Writerly Ways
Dec. 9th, 2012 01:59 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cornerofmadnessA real one even. Prejudice in readership. Granted as a writer, there is nothing you can really DO about that but it's something to consider. We had a discussion in the author's list this week that was more than a little irritating. I knew that the prejudice existed out there but I never gave it much thought when I was choosing my author names (and I'm not about to rename myself now). I SHOULD have just gone with initials but I've seen people bitch about those too.
I will admit as a woman, I DO worry that I write men well. THere are definitely times you read something and you know without looking the author is writing cross gender but that's not as common as it once was so this prejudice of "I'll only read a male hero if a MAN wrote the book" and vice versa is infuriating. I don't think I make my males too female. Some men DO cry (witness the guy at the shelter who started crying a little last night when I did). Some women don't cry etc etc. It has never occured to me to NOT read a book because it has a female protagonist but a male author or vice versa.
I'm not even getting into the damned if you do, damned if you don't conundrum about race. I'm not sure there is a winning situation there.
Another topic to mull on is the idea of patterns in your writing. I rarely read two books back to back by the same author but I made an exception this week and instantly picked up on a pattern. Two different series and in both the aunt betrays the heroine and nearly gets her killed. It's like hmmmm. Do I have patterns? Yes. I've mentioned them before, the insane woman and the abused young man. Why do I have this pattern? No clue. But I have stories going back to the late 1980's and those two character types are in them. The novel I wrote in my junior-senior year in h.s. has them and the abused young man is abused by his insane sister (so it had incest, necrophilia and the young man had a parasite twin, partially visible in his chest. Yeah I've always been THIS messed up. The real question is why didn't the teacher send me to the counselor?)
It's just something to think about. I would hate to have my writing be predictable.
Speaking of which, for the holidays I'm willing to send a free PDF of my holiday story (m/m erotica, werewolf!) to a few people in exchange for a review on goodreads and/or amazon. Drop me line if you're interested. It's @ 8,400 words.
Yearly word count- okay I DID up it one last time
213169 / 215000 words. 99% done!
Soldiers of the Sun (yes I'm still working on that nano)-
54021 / 70000 words. 77% done!
I will admit as a woman, I DO worry that I write men well. THere are definitely times you read something and you know without looking the author is writing cross gender but that's not as common as it once was so this prejudice of "I'll only read a male hero if a MAN wrote the book" and vice versa is infuriating. I don't think I make my males too female. Some men DO cry (witness the guy at the shelter who started crying a little last night when I did). Some women don't cry etc etc. It has never occured to me to NOT read a book because it has a female protagonist but a male author or vice versa.
I'm not even getting into the damned if you do, damned if you don't conundrum about race. I'm not sure there is a winning situation there.
Another topic to mull on is the idea of patterns in your writing. I rarely read two books back to back by the same author but I made an exception this week and instantly picked up on a pattern. Two different series and in both the aunt betrays the heroine and nearly gets her killed. It's like hmmmm. Do I have patterns? Yes. I've mentioned them before, the insane woman and the abused young man. Why do I have this pattern? No clue. But I have stories going back to the late 1980's and those two character types are in them. The novel I wrote in my junior-senior year in h.s. has them and the abused young man is abused by his insane sister (so it had incest, necrophilia and the young man had a parasite twin, partially visible in his chest. Yeah I've always been THIS messed up. The real question is why didn't the teacher send me to the counselor?)
It's just something to think about. I would hate to have my writing be predictable.
Speaking of which, for the holidays I'm willing to send a free PDF of my holiday story (m/m erotica, werewolf!) to a few people in exchange for a review on goodreads and/or amazon. Drop me line if you're interested. It's @ 8,400 words.
