March 2009 Archives

I tend to veer away from books that receive raving hype. (Confession #1: I don't think much of Harry Potter, Twilight, or Robert Jordan.) The problem I have is that these books are usually handed over with the glowing endorsement of, "I loved it! Everyone else loves it!"

What about that says that I'll love it?

Confession #2: I like bad action/sf movies — you know, the kind that's so bad it becomes hilarious. Don't ask how many times I watched AVP in the theater, or The Chronicles of Riddick on DVD. So sometimes I'll read a scathing film critic's review and, once I'm done laughing (unfortunately, the negative reviews are the funniest and most fun to read), go look up showtimes. Because the very things they heaped scorn upon — a plethora of explosions, a heated romance snatched between fight scenes, sarcastic sidekicks — are characteristics of a movie I'll enjoy watching. For a while I tried to find a critic whose opinion I would be able to reliably count myself on the opposite end from.

The point is that I've trained my friends to recommend things to me not because they've enjoyed them, but because they've triangulated my tastes and decided, in a deliberate manner, that I would like them too. I'm not looking for an objective review, but one with reasoning behind it: "I think you'd like this because..."

When Kristin Nelson recommended Eloisa James's Desperate Duchesses, I paid less attention to her tone and more to the specific points that she thought separated it from other romance novels. And I read it, and loved it.

I've decided to mention some books (and shorter works, too) from time to time on this here blog, but I'll try to focus on what in particular appealed to me, rather than performing a survey of the plot, setting, and characters. These aren't better reviews, or even necessarily reviews, just highlights of certain aspects that might lead one to appreciate the entire story.

This is, of course, once I wend my way through my current stack of nonfiction...

One thing I found interesting when I briefly participated in that online critique group, was the inclusion of author's notes which called out specific recurring weaknesses. The reviewer was kindly requested to take particular note of these.

I'm vain enough to consider most of my recurring traits as stylistic. (I know someone who had issues with my continued use of colons, but they work for me.) But when I expand my view to consider plot, I start thinking, uh-oh.

My fantasy stories often use warring cities. I can't help it; I'm totally sucked in by the tension inherent in a romance between a conquerer and the conquered. Or just enemies on opposite sides of a conflict that spans far beyond them, geographically and time-wise. (Perhaps I can blame this on Ernest Gunn's Antagonists, the last paragraph of which still kills me ever so softly.)

Flashbacks. I think this is my way of avoiding prologues. They (yes, the commandments of fiction, collectively issued) say to start the story where the conflict begins. Then they say to show, not tell, the background. So I usually set my beginning right when things get interesting in the present timeline, then go into a flashback to explain how circumstances got to this point. In my sf, I usually even finagle some memory-related technology to validate this technique.

I'm positive I have other ruts I keep falling into. But if the writing leads me there, should I really turn away? Should I write it and then wrestle the story structure and plot into something else during my edits? Or just glory in my variations of these themes?

The colons, though, are staying.

I'm biased, of course, because I often end up writing novelettes/novellas.

But I'm quite charmed by the way the romance genre, in particular, churns out anthologies of these mid-length works. Some are glimpses at a world expanded in other novels (which can be frustrating for me to track down in either direction). Others are simply satisfying tales in their own — as much as I love becoming absorbed into a novel, there are times I don't want to invest that much time into a story. And getting a mix of authors is interesting. There's a big-name author highlighted, and then three or so others thrown in, which is good exposure, I suppose...except that I often read the anthology for the sake of one of these lesser-known authors, and rarely consider the top-billed author's story the best. (Exception: "Alpha and Omega" by Patricia Briggs, in On the Prowl. I'm not sure I would have thought so had I not read Cry Wolf first)

Category romances are interesting because they're of a length that no other genre publisher would consider, I think. SFWA states that novels begin at 60,000 words, but the feeling I've generally gotten is that sf/f publishers would laugh at anything under 80,000.

Meanwhile, in the world of e-publishing, you have ebooks which can be of novella length because, I imagine, the overhead of publishing one isn't much different from that for a novel. I'd love to get my hands on some sales figures, though, and a graph of the price points for word count. Some submission guidelines have implied that longer works are preferred, and I could easily see readers balking at paying for something shorter than a full dose of romance.

I've been compulsively visiting Drollerie Press's site [drolleriepress.com], and finally submitted something there. This story isn't erotic by any means, which was my original direction when I decided to aim to get published, but there is a strong romantic thread, and sex, though vaguely rendered. (Not quite "fade to black," but no detail, either.)

I've always been bemused by the way many erotica authors write for a bunch of e-publishers, probably because most print authors tend not to do the same with print publishers. Perhaps the reasoning is broader exposure to a readership that may patronize only one e-publisher; with print books, after all, a person in a bookstore is going to see books form all the major publishers. (The distribution of ebooks is a little fuzzier in my mind; I know of sites like fictionwise.com, but there seems to be a stronger impression of branding.)

