Let me tell you a story. Be advised: any similarity with reality is pure coincidence. Once upon a time, a long time ago, there was this fisherman. Every day this fisherman caught a few fish. Maybe two, maybe three, he always caught enough to feed his family. One day, though, he invented a new net and started catching a lot more fish. He felt he was rich, but most of the fish he caught would go to waste, so he decided to go to a farmer and ask him to give him some p’tatoes in exchange for some fish – he thought the farmer would be pleased. So he walked about half a day to get to the farm and proposed to the farmer the exchange. But the farmer declined. He said he didn’t like fish. But he would love some shoes. So the fisherman ran a few more hours until he found the shoemaker. He successfully exchanged his extra fish for a pair of shoes, he ran back to the farm and exchanged the shoes for some p’tatoes, and then ran a few more hours… that day he was able to get back in time for dinner with the heavy p’tatoes on his back but he wondered: could he do this every day? And when would he have time to fish? And how would he keep his extra fish before they got spoiled?

Thankfully there was someone who had a brilliant idea and invented what nowadays they call: money. This money-thing allowed the fisherman to keep the value of his fish in his pocket.  He could sell his fish to the shoemaker when he wished and then buy p’tatoes and carrots from the farmer whenever he wished. But he still had to walk a few dozen miles anyway. Which was very tiresome. Then somebody else had another idea: ‘What if we all met and traded on holidays and parties and maybe on certain Sundays? We could call those gatherings ‘fairs’ or something.’ And so they did. They started trading in certain days when everybody was gathering. And that’s when advertising was born, I guess. Somebody would shout: ‘Here are the cheapest shoes!!’ And others would shout: ‘Here is the best ham!!’ or ‘The best ale!! It kicks like a horse!!’

But soon people were not living in villages but in cities and it became bothersome to meet only on a few days. People needed to be served every day. But if you had to go to town looking for shoes and you did it on foot, it wasn’t too easy to look around the whole city. So cities started to become organized by trade. In old cities like Lisbon or London, you can find a street that would be called something like: the Shoemaker Street, or the Blacksmith Road, or the Silver Street, or Baker Street. Then if you wanted to find shoes you knew where you were supposed to find them: all the shoemakers would also be positioned to watch their competition and plot against it.

But then something happened. An event stranger than anyone would have imagined. They called it the Industrial Revolution. Suddenly, the shoemaker that could make a few dozen pairs of shoes a month (I guess), now was able to make (I’m guessing) 100 pairs a day? This is incredible, but it’s also a problem. This shoemaker simply does not know 100 people who will want his shoes. He will have to go look for other ways to sell them. Sears invented the catalogue for that reason, I would think. A cowboy in Tombstone would look at it and order some blue jeans or something and it would be made in Chicago or something and sent there. And adverts became the norm: you would print ads in magazines and newspapers and things like that and send them everywhere!! And that’s when salesmen got such a bad reputation: their job was to get some product no-one wanted or never knew existed and push it around until people bought it. That later became known as Product Based Marketing.

And then a clever guy called Henry Ford had a few more ideas. It was called Production Based Marketing (even though he didn’t know that at the time). His production methods were so efficient that he was able to drastically cut the price of his products. He would make cars is such a way anybody could buy them: ‘In any colour as long as it’s black.’ In this way, you could market a product based essentially on price.

But these guys selling products and underpricing the competition were so good that soon everybody was getting everything even before they knew it! Soon, it was clear that factories were producing a lot more than the people were able to buy them. So what did factories do? What every reasonable factory would do: they cut production rates and started producing less and less. How did they do that? They fired workers. But fired workers start having less money in their pockets and so they stop buying stuff. So soon enough the factories discovered they were overproducing again and they fired more people and this lead to less buying and so on. This had a huge impact on the Economy and was called the Great Depression.

Coming out of that Great Depression someone said: ‘Well, let’s not do that again, shall we? Let’s not just produce products not knowing if people want them.’ ‘How would we do that?’ Somebody else asked.’ ‘Well…’ Said the know-it-all, ‘Why don’t we ask people first what they want and then produce it for them?’ That actually seemed a great idea and ‘Market Research’ was born then and there – leading to what we call Consumer Based Marketing.

Once people started to research why people bought things, they started stumbling on certain patterns. There were different needs and different wants, but in the end, the main drives were pretty much the same.  With the help of some wackos with strange Austrian names, they found what was inside the thoughts of Humans. And in the last decades of the last century, they focused on improving stuff for people. Products became better and better and better. Until they became very similar. To some, marketing became a war where consumers were ammunition that helped slay the enemies/competitors. If the enemy/competitor got an advantage, it was best to imitate the bastard to become ever so similar and strong in the market.

