I know many of you think that the writing life is dead easy and we all sit around sipping pina coladas while we dictate to our secretaries.1 Nothing could be further from the truth:
Note the post-its stuck to her arm and chest. I’m not quite sure what that’s about . . .
PS: This is what happens to those who cross me by putting me in videos when they promised they would not.
Remember when Scott and me were blogging at insideadog? Well, this month it’s Jack Heath’s turn. We met him last time we were back home and were charmed and impressed by his wit and elan and the fact that he’s published, like, a hundred novels all before his (approximately) fourteenth birthday. His first US publication will be out some time in 2008 (I think). Go say hello and tell him I sent you.
Someone calling themselves Mony made this comment on my last post:
How can someone who so irresponsibly condones teenage pregnancy get on her high horse about other writers?
Now, obviously there are several logical problems with that statement. But they’re so obvious I won’t bother to address them. However, the comment does raise something that comes up A LOT for YA writers. The idea that if we write about something we approve of it.
Thus Holly Black and Ellen Hopkins in their searing acounts of teens using drugs are all for drugs, E. Lockhart approves of Broadway musicals, Chris Lynch approves of rape, and Stephanie Meyer approves of vampires. And, I, of course, having written of a teenager getting pregnant clearly think that’s a fabulous idea.
Except that I don’t. Nor do Holly Black or Ellen Hopkins condone drug use; Chris Lynch rape or Stephanie Meyers vampirism. (Though I suspect that E. Lockhart really does like Broadway musicals. Repent, Emily! It’s not too late.)
We’re writers. We write about people, things, worlds, situations, acts we don’t approve of all the time. There is an argument about the existence of God in one of my books. One of the characters believes and the other is an atheist. If the mere act of writing something means I believe it then I must be profoundly schizophrenic. A character of mine is brilliant at mathematics and loves it; I am not and I hate it. Another character hates all fruit and vegetables; I love them.
I am not my books. No author is. Not unless they’re writing autobiography and even then that’s only a part of their life and a part they’ve massaged to turn into a good story.
YA writers depict the lives of teenagers. Some teenagers take drugs, many have sex, some get pregnant, a few kill other people, and some themselves. These things happens in the real world. How does writing about them in a novel make us responsible for these activities or just as bizarre approving of them?
We YA writers try to write about teenagers as honestly as we can. Even when our books also features vampires and dragons and magic and Broadway musicals. It would be dishonest to leave out the parts of teen experience that some adults are uncomfortable with.
Many of my characters do things I disapprove of and make decisions I think are deeply unwise. But if they didn’t they wouldn’t be themselves and I wouldn’t have a story to tell. Without conflict there is no story. There’s a reason that dishonesty, misunderstandings, and villiany are so frequent in novels: They create conflict which creates story.
I see my duty of care in writing for people who are not yet adults like this:
That is what I set out to do in all my novels.
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.
The comments now have a live preview. Just start typing your comment and you will see.
I guess I should now find a proper footnote plugin since so many of you have whinged about my jerry-rigged ones. Some day . . .
Thank you, Mr McLaren.
A warning: this is one of those stumbly thinking out loud posts.
I just read a dead interesting essay by Jim Huang reflecting on twenty years of selling books. Most of his comments have to do with mystery books but a lot of it applies to other genres. I’ve been thinking about this comment:
When I think about the center of gravity of the mystery genre, I still believe that it lies in series. Seventy percent of the titles on the bestsellers lists of the Independent Mystery Booksellers Association in 2007 year to date are part of a series. Seventy percent of these series titles belong to long-running series of five or more books. Sales in IMBA member stores are not necessarily representative of the marketplace in general, but they are the best indication we have of what the most devoted mystery lovers are looking for. Yet you can in fact generalize from these numbers. When you look at the BookScan mystery bestseller list for the week of 8/12/07, representing sales throughout the industry, you see that over 70%—closer to 80%, actually—of these bestselling titles also belong to series.
While not to that extent, Young Adult, is also dominated by series books: from Nancy Drew to Harry Potter through to the Gossip Girls. There’s a great deal of pleasure to be had from following the adventures of the same characters over multiple books and huge sales prove that I’m not alone in thinking so.
I know I have whinged about the trickiness of writing a trilogy, which is just a shorter series, but as a devourer of story I am all about the arc plot. In fact, lately I’ve kind of lost interest in movies and am much more into television precisely because it’s all arc. Right now we’re working our way through Homicide: Life on the Streets (which Scott had never seen!) and the first season of Heroes (anyone spoils me I kill them) having already screamed through American Gothic and the first three series of The Wire, there being no more Rome or Deadwood to be had.
I’m also gobbling manga by the truckload—my current obsession being Hikaru no go and Hellsing. I love them! But it’s also frustrating. Like right now I’m missing volume 6 of Hikaru. I have 7-10 waiting for me but no 6. And when I have all of the available volumes, I’m waiting on the next ones. Where is Nana 7? Emma 5? ES (Eternal Sabbath) 6? Hellsing 9? Her Majesty’s Dog 7? Monster 11? Mushishi 3? Waaaah!!!
But that’s nothing compared to the kinds of problems readers of mysteries have. Huang writes:
Series matter, and what publishers do with them tells you a lot about their inclinations and abilities. I write a lot about series and the bad job that the most publishers do with them: not keeping books in print (especially the first book which is where readers want to start), not clearly indicating the order of books in series, not identifying books as part of a series, not packaging series titles with a common look to make it easier to find them on new releases tables, not timing publication of new hardcovers and paperbacks to maximize sales, not indicating for the benefit of buyers for stores a new title’s place in the series, not soliciting orders for series backlist and frontlist together, not waiting months (if not years) between UK and US publication, etc.
I’ve definitely seen this happening a lot in sf and fantasy publishing but less so in YA. I wonder if that’s because YA books tend to stay on the shelves longer? Or maybe my anecdotal evidence is dodgy and it happens in YA too. Whatever. I will never understand how publishers allow book 1 of a series to go out of print while books 2, 3, 4 etc are still in print.
The first volume is always the biggest seller of a series because every time a new volume comes out it kickstarts fresh sales for the first volume. I’ve had several people write me to say that they bought Magic or Madness when Magic Lessons or Magic’s Child came out because the appearance of the later books reminded them about the series and also meant they could by the first book in paperback. My sales figures show the sales of Magic or Madness going up on the publication of the other two books.
On a much bigger scale that’s what happened with each book in Scott’s Uglies series. So much so that books two and three made it on to the New York Times bestseller list more than a year after first publcation. It will be interesting to see what happens when the fourth book comes out next month.
