After Gar’s great post this week on African American stereotypes in Hollywood, I thought I’d follow up with another stereotype that came up for me this week.
I am constantly rewatching Notting Hill, I can’t help it, love Richard Curtis! And there’s a character in that film that – despite an eccentric turn on it by Rhys Ifans, his breakout role – we’ve seen a million times before: the puckish (that’s Puck from Shakespeare’s Midsummer Night’s Dream), irrepressible, slightly lunatic magical ally/mentor that’s such an archetype in romantic comedy.
I could really teach a whole class on this one character – the “asexual”, usually meaning gay, friend who solves all the straight lovers’ problems. (Now, in Notting Hill Spike is not gay, but definitely Puckish, and he got me thinking about the origins of this character and what it’s really about.)
Modern romantic comedy has really overused the gay best friend archetype (see My Best Friend’s Wedding, He’s Just Not That Into You, Sweet Home Alabama, etc.), but it’s a centuries-old tradition – from Shakespeare and Commedia Del Arte, to Eric Blore, Erik Rhodes and Edward Everett Horton in Fred Astaire/Ginger Rogers movies and Donald O’Connor in Singing in the Rain. These movies often ghettoized gay characters by making them buffoons and/or magical helpers for the heterosexual main characters – the exact role Spike Lee excoriated as the “Super-duper Magical Negro,” a secondary African American character who seemed to live to help the white main characters solve their problems, still unfortunately extremely prevalent in Hollywood – see The Help as the latest lauded and extremely uncomfortable example. (And the uber-successfull Hunger Games gives its heroine a gay African American ally/mentor. Just saying…)
Well, last week at LCC I was thrilled to be introduced by my friend Elle Lothlorian to the ultimate satire of the character: Sassy Gay Friend!
I love these videos for satirizing the archetype, and because it’s actually true. All these disasters could have been averted by a Sassy Gay Friend.
So yes, it’s a stereotype, but there’s something else working here as well.
For one thing, the dance movies I mentioned above were largely created by gay men, and for them, I’m sure it was a way to layer a subversive gay perspective into movies in a time when homosexuality was actually illegal and censors were keeping close watch. (Take a look at the trio dances in Singin’ in the Rain: who’s really dancing with whom?)
There’s no excuse for the modern romantic comedies that keep these gay characters subservient to the heterosexual leads, and deny them a romantic life of their own to boot (with rare exceptions – Scott Pilgrim vs. the World). But I do understand these lame attempts at working gay characters into the action. There is an archetypal resonance about homosexuality that is a powerful draw. These characters have been over the rainbow, so to speak, and they have wisdom beyond the ordinary world that the rest of us want. It’s not entirely surprising that lost het characters latch on to them looking for enlightenment, or at least advice for the lovelorn. Also at play is the powerful archetype of Puck, the fairy (I’d say bisexual, but who really knows? There were all KINDS of things going on in that play….) who both meddled in and solved human lovers’ problems in perhaps the ultimate romantic comic fantasy, Midsummer Night’s Dream.
It’s that same “outsider” knowledge that people are grasping for in some depictions we see of African Americans that more often that not fall into stereotypes. But some of them, I think, are at least reaching for archetype. I love the character of “the Oracle” in The Matrix: the priestess/seer/sibyl that Morpheus takes Neo to see in order to confirm if he is “The One.” She’s played by Gloria Foster with a kind of Billie Holiday flair, and to me she’s a quirky personification of the Black Madonna, Lady Wisdom, the black Universal Mother who has absorbed the sins of the world. I respond deeply to that icon of the feminine.
The point I’m trying to make is that there can be a very thin line between stereotype and archetype. As authors we have to be careful not to fall into stereotype, but at the same time we can’t be afraid to dig for archetype.
So today – what are some character stereotypes that drive you crazy? And now – can you think of books, movies, plays that depict that same character, but raise the characterization to the level of archetype?
Here’s a partial list of tropes to get you thinking!
Chosen One, Cinderella, Mysterious Stranger/Traveling Angel, Knight Errant, Boy Next Door, Girl Next Door, Femme Fatale, Seer/Sibyl, Christ Figure, The Fool, The Third Son, The Third Daughter, Whiz Kid, Final Girl, Absent-Minded Scientist. Byronic Hero, Bad Boy, Bad Girl, Gentleman Thief, Reluctant Hero, Sinner Who Becomes a Saint. Supervillain, Shapeshifter, Trickster, Dark Lord, Evil Twin, Pissed-Off Brother (or Sister), Black Widow, Mad Scientist, Perverted Old Man, Mystery Villain, Witch, Crone, Evil Clown, Evil Wizard, Absent-minded Professor, Expert From Afar, Magician, Divine Fool, Wise Child, Seer/Sybil, Religious Nut, Hooker With A Heart Of Gold, Too Dumb To Live, Mary Sue, Manic Pixie, Martial Arts Master, Jedi Mentor, Cannon Fodder, Blonde, Ingénue, Jailbait, Jewish Mother, Magical Negro, Dark Lady, Clown, Crone, Fairy Godmother, Monster-In-Law, Pompous Ass, Nerd, Supernatural Ally, Wise Old Woman/Man, Snooty Clerk or Waiter, Devoted Domestic.
Covers…while all the research suggests that the most important factor in a book’s success is word of mouth, I think most people would agree the cover is incredibly important too. After all, the expression “Don’t judge a book by its cover” wouldn’t exist if we didn’t tend to do just that.
For those of us who come from a traditional publishing background, we’re used to having little or no say in our covers. (Unless, perhaps you’re a massive best seller and the tables have turned — from the agents/publishers calling the shots to YOU calling the shots.) But, for most of us, the covers of our babies are out of our control. Certainly they were for me with my Sophie Anderson series.
For the most part I used to think They’re the experts, they know the book, they know the market, and they know the publishing business. And, I was normally very satisifed with the covers that my publishers came up with. However, despite LOVING most of my covers, there were also a few I didn’t like. For example, the hardback cover for the American version of my first novel, Body Count. What do you think?
To me, it looked like an “adult” (porn) book, but I was assured it was very sleek and ‘perfect’ for the market. Mind you, they changed it for the mass market edition and I liked that one much better. Here it is:
The other two covers I wasn’t mad on were the Aussie and American covers for The Killing Hands. Weird that I disliked both of them. Perhaps the subject matter made it difficult? Or maybe it was just personal, and others liked the covers.
Now that I’m moving into the Kindle ebook world, it’s a whole different ball game. Guess who is involved in the development of the covers and writes the design brief? Me. Guess who sees drafts and gives further direction? Me. And while there is work involved I’m LOVING having this level of control. Never again, will there be a book cover with my name on it and a design I don’t like (unless I go back to traditional publishing houses, and then I guess it could happen again!)
