Interesting times and different a-gender

Dorchester (principally Romance publisher, mass market, medium sized) - who have I gather been having something of a torrid time (and not between the sheets - unless it's paper sheets - and then it's probably newspaper on a park bench) - have dropped their mass market print business and will now be only doing POD and e-books. Depending on whose point of veiw you trust, this either smart (their POV) or the the final countdown for publishing (Joe Konrath)or a bit of a kick in the unmentionables to their authors. The last is undoubtably correct - and Dorchester would probably have to offer me Earth, moon and stars and at least 65% of the Amazon retail price (ie five percent for them to do the cover, editorial, proofs and formatting with - call it not very likely) to persaude me that their new terms were anything but a shafting. Still interesting times. I do see how it would have been near impossible for them to have told authors, without being shredded by creditors, but the result is shredded credibility instead. I predict its demise or possibly incarnation as a vanity press. My deepest sympathy for the authors affected by this mess.

On another tack (and I owe Brendan some thanks for bringing this up last week) there's been something of a storm in the female-reader dominated YA mainstream B-cup (B stands for boys, really), with some young upstart daring to point out that boys don't read much of it, and maybe someone should do something about it. Predictably a frothy foment of furious outrage and suitable brat bashing followed from those at the top end of the status quo at the moment (I am sure they didn't intend it like that, but that -- to this neutral outsider -- was how it sounded.) It was singly funny because if you changed genders it read like the 1960 diatribes of a few crusty old... venerable members of the profession defending all-male TOC's in the SF short-story mags of 1960. When you eventually stripped out the outrage and the self-justification and the outright denial, it came down to well, yes there is a problem. But we're happy in the front of the bus, they don't really mind being in the back of the bus, and they've got lots of old busses where we used to have to travel at the back, and anyway we're still not secure and need to be reaffirmed and we're owed several thousand years in the front... yadda yadda yadda rationalisations for not doing anything and trying to stop anyone else doing it. I guess some folk are always happy with status quo, especially when they are it. Me, I'm really not concerned particularly, except thinking the young woman who brought up it is a poster child for actually being liberated (I don't agree with everything she said, but I admire her for saying it) in the broadest sense. Let's face it: a world where the detriment-to-the-enjoyment-of-reading that gets prescribed in schools is the last fiction 4/5 of all young men, and a lot young women, ever read makes for... a Brave New World. One I'm prepared to strive not to leave to my grandchildren. I'm a strong believer in merit and growing the pie rather than taking from some haves (so they become have-nots) to give to the have nots. But the reality of this is: if there is bigger audience, we should be trying to reach it -- preferably without losing our existing audience and not getting the imagined bigger one either. And let's be honest, women on the TOC's of sf mags made sf better and broader (at least for a while. Worrying representivity too much can start eating into merit, and losing an audience without gaining much. For example if Romance tried for 50% it might end up with 0% audience. On the other hand I don't think it would break Romance as a genre to occasionally publish male authors with male names on covers and male POV or even male characters that weren't stereotype female wet-dreams. There is an audience for a little something different. I'm sure there must be readers panting for a book with a hero with a chest like a tubercular pigeon, and flat feet - but a nice bloke anyway) Nothing which is truly exclusive is terribly healthy for society, long term, in my simian opinion. But that's just my five cents. No, I don't want to be a romance writer or YA-for-young-males writer. I wouldn't mind being able to get one of either into a publishing house (assuming Joe Konrath isn't right) without an automatic rejection, just as I'd like any editor to consider a story on merit, with regard to possible audience and effect on the existing audience when they get offered a sf short, and not to base that on gender or quota.

So how do you guys feel? Are there sometimes when a quota makes sense? Does it matter that say hard sf has more male writers than female? And does it matter that fiction is (because of the elephant in the room, Romance - and it seems YA) at least 70% female written and read? (my own take is I don't care who writes it, but I HATE losing an audience. I want all nice boys and girls to read. I want all not nice ones to read too. And I don't want your creed, politics, color, orientation or gender counting you out (one of the reasons I like the idea of e-books - broader spread). It's not good for our future, both as writers and as humans.)

On a third tack I read Janet Evanovich left her last publisher because they wouldn't give her 50 million advance for the next three books. Holy smoke. I've read a couple and they're not bad, rather formulaically predictable mysteries IMO. I've no gripe with her earning 50 million for that... if people want that, that's what they want, but I'd like know why our Sarah isn't earning 100 million dollars then? 'cause she's a lot better.

