Well it’s Banned Books Week– which I always love. The United States* has a long and illustrious history of hypocrisy (don’t take that as hate, with freedom of speech comes freedom to be a f@$king hypocrite– and freedom to entertain me). Our love of stamping things as unfit to read for sex, violence, religion, etc.– all of our favorite things as a people– is just one of the ways in which this manifests. Thanks, puritan colonists!

The Most Challenged list for last year is really interesting. For one, it’s awesome that Scary Stories keeps showing up. I bought the first one of those at the Book Fair at my middle school. I must’ve been 10 years old, and man I loved it. I still have nightmares about that damn scarecrow. Also unsurprising are the His Dark Materials books, since they got a resurge with the movie.

But seriously… how ridiculous.

And then there’s the list of Frequently Challenged or Banned Classics, which is always amusing. Some of the things on this one are extremely WTF. I don’t want to live in a world without The Great Gatsby or The Grapes of Wrath (two of my all time favorite American books/writers– when people from other countries ask me why America is the way it is, I direct them to those two). Also very pleased to see lots of Henry James there, since I’ve been reading a lot of his novellas and shorts in this little writing lull, and he makes me very happy.

And for a bit of speculative WTF: The Lord of the Rings. Wow. I used to read those books like once a year (I’m one of those nerds who actually read The Silmarillion– a few times. One of my collection of tattoos is in Quenya. No, seriously.) and I couldn’t remember a single bannable offense in them, so I did a little Google search. I came up with this awesome site from a high school library that gives the reasons for the challenges, and get this, it’s apparently satanic. Er, in the good and evil sense? Because that’s totally what it’s about. Or maybe it’s the pointy ears on the elves. That’s pretty demonic. Pretty bastards.

What an honor to be on these lists, reviled by crazies everywhere. What’s your favorite on them?

*I realize other countries do this too, by the way. But I’ve never lived anywhere else long enough to be allowed to talk about it.

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Now playing: Clara Schumann – Piano Sonata in G Minor: IV. Rondo
via FoxyTunes

Meme time.

Wednesday came and went, and no WIP post from me. You bet, because I don’t have a WIP. Nothing is IP at all over here, except that I’m reading a truckload of short stories– Grants Pass, Punk Fiction, and the proofreader ARC-type deal of Harvest Hill (next month from Graveside Tales, y’all!)– and playing video games. I called my parents last night and found that my dad’s life, now that he’s retired, is much the same. Alas, for me, it won’t last.

Then again, I didn’t teach high school for 30-something years. The man has earned it.

So I thought, how about a writing meme, for some group participation? We all talk about process kind of off the cuff, and like Brenton Tomlinson said this week, it’s different for everyone– and that’s what makes these fun.

1. Are you a “pantser” or a “plotter?”
Definitely a plotter, but that doesn’t mean I can’t be flexible. Sometimes Awesome Ideas strike in the middle of a book, and I’ll happily roll with them– my desk is still littered with the post-its on which I wrote down little moments of inspiration while working on The Resurrectionists, some of which changed things quite a lot.

2. Detailed character sketches or “their character will be revealed to me as a I write”?
Both. I often do detailed character sketches with the help of bio forms– ala an online RPG, since I did those for ages and learned a ton about characterization there– and questionnaires. Or sometimes I just make up my own. But the more I write a character the more weird little things come to me. I add to the sketches as I go and figure out new things. I wonder about this with other people, because character is always the first thing that comes for me.

3. Do you know your characters’ goals, motivations, and conflicts before you start writing or is that something else you discover only after you start writing?
I know– the plot comes from the characters, usually, though I’ll occasionally have a basic idea (”I want to write about American resurrection men. Everyone writes about the English ones!”) that dictates part of it as well.

4. Books on plotting – useful or harmful?
Can you believe I don’t own any? Er, yes, actually, you probably can. I imagine it’s obvious.

5. Are you a procrastinator or does the itch to write keep at you until you sit down and work?
I definitely have to disgorge things immediately, assuming I’m not working on something else, and always have since I was a kid. I wouldn’t sleep in high school for writing. I procrastinate about everything but fiction. (Though I still say some of my best work in grad school came from last minute research papers. It was the ones I worked on for months that sucked, somehow. Still, not the same thing.)

6. Do you write in short bursts of creative energy, or can you sit down and write for hours at a time?
I don’t get short bursts. I sometimes think that’d be more inspired if I did, but I guess the grass is always greener. I’m a slave– I sit down and write/edit for five hours straight without blinking.

7. Are you a morning or afternoon writer?
There aren’t many things I can honestly say I hate in the world, but at the top of that short list is morning. My brain doesn’t start up until 11am at the very, very earliest, I’ve never been able to eat until afternoon, and I am possibly the most unpleasant human being in the world before 9am. I prefer to write in the evenings, very late, but afternoon works for me these days too, because I make it.

