On fighting perfectionism by daring to be bad

Posted on July 5, 2012 by epbeaumont

We all get by with a little help from our friends.

I touched on the subject of raving perfectionism yesterday, but this new blogger nailed it: A-Plus Student Syndrome. I laughed, because I recognized my own neurotic thoughts. It has to be perfect, it has to be comprehensive, it has to be the first, last, and only word on the subject…

No, it doesn’t.

This weekend, Devin Harnois and I worked on blurbs together, since we were both on deadline for story releases for early July. Her blurb was too long, mine too short–completely uncharacteristic. So we edited each other. The result: both Dinosaurs and Whiskey and Erika and the Vampire have descriptions worthier of the story contents than the first by the respective (burnt-out) authors.

We kept up our enthusiasm by quoting Dean Wesley Smith: “Dare to be bad!” 

Because, really, perfectionism only produces stasis. Risk-taking moves us forward. Part of what inspired my push this weekend (aside from the deadline) was this post by Kristine Kathryn Rusch, on perfectionism, which every writer should read, especially the A-plus students among us.

Oh yes, and both of these bloggers, whom we call (half in jest and half in reverence)  Sensei Dean and Guru Kris, are well worth adding to your weekly reading. Their collective on-line work is an MFA and MBA all rolled into one neat package. (Kris Rusch’s  Freelancer’s Survival Guide is a classic.)

On the subject of which, check out Kris Rusch’s post yesterday on the training of writers.  From the perspective of a veteran writer, it captures the essence of the writing life: you get better by writing and writing lots.

Repeat after me:

  • Butt in chair.
  • Fingers on keyboard.
  • Brain downloading.

Ready, set, write!

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The Independence Day post I wasn’t going to write

Posted on July 4, 2012 by epbeaumont

I am not a fan of holiday posts, but this gorgeous piece by Aker (Futuristically Ancient) took me on a literary and musical journey through the flip side of the Fourth of July and made me think about why I wasn’t going to write this post.

If you haven’t discovered her blog, take this opportunity. Meanwhile, some thoughts about Independence Day from the perspective of a working artist:

The more history I read, the less enthusiasm I feel for the American rhetoric and ritual called “patriotic.” In particular, I’m skeptical about the amount of attention given to superstars of stage, screen, and page, who “did it on their own.” Not only my own experience but history itself–artistic, literary, and scientific history as well as political/social–tells me that independence and cooperation play with and against each other in dynamic tension.

Think jazz.

The quintessential American music, yes? “Our” great export to the world, along with all its children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren, not to mention its cousins throughout the African Diaspora. Music that will take you out of yourself, into the bosom of the Universe, pretty much the same way that any sacred music will.

Not what they were saying a hundred years ago; the coming of the cakewalk to St. Petersburg was read by Andrei Bely as a sign of the Apocalypse.

Let’s cut to the chase: “American” is usually read as “white”–though three hundred years ago it meant something quite different. Actually, three hundred years ago, “American” (a term used by Europeans) had the same sense as “Asian,” i.e. “person from one of several thousand cultures in a really big continent that we don’t know much about.”

And therefore, obviously, a monolithic category of aliens.

I was interested to read on the Racebending blog that Katniss Everdeen, the protagonist of Hunger Games, reads as Afro-Euro-Native-Appalachian. Certainly that’s how she appeared to the many fellow-readers with whom I discussed the trilogy, many of whom were heartened to see someone like themselves in a heroic role. Yet the casting call for the film adaptation was White-only.

Oh yeah, we’re “post-racial” all right, the same way as we’re “color-blind.” The same way that we’re past injustice, in spite of the yawning disparities of health, wealth, and education that grow wider by the day.

The most patriotic (native-land-loving) thing that an American writer can do is to engage with the dramatic conflict inherent in our collective past-and-present.  Not coincidentally, it’s also the course most likely to lead to great art.

Dig down, and American history is as full of light and shadow, transcendence and terror, as Russian or Chinese or French or English history. Yet it’s an article of faith that America (United States of) is so exceptional that it need neither heed nor read the past. It was years before I had an inkling of what it might mean to be an “American writer,” and years yet again until I could write out of it. And that artistic confidence was not born only out of strength-in-solitude, but conversations with a score of friends and artistic colleagues struggling with the same contradictions. Not to mention the ongoing apprenticeship with the dead, which helps us to understand our True Ancestors.

We are all Hyphenated Americans. We are all People With a Past. And we’re in this together, whether as comrades or as adversaries.