So, what do you think of the latest effort? It’s for my new pen name, Pippa Dee, and it’s a middle grade fantasy book.
Initial feedback on this one was that the computer image was too hard to see – people didn’t realise at first it was a laptop. And people said for children’s/YA it was advisable to have a teen on the cover. Plus, a couple of people thought because it said “Returns” in the title, it was part of a continuing series (not book 1).
Take 2: Versions 1 & 2
What do you think?
So, how important is the cover to you, as a reader? And authors, have you got any good (or bad) cover stories to share at Murderati today?
I have a dear friend who can’t stand Oprah Winfrey. A mid-list novelist like me, he thinks she’s a literary snob whose book club was an elitist farce, a cultural enclave for readers and writers every bit as exclusionary to authors of color as Augusta National has traditionally been to black golfers not named “Tiger.” And if, God help you, you happen to write genre fiction, as my friend and I both do? Well, the record certainly shows that the Big O’ has never had any time for you, let alone love.
Personally, I think her shortsightedness is Ms. Winfrey’s privilege. She is entitled to like what she likes and make literary giants of whomever she pleases, be they dead or alive.
I wish she had broader reading tastes, sure — the consistent “We Shall Overcome (Racism/Poverty/Abandonment/Death of a Child, Parent, Spouse, etc.)” flavor of her book club selections has always been somewhat annoying — but, unlike my friend, I’ve never really had the energy to care, one way or the other, what she chooses to condemn or endorse.
Until now.
Now comes news out of Hollywood that Ms. O’ is mulling a return to acting — after a hiatus of more than 14 years — to accept a part in THE BUTLER, director Lee Daniel’s upcoming bio-pic about Eugene Allen. Allen was a black man who worked as — you guessed it, a butler — in the White House from 1952 to 1986, where he served a total of eight presidents, from Harry S. Truman to Ronald Reagan.
Does Allen’s sound like a compelling story? Perhaps. You live in the White House for over five decades, at the beck and call of eight of the most powerful men who ever lived, and you’re bound to walk away having had more than a few experiences worth telling your grandchildren about.
But the title of Daniel’s planned film of Allen’s life makes it perfectly clear why African Americans should embrace it with all the enthusiasm of a nine year old given a fruit cake for Christmas: Allen was a butler! Regardless of whose shoes he shined or meals he served, he was a servant, nothing more and nothing less.
In other words, a perfectly appropriate alternative title for Daniels’ movie would be DRIVING MR. PRESIDENT. And where have we all seen that film before?
At this point, I could surprise you not a whit by turning this commentary into yet another indictment of Hollywood’s pathetic tendency to represent black people in only the narrowest and most stereotypical terms, those terms being: “domestic help” (nannies, butlers, maids, chauffeurs); “buffoons” (cross-dressing cops, matriarchs of large, dysfunctional families played by cross-dressing writer/actor/directors); po’ folks (ghetto thugs, single mothers, pimps and drug dealers); and of course, ‘ballers (base-, foot-, and the ever-popular basket-).
But railing against this vicious cycle of cinematic racial profiling has proven to be as effective in creating change as a squirt gun against a forest fire, so I’ll leave that noble endeavor for others to tackle, again and again, and again, until (it would seem) the end of time. No, what I’m taking up arms against today is not the pinhole view Hollywood continues to have of the role black people can and should play in movies, but the apparent willingness of someone as iconic as Oprah Winfrey to enable it.
When an actor like, say, Oscar-winner Octavia Spencer of THE HELP receives an offer to play yet another character out of the Four Basic Negro Groups as outlined above (Help, Buffoon, Po’ Folk, ‘Baller), her choices are to take the role and keep eating, or wait for something more dignified to come along and starve. Asking her to risk life, limb and career by taking a stand against the box Hollywood is so intent upon keeping our people in is like asking the one member of the SWAT team not wearing a Kevlar vest to take point. It’s suicide.
But Oprah? Oprah has options. Oprah has position and power and wealth. Enough of all three with plenty left over to tell pretty much anyone in this town “no” and get away with it.
Which is exactly what she should have said when the script for THE BUTLER first came across her desk: no. Flatly, unconditionally, “No.”
“After waiting fourteen years to be offered a movie part worthy of my name and stature, I am not coming out of retirement for this recycled b.s.”
(And before you suggest I would need to read the script for THE BUTLER myself to have any right to say all this, let me point out that reading it would do nothing to change the inalterable fact that, once again, it is the story not of an astronaut or a Nobel prize winner or even a simple dentist, but of a butler. An exceptional butler, a wise butler, a butler with a heart of gold, no doubt — but a butler, all the same. (Please go back to the beginning of this post and start reading again if you still don’t understand why this is a problem.)
Of course, I’m asking quite a bit of Ms. O’ here because the premise of THE BUTLER sits right smack dab in the sweet spot of her literary preferences. For Oprah, based upon her book club choices, anyway, tugged heartstrings and emotional tragedy trump originality and/or authenticity every time.
Still, it would have been great to see her get past her own affection for Hollywood’s favorite cast of black characters to let this opportunity to play one go to someone else, and make a big stink about it in the process.
By publicly declining a role in Mr. Daniels’ film, would Oprah accomplish anything beyond making it more difficult for its producers to get it made? Probably not. But her doing so would send a message to Hollywood regarding its myopic, unconscionable vision of African Americans that almost no one short of Ms. Winfrey could send and live to tell about it:
“To hell with this, I’m not having it.”
True, were they in Oprah’s shoes instead, it would only be fair to expect male superpowers like Denzel Washington and Will Smith to do the same.
But since I’ve just read they’re attached to do a remake of the old Bill Cosby/Sidney Poitier slapstick comedy “Uptown Saturday Night,” I wouldn’t put my money on that happening, either.
Meanwhile, on another subject entirely. . .
Maybe you’ve seen this graphic that’s been passed around a great deal on Facebook lately:
My writer friends say the right-hand image represents what the average career track looks like for professional authors who have achieved “success.” I suggest it actually looks more like this, at least for many:
I point this out now because I am myself about to climb even further up and out from the Pit of Irrelevance — otherwise known as OOP (Out Of Print) Hell — starting next Tuesday, April 17, when Otto Penzler’s Mysterious Press officially re-issues all six of my Aaron Gunner novels as e-books. To say that I’m excited would be to understate matters considerably.
How this development will affect my own career trajectory — onward and upward, or more non-linear zig-zagging? — remains to be seen. But I’m hoping the books will find a whole new audience with Kindle and Nook owners and create a demand for a seventh Gunner novel.
Especially since that seventh novel is being written as we speak.
