I just finished Judith Walkowitz’s excellent City of Dreadful Delight; I have her Prostitution and Victorian London in the revolving TBR stack, as well as a bunch of Jack the Ripper books.
Can you tell what the next Bannon & Clare features?
Speaking of which, I received a missive from a possibly-disgruntled fan this morning, inquiring why I’m not writing more Jill Kismet/Danny Valentine/leather and gunfire books. I am unsure whether Possibly-Disgruntled is upset that my current works are fantasy, YA, and weird alt-historical-with-magic-things; I’ve taken off down the path of Writing Different Things all my life. I wasn’t precisely bored with Jill Kismet–I could have happily written her several different character/story arcs–but I do like the chance to stretch myself. Doorstop fantasy was one of my first loves, and I wrote two trunk-novels that were sword-and-sorcery before I managed to produce something that would possibly sell in a completely different vein. I love fantasy, but at the point in my writing, I wasn’t good enough to write it.
Of course, I am sure some reviewers will say I’m no good at it now, or that I’m no good at anything. Opinions are like rectums–everyone has one, and everyone pretends theirs does not occasionally discharge effluvium.
This reminds me of the end of the first Valentine book, where people who had expected a paranormal-romance (heavy on the romance, HEA required) were rather rudely shocked. it also reminds me of several reviewers who openly wished I would go back to writing paranormal romance, instead of those icky books with gore and ambiguity. There will always be someone unhappy with what a writer is producing; there will always be someone unhappy when a change appears on the horizon.
Never mind that the “change” may be merely cosmetic–I’m sure there are “hallmarks” in my work. The figure of the inhuman protector, for one; a certain ambiguity in sexual matters, for another. I’m aware of my narrative kinks, and have largely made my peace with the fact that certain things are going to crop up, time after time. The themes need variation, or I wouldn’t be playing them. Genre is a pretty loose definition anyway, it has landmarks that are meant to be gently tweaked. Classification often says more about the person doing the classifying than anything else.
Anyway.
Why am I writing in “different” genres? Sometimes the story that falls out of my head isn’t easily pigeonholed in my “usual” genre. Sometimes I get an idea and want to try something different. Sometimes my writing partner makes an offhand comment, or I’ll go see a movie or read a book, that leads me down a new path. Sometimes I’m just plain having fun with a new set of shiny toys. It doesn’t change my commitment to telling a story the best way I know how, or my commitment to making every story that leaves my care and ventures out into the wider world as prepared as I can possibly make it. It doesn’t change the fact that I’m sitting here, day after day, ass in chair and fingers on keyboard, doing the work that must be done.
Those are the important things as far as I’m concerned. And goddammit, I am going to keep experimenting and doing what makes me wriggle with delight in my chair. And now, as Steven Brust once recommended tacking up on your writing wall, I am going to tell you something COOL. It’s what a writer does.
God knows we have to get some giggles out of this slogging game.
Over and out.
Mirrored from Ragged Feathers.
Today, dear Reader, I entered the heart of darkness.
Yes, that’s right. I chaperoned a school field trip.
The Little Prince’s school went on a Dozer Day. We even had sunny weather, a rarity here in the mossy PNW.
The mental checklist went like this: Sunscreen? Check. Fresh first-aid kit? Check! Kerchief and two hankies? Check! Extra travel pak of tissues? Checkity-check check! Hip flask? … Hip flask?
OH DAMMIT.
Anyway. I was responsible for five kids, one of them my own lovely spawn. “Give me the troublemakers,” I told his teacher. “No. Seriously. It’ll be fine.”
And she did, and it was. “What, you think I was born yesterday? Put that back…The limit is two. Not three, four is right out…Oh, honey, he threw sand on you? Come on, let’s get you cleaned up…”
All went smoothly, the only hiccups being losing (and, thank God, finding) my cell phone (this was during the sand-flinging incident) and several pocket checks (“THE LIMIT IS TWO. Look, go hide those for other kids. Hide them so well nobody will ever find them.”) and one regrettable incident involving kids thinking it was a great idea to jump off huge tires stacked, I dunno, EIGHT FEET HIGH? (I put a quick stop to that, thankyouverymuch. The Little Prince’s teacher leaned over and said, “I had my doubts when you said to give you the troublemakers. I apologize.” Heh.)
