The Resolve Is Strong This Year

Courtesy SXC

Happy New Year, readers, friends, and fans alike! I hope you had a wonderful set of holidays and are ready to take on 2014!

I have no hard feelings toward 2013, which is the first time I can say that about a year in... quite a few of them. It started off fairly rocky, but by April I was in a good groove and ready to tackle my schedule. I ended up getting a lot done in 2013. Five novels and... pffft... I dunno how many shorts! Seven? Let's say seven. I published probably around half a million words and have just as lofty goals this year.

So what does 2014 have in store for me? (And by extension, in store for my readers?) Most of you will be happy to know that this will be another (and probably final!) year of REN'AI RENSAI. I plan on rounding out the series with two more novels and two more spin-offs. One of those is in production right now and slated to drop at the end of February. There will be at least one short, but for the most part I think I'm done with those as I'm tapped out of ideas.

While I have the first half of 2014 pretty well thought out, I'm not sure about the second half. After book 7 of RR (currently untitled) I may go many different ways. I have a couple of "for fun" side projects related to the series I would like to round off with, but I will follow my muse at that point. There has been a non-RR lesbian romance cooking in my head since early 2012, and I am eager to write it. I plan on writing it when I finish the rounds of RR, as a segway into my next projects.

You see, for many years now I have also been a fantasy writer. I write both high fantasy and urban fantasy, with an emphasis on the urban as of late. For many of these years I have been working here and there on a large scale fantasy series that I originally intended to be my debut. But it went into the editing drawer and I've only recently started working on it again. It is my intention to have this series ready to start publishing either by the end of this year or the beginning of next. Depending on my RR schedule, that is.

For those of you who have come along on this ride with me because of my lesbian romances, I don't want to scare you off! Most conventional publishing wisdom says that you should only have one genre under each name. Well, I do have some pen names for my bread and butter projects (even though RR is very prolific... would you believe me if I told you that it's actually my creative escape?) that I adhere to this advice with, but I've had a long time to think about my "author brand." As you probably know, I am Hildred Billings. Since I was a little kid I knew I was going to be an author one day, and it was going to be as Hildred Billings, damnit. My name means a lot to me. Anything I slap my real name on is going to be straight from my heart, from the innermost creative workings of my brain. RR means a lot to me. You really have no idea. Many of the stories and the characters you have read come straight from my personal experiences, from Reina's gender dysphoria and Jun's crippling disbelief that anyone would sincerely love her, from the hurtful things Aiko has heard to even some events in Saya's past.

That's why I want to assure my readers that anything I write under this name comes straight from the parts of myself that I hold most sacred. My "author brand" is, in essence, who I am. And as a gay woman I will always be writing about my fellow women (and some men) who love each other. I hesitate to say that my brand is "women who love women" because that could always change. But for the next few years at least, it is who I am!

So even though I will gradually move on to focusing more on fantasy projects (although you can't keep me away from romances, so those will definitely pop up when the mood strikes) you can rest assure that it will be with the same force as always. In CROSS//, the series I've been talking about for the past few paragraphs, "queer identity" is a huge theme. Two out of three MCs are women who desire other women and make no qualms about it. In fact, you will probably be VERY interested to know that one of those women? Is Michiko from RR. ;) (You read that right. What, you thought her weirdass backstory was just there to confuse you? Nope!) Both series take place in the same "world," so to speak, so many characters that you already love will be making appearances! (Did you know that Reina, Aiko, Yuri and Michiko were all from CROSS// originally? RR is technically a spinoff! Or is it the other way around now?)

Regardless, I have big plans for 2014. I thank each and every one of you for your support throughout 2013, and look forward to you joining me as we go through the new year. Some things will change a little, but not the things that count. ;)

Happy New Year!

Write 'Em And Forget 'Em: Or, I Almost Never Re-Read My Works

I know I am not alone in this, and yet, it feels weird to talk about. As a published author I am very proud of my achievements and what I've managed to accomplish in over three months - but I have a confession. The moment I hit "Publish" on a work, I will probably never read through it again.

Why?

Heck I don't know. Call it fear.

When I flip through my book downloaded from Amazon to make sure it published in the correct format, or flip through my paperback just to say I can, I almost never let me eyes linger on the words, let alone read them. There's a lot of rationalization for this, but it mostly boils down to I don't want to make any more changes. 

From the time I hit "THE END" on a work, I will read through its entirety about ten times before it's published. This doesn't count all the smaller bits I'll read on their own, or the re-reading I do during the course of writing the first draft. (Yes, I edit as I go. GASP.) I'm also very particular about editing. Even my novelettes I've been publishing in the past month get a lot chopped from them....I believe about one-thousand words is the norm, and that's BEFORE they're sent to outside editing. Up until the last minute before I publish, I will chop off prepositional phrases, flip through a thesaurus because that word is "still not quite right", and flip back and forth between using a name or a pronoun in certain sentences. I know I'm done editing and ready to publish when, not only do I have editor and beta go-ahead, but my editing is no longer moving forward, but sideways. Thus when I flip through a story after it's been published, bought by dozens+ of people, reviewed, shared, etc, I just don't want to face the fact that maybe there's something left to change. 

As artists, we are rarely satisfied with our work. And sometimes we're afraid of what we may see.

I know most of my faults as a writer. I've been seriously writing for about 15 years now. The first novella I published was not the first book I ever wrote...certainly not even in the top 10. Maybe the top 20 of completed novels. I've done my dances of "OH EW I WROTE -THAT?-" over the years So when I re-read, it's not all about cringing and wondering how anyone in the world could possibly give it five stars...but it is a part of it. And as publishers, we're taught that once it's out in the world, it's out. Short of glaring typos and a few minor things (that may add up to big things) on a technical level, I'm a believer that once it's out, it's OUT. No more changes, no more humming, just publish it and work on the next one. Which makes it kind of awkward when I think there's a scene I might want to refresh myself on because it relates to one I am writing.

What about you, other writers? Do you ever go back and re-read your works? Does it make you cringe,even if you wrote it two months ago?

My Name Is "Author"

LOL WHAT. I DID WHAT.

When I was a little girl I thought my name was Annie. This is because, in my vulnerable youth, my mother sagely thought that "Hildred" was too hard for other children (and apparently myself!) to say, and when SHE was little there was a "really nice, sweet girl named Annie, so I've always liked that name" (I'm named after my mother's mother). So when I was in preschool, all of my play/classmates called me by "Annie". It was the first name I learned how to spell and I still have Picasso-worthy paintings from that era with "ANNIE" scribbled on the bottom.

Imagine my surprise when I reached kindergarten and my mother decided that everyone was allowed to call me "Hildred".

The hell? What happened to Annie? Amazingly,  I took it with stride. I was a really optimistic, no1curr little girl and everything was constantly changing around me anyway. Why shouldn't my name? My classmates, however (I come from a town of 1000 people. I went to the public kindergarten with the same kids I went to the Zion Church preschool with) had no idea what the heck was going on. Many still called me Annie, much to our teachers' confusion. It wasn't until elementary school that everyone knew my name was Hildred.*

For the longest time I kind of resented my name. It was old, kinda stuffy, and everyone mistakenly called me either Mildred or Hilda or Hilary (or Hildegarde! Ack!) anyway. I've always hated nicknames since the Annie debacle so I always forced people to call me by my real name. The only thing I had going for me was that I've always been an "old soul" so even as a kid my name kinda fit me.  No one thought of my name as "old" except me...mostly because no one had ever heard it before.

