GENREALITY

Howdy folks!  Happy Saturday!

We’ve spent several weeks on the hows and whys and whats of writing short stories.  Today, we’ll wrap up the drafting portion.  Then next week, I’ll conclude the series with an abbreviated post on the next steps after finishing your short story.

The great thing about short stories is that they are small enough that you can wrap them up (most of the time) in a relatively short amount of time.  It’s not unheard of for writer’s to finish off a short story in one sitting depending on how long it is.  My record is a 10k story (a novelette named “Driving Lord Dragon” that’s never seen the light of day) on a Saturday writing blitz.  On the other side of that coin, the story that took me the longest was actually about 6k long and took me 3 years.  But usually, I work on a short story scene by scene in 1-2k bursts over the course of four or five days.

There are benefits to moving at a brisk pace.  You don’t lose the voice and thread of the story if you work it every day.  And you build solid work habits.  It is good to keep in the back of your mind that time is money…at least some of the time.  Because someday, that may be important.  For example, if someone offers you .10/word for a 5k story that takes you 20 hours to write (from idea to revised and mailed) then you know that you’re making $25 per hour.  But if you can whittle that down to 10 hours then you’re doubling your hourly pay rate.  And your banking 10 hours for some other project.  I don’t think we should always  bring things down to that equation — some projects take longer for less pay but there are other motivating factors.  But I do think that we should push ourselves to be good stewards of our resources, including and especially our time and energy.  And even if no one ever knows beyond ourselves, it is good to know how much time a project takes us and how much we are being paid for that time.

So I say move briskly through your draft.  A big (and often challenging) part of writing is learning to work consistently, whether it’s every day or five days out of seven, or whatever you choose.  If you treat your writing like a job with required hours, your writing will be more likely to treat you as if its a job, too.

And part of moving briskly is to learn the balance of when to pause and think and when to push through.  There are schools of thought that say “Don’t stop ever…leave a mark in the document and come back to it.  It’s better to have a completed first draft that needs fixing than an unfinished story.”  Sometimes, I think that’s the right answer.  Another answer is “Measure twice and cut once.”  Sometimes, the story (and you) are better served to stop and think it through.  But be self-aware enough to know when it’s the Chattering Head Monkeys talking you out of writing as opposed to a real problem in the story that you need to puzzle out.

Set deadlines for yourself and keep them.  I think a week or two is about right for most short stories depending on how fast you write.  Your mileage may vary.

And once you finish the draft, give it a quick polish and get it out to whoever your beta readers are.  Then, put it away and don’t look at it until you’ve heard back from them.

Next week, we’ll wrap up the series.  This would be a great time to put any unanswered questions into the comments below.

Trailer Boy out!

I’m working on revising my latest novel at the moment (ninth published, thirteenth written). One thing I’ve noticed, as I’ve matured as a writer, is how much better I’ve gotten at revising. I’m much more willing now than I was when I first started writing to view absolutely nothing as set in stone. Plot, characters, subplots, scenes — everything is up on the chopping block when it comes to making my story the best that it can be.

This has had the added benefit of allowing me to be much more free in my first drafts. I feel like I can throw everything — including the kitchen sink — in my first drafts now, knowing that I’ll be able to excise it later if need be.

Some writers are like this from the very beginning of their career — they innately understand the rules like “kill your darlings” and “writing is revising” and “you can’t fix a blank page.” My path to this has been a little more serpentine, and I find I still struggle with it. I’m one of those writers who would far prefer to “get it right the first time” because even though I’m getting better, I still find it difficult to reconstruct my draft and then sew the pieces back up, Frankenstein style. I look at published novels of mine and I can still see the seams, even if no one else can. The original draft still lies underneath, a palimpset only I can see, in say, a line of dialogue that had a special resonance with a cut scene or a character description chosen to contrast with a character who no longer exists.

But I know these are things only I see, and that the total good of the changes I’ve made far outweigh any imagined loss. The other thing I’ve noticed is that the more I embrace no-holds-barred revisions, the less I’m bothered by anything that remains. Maybe I’m just getting better at realizing that first drafts are written on sand, not stone. Maybe, as I get older, my memory is failing me.

Whatever it is, I’m certainly noticing this time around that nothing is sacred. The old me would have looked on in horror at the things I’ve changed in the last few days, while the new me shrugs and moves on to the next chapter.

What do you think? Are you one of those writers who embraces revisions, or, like me, did you have to learn to love it?

