PC Awards

Several years ago, the the Sad Puppies drama burst upon the scene.  Lots of folks had very strong opinions on what happened, but it did appear to raise an issue of whether or not awards were being given out based on content or on political correctness.  It's hard to find a non-biased article on Sad Puppies, so that's something you'll just have to research for yourself.

All that said, I've found some merit in the contention from the puppies.  Yes, there have been people previously excluded from writer awards, and it hindered their growth in the industry.  That's a horrible episode from the past, and it's gladly behind us.  However, that doesn't mean you rectify past injustice with present injustice.  That leads to tribal divisions, which only serve to polarize the industry.

Readers want good stories, not PC nonsense shoved down their throats.  If you want to write that stuff, go ahead and test it in the market.  Who knows - maybe there's a wider audience out there than I understand.  However, to exclude that which has garnered reader interest because it doesn't contain the correct shibboleths simply shows elitism.  It reminds me of the Oscar's of today - awards are given out to films nobody went to see because they were for arteests instead of normal people.  The average moviegoer laughs at the Oscar's today, and the average reader laughs at many of the awards in our industry.  These are atrsy-fartsy books that no one reads but that many people claim to so they can gain PC credibility.   It's puerile and makes authors laughing stocks in normal society.

A few awards have apparently cropped up recently to try and correct for the stupidity that has infected most "mainstream" awards, but how long till the uber-woke infiltrate those organizations too?  That's where the frustration and challenge lie - the PC won't leave folks alone, but rather expect them to pay fealty to the PC gods.  In other words, they tell us to go find our own space after invading ours, and when we create that new space, they invade that too and ask why we're excluding them.  It's exhausting to keep fighting them, but it's the only way since they won't leave us alone.

In-Person Coming Back?

We've all suffered through the COVID pandemic for the past three years.  Whether you accepted the virus as deadly or not, the resulting restrictions affected us all.  Now that we finally seem to be moving on, I find myself wondering if in-person writing conferences are coming back?  Having never been to one myself, I'd really like to go to one, but are they even a thing any more?  Can anyone shed some insight?

Striking Out

Although it may be resolved by the time this post gets published, apparently 250-ish workers at Haper Collins are on strike.  They are striking for "higher wages, stronger commitments to diversifying staff and better family leave."

So my take is likely to be unpopular with a number of other writers and much of the traditional publishing world - what else is new? - but my first question is, has anyone really noticed?  Has this strike affected the publication of eagerly anticipated novels or made it into anyone's conscience outside of those intimately involved in the publishing industry?  Honestly, I'd never heard of this strike, a strike that began over two months ago, until I ran across it on The Passive Voice.  Still, I've seen no shortage of books at my local bookstore, and no one I know has complained about not being able to get hold of something they wanted to read.

Part of this may come from the fact that three of the four major publishers are not unionized.  Some writers are sending letters of support to the striking workers, but if they really wanted to help, they could send cash.  Or they could refuse to publish books, and that means at all publishing houses to show solidarity,  Maybe some are, but it sure seems like folks like supporting with words but not actions.  Amazing how solidarity ends when it hits one's own finances.

One of the funniest reasons for the strike is the claim that the workforce isn't diversified enough.  First off, unless the publishing house is going to somehow open up a multitude of new positions, it sounds like many of these striking workers are lobbying for their own jobs to be replaced by someone of a more diverse background.  How else does one get more diversity in the company?  Or do they just want others to be replaced with a more diverse workforce while they get to keep their jobs?  Second, the publishing industry is one of the most woke industries out there, so the finger wagging over diversity is hysterical to me.  It's like church members yelling at the pastor and deacons that they aren't religious enough.

The salaries in question are decent salaries...unless one lives in New York.  However, that seems to be a sticking point here.  With the infusion of remote work possibilities, living in one of the world's most expensive cities doesn't seem particularly wise to me.  If the pay is that important, maybe move somewhere it's easier to stretch a buck.

How It All Ends...

Am I the only writer who goes into a story not knowing how it ends?  Lots of my friends are meticulous plotters who have it planned out to the gnat's ass detail, but I think that not only does that remove the fun from writing, but it also is impractical for how a story evolves as you write it.

That said, it can be daunting when you start a story without knowing where it's headed.  I've known a few of my novels and where they were meant to go(Salvation Day, Akeldama), but more than a few have begun without me knowing what the end point is.  It can be fun, but it also has the potential to wander until I find an ending.

