The past several weeks have been rather, shall we say, challenging for me, which is why I haven't kept this blog up quite as regularly as I would have liked. Two separate writing projects have demanded my time and concentration, as well as other aspects of real life. Right now, however, I am facing the prospect of about a week tending a dog recuperating from surgery, so I'll probably have a lot of time at the desk and computer to catch up on some of the blogging.
One of the issues that's been brought home to me in some rather startling ways is this whole issue of writers wailing that their books are their babies. They seem to use this claim as a justification for both outrage over negative book reviews and outright attacks (usually verbal rather than physical) on the reviewers.
This is not a new phenomenon. Writers have been dissing critics just about as long as there have been writers and critics. My own experience goes back just around 30 years to my early days in Romance Writers of America and judging RWA contest entries. In face-to-face critique groups and online groups, along with one-on-one evaluations, responses to criticism ranged from "You're right; I need to fix that" to "It's my book and I'll write it the way I want to! Who are you to tell me how to write my book?"
After this more recent brouhaha over critical reviews which escalated to the point of reviewers receiving death threats, I wondered what is it that makes some writers react to criticism of their writing with such intensely personal outrage. The reviewers don't know the writers; all they're doing is commenting on their reaction to the book. And yet the writers take it so very personally. Why?
I'm not sure why I happened to think of my old writing buddy EK last night, but I did, and I began to see a connection between her reaction to criticism 20 years ago and this current wave of battered egos.
EK was in her early 60s when I met her, a delightful, cheerful woman with an infectious laugh and a constant smile. Nothing about her demeanor suggested she had been through some very, very hard times. Her first husband had deserted her with two small children; she had at one point lived with the children in the basement of an abandoned church. Her second husband was abusive, and in and out of jail for various not-so-petty crimes. After two more children she divorced him, but he hounded her for years and years afterward. He broke into her home, stole from her, made so much trouble that she was evicted from several apartments. The problems with him only stopped when he beat her so badly -- because she didn't have any cash in her home for him to steal -- that she ended up in the hospital and he ended up in jail for a much longer stretch.
She had lived in or near poverty most of her life, unable to hold a job very long because of the issues in her personal life. One child died of AIDS in the early days of the epidemic; another disappeared into the streets. There had been other, serious problems, the kind none of us wants to have even one of but EK had several.
Two other writers and I had formed a critique group, and when EK asked to join we welcomed her. At our first meeting she described her work-in-progress as a contemporary romance featuring a high school math teacher recovering from a bitter divorce and a firefighter who had just lost his young wife to cancer. Given that this was the late 1980s, EK's characters were way ahead of their time in terms of the contemporary romance market. The rest of us warned her about this, but she insisted this was the story she wanted to write, and these were the characters she wanted to write about. Okay, fine.
The book began with a Prologue that provided almost all the backstory for both characters in a classic "Write Chapter 1, write Chapter 2, throw away Chapter 1" fashion. EK politely accepted our suggestions that she weave backstory into the narrative, but continued to insist it was her story and she would tell it her way.
At our next meeting, we critiqued her Chapter 1 (which was effectively her second chapter), which served to introduce the firefighter hero character. Though it was competently written for the most part, we three readers found some continuity and consistency flaws and a few other mistakes. EK graciously and sometimes self-deprecatingly agreed with almost all of our assessments and said she would fix the errors. My personal feeling was that she had a workable story in process, and if she continued to accept advice as well as she had, she would probably end up incorporating her prologue's info-dumpy contents into the story and ditching the Prologue to produce a viable book manuscript.
Our third meeting should have brought us to Chapter 2, but instead EK brought her revised Chapter 1. She had reworked the sections where we had found problems, and she had made some other revisions and additions. The new material revealed some other errors and weaknesses; she didn't argue with our comments and agreed these things needed to be fixed. We specifically told her to let them go for the time being and bring us the next chapter.
She didn't. She brought yet another revision of Chapter 1. When we asked her why she hadn't brought the next chapter, she explained that she hadn't written it yet. "I have to have this chapter absolutely perfect," she said, "before I go on. This character is my hero, my hero, and to tell the truth I'm reluctant to share him even with the other main character in the story."
At the time, we all kind of laughed and teased her about falling in love with her own fictional creation, but as a few more meetings went by, she brought only the first few pages of Chapter 2 along with more revisions, more additions to Chapter 1. It became clear that EK really had fallen in love with this fictional firefighter, and she wasn't about to share him.
For a variety of reasons that had nothing to do with EK and her book boyfriend, the critique group dissolved after about five months. I stayed in contact with both EK and one of the other members for a long time afterward, long enough to learn that EK never did write any more on her book. The other writer, who went on to be traditionally published, and I agreed that EK really wasn't writing for publication. She was writing to create the kind of man and the kind of romance she had never had in real life.
We further agreed that there was nothing wrong with this. If EK had been pushed to finish her book, if she had found a publisher for it, she would have had to share her hero; and sharing him would have broken her heart. She wasn't writing for readers, she was writing for herself.
In at least one of the recent explosions of writer over-reaction to negative reviews, the writer had made it abundantly clear that she was writing the kind of story she loved. As in EK's case, there's nothing wrong with that.
What seems to be more and more apparent in each of these emotional outbursts in response to negative criticism of the writing is that the writers are equating that criticism to attacks upon themselves. They claim, sometimes in explicit language, that their books are their babies and criticism of the book is therefore a personal affront.
They claim that they don't mind low ratings (1- or 2-star ratings) or negative reviews, provided the review is constructive, is kind, is helpful. Again, they want the review directed toward them, as the writers, not toward the readers for whom the review is intended.
Which all makes me wonder if in fact the writers were never writing for readers in the first place. They were writing for themselves, with really no thought to the fact that other people would be reading, people who did not have the same passion for that particular book that the writer had. Unable to separate themselves from their stories, the writers are unable to put themselves in the position of "mere" reader.
Very often there are other specific details about the writer's experience that raise some red caution flags.
The writer who over-reacts to negative reviews often has a group of fellow writers for mutual support. Most of them will have very little if any experience or knowledge of the writing/publishing business. They are writing books based on personal experience or personal passion with the intent of sharing the writing as a direct extension of the self. There is much less emphasis placed on how the resultant work will effect or impact or be received by the reader, and more emphasis placed on the personal expression of the experience or passion. In other words, the writing is writer-centered rather than reader-centered.
The group is not, in fact, a critique group directing its attention to the writing, but a support group directing its effort toward the writer. The writer is encouraged to write, but the writing itself is not critiqued. Or if it is, the critique is more encouraging than critical.
Even after the writer has self-published the book, there is an entire community of writers who refuse to offer critical reviews because of their identification with the writer. They admit they do not want to hurt the writer's feelings. They refuse to leave a negative review or low rating because to do so would be to minimize the effort the writer put into the product. They defend other writers, even when the writing is shown to be objectively sub-standard, and admit they fear retaliation if they even point out mistakes. In some cases, these writers' works exhibit the same mistakes, suggesting they themselves are not qualified to provide the kind of writing-criticism the original writer needs if she wants to write for readers.
It's easy to make the leap from this to speculate that many of these hyper-sensitive writers have never been voracious readers. They don't exhibit any kind of empathy with readers, but only with writers. They seem unable to recognize the writing flaws that distinguish their writing from "good" writing, or at least writing that fits the standards generally accepted for successful popular fiction and non-fiction. Even when they do admit, however reluctantly, that their writing mechanics may fall short, they offer a common set of excuses and/or justifications: They can't afford an editor, or the reader shouldn't complain about a free/inexpensive book, or the writer is a beginner and shouldn't be held to the same standard as professionals. Again, the writer and her feelings always have priority over the quality of the product and the reader's expectations of it.
Anyone who disagrees with them is a bully, trying to kill their book and their writing career. I'm not sure, at this point, that most of those writers ever really contemplated a writing career. They have exhibited little to no professionalism in the production of their books that would indicate they've studied how to write and how to publish. Instead, they have simply poured their "heart and soul" into words on electronic paper and uploaded them. That's not a career any more than my buying a set of golf clubs would make me a professional golfer.
A common response to these meltdowns is that the writers need to develop thicker skins, and I've certainly expressed that feeling often enough myself. After some of the most recent events, however, I'm beginning to think that's the wrong advice, simply because for these writers, growing a thicker skin is simply not possible. Their books were really never intended to be shared with a wider audience than friends and family and supporters who would be encouraging and uncritical. Their books really are their babies, part of themselves, created for themselves, even if the writers insist otherwise. There's no indication that the writers did any kind of research to make sure they were producing a work that would be well-received by the reading public. There are many more indications that they were simply writing for their own enjoyment.
And again, there's nothing wrong with this. The problem arises when the writers forget -- and perhaps they never knew -- that when one writes for other people's enjoyment, one has to take their considerations and expectations first, not last.
Those of us who are avid readers long before we are compulsive writers know almost viscerally that books are not their writers. Books are a creative product put into a public marketplace for consumption, discussion, comparison, and review, quite separate from their creators. The conversations we readers have with each other about those books that fall short of our expectations as readers are not about the writers -- unless and until the writer inserts herself confrontationally into that conversation.
