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Have you ever read a book that got you so jazzed to write your own work that you just couldn’t contain yourself? That’s how I feel right now. I’m on the second book in The Seven Relams series by Cinda Williams Chima and it’s so absolutely amazing and so inspiring that I want to write and read at the same time.
The only real problem I’ve ever had with high fantasy was the detachment I felt to the world I was reading. It’s hard to get engrossed in a story when your eyes are crossing because you’re trying to figure out context for new world things. One book I read used a non-standard system of measurement but never gave any context to what the measurement actually was. So when it was said, “it was X ‘measurements’ away,” it just ended and I spent the rest of the book trying to figure out how far away that something was. I shouldn’t be spending a whole book doing that.
I understand the need to develop a high fantasy world and to make it feel like a high fantasy world but really, if you have roses, call them roses. There’s no need to call them Budding Virla Blossoms when they look and smell exactly like roses, especially when you don’t give context for what the damn things are. Reference the Turkey City Lexicon for more information on that and much, much more.
So when I first read The Demon King, I felt the world was a little jilting and it took me about a chapter and a half to get settled into it but once I did, I was floored. You get the total feel of an entirely different world but at the same time it’s not so foreign or unreachable that you spend more time caring about what something is than what’s going on in the plot. I’m reading through the first manuscript of Diamond Crier now just to get pieces of my world back and I’m so glad I’m scraping about 99% of the plot itself. God, it sucked. But I think my high fantasy world was just a little too familiar. Chima struck an excellent balance between high fantasy and familiar reality.
When I get back to actually writing my manuscript, I so hope I can do it as good as her.
I’ve rewritten the first chapter of Diamond Crier and I love it. I finally love my Sabina, the action hits right there. It’s great, aside from the fact that it’s a first draft. But now I can’t carry on any further without re-reading the draft I trunked in order to remember my own world. At the end of the first chapter, Sabina’s entered the world. Thanks to my memory, I can’t remember a lot of it. And now I have 80,000 words of work to read to refresh my memory.
It’s funny because as I’m rereading this I’m looking at my writing and damn, I do write some good lines. If you remember (which you probably don’t but that’s okay, I barely do) I ended up with a major voice shift about 5 chapters or so into the original first draft. I felt that what I was writing originally was too showy, too uppity and not what I felt the story was about.
I’ve read through those those original original chapters already and I’ve just come upon the chapter where the shift happens and I have to say, it worked a hell of a lot better before the shift. It looks like I tried to insert this almost slapstick type of humor that just killed the story. Very strange. And it’s funny because I expected to cringe a lot reading this. I really wasn’t so much to start. I kind of liked what I was writing, I like the history that I wrote although the execution wasn’t too great. But it sure was a hell of a lot better than what it became and damn, am I cringing now.
Obviously I need a medium between the two. DC isn’t going to be like Earth Shatterer in that kind of snarky type of humor. While it’s not that I don’t like ES, I’m not in love with it. DC, if I end up nailing it, I’m going to love and it’s going to show. I’ve gotten nothing but form rejections with ES with no requests. I’m going to try one more tier of agents and if I get the same thing, it’s getting trunked. While I love me my snark, I don’t think sustaining it for a novel (or two) is really my strong suit. It feels like I’m still trying to find my footing in my own writing and while I’m close, I’m still not there yet. Hopefully I’ll find it with DC.
So does this make my third novel? My first was completing the original DC albeit trunking it 3/4 of the way through the first edit. But I finished it. The second was ES that’s on sub now. This DC I’m basically working on from scratch. The only basis I have are a few elements from the original world I created. Everything else is new. Because if this is my third, the third tends to be a lucky number for many a debut author. Pleasepleasepleaseplease.
Hey you. Yeah, you there, you crazy ass writer. Let’s get one thing straight, okay? The world is not out to get you. There isn’t some huge conspiracy going on in the publishing world to prevent you from getting published. Really, they have better things to do with their time. So every time you go out and blame the agents for getting in your way on your road to publication, I want to hand you a tinfoil hat.
98% of the authors on the shelves now got there via the slush pile. They didn’t magically appear there. They didn’t have the help of a fairy godmother. They worked their asses off to be able to write worth a damn and queried like every other schlub out there. So take the blinders off, will you?
When I see a writer talking about getting over 100 form rejections from agents and then they proceed to blame those agents for not giving these writers the time of day, I want to start throttling something. Of course 100+ form rejections should say something but it’s not, “stop taking those anti-psychotics.” Darling, you really need to stop projecting and start looking at what’s in front of your face in the form of a big steaming pile of shit.
Any GOOD writer would see that it’s them, their writing, that’s the problem. Not those horrible meanie agents that are keeping them from their dreams. I think Freud would call that delusional. I just don’t understand the mentality of some people. And the thing is, once that kind of writer receives those eleventy billion form rejections and piss and moan about how those agents can’t see their genius, they seek other means of publication. They either self-publish or set the bar a hell of a lot lower, like PublishAmerica or some no-name publisher that’ll publish pretty much anything.