But if it's accepted practice, this is certainly a way to keep multiple manuscripts out there in editors' inboxes. And it seems that keeping the mild and spicy versions of one's work at different publishers would make sense.

Now to forget about this submission, as they cite a response time of about four months, and my nails couldn't take that much sustained biting....

(I will say that I was mightily confused by Drollerie Press's submission guidelines; they have a lot of specifics, but it was hard to tell how they applied. And they cited resources for manuscript format that contradicted their own instructions. Here's to hoping I did what they wanted...if not, I suppose I'll get a much quicker rejection.)

I'm fascinated by other writers' habits—what works for them, what doesn't, what they've tried, how they've changed. That said, I'm always taken aback when a writer advises others to use a certain methodology. The sheer diversity of tips out there should be a clue that every writer works differently. It might be useful to learn of different ways to do things, in case you haven't thought of them, but they're never guaranteed to work.

"Don't edit while you write" is a common rule, and one that I've never used. I can't maintain momentum when what I've just written doesn't sit right with me. (This may be why I've failed every NaNoWriMo attempt.) I do acknowledge that I'm a style-heavy writer, which is dependent on tweaking things on the word-level.

Probably even my "shut the story in a drawer and don't look at it for a while" rule doesn't apply for some people. I can — by reaching with the very tip of my brain — imagine a writer who turns out what's pretty much a perfect first draft.

"Summer-set" wasn't accepted into the Samhain anthology, but it did get passed on to another editor who indicated interest. I'm actually very pleased with this; I could easily see how this story wouldn't fit in with the tone of most paranormal shapeshifter stories I've seen out there.

ETA: Not to say that I wouldn't have happily seen my story resting alongside said paranormal stories, nor that this was the reason why the anthology editor said, "Meh." I'm just happy that an editor wants to pay it some attention, especially since I think I sort of sidestepped the intended theme.

Someone once paid me the compliment of calling me a writer even though he hadn't read any of my stories. What had he laid eyes upon? Exactly one of my emails.

Despite my comments about text-sex-ing (how does one make that into a verb?) with proper punctuation and all, I do let go of capitalization and such when I'm chatting with friends. Still, I think someone could look at my chat logs and at least deduce that I'm a decent writer, just from the way I phrase things—writing is about putting ideas in a readable form, not about being a grammar snob. (A guy once figured out that I'd been an English major, just from listening to my voice mail greeting—I'd lost my voice and therefore had never actually spoken to him—so maybe there's some other signal I'm obliviously putting out.)

I'm just too much in the habit of trying to pick out the single perfect word that will concisely convey my meaning. I've consciously developed a writing voice that's distinct from my speaking one, and I think there's a little bit of ambition evident in even a simple IM, a well-oiled attempt to actually express myself, not simply say somthing.

I think writers will write anytime, anywhere, even if they're not working on the latest opus. I've read blog posts that made me itch to read the author's fiction—or that gave me the opposite reaction. Is that a fair judgment to make? Perhaps not, but it's led me to make some accurate assessments. Not that every word written by a writer will emerge polished and publishable, but I do believe there's a level of craftsmanship that will shine through, the way a master chef will still turn out scrumptious grilled cheese sandwiches.

Put up the beginnings of a couple of the science fiction stories that are progressing nicely.

I've come across the term "pantser" to describe a writer who doesn't bother to outline—I think it has to do with "flying by the seat of your pants." I wonder if this is what keeps me writing shorter works, as straightforward stories without many subplots can be easily worked out in a free-flowing run of words. Since I suddenly have no less than three science fiction ideas running amok in my head, and I've already started writing two in my haphazard fashion, I'm going to try plotting out the third.

Strangely, although sf often deals with expansive galaxies and entire new worlds, I think of it as more restrictive. There has to be a rational framework underlying it all, and if people are on ships, that's a fairly enclosed space. Magic, I think, can be more hand-wavey, but technology has stricter rules and implications; magic can have abitrary restrictions, but if faster-than-light travel is possible but not faster-than-light communication, that needs to be explained.

These notes apply to a single online critique group, which I tried out of a sense of curiosity. I did receive some very helpful comments, but overall, I decided that this group didn't work for me.

Mix of genres. This was great in one sense, because I was free to read works from any genre. However, it was awkward if I critiqued someone's children's story and the group's expectation was for her to read and remark upon my erotica. Some people did write in both genres, but that's not a reasonable assumption. I think some level of focus is desirable, so that everyone has some common ground. While there was an erotica group, it wasn't particularly large, and most of it seemed to be contemporary.