GAAAH!

Okay, I feel better now. I do apologize for groaning in your ear first thing on a Sunday morning. But I'm getting too old to be digging pits in the back yard -- especially when there are no metaphoric bodies to go into them. Add in a round of paining walls, after the requisite taping, redoing a website -- almost done -- and trying to find time to write and, well, you now know why I'm groaning.

I am also groaning because that wonderful idea I had for a blog post just flew out of my head, replaced instead by one of my characters demanding to know why I haven't been writing HER story. Hasn't she been patient? She's let me write short stories and another novel and almost finish a second and get started on plotting a third. All the while, she's languished in the back of my mind, waiting oh so patiently for her turn. Can't she come out and play?

Whine, whine, whine...and I'm not sure if it's the character or me or both of us whining.

The problem with this character is that, while she's loud enough, she doesn't exactly resonate with me. I've doodled with a story involving her but, well, it just doesn't work. So she's been pushed to the back burner while other stories, stories that do interest me and are fun -- when they aren't driving me crazy -- are written.

Now, I know there are folks out there who will say I ought to go on and write the story...and, fortunately, it is only a short story. At least that's the feel of it. These are the same folks who say you don't need to like a story or enjoy it to be able to write it. Maybe that's true for them, but not for me. If I don't like the story, I find all sorts of things to do to avoid writing. And not just painting and digging pits in my back yard. As much as I grouse about them, I enjoy that sort of physical labor. No, I'm talking about doing such things as washing baseboards, or rearranging the pantry by alphabetizing the contents.

So, what's the point of all this except to let me whine? It's simple. Every writer, editor, agent, or anyone who thinks of themselves as a reader has a set of rules a writer should follow. Some of these rules are essential. You need characters a reader can care about -- whether they connect with the character or are so appalled by him. But they have to care and want to know what happens next. Hannibal Lecter is a perfect example. Here is a character that is so totally evil that it is hard to like him. But, as a reader, you're fascinated by him and what to know more. What made him the way he is? What is he going to do next? Will he get the justice he so richly deserves?

You need a story that has a beginning, middle and end -- even if the end is simply the launching point for another story. Okay, okay, I know there are pieces of "literature" out there that don't fit this but, well, I'm not talking literature. Sorry. More than that, your story has to be written in such a way that your reader keeps turning the page. The first step is to get them to turn the very first page. So hook them immediately. Give them a reason to keep reading. Remember, if you are submitting a short story for publication, you get only a very few paragraphs to hook the editor. A book might get you a couple of pages. But they don't want to read a quarter to a third of the way through a submission before getting to the hook. Honestly, no matter how good the writing, without the hook, they won't read that far.

Most of all, you need a compelling voice for the story. You have to be able to bring your reader into the story, whether you are writing in first person or third. This is the old show-don't-tell adage. And it is harder than it sounds. After all, it's easy to write, "I walked into the room and saw him. Furious, I moved to him and, without warning, slapped him as hard as I could." Those few sentences tell you what happened. They even tell you that the narrator was mad. But there is so much more that could be done with them.

So, dear readers, here's your assignment. Take the above example and expand it. Show us what is happening there. Limit yourselves to three paragraphs. I'll come back later today and add my own take on the scene.

Also, what do you see as the rules that have to be followed in writing a good story?

Okay, I'm off for more coffee and another round of painting. Later!

If it's Saturday, it must be...

If you live in my house, it's time for copious amounts of coffee before starting to do such fun things as painting, html-coding, editing, etc. Hey, you guys want to come help? I'll provide the whitewash and brushes ;-p

Seriously, with so many folks away at cons and those who aren't getting ready for the start of school, things are hectic. So we're going to throw the floor open today. This will be the last time for at least a month. So, if you have anything you want to ask, anything you want to discuss, or if you just want to say, "hey!", this is your chance.

And now I leave you to it. I hear the coffeemaker AND the paintbrush calling.

Starting at the End (Please Explain)

Hi, everyone. I recently read a book that I would class as a sort of tongue-in-cheek Urban Fantasy. The classification on the spine was Fantasy (more to do with market positioning probably), but given the strong element of detective genre plus occult and magic ( and various levels of Hell) I'd definitely put it in the Urban Fantasy camp. The reason for the long introduction is that where the book sits in the genre spectrum might be relevant to my question.