***

Special thanks to TruantPony and BrainSister for the conversations that spurred this post. (Not to mention many fascinating chats about The Hunger Games, to which we will be returning in future posts.)

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Doing the Beta Bop: Nothing better than a friend with a big knife

Posted on July 4, 2012 by epbeaumont

There is a rich literature on procrastination and writing… well, it’s simple. We put off writing, because it means abandoning that perfect vision in our heads, in favor of butt in chair,  fingers on keyboard, brain downloading, which produces something short of perfection.

Editing lets us take up the quest for the grail once more, with the proviso that what we produced in the course of writing is raw material. That’s a scary thought, given that even the most improvisational of us try to give it a shape, or have faith that it will assume a shape.

You have no idea what that shape might be, until you write it, let it sit, re-read it, let three or four of your closest beta-reading buddies read it. And that shape is elusive: it comes and goes in the mist. I’ve caught glimpses of the “true shape” of Erika and the Vampire three or four times since I finished the story in late May 2011. In the course of figuring that out, it expanded from a mere 5000 words to more than twice that length, and then back down to around 10,000 words. Among other things, I realized that I had summarized the scary stuff.

Then the singularly ruthless Devin Harnois told me, “This opening scene is too long. Here’s where the action starts.”

If you have friends like this, treasure them even if you don’t agree with them.

And if you have friends who are willing to take a knife to your work in tracking mode, and you trust their editorial instincts, take them up on it. A good editor is more precious than rubies. (That, and rubies cannot edit your manuscript.)

In fact, a number of twentieth-century literary reputations were made by tough-minded editors. F. Scott Fitzgerald comes to mind (Gatsby wouldn’t have quite so sparkling or precise without considerable editorial dialogue), but there’s also Virginia Woolf, who was writer and editor in the same package. She wrote nineteenth-century novels in first draft and carved twentieth-century novels out of the bulk, a process not unlike film editing.

I write this in trepidation because people with knives generally aren’t your friends. But if you find that friend who’s willing to wield a blade on your brainchild, and improves it in so doing (because your gut will tell you that it’s better, the honest reader-brain that looks over your shoulder after you’ve let the thing sit long enough to stop looking like your own work) then stick with that friend, feed that friend, and wield the knife yourself when asked.

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Publication announcement! and a birthday party! and the NaNoPanel!

Posted on July 3, 2012 by epbeaumont

Sunday 1 July was the first anniversary of this blog. Coincidentally, it’s also the birthday of my patron saint, George Sand.

I would have done a nice thoughtful backward-glance post, except that I was caught up in the press of business–a good thing all around. Here’s the roundup of news:

  • I will be on the National Novel Writing Month panel this Friday at CONvergence, in Bloomington, Minnesota. It’s 9:30am, but I’m in good company: good writing buddies and beta readers Devin Harnois and Becca Patterson will be joining me and some other local NaNoWriMo enthusiasts.
  • Erika and the Vampire is being published by Glass Knife Press and is available right now on Amazon, and on other distributors (Barnes and Noble, Smashwords) shortly.
  • Max and the Ghost and Annie Brown and the Superhero Blues are scheduled for release in mid-July. One more revision and they’ll both be ready. Nothing like a deadline to keep procrastination at bay–and editing is even easier to put off than writing. (More on that in a subsequent post.) Look for excerpts in upcoming Six Sentence Sunday!
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Six Sentence Sunday, 1 July 2012 (Erika and the Vampire)

Posted on July 1, 2012 by epbeaumont

Erika stared–no, you couldn’t stare down one of those, but she wouldn’t look away. “If you can’t run, then make them think the fight’s not worth it.” And her mother would reproach her for finding herself in stupid danger, but who knew that Annabelle would whistle for that?

Or whatever the signal had been.

Cold iron–no, that was for ghosts–silver, salt and metal mesh, likewise; ah, the stake through the heart. Who knew if that would work, but there were pokers in the dainty tiled fireplace downstairs. 

Six Sentence Sunday excerpts in June come from the most recent draft of Erika and the Vampire, currently being revised for release in July 2012.

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Genre Trouble: Twilight and the New Vampire Story

Posted on June 29, 2012 by epbeaumont

The good news about being a professional writer is that all sorts of oddball things become tax deductible: book purchases (market research), movie tickets (review essays), office supplies, the new computer (equipment).

The bad news: I have to read books that I don’t necessarily enjoy, in order to understand what’s going on in the Zeitgeist.

