It only gets harder once you’re published (mostly)

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Some days ago, Chuck Wendig wrote a blog post about how writing books gets harder after you get published, not easier as some people seem to think. Yesterday, Clarke Award winner Tricia Sullivan wrote about breaking in and then fighting to stay in.

I used to say all the time that it’s easier to break in than to stay in, and Wendig and Sullivan have different paths. Wendig has been growing his readership and having success. Sullivan’s experience is closer to mine: struggling to find a substantial readership and to get her work out there, although she’s been doing it longer and has that award on her mantel.

I have ten books out, and on Tuesday I passed 30K words on book 11. I’m hoping that I’ll be able to get a NY publishing contract for this one, so the backlist bump will hit my self-published work.

And Chuck’s right: I still have all the same insecurities and doubts about the work I’m doing. Worse, actually, is that I sometimes feel that I’ve lost a certain attitude I had when I wrote Child of Fire. I was pretty frustrated when I wrote that book, and I attacked it with an attitude of Fuck it. I’m going to do what I want.

I’m still doing what I want, but the fuck it doesn’t have the same bite. Why? Because that publishing contract was a tremendous relief. I didn’t celebrate it by jumping around and cheering; I flopped into a chair and sighed. I haven’t wasted my life after all.

It’s easy to forget that feeling as the years go by. Even if I never make the midlist and die in obscurity, at least one professional in the field thought my work was worthwhile. Before I was published, I really wanted that. Afterwards, I learned that it’s not enough. It’s something–something good–but it’s just the start.

Randomness for 8/26

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1) Wheel of Misfortune. Love this comic. Love. It.

2) Every JRPG ever: Video. Reader, I laughed at them.

3) Exotic polyhedra dice, made of marble, gator jawbones, carbon fiber, and more.

4) Hole Quest: Ryan North live-tweeted the thrilling 40 minutes he was stuck in an empty pool with his dog.

5) 15 Delicious Regional Sandwiches. A chow mein sandwich? I don’t think so.

6) Texts from HP Lovecraft. This made me laugh.

7) Ten tabletop games that you can play as couples. Video.

Masterminds without Muscle: The Man from UNCLE and Soft Antagonists

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I saw The Man From U.N.C.L.E. last week, and I’m still thinking about it, mainly because it was such an amazing misfire. There are so many good things in it, but the flaws wreck it. This is true of a lot of modern movies, I find: there will always be enjoyable bits, but the real question is whether they add up to a good movie or not.

TMfU had quite a few problems, especially a director who didn’t understand how a con artist-flashback works, who undercut any power the movie could have gotten from the final conflict with the main antagonist. However, the problem I want to talk about here is the lack of a Top Muscle-type character (what TV Tropes calls, unfortunately, a dragon).

If you have a mastermind-type villain who’s in charge of a large organization, the Top Muscle is their number one fighter. They’re the meanest badass on hand, usually tougher than the protagonist(s) themselves. Often, they are only beaten by the protag and his friends teaming up, or by trickery.

Top Muscle appears in Bond movies all the time; Oddjob and Jaws are probably the most famous of them. Wez from The Road Warrior fits, as does Ramrowan from The Man From Nowhere and two different characters named Mad Dog from Hardboiled and The Raid: Redemption. That TV Tropes page above features a picture of Darth Vader. Sometimes the Top Muscle ends up turning against the Mastermind boss. Sometimes they’re just looking for a worthy opponent to test themselves against. In every case, they represent a huge physical challenge to the protagonist(s).

TMfU could have had a Top Muscle character. The villain’s husband had almost nothing to do except smirk at the sole female protagonist and drive a car. He might have been recast as an expert marksman and Olympic boxing champion, or an SS Commando military trainer, or anything. But nope. He was just an ineffectual romantic rival.

But Harry, you’re wondering, why does it matter? Two reasons: When properly implemented, a Top Muscle character brings competence to the antagonists and focus to the story.

Competence: A mastermind-type villain usually has three things going for them: resources, cool clothes, a scheme of some sort. All of these things are provided by the plot (as in: the villain is rich enough to hire mooks and arm them well, and they’ve gotten their hands on a macguffin and have a plan for WORLD DOMINATION). However, much of that is established by plot fiat, and it doesn’t necessarily establish the villain as a particularly scary guy.

