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Recentevents have gotten me thinking once again on why I feel so strongly that authors should never respond to bad reviews. I think I’ve previously talked about it in terms of politeness, and of not looking bad, stuff like that.
But what I think I really mean is that most authors have more power than the reviewer. Often reviewers aren’t as well known as the person they’re reviewing. So when the disgruntled writer says, “What about my rights? Why can’t I respond?” The answer is that you can. But what will it gain you? Besides you already have a reply to your critics: your books. Your last book, your current book, your future books.
Why does an established writer with an army of books feel the need to go after a critic who happens to not like their latest book? They have a much bigger audience than that critic does. Many more people will read the book in question than the bad review. It’s madness.
Even when the author is brand new and has only one book what will they achieve by going after a critic? They’ll make themselves look small and petty minded and incapable of taking criticism. If you’re irked by a bad review respond by making your next book even better.
I have yet to see anything good come out of an author turning on a specific critic.
3 Comments on Some Incoherent Thoughts on the Author/Reviewer Relationship, last added: 7/20/2009
Recentevents have gotten me thinking once again on why I feel so strongly that authors should never respond to bad reviews. I think I’ve previously talked about it in terms of politeness, and of not looking bad, stuff like that.
But what I think I really mean is that most authors have more power than the reviewer. Often reviewers aren’t as well known as the person they’re reviewing. So when the disgruntled writer says, “What about my rights? Why can’t I respond?” The answer is that you can. But what will it gain you? Besides you already have a reply to your critics: your books. Your last book, your current book, your future books.
Why does an established writer with an army of books feel the need to go after a critic who happens to not like their latest book? They have a much bigger audience than that critic does. Many more people will read the book in question than the bad review. It’s madness.
Even when the author is brand new and has only one book what will they achieve by going after a critic? They’ll make themselves look small and petty minded and incapable of taking criticism. If you’re irked by a bad review respond by making your next book even better.
I have yet to see anything good come out of an author turning on a specific critic.
Justine said, on 7/1/2009 2:54:00 PM
Last week I mentioned how much I loved Coe Booth’s Kendra. I have much to say about this book but let me start with the notion of realism. I am on the record as saying that I am not a fan. Yet Kendra is indisputably realist. It is set in the real world. There are no zombies, vampires, space ships or magic. So how can I say I don’t like realism when I love Kendra?
Last night I was called on my anti-realism stance. It turns out that when I say I don’t like realism I’m talking about a very specific kind of book. I don’t like most John Updike or Philip Roth. I disliked Joseph O’Neil’s Netherland. When I say I don’t like realism what I mean is that I don’t like unplotted books with protags who are naval-gazing bores. I need plot! I need texture! I need to care one way or another about the main characters! Something other than complete indifference.
I had strong reactions to all the characters in Kendra. Very strong. I wanted to kill Kendra’s mother. And sometimes her grandmother and father. But never Kendra. I worried about Kendra. At the end of the book I had a big ole cry for Kendra. Several weeks after finishing the book I’m still hoping Kendra’s doing okay and that things work out better with her mother. Colour me, cautiously optimistic.
Kendra’s set in the Bronx and Harlem in New York City. It’s the story of a girl who was raised by her grandmother because her mother, Renee, had her at the age of 14. Rather than give her life over to looking after Kendra she concentrates on getting educated and out of the projects. At the beginning of the book Renee graduates from her PhD program at Princeton. Kendra thinks this means Renee’s coming home. It doesn’t. Kendra’s desparate need for her mother’s love and approval and Renee’s ignoring of her is almost painful to read about. She does everything she can to keep her daughter at arms length. Her priority is her career, not her daughter. Did I mention that I wanted to kill her? In the meantime Kendra’s left with her overprotective grandmother who does not trust her at all. (Thus making me want to strangle her.) And occasionally her hapless father.
I will not tell more of the plot and characters. I want you to discover them yourselves.
What’s remarkable about Kendra other than its effortlessly clean and elegant prose is that you wind up understanding everyone in it no matter how much you want to strangle them. It’s also an astonishingly honest novel, rendering Kendra’s actions understandable even when she’s making mistakes. There’s a lot most of us will do to be loved. And that’s what this novel is about.
Highly highly recommended.
Justine said, on 7/20/2009 1:54:00 PM
Because I have been talking about my love of Avatar quite a bit lately people have been asking me if I’m excited about the forthcoming live action version.
I am not.
One of the many things I adore about Avatar is how incredibly rich and complex the world of Avatar is. This is largely because it was [...]
Sometimes I think the best course of action for me is to simply not read anything in the New York Timesabout books by women. I just wind up cranky.
Today’s piece by Janet Maslin on this summer’s books by women was astonishing. On the one hand there’s this:
The “Commencement” characters are savvy about, among other things, feminism and publishing. “When a woman writes a book that has anything to do with feelings or relationships, it’s either called chick lit or women’s fiction, right?” one of them asks. “But look at Updike, or Irving. Imagine if they’d been women. Just imagine. Someone would have slapped a pink cover onto ‘Rabbit at Rest,’ and poof, there goes the … Pulitzer.”
They’re right of course. But this is the season when prettily designed books flood the market and compete for female readers.
Too true. Women’s books are routinely lumped together even when they’re vastly different. They’re not deemed to be proper literature just because they’re written by women. And apparently this is especially true in summer which is a time “when literary and lightweight books aimed at women become hard to tell apart.”
So Maslin agrees that women’s writing is frequently compartmentalised and dismmissed. And yet she proceeds to do exactly that for for the rest of the article by lumping together eleven vastly different books and finding tenuous connections between them. All of it under the heading The Girls of Summer. Bless you, sub editor for spelling it out: it’s an article about the frivolous time of year and the frivolous gender. All is clear.
Where is the NYT piece on the boys of summer? That lumps together vastly different books by men. Oh, silly me, that would never happen because boys write real books and girls write summer fluff which is pretty much identical despite the different subject matter:
Amid such confusion, here’s a crib sheet for this season’s crop of novels and memoirs. It does mix seriously ambitious books (“Shanghai Girls”) with amiably schlocky ones (“Queen Takes King”) and includes one off-the-charts oddity (“My Judy Garland Life”). It’s even got a nascent Julia Roberts movie. But the common denominator is beach appeal, female variety. Each of these books takes a supportive, girlfriendly approach to weathering crises, be they global (World War II) or domestic (dead husband on the kitchen floor), great or small.
Let me repeat the key bit: “the common denominator is beach appeal, female variety.”
What now?
I’m confused. Is Maslin saying that no matter what subject these women write about their books are automatically light disposable beach reads because women wrote them? Or is she saying they’re automatically beach reads because of the way the publisher has decided to package the book:
Their covers use standard imagery: sand, flowers, cake, feet, houses, pastel colors, the occasional Adirondack chair. Their titles (“Summer House,” “Dune Road,” “The Wedding Girl,” “Trouble”) skew generic. And they tend to be blurbed exclusively by women.
If only the publishers had given them serious covers with non-generic titles and got a bloke to blurb them then Maslin would have been able to review their books separately and not as “women’s fiction”. Damned publishers confusing poor critics’ brains.
I think my head just exploded.
0 Comments on They’re Just Girl Books. Who Cares? as of 6/12/2009 3:30:00 PM
Daphne over at the Longstocking blog was talking about the Worst Review Ever blog and mentioned her shock at the meanness of some of the reviews:
I’m actually a reviewer for Publishers Weekly and while I’ve read some things that were kind of poorly constructed, I’ve never had even an urge to be even half this harsh, not even secretly if I strongly disliked the book. Too much work goes into a book for anything to warrant this kind of nastiness and seriously nothing is so bad it deserves to be called “a candy-coated turd.”
I have condemned books in stronger language than that. When I hate a book, I really hate a book. I totally get writing such vicious reviews. In fact, that’s one of the main reasons I don’t write reviews and only discuss books on this blog if I love them: the knowledge that were I to write an honest review of a book I hate I would most definitely hurt other writers’ feelings, alienate their fans, and lose friends. Also the YA world is small and writing a bad review of another YA writer’s book leaves you open to charges of sour grapes. Life’s too short.
I say that as someone who has received very mean reviews. I know exactly how much it hurts. Reviews have made me cry and scream and kick my (thankfully imaginary) dog (poor Elvis, he knows I love him). But I believe people are moved to write such nasty reviews because of the intensity of their relationship with books. That’s awesome!
I feel that too. When I read a book I was expecting to love and it sucks I feel betrayed. When I read a book in a beloved series and the characters are suddenly transformed beyond recognition and there seems to have been no editing at all and the writing has gone to hell, I am OUTRAGED. I want to kick the editor and the author. On the scale of things, I think writing a mean review about the book is way better than assault.
Passionate reviews, good or bad, are fabulous. It’s great that people care enough to rant or rave about a book. I don’t think it’s unprofessional to vent your spleen at a book. Some eviscerations of books are wonderfully well written and a total pleasure to read. And some passionate raves about books are appallingly badly constructed. One of the reviews of my books that embarrasses me the most was a rave. An extraordinarily badly written rave in a professional location1 which so mischaracterised my book that it was unrecognisable. The reviewer clearly loved the book. They also clearly didn’t understand it. No review has annoyed me as much as that one.
On the other hand, my favourite review ever remains the one written by a punter on the B&N site which said Magic or Madness was like a bad Australian episode of Charmed. Makes me laugh every time I think of it.
An unprofessional review is one that attacks the author directly. But the problem is that most writers conflate themselves with their books so that many consider an attack on their work to be an attack on them. It’s really hard for us writers to be clear that the reviewer is calling our book “a candy-coated turd” not us. But learn it we must! Part of this job is having your work assessed by people who are not going to be kind. No one owes you a good review.
A site like the Worst Review Ever is an excellent place for authors with bruised egos to vent, but I really hope it doesn’t have a dampening effect on online YA reviewers. If you hate a book, say so. Figure out exactly what it was that bugged you about it and let rip. You’re doing all of us readers a service. Even if we totally disagree with you. One of the most useful parts about Twilight’s success has been the vigorous debate all over the intramawebs about the book’s worth and effect on its readers. I’ve learned a lot from it. I’d really hate for reviewers worried about an author’s feelings to dilute their passion. Bugger the author’s feelings. You’re not writing reviews for them, you’re writing your reviews for us readers.
Readers, you (we) have the right to hate!
And also the right to change our minds at a later date when we read the book and discover it didn’t suck after all. Or vice versa.
Authors, you know what’s worse than a bad review? No reviews at all.
I’m not saying whether it was online or off.
2 Comments on The Goodness of Bad Reviews, last added: 5/23/2009
Last week was a very big week for me. I found out that How to Ditch Your Fairy sold in Japan and Liar in France and Germany. (I also had my first lindy hop lesson. Next one is on Tuesday.)
How to Ditch Your Fairy sold to Tokyo Sogensha in Japan, who also publish Diana Wynne Jones. I know it’s tenuous proximity but it makes me happy, okay?
I can’t give more details on the French sale but I can say that my German publisher continues to be Bertelsmann Jugendbuch Verlag, who published the Magic or Madness trilogy in quick succession last year. It’s doing amazingly well over there, which I put down to the glory that is the covers:
Bertelsmann will also be publishing How to Ditch Your Fairy later this year. I met some of the crew over in Bologna last year and they were wonderful. Feels fabulous to have a solid home in Germany, which is one of the biggest book publishing markets in the world. Germans love to read. Bless them.
One of the best books I ever read about language is Deborah Cameron’s Verbal Hygiene, which was published way back in 1995. It’s a wonderful look at the way people try to regulate language to make it functionally, aesthetically and morally “better” and how insanely outraged and angry they get about it.
There are people who are completely wedded to the Latin-ification of English grammar that began in the 1700s, thus they are wedded to “he” as the universal pronoun, believe that infinitives must not be split, and are deeply in love with the subjunctive mood, which is on its way out in English.1
There are those who are appalled by changes in the spelling and meaning of words. They’re outraged that “alright” is becoming as common a spelling as “all right.”2 They mourn the loss of the distinct meaning of the word “disinterest” etc etc.
There are those still wedded to what their English/MFA teacher taught them in primary school/university. Never use passive voice! Never end or begin a sentence with a conjunction! Avoid adverbs! Use adjectives sparingly!
A large chunk of my university training was in linguistics. I was trained in descriptivist traditions. That is, I was learning how to describe language use not how to police it. We never discussed wrong usage ever. That concept just didn’t exist. I studied how various different groups used language. We looked at language acquisition in small children as well as those learning English for the first time as adults. We looked at the way language changes. How what was once non-standard becomes standard and vice versa. Things like that.
I learned to listen to what people really said and to think about how and why. This is reflected in the novels I write. I use “alright” in dialogue because that’s what I hear many people saying, not “all right.” Particularly younger speakers, which is who most of my characters are. Many of my characters split infinitives, don’t use subjunctive, don’t say “whom” and thus commit what some consider crimes against language. Yes, I have gotten letters to that effect.