What's better - knowing, or not knowing.  Or is that too black-and-white, and the answer is a vague idea that coalesces over time?  Any suggestions?

AI versus HI

I've ben seeing stories recently about new AI apps that will correct your grammar or even help you write a story.  Maybe I'm just an anti-tech old fashioned fuddy duddy, but I don't like these pieces of "progress."  At all.

No AI is going to be able to intuit what I'm really trying to say.  At best, it can use past tendencies to predict what I should say, but it's not doing anything truly creative.  Beyond that, regarding grammar, there are times I intend to use improper grammar.  I do that either because it's a character thing, or because I honestly believe it sounds better(that's right...sometimes "wrong" can be more right).

I use humans to look at my work since humans are my intended audience.  If I wanted to write for a Terminator or C3PO, then perhaps an AI app would be the right way to go, but people can usually figure out what I'm saying, even if I don't always get it right the first time myself.  Moreover, we lose something when we lose the human touch.  Don't get me wrong - I like a machine to wash my shirts rather than beating them against a rock myself, but anything beyond rote tasks can't do it as well as a person.

We can try to make people obsolete, but that'll never happen.  Now excuse me while I ask Siri for the best restaurant in the area...

Planning Out The Blog

As y'all certainly know, I got waaaaaayyyyyyy behind on blogging when life got in the way, and I got mired into other internet things.  I'dget towards the end of the month and figure out that I hadn't done a damn thing.  So I'm revamping the way I post.

I've decided I need to do all of my blog posts for the next month early in the previous month.  I'll take two or three days to write the posts on the topics I've been thinking about, and then schedule them.  This will not preclude me from bumping things and writing on breaking news if necessary(such as when Richard Matheson passed away), but it should keep me ahead and not in a last-minute deadline panic.  Also, hopefully, by doing the blogs up front, I can spend the rest of the month actually writing on my novel.

Although I wish I could do all the month's posts in a single day, that's not practical for two reasons:
1.  I still have work and a life, and so can't devote the time required for an entire day to just blog.
2.  I get burnout like any other writer.  If I'm in front of my screen for too long, words start to blur together and posts get less substantive.  Five or six in a day is all I can manage, and even that is pushing it.  I shoot for four, which means I can usually do a whole month's posts in three to four days.

The biggest thing I need to do in the first few days of the month is stay away from YouTube.  Otherwise I get dragged into videos of how the future of the universe will unfold or the 15 funniest commercials of all time...

Imagining The Readers

One of the things that has gotten me back into blogging has been wondering if anyone is reading my stuff.  Let's be honest - part of the reason so many of us become writers is because we want people to know what's inside our heads.  There's a self-aggrandizing joy that comes from wondering if people you know are looking at your work, or, on the truly fantastical side, if anyone famous is.

Yes, it's egotistical to imagine people reading you, following your every word.  However, isn't that ego a contribution to writing well?  I mean, does anyone start to write and say, "I really hope someone reads this and they think it sucks"?  We're looking for validation to some extent, and even though this blog isn't a plotted story, there's still something that brings out the beast wanting to know that people enjoyed it.

Of course, once I get back to writing my novel(which I should've done by the time you read this), maybe I can feed that beast a little more...

Are Reviews Important?

I find myself wondering just how important reviews are to an author.  I've said before that a) you should never engage with reviewers, and b) reviews are one person's subjective opinion.  But from a business standpoint, how does one calculate the value of them?

Obviously a long series of one or two star reviews can sink a book.  No one wants to waste their time when the consensus is that something sucks.  However, what's the median point that generates buzz without killing your novel?  My books have from 3.4 stars to 5 stars, and from 2 reviews to 102 reviews.  Given that I'm not a household name like James Patterson or Stephen King, reviews may help people find me or give me a chance, but how much should reviews be solicited or paid attention to?

I guess I'm struggling not because I'm looking to be liked, but because I don't know how integral they are to success.  Anyone have any thoughts?

Horrifying Ideas

Life can be downright nasty at times.  Bringing some of that nasty into a story is how we pull the audience in sometimes.  Additionally, I've I've said before, it often takes darkness to justify a bright ending.