With all this blood and guts going through the floors, the people-that-bought became less responsive to the products themselves and more and more attentive to the way these products were presented. Suddenly, what made the difference was Service: from the niceness and empathy of a waiter to the payment and delivery accommodations of a company. Products no longer made an impact: Service was all that mattered. Until Service was also the same. All companies delivered on time, all waiters said nice things. In the end, Service had to become something else: to be different, Service had to become a Relationship. A Relationship means something special: it means a connection between people. For a time, that was overlooked and Relationship Marketing seemed to be all about information and numbers in computers. But that didn’t last long. Soon it was all getting back to basics: Marketing was about People meeting People.

And that is how, today, when people ask me if I write to a specific audience I mostly reply (or I wish I had the presence of mind to reply): ‘I write from the deepest ends of my soul, I write about what I need to and want to write. I believe that there are people out there that need to read and want to read something like that. My purpose is to be able to connect with those people. So I write the best I can to satisfy myself and in turn satisfy others. Then I go and try to find these people to the best of my ability. Marketing, for all its complexity, is all about that: finding the people who want to connect with you. Sales are just a bi-product of that relationship.’

And that’s all I have to say today, my fellow knights. Hope this wasn’t too crazy a story and didn’t turn you away with a patronizing sigh. Maybe next time I will have a better story. It’s all about you, my friends. Or you and me… together. See you around the next campfire.

 

So what is a fact? We used to know that. It was a given. There were always conspiracy theories and wild paranoiac plots going on in untrusting minds all over the world, but now we’re in a different Era. It seems even the most basic facts are put into question: is the Earth flat? Do vaccines work? Did man really go to the Moon? Is climate change real? All of these questions should have evident answers, but no longer. We used to trust basic Science before, but no longer. How can we? Science is changing every day. What used to be true to science yesterday is no longer the norm, and studies seem to contradict themselves every day. More than that! Many pranksters have shown that «serious» science magazines will publish anything. How can we trust them?

Scientists themselves seem to disprove their own in wild ways. Thomas Khun established that science depends on scientists’ creativity. Karl Popper argued something to the point that absolute proof is impossible, as it requires infinite observations. Facts, in that absolute sense that we were used to, are no more. We live in a ‘post-fact’ world. And I’ve written somewhere else and here, about how some Science Fiction nowadays, what I call Narratives of Conscience, actually question our own take of what Reality is, of what the Facts are. See, for instance, my posts about the MATRIX here.

But let’s look at Science for what it really is. I argue here that Science is a language to understand Reality. I’ll go a little bit further in the discussion. Science is an Ethical Standard. It’s a set of values. A set of values that allow everyone to question Reality and what we all assume are facts. Within these values we are directed to prove truth, or to prove hypotheses until they are accepted (even temporarily) as facts. Science demands that we experiment, and replicate experiments and argue with logic and certainty to prove our points. Science is the Ethical Standard of only accepting as facts what has gone through the thorough extenuating process. Many scientists have lost their reputations and their livelihood by not being able to get their ideas proven by the process. And many have come to glory by being able to prove ideas that before seemed impossible. So Scientific fact is not absolute fact, but it is as close to Reality as we can usually get.

On the other hand, Religion is not an Ethical Standard; it is an Aesthetical Standard, as I argue here. There is no way possible to prove the existence of God or its inexistence. Atheism is as arbitrary as every Theism out there. Religion is about belief: it’s about how the Universe makes sense to each and every one of us. Is the Universe more beautiful if there is a Creator behind its Creation? Or does it make sense and is it beautiful if it blossomed spontaneously? Religion is about what we feel, not what we reason. Religion is about opinion.

That is set in many constitutions around the world, including the most important one, the one that started it all, the American Constitution. In its First Amendment, it states: ‘Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press.’ There is a reason for this: the Constitution is acknowledging that there is no absolute truth or fact about Religion: it is a matter of opinion. And as it is a self-evident truth that all men are created equal, we are not to impose one’s Religion over another.

I write this post as it is becoming evident that another big country, Brazil, will fall to the Forces of National-Traditionalism, that worldwide movement trying to destroy the Liberal Agenda that was set by the American Constitution and which we fought for for over two centuries. This movement is not of extreme-right or extreme-left, it is something completely different. It is against globalization, against the idea of an international world order, against the UN, against NATO, against the idea of a Human conscience or a Human culture. It is isolationist, nationalist, anti-modernist, and it believes in a radical return to the isolationist cultures that stimulated imperialisms and the tragedies of the late 19^th century and both world wars of the 20^th century. They follow the ideas of the likes of Alexander Gudin and Steve Bannon, and books like the Science Fiction novel LES CHAMPS DES SAINTS by French novelist Jean Rafail. Among the world leaders and forces abiding by these ideals are Vladimir Putin, Donald Trump, Marine Le Pen, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Bibi Netanyahu, Iran’s Ali Khamenei and, if you think about it, also ISIS and Al Quaeda. And now, unfortunately, Brazil’s Bolsonaro.

