Writerly Ways

[cornerofmadness]

So I was cruising through Dreamspinner Press' open calls since I did decide to slow down and develop the vampire one into a longer piece. I thought no more short stories but let's be honest, I can't really do that. I just need to be more selective since if i want to build up the writing cred in this century (as opposed to what I'm bagging along from the last) I have to do SOME short stories.

Anyhow there in the open call was one for guardian spirits. Angel fic...eh. then it occured to me NOT all guardian spirits are angels. A dark curly head poked up into my subconscious as said 'set it in Pompeii with the Lares.' I said go away I'm working on ideas for springkink and nano. I was just looking to see what publishers wanted. These two gentlemen said WRITE US DAMN YOU.

Fine. But I don't have any of my Pompeii books here. It's all online they argue (they're right). Okay fine. You can't be named Tiberius. But it's like the number 3 most popular name of the time. Sigh. At least Pompeii got buried before the trinomic naming system took hold. I was not looking forward to typing out Tiberius Aelius Rufus all night.

which brings me to another post on writing I read this week where they discussed writing cross-gender (i.e. men writing women and women writing men) and the mistakes they make. The main contention was to make men very unemotional and very terse. I had a problem with that.

Yes men DO show emotion less and they DO talk less but the discussion sounded in favor of one step up from a robot. That said I KNOW I do have issues with making my men too girly on occasion and I've been called out on it. However, in reading a lot of male authors writing men they don't make them these alpha male say three words and never cry type either. So where is the balance? THoughts?

Personally I think one of the best ways to know if you got it right is to have a writers group that has both men and women. Usually these first readers will point out where you have work to do.

So this week's writing challenge, write a passage from the pov of the sex opposite your own.

I still have done next to no writing this week. Hell this week went by so fast I didn't even see it go. I did like a spare 900 words of orginal fiction. I'm going to have to scale back the fanfic writing with Nano looming. That's not a bad thing. I was getting a little burn out with fma_fic_contest so I'll take me a little break from that and I REALLY wish I hadn't picked so many springkink prompts. I feel obligated to do them since they're for someone else. Oh well, it's kink. They can be short.

115501 / 175000 words. 66% done!

Comments

[cornerofmadness.livejournal.com]

silly drunk sex is probably doable.

that and spelling Olivia that way. I don't like how Olivier looks..