Showing posts with label emotions. Show all posts
Showing posts with label emotions. Show all posts
Thursday, February 12, 2015
Saturday, June 29, 2013
Words as therapy, words as dreams
One lovely Sunday morning in August of 1963, I hopped on my bicycle and pedaled to the little drug store near my home. I purchased an ordinary spiral notebook there and pedaled home. With pencil in hand, I sat down on the front porch of our house, opened the notebook, and began to write:
Sunday, August 11, 1963 (Morning entry)
I won't bore you with the teen-aged drivel-and-angst the followed. After all, I was two months shy of fifteen so there was a lot of teen-aged drivel-and-angst to be written.
This was not, of course, my first foray into writing. At a considerably younger age -- perhaps 9 or 10 -- I had started a number of the almost obligatory horse-and-girl fantasy stories, but by the time I reached junior high, my range of reading material had changed. I was only in sixth grade, so not yet 12, when I began writing a pirate story in the style of Rafael Sabatini's Captain Blood, with a bit of treasure from The Count of Monte Cristo thrown in for good measure. The summer before the diary was born, I had started what would today probably be called a dark ages historical romance, set during the barbarian invasions that collapsed the Roman Empire. Though none of that manuscript remains in existence, I remember enough details of the story to know that my historical research for that period was pretty much non-existent! Can you spell "anachronism"?
Sometime between the summer of 1962 and the summer of 1963, however, I began work on yet another novel, a contemporary mystery romance titled A Party of Ghosts. The plot is kind of not really there and the main character is very Mary Sue-ish. But there are themes of murder and sexual violence and non-marital sex and there may even be an illegal abortion. This was pretty strong stuff for a 14 year old. I'm not sure how far along I was on this novel by August of 1963, but I had definitely made a healthy start on it. Writing the diary was not a new adventure for me.
Interestingly, though, I kept at it. And I kept at the other writing, too. Eventually, perhaps in the summer of 1964, I finished A Party of Ghosts. The first draft -- chapterless and single-spaced on an ancient Remington manual typewriter -- is about 100,000 words, and I still have most of it. There are a few pages missing, and I'm not sure why, but most of it resides in the file cabinet next to my desk as I write this. Like the diary, it's filled with a lot of teen-aged drivel-and-angst.
I continued to write through high school, through my first stab at college at the University of Illinois, through my wanderings to New York and France and Spain and back again, but none of my fiction reached the completed manuscript stage. And again, I still have a lot of it, tucked neatly in file folders or three-ring-binders. Most of it is, um, not very good.
With my marriage in June of 1969, I vowed not to write fiction any more and instead to put my energy into being a wife and eventually a mother. That vow lasted a few months. But I had never promised to give up the diary, and it went on. Yes, by that time, the diary was almost six years old. It had gone beyond that spiral notebook and now filled several.
As the years went on and I continued to write fiction, I continued to keep the diary as well. It now, almost 50 years later, comprises 23 spiral notebooks of various sizes and has recently entered the 24th. I spent a great deal of spare time over a period of about eight years actually transcribing it all, often horribly embarrassed in the process. Was I really that angst-ridden at that age? And "that age" wasn't necessarily as a teen-ager!
Would I ever want the diary published. Good goddess, no! I'd be mortified. As Susan Douglas writes in the "Introduction" to Where the Girls Are: Growing up female with the mass media: "Reading the diary I kept as a teenager is now excruciating, so mortifying that, if someone were to find it, I think I would blind myself with hot coals or simply commit hara-kiri. I look back at my former self . . . the words she wrote in her spiral notebooks obsessed with two topics -- boys and sex -- and I wonder: Who are you? How could you have been so insipid? Are you related to me? How did you become me?"
When I read the first page of Douglas's marvelous, witty, and yet devastatingly honest book, I knew exactly what she was talking about. But I also felt she had missed one point: The importance of being able to look back at that former self. Douglas's book, however, is not about the value of keeping a diary. And keeping a diary is not a luxury everyone has or wants to have.
But as recent events have unfolded regarding the publication of unedited, authentic personal accounts, lost in the legal ramifications is, I believe, the true empowerment value of being able to express, without reservation and without qualification, one's feelings, all the drivel-and-angst that assails all of us at any age.
I cannot remember a time when I didn'twant to write. It was never a matter of wanting to; I simply did it. And I can understand that there are people for whom writing isn't the joy it is for me. But as I've read some of the personal accounts of people who have endured traumatic personal events, more and more often I've read that they found some comfort, some relief, some healing in the venting of their feelings through writing.
This kind of personal satisfaction doesn't rely on good grammar or perfect spelling. The writer doesn't need to know or care about the difference between affect and effect, accept and except, writing and writting and written and wrote. None of that matters, and it shouldn't. That's the kind of writing that is for the writer. She and only she is going to read it, and she knows what she means and what she wants to mean. Eyes off and hands off her words. They don't belong to anyone else.
That's how I feel about my diary. When someone once read a part of it, I felt absolutely and totally violated, as though he had drilled a hole in my head and not only entered my thoughts and feelings but took them away from me, claimed them for himself, deprived me of my most personal possession. For that reason, I never ever ever violated my children's privacy. I never listened in on their phone calls. I never looked through their dresser drawers. When I found a little "diary" that my daughter had written at the age of about 13 or 14, I returned it to her unopened and unread -- and it didn't matter that she was by then in her 30s! The privacy of thoughts was sacrosanct.
When a writer decides to share her words, whether it's with one other person or with "the public," all those things that didn't matter before suddenly do matter. Grammar and spelling and punctuation and using the right words. All that stuff. Why? Because now she wants someone else to read her thoughts, and she has to use the tools of language to make those thoughts as clear as she can. And the more people she wants to share it with, the more important her skill with those tools become.
As angst-ridden as my diaries from those teen-age years are, they are at least competently written. As shallow and plotless and Mary Sue-ish as A Party of Ghosts is, at least a reader would understand what I was trying to say. The verbs are right, the pronouns have proper antecedents, words are spelled correctly, commas are used where they're needed and not used where they aren't.
But that's because I always wrote. I took the lessons learned in "language arts" class, as it was called at South Junior High in Arlington Heights, Illinois, and I used them to hone my storytelling skills. These were the absolutely essential tools of the writing craft. In all the years since then, I have often wondered if they might not also be the absolutely essential tools of living.
Maybe not. Maybe now, in the days of Twitter and texting, when speed and brevity are more important, when feelings deeper than a :-) or a :grr: have no emoticons, when "IKR" is a whole sentence, what difference does writing make?
Writing makes a difference because we can't dream in emoticons and acronyms. We still say "I know, right?!" in a way that means so much more than "IKR." Maybe that will change with some future technology. Maybe someday there will be tablets that you touch an icon and a whole emotional paragraph will appear on the screen or be broadcast through the speakers. Who knows? But for now, words are all we have to take what's in our hearts, our souls, our dreams, and make it real enough to share with someone else.
Sorrow shared is sorrow cut in half; joy shared is joy doubled.
Sometimes it helps to share our sorrow, our grief, our fear, our anger, even if the only one you can share it with yourself. Write it out, put it on paper or on the computer screen, and even if you don't share it with anyone else, even if you don't send that angry email or post that vicious comment or publish that scathing blog, just getting the words out can help. Maybe it's just a vent for pressure and steam, or maybe it puts ideas into context, or maybe it helps understand. If it's for yourself, that's enough.
But when the time comes to share the dreams and fears and joy and pain, then it matters how you write it. It matters if you want someone else to be able to understand and feel what you felt.
We do that, we who write, by following conventions so everyone is on the same page (pun intended). Some of those conventions are so obvious they don't seem to need much explanation. We all use the same alphabet, for example. We all know what most of the common words mean: a, the, and, book, story, large, small, running, walking, eating. We know, as both readers and writers, that something that doesn't follow those conventions won't make a whole lot of sense.
For example:
Deer Sirr:
I seed yoo wokkin outer the pos offiss yessaday an is hoppin yoo fown mi wollet gotz sum munny init.
Can you figure that one out? Would it have been easier to read if I had written
Dear sir:
I seen you walkin outta the post office yestiday and I is hopin' you found the money what I lost.
In creating fiction, the writer has lots of options for re-creating the differences between what we consider standard English and non-standard. Does the exact same feeling come across? Maybe, maybe not. But the compromise gives the same impression -- the person who wrote the note is not well educated and probably doesn't speak any more literate than he or she writes -- while still leaving the text intelligible for the reader without forcing her to back out of the reading experience to understand it.
This is part of the "invisible manuscript" technique that's so important for every writer. You want the reader to forget she's just looking at letters and words on a page. You want her to enter into the experience you're describing.