These National-Traditionalists sow many scary and threatening concepts, but one of them I can describe like this: they believe that Science is an Aesthetical Standard and that Religion is an Ethical Standard. If you think like that then Science becomes a matter of opinion and Religion a matter of fact. And if you think like that then Freedom of Religion becomes worthless.  Another idea at the centre of the Liberal Agenda, that allows us to believe what we want to believe, to make the Universe beautiful ourselves, will turn to dust.

This is one point where the Agendas are radical opposites: Liberals believe in an Aesthetical Standard of Religion, believe in the ideal that anyone can imagine and practice their own version of metaphysical philosophy and their own version of religious thinking. Also, Liberals should believe that Science is an Ethical Standard which demands the highest efforts of proof and analysis to establish something as a scientific fact. It should be clear for liberals that climate change is real, that the Earth is round, that the American flag is on the Moon, that vaccines work. Because, to the best possible standards, these are facts.

Traditionalists, however, will fight for the opposite. Here are the words of Alexander Dugin himself: ‘The notions of tradition, religion, and pre-modernity already offer us an undoubtedly broader spectrum of alternatives. If we reject the laws of modernity such as progress, development, equality, justice, freedom, nationalism, and all of this legacy of the three centuries of philosophy and political history, then there is a choice.’

I don’t know about you, but for me the choice is clear. These Trads scare the daylights out of me!

So this weekend I went to another edition of the Fórum Fantástico, one of Portugal’s most important events on SciFi and Fantasy. I’m not sure exactly how to talk about this in a way that is interesting to many around the world, all I can say is that most writers that I know and know of made sure they went to promotional events and they are an integral part of becoming a successful writer. So let me speak a little bit about that.

I was never a particular fan of events. I don’t really like crowds or crowded places and get bored in many of the so-called fun activities. I started going to a few local ones not because I was having fun or to show myself to the market but for a very simple reason: I was learning stuff. I was meeting good writers, exchanging ideas and listening to many speak about problems that I also was having or I never thought about and yet I should. Also, many nowadays famous writers seemed to have begun by going to local and not-so-local events before becoming famous. And I was starting to understand why Tom Clancy would bother to go to autograph sessions where only five or six people were coming, for instance – he was starting and six people is better than none.

So I don’t go to many events, but I choose a few I try never to miss. First among these is Fórum Fantástico. This year I was invited to animate a couple of workshops with my friend and publisher Pedro Cipriano. We did ‘How to Kill Your Characters’ once more (you can read about it here), and another one we called: ‘From Idea to Structure’ (about things you find here). At one of them, we had only one single student. A few years ago that would have broken my heart, but these days it didn’t surprise me nor discourage me – I had a blast speaking with this Brazilian national coming from France that just read about the workshop on a magazine and decided to show up.

I was also able to meet the talented writer Chris Wooding, and his smart editor Gillian Redfearn, and attended their workshop on Character Development that made me open my eyes to a couple of new things. Chris spoke about his use of ‘Theme&Thesis’ Character Development scheme he picked up from Dara Marks and which I became very interested in.

Another thing I really enjoyed: I was part of the jury of a national contest for Fantasy novels. I had to go through 27 novels by writers from all over the country. It seems daunting, doesn’t it? It was. I sighed in relief when we were done. But also: I was really surprised by the quality of the writing out there, appearing from nowhere. I believe we will have a new generation of very talented Fantasy writers coming from Portugal in the next few years and that’s incredibly exciting. At the FF18, we presented the award to the winner: a young writer called Pedro Lucas Martins no-one really had ever heard of. He’s really good. Let’s hope he keeps writing!

FF is not the biggest event of the kind in Portugal but it’s the one the ‘people-in-the-know’ like to go. You must have similar events in your part of the world and my advice is: go to them. Mingle. Get to know people. Learn some stuff. It will seem little at first, but then you’ll find it will serve you more and more. Until next year Fórum Fantástico. I’ll be there in a year.