Obviously, the first volume of a bestselling series like Scott’s won’t be allowed to go out of print, but why publish the third book in a lesser selling series if the first one is no longer available? It minimises sales of all volumes in the series.
I have no idea where I’m going with any of this. Read Jim Huang’s essay!
I really love libraries and Librarians too and I was wondering what do I need to do, besides talk to my librarian, to become one? I am going to be his aide this year but I don’t think that’s enough. Any advice or ideas?
Now I know at least a few librarians read this blog. Can you give Hillary! some guidance? I’m pretty sure she’s from the US of A. You have to get a degree in library studies, right? I know that’s what you need in Australia.
From my casual observation there seems to have been a big growth in the number of specialist teen librarians. Is that right? On the other hand, I keep reading about libraries closing from lack of funding. Are there plenty of jobs out there? What are librarians paid? Is it as low as it is for editors1?
For those who don’t know Kathleen Hornig is one of the best librarians in the universe.
I’ve had a few requests lately to explain how to edit a book once the first draft is done. I’ve started a long and exhaustive post on just that, but it’s not finished, plus Maureen already wrote about it. In the meantime David Louis Edelman has a really useful ten-point guide to line editing:
1. Eliminate unnecessary modifiers. When I say unnecessary modifiers, I’m talking about both “weasel” words that lessen the impact of your prose and useless modifiers that emphasize for no reason. Words like possibly, simply, really, totally, very, supposedly, seriously, terribly, allegedly, utterly, sort of, kind of, usually, extremely, almost, mostly, practically, probably, and quite. Why write “It was quite hot out that day” or “It was extremely hot that day” when the sentence “It was hot that day” accomplishes the same thing? The more clutter you can get rid of, the better your sentences will be.
What he said. Add “actually” and “just” and “though” to that list. But remember there are always exceptions. Like many of those words are dead useful in dialogue for conveying dithering etc. For example:
“Actually, I was totally going to set the zombies on the unicorns. Seriously I was! But I was possibly maybe almost kind of sort of distracted by the troll invasion. They’re really big!”
Edelman’s list—like all such lists—is a guide not a set of rules.
In a bizarre oversight Cherie forgot to mention this golden rule of publishing—Never publish a novel which is a thinly disguised account of a murder you committed. It might help the cops bust you:
In his debut 2003 novel Amok, Polish author Krystian Bala describes the torture and murder of a young woman whose hands are bound behind her back with a cord that is then looped to form a noose around her neck. According to a judge’s ruling this week in the western Polish city of Wroclaw, Bala was drawing not on his imagination for that scene, but on his own experience.
Tsk. Tsk. Tsk. I thought we authors were smarter than that?
Plus: killing people is wrong.
On the other hand, his book was a bestseller . . .
The ever fabulous Cherie Priest has compiled a list of everything she’s learned about publishing since her first book came out. It is all totally true!
My favourites:
You will not be rich. Whatever money you might have earned from an advance will have been spent fully a year before your book appears. Maybe you paid off your car, or maybe you got that leather jacket out of lay-away at Wilson’s. Whatever, that money is LONG gone.
My advances for the trilogy and my two scholarly books are long, long, long gone. I just got a royalty cheque for the scholarly books. Yes, they’ve both earned out! The amount: $200. I’m rich! My Magic or Madness trilogy has yet to earn out. I’m hoping it will by the next royalty statement (two and a half years after the first book was published; almost four years since I sold the trilogy). The only money I’ve received this year is from foreign sales of Magic or Madness. Enough to cover the rent . . . barely.
Getting your foot in the door is not the hard part. It is the first hard part.
Sing it, Cherie! People (especially aspiring writers) have this bizarre idea that you’ve made it when you have a book published. Au contraire. Most writers never make enough money to live off. Many writers don’t get reviewed, or win prizes, or sell more than a thousand copies. Even authors with a squillion published books. Being published does not mean that you will cease to be rejected. Selling your first book does not mean that you will sell your seventh or seventieth.
There is such a thing as the law of aggregate success. You will also be offered more paying gigs, and if possible, you should probably try to take advantage of them. Some paying gigs (especially short markets) do not pay much, but there are plenty of very fine venues that can’t afford to offer a huge rate.
I wouldn’t have believed that one until this year when for the first time I’ve been approached to write stories for well-paid anthologies. Cool, huh? Now if only I could write short stories . . .
People will ask you questions about stuff you wrote, and you will say, “Um …” By the time your book actually comes out, it will have been a full year or even two years since you actually composed the material. You will have moved on to other projects, in which you are wholly immersed; and when someone asks about why character X in book one does thing Y, you’ll have no earthly idea. But you’ll be confident that there was an excellent reason.
This is true beyond trueness. People keep asking me questions about the trilogy but it’s almost a year since I last looked at Magic’s Chld and way longer than that since I looked at the first two books. It’s almost ten years since I looked at Battle of the Sexes. I can’t remember a thing about it. All I know is the book I’m writing right now.
You will acquire fans. This will blow your freakin’ mind.
Oh, yes. I’m still embarrassed and weirded out and made ecstatically happy by people (I’m not related to or friends with) liking my books. I’m not sure I’ll ever get used to it. I loves it.
A negative review of Poppy Z. Brite’s Soul Kitchen takes issue with her dialogue:
dialog—atrocious. do you realize that Rickey never once calls G-Man, his life partner, by his name? its always “Hey, dude.” “Yeah, dude?” “Dude!” between them. holy Bill & Ted! is that believable? is this how lovers talk?
A whole bunch of peoples—including Poppy Z. Brite—show up to say, “Yeah, Dude, that is what I call my lover/spouse/life partner/best friend/random acquaintances/vet/dog/neighbour etc.”
It is funny.
Personally, I do not call Scott “Dude”; I call Scott “Scott”. But he calls me “Dude” and a billion other things, but almost never “Justine”. Americans seem to have this weird allergy to calling their spouse/partner/lover by their actual name. It’s all “sweetie” and “sugar” and other weird things I can’t even bring myself to type. I am not much for cutesie names. I prefer “Dude” to “Darling”. But I like being called Justine best of all.
What do you call your main squeeze?
And, by the way, the reviewer of Brite’s book is smoking crack. She couldn’t write a bad sentence if she tried.
The worst book ever written is so very bad that there are warnings on Amazon to not even glance at the cover in case it infects you with its badness. Those warnings are true!
Holly Black LOVES this unspeakably bad book. So much so that she has many copies of it. So much so that she made us all read chapters out loud on the DragonTrain, which made us all laugh so hard we wept. I threw up I was laughing so hard.