Some of us are lucky enough by fortune and experience to have acquired the language skills necessary to do that, and to have acquired them before we embarked on anything resembling a writing career. For those who didn't, however, there are options. Not everyone, of course, plans to become a writer. Many who never wanted to write or who even actively disliked writing when they were in school find themselves years later wanting or needing those skills. Some never had the opportunity to learn. But no matter what the reason, failure to write in a manner that allows the reader to enter the story rather than struggle to discern the meaning pretty much guarantees that the work will not find an audience. If you want your story read, if you want people to get your message -- whatever that message may be -- you must make sure your writing conforms to the conventions established.
Does this mean you need an editor? Yes, it does.
The necessity for a good, competent editor is never more apparent than when a good story that's been badly written is published, and all the world gets to see how terrible the writer is. No matter how wonderful, how powerful, how emotional the story is, if the reader can't read it, all that wonder and power and emotion are lost.
Again: If you are writing for yourself, if you are writing to get out the pain and fear and joy and frustration and excitement, none of it matters. When you want to share that pain and fear and joy and excitement, it matters a lot. And only a fool thinks it doesn't.
Sunday, August 11, 1963 (Morning entry)
I won't bore you with the teen-aged drivel-and-angst the followed. After all, I was two months shy of fifteen so there was a lot of teen-aged drivel-and-angst to be written.
This was not, of course, my first foray into writing. At a considerably younger age -- perhaps 9 or 10 -- I had started a number of the almost obligatory horse-and-girl fantasy stories, but by the time I reached junior high, my range of reading material had changed. I was only in sixth grade, so not yet 12, when I began writing a pirate story in the style of Rafael Sabatini's Captain Blood, with a bit of treasure from The Count of Monte Cristo thrown in for good measure. The summer before the diary was born, I had started what would today probably be called a dark ages historical romance, set during the barbarian invasions that collapsed the Roman Empire. Though none of that manuscript remains in existence, I remember enough details of the story to know that my historical research for that period was pretty much non-existent! Can you spell "anachronism"?
Sometime between the summer of 1962 and the summer of 1963, however, I began work on yet another novel, a contemporary mystery romance titled A Party of Ghosts. The plot is kind of not really there and the main character is very Mary Sue-ish. But there are themes of murder and sexual violence and non-marital sex and there may even be an illegal abortion. This was pretty strong stuff for a 14 year old. I'm not sure how far along I was on this novel by August of 1963, but I had definitely made a healthy start on it. Writing the diary was not a new adventure for me.
Interestingly, though, I kept at it. And I kept at the other writing, too. Eventually, perhaps in the summer of 1964, I finished A Party of Ghosts. The first draft -- chapterless and single-spaced on an ancient Remington manual typewriter -- is about 100,000 words, and I still have most of it. There are a few pages missing, and I'm not sure why, but most of it resides in the file cabinet next to my desk as I write this. Like the diary, it's filled with a lot of teen-aged drivel-and-angst.
I continued to write through high school, through my first stab at college at the University of Illinois, through my wanderings to New York and France and Spain and back again, but none of my fiction reached the completed manuscript stage. And again, I still have a lot of it, tucked neatly in file folders or three-ring-binders. Most of it is, um, not very good.
With my marriage in June of 1969, I vowed not to write fiction any more and instead to put my energy into being a wife and eventually a mother. That vow lasted a few months. But I had never promised to give up the diary, and it went on. Yes, by that time, the diary was almost six years old. It had gone beyond that spiral notebook and now filled several.
As the years went on and I continued to write fiction, I continued to keep the diary as well. It now, almost 50 years later, comprises 23 spiral notebooks of various sizes and has recently entered the 24th. I spent a great deal of spare time over a period of about eight years actually transcribing it all, often horribly embarrassed in the process. Was I really that angst-ridden at that age? And "that age" wasn't necessarily as a teen-ager!
Would I ever want the diary published. Good goddess, no! I'd be mortified. As Susan Douglas writes in the "Introduction" to Where the Girls Are: Growing up female with the mass media: "Reading the diary I kept as a teenager is now excruciating, so mortifying that, if someone were to find it, I think I would blind myself with hot coals or simply commit hara-kiri. I look back at my former self . . . the words she wrote in her spiral notebooks obsessed with two topics -- boys and sex -- and I wonder: Who are you? How could you have been so insipid? Are you related to me? How did you become me?"
When I read the first page of Douglas's marvelous, witty, and yet devastatingly honest book, I knew exactly what she was talking about. But I also felt she had missed one point: The importance of being able to look back at that former self. Douglas's book, however, is not about the value of keeping a diary. And keeping a diary is not a luxury everyone has or wants to have.
But as recent events have unfolded regarding the publication of unedited, authentic personal accounts, lost in the legal ramifications is, I believe, the true empowerment value of being able to express, without reservation and without qualification, one's feelings, all the drivel-and-angst that assails all of us at any age.
I cannot remember a time when I didn't
This kind of personal satisfaction doesn't rely on good grammar or perfect spelling. The writer doesn't need to know or care about the difference between affect and effect, accept and except, writing and writting and written and wrote. None of that matters, and it shouldn't. That's the kind of writing that is for the writer. She and only she is going to read it, and she knows what she means and what she wants to mean. Eyes off and hands off her words. They don't belong to anyone else.
That's how I feel about my diary. When someone once read a part of it, I felt absolutely and totally violated, as though he had drilled a hole in my head and not only entered my thoughts and feelings but took them away from me, claimed them for himself, deprived me of my most personal possession. For that reason, I never ever ever violated my children's privacy. I never listened in on their phone calls. I never looked through their dresser drawers. When I found a little "diary" that my daughter had written at the age of about 13 or 14, I returned it to her unopened and unread -- and it didn't matter that she was by then in her 30s! The privacy of thoughts was sacrosanct.
When a writer decides to share her words, whether it's with one other person or with "the public," all those things that didn't matter before suddenly do matter. Grammar and spelling and punctuation and using the right words. All that stuff. Why? Because now she wants someone else to read her thoughts, and she has to use the tools of language to make those thoughts as clear as she can. And the more people she wants to share it with, the more important her skill with those tools become.
As angst-ridden as my diaries from those teen-age years are, they are at least competently written. As shallow and plotless and Mary Sue-ish as A Party of Ghosts is, at least a reader would understand what I was trying to say. The verbs are right, the pronouns have proper antecedents, words are spelled correctly, commas are used where they're needed and not used where they aren't.
But that's because I always wrote. I took the lessons learned in "language arts" class, as it was called at South Junior High in Arlington Heights, Illinois, and I used them to hone my storytelling skills. These were the absolutely essential tools of the writing craft. In all the years since then, I have often wondered if they might not also be the absolutely essential tools of living.
Maybe not. Maybe now, in the days of Twitter and texting, when speed and brevity are more important, when feelings deeper than a :-) or a :grr: have no emoticons, when "IKR" is a whole sentence, what difference does writing make?
Writing makes a difference because we can't dream in emoticons and acronyms. We still say "I know, right?!" in a way that means so much more than "IKR." Maybe that will change with some future technology. Maybe someday there will be tablets that you touch an icon and a whole emotional paragraph will appear on the screen or be broadcast through the speakers. Who knows? But for now, words are all we have to take what's in our hearts, our souls, our dreams, and make it real enough to share with someone else.
Sorrow shared is sorrow cut in half; joy shared is joy doubled.
Sometimes it helps to share our sorrow, our grief, our fear, our anger, even if the only one you can share it with yourself. Write it out, put it on paper or on the computer screen, and even if you don't share it with anyone else, even if you don't send that angry email or post that vicious comment or publish that scathing blog, just getting the words out can help. Maybe it's just a vent for pressure and steam, or maybe it puts ideas into context, or maybe it helps understand. If it's for yourself, that's enough.
But when the time comes to share the dreams and fears and joy and pain, then it matters how you write it. It matters if you want someone else to be able to understand and feel what you felt.
We do that, we who write, by following conventions so everyone is on the same page (pun intended). Some of those conventions are so obvious they don't seem to need much explanation. We all use the same alphabet, for example. We all know what most of the common words mean: a, the, and, book, story, large, small, running, walking, eating. We know, as both readers and writers, that something that doesn't follow those conventions won't make a whole lot of sense.
For example:
Deer Sirr:
I seed yoo wokkin outer the pos offiss yessaday an is hoppin yoo fown mi wollet gotz sum munny init.
Can you figure that one out? Would it have been easier to read if I had written
Dear sir:
I seen you walkin outta the post office yestiday and I is hopin' you found the money what I lost.
In creating fiction, the writer has lots of options for re-creating the differences between what we consider standard English and non-standard. Does the exact same feeling come across? Maybe, maybe not. But the compromise gives the same impression -- the person who wrote the note is not well educated and probably doesn't speak any more literate than he or she writes -- while still leaving the text intelligible for the reader without forcing her to back out of the reading experience to understand it.
This is part of the "invisible manuscript" technique that's so important for every writer. You want the reader to forget she's just looking at letters and words on a page. You want her to enter into the experience you're describing.
