5 Reasons Pop Culture is Run By Fanfiction

Well, I was going to write this article myself, but Cracked.com beat me to it, and did all of the more research, so instead I'm just going to link to it and point out that now you don't even have to wait until the authors are dead anymore to make money off pre-existing stories - you just have to change the names and a few details and add in badly portrayed BDSM relationships and call it erotica *coughcough50ShadesofGraycough*.

I should also point out that changing the names and a few details of a story to make money off of it isn't a new thing either; just look at almost every fantasy story written since Tolkien published LOTR.


Anyway, here's the article :D

5 Reasons Pop Culture Is Run By Fanfiction

50 Shades of Wretch

So, today at the day job, I read an article (which seems to have since disappeared - will link when I find it) by the "author" of Jane Eye Laid Bare, Eve Sinclair*, defending the book and her choices in writing it.

A lot of the article had to do with eroticism and how 50 Shades of Grey is liberating for women, and people shouldn't be ashamed to read erotic books and eroticism is different from porn, etc, etc. - and for the first half of the article, I could kind of see what she was saying.  I have zero problem with people reading whatever they want  and even though the snippets of 50 Shades I've come across are enough to make me want to stick a fish fork up my nose and wiggle it rigorously to erase all traces of the prose from my brain, my attitude tends to be, just because I find something distasteful doesn't mean other people ought not to enjoy it. I agree with her about the porn**, I have no issue at all with porn, be it on paper or film.

In (roughly) the second half of the article, Sinclair defends her reasons for essentially hijacking a classic novel for her own gain.  Except, her reasons are ridiculous.  Firstly, that Jane Eyre is already a pretty erotic novel.  Well, yes.  So why the need to wave the this part is sexy banner?  Why would you want to take something subtle and replace it with something in-your-face?  That's something like taking a perfectly seasoned turkey and then coating it in a thick paste of ground thyme because, well, everyone likes thyme and anyway, it already had some thyme and that tasted really good.  This concept of sticking porn into classic novels has to be the best argument for leave well enough alone I've ever heard.

The other main reason she gives for her book is that no one had a problem with Pride and Prejudice and Zombies - and I agree that anyone who was OK with that should be OK with this.  I had a huge problem with it.  Just to be clear, I didn't read it.  Possibly the zombie scenes were perfectly integrated and the changes and additions were as brilliantly written as the rest.  I kind of doubt it, but that's not the point.  Pride and Prejudice is my all-time favourite book.  I have read it either 12.5 or 13.5 times (it does get a bit difficult to keep track) and even though it sounds cliched, every time I read it, I find something new, some new meaning that has previously escaped me, some facet of one of the mains' characters that suddenly makes everything clearer.  To add to it is to destroy it.  Since I'm on a roll with the similes, let's throw in a metaphor. Say you have something perfect and wonderful, an extremely elegant, perfectly cut, expensive designer gown - and  let's say you also have something popular and kind of cool, some interesting buttons from an old woolly sweater... THERE IS NO REASON TO COMBINE THESE THINGS - but the horrendous hipster gown of doom effect is not really my problem with P&P&Z or with JELB.  My problem isn't even with the insane amount of hubris someone would need to read the originals and think Meh, I could do better.  My problem is that hubris combined with riding the coattails of an excellent author who is dead and can't defend themselves.  Seriously, try that shit with an author who's still alive, why don't you?  Or, better yet, make up your own universe, throw in some of your own characters, and see where that takes you.

*Is this supposed to sound like some sort of twisted nursery rhyme?
**Sinclair calls it eroticism.  I say naked people engaged in sex acts = porn, but that's just semantics.

Damaged Goods Part 2

So, a couple of years ago (my, how time flies!) I wrote this article, questioning whether some kind of personal damage or substance abuse problem was a prerequisite for good writing.  As someone who used to do her best writing buzzed, drunk or miserable, I thought it seemed pretty likely - and research was certainly on my side; so many of the "greats" battled depression and/or drug and alcohol abuse.  Of course, when I wrote that article, I wasn't exactly happy.  I wasn't unhappy, as such, but, on the surface, my life was missing most of the things that I felt it needed (IE my own place, a decent job, somewhere to write) and one of the things that I knew I wanted (wuv, twoo wuv), so overall, the best I could call myself was discontent.  Having been to both ends of the happiness spectrum, I have reached a conclusion:

Writing sad is easier.  Writing happy is better.

The quality of one's writing relies on other factors, skill and effort, to be exact.  Strong emotions and strong emotional memory are definitely mixed in there, but I think for fiction writers especially, writing should generate emotion, not the other way around.

I write easier when I feel dissatisfied or ill-at-ease.  Words just seem to pour out of me then, whereas, when I'm happy and feeling generally content, it's more of a struggle.  One of the pluses to being human, though, is that we're never satisfied, not really.  The human race never would have progressed if we could be satisfied with just food and shelter.  We would still be living in caves.  But we're built to want more, no matter what we have (iPhones are a perfect example of this; how can a phone which takes pictures, allows you to edit them, has Internet access, games and lets you watch movies not be good enough?  How do they keep marketing new editions of these things?)  