OK. The book starts with a pivotal scene from the end of the story, which is put right up front as a sort of prologue. Now this sort of thing is not my cup of tea. It's like when I am watching a TV series or movie, I get hooked into the first scene and then the image fades out and the big capital letters come onto the bottom of the screen.

ONE WEEK EARLIER

That is the point where I generally start throwing things. I hate this sort of story structure. For me it negates the tension and narrative drive.

My question is, why do people structure stories like this? Is this an attempt to hook the reader? Is it to try and increase tension?

Even more importantly does it work for you?

I guess I am fairly plot driven. I like mystery and to watch the story unfold. I might even see the conclusion coming, but I don't KNOW that until I get there. Maybe some people get hooked by other elements and don't care that that know where things will end up.

Does this sort of early reveal work for you? What is your take on what this approach is trying to achieve?

Keep your process off my emergence

Something people do all the time is classify stuff - we sort everything into some kind of category, from "want" and "not want" to super-complex lists of who knows what, and everything in between, sometimes all at once. The thing about doing that is that when you put something into the box marked "good stuff", it can't also belong in the box marked "bad stuff" - and people are very, very bad at classifying stuff that changes. When does it stop being a puppy and become a dog? There's no clear line, and there are times when it's more puppy-like, and others when it's more dog-like. Basically, classification can't handle the process by which one thing becomes another.

Let's take the nice, simple example. Everyone knows that water freezes at 0C and boils at 100C (substitute the appropriate Fahrenheit numbers if you grew up with the non-metric system). Only, well... it doesn't, exactly. Even at temperatures a fair way below freezing, you get water - and sometimes water at sub-freezing temperatures, if the conditions are right. You've also got a certain amount of water vapor - steam - in the air. There's actually a fairly wide range of temperatures where you can get water in all three states. Or two and a half, depending on whether you regard ice as a solid or as a supercooled liquid.

Then of course the process of phase change between solid to liquid, solid to gas, and liquid to gas isn't exactly simple. It's not like a switch gets flipped and "A-ha!" you've gone from ice to water.

And this is the easy part. We can follow processes and trace them from start to finish, even if we're not sure if a partly melted ice cube is "really" liquid or solid (much less whether that fuzzy monster in the living room is a puppy or a dog). Processes usually have rules, and stick to them.

Emergence is a different beastie again. That's when you get something completely different out of an interaction. Like the way combining a lethally volatile gas (oxygen) with a solid that can be soft and sooty or hard and crystalline (carbon) gets you water/ice/steam. Or how you make that jump from hugely complex aggregates of organic molecules that look kind of like proteins to living things.

Or - to get into the really fun stuff - how the heck self-awareness and a massively complex inner life with an immense storage capacity crams itself into the few pounds of brain matter.

It isn't even that there's a lot to figure out. It's that nobody has an idea how it fits together. There's any number of theories about how you get from a brain to a mind, and nothing to disprove any of them (for the non-scientific readers: technically and ideally, there are no absolutes in science. Only theories that haven't been disproved. Yet). When it comes to something that authors use and exercise everyday, science has no real idea.

Yup. Creativity is one of those pesky emergent phenomenomena (sorry, I kind of like the Nanny Ogg school of spelling). It's there or it isn't, and if you've got it you really do see things differently.

What's more, every creative person sees things differently than every other creative person. Talk about an organizational nightmare, this is it. If you try to classify creative folks, you're going to end up with one box per person. "Sarah-Hoyt-Creativity" and "Dave-Freer-Creativity", and that festering one we hide in the corner is "Kate-Paulk-Creativity", while over to the right there, the box sprouting happy thoughts and flowers is "Rowena-Cory-Daniells-Creativity" (Yeah, yeah, I'm exaggerating. Kind of).

Guess what that does to the marketing folks. It gives them hives. Where do you shelve something that's the literary love child of Pratchett and Dostoyevski? What about "Little Peter Rabbit" meets "Silence of the Lambs" (mint sauce optional)?