“You’re jealous!” they might scream at me. “My name’s in print and yours isn’t! You’re obviously not good enough!” Aside from the fact that the “you’re jealous” (usually used with the wrong form of you are) defense is used by the unintelligent, they fail to realize that I actually do have standards of publication. Yes, I want my name in print. Bad. But I’m not desperate. I’m not willing to settle for any kind of print. I want the good print. The kind that will get me into Barnes and Noble across the country. The kind where publicists will want to promote my book. Where I’ll have signing tours. You know, where people will actually read it. I’m not willing to drop to the level of pond scum that some of these crazy ass writers are dropping to in order to get published. For me it’s either do it right or not at all.
So can we cut the shit please? Aside from the fact that you make the rest of us hard-working normal writers look bad, you’re going to end up in places like SlushPile Hell where you’ll end up in the stocks by the very people you’re querying and mocked by the rest of us. You might think they’re mean but we think you’re a fucking moron. So get your head out of your ass and do it right. Stop feeding the likes of PublishAmerica with your dimwitted naivety.
Remember, just because you write a book doesn’t mean you DESERVE to be published. Like wearing spandex, getting published it a privilege, not a right. It is not owed to you. You deserve nothing. Just write the best damn book you can and maybe it’ll get you somewhere. But for the love of god stop being an asshat about it.
I’ve had this short story idea floating around in my head for at least a week. I think I woke up with it in there one morning. I just got around to start writing it a few days ago. The overall premise is rape from a teenage guy’s perspective. Actually, it’s the girl crying rape from the guy’s perspective.
There are quite a few stories out there about rape and the seriousness of it. It’s a horrible thing for anyone to go through, especially a teenage girl. But there’s also another side to it. There are cases of girls having regret about what they did. They feel ashamed so despite having there been no force, they cry rape as some kind of means to absolve themselves of the action and put the blame on the guy. He was the one that coerced her into doing those things.
So my story’s in two parts: the actual act and Monday morning, after the girl’s claim. It’s the act that I find myself having trouble getting through and I think it’s because I’m writing a lot of it. It’s by no means smut (although I’m sure that would be dependent on the eyes reading it) but it’s very telling and I can’t help but feel like I’m writing some kind of Cinemax-level kiddie porn.
But my goal with part A is to show what’s actually happening in the act. The guy is the “big man on campus” type and he can talk the talk. But the walk? He’s just making that walk for the first time. The couple is losing their virginities to each other. I wanted to show his awkwardness on not really knowing what to do, her awkwardness in thinking she knows what she’s doing but not really. And that involves getting a little deeper than listening behind the curtain. I need to show how he nearly explodes when the girl wraps her hand around him because, to me, that’s a testament to how he really is. No “player” would nearly end his night at the single touch of a hand. When he thinks she’s uncomfortable, he stops until she urges him to keep going.
I have absolutely no worries about the repercussions of writing a story like this. I don’t care. Because rape isn’t cut and dry and it isn’t always stereotypical. Yes, more women report rapes but men get raped too. And cries of wolf can often be made. And when that happens, and it’s the guy the wolves have been released on, there are horrible repercussions for him that he didn’t deserve. Duke lacrosse players, anyone?
To me a different story needed to be told.
I am a fanfiction writer. I make no qualms about that. I don’t try to hide it.
Cassandra Clare (The Mortal Instruments, The Infernal Devices) was/is also a fanfiction writer. At least, that’s where she got her writing start. I’ve only read City of Bones and I’m reading Clockwork Angel now and I can’t help but see a lot of writing issues in her books that one would find in fanfiction – excessive descriptions (in City of Bones, it was so bad I didn’t want to keep reading the series for fear of death by similes), no trust in the reader, heinous overwriting, awkward prose. And when I read her work I can’t help but think, “Yeah, that’s typical of a fanfiction writer.”
Of course I think of my own work and I wonder if it reads like a piece of fanfiction. No one that’s read it has said that, thankfully. And the thing is, I’m not alone in my opinion of Clare’s work. Many people felt it’s derivative, not only of other works but of itself, Clare having rehashed her own plot in subsequent books.
In Clockwork Angel, every single thing is described, from a person’s looks to what they’re wearing, what they’re holding, what’s in the room and so on. There’s no trust. And it’s typical of a fanfiction writer to spell everything out. The similes have substantially died down but the descriptions she has in there now are awkward and clunky, like she was searching for a good descriptor, couldn’t think of anything and just settled on something. It makes for a very strange read.
So am I unnecessarily prejudice? Am I hypocritically prejudice? Should I take a closer look at my own work and hunt down any signs of fanfiction? Has anyone else read Clare’s work and felt the same way? The thing is, I’m entertained by her stories (although CA is really dragging, I’m closing in on page 150 and only 6 chapters in). It’s just the writing isn’t quite there for me, like she’s hanging on to some semblance of fanfiction and doesn’t want to let go.
Just for the record, no I’m not bitter that Clare was discovered by writing fanfiction. Good for her, actually. But again, I find myself going, “That’s typical of a fanfic writer” when I’m reading her work and I don’t know if it’s right. Not all fanfiction fits so nicely into a mould. Some is far more eloquent than a lot of published works. But a lot has telltale markers of it being fanfic. It’s just Clare’s style screams fanfic to me. I can’t help it.
