Adam Phillips

Readers Who May Yet Stumble Across This Story, I get an email every now and then from new ISWB readers who want me to convey a message to John ("Brian"). I have to say with a great deal of sadness that I no longer can. I'm sure he and Chris are doing well. It's just that our communication back in the day was limited to Yahoo Messenger, which I no longer have, and Yahoo Mail, which I also no longer have. The last I heard from them, Chris was in college and doing well. I expect he's graduated by now. John had moved across the country and was working in a field in which he had knowledge and experience. We were great and deep online friends; it was never our karma, destiny, or, even, interest, in extending it beyond that. Maybe some day I'll stumble across John again and we'll get updated with each other. I know he reads these reviews and comments from time to time. Time will tell. In the meantime, if you haven't already, you may want to read my story Crosscurrents here at GayAuthors. Solivagant's (pretty on-target, I'm afraid) comments above re: the protagonist's (aka "my") less-than-stellar character notwithstanding, this is also an autobiographical coming-of-age story about young men whose affections don't fit the neat binaries that the culture tried for so long to pigeonhole us into. I'm in the Classic Authors section because I haven't written for GayAuthors in ages; I hope to change that this year, but I'm not making any promises! Thanks for following ISWB; I miss "Sam" dearly, and you're all correct; he was a saint of a man.

Echo, I'm glad you enjoyed the story. I'm in "Classic Author" status simply because I haven't had the time or life-space to do any more writing yet, so it didn't make sense to keep me in Signature Authors...but I have about 15 other stories rolling around in my head that I'd like to put out there some time, to say nothing of the 4 that are out there at different places on the Internet in partial stages of completion. So I hope do something before too long to accommodate your wish for more.

Fair enough, Briansboy. I appreciate that you liked what you did, and I understand why you disliked what (and who!) you did. Andy IS privileged, smug, entitled, and gloating. It's over-compensation to some degree, as his protracted doubts and agonies illustrate, but that's not an excuse. I can only plead that Andy was in the process of growing up in the narrative and that he's grown more still. And that even though he is all those negative things, he also loves deeply and is loyal to a fault. 😉 The ending ended the way it did because there aren't very many roadmaps for bisexual polyamory, or at least for how to do it within the context of trying to live what would otherwise be an unexceptional suburbanite life in a heteronormative culture. The epilogue concludes with Andy uncertain about everything except for the fact that somehow his trust and love for Matt would allow things to work out, though he didn't know anything of what that sort of "working out" would mean. Along with you, Andy himself was wrestling with finding unbelievable the frankly-unbelievable situation he was in. All I can assure you is that down the road the parties found their respective ways and that Andy and Matt are still good. I'm taking the time to reply to this because after a lengthy absence to live life, work, and be a family man, I'm kind of itching to do some more writing for Gay Authors! And I hadn't seen your comment until today, so I thought I'd reply. It gets kind of dicey for a guy to read somebody saying what a prick he is, lol, but if the shoe fits...in any case, thanks for your ongoing interest and warm words about Crosscurrents. It truly was a labor of love for me.

Yeah, it's my biggest enemy too. The reason I don't write as much as I do is that I won't continue to sit down and work with it if I don't feel I'm In the Zone. If it feels second-rate as it comes off my fingers, I'm outta there and off doing something else. And I know that This Is Not Good. So I'm trying to change... But I hate it when I write crap.

I had writer's block once when I was writing Crosscurrents, and it wasn't because of "story" issues; I knew the plot like the back of my hand. It's that there was no blood going to the writing; it was cadaverous. A writer friend of mine said, "Put it away. Write something else. Anything else. Another story, I mean. Keep it short, start a long one; just write something else!" I did. I started Brushfire (Which, uh, I've not picked up with again until this week.). And I looked at the writing and saw that it had energy. I also saw that the writing was better than my writing on Crosscurrents. but that's another topic for another time. In any case, once I had my groove back, I returned to Crosscurrents and--no writer's block! So. Write something else. Anything else. Another story, I mean.

I had an English teacher in high school who'd draw a red line at her first sight of a "very." She'd refuse to read anything below the line, and she'd give the paper an F. That cured me of "very." Rules are made to be broken, and they're subjective, and there's (surely??) a reason "very" is in the language. But I don't have any use for it, and I haven't missed it.

