The Pretension Stick

Earlier today, Anima Mecanique quoted an excerpt from a review with Terry Goodkind that was truly mind-boggling. Copying her added emphasis:

Q: “What do you think distinguishes your books from all of the other fantasy books out there, and why should readers choose to read your series?”

TG: “There are several things. First of all, I don’t write fantasy. I write stories that have important human themes. They have elements of romance, history, adventure, mystery and philosophy. Most fantasy is one-dimensional. It’s either about magic or a world-building. I don’t do either.

And in most fantasy magic is a mystical element. In my books fantasy is a metaphysical reality that behaves according to its own laws of identity.

Because most fantasy is about world-building and magic, a lot of it is plotless and has no story. My primary interest is in telling stories that are fun to read and make people think. That puts my books in a genre all their own.

Wow. Just . . . wow.

I made a decision a while back to post recommendations for books on my website, instead of reviews. Partly it’s because I’d rather spend my time pushing people toward good books, instead of ranting about the bad ones, but politeness was another factor: if I might end up on a panel with someone at a con, I’d rather not be thinking, oh god, I hated your book and told the world about it. (And, for the record, I didn’t hate Wizard’s First Rule. I’m not saying that just to cover my ass; if I’d hated it, I wouldn’t have finished it. That doesn’t mean I particularly liked it — I didn’t go on and read the rest of the series — but it’s not on the list of Books Not Worth The Trees. Takes a lot to get on that list.)

But man . . . that quote makes me want to throw things. I hate hate hate every time I hear the equivalent of, “this isn’t fantasy, because it’s Good.” It bothered me when they said something along those lines about the LotR films, and it bothers me now. To throw around statements about “important human themes” and “metaphysical realities” as if nobody else in fantasy has ever thought about it that way, thus making you a Genre All Your Own — do you really have to step on all your shelf-mates to make yourself look good? Are we really that afflicted with plotless, story-less fantasy? Fantasy that conforms to standard plot outlines, perhaps, but that isn’t the same thing, and a certain saying about glass houses comes to mind besides.

Pretension gets up my nose like nobody’s business, and I say that in the full awareness that I went to Harvard and would probably count as pretentious myself in a lot of people’s eyes. Look at it this way: if it’s enough to bug me, it must be bad. And Anima Mecanique’s post reminded me of a gem from the recent Readercon panel writeups:

The New Weird renunciates hackneyed fantasy by taking its cliches and inverting, subverting, and converting them in order to return to the truly fantastic. It is secular and political, reacting against “religiose moralism and consolatory mythicism,” and hence feels real and messy. And it trusts the reader and the genre in two important ways: it avoids post-modern self-reference, and it avoids didacticism, instead letting meaning emerge naturally from metaphor.

Combination hookah and coffee maker! Also makes julienne fries!

I liked Readercon a lot, but the panel description that comes from was almost enough to make me swear off the New Weird forever. I mean, man, we’re all so very lucky to have them around to save our beloved genre from itself, because otherwise we’d be just doomed, DOOMED I TELL YOU! (I found myself wondering what the writers who consider themselves New Weird made of that. I would have been embarrassed.)

Seriously, what’s with people being so ashamed of their own genre? I’m a fantasy writer and I’m proud of it. My writing draws on a variety of sources, all of which I’m more than happy to acknowledge; I don’t need to pretend I’ve invented a wheel unlike all wheels that have come before. Yes, fantasy has its cliches, but a) find me a form of artistic expression that doesn’t, and b) cliches are not inherently evil. Inept use of them may be, but inept use of anything, up to and including the poor abused English language herself, is not to be applauded, and you can achieve just as bad (or sometimes worse) of an effect by doing a poor job of iconoclasm as you can by flubbing your formulas. (I mean, at least the formulas have been proven to work.)

I won’t pretend the fantasy genre as a whole doesn’t have traits I consider problems, nor that I don’t make my own attempts to push at its boundaries or do something I think will be fresh and new. But if I ever start talking about my own work in a way that makes it sound like the Salvation of All Fantasy, then please, for the good of everyone involved, pull the Pretension Stick out of my ass and hit me with it until I stop.

life lately

Yesterday, while napping, I dreamt that someone infected me and several other people with an incredibly virulent plague that instantaneously afflicted us with enormous boils and would kill us in something like half a day. I recall thinking, even in the dream, that they chose a bad plague; it might have an immediate, visceral horror to it, but something that produces symptoms instantly and kills that quickly won’t get very far. Moral of the story: if you want to really screw people over, choose a plague with a long incubation period, so they can infect other people before they know they’re carriers.