It is fascinating how intensely invested people are in language use. Especially writers. Whenever I discuss this with writer friends we don’t get very far because many of them are wedded to one or more of the uses I observe disappearing. Don’t defend the “alright” spelling in front of John Scalzi, for instance. I get that passion. I’m sad about “disinterest” losing its specific meaning too. But not that sad. There are other ways to say the same thing, which don’t confuse as many people. Sadly, they’re usually longer and less elegant.
I’m as invested as they are in my understanding of how language works and how it is deployed, which is why I get into so many heated discussions with my writer friends and protracted battles with editors, coypeditors and proofreaders, who are almost all prescriptivist. Like Geoffrey Pullum, I think The Elements of Style by Strunk & White is an amusing but insane set of self-contradicting rules: if you try to match rule with examples your head will explode. But I know people who find Strunk & White useful and have learned to write clearly from it.
English is a contradictory sprawling mess. Any attempt to map it out with a set of rules is doomed to self-contradiction and insanity. Lynne Truss’ Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation is as bad as Strunk & White. But has also been useful to many floundering in the mess that is English. Even attempts to merely describe the language are doomed. It’s too big, too unwieldy and growing too fast.
That’s part of why the English language makes me so happy.3 I can’t spell it very well, according to many I abuse its grammar rules, but English lets me break it open, pull out new words, mash up old ones. I get to play with how it looks and sounds and feels.
Like those who stand tall to defend English from the likes of me, I love it.
Just, you know, my love is more fun. 4
Though I will confess that I am using subjunctive a lot in my 1930s novel, whose omni narrator is on the pompous side.
(For the record, I think “alright” and “all right” are often used as two different words and deploy them thus in my books, giving my copyeditors major headaches.
Not that I have many points of comparison given that I’ve never been completely fluent in any other language. I had a decent grasp of Kriol when I was very little but that’s long gone. I learned some Bahasa Indonesia in high school and first year uni. Also mostly gone. And then learned Spanish while living there for five months many years ago. My Spanish is also disappearing from lack of use.
That smiley isn’t going to save me from the haters, is it?
1 Comments on Language Wars, last added: 5/17/2009
I am no longer interested in hearing how lovely a particular person is in real life when they are a bully and a bigot and a troll online. I’ll go further than that it no longer matters to me if I have met said nasty online person in real life and have found them perfectly charming. Behaving well in only one or two sphere of your life does not make you a good person. Treating people with contempt speaks volumes. Always.
The internet is real life. What you say and how you behave in the land of livejournal or facebook or myspace or wordpress blogs or elsewhere is real behaviour. Those words are real and have real affects even if you turn around and delete them.
Why are there people who do not understand this?
I have a very strict policy on this blog. People who come looking for a fight are deleted. I don’t tolerate people who are rude to me or my friends in my home. This blog is my online home and I expect visitors to behave the way they would in my real life home. Or I will throw them out by banning them.1
In the last few weeks I have seen three people in particular behave extraordinarily badly online in an effort to distract from an extremely interesting and important debate about race and representation in science fiction and fantasy. I have met these people in real life. But frankly nothing I know of them in the “real” world excuses how they’ve been behaving in this land of bits and bytes. They’re all pre-emptively banned from this blog.
I agree a hundred per cent with the new Attorney General of the United States, Eric Holder, who said:
Though this nation has proudly thought of itself as an ethnic melting pot, in things racial we have always been and continue to be, in too many ways, essentially a nation of cowards. Though race related issues continue to occupy a significant portion of our political discussion, and though there remain many unresolved racial issues in this nation, we, average Americans, simply do not talk enough with each other about race. It is an issue we have never been at ease with and given our nation’s history this is in some ways understandable. And yet, if we are to make progress in this area we must feel comfortable enough with one another, and tolerant enough of each other, to have frank conversations about the racial matters that continue to divide us.
His words are just as true about Australia as they are about the USA. Talking about race is hard and scary and painful. Many people, especially white people, would rather the topic never came up at all. Which is why when Holder’s speech was discussed there was outrage that he had dared to say such a thing and precious little discussion of what he actually said. And so it goes over and over again.
So much so that the latest attempt to talk about racial representation and stereotyping in genre fiction wound up being derailed by white people screaming about other things: Pseudonyms! Sockpuppets! Class! Anything that could turn the conversation away from race. It escalated into vicious attacks on those who were simply engaging in debate about race in the genre.
I will not engage with those people in future. Not online and not in real life.
I also don’t tolerate people smoking in my home. But I spose there’s nothing I can do about you naughty people who smoke while commenting here. Alas.
0 Comments on Online versus Offline behaviour as of 3/5/2009 6:56:00 PM
Lately I’ve been talking with many of my film-obsessed friends about romantic comedies. Specifically we’ve been trying to come up with one made by Hollywood in the last five years which wasn’t misogynist rubbish. We’ve been failing.
Sarah Dollard, a dear friend, wonderful writer, and fellow romcom addict, pointed me to this excellent Guardian article on the problem. Kira Cochrane agrees with us completely:
It’s not only women who have noticed the shift in the romantic comedy genre. Peter Travers, a film critic for Rolling Stone magazine described He’s Just Not That Into You as “a women-bashing tract disguised as a chick flick” and Kevin Maher has written in the Times that the “so-called chick flick has become home to the worst kind of regressive pre-feminist stereotype”. Dr Diane Purkiss, an Oxford fellow and feminist historian, feels that we have reached a nadir in the way that women are portrayed on screen, and says that there’s been “a depressing dumbing down of the whole genre. That’s not to say that I want all movies to be earnest and morally improving. But I think that you can actually have entertainment with sassy, smart heroines, rather than dimwitted ones.”
As many of my readers know I’ve spent the last year watching heaps of movies from the 1930s. I find it shocking that so many of these movies are less sexist and appalling than the ones being made now. The female leads in so many of the 1930s movies are smarter and more interesting than any of the mostly deeply stupid women in the likes of Made of Honour, Confessions of a Shopaholic, License to Wed, He’s Not That Into You, Bride Wars and 27 Dresses.
These movies fill me with rage. There is no equality between the romantic leads which has been the heart of a good romance ever since Elizabeth Bennet and Darcy first met. In recent Hollywood romcoms the women are insecure, neurotic, needy, obsessed with marriage, and neither witty nor fun. The men are bemused by the women as one would be by a naughty puppy dog. That is not my idea of equality nor is it my idea of romance.
As Cochrane points out “the people making these films” seem to “genuinely dislike” their audience. Which I think is a good explanation for how stupid, insulting, and dumb so many recent romcoms have been. They’re made by men who hate women. Wow, does it show. It’s why I’ve stopped seeing them. It’s too painful.
For some additional romcom rage, check out the wonderful Robin Wasserman’s rant about The Family Stone.
Sometimes all the research I’ve been doing on the 1930s gets me down, because it forces me to realise that there are so many ways in which our current world is every bit as sexist as it was seventy years ago. And in some ways it’s worse: Claudette Colbert, Rosalind Russell and Katherine Hepburn never ever played stupid women. In their movies the audience was invited to side with them just as often as we were supposed to side with their male sparring partners.
Given that my next book is about a liar, I’ve been thinking about lies and why we tell them a great deal for the last year or so. Weirdly, writing this book has made me lie less. I told Scott as much and he pointed out that I’d told a lie just 30 minutes before I told him that. But it was just a tiny lie, I said.1 Still counts, said he. He’s right. It does.
I do have a few friends who never lie. I have other friends who lie constantly. Never about anything important. They’re all social, make-people-feel-better, don’t-upset-the-apple-cart kind of lies.
What was the most recent lie you told? How long ago did you tell it? Why did you tell it?
Those of you who don’t lie and are appalled by lies no need to comment. I have heard your position put forth very strongly by my non-lying friends. I understand and sympathise. But I want to hear from the liars on this occasion.
Thanks!
I told someone I was allergic to wheat because I didn’t want to offend them by not eating their homemade cake.
Even if you don’t like cricket you must admit that this catch is pretty bloody speccie:
Update: Due to Cricket Australia’s bloodymindedness you can no longer see the truly fabulous catch by Adam Voges. I’m not sure what they think they’re achieving cause having a catch like that go viral increases the number of people round the world who get curious about the game. I don’t know about you, but I’d've thought that would be a good thing for cricket. How come institutions like Cricket Australia don’t get the intramanets?
Update the second: Narelle in the comments points out that the catch can be seen on the front page of www.3aw.com.au. This is no way lessens my anger with Cricket Australia’s stupidity. Having a few minutes footage of a genius catch go viral is what you want, you fools! It’s not like youtube was hosting the entire match. Gah!
1 Comments on Best catch ever? (updated x 2), last added: 3/10/2009
Last night I dreamed that I rang many credit card companies trying to get stolen credit cards replaced. I was even put on hold. There was muzak. Numbered options. To pay your bill press 1. If your card has been stolen press 2. To talk to an operator press 0.
It was the most boring dream in the history of dreams. I am still angry at the injustice of such wasted dream time!
Dear Subconscious,
Do that again and nastiness will ensue. I mean it.
As in you will be fired!
Do you understand?
Now, let us return to the dragons, mangosteens, and flying.
Thank you.
Yours in a snit,
Justine
I hope you’re all having much better dreams. Though no need to tell me about them. All dreams retold are dull. It’s a rule.
Especially mine. Sorry about boring you! But it only seemed fair since it bored me . . .
2 Comments on Boring dreams are an outrage, last added: 3/7/2009
Because a good writing day is better than all the mangosteens in the world. Because a good writing day wipes the memory of all those bad writing days entirely. Because I love it.
From the comments on the last post I get the feeling some of you think that I’m saying writers shouldn’t blog.
Au contraire.
Many of my favourite blogs are by writers. I love writers’ blogs! I love reading about their struggles with their writing, about their thoughts on craft, their battles with their psychotic neighbours, the zeppelins they build. I love learning how different most writers approach to writing a novel is from mine. In fact, later this week I’ll be posting a bit more about outlining versus winging it. Cause who gets tired of that topic? Not me!
I frequently encourage writer friends to start blogging. In fact, I feel a little swell of pride about certain writers’ blogs because I’m convinced my nudging them is part of why they started blogging. Go me!
There are a gazillion positive effects of blogging: direct communication with other writers and readers you wouldn’t otherwise meet, becoming part of communities,1 having fun, talking craft, encouraging everyone to try fresh mangosteens2 etc etc.
And, yes, if your blog entertains people there’s a chance that some of them will wind up buying your books. All I’m saying is that if that’s your sole motivation for starting a blog then odds are you will be disappointed.
It’s rubbish that starting a blog is an excellent way to flog books. The majority of brand new blogs have teeny tiny audiences. It takes ages to build one. And if all you’re doing is flogging your books you will never build an audience. Because a blog full of exhortations to BUY MY BOOK is pretty much the most boring blog in the universe.
Which does not mean that I don’t want you to buy my books. I do! But only if you want to and if you can afford it. But I’m just as happy with you borrowing them from the library. Support your local library!
Or not reading them at all. Life’s short and there are many wonderful books. I totally get reading Dorothy Dunnett’s Lymond chronicles or King Hereafter or anything by Jean Rhys or Angela Carter or Jane Austen before you’d read my books. I’d certainly rather read them or Alice in Wonderland or way too many books to name than anything I’ve written.
Quite frankly I’m just as thrilled by the people who enjoy this blog as I am by the people who enjoy my books. The fact that there’s often no overlap between those two groups is awesome. It means I can amuse people who have zero interest in YA or fantasy but have a fascination for cricket or mangosteens or quokkas or any of the myriad other topics I crap on about.
Which is yet another reason I love blogs so much. They’re places where we can share and discuss our obsessions. There are few things more fun than that.
Especially important if you live in a small town far from other writers.
Dried, juiced, tinned mangosteens are all abominations. The one true mangosteen is the fresh fruit. Which can now even be purchased (for a fortune) in the US of A.
1 Comments on Writers blogging, last added: 12/14/2008
From the comments on the last post I get the feeling some of you think that I’m saying writers shouldn’t blog.
Au contraire.
Many of my favourite blogs are by writers. I love writers’ blogs! I love reading about their struggles with their writing, about their thoughts on craft, their battles with their psychotic neighbours, the zeppelins they build. I love learning how different most writers approach to writing a novel is from mine. In fact, later this week I’ll be posting a bit more about outlining versus winging it. Cause who gets tired of that topic? Not me!
I frequently encourage writer friends to start blogging. In fact, I feel a little swell of pride about certain writers’ blogs because I’m convinced my nudging them is part of why they started blogging. Go me!
There are a gazillion positive effects of blogging: direct communication with other writers and readers you wouldn’t otherwise meet, becoming part of communities,1 having fun, talking craft, encouraging everyone to try fresh mangosteens2 etc etc.
And, yes, if your blog entertains people there’s a chance that some of them will wind up buying your books. All I’m saying is that if that’s your sole motivation for starting a blog then odds are you will be disappointed.
