Three Inspiring Thoughts on Writing

Before I share my three favorite quotes about writing, I have to twirl a bit over my big news this week. THE TALON OF THE HAWK was nominated for Best Fantasy Romance of 2015 in the RT Book Reviews Reviewers Choice Awards! I'm so honored to be in the company of such amazing writers, many of whom are my very favorites from way back. Such a thrill!

My three favorite quotes about writing.

There is in each of us an upwelling spring of life, energy, love, whatever you like to call it. If a course is not cut for it, it turns the ground around it into a swamp. ~Mark Rutherford

I found this quote in the book WALKING ON ALLIGATORS, a book of meditations for writers, by Susan Shaunghnessy, which I bought back in 1993 when I first set my cap to being a writer instead of (or, in addition to, as it turned out) being a scientist. I've come back to this quote over and over, to explain to myself why I get depressed if my breaks from writing are too long. Ye olde swamp. Yes, exactly.

Tons of great quotes in that book - I highly recommend!

Take the donuts!

Okay, if you haven't read Amanda Palmer's THE ART OF ASKING, you won't get this. Also, this is an amazing book for any kind of creative. Maybe for anyone at all! Seriously, this book lit up my life and answered questions I didn't even know I had. Anyway, she explains this so much better than I could, that I'm copying from the book. Some of this might not make sense because she references previous thought threads, but that's all the more reason to read the book!

Thoreau wrote in painstaking detail about how he chose to remove himself from society to live by his own means in a little ten-by-fifteen-foot hand-hewn cabin on the side of a pond. What he left out of Walden, though, was the fact that the land he built on was borrowed from his wealthy neighbor, that his pal Ralph Waldo Emerson had him over for dinner all the time, and that every Sunday, Thoreau’s mother and sister brought him a basket of freshly baked goods for him, including donuts.

The idea of Thoreau gazing thoughtfully over the expanse of transcendental Walden Pond, a bluebird alighting onto his threadbare shoe, all the while eating donuts that his mom brought him just doesn’t jibe with most people’s picture of him as a self-reliant, noble, marrow-sucking back-to-the-woods folk hero. In the book An Underground Education, Richard Zacks declares: Let it be known that Nature Boy went home on weekends to raid the family cookie jar.

Thoreau also lived at Walden for a total of two or three years, but he condensed the book down to a single year, the four seasons, to make the book flow better, to work as a piece of art, and to best reflect his emotional experience.

Taking the donuts is hard for a lot of people.

It’s not the act of taking that’s so difficult, it’s more the fear of what other people are going to think when they see us slaving away at our manuscript about the pure transcendence of nature and the importance of self-reliance and simplicity. While munching on someone else’s donut.

Maybe it comes back to that same old issue: we just can’t see what we do as important enough to merit the help, the love. Try to picture getting angry at Einstein devouring a donut brought to him by his assistant while he sat slaving on the theory of relativity. Try to picture getting angry at Florence Nightingale for snacking on a donut while taking a break from tirelessly helping the sick. It’s difficult.

So, a plea.

To the artists, creators, scientists, nonprofit-runners, librarians, strange-thinkers, start-uppers, and inventors, to all people everywhere who are afraid to accept the help, in whatever form it’s appearing:

Please, take the donuts.

To the guy in my opening band who was too ashamed to go out into the crowd and accept money for his band:

Take the donuts.

To the girl who spent her twenties as a street performer and stripper living on less than $700 a month, who went on to marry a best-selling author whom she loves, unquestioningly, but even that massive love can’t break her unwillingness to accept his financial help, please…

Everybody.

Please.

Just take the fucking donuts.

And my most recent favorite, that I have tacked up next to my desk:

What would you write if you weren't afraid?

This one isn't cited to anyone that I can find. It's interesting because when I mention it to some people, they come right back with "I'm not afraid of anything!" Which is great. More power to them. Other people though, particularly well-established, multi-published authors, nod and say, "Oh, yes." It's not fear precisely, but that works well as a good umbrella term. It's caution. It's those voices of the marketplace whispering that something like it has been done. Or has never been done. It's the comments of critique partners warning that readers won't like something. It's the ever-present doubt in one's own instincts.

Whenever I hesitate on going somewhere in a story, I look a that quote.

