Poem One:

How It Really Happened

Mirror, mirror
on the wall,
fuck you
break and fall.

Dear old Cinders
still pretending?
Discard the shattered slippers.
Accept solitude never-ending.

Fairy godmother
where were you?
She cut her wrists.
The corpse turned blue.

Prince Charming,
you never came.
She died alone;
she hoped in vain.

The chariot turned, the hour struck.
She gave up. She had no luck.

Incidentally, feel free to mock my punctuation above. Oh, and, as if that wasn’t enough, meet poem number two which is far worse:

                                                                                                                     Cinderella’s Revenge

Once upon a time
The death hour chimes:

Mirror, mirror
on the wall,
fuck you
break and fall

Dear old Cinders
you are no longer pretending.
Discard the shattered slippers;
you’re accepting solitude never-ending.

The merry mice-men never came.
In solitude you wanted to die again
and again. A girl so strong and beautiful,
good and dutiful, is descending into sin.

Fairy godmother
Where are you?
She’s cutting their throats.
Look! Corpses are draining blue.

Prince Charming
you never came.
She’s taking bloody revenge;
they are dying in pain.

And so, the chariot turned, the hour struck.
The blade sunk into heart’s home.
She gave up. She had no luck.
But the sisters met their fate.

The scene is closed; the myth
is ore. Cinders never had a mate
but she won the game,
victorious in hate.

The End.
No Amend.

How’s that for some ludicrous writing? Ok, it’s definitely not quality, but it was fun. Sometimes as a writer, you need to stop taking yourself quite so seriously and just exercise the pen with some pointless fun. This stuff isn’t publishable – it’s rubbish. Sometimes rubbish serves its purpose too and you should never be ashamed to use parody as a way to channel the muse. You actually learn quite a lot about the process of serious writing by breaking it down with sarcasm.

And now, in honor of the holidays, here are two fun parodies. The first one is an Indian version of “The Twelve Days of Christmas” and the second offering is a grimmer tale mocking horror movies. Merry Christmas everybody! Now go and have some fun with your writing.

And the second, grimmer offering:

Recently, I’ve been working on a novel set in the DR Congo (Democratic Republic of the Congo for those non-Africa enthusiasts out there, you despicable creatures). I am in LOVE with the Congo, have been for years. I cannot, however, jump on a plane, ignore all the travel advisories, and jet down to the heart of the Ituri Province (jungle folks) to do a little quick research on Pneumonic Plague outbreaks. Now, don’t get me wrong, I will be going to the DR one day (saving up for it now), but I don’t want to put my story on hold. And so, I research. Research is great for obscure little things that everyday life doesn’t present (aka, exotic legal disputes, diseases, travel, or horrific characters – say a story such as Silence of the Lambs that concentrates on a criminally insane killer with a penchant for fava beans.) Research gets you places you can’t go, at least instantly and comfortably. And if you’re writing something that happened in the long lost past, research is the only way to go unless you just so happen to do an Einstein and get that whole time travel thing in your back pocket. Research can approach realism . . . with some major exceptions.

These major exceptions bring me back to the e-mail that started this little foray into creative writing theory. Some things are too general, too everyday life, to rely on research. Sadly, romance is one of them. Now, this gives me a few problems in some areas. Yes, yes, I’ve had relationships but my main character is married (and heading toward divorce.) Now, I’m not willing to hop into a marriage and go for a speedy divorce to get those emotions in my novel oh so realistic. Research is my handy little helper here, as are a few friends whose personal romances merge close enough to my characters’ life that I can experience the emotions second hand and make a stab at getting it just right.

But, for relationship feelings, the whole initial crush thing that goes into finding someone you rather fancy but either don’t have the nerve or the luck to approach, research will leave you wanting every time. This is one of those common life experiences that every member of your audience will know you screwed up and this is where youth and inexperience are going to get you every time. It’s like writing an entire novel centered around driving when you’ve never seen a car or felt the turbo engage careening down the interstate. And this is one of the major areas I always blow it in too because experience isn’t enough. Transcribing what you know and what you have felt, especially on something subtle and so human, isn’t enough. You’ve got to make every person in your audience, all of whom have the same knowledge that you do, FEEL it.