I got told I was pretty, I got my hand held by every single kid in my little pod, and I got a hot dog for lunch. So it was pretty swell. We didn’t get to the driving of the big construction vehicles–the kids could sit/stand in front of the operator, and put their hands on the operator’s hands while the vehicle did its thing, it looked like a lot of fun. My little pod, instead, got to play in sandpiles taller than yours truly, in which were buried small “treasures” in plastic bags. There’s nothing like seeing a whole elementary-school’s worth of kids descend on a sandpile. It’s got to be one of the wonders of Nature.
Every child was exhausted and well and truly filthy by the time we boarded the buses to go back to school. Sitting on the bus, one of my pod–let’s call him Jerome–turned to me with a huge grin. “You know what {Little Prince’s name} said about you?”
“Nope. What?”
“He said you had a laser eye and you could make a kid behave just by looking at him.”
“Well.” I tried not to smile. “Do you think that’s true?”
“Oh yeah,” he said. “But you’re nice anyway. Look at the stickers I got!”
I tell you, of all the times today I had to keep a straight face, that one was the hardest.
I returned every child I was responsible for in original factory condition, and got to take the Little Prince home early. He had to go lie down, he was so exhausted. No doubt we will be finding sand all over the house (and my laser eye) for days to come. But it was totally worth it.
Even if next time, I am goddamn well taking the hip flask…
Mirrored from Ragged Feathers.
I’m not a writer because it’s easy; screw those who think it is. I’m not a writer because I want to live some sort of privileged life, or because I want to be rich, or even because it’s the only thing I can do.
I’m a writer because it’s challenging and I’m good at it. I’m a writer because I want to make things, as Doris Egan has said.
So let’s stop the faux blue collar anti-elitism, and let’s stop talking about the number of words a writer creates a day as some sort of measure of how hard they work. (Harry Connolly)
He’s got a point.
I actually do measure most writing days by wordcount, for a variety of reasons. Chief among them is the fact that it works for me; it short-circuits a number of nasty little voices in my head. Wordcount goals, for me, say “They don’t have to be good words. You can go back and chop and slice and make them pretty later. Get them out now, worry about the quality later.” (No doubt a number of people would snarkily remark that such a view is most likely what’s wrong with my hack work, but oh well.) The wordcount goals get me sitting down, nailed to the chair until I get past “priming the pump” and get into the state that is most conducive to creation. It’s a skill, not magic, and the more I cultivate the habit of writing every day the more magic actually happens. I got (and still get) a lot of flak for saying “writers write, do it every day“, but so what? I truly believe the consistent habit is what will get your writing where it needs to be, and it is your best friend if you want to get published–or just get better. Wordcount goals are a tool, and they may not work for some writers. They may work, but not well enough, for others. The critical thing is to do the goddamn work, and do it consistently.
Connolly’s post is more about the snideness directed at creatives lately, but I’m not going to talk about that. Because frothing at the mouth is tres unattractive on me, and it’s all I would be capable of doing if I started talking about how snitty people get sometimes when a writer is not giving exactly what said snitty person thinks they’re entitled to receive. Instead, I’m just going to wander over into the corner and set up my wordcount for the day.
Over and out.
Mirrored from Ragged Feathers.
“Mewling quim“, Mr. Whedon? Really? You’re proud of that?
Look, I like your work, and I even contributed to the Nothing But Red anthology. I was glad to, that post was awesome.
But I don’t think you’re the friend to feminism you’re seen as, and there’s only so far that post of yours will take me.
* Buffy sleeps with Angel…and he loses his soul. Sure, it’s because he’s “happy.” But as yet another instance of a teenage girl’s sexuality turning a boy into a monster, well, it’s narrative ground that’s been tread before.
* Just like the equation drawn in a few episodes of Faith’s aggressive sexuality (Xander, anyone?) being a component of her moral ambiguity and ease of shaking off murder.
* Mal calls Inara a whore, several times, in overt and covert ways…in a society where Companions are supposed to be so “respectable” that the ship wouldn’t be allowed to land without one on board.
* River Tam is so powerful…that her “neurons are stripped,” she’s “crazy” and uncontrollable, and her brother–and Mal–have to save her, over and over and over again.
* Zoe’s physically satisfactory (one presumes) relationship with Wash is cut short by his death, but her (second fiddle and faithful lieutenant) relationship with Mal is kept intact.
