Category Archives: Ranting

Cranky

The world is causing me to shred rope this morning. With my teeth.

I am cranky and have decided to share my crank with you my gentle and not-at-all cranky readers. I know that I’ve written this rant in different forms already. I fully expect to write it again. Here goes:

Ever since I because a YA writer I have been hearing certain people accusing me and my colleagues of writing books solely for the sake of being as dark/bleak/shocking/perverted/[insert your own personal bugbear in adjectival form here]. “Why did you have to put x into your book?” is a question that almost all of us seem to hear at one time or another.

It drives me nuts.

YA writers who write about anything that isn’t considered to be squeaky clean or uses language stronger than, “Oh, bother!” get this a lot. We’re often accused of writing “dark,” “edgy,” “controversial” books in order to increase our sales.

Newsflash: the inclusion of swearing and sex and drugs and the other things that render YA books less than squeaky often, nay, usually, has the opposite effect. Book clubs won’t pick them up, Wal-mart and Target won’t stock them, nor will many school libraries, and lots of conservative parents won’t let their teens buy them.

Sure, you can point to teen books that have sex and swearing and drugs that sell; but there are just as many that don’t. It is not the automatic sales shot in the arm that so many people are convinced of.

I have never written anything for the sake of being “dark” or “edgy” or anything else. The YA writers I know think long and hard about including anything “controversial” because nine times out of ten it will reduce their sales, not increase them.

Valiant by Holly Black is often accused of being deliberately shocking; it’s her worst-selling book.

Of all the YA books I’ve read, Valiant is the closest to my teenage experiences. I recognised so much in that book. I found it moving, honest, beautiful, scary, dark and brilliant. It made me weep in sadness and, by the end of the book, in joy. I’ve read it four times so far and each time it has gotten better.

I’ve been wondering what it is about the book that bothers people. Perhaps they don’t like it because they didn’t recognise anything from their teenage experiences, therefore the book seems to them deliberately and inexplicably dark. They grew up safe and happy behind their white picket fence and weren’t interested in reading about teens that didn’t. But my friend Diana Peterfreund disagrees because she had a white-picket upbringing and she adores Valiant.1

Maybe the Valiant haters recognised too much and that made them uncomfortable?

I should point out that these are all adult complaints about the book: The teens who don’t like Valiant are mostly annoyed because it isn’t a direct sequel to Tithe.

All the adult complaints I’ve heard about books like Valiant and Looking for Alaska seem to stem from discomfort with the reality of some teen lives. Have they forgotten how traumatic teenage years can be? Have they forgotten that many teenagers swear, that they not only think about sex, but some of them have it, some of them drink and take drugs? I’ve met and talked with enough teens over the past three years2 to know that many of them are extremely grateful to have their experiences reflected back at them in the books we write—whether those experience are dark or light or a mixture (which is most people’s experience). Once I would have argued against problem novels because I personally don’t like them. But I’ve heard too many teachers and librarians tell me tales of students finding comfort and guidance in a book about child abuse, or a teen with alcoholic parents, or anorexia or whatever.

Recognising yourself in a book—in any work of art—is extremely powerful. It’s one of the ways we learn we’re not alone.

Some teenagers grow up in very dark places. Some of them go through dark, scary times. Some teens have friends and relatives who’ve overdosed, been murdered, raped, tortured, deported, gaoled, executed. Teen lives are as varied and scary and wonderful as adults’ lives. Those stories deserve to be told just as much as the story of Anne of Green Gables.

Some of us cope with the dark times by re-reading Anne of Green Gables. Some of us cope by reading stories that touch on our own horrible experiences or that are even worse.

Valiant, however, is not a problem novel. It’s a fairy tale with the requisite fairy tale ending. It affirms that even in the darkest of times a fairy tale ending is possible. I love it; I would have loved it even more as a teen.

I know that writing for teens is a huge responsibility. I take that responsibility seriously, which is why I believe it’s my duty to write books as honestly as I can.3 Whether it be the froth and bubble of How To Ditch Your Fairy or the darkness of the Magic or Madness trilogy. Pretending that teens aren’t people with as wide a range of desires and aspirations as any adult is dishonest.

Okay, I feel slightly less cranky now. Slightly . . .

  1. I should point out that my family life was great; it was my school experiences that were dark and miserable. [↩]
  2. Since my first teen novel came out. [↩]
  3. You know what? I also think that’s the duty of writers of adult books. [↩]

The Non-infringability of Plot and/or Ideas

People’s confusion over what plagiarism is sometimes drives me to loud and angry screamage. Thus I was thrilled to read Candy’s recent post, On Ideas, Repetitiveness and Copyright Infringement over at Smart Bitches Who Love Trashy Books:

There seems to be some confusion regarding the status of ideas in copyright law. You can’t copyright a plot or an idea. You can only copyright the specific expression of that plot or idea as recorded in some sort of tangible form. Think about the nightmare of attempting to nail down and legislate a plot or idea for a story. How specific would you have to be before you could declare something unique enough to copyright?

“An angst-ridden story about a vampire falling in love with a human.”
Dude, if you can copyright that and collect a small fee every time somebody published that story, you could have your own giant pool of gold coins to swim in, Scrooge McDuck-stylee. (Side note: doesn’t that sound like a painful idea to you? Because it always has to me.)

“An angst-ridden story in a contemporary setting about a vampire warrior falling in love with a human woman.”
OK, that’s a little bit more specific, but c’mon. (Also: goddamn, think of all those germs on all those coins. There is a reason why we call it “filthy rich.”)

What. She. Said.

Read it! Memorise it! Tattoo it all over your body!

I am so sick of people thinking that retelling a story is plagiarism. If that were so then we would have, at most, ten novels. All books about vampires, zombies, middle-aged English professors are not the same (well, okay, some of them are). It’s not about the story you tell so much as HOW YOU TELL IT. Why is that so difficult to understand?

Georgette Heyer did not plagiarise Jane Austen. David Eddings didn’t plagiarise J. R. R. Tolkien. Walter Mosley didn’t plagiarise Raymond Chandler. I did not plagiarise C. S. Lewis.

The next person who says to me, “Oh my God! Did you see that Certain Writer’s next book is set in a future world where you have to have your skin removed and replaced with carbon when you turn sixteen? That is just like Scott’s Uglies books! He should sue!” That person will get smacked. HARD.

There are bazillions of science fiction stories where something happens to you at a certain age. Logan’s Run anyone? And many more stories set after the apocalypse. There are even a fair few that deal with physical beauty and its enforcement. Like those two Twilight Zone episodes, “Number 12 Looks Just Like Me” and “Eye of the Beholder” (both based on short stories).

Watch them and read Scott’s books. The only thing they have in common is an idea. The characters, the mood, the texture of the writing, the way they makes you feel is very different. Scott paints an entire world with three-dimensional characters and relationships; those eps can only lightly sketch in world and characters. Given that they’re short and Scott’s books in the Uglies world add up to almost 400,000 words, that’s not surprising.

Same goes for the ridiculous claim that Melissa Marr is ripping of Laurel K. Hamilton’s Merry Gentry books. As if.

Holly Black refutes the claim succinctly:

I can only assume that Ms. Henderson didn’t realize there’s an entire genre of urban fantasy faery books published in the 80s like Terri Windling’s Bordertown anthologies and the the novels of Emma Bull, Charles de Lint, Will Shetterly, Ellen Kushner, Midori Snyder and many others.

It is really bizarre to me that she would point to the Merry Gentry series as though it was the first to use faerie folklore in a contemporary setting.

Plagiarism happens when you steal someone else’s words. If that future world book with the carbon skin had the following opening: “The early summer sky was the color of cat vomit.” And featured characters called Telly, Shiy, and Daniel who ride hoverboards and wind up starting a revolution and are described with language that is very close to how Scott described Tally, Shay, and David and have very similar dialogue, well, then I might start to be a little more concerned.

But remember Scott’s opening sentence is already a riff on the opening of William Gibson’s Neuromancer: “The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel.” It’s a little science fiction joke/homage. Homage is not plagiarism either.

Lots of books echo the words of other books. On purpose. To bring them to mind so that the reader (if they recognise the reference) can remember the earlier book and enjoy the light it casts on the one they have in their hands. Literary echoes done well are cool.

Writers are influenced by the writers who went before them. Every single book they’ve read, movie they’ve seen, place they’ve been, conversation they’ve had creeps into their work. I know that if I hadn’t read Enid Blyton, Angela Carter, Charles Dickens, Isak Dinesen, Raymond Chandler, and Tanith Lee obsessively as a kid my writing would be very different. Without Flowers in the Attic and Alice in Wonderland I might not even be a writer.

Pretty much all writers borrow plots. Even when they’re not aware that that’s what they’re doing. I was not thinking of The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe when I wrote Magic or Madness. Borrowing a plot is NOT a bad thing. It’s what writers do. Shakespeare did it. Afterall, there aren’t that many plots: Stranger comes to town and changes everything! Person goes on a journey and changes themself! Two people fall in love but their family is against it! Two people meet, hate each other, then gradually realise they were meant to be together!

Think about telling a joke. Some people do it well. Some people are total shite at it. It’s not the joke—it’s the way it’s told.

Here’s a game for you. How many novels, movies or whatever can you think of that fit the following descriptions. The first two are lifted from the Smart Bitches:

  • A woman dares to make the mistake of evincing sexual desire and unconventionality, the punishment for which is death
  • Scrawny, gormless boy enjoys a series of wacky adventures and eventually triumphs over adversity
  • Teen girl discovers she is faery, not human, and becomes entangled with a handsome faery
  • Teen copes with drunk/drug-addicted/loser father/mother and learns own strength

Thus endeth the rant. I must now go back to my idea and plot stealing. Novels don’t write themselves you know.

But I never heard of that book . . .

Congratulations to all the Printz honorees and winner. What a fabulous line up! Can’t wait to read ’em all!

I’m especially pleased to see Geraldine McCaughrean and Elizabeth Knox on that list. They’re two of the best writers in the world right now. Regardless of genre.

I’m a little disappointed by some of the whingeing I’ve seen from people who are upset that they’ve never heard of any of the Printz honorees. Isn’t that one of the points of literary awards? To draw our attention to books that might otherwise be overlooked? Every award jury is devoted to finding the best books they can that are eligible for their particular award. Eligibility is not determined by copies sold or size of publicity campaign. That’s a good thing!

One of the reasons there’s sometimes little overlap between the Printz and the National Book Award is that they have a different pool of eligible books. The National Book Award is restricted to books by US citizens. The Printz is restricted to books published in the US, thus this year there was an English winner (McCaughrean), a New Zealander (Knox), and an Australian (Judith Clarke). None of whose books were eligible for the National Book Award.

I like awards that surprise me. I’m thrilled that it looks like all the YA Awards this year are going to have different lists. It points to how rich and diverse our field is. The number of outstanding YA books being published goes up and up every year.

Here’s one thing that both the Printz and the National Book Award had in common this year—they both honored a book that is out-and-out, no-denying-it genre. Kathleen Duey’s Skin Hunger and A. M. Jenkins’s Repossessed and you can make a strong argument for Dreamhunter and Dreamquake as well. That makes this obsessive genre reader very happy indeed.