The book is THAT bad.
Remember I was rambling recently about how you can’t include all details when you write? This book attempts to do that. It takes a kajillion chapters for the protag to cross a steet. All conversations are replicated in their full tedious detail—including repetitions and broken sentences and ums and ahs. And this tediously described every second of the protag’s day is interspersed with some of the most horrifically bad sex scenes ever written.
This book takes some of my favourite things in the world and renders them boring.
It is a jewel of bad writing. All you have to do is read it and then never ever write sentences remotely like it and you will have learned to write well. I would recommend it to all of you except that the writer’s rabid fans would hunt me down and kill me.
I can say this it is not a YA book. And I take back every word I have ever said about certain YA books. They are works of genius in comparison. I can safely say that no YA publisher would ever dream of publishing such dreck and if they did there’s no way it would make all the bestseller lists. Teenagers are WAY more discerning than that.
Because I have friends who insist on proper con reports I thought I’d talk about some DragonCon panels. Most of which were excellent and peopled by knowledgable and entertaining folks.
First I must rant:
Hey, Author People, yes, you lot, who respond to every question with deeply tedious plot descriptions of your own books and never mention anyone else’s work—I have written down your names and the names of your books. And I will NEVER EVER EVER buy them or recommend them to anyone. You are boring and the death of many a potentially good panel. I am filled with hate for you and your kind.
Okay. I feel much better now. Now onto the good panels which were all part of the YA thread. So many thanks to the folks what ran it: Bev Kodak, Suzanne Chatham, Lydia Watson, Karen Smith, Heather Lauer, Tara Smith, and Mary Moline! You are all deeply awesome.
My favourite was the one I did with Holly Black, Cassandra Clare, Maureen Johnson and Scott which was excellently moderated by Bev. We nattered about how we write together, swap ideas, critique each other, and how important it is for us to be part of a writing community. This involved sharing anecdotes from those dark days when we thought we were the only ones incapable of finishing a story or ever selling one. Or—now that we’re published—meeting the deadlines from hell. It was a lot of fun and only marred by being cut off before enough people could ask questions. The few we got were dead smart.
I also enjoyed the panel where Maureen Johnson went berko at the two members of the panel who dared to dismiss the “expanding pants” section of YAland. By which they were referring to Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants and all the other chicklit YA books. As Maureen writes those kind of books and considers their writers and readers to be her people she was somewhat ticked off. I ably assisted her by pointing out the quality of not only Maureen’s books but also Meg Cabot’s, Sarah Dessen’s, Rachel Cohn’s, Jaclyn Moriarty’s and many, many others.
I find dismissals of whole genres particularly bizarre when they’re coming from lovers of a genre like fantasy and sf which is routinely dismissed as trash. Can we all agree not to trash a genre unless we know it well? Reading one or two or even a dozen examples does not cut it.
My most embarrassing moment was on the YA around the world panel. I was bemoaning how little non-English YA gets translated. Then Cassie Clare pointed out from the audience this little thing called manga. Der! I smack my forehead. How did I forget manga?
My favourite panellists—other than Holly, Cassie, Maureen and Scott—were the librarians. Specifically, Susan Fichtelberg, Bonnie Kunzel and Diana Tixier Herald, who not only have an encylopediac knowledge of the field but are also witty and smart. They kept bailing us out when we’d describe a book then flail hopelessly for the author or title. They knew. Every. Single. Time. They also kept referring to YA books for their examples and not TV shows or movies. I’ll admit I was a little depressed by the folks who only used media examples and seemed not to have heard of even the most famous YA writers.
Fortunately, they were few in number. The vast majority of the audience and panellists were dying to talk about J. K. Rowling, Diana Wynne Jones, Garth Nix, Jonathan Stroud and Stephanie Meyer—an excellent fight broke out about her character Bella Swann—and oodles of others including Holly, Cassie, Scott and me. I also enjoyed the opportunity of telling many more people about the glories of Kathleen Duey’s Skin Hunger, which I managed to mention not just on all my panels but from the audience of many more. Read it!
Maureen put together a vid of hers and Scott’s DragonCon footage:
It is fabulous in all ways!
Well, except for one way: Maureen promised me that she would edit me out. She did not. I am unhappy to realise that her promises are WORTH NOTHING.
Other than that everything is good. Watch, enjoy! DragonCon and DragonTrain were teh awesome. When I’m less knackered I’ll tell youse all about it. Especially our dramatic readings from the worst book ever written.
The worst thing about DragonCon—other than the way too many people thing—is that it’s on the exact same weekend as the WNBA conference finals. I missed seeing Phoenix sweep San Antonio (woo hoo! Amy—sorry, Rebecca) and will miss all the Indiana-Detroit games (please Indiana win tonight!)
Seeing all those insanely brilliant costumes is some compensation I suppose. Riding on the train with Holly, Theo, Cassandra, Maureen and Scott ditto. Sitting around in a hotel room with them telling ghost stories also not too foul.
Which reminds me what are your favourite urban legends? Feel free to leave a link in the comments if you don’t feel like telling the whole thing. So far we’ve done the finger nails one, the hook, the headless roommate, the evil clown statue, and the finger licker.
According to Scott these two didn’t know each other—they were just grouped together by photographers:
Photo by Scott.
I’m not quite sure what to make of DragonCon. It’s way bigger than any other con I’ve been to ever and, I gotta be honest, large crowds of people freak me out. And this place is nothing but huge crowds. On the other hand, the costumes are incredible.
Say hello to Mr Resident Evil 2:
Photo by Scott
And Theo Black is some peace keeper person from Farscape. He tried to get me to teach him an Australian accent. But, ya know, you’re either born with one or you’re not.
As usual Scott Westerfeld took the photo.
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.
I appear to have forgotten some vital password and so cannot access my email. I can read but I cannot send. Do not ask how this is so it just is. There’ll be no email out of me till next week. Not that I’ve been that great at responding anyways . . .
The train trip was fun. Biggest difference between travelling by air in the US of A and travelling by train is that the staff are happy and relaxed and like to talk to you. We heard all sorts of stories about train life (includuing gruesome stuff about what happens when someone throws themself under one).
Although the cabins are kind of on the squalorous side—especially compared to first class sleepers in Europe—it was fun hanging with Holly and Theo and Cassie and Maureen while kudzu covered forests zipped by. We dissected the YA publishing world, described the plots of our next five books, and planned collaborations that will never ever happen but would be amazing if they did. I could live on a train with those guys forever!