Some of us are lucky enough by fortune and experience to have acquired the language skills necessary to do that, and to have acquired them before we embarked on anything resembling a writing career. For those who didn't, however, there are options. Not everyone, of course, plans to become a writer. Many who never wanted to write or who even actively disliked writing when they were in school find themselves years later wanting or needing those skills. Some never had the opportunity to learn. But no matter what the reason, failure to write in a manner that allows the reader to enter the story rather than struggle to discern the meaning pretty much guarantees that the work will not find an audience. If you want your story read, if you want people to get your message -- whatever that message may be -- you must make sure your writing conforms to the conventions established.
Does this mean you need an editor? Yes, it does.
The necessity for a good, competent editor is never more apparent than when a good story that's been badly written is published, and all the world gets to see how terrible the writer is. No matter how wonderful, how powerful, how emotional the story is, if the reader can't read it, all that wonder and power and emotion are lost.
Again: If you are writing for yourself, if you are writing to get out the pain and fear and joy and frustration and excitement, none of it matters. When you want to share that pain and fear and joy and excitement, it matters a lot. And only a fool thinks it doesn't.
Friday, May 31, 2013
The lessons in the words
Another week-end is almost here, another opportunity to catch up on some reading and writing after the stress and exhaustion of the work week. Sometimes I don't take the best advantage of those opportunities, and I need to rectify that.
Ironically, I found a little bit of inspiration in one of the words I posted yesterday. "Patience" was among the labels I applied to that post, and I realized I needed to have more patience with myself.
I spent about an hour yesterday afternoon on the outline for the book I'm working on and made significant progress. There's no deadline on this outline, and no limits either upper or lower on length. I can put in as much or as little detail, scribble out what I don't like, change my mind whenever.
And in fact I did change my mind regarding a particular plot element. I realized I had resolved one character's internal conflict too quickly and too easily; he needed to remain conflicted much longer. How could I sustain and, to a certain extent actually intensify that conflict in a believable way?
The answer was both easy and a bit unsettling. The character's personal history provided the basis for the conflict to begin with, and rather than resolving it, events could be used to increase the emotional tension. What was unsettling about this was that I realized I had projected my own personal issues onto this character.
In a way, that realization brought a bit of a chuckle. I had done much the same thing with my other books in the sense that I had deliberately incorporated elements of my own personality and experience into my characters and plots. This is the "write what you know" technique, and I'm sure all writers do it to some extent. Carried to an uncomfortable extreme, it turns characters into Mary Sues and plots into autobiographies. But even when we're writing about characters and events and situations and places that we have no personal experience of, we still reach into our own store of memories to create that which never existed.
The difference this time was that the projection was unintentional. But it was also natural in keeping with the character I had created. And it also had enormous resonance in my current personal situation.
I will, of course, now be much more aware of how I write this character, how I take him through his conflicts and how he resolves them. There may be a temptation to think of this as life imitating art, but always I know where the words come from. They come from me, and my lessons are my own.
The character, of course, will walk away beyond the last page a better person for having learned those lessons. Whether I will or not remains to be seen.
Ironically, I found a little bit of inspiration in one of the words I posted yesterday. "Patience" was among the labels I applied to that post, and I realized I needed to have more patience with myself.
I spent about an hour yesterday afternoon on the outline for the book I'm working on and made significant progress. There's no deadline on this outline, and no limits either upper or lower on length. I can put in as much or as little detail, scribble out what I don't like, change my mind whenever.
And in fact I did change my mind regarding a particular plot element. I realized I had resolved one character's internal conflict too quickly and too easily; he needed to remain conflicted much longer. How could I sustain and, to a certain extent actually intensify that conflict in a believable way?
The answer was both easy and a bit unsettling. The character's personal history provided the basis for the conflict to begin with, and rather than resolving it, events could be used to increase the emotional tension. What was unsettling about this was that I realized I had projected my own personal issues onto this character.
In a way, that realization brought a bit of a chuckle. I had done much the same thing with my other books in the sense that I had deliberately incorporated elements of my own personality and experience into my characters and plots. This is the "write what you know" technique, and I'm sure all writers do it to some extent. Carried to an uncomfortable extreme, it turns characters into Mary Sues and plots into autobiographies. But even when we're writing about characters and events and situations and places that we have no personal experience of, we still reach into our own store of memories to create that which never existed.
The difference this time was that the projection was unintentional. But it was also natural in keeping with the character I had created. And it also had enormous resonance in my current personal situation.
I will, of course, now be much more aware of how I write this character, how I take him through his conflicts and how he resolves them. There may be a temptation to think of this as life imitating art, but always I know where the words come from. They come from me, and my lessons are my own.
The character, of course, will walk away beyond the last page a better person for having learned those lessons. Whether I will or not remains to be seen.
Saturday, March 16, 2013
What lies lie behind the words
A novel is a world unto itself. More than likely, there are elements in the novel that reflect or refract elements of the author's life and experience, but since the author isn't going to be on hand to explain all those nuances to each and every reader each and every time the book is read, the world of the novel must be complete, whole, and self-contained.
Even if it's not, it will be taken that way.
Which is why authors must be very careful about any and all messages that can be taken from the text they create.
We readers all know that we're perfectly capable of distinguishing between fact and fiction. We know that romance novels -- as well as mysteries, fantasies, westerns, science fiction, supernatural horror, etc. -- are not true stories. "Pictures are for entertainment, messages should be delivered by Western Union," Sam Goldwyn said, and the same philosophy is often applied to popular fiction. It's not meant as educational material.
But contrary to that famous (or infamous) Goldwynism, can stories -- whether in books or films -- carry messages, even unintended ones? Is even a simple, simplistic "Love Conquers All" or "Crime Doesn't Pay" enough of a message to qualify?
Is it possible to determine a novel's message, assuming it has one, just by reading the text itself? Can a book have a message even if the reader doesn't "get it"? Can a reader "get it," but get the wrong message?
One of my all-time favorite historical romances is LaVyrle Spencer's Hummingbird. The only problem I had with that story was that Abby treated David so badly. He hadn't done anything to deserve being jilted the way she dumped him, even if he wasn't the Great Love of Her Life. Spencer did something similar in Twice Loved and also in The Fulfillment. I felt especially uncomfortable with the treatment of the second "hero" in Twice Loved; at least in The Fulfillment the "rejected" suitor was fully aware of -- and even had a part in -- his own failure to win the heroine. But the heroines of both Hummingbird and Twice Loved didn't seem to feel much remorse over their cruelty toward decent men who loved them.
Was this a pattern? Was Spencer intentionally or unintentionally saying that it's okay to hurt innocent people who love you and to justify your behavior because you're just so much in love with someone else?
I don't know the answer to that question, but I do know that element of those three books didn't sit well with me, even though I enjoyed all of them.
Another book that has legions of devoted readers/fans but that I absolutely couldn't stand is Patricia Gaffney's To Have and to Hold. The heroine has been horribly abused, emotionally and psychologically as well as physically, and is just released from prison into the hero's custody. Fabulously wealthy, politically powerful, and of course devastatingly handsome, he has her completely at his mercy. She can do nothing without his consent, and because she has no money, she is utterly dependent upon him for her very sustenance. She has no recourse when he sets out to seduce her.
And of course she falls in love with him even though he gives her no other choice. (Or does she?)
To Have and to Hold is often compared to Mary Jo Putney's Dearly Beloved, in which the heroine is brutally raped by the hero after he has been tricked into marrying her. Realizing what he has done, and acknowledging both his guilt and his responsibility, he abandons her but resolves not to divorce her and to support her. Eventually she uses the funds he provides for her to set herself up in a position to exact revenge upon him. Of course she falls in love with him. . . .
Why did I enjoy the Putney book and despise the Gaffney story, even though they had many similarities? I puzzled this for a long time and then just recently determined that it was the balance of power that made the two stories so completely different. Gaffney left her heroine totally vulnerable, totally powerless, and allowed the hero to take merciless advantage of her. He did not do anything to heal her for her own sake, except as it would benefit him. He did not want her to be a whole person; he only wanted her to be what he wanted her to be.
Putney, on the other hand, allowed her heroine to become whole. When she and the hero meet years later and she is about to put her plan for vengeance into action, she is not powerless, not utterly at his mercy. She can give as good as she gets, in that sense. And the irony, of course, is that she is able to do that because of him. Not just in spite of him, but because he has given her the means to do it.
Are there messages in these books? Did Gaffney set out to say that if the guy is hot enough and rich enough, anything he wants and anything he does is fine and dandy, and the woman he dominates and forces to submit to him owes him her love?
Well, frankly, that's the message I took from that book. I've read it twice and still can't reconcile Sebastian's behavior as suitable for a hero. He never seems, in my mind, to atone for his sins against Rachel, never seems to experience real remorse. Oh, he has his moment where he (sort of) realizes what an ass he's been toward her, but he doesn't change his course, doesn't alter his behavior. It's as if his character arc is a flat line.
Putney's hero Gervase, on the other hand, immediately acknowledges the depravity of what he has done. He does not excuse it or justify it, though he did try to justify it beforehand. He assumes a burden of guilt -- not all of it deserved -- and shame that Sebastian never does. And it's through that acceptance of responsibility that Gervase grows and changes and becomes a hero worthy of the heroine he has created.