So, to clarify, I don't mean that your writing will be better if you're happier, I mean that it's better to write while happy.  Because, in the end, your writing will be (or, I should say can and should be) just as good as it would be if you wrote while sad/angry/depressed/drunk, but - and this is the important bit - you'll be happy.

Another 25 Things from Chuck

Clickit

NaNoWriMo, You Hurt Me

I was going to try really hard to shut up about NaNoWriMo for October.  I was, because we all know that anything I find time to post on here in November is likely going to be NaNo-related graphs or complaints that I have writer's block.

But.

I was reading Chuck Wendig's 25 Things You Should Know About NaNoWriMo (which you should check out) and came across some text off the NaNo website.  I honestly thought Mr. Wendig was using hyperbole, but I went and looked and it turns out that, in fact, the following is a direct quote from the NaNo in a Nutshell page of the site.

What: Writing one 50,000-word novel from scratch in a month's time.
Who: You! We can't do this unless we have some other people trying it as well. Let's write laughably awful yet lengthy prose together.
Why: The reasons are endless! To actively participate in one of our era's most enchanting art forms! To write without having to obsess over quality. To be able to make obscure references to passages from our novels at parties. To be able to mock real novelists who dawdle on and on, taking far longer than 30 days to produce their work.

This hurts me. I mean, I get that it's supposed to be glib, but really.

... laughably awful yet lengthy... Yes, I agree that NaNoWriMo does not inspire the best writing an author can produce, yes, it forces one to rush things a bit  - but even rushed prose should at least attempt to be decent - otherwise what's the point?  If you're planning to write something awful, your time could probably be better spent.  And no, 50,000 words is not lengthy, not when you're talking about novels.

To be able to make obscure references to passages from our novels at parties. Translation: To give us an excuse to act like pompous douchebags.

...mock real novelists... My issues with this one are twofold.  One, why would you mock anyone who is making a career out of something they love? - and two, who the f--k told you I'm not a real novelist? NaNoWriMo isn't just a waste of a month for me; I actually plan on doing something with what I write during November.  A lot of us do.*

I really do like NaNoWriMo.  I like the basic idea and I'm in awe of the amount of time and effort that the administrative staff put in every year.  The philanthropic aspects of NaNoWriMo are wonderful and so is the sense of community you get from joining hundreds of thousands of writers, all working toward the same goal.

NaNoWriMo's own description of itself really got to me.  I guess I don't like the idea that the same people who make it possible are encouraging people not to care what kind of writing it produces.

Of course I still plan to participate this year, but I'd be lying if I said that a little of the magic hasn't been lost.

*I don't think there's anything wrong with doing NaNo just for fun, but I don't like the assumption that that's the only reason anyone would want to participate.

Is Technology Making Writers Lazy?

Yes, yes it is.

Well, that's my opinion, at least.  Or possibly, technology is making lazy people write more.

My parents have this idea that because creating a professional looking manuscript is so easy now, people who would ordinarily be disuaded from sending their MSs to agents (or even bothering to complete them at all) are encouraged to keep going.   I think it's a valid theory.  I'm not saying that bad writers didn't exist before things like formatting and spell-checking were made easy, or that they didn't submit their work, but I can't imagine people who are too lazy to check simple facts, for example, setting the margins on their typewriters by hand or retyping an entire page because of one mistake.  I'm not certain, but I would guess that the publishers which require people to submit their manuscript in hardcopy by post get a lot less crap than those which accept email submissions.  I think with things the way they are today, there isn't as much of a system for weeding out those people whose hearts aren't really in it.

The self-publishing world is brimming with examples of these people.  They are people who want to be writers without actually having to do the work involved.  They vomit words onto their keyboards and see them appear on their screens, looking just the way they do in books and they think that this is what it takes to be a legitimate writer - and in no time, they can hold their books in their hands, flip through the pages, see it on a shelf.  All that's left is to sit back and wait for fame and fortune to come knocking.

I am not, for the record, bashing people who choose to self-publish.  Several great authors have gone this route, I myself have self-published one book and plan to have another out before the end of 2012 - and, of course, self-publishing has been around a lot longer than print-on-demand companies and the Internet.

Nor am I suggesting that technology is bad or that all writers should ditch their laptops, buy typewriters and do things the old-fashioned way.  Actually, the same technology that has the potential to create lazy writers makes things possible that otherwise wouldn't be.  Take, for example, Devereaux Court.  Imagine, living where we each do, trying to share the same information and opinions, to comment on articles, etc., using only paper and the postal system.  It would be an administrative nightmare, not to mention bad for the environment and kind of expensive - and yes, it may have something to do with laziness, maybe we wouldn't be willing to put in the time, but more likely, we simply wouldn't have the time to put in - especially not if we were all setting the margins of our typewriters by hand.  And then there are things like NaNoWriMo. 250,000 writers  from all over the world are expected to participate this year - Impossible, really, without the Internet, word processors, etc., etc.