Yep. I'm picking up my writing again after a long, long halt. And I'll never commit a write-and-post crime against my readers again. I am Perp #1 in this regard, and I'm determined to Change My Ways. It's my goal never to have readers wait more than a week or two from now on.

Thanks for the birthday greetings, guys!

Happy Birthday, James, and thanks for your ongoing presence here!

Thanks for the kind words about Crosscurrents...but it really wasn't my intent to leave the ending of the story inconclusive. I just didn't want to beat the reader over the head with it. Go back and read it another time. :-) As far as any other writing is concerned, check out the Interview Cia did with me for this month's Signature Author focus at http://www.gayauthors.org/forums/blog/258/entry-15595-author-interview-adam-phillips/ And thanks for reading!

There are books that are now among my favorites whose first two chapters I didn't like. Don't let that make the decision regarding how to write. Write the story for you, not in anticipation of what your audience might like. I guarantee that'll make your story stronger too.

Freakin' With Trust. Dammit. I want the rest of that story!!! Lol

Lots on on-point posts here. As a guy who took a decade to write and post a story, I feel grateful that I hung onto the readers I did. On the one hand, since (s)he's sharing free reading material, an author doesn't "owe" anybody timeliness, or even a story's completion. On the other, there is an at-least implied covenant between writer and reader. If the writer has, in effect, solicited the reading attention of a reading public by offering a story, I think there are some implicit promises made to said reading public. One of those promises is a conclusion to the story. Another is reasonable timeliness. With Crosscurrents, I would write and post. Write and post. Write and post. It wasn't a good decade for me to be trying to write regularly, though, and so it took as long as it took. These days I'll be producing a lot more, and a lot faster...but I've decided I'm not going to post a single paragraph until I've finished at least 80% of the story. Maybe 85%. My first experience with this sort of frustration as a reader came many years ago when I was reading a delightful and erotic novel at Nifty called Vermont Summer. I got to the end of the extant chapters, and then... Nothing. Ever again. That's a distinctive kind of disappointment, and the level of frustration a reader has in such a situation is directly proportional to the quality of the story. I won't do that to my readers yet another time. Thanks for staying with me as readers, all you who did.

Thanks for your thoughts on this and your suggestions. I need to go back and take care of this in my work.

I've told this story before, but there was a period while I was writing my only-completed-so-far novel Crosscurrents where the writing just hit a wall. Every word felt like an iron weight, and it was dull and slow and had no life. It wasn't that I couldn't think of what to write; it was that I felt the writing had no life in it, no blood going to it. I mentioned this to a fellow writer, and he said, "Write something else. Write anything else. That'll fix it." So I did. I sat down and started a short story, and the words came zipping off my fingers, easily and rapidly...and it was good. Somehow the experience of finding my "writing groove" again helped me go back to Crosscurrents with that newfound creativity and life, and I was on my way once again. (The end result is that I left that story hanging, and now I have to finish it; it's sitting there at my page, waiting for me to finish it. It's called Brushfire.) Your mileage may vary...but it could be that the story and the burden of telling it are weighing you down. If you just turn away from it for a while and write something else, your muse may come back to life.

Of course 10,000 Likes. It was inevitable. What's not to like?

Jeremy's a long-time nemesis/e-friend of mine, so take this reply with just a little tongue in cheek, all.-- I'm gonna have to bag on you just a little, Jeremy, as punishment for your posting of this. You know how sometimes you'd send me a review of a chapter of Crosscurrents two minutes after I'd posted it? And I'd complain, "If you're gonna speed-read my stuff, I don't want you as a reader."? Seriously, with all the work I did in each chapter and all I tried to put in each one, for you to digest it and render judgment in two minutes? And I'm supposed to take it seriously? Similarly, I gotta say, regarding that comment of mine to which you just responded, what part of "Someday I may go back and fix them, but I have other fish to fry and other stories to tell FIRST" were you not able to comprehend? The point of that section of the post was to acknowledge the validity of Tyler's criticism. That's all. The point was not to put everyone on notice that I won't be doing any more new writing while I immediately go into "perfect-it" mode on Crosscurrents. And to react to that one sentence as if that were, uh, actually what it said instead of what you made up from whole cloth in that little head of yours is to have misread and completely not-understood the post. Now that you've given it a second look, wouldn't you agree, Jeremy? Now the real lesson to be learned, the real cautionary tales--and something I might have taken more to heart in a post like yours--are that 1) Stephen King didn't improve the first book in his Dark Tower series (The Gunslinger) when he revised it. Quite the opposite; and 2) Likewise, George Lucas's new and improved take on Star Wars is arguably not an improvement, but a, uh, a de-provement. lol Those are points worth pondering. Not that I'm comparing myself those guys in their greatness. I'm comparing myself to those guys in their second-guessing-themselves-ness. Love you, buddy. ;-)