Now I love my name. I can't imagine being named anything else (including Annie, thanks mom.) I love the classic uniqueness to it (seriously, never met another Hildred before that wasn't my grandmother, and I get to be "hildred" at just about every social media site. And I get LIVID when somebody in TV credits has my name, haha! It's mine! There can only be one!) and just the overall way it sounds. It's a very strong name. The original Germanic meaning is either "war councilor" or "virgin warrior" depending on who you source. I prefer the latter one. That way I can tell Japanese people my name means Sailor Moon. Either way I'm gonna kick your ass.

Combined with my last name and I have a great, balanced name. When I was a kid (again!) my mother remarried and my step-father offered to legally adopt me, but that meant changing my last name! Oh no! I was too attached to it even then. I've always loved the look and sound of "Hildred Billings" even when I hated the first name. Even before I a devout queer feminist I always said "screw it, if I marry a dude, I ain't changing my name! No one's last name is as good as mine with Hildred!".

Then I became a serious author.

And what do you know? I have no desire to use a pen name, because my name is just so "authory", or so I've always thought. Even better that I write fantasy and romance ahead of everything else. Don't you want to read a fantasy book by "Hildred Billings"? Go ahead. Say it out loud. It's awesome.

I would take this moment to thank my mother for having the foresight to give me such an authory name, but I ask you again to look at my name. Hildred Billings. Do you know what kids called me when I was little once they learned my real name? If you answered with "Hill Billy", you may have gone to school with me.

*Fun story. On my high school graduation we were all sitting around in our caps and gowns reminiscing about preschool (yup, small town!) when a boy said "Remember Annie? I had such a crush on her!" Oh my God the look on his face when I said that was me, bwahahaha!)

How do you feel about your real name in conjunction with being a writer?

Why Queer Characters Are Important In Fiction

I'm queer. Most of you probably knew that already (or could gather it). I'm a woman who loves me some other women. I'm very fortunate and privileged to be able to share this so openly with you - for I have very rarely felt personally threatened to be out in any society I've lived in, including my super conservative home area. There have been some instances in which I was the target of "gay bashing" in my university days a couple of years ago, but for the most part I've been lucky to be comfortable with who I am and sharing that with those closest to me.

Therefore, I have never shied away from embracing my array of queer characters. I mean, straight people write about straight characters all the time, why shouldn't I have my lesbians and gays (and everyone in between?) But there are very big differences in writing about straight characters vs. queer characters, whether you intentionally made them that way or they just "happened" to be queer during development. (Yes, I shall never forget the day I realized my old guys were queer. Should've seen that one coming, eh?)

1) Queer Characters = Queer Themed? Even in today's publishing world, whether self or traditionally, having queer main characters means taking big chances. The biggest one, and my biggest point, is that any main queer relationship in a story gets that story labelled "Gay" themed and can have two big repercussions. The most noticeable one is that it may be turned down or "requested" to be "made straight" if going to the traditional publishing route. This leads into the other repercussion:  labeling. Whether you write mysteries, science-fiction, YA, thriller, etc etc, if you've got you some queer main characters having queer love, odds are you're all packed together in the bookstore's "LGBT" section. Which is great if you're shopping for books with queer characters in them, but not so great when leading into...

2) It's a Gay Gay Gay Gay World Welcome to a society that says "oh, you're gay? Let's make this all about your sex life" because that's all queer people care about, right? Oh, and how woefully awful it is being gay. In fact it's so awful that if I'm a queer character, my entire plot and development has to be all about how Awful it is and how Awful I feel and how Awful the outcome between me and mine is going to be. Stories with queer characters often go down the road of making it all about how they're gay. There could be other plot going on, but let's face it, all that matters is that this person has gay sex. Or wants to. Oh, and of course there's going to be hate crimes around every turn and the love interest will either die a horrible death or suddenly realize they're straight. Or everybody will die. Happy endings do not generally exist for queer characters in any medium, because we queers need to be constantly reminded that Being Queer is Awful. (Yes, many of these things do happen. And it is awful. But that doesn't mean we want all our fiction to be Awful. We want happy endings too sometimes!)

3) Visibility, or, oh! You're gay! Straight people are everywhere. In fact, it's the perceived norm. Everyone is straight until proven queer, and this goes for fiction as well. Thus, straight people don't really have a representation issue. Anywhere. Even in Pride. Trust me. But as much as I love going "oh! she's a lesbian!" it's always wonderful to find that out later as No Big Deal. This kinda ties into #2 up there. I may be queer, but it's not My Life. I've got bigger stuff going on than constantly thinking about how Queer I Am. Which I'm guessing is the same for a lot of straight people. I don't need the first thing known about a character to be that they're queer, unless that actually IS what the story revolves around. But if romance is secondary to the plot like in most cases? Let me find out by seeing him flirt with another man, or seeing her get a phone call from her girlfriend after that long day at work. Or heck, have her get a call from her boyfriend and then go flirt with that cute waitress. Or any number of possibilities.

With these three main considerations, you can probably see where the title ties into everything. Queer characters (who have developed naturally, and not queer to fill some Minority Quota alongside the Token Black Guy) are important in all sorts of fiction, in all sorts of mediums. But of course I'm mostly talking about novels here, since that's what I care about. Right now queer characters tend to either fall into fetishism or Life Is Awful. Or teaching tools. Or all of the above. It's critical that queer characters begin to be seen in "normal" life and situations more and more as we go along this wonderful writing journey - hence why I tend to write a lot of queer characters in my fantasy...because while I am queer myself and want to write characters similar to me in that regard, it's also important to me that readers be able to see queer people in the same exact shit straight people get involved in. Which is why I tend to steer away from the Awful unless it's just general relationship awfulness. Because that is amazingly fun to write regardless of who's involved.

I look forward to the day where I can see LGBT characters represented in mainstream genres and not relegated to the back corner. Yes, I realize that there are a lot of books like this already (the Kushiel series keeps jumping up at me) but most of those types of relationships are fanciful background shenanigans. What I really mean are the series lead by the LGBT heroes who really don't give a damn about it. Think Lord of the Rings, but Aragorn ends up with, I dunno, Hugo Weaving in the end instead because that's just how they roll.

Welp, excuse me now. I'm off to work on my urban fantasy series with some power lesbians and old gay guys (omg they're gay??) and yeah I guess a few straight people running around too. Oh, and the dog. I dunno how the dog swings. I don't think he cares.

Weekly Writing Check-In: In the midst of it all, résumés!

My brain.

What a busy week for writing!  I wrote a new blog post every day while also juggling my 25k February challenge and working on some hubs. In the process my personal blog didn't get updated, but eh. Only so many hours in a day.

Thus, I will break this check-in up into some sections!

Blog: Been a while since I wrote a post every day! And not just fluff posts either, but ACTUAL posts! I had too much fun doing the blog fest. So much, in fact, that I am looking for others like it. Anyone got any leads? I will probably do a promotional flash fiction piece every Friday from now on, so do look forward to that! (Anybody got any good prompt sources? Character-related ones are apparently my favorite.)

CROSS//Revenge 25k February: I'm not keeping track of exactly how much I am writing thus far, but I've done a pretty good job of sticking to 1k a day. I'm determined to get back to editing come this March. But we'll cross that bridge when I get there. Right now is a pretty pivotal plot scene so it's going well.