So yes, I think technology is making some writers lazy.  I also think that those of us who can recognize how  lucky we are to have such massive resources available to us can use technology to achieve amazing things.

By the way, if all goes well, this article will be posted while I'm in Ireland and nowhere near a computer.

I was reading Terrible Minds when I came across a link to this article in the Wall Street Journal, which made my blood a little boily.

For one thing, I think the author is getting confused about what a young adult is; she indiscriminately switch between the terms adolescents and children, as if authors of YA fiction are out there giving their books away to five year olds.

I'm not saying everything that's on the market labeled YA is good. Hell, a lot of it is awful, poorly-written crap that I wouldn't want to line a hamster cage with, for fear the hamster might read it and lose IQ points - but that usually has more to do with poor grammar and syntax and overused story lines than it does with the content being too dark or explicit.

One of the things that caught my eye is the assertion that 40 years ago, young adult fiction didn't exist. Heinlein's Red Planet came out in 1949, Have Spacesuit, Will Travel in 1958. Those are only two examples from one author - but I think Mrs. Gurdon is right in the sense that, 40+ years ago, young adults didn't have a great deal of special fiction - because they were considered mature enough to deal with the same ideas and themes as old adults.

What I find really funny is that, right after the bit that draws attention to the past (I'm honestly not sure if it is meant to point out the good old days, when controversial YA fiction wasn't available, or highlight a misguided past when young adults didn't have their own genre), there's a little sidebar thing with Books we can Recommend for Young Adult Readers - that, I get. If you're going to write something tearing down what you seem to be claiming is the vast majority of YA fiction, it only makes sense to point out where the wholesome stuff can be found. The funny bit is that the sidebar goes on to list Books for Young Men and Books for Young Women. I'm sorry, I thought we were done with the 40 years ago thing... is that still going on? And then, of course, if you read the descriptions of the books they're suggesting, the first one is described as gruelling and is set in a post-apocalyptic world, the next one is about WWII - I'm thinking neither of those are on the light and fluffy side.

My favourite part of the article (and by favourite, I mean the part that brought me the most joy through its sheer ridiculousness) is the very end :

... it may be that the book industry's ever-more-appalling offerings for adolescent readers spring from a desperate desire to keep books relevant for the young... The book business exists to sell books; parents exist to rear children, and oughtn't be daunted by cries of censorship. No family is obliged to acquiesce when publishers use the vehicle of fundamental free-expression principles to try to bulldoze coarseness or misery into their children's lives.

to try to bulldoze coarseness or misery into their children's lives. Yeah. Publishers and their agents are out in the world right now, stopping kids on the streets and saying, "This is about freedom of expression. And you'd better read this, because if you don't, you're condoning censorship. In fact, anyone who doesn't read dark, gritty fiction is a Nazi. Read this book, or I'll beat you to death with it."

Alas, literary culture is not sympathetic to adults who object either to the words or story lines in young-adult books.

Here's a thought for parents who are anal about what their teenagers read/parents of actual children who read YA stuff: DO SOME RESEARCH. It is your job to take care of this stuff. If you have a kid who is allergic to peanuts, you don't demand that stores stop selling them, you teach your kid to avoid them. If you, for whatever reason, believe that certain writing is going to be somehow harmful to your offspring, you need to take care of that from your end.

I know, I know, I'm ranting. I just hate the idea of the next generation being wrapped in any more bubble wrap than it already has been.

I think I'll end it there. If I think of anything else, I'll add it - and I may go back and edit this when I'm a little calmer, but for right now, here it is, 100% censorship free.

Blame it on Cinderella

There are two problems that I can see with overnight success, the first being: it doesn't really exist. The second is, it can be proven to exist.

This sucks for writers because, no matter how much we say we know it won't be easy and that we're willing to put the work in (and in fact, no matter how truthful we're being when we say it), all of us hope - and I would say that deep down, a lot of us believe - that somewhere along the way, somewhere in the midst of the sweat and tears and restless nights, something will just go whoosh and we'll wake up one morning to a book deal on our front step and a talk show host begging for a prime time interview.

Of course, it doesn't really work like that. It can't, unless you know someone, or at the very least, know someone who knows someone, and even then there are no guarantees. But we keep hoping, because after all, overnight success can be proven. This is because, to the public, every success seems like it happened overnight. Take someone who is ludicrously rich and famous. Say, Lady Gaga. She seemed, to the majority of people, to spring out of nowhere. First, there was nothing, then there was Just Dance and Poker Face and suddenly everyone knew who she was - but she'd been performing for years before that. It's pretty much the same way with all celebrities (including celebrity authors), because most of us don't know anything about them until they're already famous - so to us, they go from 0-famous in, at the very most, two seconds. Proof that overnight successes not only happen, they happen every day.

Part of this proof, I think, can also be attributed to the fact that we as writers (and the more I think about this, the more I think I should say we as Westerners) really, really want to believe that by tomorrow, we could have everything we've ever wanted - so even if famous authors come out and say, I did X for years and years and I worked really hard to get an agent and then I did Y, we tend to only catch the end of it. The bit that goes, And then Z was published and the next thing I knew, the phone was ringing off the hook.