However, having an underling who is a kick ass fighter lends an air of competence to all the antagonists. Instead of being a psychopath with a bunch of hirelings that the protagonist outwits/outguns/outfights with ease, they become a psychopath with a world-class killer as a subordinate. When the Top Muscle fights the protagonist to a stand still (or even beats the hell out of them) that extraordinary competence is transferred to the boss above.

Focus: Most spy/adventure movies have a lot of physical trials. There are fights, maybe some macguffins to steal, maybe someone to rescue. Are the protagonists facing off against a bunch of faceless stormtroopers, who only present a real danger in their numbers, or are they facing a single threat that could undo everything?

Extended scenes where the protagonists mows down mooks, then has to face the Top Muscle, can be incredibly effective. TMfU, with its aimless fight against a young Italian count and his two buddies, not to mention that endless boat sequence, needed that focus.

RIP Jeff Rice, a month late

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It’s strange for me to sit here and type out a short post about Jeff Rice and the effect he had on me. You see, I have never read one of his books.

However, his unpublished novel became one of the best horror TV movies of all time, THE NIGHT STALKER. If the sequel and the TV series never quite reached the heights of that first movie, it still set a precedent that horror TV shows follow today. We wouldn’t have The X-Files without Carl Kolchak, and although Richard Matheson wrote the script, Jeff Rice created the story.

From reports, he had a troubled life, and that successful movie and show never translated into other kinds of success. He died just over a month ago, and few covered it.

Still, he created a character I love.

If you’ve never seen any Kolchak–or you’ve only seen the TV series–get your hands on the original movie. It’s beautifully structured and incredibly effective, considering the constraints it was made under.

Rest in Peace, Jeff Rice. thanks.

Okay, voice. How do you do that?

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Someone asked me a followup question about last Friday’s post called What I learned reading debut novels, in which I talked about an exercise Miss Snark gave us: spend a year (or a few months, I guess) reading recent debut novels.

I did that, and the only thing they had in common (as far as I could tell) was a strong voice.

There’s more about it at the far end of that link above.

Anyway, someone asked me the question in the subject header, and I surprised myself by having a ready answer. This has been on my mind a lot lately, but I only just then realized what I’d learned. And it’s pretty simple:

Ask yourself how the point of view character and/or the narrator feels about the events of the book, and reflect that in the text in an interesting way.

That’s how I do it, anyway.

I used to work at Amazon, too

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A lot about this NYTimes article, Inside Amazon: Wrestling Big Ideas in a Bruising Workplace, seemed familiar to me. I worked at Amazon.com for a little while, in the late nineties when the Seattle fulfillment center was their only one.

I was temp-to-hire, which meant I was a temporary employee packing books into boxes or whatever, and if they liked my work they would offer me a permanent position. They did like my work. They did make that offer. I turned them down.

Here’s the thing: it was October, and the supervisors running our section were all gung-ho about the company. Real cheerleaders, and I just assumed it was an act. We were all standing in front of a terribly-inefficient packing machine, and they kept talking about giving our all. For a bullshit warehouse job.

Then one day in October, one of the supervisors stands on a box or something and gives us this lecture about the upcoming holidays. I guess it was supposed to be a coach’s halftime talk or something, but she was telling us that Christmas was going to be hugely busy, and it was “going to be like a war in here,” and that we should be ready to put our personal lives on hold.

My first thought was Fuck you.

My second thought was that she was joking.

When I realized my second thought was wrong, I knew I wasn’t going to stay.

At that point, I’d been with my then-girlfriend, now-wife for a few years, and one thing I’d learned was that she had no intention of being a career widow. If I was planning to ignore her over the Christmas holidays, she would never stay.

And besides, fuck that. Amazon.com wasn’t my company. I just worked there. I had people in my life, and my writing, and was I really supposed to put all that on hold so Jeff Bezos could create his dream company?

Eventually, one of the supervisors pulled me aside to offer me a job (because let’s face it, I’m a good worker) and I told him I wasn’t going to accept because I could never be part of Amazon’s culture. I could never be yay-gung-ho over a day job.

He instantly deflated, going from upbeat to morose, and we talked for a while about not really knowing where we belong and not knowing where we could make a future for ourselves.

I think about that guy sometimes. I hope he’s happy.