Résumé: Oh have mercy. Since I'm nearing the end of my contract here in Japan, I'm starting to look for jobs back in the states. This includes updating my résumé, good lord. I hate résumé updating with a fiery passion, especially when my old one was tailored to my current position - nope, can't just add my current job to it, have to go in and totally gut the whole thing. Cut out everything from high school and most of my college crap, add a separate skills section, completely get rid of "objectives" because I'm sending this first one as a "blanket" résumé for no position in particular at a certain company. And of course being the time it is, there's no one online to look it over for me. And my mother's not online to see if she can think of any skills/abilities I'm forgetting. And I want to send this thing tomorrow at the very latest. Sigh. It's only my future, you know. (Because as much as I wish I could work full time, I do need a paying job, let alone one I actually enjoy!)

Bah, enough about that. Tell me, how was your writing this week? Or if you're not a writer/didn't write, how's the reading going? Gaming? Tell me anything going in your life that is NOT day-job related, haha.

EDIT: Help a girl out? Take a look at this blog entry and help me come up with some character names! I posted it back in October but still need some help, darnit.

Why I don't write Young Adult Fiction

I'm in the wrong business.

Wow, I made that title sound cranky.

To say that YA fiction has been growing in popularity in recent years would be an understatement. Everywhere bookshelves are expanding to include "teen titles" and a vast majority of the author blogs I follow are those of YA authors. (The others seem to mostly be writers of erotic gay fiction. Oh my.) While all of this seems to have happened behind my back, it would be disingenuous for me to say that I don't see the main reasons why this trend may be occurring. But this blog post isn't about analyzing why YA has become so popular - this is about me going BLAAAAAAAH I don't write YA~

When I was "middle grade" age, I wrote about teenagers. When I was a teenager I wrote about college students. When I was a college student I wrote about late-twenty-somethings. Now that I'm a twenty-something I tend to write about characters still older than me, all the way up to middle age. Heck, some of my favorite characters I write are elderly. But there's nary a teen and even fewer kids. (In fact, most of my characters don't even want kids or work around them.) And the themes are definitely not young adult oriented, although certainly I wouldn't mind if "young adults" read them and connected to them in their own way.

I think the easiest way for me to explain why I always write about characters older than me (or more my age, as I get older) can be best described through something I read a few months ago on another blog. I don't remember who said it or where exactly, but I do remember what this author said. They said, the paraphrase, that they wrote and read YA because "adults are jaded, cranky, and haunted by their pasts. Teens are full of potential and optimism about the lives ahead of them. That's to say, adults hang on to what 'could have been' and that's depressing." I'm the exact opposite in my thinking in this manner. I find adults way more fascinating than teens or children. I feel like I've read "first love", "first heartbreak", "first job" and "firstfirstfirst" so many times (not to mention, already lived it) that it all runs together. While these topics are certainly big in our society, and inevitably shape who we are, I feel like it really gives older adults and their experiences the epic shaft. Yes, most of my characters are on their third serious relationship, working the corporate ladder, getting a mortgage, and staying awake at night thinking about how "the world ahead of them" and optimism and potential are all utter bullshit. They are mirrors of what a lot of current adults want an escape from, but I find them fascinating.

My characters usually start their stories doing their thing, living their routines, mumbling about stuff, and then wake up one day to find that everything they had established for themselves has come into question...or has been thrown out the window entirely. In our (western, American to be more specific) society we're pretty much taught that our lives end at 30, and all growing, learning, and feeling ends with our metabolism. Only "young people" get to experience new exciting things in the world, damnit. I like to read and write stories that challenge this thinking and remind us that life is always going, always changing, and even though we may become bitter and cynical that any positive change is still possible, even if sometimes unlikely.

There's also the fact that I enjoy writing romance and erotica, and that's not as fun to write with inexperienced teens, thanks. I prefer my romantic characters to be experienced and confident in themselves. Things are still changing, but I get to skip all that first time angst.

So, what about you? Do you prefer YA or adult fiction or don't care? And if you do prefer one or the other, why is that? WHY?!

Self-publishing? Please don't do this...

pfffft.

(NOTE: Leaving the 2 Truths & a Lie Game open for another day or so! Go check it out~)

Yesterday I went to the local independent bookstore in my...county...(sigh) and, of course, they have a "Local Authors" section. Since I come from a pretty small area, most of the books were self-published and contained mostly of poetry, guidebooks, and the occasional original novel. Seeing as how I am going into self-publishing myself,  I decided to see how stereotypical any of these books were.

Each book I opened was riddled with errors, awkward sentences, and in the case of one guidebook on nature trails, had mismatched captions. Oops.

If you've been following me for any number of months now, then you know that I'm a huge supporter of self-publishing. That said, a lot of the stereotypes that show self-published authors as being inexperienced, naive, and quick to jump the gun are not completely far-fetched. Aside from all the face-palm worthy errors I saw yesterday, there was also the horrible clipart + Comic Sans covers and spiral-bound novels - all costing at least fifteen dollars. The whole table was, while very encouraging to local authors, also a big flag of what probably not to do while self-publishing.

1) EDIT. Hello! Personal editing, betas, hiring professionals...all of this comes back to who you are and your brand. Yes, you as an author offering your books up for purchase, are a brand. Without a house to oversee your project every step of the way it's doubly up to you to do your own editing (including constantly studying grammar and writing trends) and to get others to help you.

2) Design. We're not supposed to judge books by their covers, but we do. While getting the perfect picture may not be feasible, it's still in your power, if you're overseeing the design and giving the okay of your jacket, to make sure the font is readable and placed in an appropriate place. If you just suck at design, then it may be time to bring in a professional or even a friend with a background in design.

3) Pricing. This is a lot harder to mediate when it comes to print, because you have to pay for your own costs incurred, but I saw a couple of original fiction books yesterday, less than 300 pages, selling for over $20 - paperback. I wouldn't pay that much for an author I love in paperback, let alone a total unknown that didn't even edit.

I want to see other self-published authors succeed just as much as I want to succeed at it myself...which is why all the tough love today. There definitely is a stigma against self-publishing out there and these are a lot of the main reasons why. Obviously I do not know these authors, but I get the sinking feeling that a lot of these errors and issues are a result of jumping the gun to get published as quickly as possible. I love you, authors, but no story is awesome enough that it doesn't need some good editing and further attention paid to it - and no story anymore deserves the horror that is Comic Sans.

Weekly Writing Check-In: Sometimes Sleep Really Is More Important

Writing wise, absolutely nothing was accomplished this week.  I can blame my day job for that.  It was an hour-packed week, with full days and a whole lotta commuting all over the prefecture. My one-day weekend was spent restocking on food, cleaning, and I think a shower is gonna be shoved in there somewhere.  Of course, I did my appropriate amount of "OMFG I SHOULD WRITE" but I was so exhausted every damn day that I always crashed early and still felt like death even after 10 hours of sleep. But that week is over and now it's back to regular hour fun times! Great timing too, because Nano starts in a little over a week!

 One of the things I did this week to unwind was read through a lot of blogs and forums, like I usually do, but this week that (and watching movies) was all my brain could handle. Something I came across was the recent development of Amazon signing up authors at a place that is definitely not writing-topic centered. As anticipated, most of the comments centered around how this will just mean more people will self-publish fan-fiction because we all know it's still super easy for "real" authors to get published by the big names.