That said, in looking back at some of what I've written, and especially some of what I've published, it occurs to me that my mind can go to truly horrifying places if I let it.  In Homecoming, the human race has grown so large, and has become so focused on its mission to reclaim earth, that the deaths of a few million in pursuit of those objectives seems a bit like a rounding error.  Yes, it was done intentionally to show that callousness is a part of war, but a few folks have said that it was unfeeling to write it that way.

Even more so in my unpublished novel On Freedom's Wings.  On Freedom's Wings started out as kind of a fun jaunt through space combat, and it slipped into some real dark places really fast.  As I've stated previously, the novel is so cliché in many of its elements that I don't think I'll ever publish it(at least not without a major rewrite), but it went into a black hole that I still wonder how it emerged.  Not only does it involve an alien attack that renders nearly everyone on Earth sterile, but it sends the main character down the road of genocide.  The circumstances are complex, but, looking back, I wonder how I ever came up with something that horrific.  And it's not just a plot device, but rather a major element of the story.  I guess that our minds can go to Hell and back if we don't pull ourselves out and take a fresh look every so often. Thank God I pulled back.

Some of my other stories still have horrifying ideas, even if not as permanent.  Salvation Day deals with a man looking to kill God.  As one reviewer put it, "The detail was at times disturbing, but always germane to the story vice gratuitous; it was difficult to get through some passages."  Did I need to go so dark?  Does this say more about the story, or about my own mind?  And how many writers deal with just how disturbing some of the far recesses of their own minds are when they write?

Weirdness

I love science fiction.  Given my penchant for reading it, it's a wonder that only one of my novels is explicitly science fiction(although what I'm working on now can definitely be construed as such).  I grew up on Heir to the Empire, Quozl, Way of the Pilgrim, and Homeward Bound, and I'm always on the lookout for engrossing sci-fi.

Unfortunately, lots of science fiction is just...weird.

I get that it takes great imagination to see things in worlds we haven't yet really discovered.  And actual alien worlds are likely to be truly foreign to us, but that doesn't mean that the stories should be so off the wall.  The trick of a good author is to take the fantastical and make it readable.  That doesn't mean introducing weird ways to lay out the format or making things so out there that the reader can't comprehend them.  Creatures of pure hydrogen floating in the accretion disk of a black hole that only communicate in the 7th dimension through ripples in time may sound cool, but how many readers really follow such an alien story?  Same with something like a futuristic mind control creature that implants itself in the souls of small animals who squeak.  Maybe these kinds of things will indeed be how we find or interact with aliens in real life far from now, but does the audience really relate?

And don't get me started on "hard" science fiction.  I think that providing enough scientific context to allow the reader to immerse himself or herself in the world is great, but some folks go so much into the details that I feel like I'm reading a technical manual.  Sorry, but if I wanted that, I'd have studied engineering rather than picked up a book for a pleasant Sunday experience.

Yes, I know anything we find is unlikely to be bipedal or build great cities, or that gravitational waves may make space travel so dangerous that we need a Kardashev-level civilization to achieve it, but let's leave that to the scientists and engineers.  The rest of us just want to become enraptured by something that expands our minds but is relatable.  Am I not imaginative enough here?

Open Avocation

One of the challenges in dealing with the audience is many understanding the difference between pushing a position, and just telling a story.  Don't get me wrong - some do want to push their agenda through their books.  The Golden Compass is explicitly a critique of the church of Christianity and an attempt to "expose" its tyranny.  The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, on the other hand, is definitively a pro-Christianity book that retells the story of Christ.

However, some books are just meant to be cool stories.  My novel Schism is like that, no matter what else people want to see it as.  Schism is about how bad a second civil war could get rather than an avocation for either the Right or the Left.  Unfortunately, in this polarized world, it seems some folks can't just enjoy the story and need to be on one side or the other instead.  The Right has said that it's a squishy book that gives the Left too much credit for how "well" they'd do in any such conflict - as if a war that burns half the country could be done "well" - and the Left has said that my novel is a glorification of violence against them.

Sometimes a story is just a story(or, to quote Sigmund Freud, sometimes a cigar is just a cigar).  When I either write or read, I go to escape, and unless it's blatantly in my face, I try not to ascribe an agenda to what I read, no matter what my more political friends may say.  Perhaps the novel is trying to be political, but if I can just enjoy the story, then I don't get up in arms over it.  I know that One Second After is warning us about the fragility of society, but I enjoyed reading about real characters trying to figure out their new reality.  Empire by Orson Scott Card can be both about the dangers of political extremism and a fun story about conspiracies, depending on which way you want to read it.