Cranky

This vid exactly expresses my current feelings. Be warned that it involves intemperate language and violence:

Do not ask me how many times Microsoft Word has crashed on me today. Let’s just say I better not run into Bill Gates anytime soon.

The first person who tells me I can switch stupid Mr Clippy off gets punched. He is switched off. But when Word crashes it magically gets switched on again. Have I mentioned that I HATE Microsoft Word?

Oh and the first person who tells me to switch to Scrivener gets yelled at. I have switched, but I’m doing final rewrites, and have to keep my doc in smelly Word in order not to blow formatting etc. Going back to Word after Scrivener is breaking my brain. Waaaah!!!

Heh hem. Talk amongst yourselves. My deadline still needs vanquishing.

I hates paper

Especially when it’s a manuscript intent on giving me paper cuts or in the form of a card.

There. I’ve said it: I hate Christmas Cards. Do not send me any.

To be honest I’m pretty much against anything that shows up in my mail box that isn’t a cheque or a contract or a magazine I subscribe to.1 And really why can’t all of these be done electronically? Why do banks charge wire transfer fees? Transferring money from account to account is now one of the simplest processes in the world. Why can’t I sign my contracts electronically? Why can’t I subscribe to all the magazines I love in non-dead tree form? Why do people keep sending me postcards? I hate ’em and they go straight into recycling.2 I’d much prefer to see jpgs of your holiday—you know photos you actually took yourself.

I hate the endless catalogues that I never signed up for, the entreaties from political parties, and furniture companies, and car dealers and all the rest of them. Junk mail is a blot on the landscape, chewing up whole forests of trees.

I love trees! Keep them in their non-paper form!

I hate junk mail even more than I hate the spam that attacks my inbox. At least there are filters I can employ to keep the number manageable. I have contacted certain catalogue senders multiple times asking to be taken off their list. It makes not a lick of difference. If I manage to get rid of one several more are there to take its place.

I no longer give my address to anyone if I can avoid it. I will no longer join any organisation that insists on having my snail mail address. If they can’t communicate with me solely by email then I am not interested in being a part of their antiquated tree-killing organisation.

I travel a lot and no postbox in the world is big enough to be left to its own devices while I’m away. Thus complicated arrangements have to be made to ensure the postbox does not overfill and explode. If people didn’t send me mountains upon mountains of paper I didn’t want those arrangements would not be necessary.

The only truly acceptable use for paper is the making of books. Those I love. But as soon as there’s an integrated iphone-like device that works as a really good ebook reader I’ll be using that to read while I’m on the road. At home I’ll be snuggling up with a good ole dead-tree product book like I have since I was knee-high to a grasshopper. No ebook reader will ever smell as good as a book.

Stupid paper. I kick it.

  1. I’m okay with parcels though. Especially in their Krug champagne form. [↩]
  2. Though obviously not the ones my mum sends. Those are all precious and wonderful. [↩]

Not that anyone asked . . .

. . . but I am hundred per cent in favour of the WGA strike. Doris Egan, who’s a writer on House,1 eloquently explains why. And, yes, a lot of it is about dosh. Why the hell shouldn’t writers be adequately compensated for their work? Here’s my favourite bit:

By the way, I’m not at all sure this understanding [about money] goes up to the CEO’s office; how can it, when that CEO can be handed sixty million dollars just for quitting? Someday I must tell you the story of the famous exec who said, “Why not make this character middle-class? Let’s say he makes $300,000 a year—” and the writers all stared at him.

That’s right the folks who are keeping the writers from having a fair cut of the work they create think $300 grand a year for one person is a middle class wage. Words completely fail me. It’s like those people who crap on about the outrageous amount male basketball players earn but don’t say a word about the insane earnings of the people who own and run the teams and leagues. An athlete’s career is short and physically dangerous.2 Execs get to keep on raking it in when they’re old and grey.

You really have to wonder at a world where it’s the executives around the creative folks who make the obscene amounts of money while most of the creatives are grateful to be paid at all.

Now, to be clear I am not referring to the producers or any of the other staff who are currently out of work because of this strike. That’s right, this strike means lots of people, not just writers, are going to be without pay for the duration. And most of those people—unlike the writers—don’t have a strike fund to keep them going. Not that the big bosses up top give a damn about any of them.

I believe I’ve ranted enough.

  1. and also wrote some of my fave fantasy novels of the early 1990s [↩]
  2. The majority of those who become pros rarely have more than ten solid earning years. [↩]

On spoilers

Cedarlibrarian, a major Harry Potter fan, doesn’t care about spoilers. Her arguments are smart and convincing.

And yet.

I’m really not a very evolved consumer of texts cause spoilers bug the crap out of me. I want my first experience of any narrative—be it book, manga, graphic novel, TV show, movie, play, whatever, to be untrammelled by knowing stuff about it. I don’t read reviews unless there of something I’ve already read/seen or it’s something I don’t care about.

Frankly, I’d almost prefer not to know what genre it is.

I don’t want to know if people liked it or not. All the spoilery grumbling about the latest series of TV shows I haven’t seen yet drives me spare.1 Could you put all commentary on Heroes behind a cut? Please. Be your best friend.

How do you lot feel about spoilers? And why? No spoilers in your examples! Thank you!

  1. And I almost always haven’t seen it yet. We travel so much we cannot commit to watching a show at the same time once a week. We tend to catch up with stuff on DVD because we’ve become addicted to watching a whole series over a couple of days. I hate having to wait a week between episodes. Bugger that! [↩]

A rant begins to brew

So I just stopped reading an ARC I was given a few book shops ago. It’s a YA by an author who’s only written for adults previously—it sucks. I’m sorry that’s as polite as I can get. The writer seems never to have read any other YA or ever met a teenager. The main character is very like this writer’s other main characters only dumber and way more obvious.1 I did not believe in this character. The book is patronising, annoying, and, frankly, boring.

Why do so many adults assume that writing for teens or children is going to be a doddle and turn off nine tenths of their brain to do it? What is that about? Why do they assume teenagers are stupid?

I hasten to add that there are adult writers who are a natural fit for YA. Alice Hoffman is one. Joyce Carol Oates and Elizabeth Knox are also splendid. But the vast majority of YA by adult authors makes me very very cross indeed. If I were not in a mad hurry I would write a long detailed rant about it.

  1. The character is so dumb and obvious that if they were meant to be a five year old it would still be insulting. [↩]

Rejection (updated)

David Oshinsky’s piece on rejection letters written by Knopf editors is most pleasing.1 It’s sobering, but also reassuring, to learn that some of the best and most popular books have been rejected. Perhaps, you tell yourself, I am in that company and some day I too will be discovered. Afterall, Rowling’s first Harry Potter book was rejected all over.

The Knopf editors and readers said “No!” to an astonishing array of legendary writers:

The [Knopf] rejection files, which run from the 1940s through the 1970s, include dismissive verdicts on the likes of Jorge Luis Borges (“utterly untranslatable”), Isaac Bashevis Singer (“It’s Poland and the rich Jews again”), Anaïs Nin (“There is no commercial advantage in acquiring her, and, in my opinion, no artistic”), Sylvia Plath (“There certainly isn’t enough genuine talent for us to take notice”) and Jack Kerouac (“His frenetic and scrambling prose perfectly express the feverish travels of the Beat Generation. But is that enough? I don’t think so”). In a two-year stretch beginning in 1955, Knopf turned down manuscripts by Jean-Paul Sartre, Mordecai Richler, and the historians A. J. P. Taylor and Barbara Tuchman, not to mention Vladimir Nabokov’s “Lolita” (too racy) and James Baldwin’s “Giovanni’s Room” (“hopelessly bad”).

It’s easy to look at this list and think, “The fools!” But then I think of the published books I’d’ve passed on were I an editor. There would be so very many of them!

Anything by Henry Miller or Charles Bukowski would’ve gotten a big old no. So would Moby Dick. Stupid boring doorstop! Not to mention the Gormenghast books. I’ve tried to read them a billion times and can never get past the first few chapters. Boooooring!

I would also have said no to a number of huge selling YAs over the years, not to mention many many many bestselling fantasy series. And even more bestsellers on the adult fiction list. I’m so sad I can’t name living writers . . .

If it’d been up to me Isaac Asimov would never have found his way into print. Not his fiction anyway. I adore his letters. Nor would there have been any Lensmen or anything by A. E. Van Vogt. In fact, classic American sf of the thirties and forties would be looking very very anaemic after I’d got done with it. (Which would have made writing my thesis about bad science fiction tricky to say the least. On the other hand, then I wouldn’t have spent four years reading some of the worst dreck imaginable . . . )

The Pilgrim’s Progress I’d’ve rejected before I got past the first page. Same with The Woman in White. Blerk! There’d be no Agatha Christie or Sherlock Holmes (sorry, Maureen, and all the Holmes fanatics who will now no longer read my blog).

Wow. This is way too much fun. Now, I’m starting to compose mean rejection letters:

Dear Mr Henry Miller,

It is with no regret at all that I decline to publish The Tropic of Cancer. This isn’t a novel—it’s a vicious and self-aggrandizing tediously boring tract. It’s possible, though unlikely, that there may be persons other than yourself who are interested in the size of your bed flute. This editor, however, is not one of them.

Might I suggest you seek counselling immediately? Your misogyny is so out of control that if you don’t seek help you will wind up in gaol for some vile crime committed against your poor wife. Her, I have written to recommend a good divorce lawyer.

Your sincerely etc.

Sadly, as the list above demonstrates, one “No!”—sometimes even dozens of them—is not enough to keep a book out of print. Even if I could go back in time I could not have saved the world from Henry Miller. Not unless I shot him before he wrote a word but, as we have established, killing people is wrong.

Update: This update is for the angry people sending me nasty emails who appear to have missed my point. I will be boringly explicit: Tastes vary. That is my point. No editor in the world will like every book no matter how fabulous. They buy books to suit their tastes and their publishing list. Thus they pass on what many consider genius. Sometimes those editors regret their decision, sometimes they don’t. No book or writer is universally loved.

I happen to really dislike cosies and most procedurals thus Sherlock Holmes bores me. Fortunately we live in a complex world with varied tastes. I would not like to live in a world where I had the final say on all books published. Nor would I like to live in a world where any one person had that power. Especially certain friends of mine because then we’d have no Angela Carter or Raymond Chandler or Jean Rhys or Walter Mosley or Lisa Saint Aubin de Teran or Flowers in the Attic.

Just so you know “Sherlock Holmes” and associated words are in my kill file. No angry letters about him will get through to me.

Note to self: Never diss Sherlock Holmes in public.

I am now very very very certain that my policy of never dissing living writers is a wise one.

  1. Thanks Literaticat for pointing it out. [↩]

Say no to SFWA

Here’s why I will never join SFWA:

The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America has used the Digital Millennium Copyright Act to fraudulently remove numerous non-infringing works from Scribd, a site that allows the general public to share text files with one another in much the same way that Flickr allows its users to share pictures.

Included in the takedown were: a junior high teacher’s bibliography of works that will excite children about reading sf, the back-catalog of a magazine called Ray Gun Revival, books by other authors who have never authorized SFWA to act on their behalf, such as Bruce Sterling, and my own [Cory Doctorow’s] Creative Commons-licensed novel, “Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom.”

