Writing Magic
Science, magic, art, creativity, and writing.
With my novel Shadowmancy about to drop in North America and the current ongoing discussion about generative AI, and whether they are genuinely creative, I thought this would be a good time to set down my thoughts on this topic, since the book considers many of these ideas.
Let me start with an answer that I gave in an interview for Chris Johnson when Shadowmancy was first published in Australia.
Do you view writing as a kind of spiritual practice?
I hesitated to answer this one but… yes, I do. This in a large part what Shadowmancy is about.
Writing is… a synthetic process in which the writer weaves knowledge, beliefs, new ideas and old tropes together into a story, to be enacted by characters who are unique and distinctive. It’s not just imagination; it’s empathy and acting and architecture and research and work. There is a craft as well as an art; a suite of skill that the writer needs learn and practise endlessly. You are trying to make something out of language that will have an effect on the world; that will make people think or feel or learn or react.
It’s a compulsion for me. I don’t feel right if I stop trying to make things. I get tired, distracted, depressed. But it’s a risk, as well. And every time you start out to write something new, no matter how good you are, there is a chance that you will fail. That the book will be malformed and won’t work, or won’t sell, or won’t capture the audience you want.
Writing is an act of faith.
Which is not to say that I think of myself as some kind of wizard or mystic. I will leave the actual wizardry to Alan Moore, one of my personal heroes. By nature and profession I am a scientist and an engineer, and I find the arcana that I am interested in practising are things like Inversion-of-Control and Expectation-Maximization, rather than the Rites of Eleusis.
Although we don’t typically describe engineers and scientists as creative, take it from me: that work requires just as much creativity as writing a novel or painting a portrait. I believe this is true for any kind of trade, especially those in which people make things. There is mechanical skill in various degrees, but they are all creative. I’ll go further and say that they are not just creative—they can be art.
Let me quote Frank Zappa, another personal hero:
“The most important thing in art is The Frame. For painting: literally; for other arts: figuratively-- because, without this humble appliance, you can't know where The Art stops and The Real World begins. You have to put a 'box' around it because otherwise, what is that shit on the wall?”
— Frank Zappa, The Real Frank Zappa
Which brings us to directly Shadowmancy.
Shadowmancy is set in a magical academy, and that is precisely the way that I have structured the curriculum. Instead of making the subjects analogous to conventional school subjects (let’s say ‘potions’ for ‘chemistry’), students at the Academy study only two subjects: Art and Reality, taught to them by Professor Thieu and Sensei Maruyama, respectively. Both of these subjects are theoretical and neither of them is mandatory. Students must learn to perform any magic (more about which later) from each other, in their own time.
So, what is magic? Readers of the fantasy genre like to read about magic, and particularly about the ‘magic system’ employed by wizards and spellcasters in a given fantasy universe. When Shadowmancy was released in Australia I fielded several questions about exactly this from readers who wanted to know more, or who thought they had found inconsistencies in the mechanics I described in the book.
Magic, to me, is a process outside the natural order. It is a way of breaking the rules that science seeks to understand; a way by which the natural world can be circumvented. Magic is of course impossible, but if it is real it has no rules. So a ‘magic system’ is just something imposed by humans who wish to exercise magical abilities. These systems often feel very much like programming or electrical engineering. (I used the word ‘spellgorithm’ in my first published short story and I might very well do it again.) If science and maths can be magic, surely they can be art?
Writing is something that you can learn about in theory. You can know language, but you have nothing to write about unless you also know something about the world in which we live. Unless you have experienced reality. Art and Reality. And the only way to get good at it is to learn to synthesize these things yourselves. Study art. Learn about reality. Try to make your own. The best way to learn is by trying it with a group of peers. Hand-me-down and shared knowledge.
The process can be unpleasant, if not brutal, especially for those who do not fit the mould. Who bring experiences or ideas that diverge further from what the group is used to. But that is the way the writing works.
When Quay, the protagonist of Shadowmancy, is learning about magic, he is learning about writing. The Naming Art taught by the Academy is the art of writing. Writing conjures an effect in other people with only words on a page (or screen). Magic is writing and writing is magical.
“The one place Gods inarguably exist is in our minds where they are real beyond refute, in all their grandeur and monstrosity.”
― Alan Moore, From Hell
For those who feel threatened by recent advances in generative AI, please take heart. Large Language Models are an amazing clever and powerful technology, but they do not write—they generate. They know language, but they have no knowledge of reality. They can be trained, but they cannot experience. They cannot make art, or magic.
Shadowmancy is out next week and is now available for preorder! It is also available on Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Australian readers can of course find copies here.
I will be talking more about this topic (not specifically about Shadowmancy, but about art and AI) with Dave Blumenstein and Kate Moon at the launch of Dave’s new comic about AI art, Octane Render. Please come along, if you live nearby. RSVP here.
We have had some requests to record the conversation so that may turn up as a podcast, but if not, you can expect to hear more on this topic here on my substack. Also you should get yourself a copy of Dave’s comic, because it’s great.
Franksly yours,
— Jaso