Just finished the edit letter
As I mentioned last December, my son has been writing a novel. A few weeks ago he gave me the first revised draft, and I have been working on a copy edit and edit letter for him. Well, I finished it last night and it’s waiting for him to notice it.
He did a fine job, to be honest. His draft came to nearly 10K words and was pretty clean. “Pretty clean” in this case means that, while there were a lot of corrections on each page, they were the same errors over and over. I think that, by the time he reaches page 50 on these edits, he’ll have punctuation around quotation marks down pat.
The title of the story is “The Twin Swords of Zordain” and it’s a comic fantasy. The current plan is that he will do the revisions and I will publish it here, on this blog. For this, he’ll receive a penny a word.
I foresee many Pokemon cards in our future.
Anyway, last week we were walking together to the bus, and we started talking about the edit letter. He was feeling a little anxious about it, because of course he wanted it to be finished for him two or three days after he gave me his manuscript.
And he wanted his money. “See, Dad, I had the money for the booster box I just bought, but I won’t have any new money until you finish my book. So, if you could get that back to me, that would be great.”
So I gave him a hug and welcomed him to my world.
Anyway, the envelope is still sitting on the table waiting for him. We’ll see how long it takes him to notice.
In other news, the book I started at the same time through the same process is going through some pretty heavy revisions. Work work work.
Follow up homeschool post
As I mentioned last month, I had an idea to create a homeschool project based on Mur Lafferty’s post on sexism. Basically, I asked my son to keep watch for three instances of girl-hate just like in the opening of BURN NOTICE.
It took a few weeks (we don’t watch a lot of TV or partake of other media), but he identified them. Two came straight out of episodes of BN, basically “punch like a girl” type stuff.
But the third one makes me a little sad. There’s a game I really like called Sentinels of the Multiverse; the boy and I play it a couple of times a month. In the course of supporting and following their Kickstarter, I discovered they have fun downloads on their site, one of which is a group of story challenges.
It’s a cool idea: You give yourself points based on in-game challenges they set: Defeat Baron Blade while playing as Legacy. Defeat a villain using only two heroes. Deal 20 or more damage in a single attack. Let the enraged T-Rex defeat the villain for you. Each is worth a certain number of points, and you get to count them up.
The problem comes from this challenge: “Catfight: Win a four-hero game against Citizen Dawn while using only female heroes.” Citizen Dawn is sort of a Magneto-style villain, the leader of a large number of low-powered villains and she’s pretty tough. However, as I explained to my son, if you have to come up with a special word for it when women do it…
Anyway, it’s still a great game and I still enjoy playing it. I really like trying to work out the best ways to pick heroes whose powers complement each other, especially against a specific villain. When the second edition comes out, I plan to push it to you guys (or you can still get it from Kickstarter.) But, you know, I wish I hadn’t had to explain this thing to my son.
Lesson over. I hope it sticks.
making books personal The outside world: internet links people publishing
by Harry Connolly
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How this is something I even need to say, I don’t know.
During the past week Time Magazine gave everyone a new catchphrase to bash mothers with (since everyone was tired of the old ones) and a provocative cover for to make cultural hand-wringers wring away. Now that it’s the weekend, the NYTimes has given us an excuse to bash writers. For the click-phobic, the article suggests that, in this New Publishing Environment(tm), writers are being pressured to put out more, more, MORE books, where it used to be common to publish a book a year.
Predictably, this brought on hoots of derision from people already doing that.
Look, let’s just skip over the fact that it’s the writer of the article, not the best-selling author featured in it, who uses the word “brutal” to describe a two-thousand-word-a-day pace. Still, I have genuine sympathy for anyone trying to increase their productivity, whatever the reason. I’ve been trying to write more and finish more, by any measurement, for my whole life.
Here’s the uncomfortable truth of things: some writers are prolific, some are plodding, some could write faster with a little more focus, some would benefit greatly by taking more time with their books.
But in response to an article like this we get an interplay of a lot of unpleasant things: the pervasive lack of sympathy for the creative class, the faux-populist, faux-blue collar attitude many writers use to mark themselves as anti-elitists, the idea many people have that the ereaders they got for Christmas have Changed Everything, and the nasty effects of living in the “age of the social artist.”
And sadly, most of the nasty comments were coming from other writers.
Here’s the thing: I’m one of those slow writers. Circle of Enemies took me a year to write. Sure, some people think it’s formula popcorn crapola; if they knew how much I pulled my hair out over it, they would pity me. Still, it was a complicated book and getting it right required time.
So when people talk about writers as though they’re begging sympathy, I get honestly pissed off. You shouldn’t measure a writer’s work by the number of pages they do a day. It’s not an assembly line. It’s not piece work. If you think it is, you’re doing it wrong.