And I write as if I'm not afraid.

Should Women Write More Like Men to Succeed?

Thanks so much to Jim for pinch-hitting for me yesterday! He graciously stepped up when David, the love of MY life, surprised me with breakfast out and a trip to the botanical gardens. I didn't want to say, "but... but... but, my Word Whores blog post!" so I sent up an SOS and Jim answered. He also wrote a really lovely post to kick off this week's topic, about whether love and romance belong in SFF. 

Kinda coincidental on my part, huh?

A lot of the time I prioritize my writing tasks and obligations (even if internally imposed) over everything else. David is a wonderful partner for me in that he gets that. He's always in my Acknowledgments as the person who makes everything possible because that's very true. So when he wants to do something special with me, that goes right to the top of the list. Love and romance are a big part of my life, as well as in what I write.

In a way it worked out really well for Jim to kick off this topic, because he's much more of a "guy's" author of fantasy than I am. I mean not just because he's a man and I'm a woman. When I stray from fantasy, I write contemporary romance, often erotic. When he strays, it's into pretty hard-core horror. I feel pretty safe saying that there are a lot of male readers who will not read my fantasy books because of the romance in them. This isn't spitting into the wind. A couple of days ago a guy, who identifies as Bearded Guy, posted to a Reddit fantasy thread a spiel directed at female authors of fantasy. I mean, he titled it, "Female Authors, Let's Talk."

He starts with this:

As everyone (probably) knows women are underrepresented in fantasy. I'm by no means an expert on the history of the industry but its easy to see that there is still a lack of female authors. Why this is, I can't rightly say. What I do know is yesterday I caught myself shamefully contributing to the problem.

Let me preface this with the little fun fact that I can't stand romance novels. They really don't jive with me on any level. So, with that in mind, yesterday I was looking at recommendation threads and lists. (Namely the post by Krista D. Ball about books that don't get recommended much).

While looking through all the authors and books I noticed myself spending less time reading (or skipping all together) the descriptions of books suggested that were written by female authors. The reason for this I think is because out of a handful I did read they all were either UF or romance. As I said earlier I don't like romance a bit. UF I'm not too keen on either.

So after noticing I was skipping female names in the list to read about the books written by men I felt shamed. In the industry though it does seem to me like women are getting more attention and being published more. But, there is an expectation that (at least on my part) they write UF, YA, or romance. Looking at the people I've seen on panels and heard about on here that assumption is sadly reinforced. 

Perhaps I don't have enough exposure to a lot of the newer authors but I have yet to see many successful female authors in what could be called (and I also hate titles, fun fact) normal/mainstream fantasy. 

From there the comments start with recommendation of female fantasy authors who keep that icky romance out of their books. Then, as the story got passed around, more people jumped in. Happily for me, other people - Janny Wurts, in particular - called him on his fundamental premise that he hates romance. As she points out - and as Jim did, too - men will tolerate from other men and from the male POV, what they won't tolerate from women. It's not so much the question of whether romance and love should figure into SFF, but whether men will accept it from the female perspective.

Which still seems to be no.

That's fine by me. I'm a firm believer that everyone should be able to read exactly what they want to. I want people to love reading my books, no slog through them. That said, I know A LOT of female SFF writers who work *really* hard to keep the girly stuff out of their books. Women writers on panels with me have said as much publicly. In private more than one has told me that I'll never be respected as a fantasy writer if I don't cut out the romance.

I hate hearing this.

It reminds me of being in college and grad school, where I studied neuroscience and most of my cohort were guys. More than once professors advised me to think and behave more like a man if I wanted to succeed. In those exact words.

I didn't believe it then and I don't believe it today. Females are half of the human race. We bring value from that perspective. We are the yin to the male yang. To bring balance, we don't convert yin to yang so we can have a big bucket of yang. When people say this kind of thing, the implicit assumption is that female is lesser and not worthy. When Bearded Guy asks for books by female authors that are writing "normal/mainstream fantasy," he's revealing the tacit belief that romance is not normal. That, to take it a step further, that the traditional male perspective is mainstream and female is not. To me he's saying, "I want to read and support female fantasy authors who write like male authors."