For today’s Wildcard Tuesday, I wanted to talk about something that seems to come up a lot for writers and aspiring authors. What makes a good writer? Is it talent (creativity) or skill?
Like many authors, I teach writing. Often the first PowerPoint slide I pop up is one with two bullet points:
Creativity (talent)
Skill
And then I ask my students, what mix they think it takes to be a ‘good’ writer. The answers vary dramatically. Most say 50/50, and I also get the two extremes of 80/20 creativity to talent AND 20/80 creativity to talent. My personal take, when putting numbers on something like this, is it’s about 20% talent and 80% skill (and maybe closer to 10/90). After all, why would I teach writing if there wasn’t something, a skill, to teach? And why would there be so many books written on the subject? And why do most authors take one, two, or maybe three or more books until they produce work that’s good enough to be snapped up by a publisher? Because they’re refining their craft.
Of course, the biggest factor is something that doesn’t start off on my bullet point list. Perseverance. And if you put that in the mix it’s probably about 10% talent, 30% skill and 60% perseverance. But perseverance and skill are also inter-related. If you persevere, keep writing day-in, day-out, your skill levels will increase.
In terms of talent/creativity, I do think there are some people who have a more natural gift for things like:
knowing when to start and end a scene on the page (i.e. what NOT to show the reader);
capturing a character fairly effortlessly, often in a few lines;
the story telling arc; and
translating the voice in their head to a strong voice on the page.
However, these skills can be learned and improved with some theoretical knowledge and lots of practice…IMHO. But what do others think? To get a good cross-section of thoughts on this topic, I asked the other Murderati folk for their input.
Zoe I think the technical aspects of writing can be taught, and taught well. The majority of people, if they put time and effort into it, can acquire the skill to become a pretty decent writer. I believe the ability to be a good storyteller―with good structure and story arc and character development―is something else that can be learned, honed and polished. After all, what we do is largely a craft rather than an art.
To my mind, the vast majority of published writers are published because of their persistence rather than their outright talent. Having talent alone is not enough without the technical skills to translate imagination and a flair with words into a finished book.
Creativity can be cultivated in a person who has the spark to begin with, but I’m not sure it can be instilled in everyone regardless. The ability to notice the small details that pull a story out of the ordinary, that takes something special―something extra. As is the ability to describe those nuances of emotion and character using words that are fresh and clear.
Everybody looks, but not everybody sees.
Pari I think that talent isn’t really the issue; it’s having a distinctive voice that most of us equate with “talent.” As to skill, it does take quite a bit of time and effort to be able to translate that voice into something others will want to read . . . and can understand. Too many people don’t have the skill to write what they really mean to say. Even if they do, readers will bring their own experiences and interpretations to any work.
Stephen Note: Stephen was fighting time this week, but said:
Bottom line ― it’s always bothered me when people have said, “Oh, writing is easy for you because you were born with such talent.” Everyone has it in them to be good. Some better than others. But it takes a lot of work, sometimes a life-time of work, to reach the point where our “born talent” is revealed. Nothing comes easy.
David I’ll second what Pari said: The key is a unique voice, but that’s just the beginning. No student is harder to teach than the one who thinks he’s talented. It takes humility and a passion to write well to achieve the kind of quality that makes your writing worth reading. That passion comes from being inspired by the writers who you want to emulate, who’ve created in you a desire not just to read but to create.
Fiction is much harder than people think, because they only see the end result. But craft alone can’t provide the ineffable magical wonderful rush that truly great prose or poetry creates. That quality can’t be taught, it can only be nurtured―or squandered, or destroyed.
The great joy as a teacher is to read a student’s work and see something special there, and to try as best you can to help that student take the next step toward excellence. The great heartbreak is to have a gifted student who thinks your pointing out where his work falls short is just evidence you don’t recognize his talent.
Alex Talent―that’s a weird one when it comes to writing. I used to sing a LOT, not just in bars, believe it or not, but also in some pretty intense classical/madrigal groups, so I ended up singing with a fair number of opera singers. Now THAT’S talent. You are born with that kind of voice or you are not (I was not!). It’s like whatever God is, singing through you. There is no arguing it. There is no room for doubt. You have it or you don’t.
You don’t see that in writing very often―there are genius writers to be sure (again, I am not one of them!), but it’s a less pure talent than musical talent, I think. Consequently yes, writing skill can be developed. People can become serviceable writers and be published without ever being much good, and I think that’s a lot because we ALL (except actual illiterates) know how to write, sort of―it’s our second language. And we’re all studying storytelling all the time, without actually knowing it, because we’re reading and watching movies and TV all the time and assimiliating the rhythms of story.
But I do think good writers (and that I will admit to being) are born with a certain programming―an ear, a voice, that not everyone is born with. You can hone storytelling skills, but if you’re not born with that ear and voice, you’re never really able to create that seamless dream that is key to a really good book.
And I completely agree with you, P and Z, about persistence―only I’d call it WILL, and bottom line, it’s more effective than skill or talent in becoming a professional writer. God knows I’ve seen that often enough in Hollywood―but in publishing, too. It’s not pretty, but it’s true. If you have the will, you can make it without talent OR skill.
Gar If the question is “What makes a good writer?”, I would quantify the talent/skill equation this way:
25% talent/75% skill
But if you were to ask me what makes for a “great” writer, I think the numbers change to something more like this:
40% talent/60% skill
This is because the things an author does to create great work―as opposed to work that is merely competent―cannot be taught. All the components of what we writers like to call “voice”―use of language, dialogue, pacing, character, etc.―are products of instinct, not learned behavior. Can anyone become a great artist simply by learning all there is to know about the use of paints and brushes? Do all skilled draftsmen have what it takes to become great architects?
The mechanics of the craft are important, and no author can reach his greatest potential without learning them. But writing only bears so much resemblance to cabinet making. If the objective is great work, the tools are not enough. Vision is also required, in no small measure, and vision is God-given.
Every so often when I write one of these blogs I have a major revelation. That happened today as I continued working on a piece called “Writing as an act of love.” Frankly, I was proud of the concept; it tied nicely into what I’d examined last week in my “Writing as therapy” entry. It also dovetailed with the holiday themes that would’ve been so appropriate.
As I sat at my computer contemplating how to unite those concepts into a neat little bow, I asked myself a question: “Why does writing have to be for anything but writing?’
Excellent question, Pari. Life-changing, in fact.
You see, before I got married, I wrote because I loved to write. Sure, I had fantasies of publication, of being famous and retiring to the Cote D’Azur (or at least having a second home there since I could never leave NM permanently). Enough writing conferences taught me that, perhaps, those fantasies might be a bit overblown.
However, I still let myself dream . . . and let myself write for the pleasure of writing.