I blame it all on Cinderella. Here's a girl whose life sucked, who worked hard, who learned all sorts of useful skills like sewing and communicating with animals, but who was ultimately content to stay where she was - and what we're supposed to remember about her isn't that she worked hard or faced injustice bravely; it's that one day, her problems magically disappeared and she got everything she'd ever dreamed of. Stupid fairy tales, filling our heads with fluff.

... of course, they were right about true love and the prince...

...so we can hope.

Quit Your Day Job

Since I was about sixteen, I've known what I want to do with my life. I want to write. I do write, of course, but I want to write full time.

The problem with this, I think, is that I'm not a very good writer. Don't get me wrong, I write very well*, but the fact is, I'm lazy. I'm inconsistent. I'll write for days at a time, forgo showering and eating, answer people with one-word sentences or entirely incoherent grunts - and I'll spend weeks at a time only writing a sentence here or there, marking down things I need to research to be dealt with later. I flit from one story to the next, so nothing ever gets finished.

When I was younger, I put a lot more into my writing, because I had a lot more to put. My last year of high school, I went to school full time, worked full time and wrote in every spare minute. I kept track of tonnes of stories in my head and never wrote outlines because I didn't need them. The only class I never skipped was Writer's Craft, because it was the only class I cared about - and the only one that I could really see benefiting me in the long run.

As I've gotten older, my ability to keep my energy up, my ability to keep track of everything I'm doing, and my ability to go for several nights without sleep and not feel the effects, have slowly drained away - but the bad habits I got into as a teenager have never really left me.

Of course, the other thing - the more important thing - which hasn't left me, is my desire and determination to be a full-time writer.

There are a lot of theories out there on how one gets to be a full-time writer - and a lot of advice. Make contacts, build a platform, hire editors, do market research, take classes, submit work, read. It can't all be good, but I think most of it probably is, or at the very least, well-intentioned - but what you don't often see, or what I don't often see, is reference to the Nike approach. Just Do It.

I'm starting to think that could be the way to go. I want to write full time, so I will write full time. The end. I'm not saying I'm going to quit my day job and go live under a bridge with my laptop, a sleeping bag and an extension cord, but I think (and I could, admittedly, be very wrong) that the best way to become a full-time writer could very well be to simply write all of the time. If I put the time in, to writing and writing-related activities (including, of course, the platforms and submissions and reading and networking), it may well be enough to get myself noticed.

And if I'm wrong, I'll be spending a lot of time doing something I love. I'm having trouble seeing the bad there.

*I hope I write very well. If not, I've wasted an awful lot of time and energy on something which has brought me joy but may never bring me money or esteem or recognition of any kind.

Under the Sun

They say there's nothing new under the sun. Whoever they are, it makes you wonder whether or not they're right.

A lot of what we (as a society) produce seems to be based on, inspired by or downright copies of, things that came before. I'm not just talking about things (for the sake of this discussion, I'm going to stick to artistic endeavours) that were created with the intention of retelling a familiar story, like Westside Story or She's the Man* - I'm talking about everything.

I would say the vast majority fiction, if we were to take away the stylistic aspects and change the characters' names to Protagonist, Antagonist, etc., would tell very similar stories. Which isn't to say those stories aren't compelling, but it calls the idea of originality into question.

Somewhere in this article, I've probably alluded to Shakespeare (and the Bible and maybe a hundred other things), without even knowing. Some things are so prolific that they become part of us, as if by osmosis, and can't possibly be avoided. We write them or say them out loud without any intention to do so. So is it even possible to be original?


I'm wondering if the similarities in the stories we tell exist because they follow a set format that limits us, like that Docx guy suggested, or if it's because we're unconsciously copying each other.

Or, do they exist because of common interest, because we like reading about badass men and damsels in distress, because we like the idea that enemies can become friends and lovers and that the underdog can win, because blood is literally our life force and therefore extremely important to us - do they exist because we're human?

Personally, I think there is plenty new under the sun. I'm a firm believer of originality in art and as far as I can see, it's still going strong.

*I couldn't think of another example off the top of my head, but this kind of leads me to believe that Shakespeare should be left alone... although, 10 Things I Hate About You was really good.

Picking Your Battles (or, at least the order they come in)

I have so much going on right now. Not just in my non-writing life (which is wonderful and crazy-intense), but my writing world as well. I've got my normal 60+ stories on the go - I've been trying to pear (pare?) the list down to just a few, so I can complete some of them, and I think I'm down to about 5 that I'm actively writing. What I've discovered: 5 is still too many. I remember the wonderful years between '02 and '07ish, when I could keep all of my characters and storylines mostly straight in my head (2004 saw the introduction of the Characters spreadsheet, which I used to keep my 300+ characters in order and avoid reusing names), when I could write two or three novels simultaneously and not get confused, or figure out the entire plot to a new story and keep it straight in my head long enough to write it down.