I'm used to reading this sort of thing - most people, especially those who aren't involved in writing/the publishing world, are understandably ignorant to what's going on in today's market. But that doesn't mean it's still not a massive headdesk moment (and not to mention, gut stabbing) to always read "Authors who self-publish just suck and their stuff is obviously drivel. ALL THE TIME. If it was any good a real publisher would pick it up!" Not only is this just not true, it also erases all the self-published authors who have chosen to forgo even submitting to agents/publishers in the first place for whatever reason.

Of course, that doesn't mean that a lot of self-published stuff isn't still...well, obviously not ready for publication. Part of our jobs as authors is to recognize when our work is not ready, or when WE'RE not ready, for world release. It's easy for us to fall into the trap of excitement and lofty ambitions, especially when it's sometimes super hard for us authors to get any sort of material validation for our works. But that's how it goes. It still does not also mean that there's a LOT of good self-published stuff out there. I know I'm looking forward to getting an E-reader at the end of this year so I can start reading my To Read list on the cheap.

Bleh. Now excuse me. I seriously have to try and finish this chapter in time for Nano. If I'm super good this week I may even get  more editing done! Like I said, folks, lofty ambitions!

Weekly Writing Check-In: Actually...writing?!

my magnum opus.

I was pretty flabbergasted a couple days ago when I realized that I had to like...write stuff. I mean, my brain is in editing and planning mode right now until Nano in a couple of weeks, so this whole notion of writing is like being told I'm actually expected to work when I go to work. I mean, what.

Since finishing Nano '10 I've barely touched my Revenge draft except to re-read and take notes for future plot plans. I did write like...a page somewhere over the past year, but it wasn't a very good page. After Nano '10 I still had to finished the first draft of Rebirth, start editing it, and there were some short story attempts in there too. OH and Camp, which was an entirely different story in the CROSS// series. So yes, this week I officially dusted off the chapter I left off on last year and realized...damnit, not only do I have to somehow finish this scene, but I also have to finish the chapter. How dare you ask me to write! Actually, I'm just annoyed because I have no idea what scene to write next yet. I barely know what I'm going to write during Nano as it is. Whine. Gripe. Moan.

Also always a good time killer is lurking on the Nano forums which finally have been given some new life with the new season. Of course, like somebody with a real love for self-punishment, I always read the rule and rebel forums to see what we're whining about this year. Everybody has their major gripe about Nano and this is mine:

While everybody knows what the "core" rule is (you must start a totally new story in November) the staff have always "welcomed" the ~cheaters~ who are not either 1) writing a traditional fictional novel or 2) starting a new story, but with the caveat that we acknowledge that we're not a part of the ~real nano spirit~ or can consider ourselves winners when we pass 50k before the 30th.

Which is, you know, utter bullshit.

There is nothing more extraordinary about starting a new draft from scratch and writing 50k than doing a WIP and writing 50k. The "spirit" of nano has always been about writing 50k in 30 months to me, with a lovely dose of community and squeeing and nail biting going on the other 23hours of the day we're not buckling down to write.

I also don't see what the difference is between somebody doing a WIP and a person starting a new story who is already working from an extremely detailed outline, where pretty much all they have to do is flesh it out with prose and dialogue. And with all the "tips" we see every Nano (write out contractions, be as purple and wordy as possible, etc) it seems like such a silly line to draw. Today I saw a staff member say that doing a WIP is not conducive to the creative abandon of Nano. Excuse me? Just because I didn't come up with my plot and characters until October 31st (and even if you're doing a new story, I feel like very few people go into Nano doing this anyway) doesn't mean that my creative juices aren't being pushed to their limits and I'm in the corner going "OMG BUT I DON'T KNOW WHERE THEY'RE GOING OR WHY THEY'RE IN THE CAR UGH".

In short, I love Nano, I love the communities I've found through it, I love that it makes me set aside whatever else I'm doing and work on that rough draft I've been neglecting, and I love when December 1st comes around and  I get to see that all my hard work has paid off and my writing career is on the right track. What I DON'T love is the head patting on rebels and saying "that's sweet, you're welcome here, but you don't really know about we're doing". It's especially distracting to us who don't live in a world where all novels are 50-90k. I write 300k epic novels. You expect me to write that much in a month? Maybe if I had Hermione Granger's time necklace thing. BUT I DON'T.

Anybody can start a novel. It takes a lot of dedication to actually finish one, which is what we WIPers are attempting.

/rant

/goes back to writing

Why My Debut Novel Will Never Be Traditionally Published

...or, why I'm self-publishing it without even trying to find an agent/publisher to begin with.

Ever since declaring last year that I would be self-publishing my debut novel CROSS//Rebirth sometime in the near future (you know, when that whole editing thing is done with) I've been thinking more and more about the reasons why I've decided to go this route. I've written a post before about the pros of me self-publishing my novel - but now I would like to talk about why, well, my novel just doesn't stand a chance with traditional publishing with nothing to back it up.

Save for an awesome hello-thar miracle, the CROSS// series will never be picked up for traditional publishing without maybe seeing large success in the "indies" market. Why? Because the today's "traditional" market doesn't want it.

Here's why.

1. Not only is Rebirth the first part of a series, but the final draft will probably come to be about 325k words. Definitely over 300k, without a doubt. The first draft was near 350k. It took me three completed Nanowrimos and a lot of off-season writing to complete, and this isn't including all the discarded prologues I had before finally settling on a set that I really liked. And although I write science-fiction/fantasy (in this case, contemporary/urban fantasy) and am given a lot of leeway in terms of high word count, both of these things majorly count against me. Most "tips" I see online from agents and established authors suggest that debut authors keep their writing to under 200k. Oops. Yeah, not happening. Also, in this market, most agents/publishers aren't willing to gamble on series and want to see stand-alone stories from unknowns. Well, my novels will always be really, really long. And I will always be working on some big series. That's just how I've always been as a writer.

2. There is a lot of cursing. Like, a shitton. I joked at the end of the final draft that there were 135 "fucks' and even more "damns" and "shits". Guess what - I actually wasn't joking. And most of those haven't been cut out in subsequent edits (unless the whole chunk/scene was deleted) because it's in dialogue. My characters curse a lot. And they curse even more with the words we know and love since the series takes place in contemporary America and they all mostly speak American English.  This really isn't up for debate in my mind. However, I have deleted a lot of old "bitches" and a couple other victim-filled words that make me uneasy to see now. My way of thinking is...if it makes ME stop and look at it, it must be unnecessary. The gendered/sexuality slurs have been saved for making somebody look horrible ~just like in real life~.

3. So many queers the whole series looks like what you find at the end of the rainbow. Sexuality is a MAJOR theme of the series. Most characters should be considered queer until expressed otherwise. Boys love boys and girls love girls, although sometimes the girls love the boys too and the boys get put into a female body and boys are angsting about other boys because that's just not done andddd *huge breath*, guess what! Don't assume that the two MCs, while opposite sexes and genders, are going to end up together! Odds are higher that the FMC will end up with another woman and that the MMC will be ~forever alone~ (that's what happens when you're straight in this world, I guess.)

And after the recent debacle of authors being asked by prospective agents to either delete the queer characters or straighten them up ugh, no.  Not happening in a million years. Like, my head hurts just thinking about it.