SFWA’s attitude to copyright has stepped over the line from luddite into barking mad. As a writer I love my fans. Adore them! I wish I had way more of them. Why on Earth would I join an organisation that is hellbent on prosecuting them? I completely agree with Cory Doctorow.

(Frivolous) things I hate

Because today I must share the negativity, a list of my current hates:

  • Referees who only seem to see the fouls committed by my team
  • Bill Laimbeer1
  • Friends who are always late—especially when we’re meeting for dinner and I’m starving and the stupid restaurant won’t seat us until the entire party is there
  • Restaurants that won’t seat you until the entire party is there—What gives? The table is empty and just sitting there. We’ll order stuff. Lots of it! You’ll make more money off us if you seat us straight away. What does not seating achieve except to make us really really really pissed off at you for keeping us hanging in the crowded, noisy bar area?
  • People who never answer the important emails I send them2
  • email
  • Microsoft Word
  • Computers
  • good bloggers who don’t blog every day
  • Bad bloggers who do blog every day
  • Books with female protags who are helpless and passive and can’t walk two steps without falling over
  • Badly written crappy books that sell millions or everyone else I know seem to think are the best books ever. You are all very very wrong! Stop buying crap!
  • Plane travel3
  • People who feel they must share how much they hate sport (and the people who like it) when the conversation has just been all about sport and clearly the other people in the convo love sport. There are other people who share your opinions—go talk to them!
  • People who love the Connecticut Sun
  • The Connecticut Sun
  • ESPN for showing little league baseball instead of most of the Indiana-Connecticut game and right now for showing women’s golf instead of the start of the Phoenix-Seattle game. You suck ESPN!
  • Running out of nectarines
  • AFDs
  1. Though I do love hating him. Don’t ever change, Bill! You were eerily calm and unaggro during today’s game. A game where you don’t get a technical foul is a just plain wrong. [↩]
  2. I am aware that my email responses have been, um, less than optimal this year, but I’m busy! The people who are sposed to be responding to me but don’t are lazy goodfornothings. It’s totally different. [↩]
  3. Have I mentioned how happy I am that we’re going to Atlanta by train? [↩]

Adults and YA books

For obvious reasons I keep an eye on reviews of YA books—both online and offline, in magazines, journals, and blogs. And I gotta tell you reviews written by adults are close to collapsing under the weight of their insane expectations about what YA books should do and rigid ideas about what teenagers are like. Apparently humans only become diverse when they turn twenty. Teenagers, it seems, are all the same.

I’m not going to link to any of the examples I give below because this is not about beating up on any one particular reviewer. Nor will I identify the books on account of that would only help identify the dodgy reviews. I have employed exaggeration and caricature to further disguise some of my examples.

I just came across a review that dismissed a book because it had a character in it who has sex and doesn’t die or suffer any other dire consequences. Except that the character in question turns into a monster courtesy of having sex. Quite a horrible consequence I would have thought. That aside—really? YA books have to show sex as evil and wrong?

One felt the use of swear words in the book in question was inappropriate because teens don’t talk like that. The irony was that of the two words singled out, one didn’t appear in the book at all, and the other wasn’t used anywhere in the dialogue of the teenage characters.

Another reviewer automatically dismissed all YA books with unhappy endings. Teenagers don’t need grimness, this reviewer opined, they need sunshine and rainbows and lollipops. One of the books this reviewer didn’t like ended with the fifteen-year-old female protag being stronger and more sure of who she was in the world but without a boyfriend. Fifteen years old and no man of her own? Yes, what a horribly unhappy ending that is.

My favourite one complained that using contractions in the dialogue of teenagers was jarring because teenagers don’t—I am sorry, do not—speak like that. Huh? Does anyone speak without using contractions? Other than robots, I mean.

Another reviewer panned a book because it offered no moral lessons. Since the book featured a protag dealing with an addict parent and learning to take care of themself, their addict parent, and their siblings, and showing much resilience, fortitude and guts in the process, I couldn’t help but be bewildered by the reviewer’s objection.

Billions of reviewers objected to books that were too smart, sophisticated, or adult for teenagers because teenagers, apparently, don’t think about sex, or philopsophy, or social injustice, and they definitely never question the way things are.

Billions of other reviewers worried that YA books are too stupid and trashy for teenagers and teach them the wrong lessons about consumerism.

From all these reviews I learned that teenagers are robots who don’t swear or speak in contractions or have sex and they read books only in order to learn moral lessons which, as robots they desperately need. Cause how does a robot become a model human adult without an instruction manual?

I will adjust the book I am working on accordingly.

P.S. I apologise for the contractions used in this post which may encourage teenagers to start using them too. However, I’m an adult and we can’t help ourselves.

Spelling (updated)

I am not a great speller. I wouldn’t say I was a terrible speller either, but I doubt I’d get many rounds into a spelling bee. I subscribe to two online dictionaries—the Macquarie and the OED—so I can check and double check words that look wrong to me1. For the last few years many words have looked wrong. Mostly because I spend part of my life in a country that spells differently from where I grew up. I don’t think it would be an issue if I were a solid speller, but because I’m not I live in a state of constant confusion.

I am not alone. I know lots of writers who are only av. spellers like me. I know a few who are TERRIBLE. I will not name them—they know who they are. Hello, Sarah! But, for example, Samuel R. Delany is dyslexic. Great writer, not so great speller.

I bring this up because I keep seeing over and over again in flamey online writing discussions people declaring that someone else will never make it as a writer because they can’t spell.

Rubbish.

Usually the comment they’re responding to is terrible for lots of reasons, such as badly constructed sentences, being illogical, ungrammatical, as well as poorly spelled. If the sentences were gorge, made sense, and were grammatical, a few wrong spellings wouldn’t be that big a deal. They’re not when you hand your ms. into your editor.

Also, hastily written, off the cuff comments and emails do not equal a polished gone-over-a-billion-times manuscript.

I truly doubt that an agent or editor—unless they’re totally pedantic crazy people—would pass on a genius ms. because it had some spelling issues.

Not being able to spell does not make you a bad person or a bad writer. It is not a moral failing. It just makes life a little bit harder for your copyeditor and proofreader.

Update: Okay, this is an irritable update as people seem to be thinking that I am saying there’s no need to proofread work before submitting. Au contraire! Of course you proof your work and get other people to look at it before submitting. Especially if you’re a crap speller. All I’m saying is a career as a writer is feasible even for those of us who can’t spell.

  1. Oh, okay and so I can spend hours finding out if “grunch” and “flird” etc. are real words. [↩]

Money writing advice

Someone wrote to Victoria Strauss over at Writers Beware asking for advice on pursuing writing as a career. Namely will it make me money?

Strauss was honest about what a hit-and-miss career writing is and how the vast majority of pro writers do not make a lot of money. Her respondee did not take kindly to the truth and wrote to Strauss to tell her that he was

not worried about your discouragement. I understand, the history of the human race is but a brief spot in time, and its first lesson is modesty, but some people are better than others. I wouldn’t discourage anybody from having high ambitions, because the good of their success outweighs the bad of their failure. The successful ones always tell everybody to be more ambitious, which is why I think you’re biased and your judgement cannot altogether be respected.

Aside from this being a breathtakingly rude response to someone who’s gone out of their way to give an honest answer the layers of delusions are breathtaking. How is telling someone the truth discouraging someone from being ambitious? If you want to be a writer the odds are that you will not make much money. Best to know that straight away because if that’s your main motivation then you’d be better off playing the stock market or getting a law degree or becoming a plumber or finding a rich spouse.

I’ve been asked the money question by aspiring writers many times during my brief career (I’ve been a full-time writer only four years) and like Victoria Strauss’s correspondent they really don’t want to hear the truth. They want success stories. They want to be told that they will sell their first novel for six figures.

They might. I know one first timer who did. But the vast majority of first-novel advances I’ve heard of have been under twenty grand. Way under. Mine was. Scott’s was. Garth Nix’s was. So was J. K. Rowling’s.

If you don’t believe me subscribe to Publisher’s Lunch. Start counting how many of those debut novel deals are anything other than “nice” deals ($1-$49,000). Make sure to check how many books are in the deal. A “good” deal ($100,000 – $250,000) sounds fabulous but often those deals are for at least three books. I’ve seen a six-book “nice” deal which means the author got at most $8,000 a book.

Strauss’s questioner ends by telling her:

And if you don’t get it, maybe that’s why you’re not very successful. Write until your words bleed. I don’t see that color in your prose.

His notion of success is all tied up with money and he has the hide to hell Strauss that she’s not a success? He hasn’t sold a book; she’s published many. The only thing Strauss is not a success at is telling him what he wants to hear: you, sir, are the chosen one who will earn gazillions.

Hard work has a lot to do with success (though bleeding really isn’t necessary) but I know plenty of hardworking writers who don’t earn enough to support themselves, not to mention all the hard workers who’ve never made it into print. Talent and hard work are very necessary, but to make the big bucks luck is essential.

You can be a very successful writer—well reviewed, award winning, decent sales—and earn only 30 thou or less a year. The majority of pro writers would be over the moon to be earning that much year in and year out. Money for writers is low and erratic. It’s August and I’ve been paid about $4,000 for my writing this year. I’m owed more but who knows when it will come? That’s the writer’s life right there. Just like any other freelancer.

Besides what is a successful writer? There are many genius writers who made bugger-all writing during their lifetimes. You can’t tell me that Joseph Conrad and Emily Dickinson and Philip K. Dick weren’t successes. They’re still in print and they’re still read unlike gazillions of best sellers over the years. Who’s reading Coningsby Dawson and Warwick Deeping now?

Why head hopping is good

Ages ago I ranted against those who say that switching point of views is evil and wrong. I did not give any examples demonstrating when pov switching not only works, but makes a scene a billion times more effective than it would have been trapped in one pov only.

So here is one. And from a fellow Australian, naturally:

There was more talk, more laughter. One moment Arabella thought that he would walk away with the other men. The next Lord Petre feared that she would turn back to the box with Miss Blount, and that his chance would be lost. The chance for what, he could not say. Neither of them heard a word of the conversation; each of them looked for a reason to address the other. They both wished, vainly, that everybody would go away. At last, as the audience began returning to their seats, they found themselves face-to-face. Lord Petre stood mute, looking at Arabella intently. She struggled for a pleasantry to break their silence.

—Sophie Gee The Scandal of the Season

No writing technique is evil and wrong. It’s all about the execution.

Matter of taste

Someone just told me I’m wrong about Bring It On being the best movie of all time. Excuse me? If I say it is then it is! This is my personal list of the best movies of all time. I cannot be wrong about it.

I’m not saying there aren’t other best movies of all time. There are! The Princess Bride is one. Rififi is another. Not to mention Out of the Past and Lagaan.

I am also not wrong about mangosteens being the best fruit.

Or The Wire being the best television.

Or Emma and Hellsing and anything by Osamu Tezuka being the best manga.

Or zombies being the best monsters.

And cricket absolutely is the best sport.

So nyer!

Though, of course, I reserve the right to tell you that your choices of best movie etc of all time is completely wrong. Because I am blog overlord.

Not YA

Last year there was a fair amount of debate about whether M. T. Anderson’s Octavian Nothing is YA or not. Personally, I think it is, but I can see where those you don’t are coming from. You can make a case either way. Octavian fulfills my requirements for YA.