Yep, we still do the beach party on or around July 4 every year. It's always friends from high school and college and their significant others. These days, we alternate by years between kid-friendly and don't-bring-the-kids. And we have to rent additional condos. Who knew when we were 18 that we'd still be doing this 18 years down the road? I gotta say, they're a lot more fun these days than that first one was for me. :-)

Thank you, Tyler. And thanks for the review.

Again, thanks, guys, for the warm words about CC. Tyler has been an e-buddy of mine for a long, long time and was a huge supporter of CC in the early years. As time went on and I just wasn't finishing it, he fell away from the story--understandably--and he actually had to finish reading it to write the review! I didn't see the review before you did, but he did warn me ahead of time that he put a mild note of critique in it. I called him a bitch--well, because he is one--and told him "you know I'm good with whatever you bring." And actually--let's be real, here--he's on the money with that one critique. There are places where the writing takes Crosscurrents across the line that separates effective style from melodrama. There are places that are mannered and self-aware in ways that I'm not happy about. I wince when I read those passages. In my defense, much of CC was written when I'd just started writing narrative. I know now how to do those places better yet keep them just as powerful. Someday I may go back and fix them, but I have other fish to fry and other stories to tell first. But even having said all that, for the most part, I'm proud of the writing in CC and happy with it. I tried to put a little style to it, and for the most part I think I hit that "just right" spot between "not enough" and "too much."

Thanks for the discussion and the links to the extended discussion.

There are times in narrative where you need your reader to be able to "see" the physical characteristics of characters. But that doesn't mean a dossier description is ever the way to do it. The only exception I can see to a rule "forbidding" it is one where a dossier-type description is somehow integral to the storyline. If you don't sledgehammer the reader with it, you can get away with it to a degree. I did it a bit in Crosscurrents as a part of Andy's reminiscences of his childhood with Matt, but as I read back over it, I find that it's not too obtrusive or jarring. It feels somewhat natural coming from the head or word processor of an older Andy, looking back and talking about what the two boys were like as kids. There are all kinds of creative ways to convey physical information in passing in a novel. And it's actually kind of fun for me to figure out ways to do that. Here's an example from Crosscurrents, which, admittedly, is far, far from Steinbeck, but still... "Standing face-to-face with me he held me fixed, as he always could, with the determination radiating from those ice-blue eyes of his;" That was from Chapter 2. I hadn't up to that point described Matt's eyes. But I did want the readers to include that detail in their mental picture of Matt. It's just that I didn't need them to have that detail right away. I was cool with letting the reader start with a somewhat blank template and filling it in as we went along. In doing that, I was consciously imitating some of the writers I most admire, who tease you into an apprehension of a character rather than front-loading everything in one massive data-dump.

The horror genre is one in which the author actively seeks to induce--wait for it--horror in the reader. Authors can still use vampires and werewolves in horror novels, but they won't be used in quite the same way as they are in the "non-scary" ways you're referring to. I don't think vampires and werewolves have lost their inherent scariness. But familiarity breeds contempt, you know, and the culture has become immersed in vampires and werewolves who are sympathetic figures--hell, who are practically cuddly--so it's going to take some intent and some skill for an author to get the reader back in touch with his/her primal, quasi-instinctive fear of and revulsion toward those creatures. But if and when he/she does, he/she is writing horror. And not until then. More broadly, "horror," as a technical term designating a genre, usually involves the supernatural or paranormal, it seems to me. Stephen King and Clive Barker seem to me to be two prime examples of authors of horror novels. It's my contention that Chelsea Cain also writes horror novels, but since she's most famous for her gruesome series of novels centering around the beautiful and psychopathic serial killer Gretchen Lowell, and there's no supernatural or paranormal element involved, her novels usually get categorized as "suspense" or "thriller." Don't ask me why. The stories are full of horror. Novels which use elements of the supernatural or paranormal for reasons other than to induce horror can't properly be considered horror novels. In my opinion, anyway. And I think I'm on pretty solid ground here.