Gervase's rape of Diana is brutal and forced. There is no seduction, no coercion. He is angry and drunk, has been tricked into marriage with a total stranger against his will, and he rapes her.
But is his physical brutality any more or less an invasion of the heroine's personhood than Sebastian's relentless seduction of a person over whom he not only has the power of life and death but to whom he makes that power known constantly? Does Rachel ever have the free will to give her consent to anything?
I was able, as a reader with my own perspectives, to accept Gervase's growth into hero material much more readily than I ever could have Sebastian's.
What each of us brings to a book or film or story affects how we react to it, whether positively or negatively. For this reason, reviews and ratings and reactions to books differ. That's something all authors have to keep in mind -- not everyone is going to like the "message" they read in the book. It may not be the message the author intended to convey. Or the reader may disagree with that message. But authors do need to be aware that readers can and will take messages from the stories they read. If the author has a specific message she wishes to impart, it is up to her to make sure that message is both as clear and as subtle as she can make it -- and then she has to let it go.
Even if it's not, it will be taken that way.
Which is why authors must be very careful about any and all messages that can be taken from the text they create.
We readers all know that we're perfectly capable of distinguishing between fact and fiction. We know that romance novels -- as well as mysteries, fantasies, westerns, science fiction, supernatural horror, etc. -- are not true stories. "Pictures are for entertainment, messages should be delivered by Western Union," Sam Goldwyn said, and the same philosophy is often applied to popular fiction. It's not meant as educational material.
But contrary to that famous (or infamous) Goldwynism, can stories -- whether in books or films -- carry messages, even unintended ones? Is even a simple, simplistic "Love Conquers All" or "Crime Doesn't Pay" enough of a message to qualify?
Is it possible to determine a novel's message, assuming it has one, just by reading the text itself? Can a book have a message even if the reader doesn't "get it"? Can a reader "get it," but get the wrong message?
One of my all-time favorite historical romances is LaVyrle Spencer's Hummingbird. The only problem I had with that story was that Abby treated David so badly. He hadn't done anything to deserve being jilted the way she dumped him, even if he wasn't the Great Love of Her Life. Spencer did something similar in Twice Loved and also in The Fulfillment. I felt especially uncomfortable with the treatment of the second "hero" in Twice Loved; at least in The Fulfillment the "rejected" suitor was fully aware of -- and even had a part in -- his own failure to win the heroine. But the heroines of both Hummingbird and Twice Loved didn't seem to feel much remorse over their cruelty toward decent men who loved them.
Was this a pattern? Was Spencer intentionally or unintentionally saying that it's okay to hurt innocent people who love you and to justify your behavior because you're just so much in love with someone else?
I don't know the answer to that question, but I do know that element of those three books didn't sit well with me, even though I enjoyed all of them.
Another book that has legions of devoted readers/fans but that I absolutely couldn't stand is Patricia Gaffney's To Have and to Hold. The heroine has been horribly abused, emotionally and psychologically as well as physically, and is just released from prison into the hero's custody. Fabulously wealthy, politically powerful, and of course devastatingly handsome, he has her completely at his mercy. She can do nothing without his consent, and because she has no money, she is utterly dependent upon him for her very sustenance. She has no recourse when he sets out to seduce her.
And of course she falls in love with him even though he gives her no other choice. (Or does she?)
To Have and to Hold is often compared to Mary Jo Putney's Dearly Beloved, in which the heroine is brutally raped by the hero after he has been tricked into marrying her. Realizing what he has done, and acknowledging both his guilt and his responsibility, he abandons her but resolves not to divorce her and to support her. Eventually she uses the funds he provides for her to set herself up in a position to exact revenge upon him. Of course she falls in love with him. . . .
Why did I enjoy the Putney book and despise the Gaffney story, even though they had many similarities? I puzzled this for a long time and then just recently determined that it was the balance of power that made the two stories so completely different. Gaffney left her heroine totally vulnerable, totally powerless, and allowed the hero to take merciless advantage of her. He did not do anything to heal her for her own sake, except as it would benefit him. He did not want her to be a whole person; he only wanted her to be what he wanted her to be.
Putney, on the other hand, allowed her heroine to become whole. When she and the hero meet years later and she is about to put her plan for vengeance into action, she is not powerless, not utterly at his mercy. She can give as good as she gets, in that sense. And the irony, of course, is that she is able to do that because of him. Not just in spite of him, but because he has given her the means to do it.
Are there messages in these books? Did Gaffney set out to say that if the guy is hot enough and rich enough, anything he wants and anything he does is fine and dandy, and the woman he dominates and forces to submit to him owes him her love?
Well, frankly, that's the message I took from that book. I've read it twice and still can't reconcile Sebastian's behavior as suitable for a hero. He never seems, in my mind, to atone for his sins against Rachel, never seems to experience real remorse. Oh, he has his moment where he (sort of) realizes what an ass he's been toward her, but he doesn't change his course, doesn't alter his behavior. It's as if his character arc is a flat line.
Putney's hero Gervase, on the other hand, immediately acknowledges the depravity of what he has done. He does not excuse it or justify it, though he did try to justify it beforehand. He assumes a burden of guilt -- not all of it deserved -- and shame that Sebastian never does. And it's through that acceptance of responsibility that Gervase grows and changes and becomes a hero worthy of the heroine he has created.
Gervase's rape of Diana is brutal and forced. There is no seduction, no coercion. He is angry and drunk, has been tricked into marriage with a total stranger against his will, and he rapes her.
But is his physical brutality any more or less an invasion of the heroine's personhood than Sebastian's relentless seduction of a person over whom he not only has the power of life and death but to whom he makes that power known constantly? Does Rachel ever have the free will to give her consent to anything?
I was able, as a reader with my own perspectives, to accept Gervase's growth into hero material much more readily than I ever could have Sebastian's.
What each of us brings to a book or film or story affects how we react to it, whether positively or negatively. For this reason, reviews and ratings and reactions to books differ. That's something all authors have to keep in mind -- not everyone is going to like the "message" they read in the book. It may not be the message the author intended to convey. Or the reader may disagree with that message. But authors do need to be aware that readers can and will take messages from the stories they read. If the author has a specific message she wishes to impart, it is up to her to make sure that message is both as clear and as subtle as she can make it -- and then she has to let it go.
Thursday, February 21, 2013
The write words require time
Back in the old days -- by which I mean the 1980s and 1990s -- when the romance fiction market was exploding, writers followed a process that led to enormous success, not only for themselves but also for their readers and their publishers.
I call this a process rather than a formula because the latter word more appropriately applies to the stylistic conventions of each of the various genres and subgenres of popular fiction and most specifically to the subgenres of the romance novel. But the process of actually writing and then getting published in the romance genre went something like this:
1. Write the book.
2. Join Romance Writers of America
3. Subscribe to Romantic Times.
4. Share the work-in-progress with fellow writers via some kind of critique group based in either RWA or RT or both.
5. Revise the work-in-progress based on input from critiques.
6. Enter the book in RWA contests.
7. Attend local and national RWA conferences.
8. Repeat steps 4 through 7 as needed.
9. Submit manuscript (query, partial, or full ms.) to potential agents and editors.
10. Repeat steps 4 through 9 as needed until the book is sold.
Because most of us writing in the 80s and 90s had been educated in the school systems of the 50s, 60s, and 70s, we had a firm grounding in the basics of spelling and grammar. Not all of us, mind you, but most. And that's why there's nothing in the 10-step process for learning how to write. It was simply taken for granted that the writer knew how to write before Step #1.
And because most of us writing in the 80s and 90s had been long-time readers of popular fiction, we were also osmotically familiar with the basic structure of the novel as a literary form. The explosion of the romance publishing industry in the 1970s -- it had existed before, but was nowhere near as large or powerful or open to newcomers -- gave us the opportunity to read both extensively and intensively in a genre we were already somewhat familiar with.
Steps 2 through 7, therefore, helped us to fine tune our writing, so that by the time we reached Step 8, we had accomplished two things. The first, taking our novel from rough/first draft to polished manuscript, could be deemed a complete success if and when we proceeded through Steps 9 and 10 until the book was ultimately purchased by a publisher. The second accomplishment, however, may have been even more important in terms of our careers than the first: We learned how to deal with criticism.
For some of us, that second lesson was much more difficult than for others. And more often than not, those who learned to handle criticism via regular participation in a critique group or frequent contest entries were also those who used that criticism to bring their writing up to publishable standard and ended up with publishing contracts in hand.
Many of those who couldn't handle the criticism, who took everything personally and defended their work as perfect and refused to change a word, who argued with their critique partners or insulted their contest judges, who flew into rages or sank into abject depression in reaction to negative comments, were unable to succeed in a writing career. I've already detailed some examples from my personal experience of writers who had the talent and skill to write well enough to succeed but who didn't have the emotional fortitude to deal with criticism.