So what happened? Somewhere around the time I had children and opted to stay home with them, writing became a selfish act because it impacted others. I began feeling obligated to justify the time I spent doing it in terms of “success” and money and having it be a “business.”
How fucked up is that? More than sixteen years of forgetting why I’d written for all the years before. And now, even when I don’t have to justify why I write, I still automatically require the act of writing to serve double duty.
I believe that that’s a huge part of why I haven’t been editing for nearly two years . . . Talk about confusing issues! I used to adore editing! While the Master Class I went to stood that idea on its head, I’d hope by now I’ve incorporated those lessons deeply enough that they don’t have to be impediments. So why haven’t I been editing? I think I was equating editing with selling and, intuitively, I didn’t want to jump on the must-market bandwagon again.
What happened to my old attitude about editing? It used to be about making a piece as good as I could.
Sheesh . . .
The challenge with epiphanies is that they seem incredibly important in the moment and then — poof — often they fade into the background and things return to the way they were. But this realization feels very different. I don’t recall ever pondering it before.
Writing is for writing. That’s powerful. And meaningful enough right there.
How about you? Does your creativity have to serve multiple purposes? Do you feel compelled to justify it?
I was writing in Starbucks in Hermosa Beach one Friday night and the town was hopping. A number of ultra-hip, Hollywood type dance clubs have opened in this little village, devolving what had once been an organically cool jazz/blues biker scene into simply more of the same L.A. bullshit. Cafe Bugaloo still brings live blues bands in from the Mississippi Delta, but they go DJ techno-pop starting at 11:00 pm. Then it’s long lines, bouncers and attitude.
The cafe was busy with marauding twenty year-olds popping in to add a little caffeine to their drunk. A group of four guys sat down in leather arm chairs beside me. They had come from one club and were headed to the next. They spoke extra loud – I could hear the music from the last place pounded in their heads.
“I’ll tell you something,” one said to the other three. “When I see a chick I want to pick up I say, ‘I like your face.'”
The friends nodded sagely. “Yeah. That’s good,” one said.
“Try it,” the first one encouraged.
“Yeah,” the others agreed.
I like your face.
Really? You don’t even want to pick a particular feature to emphasize? How about…her eyes, for instance?
“I like your face” is like saying, “Hey, we both have arms!”
How about something like…”Man, I’m sorry, but I can’t stop staring at your eyes. I hope it doesn’t make you uncomfortable, it’s just that…I’ve never seen eyes so blue. They’re just, really bright, and blue, and sharp. They’re gorgeous.”
Now you might have her attention. Put a little effort into it, asshole.
Or maybe she has one of those arcing, Roman noses and you catch her looking longingly at the pinky-noses of her friends. So maybe you try something like this:
“You’ve got a real exotic look, you know. And your nose is just…elegant. Don’t ever change it.”
Listen, anything I put down is going to sound like a shallow pick-up line. That’s why I never went to dance clubs to meet girls. Every conversation sounds exactly like this:
Guy – “(Garbled noise)”
Girl – “What?!”
Guy – “I said (garbled noise)”
Girl – “What?!”
Guy – “I like your face!”
And come on, girls…if you look at him and think, “God, that was sweet, he’s so sincere,” then you deserve what you get.
The line makes me think of one of my great writing weaknesses: describing people. I hate it. I can’t help making everyone sound like a caricature. “He had bushy eyebrows and big, puffy jowls.” That’s the kind of shit I start to write and then I think…what did I just write? So I try to think of people I know and how to describe them and I can’t think of anything that doesn’t sound absolutely dull. “She had a button nose and tiny wrinkles in the corners of her eyes.” Ugh. I don’t know, but to me, everyone looks roughly the same. “She had two eyes, a nose and a mouth that opened when she spoke.” That’s how I see everyone. The differences are too subtle to note.
“He parted his thin hair to the left.” What does it matter?! Does that really tell me anything about the character? Because that’s what a character description should do, in my opinion, tell me something about how the character thinks and feels. How he sees himself.
“He had a face that people liked.” There, that was easy.
Dickens was one of those writers who could nail a description. God, I love how he described the lawyer in Great Expectations – how the man was always washing his hands. The way his characters looked, how they did their “stage business,” what their mannerisms were…all this revealed character. Often they revealed something that countered the conscious efforts these characters made to impress others. Their faces revealed something else, something dark or sinister, or weak, or sick. The weight of life and difficult decisions etched in their foreheads.
To me, writing effective, multi-layered character descriptions is – and I’m talking about physical descriptions and mannerisms only – one of the hardest things I attempt.
I’m reading Walter Mosley’s “All I Did Was Shoot My Man” and his character descriptions knock my socks off. He makes it seem easy:
“Gert Longman was dark-skinned and heavy the way old-time movie stars used to be.”
“The rhyming young men were dirty, probably high, and likely homeless–but they were singing and moving to an imagined beat that men had been keeping alive in their breasts longer than there were any buildings or buses–or prisons.”
“She had amber skin with pecan brown freckles, burnt orange eyes, and an expression that had been spawned when she needed a doting parent to indulge her fears. The fact that she was near sixty had not extinguished the fears haunting her worried inner child.”
“The girl was cinnamon colored in the way of Native America after it had been raped by Europe.”
“His mottled tanned skin seemed to come from sportsmanship and not vanity. His trousers were khaki and shirt lime cotton. His feet were moccasined in red-brown leather and his hair was onyx and silver as opposed to the more pedestrian salt-and-pepper.”
Beautiful, ain’t it? It would take me a week to come up with lines half as good. Mosley’s descriptions reveal character. And, since the book is written in first person, the descriptions also reveal the character of the observer himself; the narrator, the protagonist. The way he describes people shows us that he is a poet himself. It reveals the quality of his education, it underscores his sense of disillusion and his loneliness.
All this to say that there’s more to a description than meets the eye.
What is it about her face that you like?
“Listen, writer dude, I just want to get laid, all right? And the line works, so shut the fuck up.”
The last time I was at a club with my wife I decided to give it a shot.
Me – “(Garbled noise)”
My Wife – “What?”
Me – “I said (garbled noise)”
My Wife – “What?!”
Me – “I like your ass!”
I feel I can take some liberties here; we’ve been married a long time.
She gave me a cock-eyed look then smiled and took my hand. We left the club together.
If she falls for a shallow line like that then she deserves what she gets.
Back when I was fifteen I wrote my very first novel, all by hand. It took me a month, start to finish—a fact I only know because I put the start and finish dates on the manuscript at the time. By the end of it I had the worst writer’s cramp I’ve ever experienced. My right hand was useless and my arm hurt more or less all the way up to the shoulder.
I knew there must be a better way.
The only computers around at the time were inanimate lumps that took hours to load the simplest of database programs on tape cassette, and then threw up error messages in Klingon. It wasn’t until the Amstrad PCW came along in the mid-1980s that I finally found a work tool I could really use.