In other words, stop assuming that all authors have hidden agendas they want to push on folks.  Maybe they do, but that doesn't mean you have to find them, for sometimes you find something that isn't there.

Tired Twists

 Three in a week - WOO HOO!

Anyway...

I'm tiring of the trope of the twist in a story.  Everyone wants to be the next M. Night Shyamalan and shock the audience, and it's getting boring.  I say boring because the twist is now expected, and if a twist is expected, it's not a twist.  Moreover, most "twists" now seem to be nothing more than the author doing what he or she can to upend the story completely.  The hero turns out to be the villain, the partnered pair end up related, the resource needed to save the world was that thing they destroyed in Act I, etc.  It feels like just a way to pull the rug out from under the audience, and it feels both contrived and disingenuous.

Yes, audiences like to be surprised, but usually only within the confines of the story.  They want a happy ending(usually), and they want to walk away feeling satisfied.  Unfortunately, so many writers feel that the only way to generate buzz or get the audience talking is to crap on them as completely as possible.  I can spot the twist a mile away now because all I have to ask about a third of the way through a story is, "What would piss me off the most?"

A real twist is truly unexpected.  But beyond that, the way to get the best reaction out of a twist is to leave some mystery in the story to begin with.  Leave something out that the audience needs to know to complete the adventure.  Don't come right out and say it, but let them infer that something is missing.  There's an unsolved murder, there's an unknown threat headed towards them, there's a moment from the past that will unlock the solution today...something that they can look forward to.  It doesn't have to be rote, but just pulling out an insane twist for shock value can be jarring.  Sure, it works every once in a while, but when the reader begins to expect it, it loses value, an the story loses meaning.

Choppy Waters

Wow, two posts in a week!  Call me butter because I’m on a roll…

 A friend of mine who wants to write his own book recently asked me how to go about doing that.  It’s a testament to how few people actually end up writing books(despite so many saying they want to) that he came to me.  There are loads of authors out there with more talent than I, yet so few have gone through the process from start to finish.

 As I was writing down my advice, one piece popped up to me out of the rest – carve out dedicated time everyday to write a specified number of words for your book.  At least 500.  Preferably 1000.  And do not stop until you get there.  Don’t get up for breaks, don’t surf the net, don’t talk to your kids – nothing.  Stop telling yourself you can do it by writing 100-ish words at a time over the course of the day(it takes me about three or four minutes to write 100 words when I’m focused), because you can’t.

Why do I say that?  Because it takes me about 100 words to get into the groove of writing.  First, you have to remember where you left off, and then you have to remember where you were trying to go.  It takes time, and chopping up that time is disjointing.  You lose focus and your plot points when your writing time gets split between five different sessions as opposed to one, especially if you can only manage 500-100 words a day.  I can almost always tell during the editing process where I left off for the day, so part of my editing time is spent smoothing out the flow between the writing sessions.

 Write.  Don’t goof off(as I’ve come to do) – just write.

A New Year...

I’m going to try again, and, honestly, the only reason I can do this now is I have a little time on my hands.  I’ve set this for the start of the New Year in the hopes I can get some momentum going to both blog more often and get back into writing.

Writing can produce a form of paralysis.  Trying to meet the goal of three blog posts per week is tough enough, but to try to do that and continue writing on the new novel I’ve been promising everyone forever can be quite the organizational task.  When I’m working on one, I feel guilty that I’m not on the other.  I also find myself wanting to get back to my blog so people can stay current, only to find I have nothing new to offer them in the form of a new book.  The circular madness of it all can make your head spin.

I say “new novel,” but that’s a bit of a misnomer.  I started writing it more than two years ago and haven’t done anything in the last several months.  Part of it is that I have to find a way to keep the story from meandering – it’s a long novel, and the potential for said meandering is high – and part of it is an addiction to YouTube videos and social media when I actually do have time.  Writing makes my brain work, and watching a video of cats on a merry-go-round doesn’t.

So bear with me this year.  We’ll see how January goes, and if I can find time to write February’s blogs before February arrives.  In the interim, I need to restart my newest novel, which, if I can do it right, is my most ambitious to date.  There will be stops and starts along the way – look who you’re talking to – but I will do my best to get back into things.  Let’s see if life cooperates.