And that’s where my e-mail picked up, detailing what I felt would be an accurate and effective manner in which to approach conveying love (and lust) in your starry-eyed characters. Said e-mail has been altered a bit to keep the person’s privacy and story details secret, but to draw out what I said. I chose to really just copy over the last few paragraphs because I spent a lot of time talking about other aspects of the work and explaining the workshopping process. Here’s a slightly altered version of how I described creating authentic romantic feelings between two characters from my own perspective. As a note of explanation, the person had expressed concern that the relationship would become tawdry if sexualized, bringing in an aspect of semi-erotic into what is intended to be a pure and innocent recounting of first love. I am below referencing his previous concern and further explaining my own point to avoid confusion. The person also expressed concern that the relationship would go over-the-top if altered from its present format which evolved around friendship at the current chapter that I was referencing:

I’m not saying to over-sexualize the relationship between your two main characters. I wouldn’t submerge the characters in the fucked-up bacchanalia of an Ed Lee world or, God forbid, an Anita Blake world where someone has sex on every page (read Narcissus in Chains for an example of what not to do). While that can work well for certain characters and situations, I feel that it wouldn’t work well at all with the character aura you are creating. I agree that the relationship should not be built around dragon slaying and other accoutrements of stereotypical fantasy romance. Any over-the-top gesture evinces secret insincerity and the “facebook official” syndrome that highlights a relationship as a showpiece simulacrum and not something real. Can I have a round of applause for that second $10 word? Anyway back to the point, you do need some sexualization – BUT not too much. As a matter of fact, I’d say veer toward the more innocent forms of awkward first love and . . .can’t believe I’m going to say this . . .read Twilight. Yes, English majors make themselves feel superior by hating it because it’s popular and Stephanie Myer writes with all the aplomb of a dyslexic eight year old, but the novel (especially the first and the last) does a really good job capturing all the aspects of romantic feelings during the progression of the relationship. That, and people sparkle.

Another good author for you to check out that really captures the aura of innocent romance is Jane Austen. Check out her novel Pride and Prejudice in particular. L.M. Montgomery’s novella Kilmeny’s Orchard is a short and great read that does a wonderful job building a multifaceted and poignant romance too. Montgomery’s short story collection, The Doctor’s Sweetheart and Other Tales is another good one. I must add that all these recommendations (sans the last Twilight novel, Breaking Dawn) do not have any sex scenes but they do capture that subtextual aura without being overt and off-putting. And yes, I was a romance fan as a tween. Tell anyone and die.

Anyway, I’m sure I have a point in here somewhere if I can find it – flesh out all the aspects of your characters’ feelings. This doesn’t mean they have to TELL each other, just the reader. The readers are their confidants and they can say anything to the reader, the nervousness, the fear of rejection, the wondering if they are even ready for this step. I don’t think they should say anything to each other yet, at least not in my brutally honest way, but let the readers in on the developing emotions – all of them.

Also, as I said in the other e-mail, don’t have them refer to each other as “friends” because that instantly draws a boundary not meant to be crossed. Keep the relationship sweet and innocent, just let the readers know that there is an entire ocean of feeling. You already have many of the essential feelings of need well drawn – need of someone else to be complete, need of a soul companion, need of someone that is always there, someone who is sturdy when the world is shaking, etc.  (I think a need for caffeine should also be in there, but that’s just me – or maybe that’s why the world is shaking?) There is a distinctly different feeling between pure friendship and a romantic feeling toward a person which should include a large dollop of friendship feelings but there is a little extra something there which is damn difficult to create in a work of fiction and which I admit, I have great trouble conveying in my own.

