Five Irritating Things About Other Writers (part three)
Here is the final installment of this series. This brings us to a total of fifteen irritating things about other writers (including Part One and Part Two)! So, feel free to leave a comment and enjoy: Thirteen-year-old kids who self-publish a book and think they are worthy of the same adoration as J. K. Rowling, Terry Pratchett, or any number of legitimately published individuals who have sold millions of copies of books. While I’m okay with people self-publishing, one should understand that you are not entitled to fair treatment. You chose to subvert the publishing process by doing it yourself. By doing so you’ve taken upon yourself the stigma that is involved with self-publishing. If you don’t like it, then don’t self-publish. You have to earn the respect of your prospective readers; readers are not entitled to respect you (which works for legitimately published writers too, but you get what I mean). Thirteen-year-old kids who did the same as above and then get really uppity with you when you point out the obvious and irritating flaws in their writing. This is part of the business. If you don’t like people throwing slams at your work, don’t write (talking fiction, of course, because I can do whatever the hell I want with my blog). This goes for all writers. If I review your book and I don’t like it, don’t argue with me about it. Being classy like some writers have been and just take the criticism. If you act like a petulant child it doesn’t look good on your part. Literary writers who rip on genre writers for writing drivel. This is almost exclusively in the realm of jealousy on their part. Get over it. People don’t want to read literary novels as much as they did in 1810. That’s just the way it is. Writers who talk more about themselves than the person they’re supposed to be interviewing. I’m not listening to your audio interview to listen to you babble out yourself in response to your own questions. I want to hear what this other person has to say. I know about you already; that’s why I’m listening to your podcast. I don’t know about the other person. So let them talk! That is all!
Five Irritating Things About Other Writers (part two)
Irritation, it seems, is not limited to five things. Here is another list of irritating things about other writers (plus Part One and Part Three). Enjoy: People who think that free publication is the same as being published in a professional magazine. It’s not. Stop pretending that your free podcast fiction piece that nobody paid you for and is being put out on the net to about thirty people is the same as someone like Jason Sanford selling a piece to Interzone. It’s not remotely the same. It’s nice that you’re building yourself up and trying to get publication credits, but editors care about as much as I do about non-paying markets: none. It’s worth very little, especially when placed next to someone of equal skill who has sold to better markets. (For the record, I am editor of a small magazine, but we’re a paying market. We don’t pay much, hardly anything, but it’s better than free. Writers with talent deserve to be paid for their work. You wouldn’t work for Taco Bell for free would you?) Writers who say stupid things like “science fiction is dead” or “I write to the market.” Science fiction isn’t dead and you can’t technically write to the market unless you happen to be incredibly good at predicting the future. Trends change so damn rapidly these days that most people just get lucky when they hit on a big thing. Maybe a few writers are capable of writing fast enough to write to the market, but that’s still stupid. At least to me it is… Infodumps in short stories. It’s a short story; there isn’t time for that sort of thing. People who think they are better than you because they wrote a book. Nothing wrong with being humble. Seriously. Try it. People who think that science fiction is exactly the same as fantasy, based upon the terms’ standard definitions and common understandings. The categories are held to be generally distinct for a lot of reasons, but mostly for marketing purposes. Generally speaking science fiction is spaceships, technology, and science, while fantasy is dragons, wizards, and magic. That’s speaking generally. There’s certainly something to be said about the blending of genres, as discussed in the comment to one of my recent posts, but the two are still distinct genres for the most part. Any thoughts?
Five Irritating Things About Other Writers (part one)
Sometimes in this thing called the “writing life” you can’t help but be annoyed by the things going on in the profession you wish to be a part of. Call it jealousy in some cases or just being a jerk, but as a budding writer I find the following things to be discouraging, frustrating, and downright irksome (plus Part Two and Part Three): People with less talent/skill getting published and recognized for mediocre work. Don’t get me wrong, I’m happy for people who have success, but it really puts a dampener on things when you’re trying your butt off just to get your foot in the door and the people whose work you’ve actually read and wondered “how the hell did this get published” are simply doing better than you. People with more talent/skill not succeeding. I know several people who are actually better writers than me. I’m enormously jealous of them because they have a grasp of the craft that I don’t. Most of them are much younger than me, haven’t been doing it very long, and generally have little self-esteem about it, which is tremendously unfortunate. So when I see these talented writers who have a gift, who are better than me, and they aren’t doing well or don’t know what to do, I’m put in a position where I want to help, but I’m also disheartened that they aren’t doing well when they’re trying. Vampires without fangs. Sorry, that should be illegal. Yes, we should pass a law that bans this practice. It’s literary rape and the poor vampires can’t defend themselves. I’m setting up a charity next week… People who try to explain away cliches by calling them something else. There’s a reason why it’s called a cliche. The Creationism people didn’t get away with changing their name to Intelligent Design. What makes you think you can get away with something similar? People who write science fiction, but refuse to acknowledge it (Margaret Atwood, I’m looking at you). If you wrote a science fiction novel, then that’s all there is to it. You wrote it. Accept it. Hell, even embrace it! Trying to pretend that your novel isn’t science fiction because it’s literary is about as intelligent as Bush trying to explain why OBGYNs aren’t allowed to share their love with women. There you have it! What about you? Any irksome things you can think of regarding other writers?