Except that would mean not staring at the beluga whales at the Georgia aquarium. We were the first people into that part of the aquarium this morning. It was just me and Scott standing in front of Nico as he pirouetted and somersaulted over and over again in front of us. Staring back at us as intently as we were staring at him. We could see the texture of his skin. Every scar, every pore. I have never been so close to such a large mammal in all my life. I could have stayed there for hours.
Tomorrow DragonCon begins. We’ve already seen our first klingons. I suspect there will be photos. Lots of them.
In not that many hours we—Holly Black, Theo Black, Cassandra Clare, Maureen Johnson and Scott and me—get on the train and head to Atlanta, Georgia for DragonCon. Is it bad that I’m more excited about the train than the con? And I’m vastly excited about the con.
I plan to blog from Atlanta but much depends on the outrageous internet charges of our hotel. I will do what I can.
My schedule of events at DragonCon can be found over on Scott’s blog.
In other news I finished the first round of editorial rewrites on The UFB today. I am knackered but really looking forward to not thinking about that book for at least a week or so. Yay!
It’s Christopher Barzak day! I’ve known Barzak for years. In fact when we first met I’m pretty sure neither of us had been published yet. And here we are both with books.
His first, One for Sorrow, comes out today. It’s a wonderfully moving sad beautiful ghost story. If you don’t believe me ask Scott. It’s published as adult but totally works as YA. Though it would get the 14+ classification on account of the sex in it. Steamy sex.
You can read an essay by the man himself on Gwenda’s blog. Or you can check out Barzak’s blog. But whatever you do make sure you get hold of One for Sorrow. If you’re broke then make your library order a copy. You’ll not regret it. Promise!
So I was asked to suggest good YA sf and I lamely suggested Scott’s Uglies series, which I do indeed love, but everyone’s already heard of them—especially folks who read this blog. (I’d also recommend his Fine Prey which I think totally works as YA, but it is pretty dirty—not to mention being out of print.)
Thing is though I’ve read a fair amount of YA sf in the last few years I haven’t liked hardly any of it. A lot of it is bog standard: plots I’ve seen before, characters I’ve seen before, worlds I’ve seen before, and nothing new done with any of it. Vastly yawn-worthy.
Remember though I spent more than eight years doing nothing but read science fiction. My standards are very very high and my tolerance for less than stellar very very low.
I will recommend Susan Beth Pfeffer’s Life As We Knew It. It breaks no new ground as science fiction—in fact, some of it doesn’t make any sense—but it’s gorgeously written, the protag has a wonderfully vivid voice and I could not put it down. Literally, I read it in one sitting. I highly recommend it.
But that’s all I’ve got. Can any of you help? Preferably recent books. But if you recommend older titles say when you last read it. Books you thought were wonderful when you were twelve—lo, those many years ago—may not stand up now. I can’t tell you how shocked I was when I tried to re-read some of my childhood favourites and discovered that they made Flowers in the Attic look like literary genius.
Three quarters of the WNBA playoffs have gone exactly how I want them to. Phoenix beat Seattle (two Aussies against one); Indiana beat Connecticut (one Aussie against Satan’s own team); San Antonio beat Sacramento (one Aussie—assistant coach Sandy Brondello + 2 ex-Liberty stars against no Aussies and no ex-Libs).
Now we just have to beat Detroit and my basketball year will be complete. Seriously, I didn’t think we’d make the post-season so for the Liberty to get past the first round would be a second miracle. I love what Shamika Christon, Janel McCarville and Loree Moore have been doing in the post-season. I’m so stoked for the 2008 season. The New York Liberty is going to be insanely good.
This year’s WNBA season and post-season has been the best I’ve ever seen. I cannot believe how amazing the games were tonight. I am in heaven.
Let’s go, Liberty! (And the Opals for gold next year.)
Twas an eight-year-and-three-month career that ended more than four years ago. Yet, people write to me disturbingly often asking me my opinion of the field I studied, about what books I think are at the cutting edge, and curly questions about my two scholarly books which I wrote ages ago and can’t remember a thing about.
I haven’t read any scholarly work since it stopped being my job. I have no idea what the latest work on science fiction is. I don’t even read science fiction novels anymore. It was never my favourite genre and having to read it for more than eight years put me off for life. Though I don’t mind YA science fiction. I pretty much enjoy YA everything.
Not having to read scholarly work any more is one of my greatest joys. Too much of it is turgid and boring, which is why I’m so relieved I don’t have to write it any more. I hated having to second guess every possible objection to every sentence I wrote. It’s a joy not having to write as if I have constipation or to footnote every single argument.
The only things I loved about being an academic—research and hanging out with like-minded people—I still get to do. For the Magic or Madness trilogy I read a scary amount of books on mathematics and number theory (I’m not saying I understood ’em). For the book I’ll be writing after The UFB I’ve been going back and reading gazillions of ballads. I even plan to crack open some ballad scholarship. For the book after that I’ll be doing lots of research on [redacted for reasons of spoileration] and [also redacted for the same reason].
The glorious thing about research for fiction is that if the research doesn’t fit I can ignore it. I’m writing fiction—most often fantasy—so I twist the facts to fit my books not the other way round. Such bliss!
I’ve written five novels since I quit being an academic. I can’t remember my research for the Magic or Madness trilogy so I really can’t remember any of my scholarly projects. I’m not alone in this. I remember hearing Jonathan Lethem say that when Motherless Brooklyn came out he was taken up by the Tourette’s Syndrome community. But by that time he was onto the next book and had forgotten all his Tourette’s research. We writers are a fickle short-term memoried lot.
To sum up: please don’t ask me about my scholarly books. I know nothing.
For some reason the theme broke this evening. I have no idea why. I have no idea how to get it working again. It is making me cry. In the meantime I have gone to the hideously ugly bog standard theme.
I have a book due on Wednesday which is also the day I head to DragonCon so the odds of getting the old theme working again or finding a new pretty one are very very very low. In the meantime you’ll just have to avert your eyes from the ugliness of this theme.
If any of you are wordpress heads and would like to recommend a pretty three-columned theme I’d love to hear about it.
In the meantime: Waaahhh!!!
Update: Chris McLaren to the rescue. He is a god. I owe him hugely. Thank you so very much, Chris!
My blog is pretty again. I am so happy!
Because today I must share the negativity, a list of my current hates:
Can you hear that screaming? That’s me yelling myself hoarse with joy because we beat Detroit in Madison Square Garden last night.
BEST. GAME. EVER.