I loved my PCW—the odd three-inch diskettes and the green-on-black screen, the lack of a mouse so everything was keyboard controlled, the fact you had to manually install new printers and give them a name. I didn’t realise this meant you were supposed to use the code number of the printer itself. Mine was called Lenny.
Looking back now, it’s remarkable how much but at the same time how little that machine actually did. You could word-process on it, using LocoScript—a program I clung to for years after abandoning my Amstrads. You could merge address lists into template letters for sending out the antique equivalent of an e-newsletter. You could create invoices. And …
… that was about it, really.
No graphics, no photos, no video-clips, no web-surfing—no web, for that matter—no email.
It was just a means of putting words efficiently into a document, fiddling around with the order, spell-checking it, printing it out, and having a back-up copy on disk.
What more do we need?
No, we SO do not need these two little constant time-sucks.
For surviving in today’s business world, we do need computers, laptops and smartphones. Writers have to promote, and network, and stay in touch on Facebook and Twitter and all those other online sites. It’s no longer practical—or sensible—to shut ourselves away in an attic and simply write.
But at the same time, the writing is getting constantly squeezed out of the schedule.
Since I started the new book last month, I’ve been trying out a new method of working—new to me, anyway. Well, actually that’s not true. It’s a very OLD method.
I’ve gone back to where I started.
I’ve always made notes about the book I’m working on at the time, but now I’m writing whole scenes or chapters in note form before I lay a finger on my keyboard.
For one thing, there are fewer distractions available on a myPad. It has no wireless modem, no graphics card, and NO solitaire. Got that on my phone, though …
I found what I was doing was writing notes only for part of a scene, then moving to the computer before I’d fully worked out where I was going. Now I write the whole section, doing all my scribbling out and backtracking in pencil first. You might think that I’m making more work for myself—in effect doing everything twice—but I’ve found that getting the kinks out in advance makes the writing flow easier and faster on screen. I’ve gone from 1000-1250 words a day to 2000-3000 and I find I’m back to really enjoying what I’m doing. It all feels like less of a slog.
Besides, the weather was glorious here last week and I could sit out in the garden in shorts and a T-shirt to scribble my notes, then come inside to write them up. Can’t do that this week, unfortunately, as the snow’s back, but it means I’m looking forward to the summer.
The latest MWA anthology, VENGEANCE is out this week in the US and UK, too. I was absolutely delighted to be asked by editor Lee Child to contribute to this fabulous anthology. Read Lee’s introduction to the collection, and an excerpt from my story, Lost And Found.
And calling all flash fiction writers. The Flashbang Flash Fiction competition still has another ten days to run—closing date April 15th. Write 150-word crime story to be entered to win two tickets for this year’s CrimeFest 2012, plus books and other cool stuff.
I’m looking forward to CrimeFest in Bristol next month (May 24th-27th) even more than usual this time. I have two great panels:
Finally, hugely talented US singer/songwriter, Beth Rudetsky has written this amazing original song ‘The Victim Won’t Be Me’ inspired by FIFTH VICTIM: Charlie Fox book nine. I’m stunned by the song, which I think is beautiful, and by the interpretation brought to it by the students of the Vision West Notts Media (Film and TV) course. They’ve done a brilliant job.
So, my question this week, getting back to my original subject, is what distracts you most when you’re supposed to be working, and what methods have you found work best to get you back on track?
This week’s Word of the Week is scrivener’s palsy. Basically, writer’s cramp!
People who enjoy opera are prissy, bombastic gas bags
so out of touch with real life they can’t even tell when they’re bored.
Growing up in the Midwest, that pretty much summed up my opinion until well into my twenties. Everything I needed to know about opera I could learn from Bugs Bunny or the Marx Brothers.
Then I married an Italian.
Cesidia Tessicini, my late wife, I cannot thank her enough. She taught me to see opera a new way, not as some grandiose exercise in self-congratulation but as great stories told through music. Operas were the mass entertainment of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, especially for Italians—what movies, TV and pop/rock concerts are today.
Ignore the snoots, she said, and just listen to the singing.
But even then my appreciation didn’t click in for good until I saw on PBS a presentation of Tosca starring and directed by Placido Domingo and performed in the actual Rome locations described in the action: the Church of Sant’ Andrea della Valle, the Farnese Palace, the Castle Sant’ Angelo.
Why was it this particular opera that turned the trick? The singing? Sure. The realism, natch. But more importantly for me, Tosca is a crime story. It appealed to me the way great film noir does: visceral, dark, passionate, beautiful. (Night and the City, by the way, would make a great opera. Force of Evil already is one.)
Is a lot of opera hokey? Sure. So are most kung fu movies. Seen Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon or House of the Flying Daggers? They’re operas with fighting sequences instead of arias. All the same grand themes appear, set against historical backdrops: love, villainy, fate, betrayal, death.
But that brings up the big caveat: opera is about the music. The singing in particular. The real dramatist isn’t the librettist, it’s the composer, which makes opera quite different than stage plays.
Until my ear was used to the sometimes blaring (and too often warbly) stylistic eccentricities of voices projecting into large halls, and I had enough exposure to musical theory to enjoy the phrasing in not just the arias but the recitative (rech-ah-tah TEEF) sections—where spoken language is accompanied by music or sung in music that imitates human speech—I found a lot of opera impenetrable and dull. I also had to learn the stories well, so the action wasn’t just a bunch of costumed mouthpieces gesturing grandly and wandering about.
It helps, for those still learning, to have superscripts at the opera house or subtitles in a video version. I’ve named the best video performances I’ve found so far of three of the five operas I name below (the other two are usually only performed in concert format, unfortunately), so you can check them out of the library or buy them and enjoy them at home. Or check out the opera on CD and read along with the libretto as you listen.
Now, five great operas that deal, at least somewhat, with crime.
The Rake as Cop Killer:
Don Giovanni by Wolgang Amadeus Mozart
Serious opera—opera seria—all but smothered the audience with pomposity during the eighteenth century and would have died out if not for Mozart’s Idomeneo. But its Mozart’s comic operas—a form called opera buffa, based on commedia dell’arte—that truly transformed the entire form and made Mozart’s reputation. Especially the three great comic operas he composed with librettist Lorenzo da Ponte (an opera in himself—a defrocked priest banished from his home town for his lascivious ways): Le nozze di Figaro (The Marriage of Figaro), Cossi fan Tutte, and Don Giovanni.
Think Marx invented class consciousness? Both commedia dell’arte and opera buffa were popular art forms that thrived on lampooning the nobility and aristocracy by emphasizing the bawdy, street-smart wiliness of their servants in outwitting them.
The philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau joined the debate in a pamphlet battle called Le Guerre des Buffons, or “The War of the Comic Actors,” in which he derided the stiff, artificial, elitist, maudlin conventions of opera seria, written for and financially supported by the nobility and aristocracy, as out-of-step with the Enlightenment. Instead he championed the more melodic, egalitarian, naturalistic and creative spirit one sees in opera buffa, which was supported by ticket sales to its working and middle class audiences. (The particular opera Rousseau chose as his example of great opera buffa, Pergolesi’s La Serva Padrona, is a one-act gem. Check it out.)
By the end of the eighteenth century, the lowbrow opera buffa, once considered the artistic equivalent of the circus, had completely superseded opera seria as the musical art form of choice among composers and listeners both, largely due to the growth of the middle class and the humanistic world view it embraced. Oh, and, well, the music.
Don Giovanni, based on the tales of Don Juan, enjoys much of its popularity due to the characters of the Don’s cranky but duplicitous manservant Leporello and the coquettish Zerlina (who, when her boyfriend is jealous, encourages him sweetly to punish her—in one performance I’ve seen, she even got on all fours and wagged her tush, inviting him to spank her). The music follows these characterizations by giving Leporello and Zerlina brighter, funnier arias, while the aristocrats get the heavy stuff, often as caricature.
But the crime? After sneaking into the bed of Donna Anna (and having her chase him out, begging to know his name, the wily dog), Don Giovanni is confronted by her father, Don Pedro, the Commendatore (police chief) of Seville. First Don Giovanni mocks the old man then, all too easily, runs him through. The rest of the action pursues the Don as he continues to mock and abuse everyone he chooses—most poignantly, Zerlina, whom he ravages on her wedding day—and the shamed and hypocritical Donna Anna as she tries to help avenge her father’s death (and salvage the honor she arguably willingly gave away) until, in the breathtaking final scene, the Commendatore’s statue comes to life and transports the lascivious Don Giovanni away to Hell.
A stellar performance can be found on DVD: Herbert Von Karajan conducting the Weiner Philharmoniker and Wiener Staatsopernchor; filmed live in Salzburg in July 1987. Samuel Ramey (the Marlboro Man of opera) as Don Giovanni, Kathleen Battle as Zerlina, and two fabulous performers in secondary roles: Ferruccio Furlanetto as Leporello, an Julia Varady as Donna Elvira, the Don’s tormented wife.
The Rake as Serial Debaucher:
Rigoletto by Giuseppi Verdi
Sensing a trend already? The lecherous nobleman returns—he is an opera staple—this time in the guise of the Duke of Mantua.
An aesthetic tension resides at the heart of this work, one I’m not sure is altogether intended—or, if it is, resolved. Verdi had not altogether thrown off the melodic lightness of his bel canto forbears—Bellini, Donizetti, Rossini—when he wrote Rigoletto, and as a result one watches and listens unable to tell for certain whether the Duke is merely a girl-crazy bon vivant, as the music sometimes suggests, or something much more menacing, as the libretto makes plain.
In the best performances this tension becomes focused, with the Duke’s melodic arias used to characterize his flippant disregard for the damage he wreaks. In less than great performances, he just seems schizzy.
Another note on credibility (or the lack thereof): Both Rigoletto’s daughter, Gilda, and even the assassin’s cutthroat sister, Maddalena, fall hopelessly (and somewhat incredibly) in love with the Duke despite his evil alleycat ways. I know, just like high school. Meanwhile, I remind myself: it’s about the singing.
The opera is based on a play by Victor Hugo titled Le Roi S’Amuse. The political sensors would have banned the opera had Verdi retained a king as the villain—the opera was written during Italy’s Risorgimento, and Verdi was fiercely anti-monarchy—so the action was switched to Renaissance Mantua. The protagonist, though, remains the hunchbacked jester Rigoletto. (What was it about Hugo and hunchbacks?)
Action: the over-sexed Duke of Mantua is surrounded by fawning, two-faced courtiers who laugh even as he drags off the unwilling Countess Ceprano while her husband looks on in fury.
Even more unfeeling than the courtiers, however, is the jester Rigoletto, who speaks the dark, viscous, uncaring words the Duke dares not.
Rigoletto jeers Ceprano so viciously even the Duke upbraids him. But the jester refuses to back down, believing himself untouchable.
When Rigoletto mocks the heroic Count Monterosa, whose daughter the Duke has “dishonored,” Monterosa curses him.
(Note: For Verdi, a curse wasn’t small taters. As a boy he called out his town priest during Mass, “May God strike you down with lightning!” Not long afterward, that very thing transpired. Verdi was called to where it happened and saw the priest sitting in a chair, his face charred black, his thumb glued to his nose as though he were taking snuff. But I digress.)
Monterosa’s curse begins to take form when the courtiers believe Rigoletto’s daughter, Gilda, is actually his lover, and they abduct her for sport and bring her to the Duke. The Duke recognizes her as the girl he’s seen in church and who has stolen his, um, heart. He proceeds to do the usual, to which Gilda responds with despairing bliss.
Rigoletto seeks revenge by employing the assassin Sparafucile (Spar-a-foo-Cheel—a great name): but who expects anything to end well for a hunchback? Especially a cursed one.
A film rendition exists, shot on location by director Jean-Pierre Ponnelle in 1983, with the Weiner Philharmoniker and Wiener Staatsopernchor (another trend). Luciano Pavarotti performs as the Duke of Mantua, Ingvar Wixell as Rigoletto, and Edita Gruberova as Gilda. I didn’t find this version entirely successful. It’s “filmic” in the worst way and looks at times like Fellini trying his hand at porno.
Note: I considered titling this section The Hunchback Stays in the Picture. But, obviously, I didn’t.
Never Trust a Crooked Cop:
Tosca, by Giacomo Puccini
When it first appeared in 1900, Tosca was derided by one prominent critic as “a trashy little thriller.” (I know, what’s not to like?) It pits one of the great opera heroines—Floria Tosca, the flighty, impetuous, jealous diva—against one of the great villains: Scarpia (another great name), the devoutly pious and rapacious, murderous, scheming chief of the secret police in Rome.
Puccini has been faulted for making Scarpia’s music too lyrical, especially in his brief “Credo” at the start of Act II, when he admits that love is far more gratifying when taken by force than sweetly surrendered. This is a minor quibble (and one you could take with a great many composers, including the revered Verdi—see above), because the truth remains that Act II is one of the great events in all opera: a seamless evocation of torture, betrayal, brief victory, despair, rapacious lust and the heroine’s murderous revenge. The action is graced with luscious, passionate music in which the love theme and Scarpia’s theme battle throughout, plus one of the great arias of the repertoire (Vissi d’arte).