I blame that dream on the crud I picked up at GenCon; for the last several days, it’s felt as if someone filled my head with glue. It isn’t all that awful (no boils, for one thing), but I’ve been shambling around, doing a few things, and then lying down for Yet Another Nap. I’m not sure what to blame for the dream I had last night, wherein my brother and one of his best friends were unpleasantly killed; maybe it’s all the anti-crud drugs I’ve been filling myself with. Either way, could I have some nice dreams, please?

The glue-filled head and exhaustion have followed closely on the heels of some of the most teeth-gnashingly frustrating days I’ve had in a while, which, starting with the accident last Wednesday, has made for a less-than-optimal week. Not without its bright spots, but not the best. I’m hoping to achieve something resembling actual productivity today.

And maybe another nap. That sounds nice.

raptor mode

If I’ve got one thing going for me in my writing life (or in the rest of my life, really, but the current context is writing), it’s not talent or great ideas or anything like that. It’s the way I react to things going wrong.

I’ve become aware enough of this that I even said it to the boy today. Having gotten some seriously discouraging news, I called him up to be mopey. I do this; I’m not going to pretend that I magically avoid the mopey stage. But when he asked whether I was okay, I said something along the lines of, “oh, I will be, once I get past this stage and move into predatory bird mode.”

My local friends have a tendency to tag people with animal descriptors, sometimes more than one. It’s generally agreed that I’m in the town’s feline populace, but I’ve also got an avian streak. Though I don’t think there’s any consensus on what kind of bird it is, it seems to be something predatory, because every so often I kick over into a mode that can best be described as circling high up in the clouds, marking out my prey, readying myself to drop from the sky like a taloned rock of death. I think the first time I really noticed myself doing it was a few years ago, when I came within spitting distance of selling Doppelganger to an editor, sent her something else next, then found out that she’d left the company for a different one, where I could no longer submit to her. That was massively depressing, and I shuffled around the house feeling more or less like I was never going to sell a novel — for maybe an hour or so. Then I sat down, wrote a synopsis for the novel I’d just finished revising, marshaled my list of editors, redesigned my game plan, and in short, stayed up until two a.m., fueled by adrenaline and raptor-like determination.

That’s what gets me through disappointment. Something gets in my way? Then I’m going to rip its scalp off with my talons, peck its eyes out, and feast on its entrails. Or something along those lines. No time for lazy cat-naps in the sun, at times like these. I’ve got me some prey to stoop on.

the day after

My thanks to everyone who offered sympathy, good wishes, and/or chocolate. Today I’m feeling not bad at all, courtesy of the friendly neighborhood masseur (look! I remembered not to call you a masseuse!) — where by “not bad at all,” I mean that I’ve woken up with a stiffer neck on days that have no excuse for it whatsoever, let alone a vehicular collision. Occasional bits of twinginess, but that’s it. I’ll stay alert for any longer-term problems like recurring headaches, but I think I’m doing good. <knocks on wood>

Spent an hour or so driving around getting estimates for the repair. Thrilling excitement, let me tell you.

In unrelated news, there’s nothing like floundering around trying to find a name for a character, and then having the Perfectest Name Ever drop into your lap. Which happened yesterday with my Exalted character, Vajra. She’s a hard-ass, hard-fisted zealot determined to restore the worship of the Unconquered Sun. The vajra, in Buddhism, is essentially the indestructible adamantine thunderbolt that brings enlightenment. Hello, perfect name.

Let’s see if I can manage productivity today.

new experiences

After ten years behind the wheel of a car, I’ve had my first accident.

I’m sitting at a stoplight, minding my own business — fortunately with nobody in front of me — and then there’s an ungodly bang and my head snaps forward. First thought: the hell? Glance in rearview mirror. See grille of enormous pickup truck, looking way closer than it ought to. Second thought: uhhhh, what do I do now?