Almost all the punters predicted Detroit would sweep us. Ha ha ha! Instead Detroit played awful. It was like they’d been cursed. And after an awkward messy first half we played great.
Of course mean old Bill Laimbeer didn’t say a word about how well the Liberty played he just went on about his own team’s suckiness. Whose fault is that, Bill?
Now I think we’re a more than even chance to take Detroit on their home court and I’m cranky that me and Scott’re going to be at smelly DragonCon cause it means we will miss our next home playoff game. At least we’ll be back in time for the finals!
And how about Phoenix’s rout of Seattle? They took Lauren Jackson out of proceedings (yes, I am an LJ fan, yes, that made me sad, but also wow—not many teams have managed it this year) and ran and shot at will. Wow, they are an entertaining team. I also enjoyed the triple overtime Connecticut-Indiana game. Bummer that Connecticut won. At least the next two games are in Indiana. Here’s to Indiana beating the annoying Sun.
I love the playoffs.
And how about Janel McCarville being named most improved player? Woo hoo!!! And LJ defensive player of the year for the first time. Happy sigh.
Meg Cabot hates rewriting. In her rant against it she mentions that
the first time I got a copy-edited manuscript back, I was so offended by anyone second-guessing all my research (this was in the days before everyone had the Internet, and I had done all of it in the library), I ripped all the Post-It notes off and threw them away and just sent the manuscript back without addressing any of them. And no one said anything about it!
That’s, like, the naughtiest thing a writer could do. Well, other than being years late with a book, or stealing your editor’s car, or spouse, or, um, never mind.
I do know of one writer who totally ignored their editorial letter. They changed a few things in the first chapter—very cursory stuff—and then sent it back with a cover letter saying how helpful the ed letter was, how much they appreciated it etc. etc. The editor wrote the writer to thank them for all their hard work and the book went through to copyediting. I think that one only works if your editor is lazy or insanely overstretched. It would never work for mine. They read every single word. Over and over and over again. Bless them.
Now I’m wondering what other naughtinesses writers have gotten up to. Feel free to comment anonymously. No one here will reveal your dread secrets. Promise!
What makes a character real and believable?
When you describe someone you always leave so much out. Physical descriptions often touch only the obvious: skin, hair, eyes and only broadly. I don’t remember the last time I read a description of the size of pores, the unevenness of the skin colour—nobody is the same colour all over—unless it was of a villian.
But if you were to describe absolutely everything you saw. Your writing would bog down. The aim is to suggest, not catalogue. But even the most cataloguey of writers—like Dorothy Dunnett and her glorious lists—always leave details out. The world’s too infinite to be exhaustively captured on a page.
There are all sorts of conventions that get in the way of describing what we actually see. I once tried to describe a very beautiful woman I used to know. She had very light almost fuzz-like hair all over her face, like a peach. You could only see it in certain lights, but it was distinct. The minute I described her like that no one would buy that she was beautiful. Gorgeous women do not have fur on their faces. But, trust me, she was—and I imagine still is—stunning.
In the 6 August New Yorker Louis Menaud takes some potshots at those who write biographies:
If we think about the laughable mess that is our own life—in which (even with the prevalence of cell-phone cameras) only a sliver of what we do and think and feel gets recorded, and the record that does exist is incomplete, or distorted, or captures states of mind that are transient—we may wonder whether the bits and pieces on which biographical narratives are often strung are not a little arbitrary. William James’s diary entry “My first act of free will shall be to believe in free will,” which makes a starring appearance in almost every life of him; Henry James’s dream of a chase through the Louvre, whose Freudian unpacking is given a prominent place in Leon Edel’s celebrated five-volume biography; Dickens’s story, first told to his biographer John Forster, about his experience in the blacking factory—once these “pivotal moments” or primal episodes get established in the literature, they acquire an unstoppable explanatory force. But what if William James decided the next day that free will was overrated but didn’t bother to write it down, or if Dickens later had a really good experience in a bluing factory, and never told anyone about it? All any biographer can hope, and all any reasonably skeptical reader can expect, is that the necessarily somewhat fictional character in the book bears some resemblance to the person who actually lived and died, and whose achievements (and disgraces) we care to learn more about. A biography is a tool for imagining another person, to be used along with other tools. It is not a window or a mirror.
What he said. It’s also true of fiction. No writer can give a complete picture of a character. And we fiction writers are even more shackled than the biographers because at least readers know that real people contradict themselves on occasion and change their minds. Trying to convey that in fictional characters is hard and if you bugger it up—and sometimes even if you don’t—will lead to accusations of inconsistency. And comments about “not buying that the protag would behave like that.”
In fiction, unlike real life, characters behave in ways that make sense. There are first shoes1 for later actions. Nothing comes out of nowhere. And if it does readers will complain that the book is badly written.
Fiction is more modelled on previous fiction than it is on real life. Readers’ expectations of where a story will go is shaped by how they understand story and how they understand the behaviours of characters in that particular kind of story.
No one’s life divides neatly into three or four acts which is why biographers often have such a hell of a job wrestling their sprawling material into a readable shape.
I guess these are reflections on rewriting. On trying to wrestle my novel into a readable whole that sits properly within story conventions but doesn’t bore me. I do, after all, write commercial fiction. It’s difficult and fun and exhausting.
I have a week left.
Holly Black urged me to read Kathleen Duey‘s Skin Hunger, the first volume of the Resurrection of Magic trilogy, saying that it was the best fantasy she’d read in years. Her blurb for it—“beautifully written, harsh and unforgettable”—is right on the money. I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it since I read it over a week ago (and I’ve read several books since then).
Skin Hunger alternates between two stories and the connections between the two do not become clear until more than three quarters of the way through the book1. When they do it’s so terrifying that you start to hope that what you think is going on isn’t.
This book is about class, politics, and power. It’s also the story of a poor country girl and a rich spoiled city boy who are not destined for each other. In fact, they never meet in the book. If I’m right about what’s going on then they are unlikely to meet in books two or three.
Skin Hunger is also about evil and about love but not in a hooey way. (No uni***ns or lollipops anywhere in view.) At times it reminded me of Le Guin’s Earthsea Trilogy and also of some of Knut Hamsun’s writing. It’s bleak and disturbing yet somehow hopeful.
The wizard school is as unlike Hogwarts as anything I can imagine. Put it this way (spoiler coming): …
Two weeks ago I mentioned that I’d been criticised for making the main character in the Magic or Madness trilogy black when the story isn’t about her being black. I said I’d write more about it and then didn’t. Mostly because there are so many disturbing assumptions in that criticism that it makes my head explode. And also because I was secretly hoping someone else would post about it.