I just finished a book which doesn’t fulfill those requirements even though it’s being sold as YA. Like Octavian Nothing, Margo Rabb’s Cures for Heartbreak is a gorgeously written, deeply moving book. I loved it.

I just don’t think it’s a young adult book.

Here’s why:

The protag is not a teenager. She’s someone in her thirties looking back on her teenage years and how she coped. This gives the book a distant, elegiac quality, which fits the subject matter perfectly, but means that the book is not ya.

YA is not a detached genre. It’s the very opposite of detached. It’s about heightened emotions, out of control situations, learning to be yourself and how you fit into the world. Mia Pearlman is looking back on those heightened emotions, on her loss—she’s examining and dissecting those feelings, but in a controlled, almost clinical way. When I read YA I want to be in the protag’s head feeling what’s going on there without a strong sense of those experiences being mediated.

Obviously, that’s an illusion—there’s always the writer in the way—but to me that “transparency” of experience is one of the hallmarks of YA—it’s what makes Octavian Nothing YA—and if it’s not there I feel like I’m reading something else. One of those adult novels.

Who else has read it? What did you think?

To reiterate: I strongly recommend Cures for Heartbreak. It’s an extraordinary examination of grief and suffering. And a really beautifully evoked portrait of New York City. I loved it. But it’s not YA.

Air travel suckage

Today there is a most excellent article in The New York Times about just how bad flying in the US is. Delays are up by 39% this year and that’s based on the airlines’ stats which everyone says are deeply wrong:

As anyone who has flown recently can probably tell you, delays are getting worse this year. The on-time performance of airlines has reached an all-time low, but even the official numbers do not begin to capture the severity of the problem.

That is because these statistics track how late airplanes are, not how late passengers are. The longest delays—those resulting from missed connections and canceled flights—involve sitting around for hours or even days in airports and hotels and do not officially get counted. Researchers and consumer advocates have taken notice and urged more accurate reporting.

The vast majority of internal US flights I’ve taken in the last four years have been delayed or cancelled or our lugguage has been lost. We’ve even managed to have all three happen on the same trip. Now when I book tickets, I first check to see if there’s a train I can take instead, then I do whatever I can to make sure it’s a direct flight (thus no missed connections) and that it leaves in the morning. Because if your flight is cancelled and it’s later in the day no way are you getting on another one until the next day.

It’s reassuring to know that my experiences are in no way unique. Air travel in the US is falling apart. The delays, cancellations, lost luggage aren’t even the worst of it. Dealing with the often grumpy airline employees makes everything a thousand times more horrible. It’s totally understandable that they’re unhappy—they’re underpaid and overworked and spend all day dealing with seriously pissed off people. It has to be one of the worst jobs in the world. And yet the crankier we are, the crankier they are, and it becomes an ever spiralling thing.

I am so very very glad we’re taking the DragonTrain to DragonCon. And that it’s a hundred days or so before I have to endure more air travel.

Different eyes

I just read five reviews of the same book.1 One praised the sharpness of the dialogue.2 Another said it was sloppy and the dialogue disconnected. One said it was the best book of its kind published this year. And another hoped that this was the limit to how low the genre could descend. The fifth neither loved nor hated it.

I was given an ARC of this particular book. I stopped reading after the first four pages because I found it cliched, derivative and boring. In particular, it’s a very mediocre pastiche of a writer I happen to love. That’s another reason I stopped reading and re-read a book by that author instead.

The book is now on one of the New York Times bestseller lists. I won’t tell you which, except to say it’s a list I’ll never be on. (Not that I fancy my chances getting on any of the lists I’m eligible for. Not writing tickets. Honest!)

This left me wondering (yet again) how very differently we all read. We can pick up the exact same book and find entirely different things in it. So much is shaped by what you’ve already read. Like my dislke of the book being fed by its marked similarities to the much better writer. I raised that point with someone I know who loves the book in question and they said they thought it was better than the original writer. To which I could only splutter, “Are you barking mad?!”

I have never met anyone I agree with about everything. Scott and I come pretty close. But he thinks American Beauty is a good movie. And does not love Elvis the way I do or, actually, in any kind of way. I guess it would be dull if we agreed about everything.

And yet I am still shocked every time someone (whose opinion I respect) hates something I love. Or loves something I hate.

And when I hate something that everyone else seems to love—like a certain Printz honour book from a few years back—it feel strange and uncomfortable.

You’d think that reading all the reviews of my own books (which range from over-the-top praise through to appalled condemnation of their awfulness, paper-thin characters and condescending language) would have finally hammered home how variable and contradictory people’s responses are.

Nope.

Intellectually I get it; emotionally I don’t. I’m starting to wonder if I ever will.

People, why can’t you all just think like me?

  1. Nope. Not telling you the name of the book. [↩]
  2. I’m not using the exact language of the reviews in case you were thinking of googling to figure out what the book is. [↩]

Self-indulgent autobiographies

Okay, the next person I hear accusing an autobiography or memoir writer of being self-indulgent gets a smack in the head, or—because violence is wrong—a pointed glare.

See the “auto” in front of “biography”? That means it’s about the person who wrote it. Very tricky to write one of those and not, you know, talk about yourself.

Quessies for New Yorkers

Anyone know where I can buy preserved lemons (Morrocan style)? (Yes, I know I can get them online, but I like to shop in real life with actual people. I also know I could make ’em but I ain’t in the mood for sterilising jars.)

I’m also looking for Thai herbs like pak chii farang and pandanus leaf. And, yes, I’ve tried Chinatown. Couldn’t see ’em anywhere and no one knew what I was talking about.

And how about plain old chervil? (The places round here haven’t even heard of chervil. Is there some strange USian word for chervil I don’t know about? I googled and came up with chervil being chervil. So how come no one knows what it is?)

I’m in the East Village and am hoping not to have to travel too far to get these essentials.

In Sydney these are readily available so I’m cranky with NYC right now. I am hoping that they’re easy to find here too and it’s just that I don’t know where to find them. Otherwise I will start kicking NYC. Also pouting. Lots of pouting.

David Levithan: Vampire Slayer

The wonderful speech that David Levithan gave at Reading Matters is now available as a podcast. You all should listen to this passionate, galvanising call to arms that left most everyone wanting to go out and slay vampires right that very minute. Or, you know, get the books that kids need into their hands.

I’m still mulling over my response to David’s call to arms. On the one hand, I think he’s totally right. On the other, it’s so annoying to have a foreignor come in, spend a few minutes in the country, and then tell us Aussies what to do! We hates it, we do. Especially when they’re right . . .

isp woes

Yes, my site has been down on and off since Friday. Ditto my email. Yes, it has driven me insane.

My apologies to anyone who’s been sending me urgent emails. I now have close to a thousand unread emails waiting for me.

Brave new world of faster and better technology, eh?

Bah, humbug.

New York Times suckage

New York has a sports team that’s opened its season with a five game winning streak, despite not even making the playoffs last year and no longer having its best and most popular player. How many column inches has the New York Times given this remarkable performance?

Pretty much none. Unless you count the teeny tiny AP reports.

This is because the team is the New York Liberty and it’s a women’s team. The New York Times is incapable of covering women’s basketball unless it’s a profile of a male coach. Especially if that male coach is ex-NBA and coaches a non-New York team.

The New York Daily has no problem covering the Liberty nor does the New York Post. What’s it going to take for the New York Times to send a reporter down to Madison Square Garden? A perfect season? Sex-change operations for the whole team? Pigs to fly? I understand it’s a hell of a hike from the Times’s headquarters to the Garden. They’d want a really good reason to have to travel so far.

Damn your sexist moronic eyes, New York Times!! Grrrr!!!

All in the mind

Someone just told me jetlag is all in the mind. This made me cranky because I have jetlag right now.

My head feels strange, almost hollow. The world is several metres away on the other side of some (slightly) warped plexiglass. Sound is taking several seconds too long to get to me. When people ask me questions I have to figure out first if they’re speaking English, then if they are, what they’re saying, by which time they’re staring at me as if I am a moron. Smiling or nodding does not dissipate the moron effect. When I have jetlag I suspect I am a moron.

What does “all in the mind” mean anyway?

A boss I once had told me that menstrual pain was all in the mind. She had never suffered from it and so doubted it existed. But if it did she was sure that only the mentally weak suffered from it. I didn’t punch her because that would have been wrong.

Nor did I tell her that just because she has never experienced cramps or jetlag or head aches or chronic fatigue syndrome does not mean they do not exist. I’ve heard some people say the same thing about sexism and racism. “I have not experienced these things therefore they do not exist and people who say they do exist are merely making excuses for themselves.”

I have never been to Russia but I’m pretty sure it’s real.

Isn’t all pain, indeed all sensation, experienced in the mind? So isn’t everything in the mind? Such as these people’s delusions that what they have not experienced does not exist.

Whatever “all in the mind” means the next person to tell me that jetlag doesn’t exist or to offer me crappy remedies that I’ve already bloody tried and don’t bloody work (and, no, I don’t care whether they work for you or your Great Aunt Tilda) will receive a long cranky rant.

You have all been warned.

Adelaide

Am in the pretty churchy city of Adelaide for a wedding. What larks. I love weddings! And these two crazy kids are great together. But internet access is not so much limited as BLOODY EXPENSIVE. Stupid gouging hotels! Colour me outraged.

So quickly: “gaol” is an another spelling of that place where people are locked up which is usually spelled “jail”. It ain’t slang. It used to be the only way the word was spelled but is on its way out. I cling to it out of love and perversity.

And thanks again for all the congrats on the Norton win. I can’t believe I’m still getting them! Yay! And an even bigger yay for the impact it’s had on my Amazon sales and my secret NYC bookseller friend who told me she has some people come in and ask for the Norton winner. Who knew?

Have any of you read any Jacqueline Wilson books? Some of you must have given that she’s sold gazillion billion trillion copies. I’ve been reading and really enjoying her Girls in Love books. Lovely.

And now I go before they demand my first born child.

I am remiss

I forgot to mention that Marcus Zusak was blogging on insideadog (I accidentally typed insideadag—Lili, I think we need a name change! Inside-a-dag is a much more accurate name for the writer-in-residence blog!) last month. Oops. You can still go over and read the archive.

This month it’s the fabulous Simmone Howell, whose debut novel, Notes from the Teenage Underground I gobbled up some time ago. Wonderful! You should all go over and say hi.

I’ve also been asked by a couple of folks to blog about the Paris-Hilton-in-gaol thing. I have no idea why anyone would want my opinion on that. I try as much as possible not to think about the Paris Hiltons of the world when there are far more interesting and talented people out there like Lindsay Lohan.

Do I think she should go to gaol?

That’s kind of complicated. I’m not convinced that gaols are the best places for rehabilitation of wrongdoers. But I certainly don’t want rich people to be treated any differently to anyone else. So, yes, she should disappear from view for 45 days. But mostly I kind of don’t care.

What I really want is for her to disappear from view for a lot longer than 45 days. For no one to have heard of her. I know we don’t live in a meritocracy, but I really really wish we did. I’m sick of vast amounts of press being given over to people who don’t actually do anything like Paris Hilton or the British royals. Who cares what Diana’s little boys are up to? And why? What a waste of words, pixels and space. Gah.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not against gossip. I loves it. I just wish we confined ourselves to gossiping about the people we know and people who do stuff not people who happen to be famous solely because they managed the tremendously difficult task of being born.

