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]

snort that's a good question. THough I have seen male authors utterly butcher writing women having them do/think things I couldn't imagine any woman doing.

yes everyone has different personalities. I agree with you guys more than the article. That said physiology also determines a lot of things and men are not wired for lots of long speeches. The emotions thing, that is probably more cultural.

[ozma914.livejournal.com]

I try to get inside a woman's head when I'm writing her, but I don't know how well I succeed -- men are terrible at getting inside women's heads. I've heard that romance readers can tell within a page whether the writer is male or female, without knowing the author's name.

You've hit on an interesting point of discussion. How many of the differences between men and women are physiological, and how many are cultural? There are certainly some areas in which you could argue *most* men differ from most women.

[cornerofmadness.livejournal.com]

sometimes it's very obvious that a female character is being written b y a man. Other times not.

The nature vs nurture argument is always an interesting one and usually , to me, it seems it's mostly a little of both

[ozma914.livejournal.com]

My girlfriend tells me I write like a woman ... I still haven't decided if it's a compliment or an insult. :-)

[cornerofmadness.livejournal.com]

snort