It’s rubbish that starting a blog is an excellent way to flog books. The majority of brand new blogs have teeny tiny audiences. It takes ages to build one. And if all you’re doing is flogging your books you will never build an audience. Because a blog full of exhortations to BUY MY BOOK is pretty much the most boring blog in the universe.
Which does not mean that I don’t want you to buy my books. I do! But only if you want to and if you can afford it. But I’m just as happy with you borrowing them from the library. Support your local library!
Or not reading them at all. Life’s short and there are many wonderful books. I totally get reading Dorothy Dunnett’s Lymond chronicles or King Hereafter or anything by Jean Rhys or Angela Carter or Jane Austen before you’d read my books. I’d certainly rather read them or Alice in Wonderland or way too many books to name than anything I’ve written.
Quite frankly I’m just as thrilled by the people who enjoy this blog as I am by the people who enjoy my books. The fact that there’s often no overlap between those two groups is awesome. It means I can amuse people who have zero interest in YA or fantasy but have a fascination for cricket or mangosteens or quokkas or any of the myriad other topics I crap on about.
Which is yet another reason I love blogs so much. They’re places where we can share and discuss our obsessions. There are few things more fun than that.
Especially important if you live in a small town far from other writers.
Dried, juiced, tinned mangosteens are all abominations. The one true mangosteen is the fresh fruit. Which can now even be purchased (for a fortune) in the US of A.
One more thing that I think some wannabe published writers don’t understand. Being a professional writer means having homework ALL THE TIME. (Thanks to Jennifer for pointing this out.) And when your homework comes back covered in read you have to do it over. Sometimes you have to do it over multiple times. And then your homework gets checked again by several other people (copyeditor, proofreader) and then you have to look at it again.
It’s like the worst homework ever that NEVER ENDS.
I’m just saying . . .
0 Comments on One more thing as of 12/9/2008 1:36:00 AM
Boingboing links to a dead interesting piece on facebook and privacy. It’s something I think about a lot. Well, not facebook, which I currently avoid as actively as I avoid twitter, but privacy and blogging.
Because it happens frequently that my ideas about privacy and those of many others do not line up. Fer instance, I never blog about the stuff I hold to be private, which includes most of what’s going on with me offline, except as it relates to my writing career, and even then I share only what can be publicly shared. Thus you don’t hear about my selling a new book until the contract is signed. Which means an interminable wait between my knowing that a book is sold and my telling you. Whereas I have seen writers blog the very first offer.
It goes the other way too. I blogged about how much I earned last year because I think it’s important that wannabe writers are acquainted with just how little a reasonably successful full-time writer earns.1 I know several writing bloggers who are appalled that I shared my income. I alsoblogsometimesaboutwhen the writing is not going well. Again there are writing bloggers who think that’s way too private to ever share.
But that side of the privacy issue is easy. We bloggers blog what we want to blog. We’re in control. If we think something’s too private for blogging then we don’t blog it. What we don’t have control over is what our friends and family choose to share in the comments thread. I have had friends bring up stuff I consider deeply personal in comments. I delete those comments. But even so, sometimes those comments are up for quite awhile before I see and destroy them. *Shudder*.
Less egregious are the friends and acquaintances who use comments to say, “Hi, how are you doing? We should get together.” I write and say, “Hey, you have my email address. I love you but what are you doing putting stuff like that in a comments thread about the end of publishing as we know it?”
It feels to me like an etiquette breach. If we haven’t seen each other in ages and you want to reconnect—email me. There’s a contact form on every single page of this blog. Here’s a rule of thumb: if you post in comments something that is of no interest to anyone but you or me then it should be an email, not a comment.
My blog is my public face. It’s a place to discuss a wide variety of topics—books, writing, publishing, Elvis, mangosteens, quokkas and so on and so forth. I expect people to stay on topic and the vast majority of folks do. Tis why I love my blog. The people who comment here seem to have the exact same notions of blogging etiquette that I do. Bless you all!
Note: I am not saying this to remonstrate with anyone. When my friends do this I call them on it and they apologise and never do it again. They are quick learners. Or, you know, tolerant of my eccentricities. Just as when I do stuff that bugs them they call me on it and I attempt never to do it again2. It’s a beautiful thing.
However, I keep being made aware that many, many, many others don’t think about blogging in the same way I do. They are surprised when I mention my feelings about this. They think I have a major stick up my arse. “If you want to keep your life private,” they ask, “why do you blog?”
There are many people who live their entire lives online. They share. In my opinion they massively overshare. But, hey, it’s their blog they can do what they want with it.3 Some also mark their blogs as a place with an in crowd, who can talk personally with the blogger, and whose comments always get a response. When the blogger in question has a public career as a writer or an artist or a musician or what have you I wonder how appealing that makes the blog to potential readers. Do they feel shut out? I know I am never tempted to comment on such a blog.4
What do you lot think? Am I a fuddy duddy? No, don’t answer that! What are your thoughts about privacy and blogging? How do you feel when a personal discussion takes place on a blog that you went to cause you like the blogger’s music or art or writing?
Sure some earn heaps more, but not many.
Though sometimes I fail cause I am not as quick a learner as they are.
And I confess that there are some extremely personal oversharing blogs that I’m deeply addicted to.
I try hard to make this blog as inviting and non-in-group-y as I can. In the olden days I would respond to almost every comment. Sadly, I am no longer able to do that. Though I am still more likely to respond to comments by people I don’t know as I am to comments by the known.
1 Comments on Privacy and blogging, last added: 12/10/2008
In response to my most recent post I’ve had quite a few adults writing me and pointing out that their job does not end once they leave the office at the end of the day. That they too have vast amounts of homework. The professions mentioned were teacher, lawyer, academic, editor, architect, and engineer.
Recently me and some of my pro writer colleagues have been asked why we are always complaining about writing, and, the follow-up question: if it’s such a horrible job why don’t we get a better one?
Good question! Here are some of the answers:
Whingeing is fun. Writers in particular are totally addicted to it. We can’t not whinge.
Writers are boring. We don’t get out much so we don’t have much to talk about other than writing, which is one of the least interesting things ever. “Hey, guess what, guys? Today I typed! A lot. Like, I typed maybe 2,000 groupings of letters.” If we whinge about it we figure it sounds a bit more interesting. We don’t get another job because we’re boring and writing is boring: we belong together.
Boasting about how you have the best job in the whole world is rude and skiteful and makes rational people want to chunder1 or kill you. “Look at me! I am so blessed and lucky! Why today I typed. A lot! I think I typed maybe 2,000 groupings of letters. I think I arranged them really well! Go me! Also I did that wearing pjs. And no one at work was mean to me. Because I work at home! Where the ice cream is. My life is perfect!” Oh, shut up, already. It is better to whinge than to skite.
Writing is really hard. It makes writers bleed from the eyeballs. Demons take up residence in our brain and sip on our cerebrospinal fluid. But if we told you how it really was—how there are tiny goblins—trained by our evil publishers—that hold open our eyelids and slap our fingers back on to the keyboards thus making sure we never miss a deadline and keep churning out publishable product—you would never believe it so we just whinge about the lesser aspects of writing hell. We don’t get another job because we can’t. The contract with our publishers mean we are indentured slaves until we die.
Writing is dead easy. Seriously all we do is sit around and type, luxuriating in our pyjamas, and ordering our minions around, while we feast on champagne and caviar. But if we let everyone know that then too many people would want to be writers. Thus, der, we pretend it’s really hard. “Ow, my brain! It burns! Too many groupings of letters today! I suffer!”
I hope that makes it all crystal clear. I live to answer your questions. And, um, write books. Like the one that’s due next Friday fer instance. Should get back to that. Or sleep, possibly. If the clanking pipes allow.
You cannot kill a vampire with an MDF stake; werewolves can’t fly; zombies do not run. It’s a misconception, a bastardisation that diminishes a classic movie monster. The best phantasmagoria uses reality to render the inconceivable conceivable. The speedy zombie seems implausible to me, even within the fantastic realm it inhabits. A biological agent, I’ll buy. Some sort of super-virus? Sure, why not. But death? Death is a disability, not a superpower. It’s hard to run with a cold, let alone the most debilitating malady of them all.
Exactly! But wait there’s more what is even better:
More significantly, the fast zombie is bereft of poetic subtlety. As monsters from the id, zombies win out over vampires and werewolves when it comes to the title of Most Potent Metaphorical Monster. Where their pointy-toothed cousins are all about sex and bestial savagery, the zombie trumps all by personifying our deepest fear: death. Zombies are our destiny writ large. Slow and steady in their approach, weak, clumsy, often absurd, the zombie relentlessly closes in, unstoppable, intractable.
However (and herein lies the sublime artfulness of the slow zombie), their ineptitude actually makes them avoidable, at least for a while. If you’re careful, if you keep your wits about you, you can stave them off, even outstrip them—much as we strive to outstrip death. Drink less, cut out red meat, exercise, practice safe sex; these are our shotguns, our cricket bats, our farmhouses, our shopping malls. However, none of these things fully insulates us from the creeping dread that something so witless, so elemental may yet catch us unawares—the drunk driver, the cancer sleeping in the double helix, the legless ghoul dragging itself through the darkness towards our ankles.
That is why zombies are so powerful and so chilling. You can fight them off. You can get away. But in the end? Not so much.
No one escapes death.
Un***rns as a metaphor? For what exactly? Tooth decay? Give me a break. They are a beastie entirely without resonance.
Zombies for the win. Yet again.
Update: Because I am nothing but fair I am pointing you to Diana Peterfreund’s response. In which she defends lame sparkly boring uni***ns. Feel free to go over and point out her wrongness.
I am currently not answering my phone or text messages, responding to emails or IM invites, or answering the door. All forms of communication are turned off. I am incommunicado until next Friday1 when the rewrites of the Liar book are due.
Rewriting the Liar book is all I am doing right now. It is the beginning and the middle and the end of each day. It doesn’t matter how much I want to play in my brand-new, shiny, shiny 1930s novel, or how much I want to gallivant about town, I’m not allowed.
I will probably still blog. If I don’t blog my head explodes. But I am unlikely to respond to your gorgeous comments. Though I will read and cherish them as I always do. Of course once I’m finished with the rewrites I head to Texas.
One of the biggest culture shocks for me as an Australian living (some of the time) in the USA is voting. Every election year I’ve been here there have been voter intimidation and fraud scandals. Maybe I missed it, but that does not happen at home. Not every single election.
Seems to me that the aim in the US is to make voting as difficult as possible. Why? I don’t get it. I’ve had friends disallowed to vote because the official said they had the wrong ID. It didn’t exactly match the name on the voter rolls. As in, their driver’s license had their middle name spelled out in full, “Rachel”, but the voter roll had just a middle initial, “R”. I’ve heard of all sorts of arcane local voting rules that are aimed solely at keeping people from voting.
I find it incomprehensible because I come from a country where voting is made as easy as possible. In fact, you get fined if you don’t vote. Back home there are no books teaching you how to avoid having your vote suppressed.
Also what’s with the voting day being a Tuesday and then that day not being declared a holiday? I know people who have a really hard time getting off work in order to vote. Sadly they live in areas where early voting isn’t possible.
And what’s with all the different areas of the US having different methods of voting? Paper ballots here, mechanical machines there, electronic machines way over there, and goat’s entrails in the hinterlands. Wouldn’t uniform voting laws across the country so that everyone casts their vote in the same way make a lot more sense?
Again. I just don’t get it. At home we have an independent electoral authority in charge of the whole thing. And, like I said we don’t have voting scandals every election.
A country that makes voting hard is making democracy hard. Voting isn’t just a right, it’s a duty.
So you don’t think I’m entirely down on the USian version of democracy here’s what I like about the US system:
Fixed terms.
Brilliant idea. I wish Australia did that. One person in power for more than eight years is a really bad idea.
For those asking why I haven’t been blogging the US election:
It’s because I cannot believe what I’m seeing and hearing. Seriously if I had made up a tenth of what’s been going on and put it in a novel no one would credit it. They’d be all, “The characters keep changing! They don’t make any sense. And one of them seems to be a malfunctioning robot! Also there’s a zombie! I thought this was meant to be realism. What the hell?”
Not to mention that I cannot talk about wolf killers dispassionately. I love wolves. Almost as much as I love quokkas.
Plus I’ve been in a really great mood lately. I don’t want to bugger that up.
So that’s why I’m not blogging the election.
But if you want to know what some other YA authors think check out Maureen Johnson’s YA for Obama social site.
And just so you don’t think I’m being partisan, which I’m not on account of I’m not USian and have no vote in the US of A, here is the YA for McCain site.
Enjoy!
Me, I’m retreating back to the simpler and happier times of the 1930s—researching my next book—when there were no earth-shattering world-wide financial crises, no wars, and no environmental disasters. Oh, wait . . .
Never mind.
2 Comments on For those asking, last added: 9/27/2008
The New York Liberty won the first game of the Eastern Conference Finals. It was an ugly win. An ugly game. The only grace notes were Deanna Nolan’s gorgeous shooting—I swear she stays up in the air for seconds at a time, she looks great even when she misses—the great turnout, and the fact that we won.