Thus endeth the rant.

Top 10 Reasons Banning Books is a Bad Idea

10. It upsets the writers what wrote the books.

9. It upsets the readers what want to read the books.

8. It makes the books cry and books are very sensitive.

7. If you really want people not to read a book, banning it will have the opposite effect.

6. If the content of a book offends you there are more effective ways to deal with your offendedness. Like, you know, engaging with it. Maureen Dowd’s columns frequently drive me spare, but I don’t try to get them banned, I argue against them.

5. Besides banning books does not make them go away. Just ask Chris Crutcher.

4. Banning books might make you feel like you’re in control, but it actually screams of lack of control. You think you can control input but you can’t. Banned books have a way of being passed around mightily and promoted during banned book week and gaining a whole other life they might not otherwise have had.

3. Banning books, you know, it kind of doesn’t encourage literacy. Last time I looked literacy was a good thing that goes hand in hand with increased life expectancy, education, living standards. Little stuff like that.

2. It’s a short step from banning books to wanting to burn ’em. People who burn books, well that is not company you want to keep.

1. Book banning clashes with everything in your wardrobe. Every. Single. Thing.

Another book banned (updated)

Maureen Johnson‘s excellent and extremely clean (no sex or violence) book, The Bermudez Triangle has just been banned in a school in Bartlesville, Oklahoma because it is about (among many other things) two girls who fall in love.

A parent read it, hated it and complained, demanding it be removed from the shelves and suggested the bible as a replacement. I’m very fond of the bible myself, but it has way more sex and violence than Maureen’s book. There’s incest in the bible, people!

There’s also excellent bits like this:

“There is no longer male nor female, bond nor free, Jew nor Gentile, for we are all equal in Jesus Christ.”

—Galatians 3:28

I believe that includes homosexuals as well as heterosexuals.

If anyone who reads this is from Bartlesville, Oklahoma and cares about first amendment rights, you are in a position to be able to complain to the school and to the local newspapers. I really hope you will. Bermudez Triangle is a lovely warm book about the importance of friendship.

For the rest of us, I think now would be a really good time to invest in a copy of Maureen’s book. She’s a wonderful writer and it’s a wonderful book.

Update: Maryrose Wood eloquently explains what the first amendment means when a book is banned in the US of A.

Genetic gifts

I seem to have rolled out of the ranty side of the bed every morning this week. First I was peeing on the eighties and now I am cranky on account of a particularly stupid thing that was said to me about basketball.

Viz, “I can’t stand basketball. It’s just a bunch overpaid genetic freaks running around with a ball. Who cares?”

As I had just been talking about the joys of my season tickets to the New York Liberty, I clearly care, and you, Mr Shorty Bald man, were being very rude. I poke my tongue out at you!

But that’s not what’s raised my ire, nope, it’s the phrase “genetic freaks”.

So, what are you supposed to do if you’re naturally good at a sport? If you’re built with extra long legs and arms, super-quick reflexes, or extra-big capacity lungs, and happen to enjoy working hard at the particular sport your genetic advantages suit you for? Huh? Work in a circus? Become an accountant? Cut your legs off so you don’t freak out people who are shorter than you?

Show me a professional sport that doesn’t have freakishly talented people playing in it. That’s what pro sports are about: talent (genetic freaks) and hard work. Cause you can be the tallest person in the world but if you can’t run up and down that court, or handle a ball, or get your shots to sink, then you are not going to be playing pro ball. End of story.

Besides show me exceptional people in any field who aren’t in some way genetically gifted. Doesn’t being super smart also mean you won the genetic lottery? Why don’t the top physicists and mathematicians and philosophers piss you off? Aren’t they genetic freaks too for being massively smarter than you the way basketballers are massively taller than you?

And anyway there are pro basketballers who are shorter than you, like Nate Robinson, Mugsy Bogues, Debbie Black and Becky Hammon. (Though maybe Becky’s a little taller than you. My bad.)

Okay, I feel much better now. Why couldn’t I think of any of these responses at the time? Stupid slow brain.

Yours rantily,

Justine

Stop it already

The next Young Adult book I read where all the pop culture refs are from the 1980s when it’s supposed to be set now, well, that book I set on fire.1

I’ve had it with these lazy authors. You wanna write about your teenage years? Then bloody set it then! You’re allowed. There’s no law that says it has to be set in the here and now.

I can buy one or two characters who are obsessed with the eighties (though I have no idea why they would be but, hey, I hear some people are obsessed with cars, and Englishmen, and chewing gum wrappers—people are weird) but I cannot buy an entire novel set in the 2000s where all popular culture came to a grinding halt in 1990. A world without reality TV, manga,2 Micheal Hussey, Antony & the Johnsons, Beyonce, Brokeback Mountain, Harry Potter or Meg Cabot. C’mon already!

Your development may have arrested back then but the world has moved on. Try to reflect that in your novels set NOW. It’s not too much to ask, is it?

Grrr. Bloody buggery eighties. They sucked. I was there. I know.

Is there anything you keep seeing over and over in a particular genre that drives you insane? Rant away! (Though try not to name specific writers. You know how I feel about making writers cry.)

  1. Carbon emissions be damned. (I don’t really mean that. Honest.) [↩]
  2. I know manga existed and was popular in the eighties but not the way it is now. [↩]

Yay! Aargh! Woohoo! Eep!

I have like a gazillion billion trakazillion emails in my inbox. This is the first chance I’ve had to go online in almost three days. It’s been crazy busy and exhilarating and fabulous and every big positive happy adjective you can think of.

San Antonio is wondrous. The Texas Library Association conference has been so extraordinarily wonderful I’m left without words. I’ve met so many amazing, fun, smart cool people I think my brain has exploded. Thank you everyone! Yay! Joy! Mangosteens! This trip has also been very educational: I know now how boots are made and have a much better idea of what distributors do.

Scott and mine’s presentation in front of what seemed like thousands of librarians, including Scott’s high school librarian, Darlene, was exhilarating. I’ve never had so much fun doing an appearance. Basically we just gasbagged about how we met, our books, writing, travelling, living in two countries, and answered lots of cool questions from the wonderful audience.

Then we signed what felt like a million books. I think I’m still floating.

To quickly answer two of your questions:

The beasts that shall not be named are evil. That is all you need to know. What do they need that horn for anyway?

Maureen is also evil and you should not do what she tells you to do.

Friday the thirteenth is excellent. Zombies love it. But yesterday’s was the best ever!

Of fans and geeks

El and Rachel Brown correctly surmised that the fan half of my question was inspired by the bruhaha about whether John Scalzi should be nominated for a fan writing Hugo or not.

For the record: yes, Scalzi should, and I hope he wins for all the reasons that have been described in great detail here, here and here. I’m also not comfortable with people telling other people that they are or aren’t “fans” or “geeks” or anything else. Those are the kind of labels you get to choose for yourself.

The geek half was inspired by my being asked to contribute a story to an anthology about geeks and geekery. My instant response was to say, “No.” Not just because I can’t write short stories, but because I couldn’t begin to think of a geeky story. (Plus no way am I biting the head off a chicken. Ewww.)

Also I was just curious about how you lot define those words. Part of what’s interesting in the great Is-Scalzi-a-Fan debate is that there were so many different definitions of what a “fan” is, which led to much talking at cross purposes. Seems thesame is true of “geek”. Veronica defined it the way I would, but Cecil defined it the way I would define “fan”.

A number of people take “fan” to mean someone who loves something uncritically. I can’t help but laugh at that when I think of the number of letters I’ve had from self-proclaimed Magic or Madness fans who tell me in minute detail the stuff they don’t like about the trilogy, just as much as the stuff they do. Clearly, these are slippery, slippery terms.

Thanks everyone for such fascinating responses.

So why do I call myself a fan but not a geek?

Let’s take the word “fan” first. I’m not a fan of science fiction, which may sound odd for someone who did a Phd on it, which became a book. To be honest the whole PhD thing was never a passion. All I’ve ever wanted to do is be a writer, but as everyone knows there’s no money in that, so I went for an academic career to support my writing habit. The subject of my PhD was an accident. I’d read sf as a kid but I’d read lots of other things too and, honestly, I think the vast majority of sf (film, television or film) is on the nose. Many of the so-called classics of the genre like the work of Isaac Asimov or Arthur C. Clarke or Star Trek or Blade Runner leave me cold.

It’s the world building that does it for me with science fiction, being transported to somewhere that is not like the world I know. I get that just as readily from books about places I’m unfamiliar with: Japanese crime books fascinate me; Australian ones not so much. I also get that button pressed by books from the past (Jane Austen, Tale of Genji,1 Elizabeth Gaskell, Miles Franklin et al) historicals, fantasy, westerns and so on. Raymond Chandler, Patricia Highsmith and Jim Thompson create worlds that are almost completely alien to me. I adore their work.

I love the writings of Samuel R. Delany and Maureen McHugh and Ursula K. Le Guin. But I’m not convinced that it’s the science fictioness of their work that does it for me. I’m just as happy when they’re writing fantasy or memoirs or criticism or blogging or whatever else they choose to write. I love the way they string their words and sentences and paragraphs together. Yum.

If I were to be banned from reading one genre it would be less of a hardship for me if that genre were sf rather than fantasy or historicals. (Naturally, I exempt manga from all these categories.)

I’m also not a fan in the sense that Ulrika is talking about. That is I’m not a member of a community that came together around a love of science fiction in the late 1930s and is still going strong today. Or am I? I definitely feel like I’m a part of the WisCon community. For years I helped with the running of that particular science fiction convention. I was on the ConCom. Can you get much more fannish than that? And, like John Scalzi, I feel very much at home with many members of the science fiction community who definitely consider themselves to be fans.

However, I’ve never written fanfiction. So I’m not part of that thriving aspect of fandom. Nor do I read it. Though there are definitely books and stories I love, like The Wide Sargasso Sea, that are a kind of fanfiction—but the kind that plays around with out of copyright texts and thus gets to be published.

I’m happy to call myself a fan not just because of the WisCon thing, but because there are a lots of things I love. Elvis Presley’s voice. Cricket. Madeleine Vionnet and Hussein Chalayan’s clothes. The writing of way too many people to list here. I love Bring It On and Deadwood and Blue Murder and My Brilliant Career and ES and Nana and Osamu Tezuka and mangosteens and the food of countries like Spain and Mexico and Thailand and Japan and Italy and Ethiopia and the great wines of Australia and New Zealand and Argentina and South Africa and Italy and France and Spain and many other places.

I don’t think the word “fan” implies uncritical love. There are clothes of Vionnet and Chalayan’s that I think are naff, Cricket matches that bore me, Angela Carter books ditto, and Spanish food and French wine I’ve had to spit out.

So why aren’t I geek?

First up, the word is American and doesn’t have much resonance for me. I never heard it as a kid nor “nerd” neither. Not outside of a John Hughes movie. (That’s not true of younger Aussies.)

The people I know who are self-described nerds or geeks have passions for stuff that bores me. Video games, role-playing games, board games and the insides of computers. I have many friends who are into these things and, well, I am not like them in this regard. I do not know what “chaotic good” is, even though Scott’s explained it to me like a hundred times.