Peggy’s Qs and My As (about science fiction)
I’m not sure if Peggy of Biology in Science Fiction wanted professional science fiction writers. If so, then I guess she can ignore my answers. If not, then here are my answers to her questions for science fiction writers (if you’re a science person, go check out her questions for science writers): Why are you writing science fiction in particular? What does the science add?I think the primary reason I write science fiction first and fantasy second is that science fiction seems to grab at my imagination in a more profound way than fantasy (which isn’t meant to be a slight on fantasy). The reasons for this are also my reasons for not clinging to a particular religion, and also being rather critical of religion: I’m a rational/logical/non-pseudo-supernatural-whatsit person. You can argue that I’m not rational or logical, but I do spend more of my time looking at things from a viewpoint born out of what is known and provable, to a certain extent, rather than looking at stuff that is, to put it bluntly, bunk. I find things like quantum computers or astronauts losing $100,000 tool bags in space far more interesting on a more consistent basis than TV shows about ghost hunters or listening to people explain to me how dinosaurs and humans lived together.So, from this perspective science fiction offers me a way of thinking “realistically” about the future. Science fiction is the literature of the future, whether that future be distant or near. I like being able to write about what the world could be like in 20 years, or 50 years, if one thing were to show up, or a new technology were to become a part of traditional culture, etc. I like how science fiction offers me a lot of ways of dealing with what interests me, such as human reactions to the other (in science fiction this translates to human reactions to aliens, cyborgs, clones, robots, human replicas, etc.).Perhaps what science adds, when I make an effort to really use it (and I guess I use science all the time in science fiction, but when I talk about really using it I mean actually going out of my own little box to find new concepts to work with or trying to portray a better grasp of something I don’t know a lot about), is a sense of reality. The idea that this story I’m writing could actually happen. That’s important to science fiction I think: that the science make the stories and imagined futures seem real enough for the reader to actually consider the possibilities. The science makes the fiction stronger. Part of this is my personal distaste for regular fiction. I like things that aren’t currently real. I like spaceships and aliens and bizarre future technologies, etc. To me, the science simply makes the fiction stronger by allowing for more complex themes than are present in “traditional” fiction. You could argue with me on this if you wanted to, but “traditional” fiction cannot do what science fiction does. Period. Science fiction is unique because of its ability to do what other fictional forms cannot do. What is your relationship to science? Have you studied or worked in it, or do you just find it cool? Do you have a favorite field?I consider myself a science enthusiast. I don’t claim to know everything about science and am honest enough to say that I probably couldn’t explain without flailing my arms around like a moron how basic aspects of science work. I don’t remember how to do most of things I learned in chemistry and I couldn’t easily tell you the specifics of every step of cell division. But I love science, even when I don’t understand it (and that happens a lot, because I have no idea how quantum physics works, or what string theory really means, or how the heck a computer works, etc.). I consider myself relatively knowledgeable, though, regardless of my weaknesses. I’m not Mike Brotherton, who is a scientist, and I would never take up arms against him on any scientific issue, because I would lose horribly.That said, I have studied bits and pieces of science. I think I know a bit more about biology and evolution than I do about, say, complex subjects such as the eleven dimensions or string theory or quantum theory. I have a lot of sociology-type experience in college primarily because I wanted to be an evolutionary biologist before I decided literature and writing was more up my alley. I really find myself fascinated by primates and how close they are to us (and if you researched you’d be absolutely astonished at how intelligent and “human” they really are). Outside of that, I utilize Google on a regular basis to keep myself as knowledgeable as possible about subjects I don’t know very well (such as physics, astronomy, etc.–although these subjects are actually fascinating to me, so I find myself learning more and more as I go along).If I had to pick a favorite field, I’d have to say astronomy. While evolution and primatology are all hot topics for me, I find the recent news in science regarding exoplanets, asteroids, deep space satellites, supernovas, dark matter, etc. absolutely astonishing. Whoever said we weren’t still advancing our at an exponential rate was a complete moron, because the things we’re learning from space are mind boggling. Pretty soon someone is going to be able to prove that that whole panspermia thing is real…imagine that day, eh? How important is it to you that the science be right? What kind of resources do you use for accuracy?This really depends. First off, I’m willing to make exceptions about certain tropes in science fiction for the sake of a story. Faster-than-light travel is still impossible according to our good friend Einstein. But, if FTL isn’t possible and you don’t want to be one of those folks who uses wormholes and other loopholes, then you’re pretty much screwed if you
Romance Novels and the Elderly
I have a question: What is it with little old ladies and reading romance novels? My grandma reads them, this little old lady I met on the bus today reads them, and I know of many little old ladies that read them frequently. Is it because they are generally alone and still want a little romance? Or is there some other reason I don’t understand because I’m young?
