiate with the most highly wanted bandit in the kingdom, and instead of capturing him, finds that she’s been sent to negotiate the terms of his acceptance into the nobility. His thirst for power has led him to surround himself with dark figures, including one familiar, but more deadly than before…
Josef, Nico, Eli and Miranda are all feeling familiar and well-rounded by this point. Miranda is a curiously unsympathetic figure of morals and authority in the story. Unfortunately, she seems to swing erratically between powerful authority and shrill helplessness. Despite her much-vaunted Spiritualist training, Miranda is perhaps the least capable of the figures in the story, and I found her to be annoying at times. Josef, too, has moments where his stoicism prevent him from being a truly fleshed-out swordsman, but he gets enough ass-kicking in in The Spirit Eater that I think I’m just being picky.
The Spirit Eater has everything we’ve loved from the earlier books and more. Heroic swordfights. A titanic battle between a strong-willed woman and an implacably corrupting demon. Gladiatorial combat. Magic being unleashed with pyrotechnics that would make Michael Bay blush and go back to baking-soda volcano models.
Some might raise an eyebrow at the darker tone. There’s certainly more pain, betrayals, hopelessness and abandonment in this one than the previous books. I think it’s likely to get darker before things clear up, though. Aaron’s said that this series is going to be five books, and there’s a long way to go. Eli is still much the incorrigible thief as before – avoiding and twisting out of situations of responsibility and selflessness, holding his life together only through of his unshakeable feelings of loyalty. I imagine the challenges awaiting them all in the future will end up either making or breaking him as a classic anti-hero.
Regardless of the darker tone, I’ve enjoyed The Spirit Eater more than either of the first two books, and I’m eager for the others. Rachel Aaron has also kindly given an interview, here, which I encourage you to check out for some hints about what’s coming in the next two books! The Spirit Eater rates eight golden coins.
Reviews of the earlier books in the Eli Monpress series, The Spirit Thief and The Spirit Rebellion, can be found on Write-Thing as well as the interview with Rachel Aaron.
Memes are self-replicating ideas. You might think of them as viruses of the imagination, spreading from one person to another, transmitted by things being interesting or attractive to our thoughts in some way. Like normal viruses, memes can spread rapidly. The Internet has a big role to play in this. Forums, blindly forwarded email and websites devoted to wasting hours of your time at a go hoard and breed memes, weeding out the weak and endlessly dissecting and replicating the strong.
As a writer, memes can be very useful. So can tropes, a subset of memetics. A trope is an idea that has appeared in different media enough times that it is recognisable as a pattern. These can range from general down to very specific. Tropes differ from memes in that a trope refers to a set of characteristics that appears multiple times in different media. A meme changes and shifts as it replicates, but shares common links with its predecessors.
Steampunk is a powerful meme. Photo: Sam Howzit
An example of a trope could be a ray-gun, popular with steampunks everywhere. While the individual construction of any given ray-gun is likely to be unique, a ray-gun is essentially interchangeable with its fellows. Tropes are also generally signifiers of a ‘possessive’ meme: antiquated ray-guns are likely to appear in steampunk, alternate history, etc. They are unlikely to appear in, for example, romantic comedies and literature.
A vast repository of them can be found at TvTropes.. A word of warning, though: it is very, very easy to get lost in there. I’ve spent hours reading through the website, and I’m not alone in this weakness. In fact, the addictiveness of hunting for tropes has itself become a meme.
Roots and origins
It’s difficult to have a purely original idea these days. In fact, I’d say not to bother trying. Whatever you come up with, a quick Google check will invariably point out that someone has come up with the same premise as you. This can naturally be a touch disheartening.
So, instead, don’t worry about finding a perfectly ‘original’ idea. Instead, develop and exploit your own personal meme library in order to better understand where your stories are coming from. Do you feel like a particular character is missing? Does ending a scene in a certain way feel right to you? Most simple ideas you have for stories will likely fit into a memetic narrative string. You might even combine two or three. An increased awareness of how stories fit themselves together inside your brain will how you where to look for how it’s been done in the past. With an awareness of what’s come before you, you can write something unique in execution.
Discounting Christopher Booker’s premise that we’re all narratively drawn to variations on Seven Basic Plots, is it really surprising that we identify with particular memes? I’ve done this myself on more than one occasion when writing out stories. I end a short story with what I could swear blind to be an original twist, only to discover to my consternation that it’s the same ending as some half-forgotten episode of Captain Planet from my childhood.
Observe with diligence.
The best way to grow your own meme library is to observe with diligence. Note with interest when you encounter familiar ideas in your own reading. Note with more studious interest ever time you come across something and sy “Oh, that’s neat!”. You don’t need to go to the stage of formalising any of this observing. You could if you want, but I don’t think t would be a worthwhile exercise compared to getting some more writing done.
As you enter into a practise of observing ideas in other people’s works, here’s what’s going to happen. Your brain is very good at detecting patterns. So good, in fact, that it intuitively will make connections and try and establish patterns even when there are none to be observed. The more you practise thinking about things like memes, the more obvious they will be to you in everything you see. Advertisements. Magazine articles. Letters to the Editor. Episodes of your favourite TV show. You might start to form your own mental classifications. Oh – here’s a Crowning Moment of Awesome at the end of a series. Here’s the Dramatic Finale. There’s the Disreputable Drug Dealer.
Better, you’ll start to see patterns in what you observe. This is what those teachers in English class were trying to instill into you: a sense of critical thinking. That thinking will let you identify patterns not only in other’s writing but also in your own. Are you predictably following the path of a certain meme? How are you distinguishing your characters from others with the same characteristics?
Exploit your meme library.
Once you’ve developed memetic awareness, start to harness what you know for your creative writing. Deliberately engage with or subvert memes, depending on what you feel suits your writing style. Don’t try and avoid them together. It’s practically impossible and hardly useful. Instead, embrace the fact that other creators have trodden over the same ground you have. Understand that your execution of your ideas is what makes your work unique. And take heart from the fact that you know it can be done!