Ok, and now back to the present and out of the witty world of my e-mail replies. Yes, I advocated research here, but not for the same purpose as previously described. You must have a personal understanding of such common place things as romantic and sexual feelings – but that doesn’t actually mean that you can write it, which is what I tried to express above. Sometimes it just helps to look at how other authors evoke such emotions and reactions. The authors you might reference depend on what type of aura you are edging toward. Here, this person was writing a more Young Adult oriented fantasy novel with a very pure aura. And so, yes, research, research, research. But sometimes research isn’t enough. To be an author you must not only research, but feel it as well. Sometimes you have to feel it before you research how to say it, as is what happened with my workshop protégé; sometimes you have to research first and feel later. But you must always feel because that’s what separates the men from the boys – the great novels from the grocery store hack. And yes, if you’re going to have Hannibal Lector in your novel, or have a jaunt off to the Congo, then you have to try and develop a feeling for the situation through imagination and study and simply let that be good enough. The everyday emotions of your characters, the relatable things we all go through, should come from personal feeling and thought and this, this atmosphere of real life, will carry the reader through all the fantastical research elements and make your reader fall in love with your world.

The point of this ramble (I’m sure there was one . . .) is that writing is an enigma that tugs at the corners of the mind and the throbbing edge of the heart. You just have to and who can say what little kid is in the process of being bitten by a lifelong bug? I’m well and truly bitten and now I want to incorporate the process of creating my novel, tentatively named Congo, into the generally disorganized steadily growing entity that is this blog. Reading is important, and I want to and will be talking about it, but now as I find my home in Grad school, I want to talk about writing too, and hey, I might even talk about other forms of writing as well such as technical writing (that’s what I’m trying to get a job in), workshop writing, and review writing. All forms of reading and writing are equally important and I will soon be finding an outlet for my fiction fetish here. Watch out you 10s of readers, more to come.

So, what’s changed in the world of fiction since I’ve been in the head spinning world of post-graduation jitters? Well, once again, Ebooks. And guess what, I’ve been bitten by the bug myself. Yes, the die-hard book collecting, library loving, bibliophile extraordinaire now has a Kindle. Previously, I vowed sternly that I would never fall prey to the seemingly impersonal feel of a computer operated apparatus over the texture, hue, weight, and smell of a book. Bookworms know the feeling. That lovely weight of a paperback jammed into a purse. Running a hand down a beloved page as you sit, reading it on the metro as the world whooshes by the windows unnoticed or, even better, spending the night curled around a cup of coffee, snoozing feline stretching in your lap, book opened to a titillating tale of betrayal all enmeshed in that dusty ink smell of a crackly yellow page. The yearly excitement of taking up a battered debit card and having a jaunt to Marlo’s on an adventure to buy yet another bookcase to indulge the guilty collecting pleasure. Yes, all staples of the secret life of bibliophiles.

But, as we all know, once you amass a certain amount of volumes (say, 1,000 for instance) the bank is busted, the bookcases crowded, and the house full. The previous solution was to either buy a new house or stop buying books. There are libraries too I suppose, but they don’t offer that euphoric feeling of ownership, nor do they house esoteric novels for the choosier reader.  Enter the Kindle, my new pride and joy. Yes, it doesn’t have that old world heft of a bound volume, or the pleasant aroma of old paper and fading ink, but it does have lots of space which has become essential for my reading habits. Even better, a lot of Ebooks are free, even over Amazon. Most classic novels are available for download sans charge since they have fallen into public domain. Readers of the 100 greatest can amass a huge collection effortlessly on a device that weights about one pound. Some reading circles even send around free Ebooks to participants and friends.

I found myself finishing an Anita Blake novel surprisingly fast and was ready for the next book in the series. Instead of having to wait weeks for a novel to show up, I was able to download it instantly and start back in the series immediately. Usually, when I order a novel in the mail by the time it shows up, patience (which is no virtue in my book) has long since flown and I’m dedicatedly cruising three or four other novels. I’m not going to postpone the reading pleasure for continuity’s sake, series reading is a disjointed and messy thing with me, and I’m certainly not going to ever become organized enough to buy novels in advance. Hence, instant download is my bag, baby as Austin Powers would say.

Of course, being a cantankerous hobbyist, I have my issues with the Kindle, and Ebooks in general. For those Ebooks that aren’t in public domain (i.e., that lovely little 12 book series I’ve got myself addicted to) an Ebook can cost just as much as a brand new paperback, sometimes even more. For those of us who used to love used book shopping where a little hardback gem was brought back home for under a dollar the $7.99-$10.99 per Ebook is a steep and painful price. Do I have to mention the current economics besieging just graduated college students or will you just give me instant sympathy (and preferably money?) A voracious reader is going to quickly run up some serious dollars with the Ebook craze. I remain hopeful that as the technology becomes more and more prevalent, this little price issue will be dealt with accordingly.