Yeah, there are authors out there putting out interesting original books every few months. There are others who need years. Who’s going to tell Pat Rothfuss he ought to write two books a year?
(Yeah, I know: A lot of people would say that. They’re wrong.)
Even worse are the people who claim that authors should never complain, ever, because they’re writers, aren’t they? Isn’t that privilege enough?
Hey, we live in the age of the social artist, where people are supposed to share their authentic lives, but the one thing they can never do is complain, or feel dissatisfied, or show their unhappiness, because they get to be writers. They’re not scraping up roadkill, or caring for dementia patients, or busting their asses on a construction site in the heat of summer. They get to make up stories for a living.
Never mind that construction work was the best-paying, easiest work I’ve ever done. Not physically easy, but not too physically challenging, either. It’s not nearly as draining as writing. Maybe other people see writing as a care-free playtime, but it’s never been that way for me.
I’m not a writer because it’s easy; screw those who think it is. I’m not a writer because I want to live some sort of privileged life, or because I want to be rich, or even because it’s the only thing I can do.
I’m a writer because it’s challenging and I’m good at it. I’m a writer because I want to make things, as Doris Egan has said.
So let’s stop the faux blue collar anti-elitism, and let’s stop talking about the number of words a writer creates a day as some sort of measure of how hard they work.
State of the self, (not actually a weight loss post)
So, you guys know I’ve been working on shedding the pounds, yes? I’ve always been a big guy (When I was a teenager I had a 44″ chest, and it wasn’t muscle or fat–it was all rib cage) so I’ve always tended toward the heavy side of the bell curve. Then I got fat for real and reached, at one point, 304 lbs. Cut for triggery talk of weight loss and gross picture of cholinergic urticaria. more »
making books personal The outside world: links publishing reasons i suck
by Harry Connolly
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“We’re entering the era of the social artist.” (Warning: ranty)
If I paid any attention to the internet and the general zeitgeist, I’d think I was screwed.
Obviously, I’ve been working pretty hard on this new book, and epic fantasy it tough right now. So is urban fantasy. And what makes it even harder? Well, this is the era of the social artist.
That link gives the background to the latest overnight Kickstarter success story, which of course wasn’t overnight at all. We live in an era when artists of every kind are deeply engaged with their audiences–in fact, where artists are supposed to cultivate a fanbase by giving of their personal life and their privacy, and where the fans get to be right up in close to the artistic process and really feel part of things.
But I’m not doing that.
I have nothing against Palmer: I think she’s talented as hell, I like her music, and I admire what she’s done with her career. Unfortunately for me, I’m not her and I could never be like her. Nevermind that she’s making music and I’m writing books; I don’t want to share that much with you. Seriously. I have my private life and I like it that way. She can say that The ivory tower of the mysterious artist has crumbled she’s welcome to, but I’m not interested in the alternative.
On the days I write, I will often not talk to any living person outside my family except to order a coffee (although the local librarians have learned my name so we will exchange pleasantries occasionally). That’s fine. I like that. It gives me focus and it saves my energy. But I can’t be on Twitter several hours a day, and I long ago gave up the idea that this blog would be a nexus of activity.
But apparently this is what people expect now. I sometimes get emails from people who claim I make it hard to contact me. Yes, my email is on my website, but it’s a little buried. Yeah, comments are off. But I still have LJ, Facebook, and Twitter. Anyone who wants to can contact me there. Or they could turn up my email address. I do respond to everyone, even though that is not enough for some people, apparently. Once you get enough blog posts and Salon articles about the Way Things Are Done Now, everyone starts to expect it. I get readers telling me online, in their most patient tone, what’s expected of me as an author.
But I can’t be everyone’s friend. I’m just not made for it. Yes, I went to a convention once, as a member, and hung around for a few hours. No, I’ve never done a reading. No, I don’t have some kind of crippling anxiety that makes me a gibbering wreck in public. The truth is that I’m not that glib, not that clever, and I don’t back and forth with strangers very well.
And when you compare that to this article in the Guardian which dropped this little bombshell:
Because what fans want above all else – what in fact defines the very essence of fandom – is ownership of that which we adore.
Well, fuck that.
Here’s the thing: I don’t much like the idea of fans taking ownership of the things they like, not in the way that article states it. I’ll talk about this in the future maybe, but my ivory tower comes with a pleasant little desk and I like to sit at it and think about characters and sentences. When I go on Twitter I’m not planting bamboo, I’m hoping that someone posts something that will make me laugh. And when they do, I feel no obligation to run out and buy whatever stuff they made.
Yeah, sometimes I feel invisible. Sometimes I think my reticence is the reason the Twenty Palaces books got cancelled. Maybe that’s true (people have certainly tried to convince me so) but I seriously doubt it. I shake that kind of thinking off, because the only actions I do that really matter are the words I put on the page.
