•July 21, 2011 •
2 Comments
Ursula Le Guin has written and interesting review of China Miéville’s latest book in The Guardian. I was amused by the section where she writes
“Some authors fill a novel with futuristic scenery and jargon and then strenuously, even stertorously, deny that it’s science fiction. No, no, they don’t write that nasty stuff, never touch it. They write literature. Though curiously familiar with the tropes and conventions of the despised genre, they so blithely ignore the meaning of terms, they reinvent the wheel with such cries of self-admiration, that their endeavours seem a doomed effort to prove that one can write a novel without learning how.”
(she isn’t referring to China, there, by the way). More amusing, though, was the speed with which the comments on the article went straight to arguing about whether Miéville thinks he is a “literary” author or not. The whole argument of literary versus genre strikes me as a bit odd. I can understand differentiating for marketing purposes, but the way some others cling to a very fuzzy distinction strikes me as a bit desperate at times.
I like taxonomies as much as the next person and more than most, but they don’t always work. More importantly, why bother? If you need to figure out where to shelve it, I suppose, but otherwise, it’s just a filtering mechanism at best, and a really crude one.
Posted in General writing things
•July 19, 2011 •
Comments Off on Free Tiny Sausage
John Scalzi actually posted this post quite some time ago (I happened to run across it while looking for the famous recipe for Schadenfreude pie, because hey, pie), but it raises some interesting questions sort of related to thoughts I’ve had myself vis-a-vis authorly blogging.
Authors are basically expected to blog these days, of course, for marketing purposes and so on, but one also hears a lot about how wanna-be authors should also put together websites, and I think this is where Scalzi’s free tiny sausage analogy comes in (you can tell the man is a pro because of his skill with analogy).
As nice as it would be for someone to happen along here and decide to offer me lots of money for a book, I’m really happy to just get a little practice making sausage, and if people enjoy the free tiny sausage and leave it that, well, that’s okay with me. Hmm, I think I strayed into a Saxeian metaphor involving legislation. This is why Scalzi makes the big bucks and I still need practice.
Posted in General writing things
•July 16, 2011 •
Comments Off on Serial Saturday: Road Trip, Part 15
JT was only distantly aware of feeling the back of her head striking the asphalt. The pain from that, the flash of light in her vision, was overwhelmed by a numbness that made it hard to feel anything but something cold crawling over her skin. She tried to move, but wasn’t even sure if her limbs were responding as the numbness grew. She couldn’t feel the parking lot she was lying on, couldn’t feel her own arms. She realized that she was rolling slowly to one side as her view of a streetlight overhead was replaced by the sight of Israel lying on the ground next to her. He was thrashing weakly himself, and covered with something that looked either a black blanket, or hundreds of snakes or insects crawling across him. They, or it, was working its way across him, wriggling under his shirt to make it jump and twitch. Continue reading ‘Serial Saturday: Road Trip, Part 15’
Posted in Serials
•July 12, 2011 •
Comments Off on Strunk / White
Since I’m not a huge Strunk and White fan, I’m linking to the Language Log, I’m linking their post about this thing about Strunk and White, because they have an appropriately jaundiced view. That’s about all I have to say on the subject of slashfic, or fanfic for that matter. My apologies for everyone who was looking to me to be a font of wisdom on the subject.
Posted in General writing things, Grammar Gripery
•July 9, 2011 •
Comments Off on Serial Saturday: Road Trip, Part 14
JT lay on her bed with an arm thrown over her eyes, trying to block out the sound of Israel watching Jeopardy. She felt like some of the tension in her shoulders had slowly unknotted after lying in the motel room for an hour, but she still had a splitting headache, and the nerves brought on by having no weapons other than her tomahawk and knife in the room were getting worse. She would have given fifty bucks for a beer or two, as well.
It all made it hard to think, and thinking was what she needed to do, if she was going to survive this little trip. Half the time, Israel seemed to know exactly what he was doing, but the other half of the time he seemed to be wandering, and in any case she didn’t trust him at all. So why had she even come along? When had she lost her sense?
“What is ‘Smokey and the Bandit’,” Israel said to the TV from over on his bed. Continue reading ‘Serial Saturday: Road Trip, Part 14’
Posted in Serials
•July 8, 2011 •
Comments Off on Writing
Two articles on the writing process from a noted literary journal.
Becoming an author.
Fictional Characters.
Posted in General writing things
•July 5, 2011 •
4 Comments
Or maybe it’s just me, but these junebugs are creeping me out. I’m trying to sit quietly in my office as the sun sets and spin frightening tales, and there are about half a dozen of those enormous suckers banging against the screen. What they’d do if they managed to get in doesn’t bear thinking about. Also, given that it is now clearly July, I can only assume that they are some sort of freaky invasive hybridized junebugs – proper junebugs are all dead by now, surely, or gone off to from cocoons or whatever it is junebugs do. There is simply no telling what sort of attack methods freaky invasive hybridized junebugs might have evolved. Toxins, at the very least, and I’m guessing they have mandibles that could tear off a finger.
Junebug attacking someone’s finger
Unfortunately, creepy things tapping at one’s window as night falls is a bit of a cliche. So I’m being terrorized for no good reason.
Posted in Bonechilling Ideas, General writing things
•July 2, 2011 •
Comments Off on Serial Saturday: Road Trip, Part 13
“How the fuck are they following us?” JT snarled. She glanced in the rearview mirror. Still nothing there, no matter what her skin was telling her.
“Who? Bryce or the Old Ones?”
“Either. Both, for fuck’s sake.”
Israel seemed to consider. “Well, I suppose Bryce is getting the Old Ones to do the following, and they’re filling him in on what they find.” Continue reading ‘Serial Saturday: Road Trip, Part 13’
Posted in Serials
•June 28, 2011 •
Comments Off on Data
I’ve decided that one of the things that makes the writing game tricky is lack of good, solid data points. It would be handy, for example, if agents and editors would respond to queries and stories with when in a story, exactly, they decided to reject something, even if they were sending a form reject. After a few responses like that, an author might have some idea whether they have a bad query letter, a bad opening, a bad middle, bad luck, etc. Of course, many writers would be driven to incandescent rage by that sort of feedback (“How dare she reject my book at page 12? Page 13 is where it gets good!”), so I understand why “does not meet our present needs” is a bit safer when one doesn’t have something fairly pleasant to say. Unfortunately, this leads to crazed over-interpretation of a few lines of a form letter (I recall reading a satirical writeup of how to interpret a form letter once, and I tried to find a link to it, but a quick search overwhelmed me with people publicly agonizing over how to interpret form rejection letters with great sincerity). This is all very annoying to those of us who weren’t English majors, though, and prefer more objective analysis. Hang on, I think I may have just realized why they do it.
Posted in General writing things