And don’t even get me started on the titillation factor of Willow and Tara. This is by no means an exhaustive list of questionable narrative choices when it comes to portraying women, and Whedon’s by no means the only one who does it. I suppose one could blame Hollywood at large–after all, it’s holy writ that any woman who possesses actual sexuality in a studio film must either be horribly disfigured/dead in some fashion (if unrepentant) or brought/remain under the control of a male figure by the end of the film (if properly repentant). (The one exception I’ve seen was The Last Seduction, and that wasn’t a box-office success despite being an incredible movie.) I understand that when one is soaking in a misogynist culture, it’s hard not to obey the tropes and assumptions coded into the very base of said culture.
All culminating in being “proud” of basically calling a woman a cunt. In a PG-13 film. Proud.
My ambivalence just ratcheted up a notch. Not to mention my disappointment.
Mirrored from Ragged Feathers.
I’d forgotten what it was like to get up every hour or two during the night with a small mammal desperately needing one’s help.
Well, to be honest, I hadn’t quite. One doesn’t forget things like that, they remain burned into one’s brain and nervous system. It makes for interesting awakenings–one finds oneself halfway across the room, clothes on and reflexes primed, before becoming fully conscious. Or one surfaces in the backyard, ankle-deep in dew-wet grass, blinking and holding a leash.
After a while, you might as well just stay up and write.
Anyway. Yesterday evening, thanks in no little part to Code Boy, who pitched in for sick-animal care so I could fall into the story and stay there for a long while, I finished the first draft of the second Bannon & Clare book, The Red Plague Affair. It starts with poison, sewage, and cardiac arrest; it ends with whistling. In between is plague, blood, murder, Mending, a mass grave, and the Moriarty to Clare’s Sherlock (in an homage-y sort of way). And more!
It’s resting safely with my editor, agent, and faithful trusty beta reader.And now I’m in the snapback phase, which means I should be working on the second in the Tales of Beauty and Madness…
…but instead, I’m doing laundry, ministering to the sick mammals, and thinking it would be awesome if I could kill some pixels, and kill ‘em good. WoW probably isn’t the best use of my time today, but dammit, I need a break.
Over and out.
Mirrored from Ragged Feathers.
A lot of people replied to my last post. It’s nice to know that wanting to be alone is something that I’m, well, not alone in.
A significant percentage of people suggested the loo as someplace to go to be alone. I hate to break it to you, but after two toddlers and various pets, peeing alone is not the norm.
The kids are older now, but there were years of having bodily functions witnessed by wide-eyed little humans. First of all, what do you do when you’re the sole childcare provider and you know that leaving the little darlings alone for even thirty seconds of emptying one’s bladder means you may come back to a burning house, a limb lopped off, or something else equally unpleasant? (You think I jest? I do not, sir or madam. Toddlers are ambulatory chaos machines.) Plus, they were fascinated, and that fascination only grew as they became potty-trained. The Little Prince, a decade old now, still enjoys making various bodily noises and waiting for reactions.
I guess he always will.
But that’s nothing compared to cats. For some reason, every cat I have ever owned will decide–for months–that they must witness the Small Room Ritual. Various strategies will be employed, from yowling and stretching a paw under the door, to sliding between my ankles as I step inside, or streaking through the rapidly-closing door and scolding me if a whisker gets caught. With that done, the cat will invariably sit and observe with bright-eyed interest. The kind of interest they give to, for example, small wriggling bits of prey.
If nothing else inspires performance anxiety, being observed thusly by a clawed and fanged animal who will probably be the first to eat your face should you expire alone and unmourned will. And then, they suddenly quit doing it, leaving one even uneasier…until the next time they decide they absolutely must witness said performance again. In case, you know, it’s changed or something? I don’t know.
And…that’s nothing, compared to the dog. Miss B’s cold wet nose is practically attached to my knees all day, and God help both of us should I dare to close the door while performing an evacuation of any type. She has, after much moaning, learned to leave me alone while showering–mostly, I suspect, because she hates being dragged into the shower and washed, because afterward she can’t smell herself and it’s like being blind, OH THE DRAMA AND THE HEADSHAKING AND THE RACING AROUND THE HOUSE RUBBING ON THINGS. But the five to ten minutes spent trying to convince her not to cram herself through the door just can’t be spent when I have, so to speak, business to conduct. And the forlorn wailing outside the door should I manage to sneak into the Small Ritual Room by myself has to be heard to be believed.