I’ve had flirtations with various computer games over the years, but my attention span for them is microscopic, and ulimately I’d much rather be reading a book.

Once I got into Go for about a year, to the extent that I was playing it with a bunch of Go fanatics on servers in Korea, and reading books on it. But it was largely research for a novel I was writing. When I finished writing the book my interest in playing Go lapsed. It’s still by far the best game I’ve ever played, but I doubt I’d even remember how anymore. I haven’t played since 1999.

Many of my geeky friends are also collectors.

I hate stuff. I spend a large chunk of my life recycling and throwing stuff out. I hate things that sit on the mantlepiece and serve no purpose other than to collect dust. I see no point in them. Nor in stuffed animals, or dolls, or collectable cards, or any of that. I love cricket but I have no desire for cricket stuff cluttering up my house and am endlessly giving away the cricket tat people give me (clothes excluded).

If I collect anything, it’s books, but I cull them ruthlessly and often. If I’m not going to reread it, or I’ve had it for more than a year without even cracking the spine and there seems little likelihood that I will, then out the book goes.

Also I have a terrible memory. Always have had. I can’t tell you what year Bring it On came out, or who directed it, or who all the actors are without looking it up. I have to read a book a billion times before I can remember any details about it and even then I’m pretty crap. I just did a test on Pride and Prejudice I don’t think I’ve read any book more times than that one. I got 5 out of 10. I would not be able to tell an original Vionnet gown from a knock off. I do not have the trainspotting gene.

So, yes to “fan” and to “enthusiast” (thanks, Bennett), no to “geek” or “nerd”. I’m also quite happy to be called a “dag”. Yes, I am also a “spaz”. (Though, Christopher, I say to you: Know thyself!) And “dilettante”? Oh, yes, that’s me. I have the attention span of a gnat.2

  1. I confess I have never finished The Tale of Genji despite repeated attempts. The bits I’ve read have been fabulous. It’s just that the book is so damned heavy and hard to read in bed. I know, I know . . . dilettante. [↩]
  2. Except for blogging, apparently. Bugger but this was a long post . . . Sorry! [↩]

Idiocy

I was going to rant all over my blog today about the bloody ICC‘s idiotic decision to demand that youtube take down all footage from the World Cup. But then I found this excellent rant that says everything I want to say. Here’s a taste of Andrew Miller’s wrath:

Only three days ago it was suggested on this website that the events of the past week might serve as a wake-up call for cricket’s fiscally obsessed powerbrokers. Fat chance. A game run increasingly by lawyers for lawyers, has deemed it necessary to go to war on the very online enthusiasts who can spread the word of a game whose reputation has been dragged through the mincer.

It is an astoundingly short-sighted decision by a ruling body that has once again shown it is completely lacking in a sense of priorities. God knows that cricket could do with some good publicity at present. Only 24 hours ago, the ICC’s Lawyer-in-Chief, Malcolm Speed, was telling Cricinfo how wonderful the match between Australia and South Africa at St Kitts was turning out to be. “Let’s all just watch the cricket,” he suggested when queried about the latest murmurings about Bob Woolmer’s death. Mal, we’d love to. But 75% of your global audience have no means of tuning in.

Yes, that’s right the ICC is so money-grubbing that they sold off the TV rights to cable channels which the majority of cricket lovers in the UK and Australia can’t afford. Cable in those countries is crazy overpriced and—other than covering the cricket—crap. Trust me, I pony up the dosh specifically to watch the cricket. And the cricket is the beginning and the end of what’s good on cable. For most cricket fans youtube is the only way to catch glimpses—and it is only glimpses—of the World Cup.

When will all those moronic beaurocrats wake the hell up? I am so sick of copyright insanity. Colour me extremely bloody ropeable.

Quit it already

What is it with you people?

I tell you what an abomination in the sight of the Lord unicorns are and how much I love love love zombies and what do you do? You send me an endless stream of unicorn-related stuff. Gah!

Quit it already! No more!

Now zombie related links I’m all for. Fire away. Share your zombie love with me.

But the next person to so much as type or say the u-word anywhere near me? Well, that’s a paddlin’.

I hope I have made myself clear.

Perfect quote

Joan Didion1 is wise:

There was nothing I did not discuss with John.

Because we were both writers and both worked at home our days were filled with the sound of each other’s voices.

I did not always think he was right nor did he always think I was right but we were each the person the other trusted. There was no separation between our investments or interests in any given situation. Many people assumed that we must be, since sometimes one and sometimes the other would get the better review, the bigger advance, in some way “competitive”, that our private life must be a minefield of professional envies and resentments. This was so far from the case that the general insistence on it came to suggest certain lacunae in the popular understanding of marriage.

The only amendment I’d make is that it’s not just popular understandings of marriage but of any close relationships. Siblings and close friends are also popularly supposed to be in competition with one another.

I remember when me and two good friends were up for the same scholarship. One of them won. No one would believe that we were happy for her. They did not understand that we could be disappointed for ourselves and happy for her at the same time. Clearly they feared their heads would explode if they admitted that those two feelings could exist side by side.

To avert said head explosion they questioned us further, adding more “reallys?” and “are you sures?” to their questions. We kept saying that we weren’t jealous, that we were overjoyed for our friend. They changed tactics and accused us of protesting too much. We sighed and backed away.

What can you say when you are asked if you’re jealous of your parent/sibling/lover/spouse/best friend? It’s like being asked if you still beat your spouse.2 In fact, just writing this will convince some people that I’m being defensive. (Or that I’m still beating my spouse.)

This view of the world mystifies me. Mostly because in my experience people who see themselves as being in competition with you, who are cranky when you succeed, and rejoice when you fail are not your friends. They will not do good by you. Flee from them! Let me repeat because I think it’s really important:

People who are cranky when you succeed and rejoice when you fail are not your friends.

When someone asks me if I’m jealous or resentful of someone I care about it feels like they’re asking me to say that I’m not friends with that person. Which is why I find it such a weird question. I still haven’t figured out what to say to the people whose response to my boasting about the achievements of a loved one is to console me. Huh? It’s like we’re not living on the same planet.

Why do so many think spouses or siblings or best friends in the same profession are automatically in competition? Is it because movies such as A Star is Born have trained us to think that way? Are we confusing fictional narratives and plot devices with real life?

Because, me, I really don’t get it. Can any of you clue me in?

  1. The quote comes from her moving memoir of the aftermath of her husband’s death, The Year of Magical Thinking. [↩]
  2. For the record: I have never beaten Scott. Not unless he’s asked nicely. 🙂 However, I have on occasion told him he is a poo-head but only when he was totally being a poo-head. [↩]

Zombies, unicorns, scrotum (updated)

What have I started? Arguments about the relative merits of zombies and unicorns rage across the intramanets. And on each thread someone suggests the zombie-unicorn hybrid. Great minds think alike? Or fools seldom differ?

I was greatly distressed that lovely friends of mine like Holly Black, Cecil Castellucci, Meg McCarron and Literaticat have fallen pray to the false glittery charms of unicorns despite the fact that being virgin fascists unicorns would have nothing to do with them. I guess it falls into the whole desiring-what-you-can’t-have camp. Perhaps to resolve our issues Holly and I should collaborate on a Zombies vesus Unicorns novel? I will write the zombies and she can have the unicorns. Though I’m not sure how well that will work given that she won’t read about zombies and I won’t read about unicorns.

Some school librarians are saying that they won’t have Susan Patron’s Newbery Award-winning novel, THE HIGHER POWER OF LUCKY, in their library because it contains the word “scrotum” (in reference to a dog). Apparently “scrotum” is an offensive word. I had no idea. I thought it was an anatomical term for a part of the male body. I’ve never heard anyone use it as a swear word and I come from a swearing people.

The New York Times also covers the story but seems to think that authors sneak words like “scrotum” into their novels solely to offend.1 Um, what now? Rosemary Graham responds eloquently to the extremely unbalanced Times coverage. The best reporting on the whole story can be found at Publishers Weekly which points out the role Jordan Sonnenblick and Asif! had in drawing attention to it.

I write novels to tell the best stories I can for teenagers. I try very hard to write characters who are believeable and I choose the language they use accordingly. I do not set out to offend anyone. I’m sorry when that happens, but I’m not going to write less believable stories in order not to offend people. That leads to the worst possible kind of censorship: When you start second-guessing yourself. Can I use the word “pom”? No, that will offend English people. Can I use the word “pink”? No, that will offend pink-haters (and possibly also pink-lovers). How about “jasmine”? No, Margo Lanagan will come gunning for me. When does it end?

Librarians and school librarians in particular have an incredibly hard job. I admire them tremendously. I just wish we were living in a world where people’s response to being offended was to talk about why, to explain the history and context of the word, and how that has made it offensive to them, rather than trying to wipe the books that contain the word off the face of the earth. I mean I am not advocating banning books about unicorns. I just won’t blurb them.

As soon as it is warm enough to go outside I’m off to buy a copy of The Higher Power of Lucky from my local children’s bookshop.

Update: Scott adds his two cents’ worth.

  1. For the record, if concerned adults can find the naughty words we wicked authors sneak into our books then we clearly haven’t been sneaky enough. [↩]

Maureen Dowd Makes Me Cranky

I am cranky. Two main things are contributing to this state.

1. As some of you may have noticed my site has been down on and off today. Grrr. Also for the last two days my email has been mostly down. Double Grr.

2. Maureen Dowd.

To try and uncranky myself I sat down to read today’s New York Times. I carefully skipped the newsy parts cause they often cause crankiness to multiply. Unfortunately, the first thing I read was Maureen Dowd’s breathtakingly stupid column about chicklit.

Bloody hell! What a morass of ignorance and misinformation. On the one hand, she’s trying to say that all chick lit sucks. On the other, she talks about books like Sylvia Plath’s The Belljar and Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet being rebranded in pink. Presumably, she does not think those texts are worthless.

As it happens many books are billed as chicklit that are not, and some that are, well, they’re very bloody good (Love Walked In for instance).

Dowd starts by talking about chicklit’s invasion of the serious adult literature shelves (Heels over Hemingway! Run for the hills!). But the only text she quotes is a young adult title, Angus, Thongs and Full-Frontal Snogging. Of course it sounds young! Its protag is a teenager! It was written for the twelve years old and up market. It’s also bloody funny. But Dowd is too pure of mind to have noticed. Sloppy journalism much?

And then there’s this:

Giving the books an even more interchangeable feeling is the bacholerette party of log-rolling blurbs by chick-lit authors. Jennifer Good in Bed Weiner blurbs Sarah Mlynowski’s Me vs Me and Karen McCullah Lutz’s The Bachelorette Party. Lauren Weisberger blurbs Emily Something Borrowed Giffin.

Stop the bleeding presses. Someone in the same genre is blurbing someone else in the same genre? Oh. My. God. It must be stopped.

But wait! Here is the back of a Peter Carey book. He is blurbed by Salman Rushdie. They both write mainstream literature that gets reviewed and lauded by the NYT. They know each other! Another freaking conspiracy.

Hmm, I wonder why the publishing industry would do something so bizarre as have people in the same genre blurb each other? Could it be because folks who’ve read Jennifer Weiner are the folks likely to enjoy Sarah Mlynowski? And those who love Salman Rushdie may well get into Peter Carey? No, that can’t be it.