The writer who, in 2013, dashes off her first draft and immediately uploads it to Kindle Direct Publishing or Smashwords has never gone through the process. She goes immediately from Step 1 to Step 11. As a result, she has no experience at all of the process. In fact, she may have virtually no awareness even of its existence.
Criticism can be cruel. It can be malicious. Not all critics are honest. Not all critics are competent. Not all critics are fair. Not all critics are right. Going through the process toughens up the writer to the inevitable less than glowing review that she'll receive after publication, but it also helps her to improve her craft.
Even a cursory examination of the many self-published novels flooding the digital bookshelves these days is sufficient to suggest -- if not outright confirm -- that many new writers are woefully unprepared for the realities of the marketplace. Too many of them, to judge by their blogs and reactions to the critical reviews their books receive, fully expected to publish their books and start collecting huge sums of money. Period. Write it, publish it, and get paid. Nothing else. And they are beyond disappointed when it doesn't happen. They are personally outraged.
The blockbuster success of certain works of fan fiction that have been altered for mainstream publication (both digital and print) has not helped to mitigate the expectations of these new writers. If anything, it has heightened their already lofty expectations. It has also exacerbated the problem of fan fic fans -- those groupies who may or may not be good guides for Steps 2 through 7 that are essential for success. They may be supporters, even to the extreme point of being enablers, but they almost never help the writer improve her skills.
Being "kind" to the new writers with their poorly produced books will not help them become better writers. Being cruel to their books, however, may be the only hope they have.
Sadly, many of these new writers take all criticism of their work as personal insults, and once they've fallen into that mindset, there's not much the critic can do except repeat the basics:
Your books are not yourselves, they are not your babies. Criticism of them is not bullying. They are indeed a product, like toasters or bicycles, pencils or baseball bats. The consumer of your product does not care how much or how little time, effort, or love you put into the making of your product; she only cares about whether or not the product functions properly by her personal standards. If your product does not meet her standards -- regardless whether it meets your own -- she has the right to complain. And you, who put the product out there, have no right to challenge her. Absolutely none.
If you, as a new writer, have not learned the lessons of Steps 2 through 7, if you have not learned both how to write and how to deal with criticism, you might want to step back and start learning. In the end, you will likely not only be much happier, but you will also probably be a much better -- and more successful -- writer.
The rise of digital publishing has allowed so many new authors to enter the marketplace in ways not available when print dominated the industry. Writers of novellas no longer have to wait for the right anthology to justify a print publisher's bottom line. Writers for niche markets can be successful without a publisher's investment. Prolific authors are no longer restricted in the number of books they can publish. But digital publishing has not eliminated the need for good writing and good writing manners. Both, unfortunately, take time.
Take the time, and learn to do it write.
I call this a process rather than a formula because the latter word more appropriately applies to the stylistic conventions of each of the various genres and subgenres of popular fiction and most specifically to the subgenres of the romance novel. But the process of actually writing and then getting published in the romance genre went something like this:
1. Write the book.
2. Join Romance Writers of America
3. Subscribe to Romantic Times.
4. Share the work-in-progress with fellow writers via some kind of critique group based in either RWA or RT or both.
5. Revise the work-in-progress based on input from critiques.
6. Enter the book in RWA contests.
7. Attend local and national RWA conferences.
8. Repeat steps 4 through 7 as needed.
9. Submit manuscript (query, partial, or full ms.) to potential agents and editors.
10. Repeat steps 4 through 9 as needed until the book is sold.
Because most of us writing in the 80s and 90s had been educated in the school systems of the 50s, 60s, and 70s, we had a firm grounding in the basics of spelling and grammar. Not all of us, mind you, but most. And that's why there's nothing in the 10-step process for learning how to write. It was simply taken for granted that the writer knew how to write before Step #1.
And because most of us writing in the 80s and 90s had been long-time readers of popular fiction, we were also osmotically familiar with the basic structure of the novel as a literary form. The explosion of the romance publishing industry in the 1970s -- it had existed before, but was nowhere near as large or powerful or open to newcomers -- gave us the opportunity to read both extensively and intensively in a genre we were already somewhat familiar with.
Steps 2 through 7, therefore, helped us to fine tune our writing, so that by the time we reached Step 8, we had accomplished two things. The first, taking our novel from rough/first draft to polished manuscript, could be deemed a complete success if and when we proceeded through Steps 9 and 10 until the book was ultimately purchased by a publisher. The second accomplishment, however, may have been even more important in terms of our careers than the first: We learned how to deal with criticism.
For some of us, that second lesson was much more difficult than for others. And more often than not, those who learned to handle criticism via regular participation in a critique group or frequent contest entries were also those who used that criticism to bring their writing up to publishable standard and ended up with publishing contracts in hand.
Many of those who couldn't handle the criticism, who took everything personally and defended their work as perfect and refused to change a word, who argued with their critique partners or insulted their contest judges, who flew into rages or sank into abject depression in reaction to negative comments, were unable to succeed in a writing career. I've already detailed some examples from my personal experience of writers who had the talent and skill to write well enough to succeed but who didn't have the emotional fortitude to deal with criticism.
The writer who, in 2013, dashes off her first draft and immediately uploads it to Kindle Direct Publishing or Smashwords has never gone through the process. She goes immediately from Step 1 to Step 11. As a result, she has no experience at all of the process. In fact, she may have virtually no awareness even of its existence.
Criticism can be cruel. It can be malicious. Not all critics are honest. Not all critics are competent. Not all critics are fair. Not all critics are right. Going through the process toughens up the writer to the inevitable less than glowing review that she'll receive after publication, but it also helps her to improve her craft.
Even a cursory examination of the many self-published novels flooding the digital bookshelves these days is sufficient to suggest -- if not outright confirm -- that many new writers are woefully unprepared for the realities of the marketplace. Too many of them, to judge by their blogs and reactions to the critical reviews their books receive, fully expected to publish their books and start collecting huge sums of money. Period. Write it, publish it, and get paid. Nothing else. And they are beyond disappointed when it doesn't happen. They are personally outraged.
The blockbuster success of certain works of fan fiction that have been altered for mainstream publication (both digital and print) has not helped to mitigate the expectations of these new writers. If anything, it has heightened their already lofty expectations. It has also exacerbated the problem of fan fic fans -- those groupies who may or may not be good guides for Steps 2 through 7 that are essential for success. They may be supporters, even to the extreme point of being enablers, but they almost never help the writer improve her skills.
Being "kind" to the new writers with their poorly produced books will not help them become better writers. Being cruel to their books, however, may be the only hope they have.
Sadly, many of these new writers take all criticism of their work as personal insults, and once they've fallen into that mindset, there's not much the critic can do except repeat the basics:
Your books are not yourselves, they are not your babies. Criticism of them is not bullying. They are indeed a product, like toasters or bicycles, pencils or baseball bats. The consumer of your product does not care how much or how little time, effort, or love you put into the making of your product; she only cares about whether or not the product functions properly by her personal standards. If your product does not meet her standards -- regardless whether it meets your own -- she has the right to complain. And you, who put the product out there, have no right to challenge her. Absolutely none.
If you, as a new writer, have not learned the lessons of Steps 2 through 7, if you have not learned both how to write and how to deal with criticism, you might want to step back and start learning. In the end, you will likely not only be much happier, but you will also probably be a much better -- and more successful -- writer.
The rise of digital publishing has allowed so many new authors to enter the marketplace in ways not available when print dominated the industry. Writers of novellas no longer have to wait for the right anthology to justify a print publisher's bottom line. Writers for niche markets can be successful without a publisher's investment. Prolific authors are no longer restricted in the number of books they can publish. But digital publishing has not eliminated the need for good writing and good writing manners. Both, unfortunately, take time.
Take the time, and learn to do it write.
Friday, December 14, 2012
They are only words. Only words
Today is 14 December 2012. Keep that in mind.
Today, 14 December 2012, "author" James M. Lowrance (aka jml63) wrote this on the Amazon KDP forum, whining about negative reviews his book received on GoodReads.
As I wrote in my comment tonight attached to the review written by GoodReads member "Chris," I'm sure Mr. Lowrance will remove his pathetic whine once the obscene inappropriateness of it is brought to his attention. No matter, folks; I've already screen capped it.
I don't care who you are, authors. I don't care if you're Melissa Douthit, Kiera Cass, Leslie Wooddavis, Leah Banicki, M.T. Dismuke, Judith McNaught, Delaney Rhodes, Vanessa Pryor, Jerri Hines, Esther Kaliski, Ruth Ann Burkybile, James Lowrance, Joe Konrath, Jo Ludwig, whoever.
Your book is not your baby. It is not your child. It is not alive. It does not eat and sleep and breathe. It does not laugh and cry and play and dance and go to school and wait for Christmas. You may have worked very hard to write it, but you did not give birth to it. And no matter how harsh the criticisms, no matter how nasty the reviews, no matter how vicious the reviewer, neither you nor your book will bleed as a result.