I didn’t think it was possible for me to hate Bill Laimbeer more than I do. But his performance tonight pushed my hate a few notches upward. How he managed not to get a delay of game call or a technical I will never understand. Sit down, Bill!
Later today I will be in Larchmont, which is a mere twenty minutes from Grand Central:
Saturday, 27 September 2008, 1:00PM Voracious Reader
1997 Palmer Ave
Larchmont, NY
I am wondering if this is the Larchmont that the term Larchmont lockjaw comes from. I hope I get to meet some of you there.
Justine said, on 9/27/2008 11:16:00 PM
Thanks to the lovely folks at Voracious Reader for uniting me with my new fairy!
And thanks to everyone who showed up to my appearance. You were all wonderful!
Meg Cabot just wrote something wrong on the internet! It really pains me to take her to task because, as I may have mentioned one or two times, I am a huge Meg Cabot fan. I adore her books, her fashion sense, her blog. She is quite possibly the most fabulous person in YA. Pointing out her wrongness, well, ouch.
But here goes. In her latest post she made the following claims:
I think some people, when they’re asking authors about inspiration, are actually mistaking the word inspiration for motivation, ie, “What motivates authors (motivation = willingness to complete a sometimes onerous task) to sit there and keep their butt in a chair for so long that they’re able to finish a whole book?”
If authors were really being honest, they’d admit there are only three things that motivate them to finish their books. They are, in order of motivational effectiveness:
–Chocolate (any kind, cheap, expensive—doesn’t matter)
–Just wanting to get the damn thing finished so they can get on with their lives
–Panic over inability to pay their mortgages if they don’t get paid
There may be other motivational devices authors use to encourage themselves (music; Cheetos; revenge on their enemies), but the above are the main sources of motivation for most, I think.
Chocolate?! Chocolate?! Ewwww!!! I am a writer and chocolate has never motivated me to do anything except throw up. I’m sure I am not the only writer completely not motivated by chocolate or by Cheetos for that matter. (I’m not exactly sure what Cheetos are but they begin with a “ch” and that makes me suspicious.)
Her second reason is also suspect. Why, I hug each and every book to my chest and never want to let it go. I’m sure if you search this blog you will not find a single sentence where I express anything but sadness at having to part company with one of my beloved books.
As for no. 3 . . . Well, frankly I’m shocked. I have never in all my days come across such a mercenary statement from a writer. Me and my writer friends tap out our creations for the pure love of it and require no more payment then to be allowed to keep doing so. Money? I can’t believe she would even mention something so low.
My inspiration to write comes from the sweet lovely muse who floats in through my window to whisper sweet and pure creative thoughts into my head as golden petals float through the air and nightingales sing and . . .
Forget it. I can not keep that line of palaver going a second longer. Muse schmuse. Cabot’s right about 2 & 3. Wanting to finish the damned thing has gotten me through more books than I care to count.1 And knowing that a cheque will come once the manuscript is accepted is very very motivating indeed. Even though the speed of that arrival is rarely greased lightning. But if I don’t finish it don’t arrive.
I am also motivated by
wanting to write the next shiny shiny new new book because I am bored with the current one.
Not wanting Scott be mad at me for abandoning a book I’ve been reading to him. He hates narrativus interruptus.
Not wanting to piss off my agent or publisher.
I know some writers are motivated by a fear that if they ever fail to finish a book they will lose their ability to write another sentence ever again. That fear motivates me to start the next book but is useless in getting me to finish.
Those of you who’ve finished a novel or two: what kept you going all the way to the finish line?
WARNING: I will delete anyone who craps on about their love of chocolate. I am uninterested. I know that many people’s taste buds are seriously warped on that subject. I have zero interest in hearing more about their perversion.
Actually it’s only seven. I don’t even have to stop using my hands to figure it out. I bet it would take AGES for Meg Cabot to figure that out.
1 Comments on In which I disagree with Meg Cabot, last added: 9/4/2008
I just read a book that’s been getting rapturous reviews. It is every bit as beautifully written as advertised. There were whole paragraphs that were very WOW inducing.1 I loved parts of it and not just because they were about cricket.2 But I did not enjoy this book.
I will break my usual procedure and name the book: Netherland by Joseph O’Neill. I’m naming it because it really is gorgeously written. Seriously, it’s stunning. O’Neill deserves the reviews he’s been getting. I think many people will love it. Hell, many people are loving it. I’m writing this to figure out why it didn’t work for me.
The book’s a realist fictional take on the after effects of 9/11 on a marriage, on the narrator, on the city of NYC, centring around the narrator’s experience playing cricket and getting involved with a shady cricket-obsessed entrepreneur. I loved the descriptions of cricket as well as the discussions of the game and why USians don’t get it. I also loved the sequence in which the narrator attempts to get a NY driver’s license. It’s a deliciously funny and accurate description of city bureaucracy.
Yet, other than those glorious parts, Netherland bored me. I found myself skimming, looking for the next mention of cricket.3 I was not engaged by the passive drifting narrator. Worse, I didn’t care about him. I didn’t care about his marriage. I was bored rigid by his reminiscences about his past. He is so distanced from his life, so flat, that he seemed passionless about everything.
But my biggest problem was that there was no discernible plot. Over the course of 250 pages all the dramatic events happen offstage. The more I read the more frustrated I became. Perhaps, though, that’s the same problem: Because I was uninterested—and eventually came to dislike the narrator—I could not look past the lack of plot.
I love Knut Hamsun’s Hunger. It has no plot. It’s about a poor writer stumbling around a city starving. That’s the entire book. What could be more boring? I love that book. There’s way less plot in Hunger than Netherland.
Come to think of it, the likability of the narrator is not that big a deal. The narrator of Hunger isn’t likable. I can think of lots of protags I don’t like, but who are immensely engaging. My problem with Hans is not that I didn’t like him, it’s that I found him and his life boring. Almost every other character in the book is more interesting than Hans and yet it’s his head we’re stuck in.
I tried very hard to like Netherland. I can’t remember the last time I disliked a book that was as good as this one. I suspect quite a few of you will like it. Do ignore me and give it a go!
Have any of you experienced this? Read a book that you didn’t like despite being able to see that it’s really really good?
Note: I have now left the bunker but bits of the bunker are still lodged in my brain. It may be a while yet before I catch up on the crazy email backlog. Or my life. Or anything really.
Imagine Stephanie Rice saying, “Wow!!!”
I just gave away what book I’m talking about, didn’t I?
Yes, I’m shallow.
2 Comments on Not liking a good book, last added: 8/29/2008
If you have more questions feel free to ask them over there.
There are spoilers in the MorM FAQ but they are at the bottom under a spoiler warning. There are no How To Ditch Your Fairy spoilers. Aren’t I good to you people?
Speaking of which, I just found out that HTDYF is a Junior Library Guild selection. This is quite the honour as they have a reputation for picking books that go on to be award-winners and bestsellers. If you look through their book selections you’ll recognise many fabulous books.
There was also a gorgeous new review over on the Ravenous Reader Reviews. I’ve never had so many reviews and comments and fan mail about a book before it was even published. I could get used to this!
Though publication is very soon: 16 September in the US of A.
Justine, I was wondering what you would do in a situation like this:
“As some of you may have heard, my partial draft of Midnight Sun was illegally posted on the Internet and has since been virally distributed without my knowledge or permission or the knowledge or permission of my publisher.”—Stephenie Meyer
Since I don’t really write or anything I don’t know what I would do. Would it bum you out to where you couldn’t write it anymore or would you just ignore it and keep going?
I’d be very unhappy and hurt that someone had betrayed my trust like that. I recently sent my most recnet novel, Why Do I Lie?, to a bunch of people for comments—if they’d passed it on to other people to read I would be furious. That’s an enormous violation of trust.
As for what I’d do in that situation? It’s very difficult for me to say. I’m not Stephenie Meyer. It’s really unlikely an unfinished ms. of mine would wind up online and widely circulated. I don’t have anywhere near her fan base. I can definitely imagine the whole thing souring me on the book. On the other hand, I really like to finish what I’ve started. Not to mention that my manuscripts tend to change a lot after I’ve finished the first draft. So what was distributed would not bear much resemblance to the final book.
I certainly feel a great deal of sympathy towards Meyer. That situation sucks.
Just when you’re approaching the end of one book and you really must give that book all your time and all your brain, another one comes along and starts insisting you write it instead.
This is WRONG and must stop. IMMEDIATELY.
Bugger off, stupid new book. GO AWAY!
9 Comments on Another reason books are teh devil, last added: 7/18/2008
That is exactly where I’m at right now. I love/hate those pesky new books. *growls at it* Go away.
emily said, on 7/17/2008 12:34:00 PM
and what really sucks is that when you have time to write the pesky new book it gives you trouble.
fail.
Iris Messenger said, on 7/17/2008 1:52:00 PM
i -hate- it when that happens, whenever I’m trying to actually finish something for once …
Serafina Zane said, on 7/17/2008 8:49:00 PM
Ah, the lack of focus. My fatal flaw. And the reason I’ve been saying “Yeah, I’m nearly at the end of my vampire punks who have one werewolf friend story” for about three months.
In my defense, it’s hard to write. *whingey five year-old*
But new project! So shiny!
Also, i use the evil excuse that “You know, I’m nearly done with that other story, and I finished my primary project a month ago and am slowly revising, so I can start some of those new ideas I’ve been suppressing, to keep up my current level of projects.”
Which ends with me never finishing and 20x as much to do as before. *sigh*
Patrick said, on 7/18/2008 6:59:00 AM
So, what’s teh NEW book about? Does it have a title that we can guess at?
Julia Rios said, on 7/18/2008 8:38:00 AM
::offers virtual mangosteen::
Kelly McCullough said, on 7/18/2008 9:15:00 AM
lol for a pointed truth. And you can’t even drive them off with a pointed stick. What if they didn’t come back?
beth said, on 7/18/2008 9:32:00 AM
Heh…I just finished a manuscript a few weeks ago and am editing it. Now I’m begging my mind to come up with a new idea because I HATE editing!!
A bunch of questions are being asked about the next novel both here and in emails. Here are some answers:
When is it due?
August
When will it be published?
September 2009
Who is publishing it?
Bloomsbury USA
What is it about?
Lies
What’s it called?
Asmentioned the working (and I hope permanent) title is the same as a song from the 1990s by an all-girl band. Feel free to guess. No one has gotten close so far.
Is it a sequel to How To Ditch Your Fairy?
No
Why isn’t it a sequel to HTDYF?
Because
Will there be a sequel to HTDYF?
Maybe
How long do you think it will be?
75,00-85,000
How long is it now?
54,013
Wow, you have quite a few words to go and August isn’t very far away—are you panicking?
Aaargh!! Damn you!! Leave me alone!! STOP asking questions!!
You seem a bit tightly wound—have you thought of maybe getting a massage or something?
I kill you. I kill you with my bare hands.
22 Comments on The next novel, last added: 7/11/2008
Wow. Umm. So, you don’t live anywhere near me, right? Just because, like, I think I’ll do my best to avoid seeing you until August, you know? No offense. I just don’t want you to have to go to jail or something.
Also, you can totally reach 80,000 by August. Wait, you mean the end of August, right?
Lizabelle said, on 7/10/2008 12:34:00 AM
Probably really obvious guesses but I’m going with “What I Want” or “Never Ever”.
*creeps away to avoid tightly-wound author*
Lindsay N said, on 7/10/2008 2:07:00 AM
case of the fake people?
chrisbarnes said, on 7/10/2008 2:09:00 AM
My guess would have been ‘Eternal Flame’ by The Bangles - it has an Elvis connection, after all - but I think it’s from the eighties, not nineties.
Godspeed with the novel!
Penni said, on 7/10/2008 3:01:00 AM
Why WOULDN’T you all it Spice Up Your Life?
Well, I personally think that your word count sounds very manageable. You’ll rock it in and have time for dancin’. Everyone knows the first 54000 words are the hardest.
Patrick said, on 7/10/2008 5:32:00 AM
We could all help. If each commentor contributed just a few words, you could reach your goal of 75,000.
I contribute these words.
“The fat man exploded.”
There. Now you are at 54,017!!!
Amber said, on 7/10/2008 7:11:00 AM
I guess: Nothing On But the Radio by The Alice Band.
My authorial contribution:
“So the last thing I said to him, I said, ‘well, they weren’t _my_ sherry glasses anyway!!!’ And I just keep thinking, if only he hadn’t exploded just then, we could have really got along.”
54,052. We’ll have this one knocked off in no time.
capt. cockatiel said, on 7/10/2008 11:57:00 AM
With all this killing going on, I’m glad I’m back home from New York. Ah, the safety of the West Coast. XP
Julia Rios said, on 7/10/2008 12:01:00 PM
“Daughters of the Kaos” by Luscious Jackson. (A good title, anway)
“Waterfalls” by TLC. (In which your DNA to stay near the Hudson after an ill-fated trip to Niagra Falls…)
“Cookie Day” by Shonen Knife. (In which your characters visit a cookie shop, and it is truly a beautiful cookie day!)