4. There's occasionally "graphic" sex...and it ain't always sexy. Even just assuming that all of the sex in the series is of the heteronormative variety (hint: it's not), it's still probably too risque for most traditional places...especially when you consider that some of the sex scenes are purposefully just awkward as hell and even depressing at times. Now, the only sex that makes the final cut in any of my drafts are those that have something plot related happen in them, but in Rebirth that amounts to one actual graphic scene, one scene where sex is going on in the background (and heavily referenced to, because damnit, those characters are busy) one where a woman is giving herself a hand (see what I did there?) and, sadly, one that is assault. Only one of these scenes are explicit in the sense that the reader gets a play by play of what is happening, but it all leads up to the the part where somebody totally screws up and there is a lot of resentment for the rest of the book. But sex is sex to a lot of people. I may not be writing erotica or sex for the sake of sex (I save that for nano tbh~) but any sex is too much sex for some markets. And since it's plot related and related to one of the major themes (sexuality) it will be a hot day in Antarctica before those scenes get deleted or, save me, "fade to black".

5. If you couldn't tell, it's a really "adult" series. Then again I've never said that I write YA or below, and my target audience has always been adults with anything I write. But the market is very pointed towards YA at the moment and some agents I once looked at even two years ago are now calling only for YA. Plus, the term "adult" tends to turn a lot of people off - I mean, all that cursing and sex! Stuff that adults do! For shame amirite. Oh, and there's occasional drug use. And a lot of smoking. Not that much violence in comparison, actually. (Minus some abuse and guns.) But if there's anything that living in America has taught me, it's that sex is WAY MORE EVIL!!! than violence.

6. Finally, the POV is icky icky omniscient. I only got this memo this year, but apparently omniscient is so two centuries ago, you guys. Everything has to be third-person limited or MAYBE first-person on a good day. But omniscient? Apparently people turn their noses up at omniscient now. Which, like I said, was news to me. But if I go on and on about this point I'll have a completely different blog post I am saving for the future.

----

I think if I only had one, maybe two of these points going on I could risk going traditional without too much damage. But as it is, CROSS// is just not traditional publishing friendly. And I am okay with that. I don't mind alienating potential readers for the story I want to tell in the way I want to tell it. I mean, I could still try, but what's the point when I don't really care and it would probably just be a bigger pain in the ass than it's worth? I'd have to wait a few months for a proper rejection, and in those few months in which I'm not allowed to do anything publicly with my MS I could be moving forward with self-publishing and getting my name out there.

Yeah, I like that one.

Anyone else got a story doomed in traditional publishing but has a good shot at being self-published? And furthermore...why is that? I bet it's all the gay sex, isn't it.

"In the name of copy-editing I will rewrite you!" and other ways Sailor Moon creeps into my author life.

What I see when I edit.

If you follow me on Twitter you've probably noticed that every night (er, my time) I've been re-watching Sailor Moon Super and live-commentating every episode I feel like watching. Well, imagine my ~surprise~ when last night we got an episode where the victim was an author and the monster-of-the-day sent after him was supposed to be...an editor.

LOOOOOOOOOOOOOL.

I am now a huge fan of Uhenshuu (the name of the monster, which essentially means the noun version of "editing"), and she's quite possibly my favorite monster-of-the-day in the history of Sailor Moon. And since there's over 150 of them (gotta catch 'em all amirite) that kinda says something. She's pretty much everything a nightmare editor is supposed to be, all the way down to her attacks. I would explain, but here! Have Youtube clips instead! (No subs so I've translated what she's saying down below.)

@ 0:17 : Are you obeying your deadlines?!

@ 0:00 : My ultimate attack, WHITE MANUSCRIPT HELL!
@ 0:12 : Next is PHOTOCOMPOSITION!
@ 0:19 : Heh, heh. Cut and paste...snip, snip!
@ 0:25 : Hey, wait...wait a minute! What are you planning?!
@ 0:28 : Make sure you get a good clipping of her!
@ 0:30 : Hey now!

@ : 0:10 : Even if it's a sudden storm I'm okay!
@ : 0:16 : G pen, round pen, and kabra pen!
@ : 0:25 : MANUSCRIPT HELL!!
@ : 0:37 : Sudden strength before a deadline!
@ : 0:41 : Borderline, safe!

I'm thinking that I could really use somebody like Uhenshuu in my life, man. You know, that editor in glasses and questionable fashion that yells things like "MANUSCRIPT HELL! HOW DOES IT FEEL?!" while throwing giant pens at me and making me cry until I finish my novel. But this could only work if I have Sailor Venus on hand to call her off whenever I want. She's like the IRL version of Write or Die!

Seriously, though, the whole time I was watching this I kept thinking about how "real" it is, when you consider her as a metaphor of writers and editors combined - we pretty much say all those things in our heads as it is. "WHITE MANUSCRIPT HELL!" is so hilarious because we've all been there yo. Staring at that white space going "WHY ISN'T THERE A NOVEL HERE OMG" and, if you have an editor/agent/publisher, hoping that they don't call up and ask you if you're "OBEYING YOUR DEADLINES!"

Then again you might get the "SUDDEN STRENGTH BEFORE A DEADLINE" and be "BORDERLINE, SAFE!"

You can watch the whole episode (with subtitles) here!

I'm done, indeed. Bye!

Disclaimer: Sailor Moon is copyright to Naoko Takeuchi, Kodansha, Toei, and everyone else who well, owns copyright to it. No infringement intended. Take it up with Youtube. Screencaps from soul-hunter.org
 

No, no I didn't know that that was going on, okay.

"I'm sorry, but how did you not know they were gay? You're the author, silly. I read one scene between them and thought 'damn, they got boyfriend drama'." - A Real Quote From a Real Reader

Weeeellllll. You know how it is. Even when you're the author you still don't know everything about everyone, or even everything about the PLOT until you're in the middle of writing and you think "Oh...my God..." and yup. Everything connects in your brain and you see things you have never seen before!

I usually categorize these as the "AHA!" moments, and they range from various sizes of "no big deal" to "THIS CHANGES EVERYTHING". It's the latter version that makes writing such a thrill, really. And let's face it, the massive AHA! moment only comes one per book/series - that moment when you realize something so big about your character/story that it changes the entire way you start viewing the actions/plot/dialogue/EVERYTHING. And sometimes? You've even subconsciously left yourself clues to this discovery and you wonder how you could be so daft from seeing it this whole time.

My two biggest "AHA!" moments so far have definitely changed the entire way I've viewed my two series. One was so "profound" to me that I ended up having to shelve the series for a while so I can figure out what I'm going to DO with that realization. But that doesn't really compare to the headslap I gave myself for the OTHER "aha!" moment.

So, basically.

NAGNOMEI: "Oh, my God...that's it, literally...God..the narrator is GOD. No wonder he's so SON I R DISAPPOINT."

CROSS//: "TRALALALALA lololololol WAIT A MINUTE. THESE OLD GUYS ARE TOTALLY GAY. Shit, that changes the WHOLE DAMN STORY. EVERYTHING."

...So yes, Real Reader (even though she knows who she is, ha) I had no idea that they were gay for a long time. But now that I know I can reformat the entire novel to reflect this and now we all know that it's all about them after all~ (As opposed to the, you know, lesbians, who think it's all about them.) Ah hell I don't know anymore. I'll AHA it later.

So, got any great AHA moments to share?

"UM EXCUSE YOU I'm busy talking to myself here."

My lofty aspirations.

My dear, dear writing friends.

We are strange.

I know, I know. I'll wait over here while I let that sink into your head and you come to accept the fact that you are, in fact, a writer, and that you are, in fact, weird as shit.

We writers have quirks. Weird ones. Super weird ones. There was a woman in a writing group of mine once who would grab a long stick and start fencing with the air as she played out her stabbity action scenes - on buses. I once read on another writing blog about the author drinking a full cup of coffee with every scene completed - on buses.