Well, yay! Tempest did:
Why, they ask, does the character have to be non-white if the story isn’t about being non-white? Because, I say, every story of my life isn’t about my non-whiteness. Sometimes it’s about my ability to let go of a crush, or figure out what raptor birds are doing on my fire escape at night, or what I plan to do with my life after college, or why I love the view from on top of a mountain yet fear the way up. If that’s true for me, it’s true of other non-whites, too.
And, you know, there are lots of non-white people in this world. It’s all right to have a few stories where they just exist, okay?
Specifying race helps to fill a character in, but doesn’t necessarily mean that the filler is standard and clichéd. When the reader first reads that Brenna is of a specific ancestry rather than a general, unspecified one, it makes her more real. Same with Reason. That’s what it adds to the story.
Many white writers are nervous about writing characters who aren’t white and seem to think that if they do so there must be a reason for it. They fear being criticised for writing people who have a different skin colour to them, they fear getting it wrong. On the other hand they worry about being criticised for having no non-white characters. Damned if you do and damned if you don’t.
To which I say, well, der. Of course, you’re going to be criticised. If you write and people read the words you have written some of them will not like those words. Doesn’t matter if you’re posting on your blog, writing an email, or publishing a novel.
My trilogy has been criticised for being too Australian and for being not Australian enough, for getting the American characters completely wrong, for getting Sydney and New York City wrong, and for many other things. That’s what happens when stuff you write is out there where people who don’t know or care about you can read it.
If you’re not going to write something because you’re afraid of criticism why bother writing at all?
As for why Reason has to be black: It’s because she is black, okay?
Also, Tempest, you have raptor birds on your fire escape at night? Really? That is so cool.
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.
Washington won their game which meant they were one game ahead of us, but we won our game, which meant we’re tied, but we’ve beaten them 3 times this year so we go through to the playoffs!
YAY!!!!!
Let’s go, Liberty!!!
This year I have seen the Liberty lose an astonishing number of games they should have won. They’d have a lead at the end of the first half only to come back out in self-destructo mode. I’ve wanted to strangle Cathrine Kraayeveld (her stats don’t list anywhere near as many turnovers as she’s responsible for: Standing immobile when the ball lands on top of you and not getting it—surely that should count as a turnover?) and Coach Patty Coyle (why did it take her SO LONG to give Janel McCarville, Tiffany Jackson and Jessica Davenport more than a handful of minutes?!)
We have missed Becky Hammon something fierce. One look at how brilliantly the San Antonio Silver Stars have played this year speaks to that. Last year they were one of the worst teams in the league; this year they’re second in the West. I fantasise about what the Liberty would have looked like this year with Hammon, Loree Moore and McCarville playing together. Don’t get me wrong Davenport and Jackson are fab and they’re going to be even better in a year or two, but we no longer have a reliable shooting guard. We no longer have someone who will reliably roll in and save our arses at crunch time as Becky has done a billion times.
I miss her.
The trade to San Antonio was brilliant for her but we were left with a big ole shooting-guard-sized hole. We better get one in next year’s draft. Though I’d settle for a forward/centre/guard like, say, Candace Parker.
But it has been a joy to see Loree Moore step up and become a very Theresa Weatherspoon-like point guard. She and McCarville are our solid core. Here’s hoping they’ll get us through tomorrow’s game and into the playoffs.
So far I have deleted five chapters of the Ultimate Fairy Book. Two of them my favourites.
The truly horrifying thing? Afterwards it was like they were never even there. The changes I needed to make in their absence? Almost zero.
Sigh. Makes me wonder why I wrote them in the first place . . .
I enjoy deleting vast chunks of text. It’s the easiest kind of rewriting. Plus it always makes my books better. I don’t miss what I’ve nuked. Seriously I have never restored any deleted passages or chapters. Not once. I always save them but I rarely look at them again.
Am I alone?
I am not one of those fans who has any illusions about the man. Yes, when he died he was a grotesquely overweight junkie. Yes, there are many other performers who were more talented and innovative than he. Yes, Big Mama Thornton’s version of “Hound Dog” is WAY better than Elvis’s. Yes, he’s example no. 1 of how corrupting fame is. But I do think he was more interesting and complicated than he is popularly portrayed. And I love his voice. I hear it and I melt. If he’d been born into an affluent family he would’ve wound up a famous tenor.
In the New York Times this week Peter Guralnick argues that Elvis Presley was not a racist:
Just how committed [Elvis] was to a view that insisted not just on musical accomplishment but fundamental humanity can be deduced from his reaction to the earliest appearance of an ugly rumor that has persisted in one form or another to this day. Elvis Presley, it was said increasingly within the African-American community, had declared, either at a personal appearance in Boston or on Edward R. Murrow’s “Person to Person” television program, “The only thing Negroes can do for me is buy my records and shine my shoes.”
That he had never appeared in Boston or on Murrow’s program did nothing to abate the rumor, and so in June 1957, long after he had stopped talking to the mainstream press, he addressed the issue—and an audience that scarcely figured in his sales demographic—in an interview for the black weekly Jet.
After citing lots of evidence of Elvis’ not being the racist redneck he’s often portrayed as Guralnick moves on to talk about why Presley is often seen that way:
As Chuck D perceptively observes, what does it mean, within this context [of social inequalty], for Elvis to be hailed as “king,” if Elvis’s enthronement obscures the striving, the aspirations and achievements of so many others who provided him with inspiration?
Elvis would have been the first to agree. When a reporter referred to him as the “king of rock ‘n’ roll” at the press conference following his 1969 Las Vegas opening, he rejected the title, as he always did, calling attention to the presence in the room of his friend Fats Domino, “one of my influences from way back.”
But Guralnick doesn’t talk about other reasons Elvis is seen this way. Like the oodles and oodles of paraphernalia that associates Elvis with the confederate flag. And also because, rightly or wrongly, white southerners are frequently viewed by the rest of the US as racists. Elvis was a white southerner therefore . . . Elvis appropriated black music therefore . . .
I have friends who hate Elvis because he was loved by the good ole boy racist sexist dropkicks they went to school with in the South. Elvis is forever tainted by that good ole boy worship.
Everything I’ve read about Elvis convinces me that for his time and place he was less racist than many of his peers. He understood the origins of the music he played which is more than I can say for many white boy rock ‘n’ rollers over the years. Does that mean he wasn’t racist at all? Unlikely given the systemic racial inequality that prevails in this and every other country and infects all our brains. Does it mean he was a nice guy? Who knows? He certainly wasn’t in his later drug-addicted days. Junkies are hard work. And rich junkies who are worshipped by millions of people world wide? Ugh.