Julia Rios said, on 7/10/2008 12:02:00 PM
*In which your DNA profilers… oops.
joe said, on 7/10/2008 12:18:00 PM
You know, decaf tastes every bit as good as the real thing these days…
Julia Rios said, on 7/10/2008 12:30:00 PM
**In which your DNA prolifers decide to… Double oops. I think maybe I should go back to bed.
benni said, on 7/10/2008 12:37:00 PM
Has anyone guessed PRETEND THAT WE’RE DEAD yet?
Mahek said, on 7/10/2008 1:46:00 PM
Is it Viva Forever by Spice Girls???
Justine said, on 7/10/2008 2:44:00 PM
No one has guessed the song. And some of you are confused about when the 1990s were.
Carrie R. said, on 7/10/2008 4:01:00 PM
just change the margins and font on your manuscript. Editor will never know the difference…..
caitlin said, on 7/10/2008 7:43:00 PM
The Gits (though started in 1986), Ani DiFranco or perhaps PJ Harvey? Because I know I’ll be thonking myself in the head when I find out what band/song has escaped my brain.
Justine said, on 7/10/2008 7:52:00 PM
Carrie R.: Do you want me to kill you?
caitlin: Ani DiFranco & PJ Harvey are not all-girl groups, they are just girls.
Plus you’re all guessing the name of a song—not the name of the band.
Mahek said, on 7/11/2008 6:40:00 AM
Is the song by En Vogue??
Justine said, on 7/11/2008 7:16:00 AM
Mahek: I am only going to say if someone guesses the right song. A band name is not enough.
I will say though that the group I’m talking about was not put together by a production company.
caitlin said, on 7/11/2008 2:07:00 PM
Just a guess …”Removal” by Spitboy
Justine said, on 7/11/2008 2:15:00 PM
caitlin: Excellently non-obvious guess! I wish I was cool enough to have heard of Spitboy . . . I am ashamed.
Sing it, sister. It’s been driving me nuts ever since I got here.
The “new improved” American money is not really a help. They are psychologically wedded to the idea of the “greenback”, and even when they make a gesture to fixing the colour (the new 20s and 10s and I’ve even seen a new 5 recently) it merely looks like someone spilled weak tea on an ordinary bill.
I dream of Canadian money.
Marko said, on 6/15/2008 3:22:00 PM
American money is deliberately designed to confuse foreigners. All the bills are the same size and color, none of the coins have an actual numerical value on them (all have their values written out in English), and the size of the coins do not correspond to their value (the dime is smaller than the nickel, yet worth more.)
It’s like some committee sat down and tried to make our currency as difficult to learn as possible, especially for non-English speakers.
Camille said, on 6/15/2008 3:28:00 PM
Honey, what the heck are you doing to the money to be ripping it???
(I concede that to people used to colorful, pretty, different sized money, Yank money can be hard to distinguish. Not so much for me, I grew up on it. But…I like it ugly. Keeps me in the mindset of what a rough, hard, soulless, un-cute thing commerce is. [/kidding])
I think they’ve officially ruled it’s unfair to the blind and are going to introduce different sizes?
All I want out of the whole shebang is a dollar coin, though. I’m easy to please.
Justine said, on 6/15/2008 3:40:00 PM
Alma Alexander: I’ve travelled a lot and I’ve never come across money so confusing and flimsy as US money. I will never understand it. Those new bills are a step in the right direction though.
Marko: Yup. It’s probably the Committee For Making Everything As Confusing As Possible.
It took me ages to remember what a “dime” and a “nickel” are. And the irony is that pennies and nickels cost more to make now than they’re worth. Abolish them I say!
Camille: I wasn’t doing anything unusual. The bill was old and very very worn. Just breathing on it would’ve ripped it. I have no idea why it was still circulating. Sadly this is not the first time it’s happened to me. Nor am I the only one I know who’s experienced it.
Before we replaced our currency with plastic bills the same thing used to happen back home. Paper and paper-like substance are not the most durable things to be making money out of.
As for USians not being confused by the money. I’ve been at two restaurant meals now where everyone’s put in their money and the bill’s come up massively short because someone put in the wrong denomination. I know it wasn’t me the dumb foreignor because both times a friend was paying for me. (I paid for them the previous times.)
Either that or USians use the confusion to be cheap. Either way is bad.
doselle said, on 6/15/2008 3:45:00 PM
Hey, Justine!
I think the least you could do is post PIX of your amusing native currency so we drab, dull USAians can revel in the rainbow play money that passes for cold, hard cash down under in the Bizarro World.
D
Justine said, on 6/15/2008 3:51:00 PM
Doselle: What? Your google’s broken? Me, I have a book to write.
Though, I’ll have you know that the US is the only country in the world with drab currency. Everyone else’s employs more than one colour. Many more than one!
nadai said, on 6/15/2008 4:37:00 PM
I wouldn’t mind making the different denominations different colors, but I would hate it if they were different sizes. That’s just wrong. I like to put all the bills in my wallet in order by value (all turned the same way, of course) in one neat little stack. Different sizes would just mess that right up.
Of course, I alphabetize my spices, so I’m perhaps a little neurotic.
emzzy said, on 6/15/2008 5:29:00 PM
just get a credit card. no bills involved!
well, yeah, actually there are. but thats bills white…
lili said, on 6/15/2008 6:48:00 PM
i just can’t believe there are still countries that haven’t gotten rid of the brown money.
so useless!
rid yourself of pennies!
Patrick said, on 6/15/2008 6:52:00 PM
I think the solution is clear. Everyone who dislikes US currency should send me all that they have. Someone needs to get a hold of this situation.
JS Bangs said, on 6/15/2008 7:35:00 PM
Everything you say is true Justine (and other dollar-haters), but as a born-and-bred American, I can say that I have a deep and wholly irrational affection for the colors of our currency. Yes, other countries have money that’s easier to tell apart, more durable, and harder to counterfeit. I don’t care. You can have my soft paper greenbacks when you pry them from my cold, dead fingers.
Camille said, on 6/15/2008 8:33:00 PM
*stands firm at JS Bangs’s side*
Either that or USians use the confusion to be cheap. Either way is bad.
But just think — if the money were different sizes and colors, all the confidence tricksters would be out of work! That whole chapter in “Paper Moon” would be obsolete! [/making Justine's argument for her]
Scottish pounds are pretty. If we HAVE to change, can we have something like those?
Justine said, on 6/15/2008 8:50:00 PM
Camille: I do not hold with grifters. They make for good novel and movie plots but in real life they are bad, bad people.
Gabrielle said, on 6/15/2008 9:00:00 PM
I know! Even Canadian money is pretty pretty different colors. Even our coins have some gold in them.
Don Vaillancourt said, on 6/15/2008 9:53:00 PM
I know that several times I have pulled my closed out of the drier and my Canadian money is clean and still in one piece. As close as I’ll ever get to laundering money.
Went to New York this weekend and got 10 $1 dollar bills in change from a $20 when I paid the cab fair. I felt rich, even if US money is worth less than Canadian.
Jason Erik Lundberg said, on 6/15/2008 10:03:00 PM
After living in Singapore for more than a year, I have to agree. It’s so much easier to get out the right notes when you can identify them by color and size.
Camille said, on 6/16/2008 9:30:00 AM
Camille: I do not hold with grifters. They make for good novel and movie plots but in real life they are bad, bad people.
@Justine — I hope it was clear I was not serious and do not support crime and the bilking of innocent people out of their hard earned money!!
I was, for humor, purposefully putting forth a bad argument: nostalgia. And the resizing of all our wallets. Won’t someone think of the landfills! Plus we’ll become complacent! (Heh — part of childhood in NYC is learning to always count your change before you take one step away from the register.)
Merrie Haskell said, on 6/16/2008 9:37:00 AM
I suspect our money is ugly because that keeps us all Puritan-clear on the fact that work is for work’s sake, NOTHING ELSE. I mean, sure now we’re the most conspicuous consumers that the world has ever known, but the Puritans are still there in the past, shaming us.
Of course, being raised on American money, I find sensible money schemes to be counterintuitive, and once stood in the door of a bus in England trying to figure out my fare so long that the driver asked me if I was Welsh.
(The beautiful thing about being an American at that point was thinking that the Welsh thing was a compliment.)
Final thoughts:
1) I’ve never once accidentally ripped a bill. Realizing this put an end to my theory that the flimsiness is to remind us all that the material world is fleeting… I think we’re just all trained from birth that the stuff is delicate.
2) I feel rather like a mother who has produced an ugly baby. *sniffle* “It’s MY baby, and I LURVE it.”
emmaco said, on 6/16/2008 1:22:00 PM
Here’s to abolishing pennies! When I moved to the UK I had fun reminiscing about when I was a small child in Australia and one and two cent coins were still around, but now I am over that and am so tired of digging out change or dragging it around!
Don MacDonald said, on 6/16/2008 2:52:00 PM
I like the design of US bills (the giant Helvetica 5 on the five dollar bill excepted.) It is a design truism that form follows function, and money is no exception. American money is designed to give an impression of seriousness and stability. Money, at least to the American mind, is not supposed to have a sense of frivolity or fun. The design of American money succeds in what it sets out to do: to impart to the user that Money is serious business and everything about the design of American bill reinforces this, from the almost non-existent color palette to the Victorian typefaces used throughout. Successful design is good design.
C.B. James said, on 6/16/2008 5:18:00 PM
Don sums my view up nicely. I’ve dealt with Euros, Marks, Pounds, Canadian Dollars and they all seem like play money. American money is serious stuff. Well, it used to be, back in the day, before our current administration took away all its value.
That said we really should give up printing ones and fives and make them coins like the rest of the world does.
Justine said, on 6/16/2008 11:36:00 PM
Camille: Gambling and grifter-like activities are two areas where my sense of humour disappears. They gives me the heebeegeebes.
Camille said, on 6/17/2008 8:48:00 AM
@Justine — Sorry about pushing your buttons. I did mean to imply that you were in some ways quite right about the drawbacks of Yank money.
(My heart of hearts agrees with Don, Merrie and CB, though. MY ugly baby!)
Justine said, on 6/17/2008 8:53:00 AM
Camille: No need to apologise! I was just explaining my humour lapse.
I understand you USians clinging to the ugly bad design. I quite like that Sydney, once you get out of the city proper (what you yanquis call Downtown) has pretty much no street signs, which drives the foreignors crazy. i also love pronouncing “lieutenant” “leftenant” because it’s such a nutty pronunciation —even though hardly anyone does anymore anywhere in the English speaking world.
fran said, on 6/17/2008 9:54:00 AM
Nice clear numbers in all four corners. Don’t see what the problem is.
I have been noticing much skiting on the internets of late. “Oh look,” says a blogger, “look what amazing Advanced Readers Copy I has been sent! Is mine, not yours. Hahahahahah!”
Well, now it’s my turn. I has an ARC of Margo Lanagan’s first novel in years and years, Tender Morsels. I hugs it to my chest and will share with no one! Well, okay, I’ll share what I thinks of it with you but not the actual ARC cause that’s mine!
But before I get to actually, you know, read the delicious bookie which is calling to me—seriously, everything about it screams, READ ME!, from the gorgeous cover to the jacket copy to the fact that Margo Lanagan wrote it—I must work. Back down into the word mines to excavate sentences and paragraphs of the next book. It’s back-breaking work but someone must do it.
Okay, I write now buoyed by the fact that I have Tender Morsels and you don’t!
Hehehehehehe.
Ahem.
8 Comments on A Tender Morsel, last added: 5/31/2008
I’ve never read anything by Margo Lanagan, but I am remembering how I first heard of Scott Westerfeld. The best librarian I have ever encountered asked me what type of books I liked to read, and then gave me an ARC she had, which was the first of the Midnighters trilogy. Then the second- the arc of which I still have- and so on, to more books and your blog. I like ARCs. You must have fun being an author and getting to see them more often than most people.
Justine said, on 5/30/2008 12:31:00 PM
Leahr: That’s exactly how ARCs are supposed to work—getting you excited about a new author. Yay for ARCs!
Actually, I think librarians and booksellers see way more ARCs than I do. I am jealous of them!
You must read Lanagan. She’s amazing!
Carlie said, on 5/30/2008 1:45:00 PM
I has a Tender Morsels, too! And I think I shall be ignoring everything I’m supposed to get done for ALA in favor of reading it.
capt. cockatiel said, on 5/30/2008 1:55:00 PM
I was in Portland last Monday and saw an ARC of Looking for Alaska for sale (which was weird…) and really wanted to get it… but I didn’t have any money. So then I was back there yesterday and it was gone! I was pretty down, even though I already own the book.
I think the only ARC I’ve gotten before a book actually came out was Spud by John van de Ruit (which is fantastic). I got an ARC of So Yesterday, um, three or four years after it was already out. Haha.
ARCs are the best things ever.