Maybe I'm oversensitive, but I don't think so. Kristan Higgins wrote an amazing article for Publisher's Weekly that went up nearly at the same time as Bearded Guy's. She talked about teaching at a writing conference at Mt. Holyoke College, where this happened:

The keynote speaker was Andre Dubus III. In his address, he described the typical romance reader as “some woman reading a schlocky romance novel while simultaneously watching soap operas and eating.”

During the q&a period, Judith [Arnold] (a friend of mine) asked Dubus about his knowledge of romance books. He admitted he’d never read one. Most people who criticize romance haven’t, she countered. Dubus said he was put off by “those cheesy covers with Fabio” and went on to apologize—and change the subject.

I really want to ask Bearded Guy what romances turned him off the genre. Mostly I don't want to hear romance in fantasy bashed anymore.

I'm really all for balance. 

Embracing the Tropes - Love, Not Hate

Spring definitely begins in March here in Santa Fe. I spent a few hours sitting outside reading with my coffee in the sunshine this morning. Lovely!

This week at the bordello, we're discussing our favorite genre tropes. Since we get to pick the genre and I write in three at the moment, I'm talking about one from each. Also, since I'm the topic-kickoff girl, I'll take on the job of defining "Trope," for those who aren't familiar. Particularly because the way we discuss tropes in fiction writing doesn't exactly match the first definition of the word in most dictionaries. Basically a trope is a plot device. Many definitions add in a bit of a sneer, using words like "overused" and "cliché." Amusingly - at least to me - the purveyors of these discussions immediately move to subverting or avoiding tropes. This ignores this one simple rule:

Readers of genre fiction LOVE THEIR TROPES.

I shouldn't have to say this, but I'm going to.

1) This does not make them stupid.
2) This does not make them lazy readers (whatever the hell that means).
3) This does not mean the author is lazy (because, hoo boy, writing books is SO EASY).

A book that takes a beloved trope and runs with it in a fabulous way is a great treasure. Personally, I think all stories exploit tropes (because there are no new plots under the sun, right?). You could name me any book at all and I'll tell you what trope - or tropes - it uses. (GONE GIRL: unreliable narrator; HUNGER GAMES: the chosen one; etc.)

Okay, that's my soapbox. On to the lurv!



Fantasy

I'm going with the Fish-Out-of-Water trope for fantasy. This means a story where a person is plucked from their usual world and immersed in one alien to them. Often these are called "portal fantasies," because the protagonist much travel through some kind of portal to this other world. Oddly, it seems many portal fantasies these days are limited to books for YA and younger. My Covenant of Thorns trilogy is one of the few current adult ones that also includes romance. (Um, very adult. *cough*) I know this because we had a huge Twitter conversation about it - not started by me, but I got roped in, due to a mention of Covenant of Thorns - and most of the books we could think of were not at all recent.

Fantasy Romance

For this one I'm picking the Marriage-of-Convenience trope. This is a staple of romance novels for a very good reason. Two people are thrust into close proximity (lots of enforced situations can count as the "marriage") and must come to terms with each other. It's a classic because the conflict is inherent in the situation (something outside the couple forces them into the relationship) and because the emotional tension is easy to mine. Neither person is allowed to simply walk away when things get difficult. The problem with this trope outside of historical romances is that our modern world allows so much more freedom that it's difficult to come up with believable reasons for a Marriage of Convenience. But in fantasy - Aha! Because fantasy romance gives us room to build worlds and societies, it's a rich genre for playing with this trope. Which is what I did in THE MARK OF THE TALA.

Contemporary Erotic Romance

For erotic romance, my favorite trope is what we affectionately call dubcon, for dubious consent. This is not unlike the Marriage of Convenience and often requires a similarly deft hand and meticulous worldbuilding - even in a contemporary world. With dubcon, the protagonist is caught up in a bargain or situation that pushes them to explore sexual boundaries that they wouldn't have done in the normal course of their lives. This can range from extreme noncon abduction stories to mild dubcon where outside forces conspire to force the protagonist down a particular path. In my upcoming UNDER CONTRACT, the heroine is financially destitute and accepts a bargain from the hero where he pays her for BDSM sex. Again, this kind of trope creates delicious emotional and sexual tension - and keeps the hero and heroine from simply walking away when conflict arises.

I could probably make long lists of my favorite tropes, because there are tons out there. What's your favorite?