I think it matters whether or not he was overtly racist. People who hold him up as a symbol of the white South and a believer in white supremacy should know he wasn’t a white supremacist.
It’s very hard to separate the symbol from the person. Especially when the person was as big a mess as Elvis was.
Excuse me, I’m going to go have a little cry and play “Long Black Limousine” now.
Danica Eakins who starts her final year of high school in September loves books and wants to become an editor, but doesn’t know how you go about doing that. Could those of you who are professional editors give her some advice? Tell her about internships and the like?
Here are her questions:
I’d like to know things like, which university courses would be most beneficial, how does one actually find a job as an editor, what are the perks and downfalls of the job, what is the average pay, etc.
I’ve never worked as an editor so I have only the vaguest inkling of the answers to these questions. I realise I don’t even know how much editors get paid. Other than it not being a lot. Not until you’re really senior and running your own imprint. Is that true?
In the US of A do you have to move to New York City to make a living as an editor?
Danica’s Canadian so what’s the publishing centre there? Toronto?
Are there other jobs working with books that you’d recommend?
As regular readers of my blog know I am not a fan of vampires. I’m especially not a fan of the vampire-as-love-interest because falling in love with a vampire is falling in love with a corpse. Frankly, Ewwwwwwwww!!! is too mild a response. Turns out Meg Cabot feels the same way I do (via Diana Peterfreund):
Anyway, as a consequence of that experience [having lyme disease], I just don’t enjoy books (or movies or TV shows) where vampires are the love interest. Because they remind me of the parasite that caused the disease that almost made me bald (if the fiftieth—only a slight exaggeration—doctor in two years that I went to hadn’t successfully figured out what was wrong with me, and cured me before I ended up looking like Britney before her extensions. You will note I am more upset about nearly being bald than I am about nearly dying. That is yet another sign of how shallow I am), and I honestly don’t understand how any girl could not want to spray a vampire in the face with Off.
So me and vampire love stories? Not so much.
Yes, I know, I liked Buffy—but she KILLED vampires, remember, and never toyed with the idea of BECOMING one. I didn’t take my husband’s last NAME when we got married. Do you honestly think I’d like a story about a girl considering changing SPECIES for a guy? No offense to any of you, but as a feminist, I just can’t go there…especially considering it’s a species that has so much in common with the one that tried so hard to make me bald. I mean, kill me.
What she said. Times a billion.
I know I said blogging about writerly achievements is tedious but I have to share when my books are translated. That’s not a writer skiting thing; it’s a publishing geek thing.
I love seeing what books are called in other markets. In this case Magic or Madness, the first book of the Magic or Madness trilogy, becomes The Revelation, book one of the Blood of the Witch trilogy.
Dark Magic is the name of the imprint. Also published on that list is none other than Margaret Mahy (!). Quite possibly the world’s finest living YA writer (along with Diana Wynne Jones). Not too shabby company, eh?
But what’s with the cat on the cover? There are no (living) cats in the trilogy! There is a key, but.
Robin Hobb is against blogging. In a witty and amusing screed she argues that blogging will suck away all your writing time:
For once a writer has entered that realm, there is no turning back. T’is true, so sadly true. Soon when your precious hour of free time arrives and you sit down to write, you will think to yourself, ‘oh, but I must do my blog first.’ And you will go there, and dutifully blog. At first, you will notice nothing amiss. It is pleasant to receive the daily dose of recognition from your readers, the gratifying feedback, and the responses that invite a response from you.
But my dear friends, it is NO COINCIDENCE that blog and blood begin with the same three letters!
I disagree. (Well, yes, they do begin with the same three letters but it’s DEFINITELY a coincidence!)
Blogging is no more pernicious than knitting or cooking or video games or any other hobby or procrastinatory activity a writer can undertake.
I love blogging. I do it pretty much every day. It makes me happy.
My blogging roughly co-incides with my pro writing career. Since I started blogging I’ve written a book a year. This year (so far) I’ve written a book and a long short story and the first ten thousand words of a new novel.
Blogging feeds into my writing. It’s a way of stretching the writing muscles that’s relaxing and fun. Without it I don’t write so good.
Lately, I’ve realised that part of my writing process is to procrastinate. I need to futz around blogging, reading blogs, cooking, reading books, watching tellie in order to get my brain to the point where it’s ready to write. When I just leap into writing gears grind on gears and it ain’t pretty. Blogging and other procratinatory activities are necessary brain lubricants.
Also blogging makes me feel like there are other folks out there writing and loving/hating it. Other people who are like me. It gives me daily access to several communities. When I blog cricket the cricket fans come out basketball ditto. I’m strongly and passionately in favour of blogging and the intramanets in general.
This doesn’t mean that blogging isn’t a disaster for some writers. If you’re blogging when you should be writing and thus not meeting your deadlines then you’ve got a problem. When the procrastination gets out of control and eats the work then it’s time to stop. But then Worlds of Warcraft is a disaster for some writers, so is sudoku.
I also come across writer’s blogs that seem to exist only because the writer has been told that blogging is great publicity for your books.
No, it isn’t. Not if you don’t enjoy blogging.
Cause if you don’t enjoy it you prolly aren’t any good at it and you’re writing the world’s most boring blog. Frankly, I am bored by announcements of award nominations/wins and other writerly achievements. I’m bored by my own. I don’t read other writers’ blogs to hear about that stuff. I read them to find out their opinions on American Gothic, politics, cats, mangosteens, their writing process and whatever else is on their mind. I read the blogs that are engaging, funny, whingy, moving, informative, mean, gossipy, snarky and fun.
When I started this blog I used to crap on about my various writing achievements way more than I do now cause I thought that’s what you were supposed to do. As I’ve gone on I’ve cut those kind of posts down both in number and in length. And I try to post something interesting quickly afterwards. Blogs that are just a boast-a-thon are dire. I’m definitely considering saving that stuff for the newsletter and the front of my website and leaving this blog skite free.
In short: Blogging rules! (But only if you like it and can get writing done as well!)
The tomatoes right now are unspeakably good. I went to the Tompkins Square farmers’ market this morning and bought eight different kinds. Yum. They’re so sweet and flavouresome they don’t need dressing. Just salt and pepper and a squeeze of lime and you have the best tomato salad ever.
They also had the first cape goosberries (husk cherries) of the season. Heaven! And the fresh garlic keeps on. I think I’ll do a stir fry tonight of kale, lebanese cukes, garlic and onion. (All bought at the market.)