Twilight was one such read. I’ll be frank: my first introduction was a parody, the video mashup Buffy versus Edward.   It was November 2009, and me and about 12 of my closest NaNoPosse were at a write-in at the Coffee Gallery in the Open Book literary center. Devin Harnois was laughing over something at halftime and she said, “Hey,  you’ve got to see this.”

So I watched the video, which is an inspired masterpiece of remix, throwing into high relief the conflict between two very different notions of gender roles and romance.

And then an on-line buddy said, “You’re writing fantasy and you haven’t read Twilight? You gotta.”

The Zeitgeist had spoken.

I went to my local library and asked for the book. “It’s homework,” I said. “I’m a fantasy writer and I don’t think I’m going to be able to write vampires without knowing this.”

He said, “You’ll need context.”

Unspoken: and some relief from the nonsense. I’d already read Dracula, and some of its contemporary texts, including Carmilla, which interestingly showed up in an anthology of nineteenth-and-twentieth-century literature by and about lesbians. (Big surprise: vampires and other supernatural critters play out contemporary anxieties about sex and sexuality, gender roles, and class.)

Librarians, by the way, are literary superheroes. Did I mention that?

As for Twilight, I’ll be candid: I did not enjoy it.

No, I didn’t enjoy it. Not the zombified pacing,  not the weird passivity and banality of the viewpoint character, not the coldness (literal coldness, like ice or marble) of the putative romantic interest, not the dubious relationship dynamics …

… oh yes, and the author never, ever convinced me of the attraction between the two. And it’s sick and twisted, and abusive. This blogger nails why Twilight is dangerous, not just stupid: it’s a handbook for predators.

Then my Brain Sister sent me this article from Bitch Magazine. Halfway through a read-through of the comments, I got the germ of the story that turned into Erika and the Vampire: what does the girl with a crush on a vampire bad boy look like from the point of view of her sensible friend?

I discover that I’m not the only one who’s working this angle. There’s Team Human by Justine Larbalestier and Sara Rees Brennan. You can read the first chapter here. I laughed all the way through that excerpt and promptly went to pre-order it. (You can expect a review here when I’m done.)

Coincidentally, we’re both issuing our vampire stories in July 2012. Theirs is funny; mine is grim. Both depend upon a seismic shift in the vampire story as a genre, precipitated by Twilight as a mass phenomenon. The Big One might have made a splash, but alongside is riding a whole cohort of paranormal romance tales that conflate folkloric monsters with the brooding-Byronic-bad-boy of category romance.

Twilight has spawned other brainchildren, including the regrettable Fifty Shades of Gray. (We’ll be taking this on in later posts, but for the moment let it be said: I have no objection to erotic writing, but this work is neither erotic nor is it writing. No work that claims to be erotica should use the locution “down there.”)

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Doing the Beta Bop (Beta Reader Interviews): TruantPony, part 3 (Sex and the Single Story)

Posted on June 28, 2012 by epbeaumont

The Beta Bop is a social dance, and in this week’s three-part series of interviews, I’ll be talking with one of my favorite dance partners, TruantPony. Part 1, How You Do What You Do (including brief bio) is here, and Part 2, The Art and Science, is here.

Truant has beta-read The Shape-shifter’s Tale,  Erika and the Vampire, Max and the Ghost, Annie Brown and the Superhero Blues, and most recently, The Necromancer and the Barbarian: A Love Story, to which she contributed key insights on the immunology of resurrection.

***

E. P. Beaumont:  Some people get really irritated when you try to unpack the deep axioms of a work of fiction. They’re like “shut up, it’s just entertainment.” What’s your reply to that as a beta-reader?

TruantPony: No, it’s not. Fiction has the ability to enter your thoughts and influence your mind. Be very careful as a reader, because when you’re reading fiction, you are WILLINGLY suspending your disbelief and part of that means accepting the words/ideas put forth by the author. Language is powerful, and as with all things that are powerful, it can be misused.

The way I see it, writers put forth all their effort to make their story believable in fiction, to convince you of the reality of their story, the world they’re building. I definitely wouldn’t take it lightly, because I’ve found some really deplorable ideas in fiction before.

E. P. Beaumont:  What are the most deplorable of those ideas? Any speculations as to why they’re so popular?

TruantPony: Some of them include putting women ‘in their place’. And that place is properly as a secondary side character who NEEDS to be rescued by a strong alpha male.

Why is it so popular? I have no clue. It sells, maybe the industry wants to keep it that way, perhaps the industry likes to promote certain agendas? I think that’s my paranoia talking…

I do think sexism does still exist, though, and that’s NOT paranoia talking, that’s real experience.