It's always buses, man.

Me? Well, my big weird writing quirk is that I talk to myself. Like a loooooot. Full blown conversations: in the shower, walking home, on the bus train, waiting for Sim City 4 to load, fighting Ganondorf for the millionth time because homeboy keeps stalkin' mah hyrulez, making dinner, doing laundry, getting groceries okay you get it. Point is, I talk to myself, in full hearing of everyone around me.

What am I talking about?

Dialogue.

I act out almost all my dialogue before I even write it down .I intone my voice to match my characters'. I snort, I sneer, I laugh, I make funny faces in general until I know down to every little bit of word choice exactly how the conversation will fall out on paper. Sometimes I even record myself if the scene I'm dialoguin' won't be written for months or even years, but I really wanna remember that swear so-and-so said with my mouth.


Most of the time it's just a funny quirk that I laugh about and then go on my way. Sometimes, though, I get caught. Like tonight. I was walking home from work to the train station, mumbling dialogue I was going to write tonight for my Camp Nano novel to myself when a young Japanese couple stared at me at a crosswalk and backed away super quickly. Great. White girl in rural Japan talkin' to herself in the middle of the night out in the street. NOTHING BAD CAN HAPPEN NOW.

I've been caught many times at home with my parents as well (and holy balls context is awesome.) When I lived with my parents I waited until they went to bed before mumbling dialogue to myself at my laptop. Apparently I was too lloud a few times, however. There were a few times when my mother would come up to me and ask "Who the hell were you talking to last night? Were you on the phone? When did you get a phone?" and so on until I would coolly cover with a "omg no one mom jeeeeze you're just hearing things."

I act out all kinds of scenes, between all kinds of characters. Fight scenes, both physical and verbal, throw away scenes in bars and strip clubs, bedroom scenes (well the parts with dialogue anyway, hohoho), work scenes, traveling scenes, everything and anything. Children, adults, men, women, I gotta know exactly how they're going to sound so my mouth becomes their mouth for a short while. Basically what happens is that I play the scene out in my head like a movie, but instead of wearing ear phones I put everything on loud speaker and the conversations fall out of my mouth. I've had more than one hapless person overhear an angst fight between a lesbian couple, but with not so many lesbians.

So now that I've shared my super weird writing quirk with everyone, I implore all you writerly types to do the same. Oh, and you should start mumbling dialogue on street corners. It's the best way to make new friends. I promise.

This is my sad face: :(

I know I'm super late to this club, but that's what happens when you live in a foreign country that doesn't give a flying seagull about this sort of thing (granted, Japan has more pressing local matters to put in their news at the moment) and are pretty much internet-less when you finally get the news.

You know, the news that your favorite bookstore chain is closing.

Let's just get this right out of the way now: I was always a Borders fan moreso than Barnes & Nobles. There. Said it. Picked a side. Moving on, shall we?

Coming from super-duper rural Oregon, where the nearest bookstore of ANY kind is over thirty miles away in either direction (there are only two directions in these matters, you know), and the only bookstore that carries the titles and authors you actually WANT are three HOURS away...Borders was my friend. Borders was in malls and on convenient street corners when I bothered to be in those sorts of oh so big towns that had MALLS and STREET CORNERS *gasp*. A couple of Barnes & Nobles were there too, but were usually out of the way from where my family was driving so I never visited them much.

Borders was where I got almost my entire manga collection. And when I went through a phase where I didn't buy books at all, when I did buy books I bought them at Borders. Even the books I bought online were from the Borders website. I was a very loyal Borders customer. They pampered me with their rewards card. When I was a super poor college student (still the same, just no longer a college student *sigh*) I used to cash in my rewards for a super cheap book to keep me entertained. Borders stores were always within walking distances in our college towns. (Barnes & Noble not so much) and I actually preferred their stores in the long run because they were smaller and cozier and quiet. Usually I would be the only person in there (a sign of things to come, apparently) and would just stare at the fantasy wall until I finally found something I wanted to read. ...and then I would use my super cool rewards card to get super cool books.

When word got out back in February that Borders was closing a bunch of their stores, I worried a little but then felt better when I learned that none in Oregon were closing. Then I moved abroad, and just a couple of weeks ago I learned that Borders was closing for good.

It was a sad, sad day.

Many people, including myself, saw this coming, especially after all the stores that started closing back in February. I could sit here and wax and wan about why this might've happened, from management practices to an inability to keep up with the times, but if you want that kind of commentary you can go to just about any other blog post about the disappearance of Borders. Because all you're gonna get here right now is a budding author shakin' and cryin' because her favorite bookstore is going bye-bye.

Oh, doubtless I will find another one I love just as much. For now I have Amazon to fill the internet shopping void, but I do love picking out books in real life and taking them home at that moment. (I'm the same with CDs and clothes and well everything.) Plus no shipping fee! I'm too old-school still to get an e-reader (plus they're way out of my budget still) so until that day inevitably comes...well, for the moment I still live in Japan, and I'm happy enough to have a bookstore an hour away that has an ENGLISH section, haha! But there is also that sad little feeling when something that's always been a part of your life goes away. And since we live in such a technological age, it's not too far-fetched to picture a world where bookstores as we know them may not exist at all, and even for those who love change that can be a weird feeling.

But in the end there's one thing about all of this that really, really makes me mad.

I'm in the wrong country to be enjoying all the damn good going-out-of-business sales! Argh!

Musings of a RAGEQUIT author.

It's in my dreaaaams.

I've been having one of those months, dear readers.  You know, the kind of month where nothing is good enough and you're convinced that you're going to fail at everything and OH MY GOD WHY DO YOU EVEN TRY?? JEEZ.  Yeah, that's me.

Editing.  And reading.  Doing both at the same time. That's usually a dangerous combination, really. After years and years of being forced to set aside "pleasure" reading for what academia threw at me, I am now totally incapable of simply "enjoying" a book.  (Especially if it's you know, a horrible book, like are want to fall into my hands.)  Nope. I have to analyze it every step of the way - from style, to characterization, to how many damn lines there are in the average paragraph.  This wouldn't be too bad in the end, if it wasn't for the fact that I compare myself to the author I am reading every step of the way.

It doesn't even matter if I don't like the author's style, prose, or the way they treat their fans via what I've read on Wikipedia - no, I could thoroughly detest them, and I still become convinced that I'm still not good enough.  This is especially bad when you write fantasy, particularly serial fantasy, because there is a very concrete standard that readers expect.  Yes, you're supposed to bring "your own" to the table, but even  I expect certain things from the fantasy I read:  a grandiose atmosphere, a sense of urgency, sentences that blow me away and make me go "I want to write like that."  And yes, I do have a very distinct writing style of my own that is not always the norm.  I've assigned dashes and ellipses very solid jobs.  I've become self-conscious of my overuse of three sentence paragraphs.  I struggle to balance my copious amounts of dialogue in some instances with an adequate amount of prose. And yet it often feels all in vain when I pick up another (popular, of course) work and notice that I pretty much write nothing like them.  Is that a good thing?  Most of the time, yes, of course.  But then anxiety and self-hatred set in, and I think, "I will never be as popular as this.  My works will never touch anyone like this has.  People are going to laugh at my style."

True?  Undoubtedly, especially if my works were ever to become popular in the general writing world, let alone fantasy. Somebody will be sure to complain loudly about the way I use dashes and ellipses, somebody else will tssk at extraneous dialogue, etc etc. I'm okay with that, really.  Yet that horrible sinking feeling of "NO EVERYONE WILL DO IT HAHA" is always there and inhibits my ability to proceed with my own works.