Last but way not least, the second act contains a murder scene surpassed by none. (If you watch no other clip, don’t miss this one.) As Tosca stabs Scarpia, she sings, “This is Tosca’s kiss.” As he dies she taunts him, “Are you choking on your blood? Killed! By a woman!” As he expires, she spits, “He is dead. Now I forgive him.” And as she pulls from his cold grasp the letter of transit for her and her lover, Cavaradossi, she stares down at Scarpia’s corpse and reflects: “And to think, all of Rome trembled before him.”
A very good performance on video: Chorus and Orchestra of the Teatro dell’Opera, Roma. Filmed live. Luciano Pavarotti performs as Mario Cavaradossi; Raina Kabaivanska as Tosca, Ingmar Wixell as Scarpia.
For a glimpse of what Pavarotti can do in the role of Cavaradossi, check out this rendition of E lucevan le stelle, the signature aria of the third act, where the condemned man sings of his realization, now at the hour of his death, that life has never been sweeter (“Tanto la vita”):
Even Serial Wife Killers Deserve a Little Privacy:
Bluebeard’s Castle, by Béla Bartók
For my money, an often overlooked gem is this one-hour, one-act, two-character tour de force from Béla Bartók, based on a mystery play with a folktale theme.
Bluebeard brings home his new bride Judith who has been warned by all her family and friends not to marry the notorious count.
Judith knows of the rumors surrounding him, and when she sees seven closed doors in his dark castle, she demands to see what lies behind them. Bluebeard begs her to forego her curiosity but this only makes Judith more terrified he’s hiding something. Reluctantly, he agrees to show her what lies behind the first five doors. One by one they open, revealing Bluebeard’s torture chamber, then his weapons, his treasure, his secret garden—everything tinged with blood.
Through all this, Bluebeard comes across more haunted than malevolent, even gracious and despairingly sad. That’s not to say he doesn’t have his creepy moments. When Judith notices that everything has blood on it, he replies:
Through and through my castle trembles.
Stones of sorrow thrill with rapture.
Judith, Judith, cool and soothing
is the blood that oozes freshly.
Silly Judith—she thought the walls were just weeping.
Finally, he asks she content herself with the fifth door. It opens with the most stunning music of the opera, a “Zarathustra-meets-Debussy” series of block chords dominated by brass that evoke the vast reaches of Bluebeard’s estate.
But Judith is not content. Bluebeard is rumored to have killed his three previous wives and she’s almost mad now with fear their bodies lie behind one of the two remaining doors. Bluebeard tries to dissuade her, saying now that she is there his castle will ring with music and be filled with light.
But she will not relent.
The sixth door opens with a vast, moaning sigh and beyond it spreads a vast lake of tears.
Bluebeard tells her the seventh door must remain closed forever but she defies him, saying she knows now the rumors were true. He is a murderer and his slain wives lie behind the last door. She demands he open it. When he does, the three previous wives appear—alive. They come and garb Judith in robes, then take her away with them, behind the seventh door, while Bluebeard laments that now his castle will return to darkness forever.
A very good CD version of this opera can be found on Phillips with Iván Fischer conducting the Budapest Festival Orchestra, László Polgár as Bluebeard, Ildikó Komlósi as Judith.
If Mom Doesn’t Get you, The Furniture Will:
L’Enfant et les Sortileges by Maurice Ravel
Ravel wrote this dazzling one-act opera with the intention of seeing it realized as a Disney-esque animation. This has never happened, strangely, nor is it often performed because of the difficulties the fantastical story presents.
It’s another one-act, and runs a little over an hour. The libretto is by Collette and concerns a wicked little boy who gets scolded for not obeying his mother. Once she leaves, he goes berserk, saying he intends to be evil.
At which point: the chair he’s sitting in comes to life. The chair’s been ruined by the boy: He carved his name in the wood with a knife. The chair tells him how badly it hurt when the blade scored his flesh.
Then the clock speaks, recounting his own tale of woe, followed by:
The wallpaper (shepherds and shepherdesses sing a haunting choral duet back and forth, lamenting the fact that since the boy tore the wallpaper, they will never be reunited).
Dishware (singing in pseudo-Chinese—get it? Dishware? China?).
Even the fire (”I warm good boys but I burn the bad”).
A fairytale princess sings a haunting aria of how she now floats in limbo since the boy burned her storybook before he finished reading it.
Then the walls give way, the garden appears, and the animals and trees all surround him with increasing menace. Only an act of kindness spares him.
What makes this piece so stunning is Collette’s inventive text captured beautifully in music by Ravel’s melodic genius and his dazzling, intricate orchestrations (Stravinsky called him “a Swiss watchmaker”).
A brilliant rendition from 1961 can be had as part of Deutsche Grammophon’s Original Re-Issue series, with Loren Maazel conducting the Orchestre National de la Radio Theatre Française. A very successful treatment of the piece, especially visually, is from the Glyndebourne Festival Opera, where Maurice Sendak did the designs—brilliantly. You can catch the whole opera in six segments on Youtube (two of which are below, and others are embedded in the highlighted links above).
Now, go out an enjoy some evil—everybody sing!
So, Muderateros—have I bored you stupid with all this talk of opera? Do you still think it’s just for stuffed shirts and snobs?
Any favorite opera or performance you’d like to share?
When it comes to crime in song, would you rather stick with Johnnie and Waylon?
* * * * *
Jukebox Hero of the Week: Here’s my favorite part of L’enfant et les sortileges, with the Maurice Sendak design—the sad duet between the shepherds and the shepherdesses, and the utterly heartbreaking scene with the fairy princess:
Or, if your preference is a mad mathematician, slinky dancing cats, and menacing trees (breathtaking stage design in this segment):
I just returned from Left Coast Crime in Sacramento, a smashing success, thanks to organizer goddesses Robin Burcell and Cindy Sample and what looked like some graceful heavy lifting from the Sacramento area Sisters in Crime.
I love Left Coast Crime because it’s always so laid-back and friendly, possibly the most comfortable conference on the mystery circuit.
But this year there was definitely an undercurrent at the con, the same furtive conversation overheard repeatedly in dark corners of the bar, and it went like this. Have you done it yet? How was it? How many times have you done it? Have you told your agent you’re doing it? I want to do it but I’m afraid to do it… but should I do it?
Well, let’s face it, we’re all doing it, and some of us have been doing it for a while. I’m talking about e books, of course. Everyone was comparing stories, numbers, strategies, numbers, choices, numbers….
Because it’s the numbers.
Things have changed so much since I went to my first conference in 2006. Oh, the conferences are still wonderful, unforgettable experiences, so very good for so many things on so many levels. Let me just start with some non-business things.