Tonight, 14 December 2012, there are as many as 20, and perhaps even more, families mourning the violent and senseless and irreversible deaths of their real flesh and blood children. I hope none of you whining, wanking crybabies ever have to experience that. I hope no one anywhere ever has to, even though I know that in our day and age, such a hope is in vain.
But to compare a negative review to an assassin's bullet is grotesque exaggeration -- yes, Lowrance, you pathetic twit, it most certainly is exaggeration, of the most insensitive and offensive kind.
I'm a writer. I've been a writer longer than a lot of you have been alive. I've suffered the bad reviews, the stupid critique partners, the d'uh moments when my own stupidity and errors have been pointed out to me. I've been there, I've felt it, I've done it . . . and I haven't gone all wacko over it. I don't blame the reviewer, I don't call her bully, I don't threaten to reveal where she works or where her kids go to school.
Because it's a book. It's a fucking book. It's a made up once-upon-a-time story. The people in it aren't real, their lives aren't real, none of it is real. The bad guys die, sometimes horribly, but when you go back to page one to reread it -- or rewrite it -- the bad guys come back to life, and so do the good guys who died on page 175. They're not real. They don't bleed, they don't suffer, they don't really die.
Bad reviews won't kill it, and they sure as hell won't kill you. Grow the fuck up.
Today, 14 December 2012, "author" James M. Lowrance (aka jml63) wrote this on the Amazon KDP forum, whining about negative reviews his book received on GoodReads.
Some members use the site [GoodReads] to perpetrate intimidation. They would claim this is done to keep authors writing better books but this actually causes authors to feel like they are dodging assassin bullets (no exaggeration). Some reviewers there are only interested in extremely well-written novels and are largely bored by works in the 'How To' or 'Need to Know' categories. Why do they review these type books anyway? Because they are seeking out “bad behaviors” in authors and many of them use THE SAME DISCLAIMER that they composed that actually states this.Emphasis is mine.
As I wrote in my comment tonight attached to the review written by GoodReads member "Chris," I'm sure Mr. Lowrance will remove his pathetic whine once the obscene inappropriateness of it is brought to his attention. No matter, folks; I've already screen capped it.
I don't care who you are, authors. I don't care if you're Melissa Douthit, Kiera Cass, Leslie Wooddavis, Leah Banicki, M.T. Dismuke, Judith McNaught, Delaney Rhodes, Vanessa Pryor, Jerri Hines, Esther Kaliski, Ruth Ann Burkybile, James Lowrance, Joe Konrath, Jo Ludwig, whoever.
Your book is not your baby. It is not your child. It is not alive. It does not eat and sleep and breathe. It does not laugh and cry and play and dance and go to school and wait for Christmas. You may have worked very hard to write it, but you did not give birth to it. And no matter how harsh the criticisms, no matter how nasty the reviews, no matter how vicious the reviewer, neither you nor your book will bleed as a result.
Tonight, 14 December 2012, there are as many as 20, and perhaps even more, families mourning the violent and senseless and irreversible deaths of their real flesh and blood children. I hope none of you whining, wanking crybabies ever have to experience that. I hope no one anywhere ever has to, even though I know that in our day and age, such a hope is in vain.
But to compare a negative review to an assassin's bullet is grotesque exaggeration -- yes, Lowrance, you pathetic twit, it most certainly is exaggeration, of the most insensitive and offensive kind.
I'm a writer. I've been a writer longer than a lot of you have been alive. I've suffered the bad reviews, the stupid critique partners, the d'uh moments when my own stupidity and errors have been pointed out to me. I've been there, I've felt it, I've done it . . . and I haven't gone all wacko over it. I don't blame the reviewer, I don't call her bully, I don't threaten to reveal where she works or where her kids go to school.
Because it's a book. It's a fucking book. It's a made up once-upon-a-time story. The people in it aren't real, their lives aren't real, none of it is real. The bad guys die, sometimes horribly, but when you go back to page one to reread it -- or rewrite it -- the bad guys come back to life, and so do the good guys who died on page 175. They're not real. They don't bleed, they don't suffer, they don't really die.
Bad reviews won't kill it, and they sure as hell won't kill you. Grow the fuck up.
Wednesday, July 18, 2012
My words are mine, but they are not me
Sometime after my first book, Legacy of Honor, was published, someone remarked to me how vividly I had described the heroine's experience of being so cold during the Russian winter after Napoleon's disastrous invasion. I said I remembered very well writing that scene, and that to get all the sensations, I merely stepped out the door into the dark night of a sub-zero northern Indiana midwinter. I knew what that cold felt like.
My experience. My words. My book.
But not me.
When Firefly was going through the editing process at Pageant Books, my editor wanted to change a scene in which the heroine Julie looks out her window to watch the rising sun light the mountains to the west. The editor wanted the sun to light mountains to the east, and I literally had to draw her a picture to show how the rising sun casts its light from the east to the west. You know what I mean, don't you? Well, so did I, from having spent many an early morning watching the sun come up and light Saddle Mountain in Tonopah, Arizona to the west.
My experience. My words. My book.
But not me.
There's a scene in the book now titled Secrets to Surrender in which Viva protests Rio's intentions to sell a mule. Although his arguments made perfect sense, she is emotionally attached to the animal and resists selling her. I bond to animals -- and sometimes to possessions -- instantly and I felt her sense of loss even though I, as a human being and as an author, knew it's only a story.
My experience. My words. My book.
BUT NOT ME.
I make jewelry from rocks. Remember my saying that I watched the rising sun light Saddle Mountain? My husband and I used to go out to far western Maricopa County, in the area dominated by Saddle Mountain, early in the morning and spend all day collecting rocks that were then sliced and polished and wrapped in precious metal wire to make jewelry.
In order to sell my jewelry -- which I do -- I have to let it go. I have to stop owning it. And when someone buys it, it becomes theirs. It's not mine any more. It's not me.
At an art show many years ago, a potential customer was looking at one of the small ironwood bowls my husband had made. The customer asked if it would make a good ashtray. We were honest and told him it would probably burn, since it was, after all, wood. Duh.
And so he didn't buy it. But what if he had? What if he had used it as an ashtray and burned the hell out of it? What if he put salad in it and ruined the finish? What if he got pissed off and burned it?
Well, I wouldn't want to know about it, but once he bought it, it was his to do with as he wanted.
If an author can't separate herself enough from her work that she takes criticisms of it personally, then she really needs to get out of the business. I just can't stress this enough.
You are going to get bad reviews. It will happen. I can guarantee it. Somewhere along the line someone will not like your book. Maybe a lot of people will not like your book. It's even possible that no one will like it. You may have written a really terrible, really bad, really shitty book. It's possible. And you are too close to it to know for sure. The only people who can tell you that are people who aren't you.
No one can guarantee your success. It will happen, or it won't. No one owes it to you, and no matter how hard you try, you can't make it happen.
You are not your book. You are not the sum of all your books. You are you.
Let the book go. Let it live on its own, or die on its own. If you didn't do the best you could, then you should have, and it's not the reviewers' fault that they didn't like it. It's your fault. If you did the best you could and they still don't like it, then there's nothing you can do about it.
The only thing you can do is walk away from it. Go on to the next book. Make it better.
But you cannot make it you. You cannot make you it.
And if you can't understand that, if you don't want to understand that, if you refuse to believe it, then you are probably in need of more help than I can give you.
My experience. My words. My book.
But not me.
When Firefly was going through the editing process at Pageant Books, my editor wanted to change a scene in which the heroine Julie looks out her window to watch the rising sun light the mountains to the west. The editor wanted the sun to light mountains to the east, and I literally had to draw her a picture to show how the rising sun casts its light from the east to the west. You know what I mean, don't you? Well, so did I, from having spent many an early morning watching the sun come up and light Saddle Mountain in Tonopah, Arizona to the west.
My experience. My words. My book.
But not me.
There's a scene in the book now titled Secrets to Surrender in which Viva protests Rio's intentions to sell a mule. Although his arguments made perfect sense, she is emotionally attached to the animal and resists selling her. I bond to animals -- and sometimes to possessions -- instantly and I felt her sense of loss even though I, as a human being and as an author, knew it's only a story.
My experience. My words. My book.
BUT NOT ME.
I make jewelry from rocks. Remember my saying that I watched the rising sun light Saddle Mountain? My husband and I used to go out to far western Maricopa County, in the area dominated by Saddle Mountain, early in the morning and spend all day collecting rocks that were then sliced and polished and wrapped in precious metal wire to make jewelry.
In order to sell my jewelry -- which I do -- I have to let it go. I have to stop owning it. And when someone buys it, it becomes theirs. It's not mine any more. It's not me.
At an art show many years ago, a potential customer was looking at one of the small ironwood bowls my husband had made. The customer asked if it would make a good ashtray. We were honest and told him it would probably burn, since it was, after all, wood. Duh.
And so he didn't buy it. But what if he had? What if he had used it as an ashtray and burned the hell out of it? What if he put salad in it and ruined the finish? What if he got pissed off and burned it?