Like I said before, I've been editing.  Since this was primarily a NaNoWriMo work, it's riddled with disastrous attempts at inflating word count - most specifically, adverbs. Adverbs everywhere.  I feel like I need bug spray to wipe them out every time I edit.  I know this is normal, every draft starts off like horrible vomit and that's the whole point of editing.  But the vanity.  The voice.  The one that says "You will never be ready! No one will ever take you seriously!" I really, really hate that voice.

Friends, teachers, many people tell me that I'm a great writer even for my faults, that I'm on the right track.  The real struggle for me is being able to believe them.  Are they serious?  Are they just inflating my ego?  Did they even read anything? WAS I SO BAD THEY SAID SOMETHING NICE? It can't be helped. This is what happens when so much of your life revolves around writing novels. I imagine it's much the same for singers playing back a recording and shuddering, for painters stepping back from the canvas at a shared gallery and finding nothing but faults in their own works.   Art is completely subjective, and that's what scares us the most.

So even though this is just one of those hurdles that I must jump over in order to fulfill my main dream in life, that doesn't mean I can't hate every minute of it. Be right back, lighting my book on fire - and then blowing out the flames while I clutch the poor draft to my chest and baaaaw  it back into precious existence. RINSE AND REPEAT. WOO.

"I swear, you &*%^ing swear a lot."

hypocrite, much?

(WARNING:  There's a lot of fucking swearing in this post.)

In real, everyday life...I swear.  I swear a lot.

On my OKCupid (don't judge) profile I say that I don't smoke, but "fuck is my nicotine".  I can clearly the remember the day, a few weeks after my grandmother died when I was nine or so, and I heard my mother say "shit" for the first time.  I remember gaping at her with that great "OHNOYOUDIDNT" face little kids get when their hero has just done something heinous.  Until that point my biggest swear word was "sucks".

Suffice to say, I grew into more and more swears.  My parents often comment on it (funny, considering they're the ones I learned it from eh.)  It also doesn't help that many of my public domains, such as school and work, never discouraged it and most of my scholarly/working peers swear/swore a lot themselves.  Swearing's even more prevalent on TV these days than it was ten years ago when I was still an impressionable little shit.

So, as you can imagine, my characters swear a lot themselves.  But miraculously enough my narration always remains devoid of words that end with itch, it, and uck. In fact, my narrating voice is often seen putting on a "oh these characters and their swearing~" hat.  If there is swearing in the narration, it's encompassed in quotes to imply that the narrator would NEVER say that, but the character sure did think it.

It's just one of those things I've noticed about my writing.

My narrator (who I often think of as myself, and I'm not sure how popular that is amongst authors...insights?) is  the divine neutral.  She (or he, or it, but since I think of the narrator as myself and I identify with feminine pronouns, there you go) sits back and omnisciently tells everything as neutrally as possibly, including the use of the most neutral language possible.  But when it comes to matters of evil, she always has the subtle stance that she realizes these acts and thoughts are wrong and does not condone them, even though she attempts to communicate them to the reader as neutrally as possible.  This is offset, of course, by my characters who are definitely NOT neutral and don't give a ~flying fuck~ about cursing everywhere if it's in their nature to do so.

In various discussions about writing I've come across throughout my years on the internet, the topic of openly swearing in novels is brought up a lot.  Some people are very much against it unless the situation "direly calls for it, such as somebody just died", or feel that swearing characters depletes the approachability of their novel.  Others don't give a flying fuck and happily let their characters ride the Swear Train to Swearsville, for it "realistically depicts the character's behavior".  As you can probably tell, I fall into the latter camp.  Most of my characters wear by default, unless it's specifically NOT in their nature to do so...and thus they spend a lot of time being abashed over the other characters swearing so much.  The only work I have those types of characters in, however, are in Nagnomei, where many characters are raised in nobility and find swearing to be crass and beneath them.  That's as intrinsically a part of their character as swearing is for characters who do so. 

Swearing a lot does bring its own difficulties, however, especially in high fantasy settings where a part of world building is to develop a land's own language.  Some swears translate naturally into Nagnomei, such as "ass", "bitch", "shit", and even "fuck" depending on the context, and if you approach some of the swears as a translation to what the character is actually saying.  But, of course, there are some forced changes.  Instead of saying "bullshit" my characters in that series often say "horseshit". And if there's any series where I just "fade to black" on cursing and cop out with "and then he said a string of obscenities", it's that series.  Because sometimes I just don't know what they would say in that land that wouldn't sound out of place!

Hence why if I run a search of swears in any Nagnomei file, I do not find many.  In CROSS//Rebirth alone, however, there are 84 "fucks", 62 "shits", etc etc. It's a lot easier to let the modern American swears ring out when your characters live in, well, modern America...and swear just as much as you do.  Sometimes, even, it's just fun to sit there and childishly let your characters say all the swears you never got to say in front of your parents growing up.

This tangentially leads into another, slightly more serious field than just swearing - slurs, which a lot of swears fall under.  Some swears are wonderfully neutral as to who they go against - words like "ass", "shit", "fuck", etc.  Then there are the slurs, such as "bitch", "cunt", "retarded", etc.  Swears that come from the oppression of minority groups, pretty much.  I've cut many of these words out of my general vocabulary over the past couple of years, and I've deleted quite a bit of them as well from my writing - unless it really is time to drive a point home about a character.  Although I've stopped saying many slurs in my day to day life, my characters still spit them out on occasion.  Sometimes it's just a fantastic way to tell a reader "hey, this guy's a scumraking douchenozzle. look at what he's saying about women, eh."  Sometimes characters are purposefully trying to hurt one another with words, including slurs.  Some are probably even the type of people to go on their Livejournal and mumble about "political correctness".  And some just don't care, especially in a time period (in this case, 2007 and slightly before) when using more recent slurs was still more socially acceptable than it is now in 2011.  There are times when I am editing a scene in a novel and cringe at some of the dialogue a character is spewing and seriously consider changing it because it even makes me uncomfortable now - about half of the time I do change it to something more shitastically neutral, and the other half I leave it in based on the context of the scene and I decide that I want it to reflect (usually poorly) on the character.  Even my heroes are not exempt from the "ugh, did he really just call a woman a 'bitch'" anger. There is also the balance of my own - and my characters' individual - privileges, but that is almost certainly a topic for another entry one day.

For now, let's just leave it at this:  my characters swear twice as much during the month of November.  I'm sure most of you can guess why.

"But are you a -real- author?"

You are nothing without the bind.

"I'll read your books once they're published!"

If you're a writer you've probably heard this before...unless you're not interested in people reading your works, then maybe you haven't.  But if you have then you're probably also familiar with the connotations a phrase like this carries.  On the surface it's innocuous and means "When you're out there I'll support you", which is always nice to know, I suppose.  But on the other, if you've been "in the business" long enough, what you're interpreting is "I do not take your writing seriously enough because you are not published."