And, for those esoteric readers among us, not all books have been or will be converted over to digital format. The cozy mystery genre in particular seems to enjoy a large mass of troglodytes who remain averse to technology. Out-of-print goodies that we bookworms spend hours searching the coves of darkly lit and dank bookstores in the seedy sections off narrow downtown streets will remain locked away in such sequestered corners, only to be rescued by the brave and true.

Overall, horror stories and complaints aside, I’ve shifted away from my old fashioned desire to have the printed novel in my hand instead of the digitally re-mastered copy. The Kindle is lighter, enables me to carry around as many books as I like, lets me leave notes and highlight without permanently ruining a book, has a reading light always attached, and makes those wrist-hurting, ultra heavy Stephen King books painless. Yes, your upper arm strength will decrease, but in an advancing world where technology enables collectors to go wild, the Kindle is the only solution for someone who can never have too many books. So, with the Christmas season coming on, keep your bookworm pals in mind.

Here’s a little link to get you going in the world of the Kindle. Project Gutenberg has thousands of free Ebooks (which you can read on your laptop as well if you don’t have an Ereader):

http://www.gutenberg.org/

And, since I haven’t posted for a while, here’s a little shill.  My Epinions.com profile has loads of recommendations for potential reading adventures, that and I really need some more hits so do me a favor folks:

http://www.epinions.com/user-countess_eva/show_~View_Profile

I was prowling through the Internet a few weeks back and

Now, while I am personally willing to suspend my belief for some death-defying action stunts or some mystically creepy creatures that ooze along the pages of the best splatter-punk horror tales, I have to admit that many of the things Johnson dislikes I actually enjoy. Yes, I know they are fantastically unrealistic, and this is why I love them but even for me sometimes authors go a little too far.

For me though, going too far isn’t epitomized by unrealistic action sequences but rather by rampant illogicality. For instance, best example ever, is Patrice Kindle's Woman in the Wall tale of a wilting wallflower who decides to take refuge behind the plaster. She does this by slowly and surely building walls in front of walls and then voila she moves into these labyrinthine passages never to be seen again! Her family never seems to notice these night-time carpentry extravagances and, although the main character Anna is only eight, she masterfully
builds a world within a wall. Yeah, I’m buying it.

But! It gets better! Her oh-so-oblivious mother meets the man of her dreams but tells him she can’t marry him because her long-lost daughter just might be living behind the walls. Now, in all these years (the main character is a teenager before she reemerges from her secret dwelling) no one ever looked for her? No one ever noticed that food keeps disappearing? No one evernoticed the walls moving closer? Hello! See, now this is what I mean by going too far. Sure, you can give the characters super-human abilities. Sure they can throw knives, drive 115
backing out of the driveway, kill monsters effortlessly, and straighten their clothing after walking out of an explosion but if they start acting psychologically un-human, then I’m not even interested in reading further.

So, now that I’ve mocked my most-unbelievable book, it’s
your turn. What reading experience has left you yelling at the characters and staring in confusion at the page as the absurd takes over?

I discovered an interesting article on io9.com that describes modern society’s impulsive yearning toward apocalyptic fiction and cleverly crafted dystopias. I was instantly reminded of these terms from class and began to dig deeper.

Reading, as many bibliophiles secretly know, is a form of escapism similar to movies and video games in that it divorces the reader from reality. But is dystopia literature about escaping reality so much as about predicting reality? As io9’s article describes, readers run to fiction to escape the confusing world of economic downturn. Io9 sees this as a sort of escapism but into what? A darker reality? Or perhaps it’s a prediction of reality. In our modern post 9-11 world are we taking current signs and seeking their meanings, their interpretations, in futuristic literature? Are reader’s seeking to escape reality, or indulging their paranoias about society and hard times? Sci-fi doesn’t concern itself with the Jane Austen-esque fiction of yesteryear where it was all about personal character fulfillment, instead it typically serves as a social critique and warning. Are we then, as a modern audience, seeking the solutions to societal problems through reading? Is it reverse escapism?