So the question is, how do I narrow my list down even further? I don't want to give up on any of my stories, I'd like to think that I'll write them all, eventually, but the problem is that for every story I complete I start at least two, so how am I ever going to achieve that?

To get the 5, I've used a rough set of criteria based on what I feel like writing, what I can complete in the shortest amount of time and what has the greatest publishing potential, all of which, for reasons I don't quite understand, kind of makes me feel like a sell out. I don't know what else I can do to shorten the list, I honestly don't.

So how do I (or how does any writer) decide which projects to work on and which to push to the (seemingly endless) back burner?

Preconceptions: What People Think of Writers

I think there is a propensity among professionals in general to believe their profession is among the noblest, most difficult and most incomprehensible to others - and for the most part, I don't think we writers are any different*. Sure, we understand the necessity devoting time, energy, money, blood, sweat and tears to our passion, but try explaining it to someone else. Not easy.

I've only recently started allowing myself to tell people I'm a writer. A strange feeling comes over me, like somehow I'm tricking them, like a beauty school student telling people s/he's a professional stylist, like I'm not a real writer yet. I know this is ridiculous, since I've been a real writer, heart and soul, since I was about four (the first time, to anyone's recollection, that I proclaimed "I have to write this down" - and without any further explanation, allowed the crayons and colouring book I was holding to fall to the floor and promptly disappeared into my bedroom) and a published (and indeed selling) writer for almost a year. But it still feels weird.

I know how many writers feel about this glorious, insane, impossible, wonderful profession, and how many of us feel about ourselves. What I'm interested in (for the purposes of this article), is what other people think about us - and how their preconceptions (or lack thereof) change ours.

When I tell people I'm a writer, one of the first things they (almost) always ask is, "Anything I'd know?" It's a good question, it shows interest, but I still fear it because I know the answer is no. Not even probably not, just, no. From there, their reactions can go anywhere.


Pleasantly, a lot of people seem to have the That's Amazing reaction, the one where they tell me they could never write and that they're fascinated by people who can, then proceed to ask me a million questions about my writing, my process, my whateverelsetheycanthinkof - which I am only too happy to answer. These people usually insist that I'll be famous soon, too, which I like, even if it is a baseless assertion.

Almost as many people (possibly more and I just trick myself into mentally fudging the numbers a little) have the Stunned Silence and Change the Subject reaction, where they say "Oh," or "Ah," or contrive to make an even less committal noise, then start talking about their cold or their dog or the exhaust pipe they need to have fixed on their car. It always makes me feel a little judged.

And of course, there is always the myriad of reactions we get from our family and friends when they find out we plan to make a career out of this thing called writing. In my experience, they have just as wide of a range as those of strangers and casual acquaintances.

There is the Go For It! reaction. It involves words of encouragement, help with writer's block, help with brainstorming and editing - and the understanding that when we are typing, completely ignoring what they're trying to tell us, it's not personal.

There's Go For It, But Be Careful. Supportive, cautionary, still overall not a bad reaction to have.

Then there's the Fall Back, the reaction basically suggests that eventually, you'll grow out of this phase and want to settle down and get a real job - and you should prepare for that eventuality, you know, just in case.

And, of course, there's the rare (although never rare enough) Why Don't You Get a Real Job? reaction. The one that can make you want to scream, throw things or just shake your head in bemused disgust. I'm happy to say that this is one reaction that I can't seem to get my head around, and as a result, I never take it seriously.

Have I missed any? I'm not certain what brought on this little catalogue of reactions, but I'd like it to be as complete as possible. I'm nothing, if not thorough.

*Of course, in our case, it's true ;)

The People You Know

***First of all, I'd like to wish everyone a happy 2011 filled with book deals and adoring fans.***

Most writers write with an audience in mind, even if that audience is only a vague: people like me. Sometimes it's way more specific, with age, gender, even socioeconomic standing or ethnicity taken into consideration. Who a writer writes for will vastly alter what s/he writes, not to mention what gets cut during editing.

So, what I'm wondering is, do you ever find yourself writing for the people you know? Do you worry about what your friends and family will think about a certain scene, concept or character? Do you avoid basing characters off of friends of friends or colleagues, in case they're recognized.

There's no denying it can get awkward. It's kind of hard to hand your Dad a piece of writing with a sex scene and say, here, read this and not feel weird about it.

The popular theory seems to be that it's not what, but who you know that will determine your success as a writer. One of the best tools a writer has is his/her circle of acquaintance. Word-of-mouth is an excellent form of promotion (I know I'm personally a lot more likely to read a book based on a recommendation from someone with similar taste than I am to read one because it's a best-seller), but I find it kind of difficult to approach people and ask them to promote me - and even more difficult if they themselves are not part of my target audience, or worse, I know they're likely to disapprove of what I've written.

So, do you skip sex scenes to prevent your dad from reading them, or skirt religious debates to avoid upsetting your grandparents, try not to rail against your day job to placate your boss?

Do you just not tell people what you're writing and hope that some never find out?

Alternatively, do you just write the way you want to write, release your writing into the world and reap the whirlwind (/backlash)?