Here are my questions:

Why the endless deriding of this genre? Why aren’t there people getting het up about the pernicious influence of techno thrillers? Some of those are shockingly written, but I’ve never seen a columnist lose any sleep over how well those books sell, or the fact that they’re mostly written and read by men. In all genres there are many badly written books. Including mainstream literature. What makes chicklit so evil?

Also how come it counts as journalism to walk around a bookshop mouthing off ignorantly about a genre you know nothing about, grabbing three dozen of them to take home, flip through, and then mock in your newspaper column?

Why did it not occur to Dowd to interview some of the writers, editors, publishers and consumers of the genre? Or to ask them what their faves are and why? Too much hard work for you, Ms Dowd?

Why does Dowd not explain exactly what’s wrong with the existence of chicklit? I mean, seriously, what is the point of her column? Why is she so threatened by the colour pink?

Okay, that didn’t help. I’m still cranky.

I’ll be stomping off out of your way now.

Cold

I have been whingeing more than somewhat about the cold since we landed in NYC. As I type this it’s -9 (15.7F) outside and the winds are howling. Both of which strikes me as just plain wrong.

But rather than focuss on the utter misery and horror of it, I’m trying to think of some positives. Like, um, er, ah, um, . . . Okay, I got nothing. I can think of nothing good about weather this cold.

Can any of you help me? Do any of you like the cold? See something positive about it? Do please share. Because I haven’t left the flat since Friday and I’m kind of not planning to until we get to June and warmth.

Give me a reason to go outside. A good reason.

Hollywood sucks: a rant

On the plane from Sydney to NYC, I watched a lot of films and most of them were awful. Especially The Departed. Once again, I sat there, jaw dropping, thinking this is what racks up gazillions of award nominations? What are they seeing that I am not? Am I the only one who cares that no one’s motivations make any sense? That there are plot holes so deep and wide you could ride all the world’s horses through them?

Warning: Spoilers follow.

Not that you will care within about ten minutes of the film starting. Frankly I was hoping they would all die. It was the only way in which the film gratified my wishes.

Like why would you, on finally (at long bloody last) figuring out who the bad guy is, go arrest him yourself? Why would you not take the ample evidence you had straight to the authorities? Or at least go arrest him with lots of back up? Why do female psychiatrists in Hollywood movies have absolutely no ethics and sleep with their patients within seconds of meeting them? And why are they not in the slightest bit conflicted by this?

(Side questions: Why did all the white lead males under forty look and talk exactly like one another? I could not tell them apart!)

There were no real people in The Departed. Not one. Maybe that’s what the title really refers to: the departure of charcterisation and coherent plot. None of them had families. None of them had remotely believable pasts. They only existed—and that barely—for the duration of the movie. It wasn’t a movie. It was a shell of a simulacrum of an impression of the photocopy of an idea of a movie.

There’s a reason films and television like this spawn no fanfic. There’s no there there for fans to run and play with. Everything is cardboard. Shiny cardboard with way-too-white teeth.

I also saw Miami Vice which was just as ludicrous. Colin Farrell wins my award for worst American accent ever. But at least it was cheerfully and colourfully stupid and way more stuff blew up.

If I hadn’t seen Pan’s Labyrinth and The Queen recently I’d be concluding that all movies suck. (You know, just like all those folks who conclude that all YA sucks after reading one Gossip Girl book.) But wait a second. They’re not Hollywood films, are they?

Why does Hollywood keep spending gazillions of dollars making so-called A grade movies that make no sense at all, are badly written, cliche ridden, and boring, and why does it keep giving such train wrecks a gold statue with no penis? I’m looking at you, Crash.

I can’t remember the last time I genuinely enjoyed a Hollywood A grade prestige flick. Quite frankly I’ve reached the point where I will never spend money on such movies again. Bugger ’em. I’ll stick to the much-better B grade and independent and non-USian films from now on. Some of them will suck too, but not in the same glossy, vampiric, scary simulacra way that the Hollywood monstrosities do. A pox on the lot of them and their shiny interchangeable stars.

Gah!

Love of writing

Doris Egan has a lovely essay about writing from the heart that explains that it does not mean writing drippy and sentimental (unless, you know, that’s your heart’s desire), but allowing yourself to write what you want to write without second guessing yourself.

I have heard people object to the idea that you should write what you love on the grounds that some people have no talent and no taste and what they love is too hideous for words.

Leaving aside how subjective the idea of talent and taste are, why can’t people without either write if they want to? Who are they harming? (Other than the eyes and brains of those who read the slush pile, but they knew the dangers when they took on the job.)

Lots of people write who have no intention of ever being published or becoming a pro writer. Why shouldn’t they? I like to dance, but I’m not ever going to make a living at it.

Sure there are lots of people who try to become pro writers and don’t succeed. There are lots of actors, singers, musicians and dancers who are unable to support themselves doing it. So they find other ways to make a living, but keep on doing what it is that they love.

I know I talk here a lot about writing as a profession. That’s because I’m a pro writer and the realities of that concern me greatly. But if I stop being able to make a living at it, I will not stop writing. This isn’t just how I earn my money, it’s a huge part of who I am. Most of my writing life has been spent unpublished and without an audience. It never stopped me.

I love writing. If you love it, no matter how talentless others might consider you, then write.

That word does not mean what you think it means

This one breaks my brain.

From the Sydney Morning Herald the Australian cricket team responds to accusations of being arrogant, rude, sledging bastards:

“The way I look at cricket, you do everything possible to win. Some people like the verbal side of the game, some don’t, but you just get one with what your job. I take what Vincent is saying as a backhanded compliment.”

Hayden, Clark’s Australian teammate, was equally indignant.

“If he considers that to be the case, I’m not unhappy about it, to be honest,” Hayden said. “It’s a great clash between New Zealand and Australia and long may it continue. It doesn’t matter what sport—we could be playing kick a cockroach from here to the wall and we’d want to be competitive.”

You know last time I looked “indignant” meant “cranky”, “pissed off”, “ropeable”. It did not mean “bemused”.

Talk about sloppy journalism of the let’s-try-to-manufacture-controversy-even-if-the-quotes-don’t-fit variety. That or the journo truly doesn’t know what “indignant” means. Well, whoever wrote that, I am indignant at your use of the word indignant.

Though maybe they were just being a smartarse? Cause Hayden is just as indignant as Clarke, i.e. not at all.

RW4: Novels I despise

Wicked Jenny D requests that I write more

scathing posts about novels you don’t like in which we have to guess what they are and you annoyingly and mysteriously refrain from telling us.

First up I have to establish the rules of this game.

    Rule no. 1: If you are a friend of mine who has heard my rants and knows what books I refer to you may not act like you’re guessing in the comments thread. That would be evil, immoral and wrong.

    Rule no. 2: All guesses must be as vague as possible and not include actual book titles or author’s names. That way no author will get offended that you’re even guessing that any of these dreadful books could be by them. This rule does not apply to dead authors.

    Rule no. 3: No authors may guess that I’m talking about their novel. I adore all novels written by authors who read this blog. Even those I haven’t read.

    Rule no. 4: I will annoyingly and mysteriously refrain from telling you what the books are. Yes, even if you email me and beg.

Despised novel the first:

It starts off and the reader1 thinks it’s going to be the best book of all time. The situation is exciting and funny and wry, but also a little bit sad. It then turns into a blokey stream-of-conscious-my-life-sucks-and-no-girl-loves
-me-especially-not-the-girl-I-have-a-crush-on-who-is-too-good-for-me pile of steaming excrement. Someone is tormenting him. The torments make no sense. He runs around doing stuff. The girl-who-is-too-good-for-him rejects him. The reader is more and more inclined to agree that the girl is too good for him. He does more stuff. The girl unrejects him. The reader is aghast. It all turns out to be a dream. The reader throws the book across the room.

Despised novel the second:

An obsessive bloke ponders whiteness and pursues a whale. Oh, bugger it. The book’s Moby Dick and I hate it so much I cannot express my hatred. Gah! I wish I had never ever tried to wade through its turgidity. Stupid book club.

I do love Melville’s short fiction, but. I’m not a total philistine, people.

And before you suggest it, yes, it’s prolly because I’m not American that I do not get the most genius work your nation has ever produced. Let’s leave it at that, shall we?

Despised novel the third:

There’s a new girl at school. Although she’s worried about how she’ll adjust everyone loves her, even the coolest guy in school. This is fortunate as she loves the coolest guy in school too. They hang out. The new girl falls over a lot. The cool guy picks her up a lot. There are lame unbelieveable obstacles that are quickly cleared. But in the end they are separated for some reason that is not particularly clear to this reader. The follow-up books are even worse and feature more falling over and being picked up. The protag’s real name is Mary Sue.

Despised novel the fourth:

A middle-aged-but-still-sexy-damnit college professor has an affair with one of his students while his wife washes dishes slowly, seeing her life reflected in the suds. Or so the college professor imagines. However, as he rarely speaks to, or pays any attention at all to said wife it’s a puzzle where his conjectures come from. I’m thinking out of his arse whence the novel derives its origin. The protag’s name should be Gary Stu (the male equivalent of Mary Sue). Which is ironic as I bet a gazillion dollars that the esteemed author never heard of no Gary Stu. I confess that I couldn’t even finish this one.

If I get into trouble for this post I would like to point out that it’s Jenny D’s fault. Hate her, not me!

Feel free to rant about novels you hate in the comments. But, please, keep it vague! Very very very vague. We authors are delicate creatures whose feelings can be crushed with even a slightly unenthusiastic word.2 Do you really want to make an author cry?

  1. I say “the reader” because I cannot conceive of an intelligent human being who could like this book or have a different reaction to it. Sadly I have some friends who do like this book, but clearly they were under the influence of a malign star while reading it, so I forgive them. [↩]
  2. Possibly even the dead ones. Sorry, Mr Melville! [↩]

RW2: Jetlag, my favourite fruit, and signing etiquette

Pt wants to know how to cope with jetlag. I have but two pearls of wisdom:

    1) Be very very rich and fly first class. On those rare occasions I’ve been upgraded to business class I’ve recovered from jetlag many days earlier than when I fly cattle class. I can only imagine how much faster the whole thing would be in first class. Or in your own private jet. Or if you could teleport. I would not say no to a door between Sydney and New York either . . .

    2) Don’t fly anywhere. You get no jetlag and the environment will thank you.

Little Willow asks what my favourite fruits are and gets extra points for being an American and spelling “favourite” correctly.

I may possibly have mentioned my love for mangosteens. I am also dead fond of mangoes (I read this wonderful novel recently that featured a character eating a mango for the first time without knowing what it was), pineapples, rambutan, figs, longan, lychees, dates, custard apples (I just realised I haven’t eaten one in at least two years. Crap. That’s what I get for missing Sydney winters), apples (when they’re crisp and not even slightly floury), grapes (especially champagne grapes), nectarines, sugar bananas, peaches, passionfruit, dragonfruit, these amazing brown fruit I had in Thailand that I can’t remember the name of sapodillas, cherries, strawberries, raspberries, blueberries, blackberries, mullberries, boysenberries, cape gooseberries and apricots.