I think she’s afraid the flush might drag me with it, and she’ll have to herd the cat with nobody watching for the rest of the day.
Anyway. Peeing alone rarely happens, and the loo is really not the sanctuary it could be. Although, with the way things are, I should probably be grateful there’s no goddamn squirrel in my shower, peering at me while I try to…ummm, yeah.
But that’s another blog post.
Mirrored from Ragged Feathers.
I’m not Garbo, but still.
I’m talking about the urge I get every so often to lock up my house and retreat to its recesses, snail in a shell, turtle hunching down. Not go out unless it’s absolutely unavoidable (and with the Internet, why bother to leave at all?) and to withdraw from even written interaction for a while. To take a bath in solitude.
Well, except for the cat. And the dog. And the kids. Pure solitude’s impossible to find unless one retreats to a mountaintop or something.
I read Anthony Storr’s Solitude a while ago, during the fallout from the divorce. It was good to see, in print, a discussion and celebration of being alone that didn’t presuppose one’s crazy to want to immure oneself behind a wall or two for a while.
I wonder, when this mood strikes me, if it’s somehow part of the constellation of weirdness that makes me, or just that I can indulge it because I have the luxury of working from home.
Anyway…I suppose I’m asking: what do you do, dear Reader, when you “just vant to be alone”?
Mirrored from Ragged Feathers.
Crossposted to the Deadline Dames. Check us out!
As sometimes happens, I got nothin’ for a blog post, even though it’s my day here at the Dames. I would have some braincycles, really I would, except for the cold my loving son brought home from elementary school and the line edits due back tomorrow, as well as the lack of sleep and a few other things. (Like, Dinosaur-Sized Personal Things.)
It’s enough to make a Rex Velvet out of anyone.
Often, people will think writing is a glamorous or lazy job. Sometimes I wish they could see me in my Jedi bathrobe, unwashed and hacking up a lung, Kleenex scattered through the living room and my bloodshot eyes burning with hellfire as I try to crunch through work to meet a deadline. (Or, you know, think up a subject for a blog post while my brain is line-edited sludge and my immune system is desperately imitating the Charge of the Light Brigade.) There are nice things about my morning commute being a shamble to the living room, sure–but I also don’t get to walk away from my work. It follows me, peeking out of cracks and corners, even when I’m staggering down the hall for bed after turning in a 12-hour day of line edits. This shit is not for the faint of heart or stomach.
Which is a somewhat roundabout way of saying I’m digging deep into my cortex for a Three Things post. Here are three things nobody told me about working from home:
1. Solitude is your friend. Until it’s not. I need large chunks of alone time. I can function without them, but it’s not pretty. But even I sometimes go grocery shopping just so I can see the checkout lady and remind myself I’m human. (The kids can rarely help me with that one, because I’ve raised them–they don’t have much of a basis for comparison. They tend to think I’m normal, poor things. Their therapy bills are gonna be HUGE. Anyway.) Paradoxically, my job involves a great deal of observing people so I can build characters effectively, and further requires that I interact with fans, editors, editorial assistants, Production and Marketing staff, and fellow authors (just to mention a few) without sounding like a troglodyte or a crackhead squirrel-feeding mouthbreather.
Which I manage with varying degrees of success, all told, but those interpersonal skills do tend to rust when you spend long hours moving around the people inside your head and making the words sit straight on the page. Exercising them enough to not (overly) embarrass yourself (much) in public is just another thing to add to the ever-growing to-do list.
2. Still gotta get dressed. Mostly. To call the dress code here at Office Saintcrow “relaxed” is, well, an understatement. I joke about work not requiring the wearing of pants, but really, getting the pattern of your office chair’s upholstery tattooed on your nethers isn’t a good time. (Don’t ask.) And when I have correspondence to deal with, I’ve found it goes a lot better if I’m showered and at least reasonably attired. It’s like the old advice about standing up and smiling when you’re on an important phone call–it makes you sound brighter and better. Sometimes I’ll dress up to write a particular scene, and there was one book (I am not going to say which one) that I had to go through the copyedits while wearing heels and eyeliner just to remind myself that I was a professional, dammit, and I was not going to start throwing things.