I was terrified to let Aigaion Girl go. I wrote it happily enough, not really giving any thought to anything other than the flow of the story, the realism of the characters, the cadence of the prose--It never occurred to me that I should avoid certain topics or images - until I was getting ready to publish, and realized that somewhere along the way, there was good chance my grandmother was going to read it. She won't, thankfully*. I was actually a little surprised that I didn't experience more negativity from my extended family. I didn't send them all invitations to join my Facebook fan page or anything, but, especially with social networking sites like FB, it's kind of impossible to keep my writing secret from anyone without using a pseudonym.

So there's a question, too: Is it worth it to write under another name, so that you can write with abandon?

Really, I'm just curious to know how other writers deal with their family and friends when it comes to their writing - how much of a consideration friends and family are.


*I love my Gran and I don't want to read something that I know will upset her (I've since been told by others that the book is really sexual, which surprised me because all the sex scenes are fade-to-black).

I've found another article that everyone might find interesting. This one's about an apparently pretty strong gender bias in the publishing world when it comes to book covers.


I Write A Nasty Book. And They Want A Girly Cover On It.

Discuss!

>:D

Freelance Writing

Godchecker put the link to this article up on their twitter account. I read it, and thought, "Everyone at DevCo would love this", and (even though Bean's already got Godchecker on her twitter follow list thingy), I figured I'd at least let E have a go. >:D

Really though; it's a good article about freelance writing and why you can get away without pants it's awesome

Why You Should Freelance (Despite All That Face-Punching Business)

Good discussion question from this: would you ever consider doing full time freelance writing, or would you rather have a specific publication/publisher?

An Interesting Article

Some People Just Need To Be Kicked In The 'Nads

It's the 'e-book vs. real book' thing again, only some tit has gone and made a deal with Amazon to sell all of the books he represents on nothing but kindle. Naturally, this has the publishers annoyed, especially since it cuts them right out of everything to do with the money involved. It also has me annoyed, because I don't want a Kindle and I doubt I ever shall. Apart from all of the other pros and cons...magnets can't erase words printed on a page.

Still...I don't think it's the death knell for paper publishing, as the article suggests. There will always be a market for paper books, amongst those with their heads screwed on straight. I do wish they'd come up with more sustainable sources for paper, though.

Oh...and this can count as this week's discussion question >:D

The Weight of Shadows

The Weight of Shadows

Author: Alison Strobel

Publisher: Zondervan

Publication Date: May 7, 2010

Paperback, 320 pages

ISBN: 978-0310289456


I don't generally read a lot of Christian fiction. To put that more accurately, until recently I hadn't picked up a work of Christian fiction since I was still babysitting my cousins at their house (the youngest of these cousins has just finished grade 9, the oldest, her first year of university). I don't have anything against religious fiction as a rule; it's just that I rarely have occasion to read it. With Alison Strobel's The Weight of Shadows, the occasion found me - and I'm glad that it did.

The first thing that struck me about this book was how quickly I found myself caring about the characters. Not because they're the most amazing, wonderful, likeable people in the world, but, actually, because they're not. The characters in this book are, really, just people. They struggle. They make mistakes, like everyone else, some huge and life-altering and others mundane and inconsequential, but all of them mistakes that real people would make. Throughout the book, and especially toward the end, I found myself silently cheering them on or telling them off and willing them to make what seemed so obviously to be the right choices.

By the second chapter, the importance of the author's faith to her, and the roll it plays in her writing, is evident. Regardless of my own beliefs, I found myself awed by her expressions of that faith, from the inner thoughts and feelings of her three main characters to the little (but heartfelt) prayers that they utter throughout the entire novel. Before the three seemingly insular story lines start to intersect, they're held together by these thoughts, feelings and prayers.

I can only imagine the painstaking research that must have gone into making The Weight of Shadows the book that it is. Strobel offers readers a detailed look into the life and motivations of a battered woman, the workings of a shelter and the emotions of people trying to cope with long-standing guilt.

The Weight of Shadows is an interesting study in faith, love and the interdependence of people, thoroughly researched and uniquely executed. I'm glad I had the opportunity to read it.

About the author:

Alison inherited the writing gene from her father, Lee, and grew up composing stories on everything from napkins to typewriters. Her talent earned her awards throughout school, a two page spread featuring her work in her senior yearbook, and even saved her from failing college chemistry. But it wasn't until she moved to California after college that she wrote her first full-length novel, and that's when God made Alison's oldest dream come true.

--From Alison's website, www.alisonstrobel.com



For more information about the book, the author or the tour, check out Alison's Blog.

eReaders - The End of Paper Books?

I've spent a lot of time over the last little while thinking about e-readers and whether or not they're going to eventually mean an end to paper books. I really hope not.