8. Do you write with music/the noise of children/in a cafe or other public setting, or do you need complete silence to concentrate?
I don’t mind noise– the TV distracts me (my set-up is in a corner of the living room– it ought to be a dining room, but, er, it’s not), but only because I get interested when Anthony Bourdain is hanging out in Thailand. I don’t mind anything else, and if it gets to me, I just put on the old noise canceling headphones and go to. I do prefer to write with music, though. Which I guess is obvious. Right.

9. Computer or longhand? (or typewriter?)
Because I have issues with dialogue I like to write it out like a script (I even do stage directions… nerd!) first, then read it out loud to myself. A lot of my notebooks are full of this stuff. But when it comes to actually writing, I always do it on the computer. My typing is way faster.

10. Do you know the ending before you type Chapter One?
Aaron Polson talked about this once, and I’m in the camp that says I need to know my ending. It might change, like I said up in #1, but I definitely always know at least where I want the characters to end up in terms of development.

11. Does what’s selling in the market influence how and what you write?
Well, if there’s an anthology calling for submissions it can! But you know, even then I notice that if the idea’s going to come, it does it really fast. Sometimes I can sit on a call for subs and wish and hope, but it just never happens for me. I hope I’m wrong about this, I’ve only been at it for a little over a year now, but we shall see.

12. Editing – love it or hate it?
For my own stuff, I love editing it if it’s based on someone else’s comments. Editing frustrates the f#$k out of me when I’m on my own, because I have no perspective. But I really like getting fresh perspective, because then I feel like, hey, I can save this after all!

And to conclude, I am officially a member of the Aaron Polson Fan Club, begun by Cate Gardner this week. I’ve already started making converts of my friends (this means you, Dana), but I’m nowhere near done. Click his link up there in question 10, or just go check out The World in Rubber, Soft and Malleable directly. You’ll be converted too.

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Now playing: MGMT – Destrokk
via FoxyTunes

Today is my friend Keli’s birthday– which seems to me a perfect day to point out a recent new addition to the Sites I Stalk portion of this page. Keli’s the owner of and designer behind Colette Paperie. Keli also has a blog here for Colette Paperie where she shows her own handmade screenprinted journals, cards, calendars (I’m in love with the Wild West theme one), etc., and pimps other peoples’ creations from Etsy.

I don’t know how I know people who make awesome things and write awesome books, but it’s a pretty sweet life. But you know, writers like journals and sending cards and letters, so I thought that might be a helpful pimp. After all, the prettier the better, and her stuff is the prettiest.

That gave me Very Secret Diaries flashbacks– Legolas in particular. Still the prettiest! Go me!

Right. In other news, another of the books I read recently (or re-read, I guess, though it’s been an age) was Persuasion; I put away all the books I used for the last name meme except that one. I figured it was period-appropriate– give or take a decade or two– so it might make a fun break from writing. It did!

There’s this scene where Anne, the heroine, is talking to a friend, Harville, in a corner of some room during a little social gathering. They’re discussing who’s more constant in love, women or men. While they’re having this conversation, Wentworth– the man Anne was engaged to before, and still loves (this being the main plot)– is sitting at a desk just near them, ostensibly writing an unrelated letter.

Wentworth seems to react to various sentiments Anne expresses in a kind of general way. He drops his pen, he looks up and stops writing, etc. You know he’s listening, she knows he’s listening, and he knows that she knows he’s listening. You’ve known for at least the second half of the book that they’re still in love, but they haven’t said a word. And he’s sitting there scribbling away, driving all three of you crazy, because Jane Austen is so good that she makes something that simple into something perfect. (Also, what he ends up writing? Bad. Ass.)

It’s one of my favorite little scenes ever, I think. Yeah, yeah, not speculative, but that one I wrote was really just a screwed up romance, so it works. But I love stories with these scenes in them that make me go, “If I could just do that just once, I’d be happy forever.”

I need to make a list, but it’d be so long. Still, inspiration is great.

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Now playing: The Charlatans – Blackened Blue Eyes
via FoxyTunes

Arrr, me hearties! And that’s all the pirate I have in me today, sorry. Instead I have a long discussion of little literary import, in which I hope you’ll join me. Apologies ahead of time.

I’ve been really lax about mentioning the books I’ve been reading since I started the intense part of writing that book about two months ago. I read a ton, but the only new, pertinent one (as in, at all speculative) was Neal Stephenson’s Baroque Cycle– which stretched out over the better part of a year for me, just because it’s extremely long and convoluted and– oh. Uh, guess the word I want is Baroque actually.