Anyway, Amazon is one of the reasons that Seattle has such a thriving economy, but I’d never want to work there myself. Check out this quote from the article:

A woman who had thyroid cancer was given a low performance rating after she returned from treatment. She says her manager explained that while she was out, her peers were accomplishing a great deal. Another employee who miscarried twins left for a business trip the day after she had surgery. “I’m sorry, the work is still going to need to get done,” she said her boss told her. “From where you are in life, trying to start a family, I don’t know if this is the right place for you.”

A woman who had breast cancer was told that she was put on a “performance improvement plan” — Amazon code for “you’re in danger of being fired” — because “difficulties” in her “personal life” had interfered with fulfilling her work goals. Their accounts echoed others from workers who had suffered health crises and felt they had also been judged harshly instead of being given time to recover.

A former human resources executive said she was required to put a woman who had recently returned after undergoing serious surgery, and another who had just had a stillborn child, on performance improvement plans, accounts that were corroborated by a co-worker still at Amazon.

“Put your personal life on hold.”

“Put your personal life on hold.”

My personal life IS my life, and it’s the only one I get. I’m not wasting it to make some obnoxious super-libertarian richer than he already is.

Randomness for 8/15

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1) How One Misunderstanding in the 1870s Created an Entire Sci-Fi Subgenre

2) Every state flag is wrong, and here is why.

3) Someone is setting hipster traps in New York.

4) An “accomplished writer” takes James Patterson’s “Masterclass.”

5) What if Werner Hertzog directed Ant-Man?

6) Architects crowdfund to build £1.85 billion Minas Tirith in England.

7) I read NPR’s 100 best sff novels and they were shockingly offensive. Nothing to argue with here.

What I learned reading debut novels

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Not that any particular voice is going to have universal appeal. I’m a big fan of Richard Stark’s novels, although I can understand why many people wouldn’t be, and A Clockwork Orange is an amazing exercise in voice, probably one of the most outre examples. Then again, I stopped reading Kushiel’s Dart at the word “fustian” because I wanted to read a certain voice and that so wasn’t it.

Voice. It matters.

Zombies Beat Orcs: Persistent Racism in Fandom

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I’m about to run out the door and do some writing, but first let me drop this link from Toby Buckell: Yes, Virginia, people of color do fucking read SF/F

First of all, why write a post asking “Where Are All The People of Color in Sci-Fi/Fantasy?” in this day and age? They’re out there, and easily found for anyone willing to make the extreme effort of searching with google.

But the post I’m linking addresses a particular comment, which is emblematic of a number of shitty zombie arguments that continue to be made. At this point in history, we ought to be addressing the institutional and subconscious aspects of racism. We ought to be long past this sort of white supremacy. But we’re not. These beliefs just won’t stay dead, no matter how many times they’re buried in evidence that refutes it.

And every time I think “I should get more involved with sf/f fandom” I read something like this and just go back to my writing.

The Kid Curates His Own Homeschool Reading List (thx to reddit)

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A couple of days ago, I tweeted this:

Here’s the list of reddit’s 100 favorite books. There’s some good mixed in with a lot of not so good, just like reddit, but he wanted to know which of those books we had in our apartment. That, naturally, led me to search through my bookshelves, which lead to this:

My wife is an enthusiast. When she sees something exciting, she commits, and the idea that our son would return to reading in a big way had her tearing through our shelves looking for books on the list to give him. And if there we didn’t have a particular book but did have something else by the author, that got tossed into the mix, too.

It’s dangerous. As much as I love her passion, I know it can over run someone else’s tentative interest in a thing in the same way a hurricane will blow out a camp fire. So we don’t have The Unbearable Lightness of Being but that doesn’t mean you can toss The Last Temptation of Christ on the pile. And you don’t just add some Marshall McLuhan because you think it’s worthy and he ought to be interested. And I’m sorry, but you can’t substitute Dhalgren for Dune.

Anyway, while she’s at work, I’ve gone through the stacks she’s put together and set aside the books that aren’t on the list. Books not on the list by authors who are have been placed nearby, but except when they aren’t. And LOTR… well, I’m not going to bother.

For a few years, he’s hated the idea of reading anything, and did so only for homeschool assignment. Resentfully. Recently, he’s been reading ebooks of Japanese “light novels.” Then he found the list, realized we had the #1 book on the shelf, and grabbed it.

When I gave that book to him a couple years ago, he rolled his eyes, read a few pages, then pushed it away. When reddit recommends it, he’s in love.

And that’s fine. I knew he would turn around at some point. Now we just have to nurture this interest instead of vomiting a reading list on him.