It's not that I don't want people to be environmentally conscious. I do and I recognise that every little bit helps, so even though switching to ebooks isn't going to have the same impact as, say, driving a fuel efficient car or walking to work every day, I don't think it's a bad idea to do something to help the environment, especially where trees are concerned. This seems to be a hot topic for debate at the moment, but so far, even where there is a clear support of the continuation of paper books, everything I've read suggests that, over all, for avid readers, ereaders are the environmentally conscious way to go. Two blogs with differing opinions on the subject, but which present essentially the same research are Daniel Goleman's (E-Reader Versus Book: The Eco-Math) and Earth Beat (The future of paper books ... and e-readers).

So, why, as an environmentally conscious writer, would I not want ereaders to replace traditional books? A few reasons.

The first and biggest reason is that I think our society depends far too much on technology. Just about everyone in North America remembers that wide-spread, three-day blackout and the rolling black and brown outs that followed it. In the realm of disasters, it ranked pretty low, but it wasn't nothing. Some people died as a result, because they had no air conditioning and the financial damages done to businesses due to products spoiling or stores having to stay closed for long periods of time, was immense. And that is a system that has been in place for many, many years. What makes us think that the Internet (something new enough that I remember when only rich people could afford it, something which, at the time, couldn't be accessed without a dedicated phone line and ten minutes of horrible beeping and gurgling) is any less likely to spontaneously go down? Or, Hell, if you believe the Internet is bullet proof, good luck using it if the power goes out again. Good luck charging your ereader, too. If we've converted all of our old books to efiles and, especially, if our new books were never (or hardly ever) actually in print, a technological breakdown would be crippling to the acquired and compiled knowledge of the entire world. Think the burning of the library at Alexandria. Having all of our knowledge stored in one place is a bad idea.

It's also a money thing. Right now, especially, people don't have a lot of money to spend on, well, anything. So while an ereader might save you money overall (from what I can tell, ebooks aren't that much cheaper than paper, but they are a bit), most people don't have the money to spend on an ereader up front, and if they do, and enough people switch, it's going to drive the price of traditional books up - which means that people who couldn't ever hope to afford an ereader now won't be able to afford paper books either. Any new technology does this at first, drives out the old technology while simultaneously being too expensive for many people to afford (I saw this first hand with the transition from tape-cassette to CD, Discmans to mp3 players and videos to DVDs), and yes, eventually, it does balance out, but in the meantime, it sucks for the people who are too poor to afford the new stuff and (because the new stuff is so widely available to those who can afford it) can't find the old stuff anywhere.

Then there's the issue of the traditional in traditional books. It may sound a bit snobby and like it's not much of an argument, but there is something to be said for the feel of a paper book in your hands. There is something to be said for the idea of taking your book on a plane or a bus or to the beach or camping or hiking through the mountains and not having to worry about what happens if your batteries die. I don't know, the idea of reading The Paper Bag Princess to a kid on an ereader just doesn't work for me.

As for the solutions to the environmental implications of sticking with paper books, my suggestions to the publishing world at large include using recycled (preferably sustainable) paper and natural inks and printing books on demand, rather than printing huge quantities then warehousing them and eventually pulping the unwanted ones.

Obviously, this is a subject which readers and writers alike have strong opinions about and most of the articles I've read contain very evident biases (I read one article comparing various ereaders and paper books, which ranked most of the ereaders' readability as high and the readability of paper books as medium.) and I don't want to suggest that I think that ereaders in general are a bad idea, or that people shouldn't take steps to help the environment. In fact, I think they're a good idea, especially for people who want to read a book but don't necessarily want to own it (especially popular books which may not be in stock at a nearby library but are often overstocked at bookstores) or for people who spend a lot of time travelling and don't want to put fifteen books in the carry-on when they go on vacation. I think there are a lot of great uses for ereaders; I just don't want to see them replace paper books.

Gender Bias in Book Selection

Someone on Book Blogs started a discussion (and posted this link to her blog) about gender bias in book selection. Apparently, she has a colleague who will not read books written by women. As a female author, this bothers me. As a human being, it scares me a little. As a reader, I can kind of see his point.

I can't imagine deciding against picking up a book to read because its author is female, but if we didn't judge books based on things other than their content, all books could just be a flat light grey with their titles printed in an easy-to-read font. So I judge books (at least a little) by their covers, and part of that includes the author's name*. If an author's name is gender-ambiguous, I don't feel any great need to find out their sex. In some cases, the rest of the book cover gives that away (P.C. Cast, anyone?), but by and large gender doesn't really matter to me when choosing an author, as long as the book looks good.

The reason I said I could kind of see Buddy's point is that, when I thought about it, I realized that most of my favourite authors are male (Terry Pratchett, Neil Gaiman, Robert A. Heinlein, etc.). I don't think that's because of their use of “male” language (although, in the case of Gaiman and Pratchett, I would say it definitely has something to do with their British language), so much as the (often) male perspective on characters. Apart from a clever and engaging style, what I look for most in fiction is something character-driven. Fun and wonderful plots are all well and good, but if I don't care about the characters, I can hardly be expected to care about how they spend their time... and I think that men are more likely to write characters I care about. The reason for this? Flaws. Female authors (and I am way generalizing here; clearly I don't think this is true of all female authors) tend to have the unfortunate habit of forgetting to give their protagonists flaws of any kind – and many times, when they do have flaws, they're things like thinking that they're more flawed than they really are. I like my characters to be overcoming addiction, or give careless criticisms to people or be so heartsick that they can barely function. I don't want to read men who never ask for directions and frequently forget to pick up milk or women who insist on watching chick flicks and won't eat Chinese. There are flaws and there are quirks, and I think male authors are quicker to heap on the flaws when their characters are in their planning stages.