I’ve also been told that as a wife, I should be ‘obedient and listen to my husband no matter what’. Yes, here in America. By Americans.

In fact, the other day, I was helping out at my family’s business, and when I explained that my father cooks, and my mother takes care of the business and basically runs the show, the customer told me as a last parting word- “That’s nice, but don’t learn too much!” Was it a joke? Because if so, it wasn’t funny to me.

E. P. Beaumont:  Sex roles and talents are not the same thing.

(sensing the abyss, and proceeding nonetheless) In contemporary romance, many writers are experimenting with BDSM themes, but invariably conflating them with traditional sex roles. Any comments on that?

TruantPony: Boring. The real spice is the non-traditional sex roles. Speaking as a biologist- sex is genetically determined. Sex roles, however are largely dictated by society and the way women and men are ‘expected’ to act is a social construct.

That’s what I believe.

E. P. Beaumont:  It’s interesting that the people who claim loudly that traditional sex roles are ‘what evolution intended’ don’t tend to have real scientific training.

TruantPony: That kind of pisses me off. I’ve had debates with such idiots, complete with papers and invariably they’ll flounce off in a huff. What evolution intended is that we pass on our genes, as many as possible, in the most effective way. Evolution doesn’t ‘intend’ anything but that.

E. P. Beaumont:  I knew practicing geneticists when I was in college and graduate school, and they seemed perpetually bemused by the complexity of it all.

TruantPony: It’s very very complex, genetics. And we still don’t understand all of it. Same with the brain. I wonder if in my lifetime, we’ll figure it all out? I’m inclined to believe that there is still a lot of mystery to it, and that complete understanding is that unreachable horizon.

***

Preview of Coming Attractions:

In August, TruantPony, my beta-reader BrainSister and I are going to take on Fifty Shades of Gray, romance-writer Genre Fascism, BDSM and traditional sex roles, and other Juicy Topics of TEH SEXEH. As artists and passionate believers in free speech, we do not endorse book burning, so it is in a strictly platonic manner that we are going to flame that sucker but good. Stay tuned.

While you’re waiting for us to have a go at this Moby-Dick-scaled sitting duck, have a look at our colleague Jennifer Armintrout who, in the course of her critical labors, suffered the Slings and Arrows of Outraged Fandom in the form of a Goodreads pile-on that fell most heavily not upon herself, but upon a writer with a similar name. (To which your Humble Author appends No Comment, in all caps).

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Doing the Beta Bop (Beta Reader Interviews): TruantPony, part 2 (The Art and Science of the Beta)

Posted on June 27, 2012 by epbeaumont

The Beta Bop is a social dance, and in this week’s three-part series of interviews, I’ll be talking with one of my favorite dance partners, TruantPony. Part 1, How You Do What You Do (including brief bio) is here.

Truant has beta-read The Shape-shifter’s Tale,  Erika and the Vampire, Max and the Ghost, Annie Brown and the Superhero Blues, and most recently, The Necromancer and the Barbarian: A Love Story, to which she contributed key insights on the immunology of resurrection.

***

E. P. Beaumont:  Your academic training is in the sciences. How does this affect the way that you read, both as a beta-reader and for pleasure?

TruantPony: Yes, it does. I pay attention to details, and read critically, because part of my training includes being able to decipher papers and journals from a variety of fields, not to mention, my academic training included a lot of problem solving. It’s hard for me to let go and just read without getting really engaged with the material. When something is written well, I feel like I’m just flying though the reading.

E. P. Beaumont:  And that ease of reading is information, too.

TruantPony: Yes. I can definitely tell what parts the writer was uncomfortable writing. It’s really kind of a weird feeling.

E. P. Beaumont:  What are the surface clues?

TruantPony: The tone and pace suddenly changes, it becomes stilted, feels stagnant, there’s no momentum, no forward movement. I have a feel for it about oh, 90% of the time, and when I ask, the writer will generally be surprised. I think astute readers can pick up things like this pretty easily.

E. P. Beaumont:  There’s a lot of information conveyed in the rhythm, just as in spoken language.

TruantPony: Yes, absolutely. Writing is very much like language or song in that everyone has a specific pace.

E. P. Beaumont:  In your experience, how long does it take to develop a beta-reading relationship? You mentioned starting out with reviewing, and then correspondence…

TruantPony: Well, generally I follow with reviews, and since they’re pretty long and detailed, the writer usually likes to talk about it- what worked, what didn’t work, and regular correspondence, maybe talk about plot points. I don’t really know, I just kind of fell into it, and there are several writers I follow regularly, and beta reading just came naturally from that.