Late Tuesday I got sick. Like, really sick. I’m thinking it’s the flu but, honestly, I’m barely thinking right now. The fever-induced headache appears to be a barrier to writing, analyzing…living. Next week’s post might be about how to function when your body gives up on you. This week’s is a testament to the Maybe You Shouldn’t Do This school of running a writing career. Christopher Priest blogged about the shortlist for the 2012 Clarke Award and, to put it mildly, Priest is not impressed.

As background, I reviewed before sold. I stopped because it was too hard to juggle telling my opinion with my feelings of discomfort about publicly telling my opinion. I upset some authors when I didn’t love their books. I got some angry emails. Really, it was best for my peace of mind that I stopped. But I’m hoping I never went this far:

It seems to me that 2011 was a poor year for science fiction. Of the sixty books submitted by publishers, only a tiny handful were suitable for awards. In my view, candidly, there were fewer than the six needed for the Clarke shortlist. Many of the submissions were fantasy of the least ambitious type, and many of the science fiction titles were almost as firmly embedded in genre orthodoxies, to their own huge disadvantage (and discredit), as the plodding, laddish works of Mr Mark Billingham. Discounting all those submissions did not leave many competitors at the top.

That made me wince. It’s not awful – up until the point where he takes at shot at Billingham – but it’s uncomfortable. I had a uh-oh feeling as I read along. Then the author turned to China Miéville, a three-time winner of this award. I’ve read several of Miéville’s books. Didn’t love all of them but I did appreciate the work and had the impression he was a superstar.

Let me now turn to the most highly argued novel, for and against, on the list: Embassytown by China Miéville (Macmillan). For reasons some people might readily understand, I have not until now had anything to say about this novel, but events have freed me. I like China as a person, and in his unsought role of media-friendly spokesperson for the SF world he has done well and has not aroused controversy. He is obviously serious about writing, believes in the weird or the speculative novel as a genuine force in literature, and aims high. He is an enterprising writer who comes up with some excellent ideas, and many of his images are memorable and effective.

But wait for it…

However, a fourth award to this writer would send out a misleading and damaging message to the world at large: it suggests that not only is Mr Miéville the best the SF world can offer at the moment, he is shown to be more or less the only writer worth reading. Worse even than this, it would send a misleading message to China Miéville himself.

Although Miéville is clearly talented, he does not work hard enough. For a novel about language, Embassytown contains many careless solecisms, which either Mr Miéville or his editor should have dealt with. This isn’t the place to go into a long textual analysis, but (for example) a writer at his level should never use ‘alright’ so often or so unembarrassedly. He also uses far too many neologisms or SF nonce-words, which drive home the fact that he is defined and limited by the expectations of a genre audience. On the first few pages, alone, he uses the words ‘shiftparents’, ‘voidcraft’, ‘yearsends’, ‘trid’, ‘vespcams’, ‘miab’, ‘plastone’, ‘hostnest’, ‘altoysterman’ … Yes, of course, it’s possible to work out what most of these might mean (or to wait until another context makes them clearer), but it is exactly this use of made-up nouns that makes many people find science fiction arcane or excluding. A better writer would find a more effective way of suggesting strangeness or an alien environment than by just ramming words together. It’s lazy writing.
…
This is not to say that Embassytown is a bad novel. It is not, but neither is it a good one. It has too many common flaws that could have been eradicated by a more ruthless editorial process in the writing, or even more simply by an extra draft of the manuscript. Nor does it suggest that Miéville is a poor or failing writer: he is obviously not, but unless he is told in clear terms that he is under-achieving, that he is restricting his art by depending too heavily on genre commonplaces, he will never write the great novels that many people say he is capable of. In the short term, to imply by giving it a prize, or even shortlisting it for one, that this is the best science fiction novel of the current year is just plain wrong.

He doesn’t work hard enough? Is an underachiever? See, that strikes me as too far. Too personal. It also suggests the author knows something about Miéville’s writing and personal life that is doesn’t really know. I hate when people do that, so spending my three minutes sitting upright and being online all day yesterday reading this was probably not a good use of my time.

Back to my sick bed.

I used to make it a point to not read my reviews on Amazon.  There were several reasons for that:

1. As any student of sampling knows, the people who post reviews are not a fair representative of the reading public.
2. Anyone who has ever purchased anything from Amazon can post a review, but that doesn’t mean they purchased the book they’re reviewing.  That makes it the Wild West.
3. Some reviewers spam all of an author’s books.  Excuse me, but if you didn’t like one book, why go paste in that same exact blistering review on all the books that author has had published?
4. Some authors spam other author books as a means of promoting their own book.  These people need to grow up.
5. Customers unhappy that a book hasn’t yet been published on Kindle often post one star reviews of the print book, as a form of protest.  All that does is hurt the author, who often has little control over when and what form the publisher releases the book.
6. One star reviews seem to carry more weight than Five star reviews.