Even though I’m locked in working my arse off on the UFB and can’t remember the last time I talked to a real human being (other than Scott) I’m still eating well! Sometimes I think cooking is the only thing that keeps me sane.
I just had a fight over which is the kiss and which is the hug: the x or the o.
I say the x is the kiss on account of it’s representative of a scrunched up mouth. The o is a hug cause it’s arms in a circle which (unless you’re hugging yourself) is classic hugging action.
I will not share my friend’s strange delusion of what they mean because, really, too weird!
Then I asked Scott and he agreed with my friend. And even google says the friend is right.
Madness reigns! Or maybe it’s another one of those Oz versus US of A things? she asked hopefully.
Whatever. I have decided to ignore them all. For me the x is the kiss and the o is the hug.
xo
Justine
Update: I win! Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha! Take that!
Though I totally fail at google . . .
Okay, why did no one tell me what a flawed masterpiece American Gothic is? Is there any other brilliant tellie of the last twenty years you’re hiding from me? I mean I never even heard of American Gothic before! Why? Twin Peaks is total rubbish in comparison. (Don’t get me started on my Twin Peaks hatred. What an evil tease of a tv show!)
If my next novel features an evil but charming sheriff trying to corrupt their illegitimate child you’ll know why.
A friend of mine is thinking of quitting their day job. They’ve had a novel published, which is doing very well indeed thank you very much. Their publisher is solidly behind them and eager for more books. The friend has turned to me for advice. On account of how I’m already a freelancer.
However, their situation is very different from mine when I went freelance. I had come to the end of a fellowship so instead of seeking employment or another fellowship I opted to try my hand at writing full time. My friend would be leaving a job which has a clear path of promotion in a secure industry with great health insurance and all sorts of other perks. Also the friend likes the job, but they love writing. And the job is so full on that it’s very difficult to make the time to write novels.
My first impulse is to say, “Keep the job!” But the friend is a brilliant writer. Keeping the job means a book every three or four years. Tops. At the moment the money is about the same between the two options.
What to do?
Here’s my list of pros and cons of freelancing.
| Cons | Pros |
|---|---|
|
very irregular pay have to provide your own health insurance your own super (savings for retirement—dunno what they call that in the US of A) can be very isolating working long hours on your own stationery no longer free life ruled by deadlines |
concentrate on writing your time is your own work uniform is pyjamas no boss can work wherever you want can work whenever you want travel is easy its fun no office politics if you need to get out and go for a walk/swim/ice cream you can |
I’m a bit stupid today so I’m sure I’ve forgotten heaps and some of them are a bit repetitive. Please chime in with your own pros and cons to the freelance life. What would you do in this situation? What’s your advice for my friend?
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.
International Blog Against Racism Week is on again. Yay! If you’re confused about racism and race you can ask the awesome Angry Black Woman questions. She’s smart and funny and will treat you with the respect that you will, naturally, accord her. It is a brave and time consuming thing she has agreed to do.
You can find lots of links and posts here.
I was thinking of responding to Scalzi’s post about how he deals with race in his books, but Kameron Hurly has eloquently said what I was gunna say.
I’ve also decided against writing about the miscegenation bruhaha over on lj because so many smart people have covered it.
And I’m definitely not going to write about my nervousness in discussing race and racism. I see no way of doing it that doesn’t go down the white liberal guilt road, which is, frankly, deadly dull.
I would, however, like to post about my theories as to why I get asked about the race of the protagonist of the Magic or Madness trilogy (Reason Cansino) who isn’t white, but I never get asked about the race of the white characters (like Tom Yarbro). I’ve also had people complain that Reason being of Aboriginal ancestry doesn’t “add” anything to the story. As if the story should somehow be “about” her race. (Though it might not happen on account of the whole busy-ness thing—also I’m not sure I’ve sorted my thoughts out yet.)
Then there’s Tobias Buckell’s post on being (not visibly1) mixed race and how it freaks many white people. The assumption that (visibly) white people have two white parents, and that (visibly) black people have two black parents, or that a light-skinned black person has to have a white parent speaks to misapprehensions about how genes are passed on. Not to mention the cultural specificity of race. Black and white are not tidy terms, they leak.
In Australia a black person is, by and large, an indigenous person. In the US of A it usually means someone of African ancestry. In the UK I have heard people of Indian ancestry described as “black” and also as “asian”. In Australia only people from China, Japan, and Southeast Asia are called “asian”. And so it goes.
In Toure‘s review of CHARGING THE NET: A History of Blacks in Tennis From Althea Gibson and Arthur Ashe to the Williams Sisters by Cecil Harris and Larryette Kyle-DeBoseof he questioned some of the inclusions and exclusions:
There are some strange choices—they barely mention two Africans now on the tour, Hicham Arazi and Younes el-Aynaoui, both from Morocco, but give several pages to the Wimbledon winner Evonne Goolagong, an Australian aborigine. Aborigines may be oppressed and darker-skinned, but does that make them black? The original Australians are no blacker than, say, Vijay Amritraj of India, who played in the ’70s and ’80s and acted opposite Roger Moore in “Octopussy.” Alas, he’s not in the book.
Today in a review of a new reality TV show set in an affluent black suburb of Los Angeles the term “white” is jokingly used to described a group of affluent black teenagers:
This leaves “Baldwin Hills” in constant danger of turning into “The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air,” albeit with better jokes. The show avoids that fate by focusing much of its attention on the hugely charismatic Staci, the only cast member to live in the low-lying, less wealthy district known as the J’s (for “the jungle”), and her constant nemesis, Garnette, the self-possessed queen bee of the girls up the hill.
In one of the show’s main plot lines so far, Garnette, against her better judgment, invites Staci—whose sense of humor makes her popular—to a party and then watches in horror as Staci, the “party starter,” takes center stage and shows everyone how to dance. Back in the J’s with her friends, Staci is asked where she’s been and sums up the whole situation in six words: “Hanging out with the white chicks.”
Black people are often accused of being culturally “white”. Do white people ever get accused of being culturally “black”? And if so how different are the effects of those accusations? Working class whites aspiring to upper class tastes and culture are pursuing the great [insert country here] dream or at worst getting above themselves; black people are trying to be “white”.
Then there’s the Brazilians who are white in Brazil, but black and/or hispanic (even though they speak Portugese) in the US of A (sorry can’t find the link to the fabby article about this—will keep searching).
It would be comforting to think that this was all a matter of linguistics, but way too often it’s a matter of life, death, and freedom.
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?
