writerly ways

[cornerofmadness]

I had a really good idea for the writer’s blog this weekend, saw something in a magazine. Now I can’t remember the idea or even the magazine, and since the only one I’ve read recently is about green living/cooking I’m at a loss.

So I sat down and rested up with watching all the TV I taped this past week. The Glades was so critically acclaimed so I was looking forward to it. Instead, I was treated to utter crap but it gave me my topic for the week.

Your Audience Is Not Made Up Of Idiots

Write what you know: This old chestnut is either highly touted or reviled depending on which author/teacher you follow. Me, I rather revile it. I’d be stuck writing medical dramas, loveless forty-somthings and teaching angst. A better way of saying it would be, teach yourself what you want to write. There are just some things you can not hand wave over and think people won’t notice.

I was in a RPG once with a wanna be author who wanted to do historical romance but didn’t want to do research since it was boring. Needless to say several of us tried to talk her out of this. Historical fiction readers are notoriously up on their history. In The Glades you don’t even HAVE to be up on anything to know that a police detective can not put crime scene tape up to protect his golf ball on the green (was this a joke?), or know that a real detective wouldn’t say can’t the crime scene wait an hour, they aren’t getting deader, or that detectives don’t wear uniforms. There’s a divide between uniformed police men and detectives. Let’s not even get into the nurse offering to ‘give him something for pain but eh, go drink a six pack.’

There are times I honestly believe reviews are bought. The Glades seems to prove that one for me. You MUST have some authority in the things you are writing. If you make major mistakes, no one will take your work seriously. For example in In the Hands of the Gods I researched ancient Pompeii, city and culture, heavily and as a result, not only did it sell but an Italian reader commented she was surprised at the detail from a non-native. Now that’s the review you want.

In the cosplay erotica I’m failing to write, I know anime cons from experience. I feel confident I can make people believe this is a con. Now, in Splinters of Silver and Cold Iron, I do not know everything I need to about Ireland and it’s slang and admittedly I wrote it without looking into it. However, now that I’m in the final stretch, I’m working that out. Between 0_mother_0 & enemytosleep and a few others, I’m in contact with natives of Ireland and they’re helping me. I’ll go back and work on the slang and culture. I was worried that if I obsessed on getting it right in the first draft, I’d bog myself down. But I’m not sending it out to agents without doing my due diligence.

The same can be said about Machiavelli Moon. For those who don’t know, Mmoon was actually part of Writers’ Digest workshop in the magazine, so not only did a pro pull it apart but that was the first time they did it on the internet. When I was in granny’s basement this summer I found the emails about that. One was from a Lakota both praising some of what I had done with the Lakota in my story and pointing out my errors. I was so grateful. That’s one more thing I would like to do, contact the college on the rez and see if I can find someone who might want to help with that. I’d prefer to avoid ending up on Race!fail somewhere because while I did live and work in South Dakota on Pine Ridge, I am not Lakota and my cultural understanding isn’t perfect.

Write what you want to write but own it. Research it. Make it yours. If you’re sloppy, your readers will call you out, loudly, humiliatingly.

Speaking of my writing, it was the first week of class. I was swamped. I DID get out 2000 words most of it for Splinters of Silver because that was due out to the writers group. So I’ll spare you all the word count meters this time. I didn’t do much.