Reciprocal critiques. Members were actively encouraged to give critiques to those who had given unto them, which was great in increasing activity, but it meant looking at works for which you were completely the wrong audience for (see above), or working with writers who were at a very different stage of their writing development—which hardly works out to be equitable. I would sometimes spend hours on a critique trying to articulate the issues I saw in a work, only to get a 300-word (the minimum critique length) list of sentences in which I used the word "was" in return.

Inline critiques. One popular feature was the ability to insert comments after specific paragraphs of the story. I found that this encouraged what I call reader reactions: someone saying, "I guessed it was him!" or "I wonder what she's hiding?" This is great feedback, since ultimately I do write for readers; but the whole point of a critique group is that the other people are fellow writers who should be able to provide actual constructive criticism, and not a litany of which points in the plot were surprising.

Incorrect corrections. Frankly, I was far stronger in grammar than most of my critiquers. Too many people have read that the passive voice is bad, and concluded that any occurrence of "was" constitutes passive voice. I was hounded to change many sentences to use active verbs, although that would have changed my meaning. (Read Passive Voice and the Verb "To Be" [imogenhowson.com] for an explanation.)

Time commitment. As I mentioned, I would spend a lot of time on critiques at first: re-reading the stories, writing up comments at each pass, and trying to summarize major strengths and weakesses (or as my company insists on saying, "areas of development"). Critiques could go over a thousands words easily, and then I would actually edit this stuff. When my wrists started giving out, so did my standards, which made me unhappy. I simply couldn't afford to type anything that wasn't work-related or my own stories.

I'm sure many others have found this group helpful, and as I mentioned, it wasn't a loss for me. But the cons outweighed the pros, and I'm striking out alone again.

I've heard two different theories for what reading material to seek out when you're deep in the throes of a story you're writing.

1. Read something similar to what you're writing
Burying your nose in a romance novel, for example, can get you in the right mood for your own love story. The problem with this one is that there isn't a perfect way to find a similar book (thus Netflix's famous algorithm competition, for improving their recommendations based on what you've already watched and liked). Should I stay in the same genre? Or go for the writing style I aspire to?

2. Read something completely orthogonal
I think the idea here is that there's too much potential for intersection (Oh no! Crossing of the beams!) between the reading and writing material. For writers inclined toward insecurity and despair, there's no need to compare your writing to someone else's — especially a polished, professionally edited product — while you're in the act of creation. And it might be nice to let your brain relax and wander into other areas.

Anyway, I'm now trying to decide between a nonfiction book about the Anasazi, or a promising fantasy romance. I may end up flipping a coin.

I was at one point involved with a boy who was very open about his sexuality. I knew how frequently he masturbated (not often when I was around, don't worry), what were his favorite porn videos, and so on. He left for France for a couple of weeks (at the same time I scheduled a trip to the other side of the world—so much for a romantic time in the city of lovers), our first extended period away from each other after deciding to make a go at being exclusive. It didn't take long for me to miss him, so I wrote him an email detailing exactly what I wanted to do to him.

The reply was awkward and G-rated. He mentioned that he'd return the sentiments except that he was on his uncle's computer. Mood killed, I never wrote him a sexually explicit email again.

With other boys, I've noticed a trend toward text-sex. Fun as this can be, I can't help but cringe when I get messages like, "i want 2 pound u hard." And then I face a dilemma: should I respond in kind, trying not to ruin their mood with my proper capitalization and puncutation? Exchanges of "i cant wait til ur on ur hands and knees" and "I push against the wall to brace myself as you slam against my ass again and again" are disjointed and don't get anyone off. These boys were fun in bed, but then again, between the sheets I wasn't exposed to atrocious spelling.

The sad conclusion here is that writing about sex doesn't seem to be a useful skill for real-life relationships.

Now, if I ever date a male romance writer...

You know what I'm dreading most about writing a science fiction story? No, not the worldbuilding or the fear of turning off an audience...

Updating the title for this site.

I actually spent most of my reading life buried in fantasy and science fiction. Romance was a later discovery. (I was sufficiently humiliated by fantasy bookcovers to wrap them in paper when reading them in school—seriously, why does a masterpiece by Zelazny get this? [amazon.com]—and I can't imagine what the teasing would have been like had I brought certain luridly illustrated romance novels to school.) Naturally there were romantic threads in many of those sf/f stories, and they were frustratingly brief or only thinly fleshed out. It was lovely to discover that there were books that revolved entirely around romance while set in fabulous settings.

Recently I found myself at The Galaxy Express [galaxyexpress.net], which was started by someone who began as an sf reader and veered into romance. I'm not an utter fan of all the recommendations there, but there's intelligent discourse about the fledgling state of this hybrid genre, and I'm looking forward to reading more.