Well, I wouldn't want to know about it, but once he bought it, it was his to do with as he wanted.
If an author can't separate herself enough from her work that she takes criticisms of it personally, then she really needs to get out of the business. I just can't stress this enough.
You are going to get bad reviews. It will happen. I can guarantee it. Somewhere along the line someone will not like your book. Maybe a lot of people will not like your book. It's even possible that no one will like it. You may have written a really terrible, really bad, really shitty book. It's possible. And you are too close to it to know for sure. The only people who can tell you that are people who aren't you.
No one can guarantee your success. It will happen, or it won't. No one owes it to you, and no matter how hard you try, you can't make it happen.
You are not your book. You are not the sum of all your books. You are you.
Let the book go. Let it live on its own, or die on its own. If you didn't do the best you could, then you should have, and it's not the reviewers' fault that they didn't like it. It's your fault. If you did the best you could and they still don't like it, then there's nothing you can do about it.
The only thing you can do is walk away from it. Go on to the next book. Make it better.
But you cannot make it you. You cannot make you it.
And if you can't understand that, if you don't want to understand that, if you refuse to believe it, then you are probably in need of more help than I can give you.
Wednesday, June 13, 2012
The words that touch the heart
One of the essentials to a successful resurrection of my writing career -- as distinguished from my publishing career -- is reading. I do not lack for reading material, and I seem to be acquiring more and more every day. That Amazon one-click buying button combined with ereaderiq's daily listing of freebies has swollen my Kindle library to almost 600 volumes.
But I also have an extensive library of print material, not only popular fiction but non-fiction and research and, well, you name it, I've probably got a bunch of it.
The problem I have is finding time to read, and then secondarily choosing what to read. Most, but not all, of my print library of romance fiction is from pre-2000, and I know that I need to read more current material. But I also need to read the old stuff.
Anyway, the point I'm trying to reach is that a few days ago I selected a book to read, something I could take outside with me if I had a little time to relax on the patio when it's not too terribly hot or for a few minutes in bed before I turn out the light. The book is Lady of Spirit by Edith Layton, a traditional Regency romance published by Signet in 1986. The link is the Amazon listing with a quartet of reader reviews that will give you some idea of the plot and style.
First of all, I'm not offering a review here. I'm not well enough versed in the Regency sub-category of romance and don't want to make a fool of myself. I've also only read about one-third of it so far.
Second, one of the reasons I chose this book was because I knew the late Edith Layton. Not well, but I could say I had met her a couple of times at various RWA functions, chatted with her, and engaged in many online exchanges with her. So I admit I was predisposed to like the book, and that kind of bias is not good in a reviewer.
Third, the book's age mitigates against it being instructional, informational, or even inspirational in terms of my writing for today's market. It becomes, therefore, much more pump-priming, which is okay. And please notice that I did not say "just" pump-priming, because I consider that function of my reading to be very important.
So my comments here are not about the plot structure, the Regency conventions, or even Ms. Layton's writing style. Instead I want to bring up one particular element: The power of a novel to evoke a strong emotional response in the reader.
The scene and details aren't important, but there was a passage in the early part of the novel that brought me to tears because I was able to identify with the emotions the character experiences in connection with events similar to ones from my own personal real-life history.
And I realized that this has been missing from several of the newer "romance" novels I've read recently, whether self-published digital fare from Amazon or newer digital works from established authors or the print works from the past decade or so.
Is it just that I'm old and set in the ways developed over so many years reading romance novels? Is it that I can't seem to connect when the characters are vampires or werewolves or angels or zombies or faeries or whatever? Is it that I'm too liberal in my politics to be able to dismiss the whole invisible realm of poverty that lies under the facade of all the dukes and duchesses, kings and billionnaires? I can probably answer "yes" to all of those. And maybe that's why Lady of Spirit resonates with me, at least today.
A few weeks ago, I downloaded a new self-published historical romance from a first-time author. I knew when I acquired it -- free -- that it was the author's first published work because she said so in the front matter. How many other novels she wrote before deciding this would be the one she put out for public consumption, I have no way of knowing. I looked at the free sample before I downloaded the whole thing, and so I knew the book was full of typos and formatting errors. Not knowing the author at all, I was not disposed to like the book or make allowances for her the way I might have been for Edith Layton.
In the end, though I tried mightily, I could get through no more than I think two or three chapters of the free Kindle book. It was a textbook example of virtually everything an author could do wrong, from boring "fashion show" description of her characters on the first pages to inaccurate history to anachronistic names to horrible grammar and spelling errors to inconsistent backstory details. But as I read it, what struck me most was that I couldn't connect with the characters.
One of the criticisms leveled at Lady of Spirit in the reviews at Amazon is that it was too introspective. A lot of emphasis was placed on the characters' backgrounds and how their experiences shaped them. Because I don't read a lot of Regencies and had never read any of Ms. Layton's works before, I had nothing for comparison, but even so, I was very much aware of the depth of backstory detail in this. And while I myself might have written it differently, and since I don't know what went into Ms. Layton's personal motivation for writing this book the way she did, all of that emotional backstory made sense. It was in keeping with the atmosphere of the story. And it made me care about the characters.
Romance novels are all about emotion, and the good ones reach out to the reader's emotions, engage the reader's emotions, reflect the reader's emotions. Edith Layton reminded me of that today.
But I also have an extensive library of print material, not only popular fiction but non-fiction and research and, well, you name it, I've probably got a bunch of it.
The problem I have is finding time to read, and then secondarily choosing what to read. Most, but not all, of my print library of romance fiction is from pre-2000, and I know that I need to read more current material. But I also need to read the old stuff.
Anyway, the point I'm trying to reach is that a few days ago I selected a book to read, something I could take outside with me if I had a little time to relax on the patio when it's not too terribly hot or for a few minutes in bed before I turn out the light. The book is Lady of Spirit by Edith Layton, a traditional Regency romance published by Signet in 1986. The link is the Amazon listing with a quartet of reader reviews that will give you some idea of the plot and style.
First of all, I'm not offering a review here. I'm not well enough versed in the Regency sub-category of romance and don't want to make a fool of myself. I've also only read about one-third of it so far.
Second, one of the reasons I chose this book was because I knew the late Edith Layton. Not well, but I could say I had met her a couple of times at various RWA functions, chatted with her, and engaged in many online exchanges with her. So I admit I was predisposed to like the book, and that kind of bias is not good in a reviewer.
Third, the book's age mitigates against it being instructional, informational, or even inspirational in terms of my writing for today's market. It becomes, therefore, much more pump-priming, which is okay. And please notice that I did not say "just" pump-priming, because I consider that function of my reading to be very important.
So my comments here are not about the plot structure, the Regency conventions, or even Ms. Layton's writing style. Instead I want to bring up one particular element: The power of a novel to evoke a strong emotional response in the reader.
The scene and details aren't important, but there was a passage in the early part of the novel that brought me to tears because I was able to identify with the emotions the character experiences in connection with events similar to ones from my own personal real-life history.
And I realized that this has been missing from several of the newer "romance" novels I've read recently, whether self-published digital fare from Amazon or newer digital works from established authors or the print works from the past decade or so.
Is it just that I'm old and set in the ways developed over so many years reading romance novels? Is it that I can't seem to connect when the characters are vampires or werewolves or angels or zombies or faeries or whatever? Is it that I'm too liberal in my politics to be able to dismiss the whole invisible realm of poverty that lies under the facade of all the dukes and duchesses, kings and billionnaires? I can probably answer "yes" to all of those. And maybe that's why Lady of Spirit resonates with me, at least today.
A few weeks ago, I downloaded a new self-published historical romance from a first-time author. I knew when I acquired it -- free -- that it was the author's first published work because she said so in the front matter. How many other novels she wrote before deciding this would be the one she put out for public consumption, I have no way of knowing. I looked at the free sample before I downloaded the whole thing, and so I knew the book was full of typos and formatting errors. Not knowing the author at all, I was not disposed to like the book or make allowances for her the way I might have been for Edith Layton.
In the end, though I tried mightily, I could get through no more than I think two or three chapters of the free Kindle book. It was a textbook example of virtually everything an author could do wrong, from boring "fashion show" description of her characters on the first pages to inaccurate history to anachronistic names to horrible grammar and spelling errors to inconsistent backstory details. But as I read it, what struck me most was that I couldn't connect with the characters.
One of the criticisms leveled at Lady of Spirit in the reviews at Amazon is that it was too introspective. A lot of emphasis was placed on the characters' backgrounds and how their experiences shaped them. Because I don't read a lot of Regencies and had never read any of Ms. Layton's works before, I had nothing for comparison, but even so, I was very much aware of the depth of backstory detail in this. And while I myself might have written it differently, and since I don't know what went into Ms. Layton's personal motivation for writing this book the way she did, all of that emotional backstory made sense. It was in keeping with the atmosphere of the story. And it made me care about the characters.
Romance novels are all about emotion, and the good ones reach out to the reader's emotions, engage the reader's emotions, reflect the reader's emotions. Edith Layton reminded me of that today.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)