So here’s the deal with me, okay? I will write books. Sometimes they will not be very pleasant or happy, but they will always be the best I can manage. You, if you want, will read them. We can share funny stuff on Twitter, or you can drop me a note about whether you liked it on Facebook, or we can discuss whatever on LiveJournal. That’s all cool.
But I won’t be cultivating you. I won’t be growing your numbers like flies drawn in to a trap. And in return, you’ll understand that I’m just this guy with a job he really likes, and that I keep a certain distance because I have to guard my time and energy for my family, my health, and my work. I don’t have an assistant to read my emails or search my spam filters. I don’t have an interesting life.
And that’s all. If my books alone aren’t enough to make me successful, then I don’t think it’s worth having.
The outside world: beautiful film funny games interesting things internet links publishing
by Harry Connolly
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Randomness for 5/10
1) The 37 Saddest Failed Kickstarters.
2) Top 10 banned or censured rpg products.
3) Six Common Movie Arguments That Are Always Wrong.
4) Greatest. Romance novel cover. Ever.
5) How much damage did the Chitauri do to NYC?
6) Where do the Avengers eat Shawarma? (Actual location for that shoot)
7) Guy builds an RC flying, fire-breathing dragon.
The Hero Initiative
Folks, I just donated $25 to The Hero Initiative, which is basically the price of three matinee tickets to The Avengers (plus a buck).
The movie is bringing in hundreds of millions of dollars, and none of that goes to the people who originally created that content, many of whom are living in difficult situations. I donated as a way to show my thanks and my respect, and I hope you do, too.
Have a sick kid at home
The second symptom of a kid’s sickness is a ruined schedule. In a few hours, my wife will return home and I can tag-team out to do some writing revisions.
Luckily, I’m utterly immune to disease of all kinds, like a paladin.
::kaff::
I invent a new unit of measurement
I call it the “bullshit.” As in: “I did one bullshit worth of work on my revisions today.”
Which isn’t fair to my revisions, because I found a minor inconsistency that I needed to hunt down and fix, and that stupid crap takes time. I would have had to fix this at some point, right?
Still, it’s frustrating to have this dumb stuff take so much time especially since it means I can only finish bullshit.
The Avengers (w/ spoilers)
I saw THE AVENGERS yesterday with my son. He loved it, naturally, and so did I. While we waited for the bus home, I asked him which Avenger he would most like to be (a sure way to tell which he that was the most awesome) and his answer, after a moment’s thought, was Hawkeye.
Hey, who could argue with that? Or with a kid pretend-shooting arrows at all sorts of unlikely targets as we walked home.
Here are my thoughts on the movie: (Spoilers behind the cut) more »
The outside world: i look bad interesting things links people
by Harry Connolly
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The outside world: comics film funny games interesting things links weirdness
by Harry Connolly
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Randomness for 5/5
1) Avengers Mashup Movie Posters
2) Hard to believe it’s been 20 years.
3) Planet of the Apes Dance Remix. Video. Pure Awesome.
4) Mark Waid’s Thrillbent is live.
5) Bed Cartography. Not that this has any relevance to my life, not at all.
6) Alien vs. Predator, the infographic.
7) D&D co-creator Dave Arneson’s personal collection and archive to be auctioned.
Real life superhero in May Day Seattle
Seattle superhero Phoenix Jones (and his buddy Midnight Jack) were out among the crowds during yesterday’s May Day protests, and man don’t they look like self-aggrandizing fools. I’d always been vaguely sympathetic to the guy because he seemed to honestly want to do some good while avoiding the idiocy of other self-styled heroes, but this is just embarrassing.
And now Seattle has it’s own “social villain” calling Jones out. The video is pretty funny, to be honest.
In which I opine on two TV shows I haven’t seen
Over on Tor.com, Shoshana Kessock compares the portrayal of women in Game of Thrones and Girls and comes down on the side of the genre show, despite its problems.
Me, I haven’t seen either show. I have read Martin’s novels and I listened to an interview with Lena Dunham on NPR. Maybe that limited exposure should disqualify me from commenting on the topic, but this is my blog and I can be wrong if I want to.
Anyway, while listening to Dunham on NPR, she specifically addressed the whole “Voice of my generation” bit, making it clear that the character was ridiculous even when she wasn’t stoned and that she hoped viewers would recognize it wasn’t to be taken seriously. In fact, she made it clear that she was making an effort to portray a character who was not admirable at all–she admitted that others involved in the show had to make her pull back on the amount of humiliation heaped on her.
And my first thought was “She’s writing to literary protocols.”