Are sexually explicit narrative sequences needed in "gay stories"? Of course not. But given that "No" serves as an adequate and surely definitive answer to the question, it's interesting to note where this thread has gone. The first thing I'd like to say--and I'm not calling anyone in this thread out, particularly--is that I note a somewhat pervasive bias in both gay and straight populations, reading and otherwise, against explicit erotic narrative. That bothers me a little. I'm not sure entirely where it comes from. Probably it's a matter of personal preferences, but the judgmental tone I run into here and there when this topic comes up furrows my brow a little. I guess that's because I don't mind narrative that's in-your-face explicit, and I don't see anything wrong with it, as long as it doesn't bore the snot out of me. I'm even okay with narrative that's clearly designed to get a response from me that's not centered in, uh, the head on top of my shoulders. I've been known to read--hell, on occasion I seek out--that kind of narrative. I've also been known to write it. There are stories--and don't lie, you've read them--whose first and only intent is to get you excited, or get you up, or get you off, or whatever. They use the trappings of story to deliver their goods. And why not? A Date With Self can always use a little fantasy, right? There's video porn like that, and a lot of it is ridiculously conceived and poorly-acted...but once in a while, you'll find the aesthetics are actually working. It's not impossible. And then there are stories that intend to tell a larger story but have explicit erotic sequences. Regarding this kind of stuff in general, in cinema or in print, you hear a lot of people throw around terms like "gratuitous sex." But what does "gratuitous" mean in this context? And who determines what's gratuitous? Let's be real: Aren't there scenes of all kinds, sexual and otherwise, in every narrative that are arguably gratuitous, in the sense that the same essential story could be told without them? Yet not all of those detract from the narrative. Some of them enhance it. Likewise, it's an easy critique to claim that explicit sex scenes as a whole are gratuitous, in the sense that the writer can tell the story effectively without them. But if the author weaves those scenes into the story in an aesthetically pleasing and narratively-convincing way, they can certainly intensify the portrait of characters' sexuality, and I think that's a perfectly legitimate aim. Where's the harm if the author wants to get the reader off at certain narrative points? Too much art, in my opinion, shies away from blatant depictions of sexuality. There are times in storytelling when the narrative can accommodate it, and sometimes the story actually wants it. I guess the authors pull back out of some sense of propriety, and on that matter every author is different. As an author, maybe you don't want to distract the reader by giving him an erection he has to stop and take care of. But if a writer does like the idea of writing a sex scene that causes the reader to stop and, well, appreciate the scene in a physical way, I don't see that that's incompatible with good storytelling. I gotta say I have difficulty relating to those of you who've expressed discomfort, as readers and writers, with in-your-face depictions of sex. But then I'm probably more depraved than the rest of you. So when I see narrative that's not merely intended as a stroke piece but nevertheless has narrative passages that could be used in that way...I'm fine with it. Secondly, though, the key is how well it's done. Let's face it, there's a limited set of things you can do with a finite number of body parts. What's going to give explicit narrative its real spice is for the writer to get into the heads of the characters who are using those body parts at the time they're using them. And this takes all the subtlety, imagination, creativity, and skill that any other kind of narrative writing requires. When it's done well, it packs a wallop. When it's done poorly, it's forgettable, and your time is better spent as a reader on the non-sexual parts of the narrative. Some of you mentioned that you've skipped over sex scenes when you're reading. I've done that too. Not because they're sex scenes, but because they're boring. But give me an author who has the skill to make it sizzle and make it interesting, and I'm right there, present and accounted for...in a couple of geographical/anatomical regions.