Having a strong desire to escape my ever more confusion literary theory paper, I did a little bit of Internet surfing and discovered that authors and pets seem to go hand-in-hand.

For instance, check out the Pets and their Authors blog where the pets scoop the dirt about their authorial owners. Perhaps even more amusing is Entertainment Weekly’s post  comparing classical authors with lookalike animals. So, it looks like authors/readers are inseparable from their pets but no one seems to address the most important question: cats or dogs?

I recall once, way back in the mists of time when I actually had free time (yes, pre-college) when I was chit-chatting on the Amazon reviewer’s DB. It was a conglomeration of reviewers, authors, readers, and wannabe authors and together we hashed out this issue to conclude that, truly, cats are an author’s best friend.  I have to admit, this follows my obvious cat loving proclivity but, what do you think? As readers/authors/friends I’m threatening so that they will read this, do you think cats or dogs are an author’s best friend?

And yes, that cute photoshopped kitty in this post is mine, all mine!!!

While vanity presses have long existed, technology and the Internet have made self publishing an especially effortless endeavor. Places such as iUniverse, Lulu and other publishers put the entire publishing process in the hands of the authors.

Author Betty Dravis  describes the good and the bad side of self-publishing in her e-mail response:

“There was a time when I turned my nose up at self-publishing, but I wish people wouldn’t put a stigma on it. The main drawback to self-publishing is that the publishers don’t supply editors (only at exorbitant fees) so a lot of junk gets published…with too many errors and atrocious grammatical errors. As an Amazon reviewer, though, I have run across some gems that were self-published. So there is some good that comes from it. Then there are the authors who want to put a book together just ‘for family and friends.’ That’s where self-publishing is a blessing.

“I can advise self-published authors, and even those who publish with small ‘indies’ like me, to be prepared to do most of your own public relations work…and that is very hard, takes much time and keeps you from what you really love to do: write! One of the favorite lines that I ever wrote is this: ‘Writing a book is like sliding down a rainbow; marketing it is like trudging through a field of chewed bubblegum on a hot, sticky day.’ And that’s the truth of it!”

Most authors tend to share Betty’s cautious yet optimistic approach to the emerging field of self-publishing. As the New York Times article notes in a depressed economy where publishers are relying only a bestsellers only and are ignoring new authors and non-bestselling authors, self-publishing offers a new door into an old habitation.

Of course, some authors still remain dubious. Scott A. Johnson, prolific author of over 50 works, notes in an e-mail interview:

 “I have never, nor shall I ever, self-publish.  The problem with it is that anyone can do it.  If I so desired, and had the money to do so, I could publish a book of nothing but the phrase ‘I wrote this’ over and over again.  There is no measuring stick for self publishing.  Traditional publishing is the mark of a true professional.”

The debate rages on but regardless of emotions, it looks as though self-publishing is here to stay. So, what do you think about this new phenomenon? Is self-publishing an exciting new development that opens the industry doors to up-and-coming authors in a time of economic downturn? Is self-publishing the destruction of professional authorship? Is its wide acceptance of anything contrary to the ideals of quality set down and established by the industry?

At the same time I lost my library card. In Zombieland this would be called the double tap – I made sure that I was in deep trouble – twice! Luckily for me, I discovered an online website dedicated to the copying and free distribution of books that are now in the public domain (their copyright having expired, in other words.)

This site, Project Gutenberg, has actually been fairly controversial in media circles for some time since many people, mostly publishers, are opposed to making texts this easily accessible.

 While I am not a fan of e-books, I was however, quite grateful to the site. I can also see how students would appreciate access to reading materials through this website. It’s free, it doesn’t require any downloading (I just read mine in an html document), and it includes classic literature and old literature that is required reading in schools. Of course, it doesn’t have everything because its creators are still in the process of tediously copying all these books into digital formatting.

I still prefer reading books and feeling the paper and binding in my hands, but I like to know that Project Gutenberg is there when I need it. What do you think of Project Gutenberg and the entire e-book format? What about the publishing industry and their fear that this will dramatically impact their sales?