Justine said, on 5/30/2008 2:07:00 PM
Carlie: You’ve just proved my point about how librarians get all the good ARCs! Which is a good thing for the promoting and buzzing of our books. I do not begrudge you. Just don’t tell me about any more cool ARCs you have that I don’t. The next person to mention the M. T. Anderson is on the naughty mat.
Capt. Cockatiel: I don’t know that you shoudl be paying for ARCs. I’m not saying that for legal reasons but because from the writer’s point of view they’re really crappy. Seriously, they usually have all the typoes and mistakes that will be cleaned up for the real book. They’re the dud early version of the book just to get booksellers and librarians and reviewers excited before the real mostly-typo free version comes out.
The whole magic of ARCs is that there a sneak preview, but when there years old and the real book has long since been published they’re just kind of sad and forlorn and with no real interest except to crazy collectors.
You’re not a crazy collector, are you?
I should at this point confess that I have ARCs of Angela Carter’s first two books. But there are hardly any of them in existence! They is rare and precious. There are thousands and thousands of ARCs of Looking for Alaska and Peeps. They are not even remotely hen’s teeth.
Okay, I might be a crazy collector.
Never mind. Talk amongst yourselves.
Nichole said, on 5/30/2008 7:10:00 PM
Lucky! I love ARCs. Getting the good ones is an artform and sometimes requires a little work. And by work, I mean begging.
capt. cockatiel said, on 5/30/2008 7:30:00 PM
I am kind of a crazy collector. I like the typos… >.>
And I have a lot of ARCs that I got after the books came out (years and years before) because in the summer I go to the local bookstore and they give them out. That’s how I got So Yesterday, actually. I couldn’t pass up the free goodness. I should maybe read the real printed version sometime, actually. Ha.
But all they usually have there are old ARCs, so I was lucky to get Spud.
Except then I didn’t actually read it until the real book had come out. Stupid me.
cei cei said, on 5/31/2008 6:15:00 PM
i just got a ARC of the Meg Cabot book AIRHEAD lol i LOVED it
The world is causing me to shred rope this morning. With my teeth.
I am cranky and have decided to share my crank with you my gentle and not-at-all cranky readers. I know that I’ve written this rant in different forms already. I fully expect to write it again. Here goes:
Ever since I because a YA writer I have been hearing certain people accusing me and my colleagues of writing books solely for the sake of being as dark/bleak/shocking/perverted/[insert your own personal bugbear in adjectival form here]. “Why did you have to put x into your book?” is a question that almost all of us seem to hear at one time or another.
It drives me nuts.
YA writers who write about anything that isn’t considered to be squeaky clean or uses language stronger than, “Oh, bother!” get this a lot. We’re often accused of writing “dark,” “edgy,” “controversial” books in order to increase our sales.
Newsflash: the inclusion of swearing and sex and drugs and the other things that render YA books less than squeaky often, nay, usually, has the opposite effect. Book clubs won’t pick them up, Wal-mart and Target won’t stock them, nor will many school libraries, and lots of conservative parents won’t let their teens buy them.
Sure, you can point to teen books that have sex and swearing and drugs that sell; but there are just as many that don’t. It is not the automatic sales shot in the arm that so many people are convinced of.
I have never written anything for the sake of being “dark” or “edgy” or anything else. The YA writers I know think long and hard about including anything “controversial” because nine times out of ten it will reduce their sales, not increase them.
Valiant by Holly Black is often accused of being deliberately shocking; it’s her worst-selling book.
Of all the YA books I’ve read, Valiant is the closest to my teenage experiences. I recognised so much in that book. I found it moving, honest, beautiful, scary, dark and brilliant. It made me weep in sadness and, by the end of the book, in joy. I’ve read it four times so far and each time it has gotten better.
I’ve been wondering what it is about the book that bothers people. Perhaps they don’t like it because they didn’t recognise anything from their teenage experiences, therefore the book seems to them deliberately and inexplicably dark. They grew up safe and happy behind their white picket fence and weren’t interested in reading about teens that didn’t. But my friend Diana Peterfreund disagrees because she had a white-picket upbringing and she adores Valiant.1
Maybe the Valiant haters recognised too much and that made them uncomfortable?
I should point out that these are all adult complaints about the book: The teens who don’t like Valiant are mostly annoyed because it isn’t a direct sequel to Tithe.
All the adult complaints I’ve heard about books like Valiant and Looking for Alaska seem to stem from discomfort with the reality of some teen lives. Have they forgotten how traumatic teenage years can be? Have they forgotten that many teenagers swear, that they not only think about sex, but some of them have it, some of them drink and take drugs? I’ve met and talked with enough teens over the past three years2 to know that many of them are extremely grateful to have their experiences reflected back at them in the books we write—whether those experience are dark or light or a mixture (which is most people’s experience). Once I would have argued against problem novels because I personally don’t like them. But I’ve heard too many teachers and librarians tell me tales of students finding comfort and guidance in a book about child abuse, or a teen with alcoholic parents, or anorexia or whatever.
Recognising yourself in a book—in any work of art—is extremely powerful. It’s one of the ways we learn we’re not alone.
Some teenagers grow up in very dark places. Some of them go through dark, scary times. Some teens have friends and relatives who’ve overdosed, been murdered, raped, tortured, deported, gaoled, executed. Teen lives are as varied and scary and wonderful as adults’ lives. Those stories deserve to be told just as much as the story of Anne of Green Gables.
Some of us cope with the dark times by re-reading Anne of Green Gables. Some of us cope by reading stories that touch on our own horrible experiences or that are even worse.
Valiant, however, is not a problem novel. It’s a fairy tale with the requisite fairy tale ending. It affirms that even in the darkest of times a fairy tale ending is possible. I love it; I would have loved it even more as a teen.
I know that writing for teens is a huge responsibility. I take that responsibility seriously, which is why I believe it’s my duty to write books as honestly as I can.3 Whether it be the froth and bubble of How To Ditch Your Fairy or the darkness of the Magic or Madness trilogy. Pretending that teens aren’t people with as wide a range of desires and aspirations as any adult is dishonest.
Okay, I feel slightly less cranky now. Slightly . . .
I should point out that my family life was great; it was my school experiences that were dark and miserable.
Since my first teen novel came out.
You know, what I also think that’s the duty of writers of adult books.
It seems that so many writers, especially for teenagers, have lost their “day eyes”[1]. The books then are just as false as the Leave It To Beaver stereotype of Dick-and-Jane goodness, where the authors seem to have gouged out their “night eyes”[1] in order not to affright the kiddies (or, more likely, their parents)
I think a fairer question than “why did you have to put in X?” is “why did you leave out Y?” Where’s the rest of the story? The rest of the world? And if you chose to narrow your focus down to just this bit, well, why? Especially if the “why” is real question, wanting a real answer (usually interestiing) rather than just a reflexive opportunity to condemn.
In any event, if you’re not writing a documentary; it not a mirror; it’s trompe-d’oeil. What you choose to paint, and how you choose to paint it, is in the end a choice. One hopes it’s made with care…
[1] Why, oh why, isn’t The Glassblowers Children as popular in the anglosphere as it is in Sweden? This is such a useful story! And so well told. Brief summation: A raven had two eyes, a day eye that saw only good, and a night eye that saw only evil. When he lost one (his night eye) he was no longer wise…
sylvia said, on 3/3/2008 2:18:00 PM
I agree with everything you’ve said here except the implication that the Anne of Green Gables books are all sweetness and light — because they’ve actually got quite a lot of gloom, sorrow and despair in them (esp. the later ones), and the presence thereof was one of the reasons I re-read them so frequently as a teen.
Writing for young adults is not the same as writing for little kids; but even little kids need books that tackle difficult subjects (the death of a parent, the death of a pet, being very sick, having to go into hospital, surviving parents’ divorce and remarriage…). The books that spoke to me most strongly during my horrible early-teen years had a lot of bad stuff in them: sex and accidental pregnancy, unhappy love affairs and unrequited love, child abuse, violence, death galore, SIDS, war and destruction and the Holocaust and orphans surviving in the ruins. Anything that made me weep buckets, I’d read over and over. Some of what I read is highly recommendable, while some of it (I’m thinking particularly of a certain series of YA books about teens with terminal illnesses of various kinds) was formulaic trash, but I was fortunate to have parents and teachers who would never have dreamed of censoring my reading.*
I also liked to read frothy stuff, granted. But teens, just like grown-ups, need all kinds of stuff to read, and they need to be allowed to use books and reading (and writing!) for all the many purposes adults use them for. Being an adolescent is horrible enough without dictatorial adults telling you you can only read happy things. Sheesh.
*Not all my friends were so lucky; one was marched out of My Life as a Dog by the ear following the penis-in-bottle scene, while another’s mum confiscated her copy of The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, Aged 13 3/4 because it mentioned breasts.
sherwood said, on 3/3/2008 2:25:00 PM
Oh, what a good post. I gotta link, even though I already did one today.
Gabrielle said, on 3/3/2008 2:25:00 PM
You are awesome.
Valiant is Holly Black’s worst-selling book? Well, I personnally think it’s her best book! Haven’t read Spiderwick yet though. Shh.
I feel like a lot of adults, particularly those who don’t read a lot or who, at least, don’t know much about the industry, are sort of perverted as to what sells and what doesn’t sell. Apparently, like you said, sensational and controversial books sell better. Well, that may be true sometimes, but I definitely think the book has to come at the right time. A book that’s amazingly popular may not have been if it’d been published ten years earlier.
I’ve heard way too many adults snobbing books, or music, or whatever, simply because it’s successful. I know that’s not quite the same issue, but you got me thinking about it. “Oh, yeah, that’s just some commercial crap.” Sure.
Camille said, on 3/3/2008 2:36:00 PM
I have been looking for a replacement copy of “The Glassblowers Children” for YEARS. (And “Elvis, Elvis!”)
I don’t have much to add to the previous comments — I’m just constantly amused and seriously disturbed and frightened by, say, the Amazon comments from adults I see that seem to assume that 14-year-olds are five, or that keeping all knowledge of unpleasantness from them is actually doing them a service.
(Ahhh. The Glassblower’s Children. I see what you did there.)
Liset said, on 3/3/2008 2:59:00 PM
people who grumble about issues in books are SILLY!
silly silly silly
why on earth they think they can dictate what I read is beyond ME!
the weird thing about being a minor.
Fortunatly I had a really great mom who encouraged me to read anything and everything (well except horror books that I had to steal from my brother).
oh and i’m technically an adult now… so that helps too…
but uhm… fight the power justine!
J said, on 3/3/2008 3:14:00 PM
Thank you Justine! Thank you for writing this!
I’ve honestly never read any of your novels, but, I just read Uglies, and was talking to a friend of mine (we’re 17, by the way), and he hasn’t read it yet, and, when talking about Uglies, I said “I kept waiting for the sex scene.” And he seemed shocked. Not because he can’t handle a sex scene, but because he seemed surprised I would suggest that sex scenes have a place in YA. (As an aside, I’m not disappointed there wasn’t a sex scene. I mean, its not like Tally was at the Smoke for that long, but, if she had been there for a more significant amount of time, I would expect that either it would have happened or a concise explanation of why it hadn’t happened would show up eventually.) When he asked if sex scenes are appropriate in YA, we had the following conversation:
Me: You’re 17. Your girlfriend is 16. Tally’s age.
Him: Yes.
Me: And how far have you two gone?
Him: Not all the way.
Me: Exactly. If there was a book about a relationship similar to yours, wouldn’t a scene that involved some sort of sexual activity be important? Even if the book was intended for people between 13 and 18?
My point: Teens have sex! Gasp! In books about teens that involve relationships, if they’re the type of characters that would go all the way after a couple of months, they should go all the way! Or whatever!
This point can be translated to drugs, alcohol, or any other “edgy” thing you may put in your books.
Q.E.D.
Steve said, on 3/3/2008 3:38:00 PM
In many ways, Valiant is my favorite of Holly’s books (I’m sure this won’t last as she is constantly inventing new and brilliant stories). Despite the fantastical elements, Valiant has resonated for me as a cautionary tale about love. The people suffer. Not the ‘author twirling mustache as he writes painful scenes’ approach but a very realistic, ‘I am alone, despite all these people around me’ sentiment. Ravus feels that way. So does Val. It causes them to act out, lash out, hide away, seek comfort, sometimes all at once. It’s a rich book, full of raw emotions.
Hillary! said, on 3/3/2008 4:18:00 PM
Did you guys hear about the controversy behind The Higher Power of Lucky? They wanted to ban it because Lucky wants to know what a scrotum is. After I read it that really irked me. Lucky is just a curious kid, and it’s really only mentioned twice: the beginning, and the end, where she asks what a scrotum is. And it is explained in the best way imaginable. When I told my aunt about this book she thought it was a cute and had me read it to my cousins for her.