See, I don’t even remember being in an accident, with someone else driving. I know my parents have had a few, but if any of them were with me in the car, I was too young to recall. So now I’m getting to discover the exciting world of insurance claims. I don’t feel particularly hurt (though I’m getting a neck massage in an hour or so, to be on the safe side, and I took some Advil). My bumper’s a little dented, maybe a little askew, but the bad news is the trunk: I got rammed by one of those oversized pickups, and some bit of its front end managed to slam into my trunk lid and dent it forward. I have a feeling that’s one of those things that doesn’t look so bad but will cost a bloody fortune to fix. <sigh>

Not what I wanted to have happen with my afternoon. I think I’m going to curl up on the couch with one of my new books as consolation.

the best stories have alligators

I’m fascinated. In researching for an annotated bibliography on games and play theory, I came across an article about the development of storytelling skills in very young children. The major focus of it is the effect that props have on the stories; children tend to tell better stories when they have figures in their hands than without, likely because they think more about characters than event sequences. But the really interesting part was where the researchers tested the effects of different kinds of figures.

Given a set of an adult male, an adult female, a boy, a girl, a baby, and a dog, most of the children (who were four years of age) told rambling non-stories where nothing actually happened. In those few instances where something happened, it was a lack/lack liquidated dyad, having to do with a breach of the natural order (e.g. an abandoned baby wandering around looking for parents to care for it). That was the first half of the experiment.

In the second half of the experiment, they replaced the dog with an alligator.

And you know what? The stories got better.

Seriously. The stories became structurally more complex, by a significant amount; stuff happened, instead of the four-year-old simply naming off who each figure was. Probably not coincidentally, villainy/villainy nullified also popped up far more frequently as a narrative dyad. Basically, it seems that children tell more interesting stories about things that aren’t normal (including things like the abandoned baby). In other words, to display my fantasy-writer chauvinism for a moment, normalcy is boring. Alligators are cool.

(The girls also performed statistically better than the boys, in terms of length, content, and complexity. Interesting.)

So the moral we should all take away from this is that when you buy small children toys, be sure to purchase them alligators and space-men and flying horses and dinosaurs along with the Barbies and the G.I. Joes. Their cognitive development will thank you.

a very good evening

Just ran the second session of “A Conspiracy of Cartographers” in Memento, wherein I merrily threw out everything I didn’t like about the merfolk and kept the bits I did like. This made me happy. High Seas Adventure! Or in this case, Underseas Adventure! Then I came upstairs and found that Talebones wants to buy “But Who Shall Lead the Dance?,” which I’d really, really been crossing my fingers for. It’s my second sale to them, and one of those submissions where I had a gut feeling that this was the place to send it. So, all in all, a very good evening.

still a little bit Morwen

My braid is fluffier than usual. As of bedtime last night, my rag curls had gone limp enough that I decided to forgo my usual habit of sticking my head into the shower to wet them down. Today my hair is mostly flat, but clings stubbornly to hints of fluffiness. It’s kind of weird.

For those who were asking yesterday, my dress came from Ravenswood Leather; specifically, it’s the Saberist Dress. I originally went to their site looking for a bodice (having decided, when Morwen walked out of the last High Court, that her next costume would be Adventurer!Morwen), but got sidetracked by the dress. The Kitsune is rather correct in saying that I have a writing career to support my costuming habit. But I highly recommend Ravenswood; they custom-cut the items to your measurements, and I was able to specify over the phone to them exactly how I wanted my dress to look. What’s more, their usual delivery time is about four weeks, but when I told them I would need it four weeks from when I ordered it, they sent it to me in about a week and a half. So they’re good people.

Gaming — oof. Three characters in three days. I love Sess just for being a low-maintenance character, compared to the two days of high costuming that followed. Getting to play the High Lord of Scathach was awesome, though I do wish the evening game had been longer, so I could have had more time to do things with her. (I wish even more that I’d gotten to flex her phenomenal badass-ness in the dragon fight, but alas, I was pulled out for a completely unrelated scene at the same time.) And then, of course, there was Morwen, who desperately wanted to Kill Something and never got the chance. But, as has always been the case with her, I was able to tell myself that whatever she did, she’d look good while she did it. ^_^

And now I’ve got just over a day to get my brain back in gear for my own game. As much as I’m loving Memento, man, there’s a part of me that’s looking forward to the day when it will stop eating my head.