Media Tie-ins: A Little More
A lot more discussion has been going on regarding media tie-ins, making me realize how big an issue this really is in the genre world. Lou Anders wrote a fascinating post here and in it he quoted someone else who likened the bias in genre fiction against media tie-ins to the bias of non-genre folks against genre. This has made me question my own bias towards media tie-ins. Am I no better than the literary academia who find joy in bashing us genre folks down for writing crap literature?And as I thought more about all of this I started to think about the wealth of literature I never got to read. You see, during high school I went through a period where I absolutely hated reading. Why? The same reason high school kids to this day hate reading: I was forced to read stuff I didn’t enjoy, that didn’t make reading fun or interesting, and because everything about literature revolved around standardized tests or annoying essays about stuff that was completely irrelevant, and still is, or annoying vocabulary tests of “what’s going on in the book” tests. None of this helped me become a person who loved books. For most of high school I absolutely hated reading. And that was anything. Only in freshman year did I actually read for fun, and those were media tie-ins such as Star Wars and Dragonlance, the former primarily because I was in love with SW through and through (still have some of my SW tie-in favorites, actually). But, then I was subjected to the horrors of our current educational system and that killed reading for me for several years–I got back into it when I started reading Star Wars yet again, and Dragonlance (and the works of Richard A. Knaak, who wrote for Dragonlance and then his own series). I wasn’t a reader before high school either, by the way, for the same reason.So, in a way, it was media tie-ins that made me a reader of science fiction and fantasy. I’ve always loved SF/F, because the movies were always awesome (mostly Star Wars, of course), but media tie-ins created my love for the literary form, where Star Wars novels allowed me to follow some of my favorite writers outside of the SW universe to original universes. And…that’s a good thing, right? If tie-ins drive us to read other things, what’s wrong with that? Nothing, but we’re not really talking about there.I’ll talk more about the crappy educational system in this country later. For now, I think I need to start realizing that I can’t be biased to media tie-ins as much as I used to be. I will always hate the Magic the Gathering stuff, because all of the ones I have read have been terrible, but I remember loving the SW stuff, so why shouldn’t I be able to pick those up again and maybe find new things to read?I think my biggest issue with SW is that it got too…I don’t know what to call it. I loved the stuff that followed ROTJ, showing us what happened to the Empire and our heroes, but then the whole thing lost me when they started delving into characters that just didn’t interest me (such as Han and Leia’s kids, who I couldn’t care less about…). But I can go back. I really can. And I think I will, some day.Additionally, this whole thing got me thinking about media tie-ins as something I should consider doing one day. When I was younger I wanted to write a Star Wars novel so bad that I would spend hours and hours figuring out what things I’d put into my story. I never write anything, but I wanted to. I don’t know when that desire left, but just in these last few days it has come back. In fact, here are the many shared universes I’d like to work in one day, and why: Star WarsThe obvious one. I love Star Wars. Always have. I don’t care much for the prequel stuff, mostly because it feels a bit tired and dull in comparison to the far future. And I’d like to work in the SW universe. I really would. I’m feeling a resurgence of love for the universe and all those childhood memories came flooding back, reminding me of why I wanted to be a part of the SW family. If I can, I’d like to write a SW novel, or two, or more. Star TrekI love SW more, but I do think there is a lot of fun stuff in the ST universe, particularly looking at it from a space opera perspective. I’d have a lot of fun showing the Federation at war and the politics involved. Imagine the complexity of such a complex situation as war within the Federation? Has it actually be done well? I mean the full political, social, and economical implications of interstellar war where allied worlds start fighting against one another? Sounds fun to me. X-men/MarvelI was in love with the cartoon show when I was a kid and wish all five seasons had been released on DVD, because I’d love to watch them again. Something about that gritty world of mutants was fascinating. I don’t know what I’d do with the X-men or any Marvel creations, but I know I’d like to do something with depth, drawing upon the social issues of a society where the minority are scared of the majority, and vice versa. WarhammerI’m not entirely sure why, but something about it makes me curious. It’d take a lot of research on my part to know what I’m writing about, etc., but I’d take a lot of joy in expanding on this militaristic war game’s universe. RiftsThe novels are dead, but dangit, this would be such a cool game to write for. Rifts is my favorite pen & paper RPG and there are so many fantastic stories to write about. It’s such an enormous “world”, with