As a publisher, I now I force myself to go over the Amazon every once in a while and check the reviews, especially to see if there are any formatting, editing or other fixable problems.  We see a definite correlation between lost sales and scathing reviews, but not great reviews and positive sales.  One aw-shit seems to outweigh one atta-boy.

Some suggestions:

1. Only people who buy the book, and that version, have the right to review it.
2. Reviewers should not be anonymous.  This prevents the bullying and spamming that is prevalent.  It also allows the author/publisher, to address the problem if need be, such as technical problems or downloads.  And thank readers who really enjoy something.  The future of publishing is an author-reader relationship, but we can’t relate with people who aren’t identified.
3. Allow people to recant their reviews if technical problems have been resolved.

A final suggestions: If you really enjoyed a book, go, review it. Review the format you bought it in. Remember, a typo is different from bad formatting and bad formatting isn’t necessarily the fault of the author, or even the publisher. Technology does fail at times. If it’s a self-published eBook or from a small publisher, take the time to go to their web site and contact them.  You might be surprised at the positive results.

The future of publishing, as we note in Write It Forward, is wide open.  And readers, more than ever, are going to determine the success of failures of books.

There’s been a lot of talk about BDSM in fiction lately so I thought I’d talk a bit about writing it. I think the most important thing for readers, and writers, of fiction with BDSM elements in it is to remember is there’s one undeniable truth about BDSM – there is no real standard. Each relationship is different, and there are all levels. Which means, when you reach for a BDSM book, you can get something that only contains a few ‘play’ elements, or something that is full on lifestyle, or S & M. Just because two books fall under the BDSM label does not make them even close to the same. Just like not all paranormal romances have Vampires, or Werewolves, some have psychics, some have witches or fey. The big difference here is that when If you buy a paranormal a romance you usually have abetter idea of what you’re getting buy reading the blurb. With BDSM, it can be a bit harder to discern that way because many of the differences within the genre can be subtle.

Example: My first novel BOUND has what I call BDSM elements. The heroine has fantasies about being dominated by the sexy security guard she works with, but it’s fantasy. However, as the two get closer, she finds herself really enjoying the whole submission thing. That story is written in the POV of a non-lifestyle character. WICKED is about Karl, who is a lifestyle Dominant. Some people would automatically think that means there’s plenty of whips and chains and bondage in this story, but thats not true. There is some, but Karl calls himself a “gentle Dom” and the story reflects that. He’s not a sadist- although he will deliver a blistering spanking if he thinks his girl deserves it- he just enjoys controlling, and caring, for his women. Two different levels of BDSM fiction.

For more insight into the various levels of some great BDSM fiction, look back to Eve Berlin’s Guest post here at Genreality (Not sure what happened to her cover images)

Cherise Sinclair writes some great BDSM fiction stores. The Masters OF Shadowlands stories are all set around and mostly take place with in a club atmosphere, and there’s some very well done kink scenes. Personally I’ve never thought any sort of ‘puppy play’ could ever be erotic, but she managed to do that in one of her stories (I think it was Make Me, Sir)

Joey Hill’s Nature of Desire series is unparalleled -in my opinion- when it comes to male submission. Give Natural law a try, and you’ll be hooked. Now, beyond the kink factors of these stories, (or the plots) the differences are also about what is more true-to-life. Joey Hill’s stories are fiction. but when you read then, there’s a realism, an honesty, to them that shows some true varieties of the lifestyle and BDSM. My own BDSM stories lean toward realistic as well, but the elements tend to be lighter than hers. Cherise Sinclair’s books are a bit more fantasy-ish. Her doom’s seem to be a bit too-good-to-be-true, and almost psychic in the way they read their subs. However, she is clear to state at the start of each book that the stories are romantic fantasies, and encourages people to remember that in real life, Safe, Sane and Consensual is a must, and that communication is key. These are just some examples of the variety that’s out there.

Personally, I enjoy BDSM fiction. I enjoy writing it, and I enjoy reading it. I love it because there are so many levels, and varieties, but also because really good BDSM fiction is not just about the sex, or the kink. It’s about the mind, and the emotional journey of the characters involved, and to me, thats what all good erotic fiction is about.