I’m sure there’s some others that I just can’t think of right now. It’s much easier to say which fruits I’m not in love with: paw paw and grapefruit, but if there’s no other fruit going I’ll eat them. I just won’t melt with joy as I do so.

If I could only live off one food group I’d go the fruit and veg with major emphasis on the fruit part. I loves them. Anyone who does not love fruit is deeply weird and suspect.

Rebecca asks:

book signing etiquette. ex. 1: is it a bad idea to bring every book the author has ever written, even if they’ve written, like, 20? is it okay for book signees to start conversations with the author, or will that be considered rude for holding up the line?

It’s entirely dependent on how long the queue is.

If it’s short then most authors will be grateful to you for showing up at all. When they see you have all their books they may cry. Authors with teeny tiny signing queues are more likely to start a conversation with you than the other way round. They may not let you go at all. The thought of the queue going from miniscule to non-existent is too frightening for them. If this happens to you, smile politely, ask them questions, and as soon as another of the writer’s fans shows up, back away slowly and make good your escape.

I have no advice for you if no other fan shows up. It may get tricky and involve staging a diversion. I imagine Maureen Johnson would have some excellent suggestions, but I fear they would involve a stun gun.

If the line is very very very long then they’ll probably have a limit on how many books you can sign, and the author may be too ecstatic with joy at the size of their queue to be capable of coherent conversation.

But I can only surmise. I have never had a queue of unusual length (QOUL). It’s something I aspire to, like having my name bigger than the title on my books. Some day . . .

What authors owe their readers

There’s been much debate about what authors owe their readers out there in bloggyland. I think the whole thing is really rather simple:

When I’ve got my writing hat on then it’s very clear that authors owe their readers absolutely nothing. Do you hear me readers? I owe you nothing!

I can write about what I want, when I want, and how I want. If I want to set fire to your favourite character’s hair, push them off a cliff, and then jump on them, I can and I will, and there’s nothing you can do to stop me. So nyer!

When I’ve got my reading hat on, then it’s very very clear that authors owe me exactly the book I was expecting. And Mr Pullman in particular owes me big time for the rubbish third book in the Dark Materials trilogy.1 Do you hear me writers? You owe me everything!

You owe me more books in my favourite series even if you’re bored with them. You owe me unharmed favourite characters, or at least not in a fatal way. And if you do kill them then you have to bring them back as a zombie or a ghost and they have to be sexy zombie-ghosts. Also you have to make sure you visit wherever I happen to be, and sign my books, and read to me when I want you to. You are my slave. Get cracking! I want more books and I want them NOW!

There, I’m glad that one’s sorted.

  1. Mr Pullman, sir? I didn’t mean it. Honest. The first two books are so unbelievably good that I forgive you for the, um, less than brilliance of the third. Okay, not less than brilliant. It’s more like it’s differently brilliant. You are a genius and I am not worthy. I tug my forelock.

    Okay, shutting up now . . . [↩]

Faults

I have many faults, but the one I’m feeling baddest about at the moment is my tendency to dismiss a writer on the basis of very little. For example:

  • If I meet a writer and I think they’re obnoxious I won’t read them. This is very very bad of me. Because I am a writer and I can be totally obnoxious (especially if my blood sugar is low), so if other people are as intolerant as I am, and they meet me when I haven’t eaten, odds are they will never read me. To make this even more circular I am most especially likely to decide a writer is obnoxious and I will not read them when my blood sugar is low and I am being obnoxious.

  • I will read one short story, or worse one or two pages of a short story or novel, and if it doesn’t immediately grab me, I will decide the writer is vastly overrated and never read them. This despite the fact that my own short stories in no way reflect the quality of my novels. Or vice versa. And many writers improve. So an early sucky story says nothing about their later quality. Not to mention that my mood (blood sugar levels) greatly affects whether I will keep reading a story.

  • If I hear a writer read, and they’re not any good at it, I will never read them, no matter how much praise I’ve heard. A bad reading kills the writing for me stone cold dead. This is particularly unfair as I’m an erratic reader and suckiness is sadly part of my repertoire (especially if my blood sugar is low).

  • If a friend whose taste I trust tells me a book sucks I won’t read it unless it is the only book available. This is why it took me so long to discover the joys of the Bartimaeus trilogy—a friend I love and trust told me it sucked. They were so wrong! But why are my friends going to be any more consistent than I am? They have their blood sugar issues too.

  • I also won’t read book by people who have dissed writers I adore. I don’t care how much they’ve been raved about, or by whom, or how many people insist that I will love love love them, if they’ve dumped on Angela Carter, or Georgette Heyer, or Dorothy Dunnett, or Patricia Highsmith, or Ruth Park, or any number of other writers, I won’t touch their books with a barge pole.

Writing is a tenuous profession and too many of us passionate readers are certifiably insane. It’s shockingly easy to turn off potential readers. You can do it with a word (use “jasmine” and you’ve lost Margo Lanagan), a bad clothing choice on the part of a character (I put a book down once because the supposedly hip protag was wearing hot pink lycra), a factual error (I have stopped reading otherwise fine books because they had Canberra being a short bus ride from Sydney).

You can also lose readers through no fault of your own: because they don’t like your cover, because they don’t like your author photo, or the way you spell your name, or won’t read paperbacks, or books by Australians.

So you’ll never catch me insulting fellow writers on my blog—too risky! I don’t want to piss them off (we writers have such long memories), or their fans (ditto), nor do I want to rack up any more bad karma (I’m bowed under the weight of what I’ve already got!). And I resolve to make sure my blood sugar levels are where they should be before reading a new book or attending a reading.

Young Adult v Adult

What is the difference between young adult literature and plain old adult literature?

Now there’s a question that should be first on my faq. I sure do get asked it a lot. Invariably by someone who knows nothing about ya, often by someone who hadn’t even heard the term until they asked me what I do for a living, and sometimes by someone with a big ole sneer on their face.

It’s a hard question and my answers depends on how irritated I am by the asker. Here are a few:

  • Unlike adult fiction YA is actually good
  • YA can be read in less than a day
  • YA is never about a middle-aged professor who has affairs with his students
  • Or about anyone moving to Mexico or Indonesia to find themselves
  • YA is commercial fiction where the writer gets to experiment with the form without their publishers’ head exploding
  • A YA writer can write whatever genre they want—romance, crime, sf, fantasy, horror, western, whatever—and still have all their books be in the same place in the bookshop and not lose the love of their publisher
  • YA writers get to meet some of the smartest teenagers around (hi, Erinn!)
  • And hang out with all the cool librarians

Anybody else wanna add to the list?

Don’t

Somewhere out in the dangerous land of the intramawebby, an author is being bent out of shape by a less-than-positive review they have accidentally stumbled across using the magic of “google”, or “blogpulse”, or “icerocket”, or some such fell black witchcraft. That author is prolly contemplating their witty riposte, or deciding what to call the vengeful sock puppet they will loose upon the malign and malodorous writer of the less-than-positive review.

Don’t.

Truly. Just let it go. If you publish stuff you have to learn to do the duck’s back thing. Folks are going to read your stuff and hate it. You cannot stop them. And if you try you will only look really really really pathetic and tarnish your reputation amongst readers who really care about what they read. Like I said before your book no belonga you.

And those reviews? Bad or good: they’re not about you or for you. Believe it or not, most are written without giving the real, living, easily wounded author of the book a second thought. A wise friend of mine points out that they are written for readers. Just as most literary prizes are about canon formation, about pointing librarians and booksellers to the books they should be making available, and scholars to the books they should be writing about. Rewarding the author is a mere side effect.

Or to put it more simply: you are not your books. You just writes them.

More on banned books week

Us Asif! authors have been chatting more than a little about the whole books-being-banned situation and we don’t always agree. Some of us do think there are books that are inappropriate for kids. For instance, I would not be totally wild about a ten-year-old reading the Marquis de Sade.

On the other hand, when I was ten I picked up Henry Miller’s Tropic of Cancer (I blame my parents!) and promptly put it back down ’cause it was not only gross, it was really really really boring. I read it again in my late teens and had the exact same response. I imagine the ten-year-old me would have had the same response to the Marquis. As a kid, much like the kid in The Princess Bride, I skipped all the kissing bits. Boooring!

nullMost of us Asifers agree that there are books that kids shouldn’t be reading, but none of us can agree on what those books are or what the magic age of being able to read “adult” stuff is. I read and loved Alexander Durrell’s Alexandria Quartet at an early age, along with a slew of other “inappropriate” books. I think it had no ill effects on me (others may disagree).

The problem with the banning of books in the US of A is that there are different rules in every state. Hell, there are different rules in every school. In a lot of cases individual principals (head masters) and school librarians are removing books from shelves, or not ordering them in the first place.

Now, obviously school librarians need a certain amount of discretion. They have budgets. They can’t buy every book and it’s their job to buy books that are appropriate for their students. You can’t do that without making judgements.

The school librarians and principals are the ones on the frontline. They’re the ones dealing with parental complaints. They’re the ones looking at catalogues and deciding what to order. If their school is in a particularly conservative area they might see a book titled Sex Kittens and Horn Dawgs fall in love listed as a middle grade book and decide that ordering it just isn’t worth the grief, no matter how tame the content.

As it happens that’s exactly what’s happened to Maryrose Wood’s book despite it being as pure as the driven snow and its title being the raunchiest thing about it. And yet the title fits the book to a tee. Should her publishers have called it something else? Should people read books before they rush to ban ’em?

Is banning books ever a good idea? How about just limiting access? There are some kids who are horribly freaked out by books. I babysat for this one little boy and if I read him stories that were even a teeny tiny bit scary he would not be able to sleep for a few nights. When he was a little older and reading on his own, Grimm’s fairy tales deprived him of sleep for weeks. He wasn’t ready for it and was a much happier and saner kid when he stuck to sport and pony books.

But there are young kids who adore the scary stuff. Why should they be deprived of their reading pleasure cause some other kid is scared by the same books? Kids mature at different rates. One size really does not fit all. And besides, that kid I babysat for—he self-regulated. He stopped reading the fairy tales after the first two. Every time he decided a book was scary he stopped reading. I suspect a lot of kids do the same thing.

So usually it’s not a question about what a kid does or doesn’t want to read; it’s about what their parents do or don’t want them to read. And, yes, parents have every right to do that. But they do not have every right to regulate what all the kids at their child’s school can read.

And, frankly, I worry about parents who are that controlling. When I was in primary school one of my friends was not allowed to read any books her olds deemed sexist or racist. So she read those forbidden books (mostly by Enid Blyton) over at my place and we’d pretend to be members of the Famous Five (with huge fights over who got to be George) or pretend we were in boarding school at Mallory Towers and have midnight feasts (though sadly we never managed to stay up till midnight for them).

Forbidding her those books and not allowing her to watch television did not protect her from racism or sexism. It just made the forbidden items more desirable. It’s incredibly hard to control the cultural artefacts your child comes into contact with and even harder to control what they make of them.

I understand the impulse, but that doesn’t make it a good idea. (I also understand why authors feel compelled to respond to bad reviews.) I also wonder what exactly is the harm that parents think their child will contract from reading books they deem “inappropriate”. Is it a bid to put off having awkward conversations? To protect the child from how foul the world is? Is it an attempt to mould your children in your own image? (Good luck with that, by the way.)

What do you lot reckon?