E. P. Beaumont:  What’s the difference between the way you beta-read fan fiction and original fiction?

TruantPony: There’s not much of a difference. Fanfiction is more of a review ‘after the fact’, so I don’t really point out things they could have done in the chapter, rather what worked and what didn’t work for me as a reader. I think that’s the only difference.

E. P. Beaumont:  I’ve enjoyed reading your reviews on ffnet. You have a keen eye for gender and culture issues. What’s your take on how these issues play out in fanfic, where writers are playing in somebody else’s world?

TruantPony: This…is a touchy topic for me. First of all, I think some fanfic writers really do a disrespect to the source material by taking the original characters and making them (aside from looks) unrecognizable from their true canon characterization. To me, these characters have a life and voice of their own, and to subtend that to your own agenda is not being respectful or true to the original work.

Secondly, since romance is a popular topic, or I should say, THE most popular topic to write, instead of exploring culture or gender boundaries, which is interesting to me, most people just want to shove characters into the role of ‘romantic hero/heroine’. There’s also a variety of self-insert, wish fulfillment fics too, that really make me cringe to read.

Thirdly, a lot of fanfic writers dabble in dangerous territory, for example, depicting rape as a vehicle for romance, fics about abuse, etc. I think what they forget is writing is kind of like public exposure! What they write, is a mirror for what they think, and sometimes I get the uncomfortable feeling that they’re revealing more to me than they (and I) ever wanted to know.

E. P. Beaumont:  All of those are sins that can be (and are) committed by original fiction. Case in point: Twilight.

TruantPony: Yes. I didn’t like how the pro-life agenda, romantic hero tropes, allusions to creationism were shoved at me through that book.

***

Yes, we’re going there. Tomorrow, we take on romance tropes and critical thinking, with Part 3, Sex and the Single Story, along with a Previous of Coming Attractions.

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Doing the Beta Bop (Beta Reader Interviews): TruantPony, part 1 (How You Do What You Do)

Posted on June 26, 2012 by epbeaumont

The Beta Bop is a social dance, and in this week’s three-part series of interviews, I’ll be talking with one of my favorite dance partners, TruantPony.

While we haven’t yet met in person, we’ve spent many delightful hours on chat taking on the first-generation immigrant experience, varieties of American racism, dysfunctional romance tropes in fan-fiction, and mainstream American culture’s ambivalent relationship with scientific reasoning, not to mention howling in laughter at anatomical solecisms in bad romance and erotica (both fan-fictional and original). Truant has beta-read The Shape-shifter’s Tale,  Erika and the Vampire, Max and the Ghost, Annie Brown and the Superhero Blues, and most recently, The Necromancer and the Barbarian: A Love Story, to which she contributed key insights on the immunology of resurrection.

She’s a valued member of my Pop Culture Posse and an accomplished reviewer on fanfiction.net, when she’s not adding new finds to her tumblr blog. She writes fanfic herself, mostly in the Bleach and Harry Potter fandoms.  Her Bleach fanfic is so good that it got me to check out the source material. She is also the person who told me all about whale falls and the Filter Bubble. A Renaissance Person and Woman of Parts, as well as a rollicking conversational partner. I learn things every time I talk to her, and this interview is no exception.

She’s also a huge fan of Biomedical Ephemera, which features vintage medical images, frequently of a disturbing nature. She pops in from time to time to leave perspicacious comments on the tumblr fanfic blog So Bad It Hurts (English is Crying in a Corner)   Check it out with the usual warning that Tumblr is a space-time singularity.

And now… on to the interview! Continue reading →

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Six Sentence Sunday, 24 June 2012 (Erika and the Vampire)

Posted on June 24, 2012 by epbeaumont

The football players made faces at Erika and her friends, but didn’t say anything. A good day, when they didn’t say anything, when fag and freak and the n-word didn’t follow them like the greasy wash of a barge leaking toxic waste. The well-dressed missionary boys and girls from the Church of the New Day stood at the edges of the lunchroom, watching as they always watched. 

Erika and Max and Chloe got their lunches from their backpacks and sat down. Backs to the wall, watching the entrances and exits. 

“So Annabelle’s hanging with the vamps,” Chloe said.

Six Sentence Sunday excerpts in June come from the most recent draft of Erika and the Vampire, currently being revised for release in July 2012.

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