With all of that being said, I should mention that my favourite book EVER is Pride and Prejudice. Jane Austen's style is very distinctly female and her characters are real, flawed people who I can relate to and enjoy reading about.

A few (though admittedly, a very few) people on Book Blogs didn't think there was much of a difference between male and female authors and Amanda Markham, the author of the blog that prompted this whole thing, points out that “... men can be every bit as fluffy and emotional as women”. This is true, but, as Ms. Markham goes on to point out, there is a discernible difference between the way women write and the way men write. She directs her readers (and I direct you) to the Gender Genie, which boasts something like 80% accuracy when determining if a passage was written by a male or female author. What's really interesting is that it shows you how it reached its conclusion, which is great, especially if you want to get really good at writing first person characters who aren't the same sex as you.

I'm still fairly ambivalent about this issue, because while there are traits that are often attributed to female authors (some of which I attribute to female authors in this post), I don't think that women should strive to be/write/act more like men. Actually, I think that if everyone strove to be and write more like themselves, we would have a lot more interesting and varied fiction available to us and a lot less weird men refusing to read woman authors.

*If an author has a name like Adrienne Loveheart, I'm likely to avoid anything she's written on principal.

Press Releases and Gorilla Marketing

No matter how much a book may write itself, I've come to realize that no book is going to sell itself. So, a couple of random tips on how to get your book (/product/whatever) noticed and (hopefully) selling.

First off, the press release. I didn't know this, but apparently, you need one. Any time a company launches a new product, or an author (or publishing house) launches a new book, someone writes a press release and sends it to every relevant media outlet they can think of. A lot of the people who receive it won't care, but some will, and it just might mean your name in a paper, in a blog entry or on the radio. Prefferably, you want to send your press release out just as your book (or whatever) is available. You might even want to send one out before it is available, telling them it is going to be available and offering a review copy, because many reviewers won't review a book that's already been released. I've sent the one for Aigaion Girl to our very own Jam to look over (Jam is the new Editor in Chief of The Muse - Congrats Jam!), and I don't know exactly how effective it will be, but from the tonne and a half of research I've done on it, this is how a press release (actually now called a Media release, because they're sent to everyone, not just papers) should look:

For Immediate Release:

Contact
(contact name)
(contact phone number)
(contact fax)
(contact email)

(Headline)

(City), (Province/State), (Date)

(First Paragraph)*

(Second Paragraph)**

### OR - End -

* The first paragraph should contain the basic info (who, what, where, why, why we care)

**The second paragraph should contain the more detailed info.

Always refer to yourself in the third person and try to write the press release as if you are an uninterested third party. I wish I had more info to share, but first we'll have to see if I've done mine properly.

As for the Gorilla Marketing, this is something I'm quickly learning about. The Internet has made marketing a million times easier, but in so doing, has made it a lot less relevant. There are a tonne of ads on almost every site you visit, so I'm not really rushing to add mine to the throng and hope it gets noticed somehow.

My theory is that the best way to get noticed is through search results. If someone types your (pen)name into Google, you want you to be the first person on the list. The same with your book/story/poem title. There are a couple of ways to achieve this. One, link everything. Link to your website from your other website, link your blogs together, include your website(s) in profile on every forum you belong to... and the second, which is kind of a pain in the ass, use your own links. When I have to get to my website, AthenaMcCormick.com (see what I did there?), I don't just type in the url and hit enter. No, I search
"Athena McCormick" on google, then I click the link that pops up for my website. I have the unfair advantage of a really unusual name (there is another one in Colorado), but my site is now at the top of the list, where it wasn't before.

Spiders are the best thing ever for marketing, especially for us poor, starving artist types, because they're relatively easy (albeit time consuming) to use and manipulating them doesn't cost any money. Six days ago, when I approved Aigaion Girl for sale, I got a little automated message telling me I could expect to wait 15 business days (or three weeks) before it would be available on amazon. That seemed a little long, so ten or twenty times a day, I went to Amazon and typed "Aigaion Girl" into the search bar a whole bunch of times. When I got tired of that, I typed my name. Aigaion Girl showed up on Amazon yesterday. Go see for yourself (and boost my spiderness) here.

The one other thing (and the final one for the purposes of this article) I wanted to mention was email signatures. They don't have to be overly complex or witty; they just have to have some basic information and link to whatever you want linked - and once you've written them, they're always there an easy to use. I discovered today that not all mail clients will interpret the links correctly, however, so I suggest instead of saying "click here", you say something like, "visit my profile at www.profile.com" and link the url, so if the link goes dead, your recipient still has your url.

Okay, I think that's it for me. Hope this helps someone, somehow.