Dunnett Despair

I’m beginning to think I should impose a moratorium on my reading of Dorothy Dunnett’s novels. Some authors I can read and be inspired; she makes me despair for my ability to write at all. On every level I can think of, she induces a feeling of abject inferiority: her dialogue, her descriptions, her characters and her plotting . . . and hell, that’s just re-reading bits of The Game of Kings, also known as HER FIRST BLOODY NOVEL. I like Doppelganger and all, but it just doesn’t compare, and I know it.

It doesn’t even solve the problem to write some manner of fiction very different from hers. A first-person urban fantasy would sound odd indeed if written in her style, but that doesn’t quite let me shake the inescapable awareness that the awesomeness quotient of any given sentence isn’t up to snuff.

Sigh. I should go read some crappy fiction to get my spirits back up — but that wouldn’t be nearly so enjoyable in its own right, of course.

return from Readercon

I enjoyed my first Readercon, though it’s the first time in a while I’ve gone to an sf/f con and not been on the programming, so I felt vaguely like I was slacking. That’s what I get for registering so late. Got to talk to some interesting people, though, and to learn some valuable lessons:

(1) Walking around the book room with a copy of Silverlock in one’s hands is a fantastic way to start conversations with total strangers. Everybody has their favorite bit. (Mine is the alliterative Norse rendition of the Battle of the Alamo.) And I am not, in fact, the only person convinced the book was written Just For Me.

(2) I do just fine picking up folksongs I’ve never heard before; in fact, sometimes I can predict the rhymes in advance, which is fun. If, however, I wish to attempt singing something I know, even for the purposes of a brief demonstration, I should take the time needed to coax my sense of pitch into providing me with the notes I need. Rushing this process will result in me sounding like I have no sense of pitch at all.

(3) Hanging out with fairy-tale-oriented friends and then going to the talk on quantum mechanics is either a recipe for brain meltdown or the Best Idea Ever. Or possibly both.

I didn’t get as much written on “The Last Wendy” as I wanted to while on this trip, but “Double Woman Dreamer” got unexpectedly resurrected from the dust-bin of story ideas (courtesy of one room-mate), and now I’ve got a notion for something calling itself “Schroedinger’s Crone” (courtesy of the other room-mate and Lesson Number Three). Cons always make ideas breed like flies in my head. Most of them are flashes in the pan, briefly shiny and forgotten before the con’s over, but usually there’s at least one keeper.

I’d prefer a keeper, though, which doesn’t involve someone e-mailing me a reading list in Lakota folklore, or self-lessons in quantum mechanics.

Christmas in June

My god, is it that time already? I came home from lunch today to find a box on my doorstep, full of Advance Reader Copies of Warrior and Witch. Book ain’t coming out for three months, but apparently the ARCs are already in circulation. I shall have to think of something to do with them.

Then, about five minutes later, the doorbell rang. Found a box waiting on the porch, and in it — EEEEEE!!!!!! My costume for the second Concordia game is here. I cannot wait for that game. To hell with the plot; I just want to show off the pretty. ^_^

In other news, since I’m now registered and everything, I should mention that I’m going to be at Readercon next weekend. At present I’m not on the program (having decided way too late to go), but I’m going to e-mail them and volunteer to fill any holes they might find themselves with. Regardless, come say hi to me if you’re there.

News!

Ladies and gentlemen, it is my pleasure to announce the latest development in my writing career: I have sold two more books to the Hachette Book Group (formerly Warner Books).

Yay!

What two books are these, I hear you ask?

Search me.

<g> The deal is open-ended: two novels, title and content of said novels to be determined later. I have ideas for what I’d like to do, but none of that is settled yet. The contracts, however, are drawn up and on their way to me, so it’s official. I’ll make further announcements when I know just what I’m going to be writing.

I should have been doing this a month ago

Untitled Sequel to the De-Titled Urban Fantasy

Zokutou word meterZokutou word meterZokutou word meter
2,024 / 120,000
(0.0%)

I’m way behind on the plan for this thing, but hey, I wrote tonight. Good for me. I think I’m at the stage where I need to pat myself on the back for that, and not beat myself up for the prior slacking.

Problem was that I just didn’t know how much I should be letting them talk about in this first scene. Problem was solved by letting Kim talk politics. Problem with that is that Kim’s apparently itching to become a rabid activist, about half a novel too soon. Must alter calculations accordingly.