Sometimes I wonder if the people complaining about these books even have children, and if they do, how good is their relationship with them? I bet that they really don’t understand their kids. Because, seriously, the parents who actually care want their children to read these ‘dark and shocking’ stories, so that they know life isn’t all peaches and cream, because it isn’t. Life can be very dirty and gritty and hard and, most of all, SHOCKING! Just like all these books people are complaining about. Life doesn’t always end happy so why ban books that imitate life in one form or another?
liliya said, on 3/3/2008 4:50:00 PM
UK children’s publisher Random House just did a survey of parents (under 2000 respondents, mmm, how representative) and concluded that British kids are going to hell in a handbasket because they are drinking and having sex so young. UK newspaper dutifully contacts children’s author Jaqueline Wilson for a comment; she says she thinks it’s sad kids are growing up too fast; newspaper then criticises her for writing novels about kids who drink and have sex…
From the Independent:
‘Fiercely strict parents, ugly divorces, terminal illness, and various kinds of abuse are all common themes in Dame Jacqueline’s work. Given such gritty content, is there not a whiff of hypocrisy about her outrage?
“I wish I could write novels in which children didn’t have to confront these issues”, said Dame Jacqueline, who has sold more than 25 million copies.
“But my role as a writer is to hold out a metaphorical hand to these children, and to reflect the difficulties they face in an imaginative way….”
eek said, on 3/3/2008 5:09:00 PM
I agree with so many of the comments that have already been made, and I’ll just add that it seems to me that there will always be people uncomfortable with teenagers showing any kind of maturing or independence - ie, sex, drugs, disobeying authority, etc. And in my experience, they tend to be people scared of the world in general. Scared their child will go a different path than they did, or more often, than they want their child to go.
A few years ago I suggested a friend let her eleven and thirteen year old daughters watch Bend it Like Beckham. After she watched it she got really angry at me for suggesting she show her daughters a movie about a girl who disobeys and lies to her parents and flouts their moral code. (She also incidently advocated for installing spyware on her family computer to spy on her kids’ online activities). My response was astonishment that a movie showing a strong independent and pretty-morally centered young woman would be viewed so negatively.
It’s just one example of my experience that people who are uncomfortable reading about/watching movies about teenage sexual or chemical experimentation are also uncomfortable with teenagers.
Emily
Jeanni said, on 3/3/2008 5:11:00 PM
“Pretending that teens aren’t people with as wide a range of desires and aspirations as any adult is dishonest.”
Thank you! We’re treated like children and expected, in opposite moments, expected to act like an adult, and a child with no knowledge of the world as it is.
My best friend and I both have divorced parents. My mother barely gets out of bed when i wake her, and Maria’s gotta take care of her younger sister. We both have moments where we forget, because we’re expected to be responsible adults, that we’re only 15. It’s ridiculous to expect that we as teens don’t know what the world is like, merely because we’re not adults.
kim said, on 3/3/2008 5:11:00 PM
i get what you mean about the swearing. there was this kid who sat behind me in german class and he said a cuss word every other word. i got really annoting. and all of my friends say cuss words on a dialy basis.
if it is a book about tenns it needs to have things in it that teens say and do. you don’t want a teen book where the characters say “oh, how are you my dear old chum.” or “oh, my!i am so weary!” and stuff like that that that tenns don’t say! i am a teen so i know!!
eek said, on 3/3/2008 5:45:00 PM
Oh, one more comment I forgot to make. With regard to the comment about the Higher Power of Lucky…
That whole hoopla about librarians threatening to ban the book because it included the word scrotum was somewhat not so much based in reality.
The original article claimed that the book was being banned or that librarians were threatening to ban it because of the use of the word scrotum. That is not accurate.
The author based her story on an online discussion of a handful of media specialists regarding whether the book should be recommended for use in the classroom. Specifically, one librarian wrote something like “I’m not sure I’d recommend it be read out loud to one of the 4th grade classes.” But all of the librarians discussing it already had it in their collections.
In following up on the story, an AP writer discovered that no one was actually advocating for banning or actually banning the book. In fact, the librarians he contacted from the same online discussion list all had it in their collections.
Now, I am not advocating for (or supporting) that the word was even a concern - it is the anatomically correct word, would they have preferred a slang term? - or that educators should refrain from using the book because of it, etc…
What I am saying is that no one was discussing banning the book until after the article said it was being banned, and I am not actually aware that anyone ever really banned it.
There certainly was controversy after the article was printed, but the article’s original controversy was not based in reality. It’s a shame the New York Times never printed a correction to that ridiculous story.
I totally agree with you. It is so aggravating to listen to people who seem to think teenagers lives are these happy times filled with no care in the world. So why would they want to read such books?
…
Yeah, sure. I admittedly am not a huge fan of Valiant. But not for the reason given by adults. I love both Tithe and Ironside very much and this comes from the gritty realism. Holly writes so vividly and I love that. But I know some people who would be shocked at the amount of swearing and drinking in it. I think they keep their heads in a whole in the ground too much. Her stories to me are some of the most real I have read. I feel so much like I’m actually there.
I’m not a big fan of swearing, but I’m also not so naive to think that teens don’t cuss. And I think sometimes adults/parents don’t want to think that their kids do. They seriously need to get over themselves and pay attention.
Janni said, on 3/3/2008 7:10:00 PM
“Why did you have to put x into your book?” is a question that almost all of us seem to hear at one time or another.
It drives me nuts.
It drives me nuts, too, especially because no one ever asks this about an adult book. I started off writing for adults, and it was only when I switched to writing for kids that all the “should yous” and “why did yous” started showing up.
It especially drives me nuts because a sixteen year old really isn’t a child. They’re not that different from an eighteen year old, all told. But there’s this notion that if you’re even a year or two under eighteen, you need to be protected from everything. It makes no logical sense.
(In, say, books for seven year olds, the issue is maybe a little more complicated, though even there, not as much more complicated as some folks seem to think. Seven year olds live in the wide world too, after all, but that’s a whole other issue.)
limeywesty said, on 3/3/2008 11:48:00 PM
Well, just so people know.
I love both Valiant and Looking For Alaska. Think they’re both great books, and have copies of both of them in my bedroom.
celsie said, on 3/4/2008 12:49:00 AM
I think it (Valiant) has a lot to do with the fact that people are most comfortable with predictable stories. A sequel should pick up where the previous one left off. What she did was innovative and slightly experimental. It was risky, and she reaped the benefits and the damages there.
I liked the story, though I didn’t understand why it was loosely titled a sequel until I got to the end. I think a lot of people were upset they didn’t see Roiben and Kaye immediately, and intimately. The new characters still had a remarkable depth to them, and I loved her solution to the iron problem.
Tacithydra said, on 3/4/2008 1:17:00 AM
There’s some interesting research in linguistics and psychology showing that as people age they actually tend to speak more about the future, and more positively in general (they use more ‘good’ emotion words like ‘happy’ and ‘excited’ and fewer negative emotion words like ’sad’ or ‘tired’). The stereotype that the young are full of hope while the elderly bear more than their share of despair isn’t bourne out.
Which makes sense, if you look past the stereotypes. The older we get, the better able we are to think about the long term, to realize that the things we might have thought, as teens, would break us, are in fact survivable (in many cases because those things have come to pass, and we’ve survived). We know ourselves, so we know how far to push ourselves, what we need in order to recover, how to replenish our resources. Adults often have more obligations - mortgages, family, career - but with those obligations also comes power and control that teens and children don’t have.
When we’re younger, we’re still figuring out how the world works, and how we work within it. We push ourselves too far and break. Far more people have control and influence over us, and sometimes that influence is abused. Everything is more immediate. I know when I was in grade school a week felt like FOREVER. In high school six months felt like a very long time. In college it was a year. Now a year feels like nothing. I feel like the younger one is, the more space tragedy and pain can take up. All the habits and adjustments that let people weather hard times are still being built, and often smashed, when we’re young.
I think it’s a travesty that people don’t want kids reading ‘edgy’ literature. And *swears*? Jesus, I went to a good grade school, and I still knew every swear word in the book by fifth grade. Are people aware of how young some people are when they lose their virginity these days? Even those seeking to reverse that trend need to admit that limiting books with sexual activity in them is not what they should be spending their time on - books are just easy targets, ways for people to feel like they’re accomplishing something. I was a dark kid - if I’d had to survive on empty Mary Sunshine pablum I would have quit reading. Seeing things from the world around me in the books I read helped me come to grips with them, to think about what they were in relation to me. Without that, I would have been much worse off.
Marie said, on 3/4/2008 2:25:00 AM
From a 14 yr old whose father won’t let her read Looking for Alaska until she’s 16 (and possibly older) and thought that Valiant went “a bit too far” (actually, it rocked)- Justine, I freaking love you.
Hillary! said, on 3/4/2008 11:20:00 AM
Emily-
I amy have used the term ‘ban’ a little too losely. And I didn’t mean the librarians were trying to ‘ban’ it, more like certain people who have way too much time on their hands and rather than do anything productive, like, say, actually read one of these ‘controversial’ books they would rather complain about it without really knowing what the book is about.
And thank you for then link, I didn’t know about that one.
Ariel Zeitlin Cooke said, on 3/4/2008 3:32:00 PM
I also loved Valiant. My latest theory is that adults want to think that it’s the books, movies, TV and bad companions that give kids dark, edgy ideas because then they (the adults) could control teenagers’ behavior by controlling what and whom they see. Wrong! Newsflash: the kids can’t be controlled and as you so rightly point out, Justine, unfortunately many of them have survived situations as horrendous as any problem novel. When I heard that Looking for Alaska was being considered pornographic, I thought “Well, then, we need a lot more pornography out there.”
Dawn said, on 3/4/2008 10:13:00 PM
Yeah, I would have to say that my biggest complaint about Valiant was that I was expecting a direct sequel to Tithe and didn’t get it. But Ironside makes it all better, so YAY!!!
It really seems like sometimes adults don’t understand teenagers at all. They seem to have forgotten the years before they were 20 completely. I’m 21, and yes, that’s an adult…but I LOVE YA. In fact, when I’m shopping for books, that’s directly what I go for. No one would ever find me in the adult sci-fi or fantasy…just because I don’t think they’re as well-written as YA. YA authors are forced to write at a higher standard because teenagers are just pickier, I think. And thank goodness for that. Then I wouldn’t have anything to read otherwise.
Cheryl Rainfield: » Justine Larbalestier's post a said, on 3/5/2008 6:10:00 AM
[…] author Justine Larbalestier posted a lovely rant on her blog called Cranky about what it’s like to be a YA author whose books have something in them that one person or […]
Iris said, on 3/5/2008 8:23:00 AM
Thank you so much for posting this, Justine! You are saying everything I think when I see lists of banned books. I was looking at a poster the other day of books that had been censored, and Mark Twain was on it for goodness sakes! There were books on that poster that dealt with difficult and sometimes mature issues, but that is not a good reason for censorship. And when you read some of the stuff that’s out there not being censored and then look at stuff that is, I wonder where the logic is at all. The poster said ‘Censorship is Blindness’. I could not agree more.
Everyone else has already said what I’d be saying in my second paragraph!
There seems to be some confusion regarding the status of ideas in copyright law. You can’t copyright a plot or an idea. You can only copyright the specific expression of that plot or idea as recorded in some sort of tangible form. Think about the nightmare of attempting to nail down and legislate a plot or idea for a story. How specific would you have to be before you could declare something unique enough to copyright?
“An angst-ridden story about a vampire falling in love with a human.”
Dude, if you can copyright that and collect a small fee every time somebody published that story, you could have your own giant pool of gold coins to swim in, Scrooge McDuck-stylee. (Side note: doesn’t that sound like a painful idea to you? Because it always has to me.)
“An angst-ridden story in a contemporary setting about a vampire warrior falling in love with a human woman.”
OK, that’s a little bit more specific, but c’mon. (Also: goddamn, think of all those germs on all those coins. There is a reason why we call it “filthy rich.”)
What. She. Said.
Read it! Memorise it! Tattoo it all over your body!
I am so sick of people thinking that retelling a story is plagiarism. If that were so then we would have, at most, ten novels. All books about vampires, zombies, middle-aged English professors are not the same (well, okay, some of them are). It’s not about the story you tell so much as HOW YOU TELL IT. Why is that so difficult to understand?
Georgette Heyer did not plagiarise Jane Austen. David Eddings didn’t plagiarise J. R. R. Tolkien. Walter Mosley didn’t plagiarise Raymond Chandler. I did not plagiarise C. S. Lewis.
The next person who says to me, “Oh my God! Did you see that Certain Writer’s next book is set in a future world where you have to have your skin removed and replaced with carbon when you turn sixteen? That is just like Scott’s Uglies books! He should sue!” That person will get smacked. HARD.
There are bazillions of science fiction stories where something happens to you at a certain age. Logan’s Run anyone? And many more stories set after the apocalypse. There are even a fair few that deal with physical beauty and its enforcement. Like those two Twilight Zone episodes, “Number 12 Looks Just Like Me” and “Eye of the Beholder” (both based on short stories).