It’s historical fiction, but it gets pretty fantastic at times thanks to the mad alchemy and occasional superhuman feats performed by characters here and there. It’s also hilarious and smart and beautifully written, with a cast of characters to die for, including Sir Isaac Newton, Gottfried von Leibniz, and even a crop of entirely fictional types.

I thought Quicksilver, the first one of the trilogy, was the best. It’s a lot shorter than the other two, and that’s sad in a lot of ways. But in another, it meant that it didn’t have several chapters/plot-lines that left me wondering what the hell the point was– which both of the other books did. Natural when you have a book that covers pretty much the entire known world at that strange and lovely period where the 17th century was becoming the 18th. But Stephenson is a man who can make Newton and Leibniz arguing metaphysics with Princess Caroline (of Ansbach, as in future Queen of England) as referee scarily fascinating, so even that isn’t cause for much complaint.

This leads me into an other issue, though. Amanda Pillar had an a thought-provoking post last month wherein she asked whether or not it’s okay to fictionalize real people. The example she gave was the Elizabeth movies. I’m vaguely uncomfortable with that kind of thing, too, when it claims to be authoritative– not for the populace at large, of course, who do not require my approval, but for myself. If it claims to be pure entertainment– like Showtime’s The Tudors– I’m a little more forgiving, at least when it’s a movie. After all, I love Amadeus for some of its frightful inaccuracies, but it’s not pretending to be a history. Was Jan Vermeer the creepy weirdo of The Girl with the Pearl Earring? Er, I wasn’t a Vermeer specialist, but I doubt it. Still, the movie was entertaining for what it was. But both of those are technically from someone else’s point of view.

What I really love, though: exploring historical personalities in an obviously fictional work (as in, could not be taken for history by the most credulous of readers) as incidental, or at least non-PoV characters. Manda gave the example of the Prince Regent popping up in Regency romances, which is one of my favorites. Always good for a laugh, Prinny! I’d also put Newton, Leibniz, et al. from The Baroque Cycle into that category. Susanna Clarke’s magical Victorian awesome, Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, has historical figures like Lord Byron and the Duke of Wellington playing parts– but never slips inside their head.

For me, there’s a line. For one, the immediately above examples are obviously not trying to make bad history of pure fiction, which is what this trend toward psychological history is doing. Yeah, I realize they’re not exactly academic publications– though it’s becoming more common, sadly– but I think it’s about how it’s presented. And for another, these people are long gone, along with their friends and immediate family. No one is going to be hurt by them being made into fiction, and no one is taking it seriously.

Unlike this book about the life of Richey Edwards “as he might have told it”, slated for 2011. I realize I really shouldn’t give this any more word of mouth, but Jesus Christ. If you don’t know who he* is, the only important thing is that he was in a band– my favorite band, the Manics– and he disappeared in 1995 and hasn’t been seen since. He was presumed dead officially last year.

Last year. As in, his family and friends are still very much alive and dealing. I try pretty hard not to be negative on this blog, but I gotta let this fly: I thought the Joe the Plumber book deal was upsetting, but no, it’s not. Maybe I’m just getting old and intolerant, but dude, regardless of what you think of Richey Edwards, that is in. poor. taste.

Arbitrary line in the sand? Newton and Byron in fantasy as the thin end of the wedge? Hey, maybe. But you have to draw a line somewhere, right? Do you?

*Picture of the dude with 4Real carved into his arm on my picspam meme– that was Richey.

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Now playing: Camille Saint-Saëns – Piano Concerto No. 2 in G Minor, Op. 22: I. Andante sostenuto
via FoxyTunes

The End.

So 122k and some change later, I’m done. Okay, okay, look, 20k of it will be gone by the time I get around to a second draft, minimum, and I won’t come and hunt those of you kind or foolish enough to volunteer to be beta readers down until I get that far, so never fear.

But it’s done. I finished The Resurrectionists. The book I’m going to try and sell some day, after many many more drafts, by saying, “I decided to murder the historical romance genre, and then bring it back to life to bite people. On the face.” (I said that not so long ago to some friends. Reenie said I should use it to sell the thing, alongside Cory’s suggestion that I use the thing about it being my 1820s Philadelphia, Paranormal-Flavored, Occasionally Gruesome, Triple Romance Clusterf@$k a few weeks ago. Seriously, why am I not a copywriter? Oh wait, that’s why.)

So hey, celebratory post. If I were to congratulate myself, I think it’d be with this card.

Seriously, thanks for cheering me on, y’all. I needed it on this one. Never had anything get away from me like this before, and it was a lot more fun than it should’ve been. So now, I’m going to listen to really loud music and play my MMO of choice for like a week straight. And also, drink.

Wait, I was already doing that last thing. Well hey, now I can start earlier in the day. Time’s a-wastin’.

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Now playing: Kasabian – Take Aim
via FoxyTunes