For one thing, I get to get dressed. I even get to get dressed up, but just getting dressed every day is a miraculous thing. It makes me feel so professional and human. And because that’s such a treat I like to play around with it. This year I’ve been taking a belly dance class and I’ve discovered that they sell regular clothes – sort of – in belly dance costume stores, so I had some wonderful net-y sparkly things that other people seemed to enjoy seeing me in. But full-on costuming is not required: Kelli Stanley is never without her trademark fedoras (and this year some fabulous scarves and jewelry) and Bill Fitzhugh is always memorable in his berets – a little accessorizing is a great way to stand out from the crowd, express a little personality that gives a hint of your books, and help readers find you.
There is the sudden totally immersive social life – scary to some people but for most of us it’s a relief and a comfort and a total joy to be around people that just GET IT. There’s nothing anyone has to explain because we all do the same thing all day and night and we all feel exactly the same way about it and we can talk about it with people who really know but we don’t have to because they do know. And if we get a little crazy, and who doesn’t, once in a while? – what happens at a con stays at a con, and the family has your back.
And when we need to talk, well, there are no better listeners than writers. This year was actually a very weepy one; so many people had lost parents and spouses, others were struggling with or had just emerged from serious illnesses. But if you can’t break down sobbing in a dark corner of the bar with your brother and sister mystery writers, I don’t know who else you could do it with.
It’s also so wonderful to be around so many readers; they keep us honest and – well, they make me remember WHY I write, WHY it’s worth it to get to The End.
At a con writers exchange business information, they learn even more from booksellers and librarians; they get inspired hearing each other talk on panels (This year it was John Lescroat, the Guest of Honor, who gave me the inspirational ass-kicking I needed). Some of us teach and learn just as much from our students as they’re learning from us.
And in a business sense, I mean a book business sense, there are reviewers, editors, social media pros – unexpected opportunities come up for promotion. And you’re exposed to new readers. I taught a workshop that was maybe 60 or 70 people. I was on a panel for which there were about 25 people in the audience; I did another that was packed, easily 100 people. That’s some good exposure to potential readers, even though I know there’s a growing percentage of those readers who already know of me and my books, so in some ways I’m preaching to the choir.
In 2006, going to one of these cons was still one of the best ways to develop a following that would buy your books. You’d have to do a lot of them, and other appearances as well, but the theory was that you would build a devoted audience that would always buy your books, and that would be the core of a growing fan base.
But here’s where the numbers question starts to come in, in this new era.
This week I’m doing the new thing, a Kindle Select promotion on Amazon in which I am listing several books for free – a blast that gets thousands of books out there – not to my fan base, which theoretically already HAS my books – but to a whole lot of people who have never heard of me but who might become fans. Our Zoe Sharp and former Rati Brett Battles and I have teamed up with recent guest blogger Scott Nicholson, and thriller writers Mel Comley and Aiden James to further promote our giveaways by raffling off three Kindle Fires and some gift certificates on the new site Scott has built for this kind of promotion (it’s ebookswag.com, and you can click and enter the drawing for free with the button on the left of the page, and download all our free Kindle thrillers as well).
Well, first day of promo, day isn’t anywhere near over yet, and The Harrowing, my first giveaway, has already had over five thousand downloads. That’s five thousand new readers who actually HAVE the book – they’re not just considering it as I speak on a panel or as they walk past it in a bookstore – they HAVE it. (And to put that in more perspective – 5000 copies is a standard first print run for a lot of books! We’re talking ONE DAY). If people don’t read it all the way through – well, that’s my fault or their particular taste, but those odds are a huge improvement over pretty much any other kind of promotion I could do myself (not counting a big publisher push). And that’s just one day – we’re doing this giveaway all week (I’ll be offering The Price and The Space Between on Thursday and Friday) and the cost to each of us participating is less than the cost of one day at a conference. In fact I’d say it costs about a quarter of what one day at a conference costs.
This is the new model and the kind of economic reality we’re looking at these days, and it’s really making me think. I will never stop going to conferences. They’re life. They’re my inspiration, they’re my social life, they’re my way of keeping up with my beloved extended family, and they are great business. But these days there are ways of reaching readers that are book promo on steroids, and I wanted to at least broach the subject because this is what I’m seeing and that’s what we do here – we talk about this stuff.
So please check out ebookswag.com every weekday this week to take advantage of all the free books (including The Space Between on Saturday, still) and by all means sign yourself up for a chance at those Kindle Fires. And I’ve just noticed another Rati alum in the Top Ten Free Suspense along with Brett and me today – J.D. Rhoades. It’s a bonanza!
And tell me, authors – how do you see the promotional model changing? Are you more confused than ever, or is some of this making sense to you (and if so, please explain it fo the rest of us!)
And readers – how do you find books, these days? Are you into the free book promos? Has your bookbuying changed with e readers?
From the beginning of my time as a writing being, back in the wee single-digit years, I have always used this form of self-expression as a way to make sense of the world. Whether it be through poetry, lyrics, journaling, nonfiction or fiction, there has always been that element of wanting to learn or explore my own emotional maze — and wanting to come away from the experience understanding more than when I entered it.
I wouldn’t have survived certain periods of my life without writing. Most of my adolescence, for example. Those were rough years filled with so much angst I could’ve made Jane Eyre look like a Katy-Perry California girl. Through jilted relationships, a year in France and a year in Hong Kong, through anger at my mother, fights, self-hatred . . . all of it, I put pen to paper or tapped on my old Olympus typewriter or used a computer to get it all out.
And yet, the works I’ve written specifically for publication don’t fall into this category. Perhaps it’s self-preservation that impels me to draw an emotional line between the truly personal and what is for public consumption. After all, for most of us, our personal dramas and insights are rather banal vis a vis the rest of the world. Sure, we think we’re interesting . . . but I long ago learned in PR that most of the time that doesn’t translate to other’s perceptions.
So why am I writing a novel right now about a woman finding independence in divorce after decades of marriage? Shouldn’t I know better? It’s odd, but somehow — in spite of everything in my life that might be applicable to hers — this story isn’t about me.
Instead, I’m exploring emotion — my protag’s — and letting myself really go in and look around at the human experience at this juncture in her life. Sure, sometimes while I’m writing a scene, I burst into tears because it touches on my own experiences . . . but the world I’ve created is hers, not mine. Her reactions aren’t mine, though they often move me to examine my own.
Is this a more subtle form of personal therapy? One could argue that any creativity is therapy for those of us who yearn to create. But I think something else is going on here, a kind of hybrid newness in my approach to writing. Whatever it is, I’m grateful for the process.
Question:
What form of creativity have you used for your own personal therapy?
Or
Have you ever read a book and felt like the writer wasn’t so much telling a story as figuring out something for him/herself?