This whole topic comes from the interview I had the other day with the local newspaper.  At one point while we talked about writing life in a rare sunny January morning, one of us mentioned how writing is that one art that you usually don't have much to "show" for.  If you're a painter, a sketcher, even a sculptor, or hell even a master quilter, you've usually got that tangible product to show for all your hard work.  In this day and age, however, most of us authors do our thing electronically.  All of my writing is stored (in various places, because I've learned many lessons...) primarily on my laptop, on my web server, and even on a USB drive for good measure.  And while way back when I used to print off my manuscripts and bind them in a binder, that quickly became impractical and something that wasn't worth my time anyway.  Yet that was the extent of which you could see a tangible product of my work.  Even if you've painted something too large to carry around with you for people to look at, odds are you can still take even a cell phone photo to whip out at all those small-talk parties.  But if you're a writer, you can say, "Yeah, I'm a writer..." and worst case scenario they say, "Oh, have you been published?"

The moment you say "no", you've lost all credibility.  It doesn't even matter if that person is someone who swears that it doesn't matter if you've been published or not - once "no" passes through your lips, you see their faces fall and their eyes say, "Oh, well...then how are you a writer?"

If a painter is somebody who paints, then a writer is somebody who writes.  Nobody would really argue with the guy in his studio whether or not  he is actually accomplishing something with his painting...it may not be "good", it may not make him any money, but the painting is there and people can clearly see the outcome of his time spent.  With writing, however, you usually have to work on the basis of good faith, especially if you're like me and have a propensity for deleting everything you just wrote because it's crap.  The painter who destroyed his works for the same reason still has to take out those scraps to the garbage, but we (electronic) writers just have to hit "delete" and it's like it was never there.  We know we wrote something, but now nobody else does.

Unless you've been published.

And even "yes, I have been published" means different things.  How?  When?  "I published a short story in a magazine ten years ago" is not as exciting as "I just released my first book last year."  The first thing people usually want to know is if they can get a hold of your work.  Depends on what they mean by that,, eh?  They want to hear, "You can get it off Amazon / at Borders" not "I think there's still a downloadable PDF at the magazine's website."  And heaven forbid if your publishing claim to fame is an academic piece about Gnostic mysticism and there was this guy named Jesus and blahblahblah....you can see them yawning already and quickly losing interest. 

As someone who has claimed to be a writer / author (the difference or interchangeability of the two is a discussion for another day) for over ten years now, it's a song and dance I'm quite used to and have finally responded by simply saying "I'm an author" and then pretending I don't hear anything else after that.  No, I as of yet have not been "legitimately" published, and I'm pretty okay with that.  Right now I'm focusing on finishing projects and cleaning them up, which one would hope precedes any actual publishing.  And with my impending move overseas looming in front of me, I don't exactly have time to see if I want to try sending things off to be published or not.  These aren't even excuses:  it's reality, and it's something that does not bother me.  It seems to really bother other people, though.  How dare I call myself an author when I haven't even been published before?  Sometimes I wonder if other people would also have a problem with finding out that anything I published was self-published, since there is certainly still a stigma around that in the writing world, but like most other things that's a topic for another day.

Believe it or not, this wasn't really where I was planning to go with my opening topic.  While I may not be published, many of my works are available in various formats for people to read - freely, even.  More than once I've pointed this out to those who lament that I'm not published for them to read...and the usual response?  "Oh, well, I'll read your books when they're published!"  Gee, thanks?  Where does that leave me in the mean time?  Oh, and thanks for insinuating that I'm not a real author and my novels have no real merit unless they're published...that's not what you meant?  Well, for me, and many other writers out there, that's sort of how we interpret it now.   Furthermore, we love beta readers.  What's a beta reader?  Someone who reads our drafts (and takes into account which draft it is) and helps us figure out what's working and what isn't.  That way when we do attempt publishing we're the best we can be at that stage, and you've got a finely polished book in your hands that you've apparently been waiting for so long to have.

Or maybe I'll just screw with everyone and only do electronic publishing.  What now.

Number Games: A Beginning in Fail

After recently declaring that I intended on finishing the manuscript for CROSS//Rebirth by November so I could purely work on the next installment and get its first 50k words in for NaNoWriMo...I'm kinda failing already.  Well, not totally. So far for October I've written 3322 words, but that still leaves me behind and blahblahblah.  At this point I'm not entirely sure I will be able to make it...and then what?  I am close enough to finishing this manuscript that it would not be worth doing Nano for just to immediately start the next one in the same month. At this point my goal is just to get as much as possible done, whether it's 30k or 50k or just the few remaining chapters I have scripted out.

 It also does not help that I had an author's revelation on the series-running plot last night.  I had one of those "HOLY CRAP WHAT IS GOING ON WITH THIS CHARACTER" moments and while totally  awesome, it will require doing a lot of rewriting in certain spots when I start to do revisions on the current manuscript.  Basically, what I'm getting at is...I have a lot to do, and not a lot of physical time to do it in.  I would love to do some notes and further planning for this new idea I've had, but with all the actual writing I've got to do it may be going back to a basic idea.

Just gotta focus, right? Riiiiiight.  Somebody pass me a Ritalin.

My Computer Kills More Characters Than I Do

It looked like this.

There's something to be said about irony.  I mean, besides the fact that it's my favorite thing ever and you would never guess I'm prone to being anemic.   But irony is only really cool when it happens to other people.  When it happens to you? Not so much.

Here's some irony for you:  on Labor Day I was futzing around, thinking about going to grab my flash drive to back up my latest writing files that had been sitting on my hard-drive for a couple weeks.  Well, before I could say "WHAT'S SOMETHING YOU SHOULD DO AFTER COMPLETING A DOCUMENT, EH?" Firefox crashed on me.  And it crashed hard.  It crashed so hard that it also took Windows Media Player out with it.  And Word.  And anything else I had opened at the time.

...And Windows.

I was forced to do a hard reset, as my laptop is prone to making me do every so often, and didn't think much of it besides a bit of an annoyance.  Well, Windows entered Startup Repair hell.  By the end of the night I was resigned to the fact I would probably have to reinstall Windows and brought out the alternate OS to salvage some files first...you know, like those writing files I meant to backup. But for some HORRIBLE reason none of the other OSes could find my document folders! So I finally realized the inevitable...I would have to reinstall and lose just about everything.

I write to you now from my new installed windows.  Thankfully, a majority of my writing projects were backed up and even to date about a month ago.  So, all is not lost.  Just the latest chapter of The Key of Nixey and the last two (thankfully short!) chapters I wrote for CROSS//Rebirth.  I have about 20 pages in total to rewrite, which is utterly obnoxious, but not the all end of the world.  The trick is just to remember what I wrote!

So, learn from me, fellow document creators...aaaaalways baack up your stuff the moment they're created! I'll definitely be more vigilant in saving my extended files to other sources just so I don't have to repeat the rewriting bullpocky that I haven't had to do since 2000. Fudge.

30 Days of Writing: #17

17. Favorite pro­tag­o­nist and why!

Sooooo how  is this not like the "favorite character!" question?

Meh, I have so many protagonists, it's hard to pick a favorite.  Especially since some of my faves cross over into antagonist category more than once - actually, if I think about it, most of my characters cross between "good" and "evil" so much that sometimes it feels weird to call them protagonist or antagonist.  The bad guys are doing their bad things in the name of good, and the good guys do some bad things to save their worlds.  IT'S LIKE A CIRCLE.

But I guess if I spin it in terms of ~best character that does protagonisty things~ I'll give props to my man Jack, because he was my first (as if) and, even though he's in a total crap situation throughout his entire series, he doesn't whine too much and just kinda takes it like a man.  He's lawful good without the armor, because guys who go out with just a sword in their hand are a-ok with me. And he's a red-head, I mean come on.

I have a horrible feeling I know what tomorrow's is going to be...