For that matter, it makes a heck of a mess of writers, too. Imagine you're buzzing along happily with your satire on life, the universe, and everything (Yes, I like Douglas Adams, too) and out of nowhere - or so it seems - it twists and suddenly the whole thing is much more skating on the thinnest of ice praying it's not going to break. It's interesting, terrifying at times, and usually ends up being better than what you'd originally figured on, if you can survive the transition. Then of course there's that moment when a chance comment or something you see makes everything in your current project click into place so firmly you feel like you've had a chiropractor fiddling about inside your skull.

(And we won't even mention the process of going from "idea" to "book". There be dragons there. Big ones.)

So... the point, if there is one, is that writing is an emergent process all by itself, and spins off a whole bunch of others. What are some of your emergent process stories?

When the Dam Breaks

What kind of creatures are we? Okay, we homo sap, but we writers in particular. What is this drive to look at things and imagine if only they were “different”, “stronger”, “if only they made sense”?

When my first son was little, I used to put him in the baby carriage and go out for an hour or two long walk, to clear my head. Since we lived at the edge of downtown, this meant walking past coffee shops, going into bookstores, crossing the park. I have no idea what normal people do or think about in this situation. We are all, alas, tragically, caught in our own minds. For me, I’d see a person in the corner, and immediately a story would attach to him. I’d walk past the lighted windows of a Victorian and imagine the interior, and imagine the parties that took place there long ago. I could no more stop myself than I could stop breathing.

Now I don’t consciously base my characters on people or situations I see, but I do spend a great amount of time daydreaming about people I’ve met/seen. I spend a great deal of time well... not quite making up stories about them, but sort of “seeing the stories around them” which are always, btw, bigger and brighter than real people’s stories, somehow. I spend a lot of time listening to conversations. I think this is part of the reason I like diners so much. I’ll sit there, sipping my coffee and ten or twenty real people – other people always seem more real than I am, somehow – have conversations around me. I will confess I also read a lot of bios – from famous people and self-published by Joe Schmoe alike. And again, I don’t base my characters on any of this. Not consciously. But things as it were fall in the hopper. And the hopper is where character and story brews.

Sometimes I can tell where an incident/description/character came from. Like... the tv in Dipped, Stripped and Dead. Sometimes even I couldn’t guess. The characters arrive in my head. They talk their own language.

So... apropos what am I telling you that? Well, I don’t know how the rest of you are and I know even less how non-writers are, but I know for a fact after a while, my well runs dry. If I haven’t had time to read a lot and even more importantly, if I haven’t been out and away from the computer enough, I can’t seem to write. I’ve been feeling that way lately. It manifests as day dreaming about going away for a weekend – usually our big, expensive vacations are in Denver for a weekend – and going to museums and parks and gardens and the amusement park (which is almost as good as diners for people watching.)

It’s probably a good thing that I’m going to NASFIC this weekend. However, the reason I’m writing about this at all is that I realized I have to take either the laptop or the eee.

Now, it’s entirely possible that I’ll take these and never write. Just be too busy with NASFIcky stuff to write. In fact, this is highly likely.

However, when the pressure has built to this point, my experience is that if I go away – weekend, con, etc. – the first day I am too fried to do anything. And then the second day I wake up with whatever was blocking me removed and the story trying to pour out.

I’ve written outlines/chapters on: hotel note pads; napkins; the back of receipts; my arm and (the outline of what became DST) on the back of a fast food bag for the happy meal one of the kids had eaten.

Do you have similar experiences? What’s the weirdest thing you ever found yourself compelled to write on? What breaks your “not quite block”? Do you prepare for the break? Or do you have to trick your subconscious into believing you’re not expecting it?

Where would writers be be without chocolate?

I haven't had a bad day. In fact I've had a great day. I've been working on the first book of the new trilogy that my publisher wants delivered next year.

The good thing about having a whole day to work on one thing, is that you can immerse yourself in the world and look for those little tweak and layers that make it all the more real for the reader.

The bad thing is that your concentration starts to lapse about about 3pm. At least mine does. I started at 7am, worked through without pause. Lunch? An apple will do. Don't want to stop the flow.

So 3pm is when I bring the chocolate out. Chocolate and coffee. And then I can keep going for another couple of hours. But eventually, the kids need me to cook dinner and I have to stop. (Home made meat pie, just in case you were interested).

Now it is back to work tomorrow and I have to get out of my book mindset and into my lecturer mindset. Sometimes I wish I could run away to a writing monastery (one where they delivered chocolate and coffee at 3pm!).

What's your idea of writing heaven?