3. Save somewhere, spend somewhere else. So I don’t have the associated costs of a morning commute–petrol, wear and tear on the car, wear and tear on the nerves–but my caffeine habit consumes the GNP of a small island nation. Not to mention my book habit, because getting them delivered is easy, right? What I save on postage costs through email I spend on high-speed Internet and various apps and software. Sometimes working at home is cheaper, sometimes it’s not. I finally broke down and got an accountant to do my taxes, since she knew how to compute home-office stuff, and frankly she saves me from needing a boatload of Xanax and ulcer medication every April. See? It’s like trying to fit eight pounds of Silly Putty into a five-pound burlap sack–no matter how you smash it, something’s going to bulge out somewhere.
…that was probably not my best simile, but what the hell. The cold medication is kicking in, the line edits were slaughtered early this morning and will be sent off on time tomorrow, both dog and cat are snoring in their respective corners, and I may be able to steal a half-hour’s worth of rest before some damn thing else lands in my inbox.
Still, I’m not bitching. This wordmonkey gig is a pretty sweet deal.
Even if you do (really, trust me on this) have to wear pants.
(Most of the time.)
Mirrored from Ragged Feathers.
From my email inbox:
Dear ms. St. Crow,
I just finished reading Reckoning and was extremely curious about why Dru decided to not choose between Graves or Chritophe, I’m a little perplexed since I was in suspense about which boy would win Dru’s heart the whole series, and found myself heart broken when she decided not to choose. The reason I’m dumbfounded is that the cover says it’s the last book of the series, a unique way to end the story, but the question has been bugging me a lot.
Thank you for your time.
*name redacted* (from email)
And my reply:
Hello *name redacted*,
Thank you for reading my books.
I get this question a lot. My answer is: why does Dru have to choose, why does she have to “end up” with someone? A girl is not defined by who she is “with” or who she “ends up” with. Graves and Christophe are both pretty terrible boyfriend choices, for different reasons–Graves is broken, both by abuse and by Sergej, and no matter how much Dru loves him she can’t fix him. He has to fix himself. And Christophe is far too adult (despite being djamphir) for her, not to mention he doesn’t give her the information she needs to make informed choices. Dru may eventually grow further and decide to engage with Christophe on that level, but at the moment she has made the decision to put herself first. Which is something I think a lot of young girls may not do.
A girl or a woman is not defined by who she’s dating. A girl or a woman defines herself, and it would have been unconscionable for me to make Dru’s story all about who she wants to kiss next. Dru’s story was about growing up and surviving, and while kissing may be a (sometimes pleasant) part of that, it isn’t the only or even the most important thing about finding out who you are and, as her Gran would say, “where ya iron’s at.”
I am sorry you were heartbroken. Dru was too, and since I suffer with my characters, so was I. But Dru is stronger than that–she survived Sergej, which means little things like deciding not to date anyone for a while kind of lose their sting. In the end, I think she made the right choice–to take care of herself first. That’s a difficult choice for any young woman, and some of us never master the trick of it.
I hope this helps, and thank you again for reading,
Lili St. Crow
I still believe with everything in me that Reckoning‘s ending was the correct one. (I do not think I shall ever be convinced otherwise.) My private titled for Reckoning was actually Sacrifice, because it was the book where Dru made the decision to give up her own life if she had to (when she tells Dibs to go ahead with the transfusion) to buy her friends just a little more time. For me, that will always be the correct title–and Dru choosing as she did, the right ending.
Over and out.
Mirrored from Ragged Feathers.
Dear Homeless Man Digging In Church Dustbin,
I know we surprised each other, me out for a run, you looking for…whatever it is you were looking for. However, I am not the police, and though I am sorry to have frightened you, I am not sorry for the filthy name I called you when you chucked a bit of wood at me and my dog. I am further not sorry she decided to lunge for you, though you were never in any danger since the leash was wrapped around my waist and you were, after all, inside a metal dustbin.
Should I see you again, I hope we can ignore each other. I can’t speak for my dog, though. She remembers things.
Sincerely,
Me
Mirrored from Ragged Feathers.
Profile
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif?v=92.1)
lilithsaintcrow- Lili Saintcrow
- Ragged Feathers
Syndicate