Watch them and read Scott’s books. The only thing they have in common is an idea. The characters, the mood, the texture of the writing, the way they makes you feel is very different. Scott paints an entire world with three-dimensional characters and relationships; those eps can only lightly sketch in world and characters. Given that they’re short and Scott’s books in the Uglies world add up to almost 400,000 words, that’s not surprising.
I can only assume that Ms. Henderson didn’t realize there’s an entire genre of urban fantasy faery books published in the 80s like Terri Windling’s Bordertown anthologies and the the novels of Emma Bull, Charles de Lint, Will Shetterly, Ellen Kushner, Midori Snyder and many others.
It is really bizarre to me that she would point to the Merry Gentry series as though it was the first to use faerie folklore in a contemporary setting.
Plagiarism happens when you steal someone else’s words. If that future world book with the carbon skin had the following opening: “The early summer sky was the color of cat vomit.” And featured characters called Telly, Shiy, and Daniel who ride hoverboards and wind up starting a revolution and are described with language that is very close to how Scott described Tally, Shay, and David and have very similar dialogue, well, then I might start to be a little more concerned.
But remember Scott’s opening sentence is already a riff on the opening of William Gibson’s Neuromancer: “The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel.” It’s a little science fiction joke/homage. Homage is not plagiarism either.
Lots of books echo the words of other books. On purpose. To bring them to mind so that the reader (if they recognise the reference) can remember the earlier book and enjoy the light it casts on the one they have in their hands. Literary echoes down well are cool.
Writers are influenced by the writers who went before them. Every single book they’ve read, movie they’ve seen, place they’ve been, conversation they’ve had creeps into their work. I know that if I hadn’t read Enid Blyton, Angela Carter, Charles Dickens, Isak Dinesen, Raymond Chandler, and Tanith Lee obsessively as a kid my writing would be very different. Without Flowers in the Attic and Alice in Wonderland I might not even be a writer.
Pretty must all writers borrow plots. Even when they’re not aware that that’s what they’re doing. I was not thinking of The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe when I wrote Magic or Madness. Borrowing a plot is NOT a bad thing. It’s what writers do. Shakespeare did it. Afterall, there aren’t that many plots: Stranger comes to town and changes everything! Person goes on a journey and changes themself! Two people fall in love but their family is against it! Two people meet, hate each other, then gradually realise they were meant to be together!
Think about telling a joke. Some people do it well. Some people are total shite at it. It’s not the joke—it’s the way it’s told.
Here’s a game for you. How many novels, movies or whatever can you think of that fit the following descriptions. The first two are lifted from the Smart Bitches:
A woman dares to make the mistake of evincing sexual desire and unconventionality, the punishment for which is death
Scrawny, gormless boy enjoys a series of wacky adventures and eventually triumphs over adversity
Teen girl discovers she is faery, not human, and becomes entangled with a handsome faery
Teen copes with drunk/drug-addicted/loser father/mother and learns own strength
Thus endeth the rant. I must now go back to my idea and plot stealing. Novels don’t write themselves you know.
3 Comments on The Non-infringability of Plot and/or Ideas, last added: 1/28/2008
I’m especially pleased to see Geraldine McCaughrean and Elizabeth Knox on that list. They’re two of the best writers in the world right now. Regardless of genre.
I’m a little disappointed by some of the whingeing I’ve seen from people who are upset that they’ve never heard of any of the Printz honorees. Isn’t that one of the points of literary awards? To draw our attention to books that might otherwise be overlooked? Every award jury is devoted to finding the best books they can that are eligible for their particular award. Eligibility is not determined by copies sold or size of publicity campaign. That’s a good thing!
One of the reasons there’s sometimes little overlap between the Printz and the National Book Award is that they have a different pool of eligible books. The National Book Award is restricted to books by US citizens. The Printz is restricted to books published in the US, thus this year there was an English winner (McCaughrean), a New Zealander (Knox), and an Australian (Judith Clarke). None of whose books were eligible for the National Book Award.
I like awards that surprise me. I’m thrilled that it looks like all the YA Awards this year are going to have different lists. It points to how rich and diverse our field is. The number of outstanding YA books being published goes up and up every year.
Here’s one thing that both the Printz and the National Book Award had in common this year—they both honored a book that is out-and-out, no-denying-it genre. Kathleen Duey’s Skin Hunger and A. M. Jenkins’s Repossessed and you can make a strong argument for Dreamhunter and Dreamquake as well. That makes this obsessive genre reader very happy indeed.
0 Comments on But I never heard of that book . . . as of 1/15/2008 1:25:00 PM
This vid exactly expresses my current feelings. Be warned that it involves intemperate language and violence:
Do not ask me how many times Microsoft Word has crashed on me today. Let’s just say I better not run into Bill Gates anytime soon.
The first person who tells me I can switch stupid Mr Clippy off gets punched. He is switched off. But when Word crashes it magically gets switched on again. Have I mentioned that I HATE Microsoft Word?
Oh and the first person who tells me to switch to Scrivener gets yelled at. I have switched, but I’m doing final rewrites, and have to keep my doc in smelly Word in order not to blow formatting etc. Going back to Word after Scrivener is breaking my brain. Waaaah!!!
Heh hem. Talk amongst yourselves. My deadline still needs vanquishing.
oh noes! violence against paperclips! ’tis a terrible thing. here, have a kitty to bring down the stress: http://tinyurl.com/2lr5e8
Rebecca said, on 12/17/2007 10:22:00 AM
um….may i tentatively suggest that, post-deadline, you test-run OpenOffice? I haven’t used it much, but i hear it’s awesome and that it’s compatible with the evil MicWord.
hahahahahahaha! at the video. that is hilarious. perhaps you could change the paper clip to the cat? it won’t really improve the situation, but i find that a cat asking me if i’m writing a letter is far less aggravating than a moronic little paperclip, for some reason….
Kelly McCullough said, on 12/17/2007 10:42:00 AM
clippy = evil. Jim Hines turned one of my covers into an anti-clippy LOL (http://jimhines.livejournal.com/327414.html) that you might appreciate at the moment. He did at great personal cost too–turning clippy back on and then not being able to get rid of the damn thing without manually editing his registry file.
Steve Buchheit said, on 12/17/2007 11:06:00 AM
If I don’t yell “I hate (explicative) microsoft” at least once a week, I don’t think I’m working hard enough.
margo said, on 12/17/2007 12:41:00 PM
Maybe you need more RAM? Or more waking hours in the day - computer troubles are legendary for only happening in times of stress.
Or - you know how they say if you just think about exercising for 20 minutes, it’s as good as actually exercising, maybe if you just think about lying in the sunshine for 20 minutes (there has to be some music you can use to evoke sunny thoughts) you will actually get some vitamin d.
I send my novel off last night, and I can now vouch for the fact that if you just keep turning up and hacking at the thing, you eventually get to the end.
Write like the cyclone (but not tracy)!
hillary! said, on 12/17/2007 1:03:00 PM
I would hate to be an author. I much prefer reading, appreciating, adoring and loving the final product. but I gotta agree that microsoft really does go Korazy when you are stressed. Does it sense the impending doom?!
y.manynames said, on 12/17/2007 1:43:00 PM
I am so sorry Word is being hateful and horrible to you. If it makes you feel better, I HATE it too, and frequently am forced to swear at in in all languages that I speak and a few that I have made up just for such occasions. The Sweetheart tells me “that is why Mac is better” and then I am forced to yell back “as soon as you convince my entire workplace to switch to Mac i would be happy to be all Macified!” Yes, I know that there is conversion software out there, but if getting windows to behave is a constant struggle for dominance, why would i complicate things further?
I saw on Libba Bray’s blog that you are also having nasty flu aside from homicidal thoughts about that stupid paperclip! I hope you feel better soon!
Edwina said, on 12/17/2007 4:29:00 PM
I am buying a damn mac as soon as possible.
MS is just … *screams*
Cameron said, on 12/17/2007 4:37:00 PM
Have you looked at Open Office? (ducks, as the breeze from a mistimed punch parts his hair)
MaryP said, on 12/17/2007 5:10:00 PM
oh, I am glad to see someone who rants at Word the way I do. I write in Wordperfect and only resort to the evil Word when I must attach a document for the rest of the writing world. And Mr. Clippy? A sadist. Commiserations.
hereandnow said, on 12/17/2007 6:45:00 PM
i have a hard copy of this anger-management lolcat stuck next to my work computer for similar instances of word rage.
Simon Sherlock said, on 12/18/2007 1:28:00 AM
I’d be interested in a blog entry of the tools you use and how. Cory Doctorow writes in some form of XML, which must be horrid yet Word hates large docs so do you have one doc per chapter or something?
Open Office is a good Word-alike but no idea what it like for large docs either. Scrivener looks good but complicated and just how good is the export to Word feature?
As a non-author/writer I find it fascinating to read how different authors approach their craft and what tools they use (and how).
emily said, on 12/18/2007 8:50:00 AM
i love macs, but they aren’t that much better with word-prossesing. i still haved to use word on it, and it crashes only when something is due tomorrow. i know that feeling.
kim said, on 12/18/2007 1:59:00 PM
what happened to my commet??!?!?!?!?
all i said was that you could switch off Mr. clippy *evil laugh*
Word sucks. very much so, especially for large docs. I hope you’re backing up very very often because, well. Word sucks.
I use wordperfect for my personal writing and it handles large docs effortlessly. Haven’t had a crash since moving to their x3 version. But I use Word at work, my girlfriend and her hubby use word Mac for their professional writing and it ain’t any prettier on that side of the fence.
Might I suggest, if you feel like you need to stick with word, you look into the latest version? It is hell on learning curve (so don’t even think about it now … is that a deadline I see before me?) because they’ve changed just about every thing about it, but the file format is much better, smaller, and more manageable for the computer (less choking on big files) and once you get used to it the new layout is pretty good. I do not know, however, if it is any better with long docs. Cause, you know. Word sucks.
Recent events have gotten me thinking once again on why I feel so strongly that authors should never respond to bad reviews. I think I’ve previously talked about it in terms of politeness, and of not looking bad, stuff like that.
But what I think I really mean is that most authors have more power than the reviewer. Often reviewers aren’t as well known as the person they’re reviewing. So when the disgruntled writer says, “What about my rights? Why can’t I respond?” The answer is that you can. But what will it gain you? Besides you already have a reply to your critics: your books. Your last book, your current book, your future books.
Why does an established writer with an army of books feel the need to go after a critic who happens to not like their latest book? They have a much bigger audience than that critic does. Many more people will read the book in question than the bad review. It’s madness.
Even when the author is brand new and has only one book what will they achieve by going after a critic? They’ll make themselves look small and petty minded and incapable of taking criticism. If you’re irked by a bad review respond by making your next book even better.
I have yet to see anything good come out of an author turning on a specific critic.
Last week I mentioned how much I loved Coe Booth’s Kendra. I have much to say about this book but let me start with the notion of realism. I am on the record as saying that I am not a fan. Yet Kendra is indisputably realist. It is set in the real world. There are no zombies, vampires, space ships or magic. So how can I say I don’t like realism when I love Kendra?
Last night I was called on my anti-realism stance. It turns out that when I say I don’t like realism I’m talking about a very specific kind of book. I don’t like most John Updike or Philip Roth. I disliked Joseph O’Neil’s Netherland. When I say I don’t like realism what I mean is that I don’t like unplotted books with protags who are naval-gazing bores. I need plot! I need texture! I need to care one way or another about the main characters! Something other than complete indifference.
I had strong reactions to all the characters in Kendra. Very strong. I wanted to kill Kendra’s mother. And sometimes her grandmother and father. But never Kendra. I worried about Kendra. At the end of the book I had a big ole cry for Kendra. Several weeks after finishing the book I’m still hoping Kendra’s doing okay and that things work out better with her mother. Colour me, cautiously optimistic.
Kendra’s set in the Bronx and Harlem in New York City. It’s the story of a girl who was raised by her grandmother because her mother, Renee, had her at the age of 14. Rather than give her life over to looking after Kendra she concentrates on getting educated and out of the projects. At the beginning of the book Renee graduates from her PhD program at Princeton. Kendra thinks this means Renee’s coming home. It doesn’t. Kendra’s desparate need for her mother’s love and approval and Renee’s ignoring of her is almost painful to read about. She does everything she can to keep her daughter at arms length. Her priority is her career, not her daughter. Did I mention that I wanted to kill her? In the meantime Kendra’s left with her overprotective grandmother who does not trust her at all. (Thus making me want to strangle her.) And occasionally her hapless father.
I will not tell more of the plot and characters. I want you to discover them yourselves.
What’s remarkable about Kendra other than its effortlessly clean and elegant prose is that you wind up understanding everyone in it no matter how much you want to strangle them. It’s also an astonishingly honest novel, rendering Kendra’s actions understandable even when she’s making mistakes. There’s a lot most of us will do to be loved. And that’s what this novel is about.
Highly highly recommended.
Because I have been talking about my love of Avatar quite a bit lately people have been asking me if I’m excited about the forthcoming live action version. I am not. One of the many things I adore about Avatar is how incredibly rich and complex the world of Avatar is. This is largely because it was [...]