A couple of days ago I watched Ruben Fleischer’s VENOM with the powerful Tom Hardy as Eddie Brock, the MC, a man who shares his body with a horrifying invading alien from Outer Space. First of all, loved the movie. It has a certain amount of ugliness that makes it different from the average super-hero movie. Everyone is somewhat ugly, with the probable exception of the female MC, Brock’s girlfriend, played by Michelle Williams. Secondly, it is again a story about a schizoid mind, the likes of which I’ve been writing about in the last few weeks, from NARUTO’s Nine-tail Fox (here) to Neo’s MATRIX. VENOM is a film about the struggle with our inner monsters, and the way they dominate us and many times ruin our lives with their destructive powers. Let me speak a little bit about that and how that translates to Writer’s Block – particularly the Inside-Out Fear I already spoke about here.

There’s this brilliant psychologist called Melanie Klein who created the school of Object Relations within the psychoanalytical school of thought. Let me put forth a few of her concepts in a very basic way. Klein would say that we feel that inside us there are Good Objects and Bad Objects (our Monsters?) and we have a hard time dealing with the interactions between them. We are many times scared that our Bad Objects will hurt us or hurt others around us, and so we act out to expel those monsters from us, or we fight against their release by locking them in and hurting ourselves in the process. As I said when speaking about THE MATRIX here to here, though, it is the fight itself that binds us in danger – if we understand our monsters and stop fighting them, we gain some peace and control. As The Oracle would show to Neo: it’s when we understand our choices that we are able to be free to make them.

Let’s translate that into the field of writing. Before, I spoke about one particular type of Writer’s Block: the Inside-Out Fear, which happens when our inner demons are stopping us from writing a particular scene we know we need to write. It happened to me, for instance, when I wrote a rape scene for one of my novels: THE ALEX 9 SAGA. It was to be so gore and cruel that I postponed it for weeks, as it made me uncomfortable. It could also happen in a simpler more subtle way: imagine you have a character that unconsciously reminds you of your grandfather and that your plot needs for you to kill it. If you don’t understand why it is making you wary it could block your writing for a long long time. Once your fear becomes conscious, though, it will almost seem stupid how easy it is to overcome it.

How about when our monsters intervene? Love and hate often come together, but it is sometimes hard to come to grips with that. Imagine, if you will, that you have a teenage son that got drunk and wrecked your car – a car you cannot afford to fix. A part of you hates him, even though it is possible you will not be able to accept that yourself. But you could have the villain of your story beat or torture a boy in a ruthless way. Your mind will react to that: either blocking your writing or being cathartic and relieving your inner emotional pressure. Your monster will either be attacking you or fantasizing about attacking your son – and the safest place to get it to do that is in the page of your text, no doubt about it. Understand that, accept the fate of that fantasy boy, consciously making that choice, and you’ll see good results popping up on the pages. And your anger towards your son will most likely subside (fingers crossed).

Becoming conscious of your monsters can then become a very useful resource for your writing. Your writing can become richer, rawer and more emotional if you can harness the energy of your monsters instead of fighting them.

Just like NARUTO or THE MATRIX, VENOM’s is the story of a man burdened with his monsters that is able to turn his life around by getting along with the demons. The story is slick and fun, and at the same time it is Human – Hardy’s character is not your usual hero in any way. His failings lead him to demolish everything around him and ironically it is the monster that comes to destroy him that ends up saving him.

I didn’t like a couple of things in the movie, actually. The way that Venom, the monster, suddenly becomes an ally did not convince me fully. I would bet with you there is somewhere a background scene written for the monster, where we could see how he feels like a loser among his kind (the manifest motivation he states in the movie), but the scene was discarded at some point and left to rot – it’s what makes sense to me.

In the end, both Human and Monster become a better ‘person’ together than they ever were apart. It’s a classic story. We all have our monsters. We all fear and despise a part of us: our ability to hurt others or to disappoint or to do the wrong thing or to be violent. We all believe there is a part of us that is unlikeable and shouldn’t come out into the open. Part of the Human Drama, that fundamental field of research for every writer, is that conflict between the Good part of us and the Bad part of us.  Just look at HAMLET, for one. But it’s not a fight we can outright win – the only way to win is to gain some harmony, to accept one’s demons as a part of us and find a way to live with them.

Becoming a writer could be a solid path to integrate and deal with our monsters. A writer can channel the monster’s energy into the pages and give the demons a space to strive without doing much harm – quite the opposite, they boost creativity. Always remember one thing: what happens in your life is real; what happens on the pages is not. So for you, fellow knights, I leave you with the following: you can try and fight your dragons, put them down with your spears, incarcerate them in the deep dungeons of your inner being and mock them while praying in fear that they don’t find a way to escape; or you can learn how to ride them and fly. I strongly suggest you do the latter.