Years ago when I was studying everything I could find about writing, someone (I’ve forgotten who) said that genre characters always (or nearly always) operated at the best of their ability. Whether it’s Conan fighting a giant snake or a CPA who discovers that her daughter has been kidnapped by a motorcycle gang, the characters may not always have skills and competence in a particular situation, but they do the best with what they have. If they do make mistakes, it’s either like Peter Parker letting the crook escape (a lesson that needs to be learned/kick off the story) or it’s the cop who arrests the wrong person (a mistaken action based on a misunderstanding of the evidence at hand).
When a character persists in their error, the way Neo continues to resist the idea that he’s living in a computer simulation, the instinct is to become exasperated with them. The same is true for stories where the audience wants the protagonist to operate at their best but they don’t (or don’t appear to be) such as addiction stories.
But in stories aimed for a literary market (at least the ones I’ve read) the characters rarely operate at their best. They’re feckless, selfish, self-delusional, or flawed in all sorts of ways. They don’t get out when they should. They don’t address their problems in a way that would fix them. It’s like Joe Gillis in Sunset Blvd: The movie starts out with him shot to death, and you see the long awful comedy of errors that led him to that fate.
Obviously, there’s overlap here; you can’t make large generalizations about groups of books (or readers) without begging exceptions or edge cases, but to me it looks like a clash of two conflicting artistic impulses.
Creativity Project, part 4
It’s been a while since part 3. Sorry about that, if you care. Truthfully, I’m behind on my WIP and I’m having trouble prioritizing this. Quick recap: I’m using this article: Twelve Things You Were Not Taught in School About Creative Thinking as a springboard to talk about my own creative processes.
7. Expect the experts to be negative.
This section of the article is more for office workers than it is for creative people. Wait, I take that back. It’s not an issue for me because I don’t really have someone telling me that I can’t do something before I do it.
For example, when I was planning my story for the Don’t Rest Your Head anthology, I told editor Chuck Wendig that I was planning to center the story around the death of a child. Chuck wasn’t happy with that at first, because it’s a touchy subject that turns people off (and too often he’s right). Still, I told him I thought I could make it work and he told me to go ahead.
Chuck was the expert in this situation, and rather than put his foot down, he said: I bet you can prove me wrong. In the end, he accepted the story pretty much as written.
This is what it’s like when an editor–especially a really really good one–is “negative” about creative choices. As I said down in comments, it really was ego-less arguing. She wanted me to save a couple of the Game of Cages characters for a future book, and she wanted me to cut The Sentence (for those who’ve read it, it’s the long murder scene that’s written as a 500+ word single run-on sentence). Cutting that violent scene could have given the book a more upbeat adventurous ending.
Of course, I didn’t cut that scene. I did change the book substantially to make The Sentence work–including saving one of the characters–but for me that scene was the whole point of the book, and I had to have it.
Now, only one reader has ever told me they disliked it. Several really loved it, but people who don’t like GoC rarely mention The Sentence. Was my editor wrong? I don’t think so. I’m betting that, with a more upbeat adventurous ending, it would have gotten better word of mouth. Maybe it would have sold better. Maybe the series would have survived.
I still wouldn’t go back and change it, though.
So, the most a writer like me has to worry about isn’t that my idea might get shot down, the way a bright-eyed ad exec with a crazy new concept might be. It’s that no one will want to buy it, and you can’t really tell that until it’s too late.
8. Trust your instincts.
I’m not going to respond to this part of the article, except to say that the only sensible response to “They laughed at the Wright Brothers!” is “They laughed at the Marx Brothers, too.” It’s okay to be discouraged. It’s okay to give up on writing.
Seriously, I honestly believe this. I’m not one of those people who tell people to never stop trying; who’s to say what’s the best use of your time? Not me. Maybe someone who stops writing would go to work in a soup kitchen with that free time. Maybe they would spend more time with their friends, or edit Wikipedia in a useful way, or do any number of genuinely helpful things.
Write if you want to and if you think you have a chance to find the success you’re hoping for. Just be aware that you may never get it (I may never get it) and even if you do it won’t make you happy.
However, I should point out that I’d already quit writing when I’d signed with my agent. I was not going to start a new novel; I planned to go back to school to get a graduate degree in hopes of finding a career. All my writing time was spent studying for a GRE. Then my query letters started getting positive responses.
So who am I to say that people shouldn’t be discouraged? Creativity doesn’t have anything to do with success. You can be extremely creative but never find an audience for a host of reasons: Maybe your creative ideas are too far outside the mainstream. Maybe you’re creative but don’t have the writing skills to put together a sensible paragraph. Maybe you have other uses for that time, or new priorities. Who knows?
Quit if you want. Live your life. That’s what I say. Maybe, someday, I’ll do that myself. But in the mean time, I intend to write the stories I want to write, the way I want to write them. Anything else would take the joy out of things.
For the next post I’ll talk about failure. Jeez, this just gets more cheerful all the time, doesn’t it?