This is gonna be long. I should be diligent and compact it down. But I'm pressed for time, so I won't. If you feel like ignoring it because it's too damn long, I won't be offended. ---------- Yeah, we resent rules, and we especially resent it when we're making art. And why not? Aren't the rules arbitrary? And aren't they really just about some people with hangups getting all self-righteous? I really do appreciate it when people declare that writers can and do create great without being enslaved to arbitrary stylistic and structural "requirements." And I agree. In fact, I'll say this to advance that assertion: When you think about it, in any art or discipline--except for games, many of which come with rules from the ground up--rules arise from usage, not the other way around. Rules become rules as a condensation and codification of standard practice. They don't pre-exist all art and require every piece of art to comply. But here's the deal, which I'll try to articulate even as I pick an obscure example to illustrate the seemingly iconoclastic points I just made. 17th and 18th century contrapuntal harmony in music "forbids" the use of parallel fourths, fifths, and octaves in chord-based harmonic progression. Why? Because there's something in parallel fourths or fifths that is repellent to our synapses? No. It's because, within the forms and conventions of the genre, they don't sound "right." They don't exemplify the type of music that the people of that time and place had been "acculturated" to hear. So was it good thing for a composer to abide by that rule about parallel fourths and fifths? I think it was. Because to violate those rules threw people out of their "listening" experience when they heard said violation in a composition, and the violation created a moment that jarred that listening experience, and not for the better, because it didn't fit in with the overall sonic structure of the music. Now the thing is, music evolves. Somebody has to deviate. We don't listen to the contrapuntal harmonic technique of that era anymore except in musical museum pieces. But when the deviation happened (gradually, of course), it was in and by composers who knew full well what they were doing and who had thought deeply about the deviation. And often the results were delightful. And ground-breaking. And the object of much subsequent emulation. That's how art changes and grows over the years. But those guys weren't dilettantes. They knew their craft and knew it deeply. They knew what came before them, the grand tradition that they had inherited and that had nurtured them as artists, and they knew what they were doing and where they were going when they chose to go off-course. It's the same with writing, I think. Writing and reading occur within a cultural context. And we can state the rules as if they came down from the gods, but they're not from the gods. They're the distillation of years of readers-and-writers swimming in the same cultural-literary ocean. The rules articulate what feels natural and fluid in the swimming and what feels like running into a piece of seaweed or a glob of tar from the offshore drilling rig. There's a mixture of "objective" and "subjective" to all that: There's nothing inherent in reality that says a particular literary rule just has to be; it's more the case that "writing that proceeds like this" feels amateurish and unaware when a writer breaks a rule and demonstrates, in the breaking, that he/she is clueless about the function of the rule within the particular literary/cultural tradition and what bad thing(s) it is preventing within that tradition. The question an author has to answer is "Do you have a deep understanding of the literary-cultural conventions in which you're working?" If you do--either intuitively or through instruction--then you may be qualified to say, "Yeah, I know this is how I'm supposed to do it, but I think I'm going to do it this way. Because in doing it this way, I achieve this desired effect: ________________" And then you can deviate where it feels right. Because if you can verbalize all that to yourself, you'll have a sense of the consequences of your deviation. You'll have an idea of just what you're doing to the typical reader's sensibilities. And you'll be sure to see to it that the effect of your deviation is delightful and deliberate and has a purpose that you can articulate. And you can be confident that it's not just an amateur's excuse to be lazy and ignorant of the literary tradition in which he/she writes. If you are too much of a novice to the grand cultural tradition that is western (civilization) narrative writing to realize in what ways you may be introducing literary clumsiness when you tinker with rules; if you don't understand the particular ways your writing can seem clunky and amateurish by violating the rules...well, you're precisely the author that the rules need to guide. To help keep you from looking like you don't know what the hell you're doing. And also to give you firsthand experience in writing stuff that's one with that deep cultural tradition. That kind of work produces mastery of the tradition and gains the assent of readers who have come to assume those rules in their reading. Because those readers often smell something fishy when a writer who doesn't understand what he's doing deviates from those rules. When you have that kind of mastery, you have the power to break with traditional rules knowingly and to good effect. Look at Picasso's earliest work. It wasn't Cubist. It was "realistic," that is, it deliberately sought to work within the style that the art of his day deployed to depict figures, for the most part, "as people see them in real life." And in those early works, he demonstrates mastery of that traditional style. He mastered that style and demonstrated that he understood it enough to work brilliantly in it. And because he'd mastered it, he knew--deeply--what he was doing when he deviated. And the result was fully informed...and stunning. But not something he could have accomplished at the beginning of his career by deciding he was "above" traditional conventions regarding perspective, shading, etc.