Yearly word count- okay I DID up it one last time
Soldiers of the Sun (yes I'm still working on that nano)-
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2012-12-09 07:31 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-12-09 07:34 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-12-10 03:03 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-12-10 03:51 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-12-09 08:01 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-12-09 09:12 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-12-09 09:33 pm (UTC)Regarding patterns: yes, there are enough authors I read frequently that I notice patterns a lot. I find that I have to vary my reading to continue enjoying the work of the same author -- for example, after I read three or four Dean Koontz books in a row, the similarity starts to drive me mad, so I need to switch to other writers and come back to that one a year or two later. And reading the first book or two by a new writer is always a little bit exciting; what's going to happen next??? You don't know if they're the sort of person who ends the book by killing the hero's entire family and his dog, or if the characters will have a fluffy reunion and live happily on a little ranch somewhere. I love that uncertainty. By the time you get familiar with an author's work, it's like, oh yes, THIS is where the serial killer shows up, and HERE is the intrepid urchin that I was expecting ... I guess the authors we keep reading are the ones where we find the patterns familiar and fun, rather than stale and boring. And some authors are more repetitive than others.
I know that it's unavoidable to have patterns in our own work. One of my fandom friends once described the theme of my work as "finding home", which I think is completely accurate; she was talking about my fanfic, but I think that it applies just as well to my original fiction. Nearly everything I write is, on some level, about lost and lonely people finding home and family. And I guess I could deliberately write something that breaks the trend, but I just don't have any desire to do so.
Writing authentically: I know that some people judge books by the gender of their writers, but honestly, I think I'd much rather not have an author misrepresent them as something they're not in order to sell books. (Unless it's an unavoidable necessity, of course, like some female writers had to do in the early days of SF.) But for a writer to pretend to be male in order to present an "authentic gay male experience", or whatever -- there is something pretty skeevy about that, to me. I would much rather KNOW whether the writer is really an example of [x] group that's being written about (though it really doesn't matter much at all if the writer has done their research). As a mildly disabled person, for example, I like reading books about disabled protagonists and I don't really care whether the writer is disabled or not as long as she's done her research, but for the writer to pretend to be disabled to make disabled readers more likely to think she knows what she's talking about and buy her books -- that's pretty icky, I think.
no subject
Date: 2012-12-09 11:23 pm (UTC)Yes I almost always vary authors as much as possible (in fact I tend to try to read mystery then fantasy/uf/sf back and forth to help with the variety (though I'm glutting on mystery right now trying to read a bunch off my shelf to package up for mom for the holidays).
And you're right, there is a feeling of comfort and home in certain patterns. You know how to handle that. If you look through my original work, most of it is set in places I've lived (though I noticed I've skipped Florida, if only I could have skipped it in the real world. Though I do have an unfinished work set at my college. Man I really DO need to get back to that story!).
And I understand exactly where you're coming from which is why I didn't hide my sex. When I first published m/m erotica in the mid-90's, I HAD to be a male name. It was not an option. (I was Adrian something or other). Luckily the internet was just starting out in full force at that time so I didn't have to represent myself as male on social media.
They pointed out that the Lamdba awards for gay literature was trying to enforce in the last few years, the fact you had to be gay to qualify, something they've backed off of. I'm not a gay man (or a gay woman for that matter) but I do my research, I talk to my gay friends and I try to be as authentic as I can.
and on a side note, the novel I finished at the end of October is about a disabled man (I am also 30% disabled due to the hand damage) and I hope I did a good job with it.
no subject
Date: 2012-12-10 12:18 am (UTC)I think we all have things that pop up in our work often. Sometimes it is sort of random, sometimes it is stuff we are interested in.
no subject
Date: 2012-12-10 12:37 am (UTC)this is true as well
no subject
Date: 2012-12-10 11:55 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-12-10 05:06 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-12-10 04:21 am (UTC)Abused kid (could be male or female) - Check
Female character who is a figher (may or may not have been the abused child at one point) - Check
At least one shapechanger, of one sort or another - check
Magic always plays some part in the story - Check
Hurt/Comfort (physical, emotional, etc.) - check
no subject
Date: 2012-12-10 04:26 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-12-10 05:46 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-12-10 05:54 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-12-10 06:00 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-12-10 06:07 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-12-10 03:59 pm (UTC)Go, go, go!
no subject
Date: 2012-12-10 05:04 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-12-10 11:49 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-12-11 02:18 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-12-12 01:17 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-12-12 03:15 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-12-12 03:43 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-12-12 03:55 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-12-12 04:01 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-12-12 04:15 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-12-12 04:56 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-12-12 05:32 am (UTC)