Writer's Weekend--Day 2 (continued)
Jul. 28th, 2004 11:32 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
annathepiperThis is the rest of what I did on Day 2 of Writer's Weekend (Friday the 23rd), finished up before I forget about it. :) I'll be trying to get the rest of this written up tonight so that I'll have this out of the way! Once I started getting into the rest of the panels on this particular day, I began to get an overall theme of "Writer's Weekend Cliff Notes"... "be professional", "keep at it", and "write good books"!
After Russell Davis' panel, we were all fed pizza for lunch and that was quite tasty. In fact, being fed regularly was one of the things I liked about the conference even aside from the subject matter of the panels--it helped make the registration price worth it. Of course, I later learned that next year they won't be able to do this--it's hella pricey to feed that many people for a weekend. Still, though, the group meals proved a very good opportunity for folks to just hang out and chat. The pros mingled with the not-yet-pros. The amateurs mingled with the agents. And it all helped make the writing industry a little less scary by giving it faces of real people.
The next thing I attended was Rebecca York's keynote speech, the first of several amusing keynote speeches given by the various pro authors who were attending. This lady was representing the romantic-suspense/mystery/romance side of the industry, and she has a current trilogy of romantic suspense books out... that involve werewolves. Hee. I figured, what the hey, those sound like fun. ;)
She started off her talk, though, with some amusing questions she gets frequently asked. "Why do your book covers always suck?" (She held up a large-scale mockup of one--it's a series romance cover, and well hey, those do generally suck! But she also pointed out that authors generally have no control over what goes on the cover.) "Do you practice your sex scenes?" Her answer to this is "I also murder a lot of characters. Do you think I practice murder?"
And she, like so many other authors, gets asked where she gets her ideas. In addressing how this happens, she went into telling us a very amusing tale of how she got an up-close-and-personal look at five buzzards who all flew off when she moved to get up and bring her husband to look at them--and they realized she wasn't dead. She proceeded to elaborate how she got a very vivid picture of what buzzards look like, and from what she was describing, it was a very good example of how weird little incidents over the course of one's life can go into your brain, roll around with everything else in there, and eventually pop out an idea for a scene or an entire story. At this point I am sad to say that I can't remember whether she specified she was going to use this in a book she was working on, or whether it was in a book she'd already written, where her hero, lying wounded, would have this flock of buzzards hanging out and eying him from a tree.
Another interesting thing she mentioned is that even though she writes romantic suspense, she didn't read romance as a child. That is interesting to think about for me in conjunction with how they kept advising people to marry their genres of choice for writing with their genres of choice for reading--if you don't read science fiction and fantasy, you won't be as well equipped to write it as another author who does and is familiar with the conventions of the genre.
Her version of the overall theme I began to detect throughout everyone's talks was that to succeed as a writer, you need 1) talent, 2) luck, and 3) pluck. In other words, "write a good book", "get it to the right people at the right time", and "be determined enough to hang in there".
She had us do a little mental exercise I'll mention here, which was to take the following four things and rank them in order of importance in regards to wanting to be a writer: making money, getting recognition, writing the best possible book, and avoiding stress. Most of the folks who actually spoke up to share how they'd ordered these things had "best possible book" as number 1, with "getting recognition" as 2. The other two... a few had these switched back and forth.
And she stressed the importance of how you can't write alone; a writer needs feedback in order to learn and improve. But a writer needs good feedback. I was pleased to note at the time that this was one of the things I rather knew already--but which was nice to have affirmed. "Oh, I loved reading this," is nice for the ego--but it's not really good critical feedback. "Okay, overall, I did like this chapter, but it has weak points A, B, and C for me. On the other hand, it's ALSO got good strong points D, E, and F"--something like that is good critical feedback.
Okay, so I'll freely admit that mostly during Kit's panel, I was back there playing with editing Chapter 1 of Faerie Blood on my frob. But I was listening, honest! HI KIT! *waves wildly* ;)
This was the first time that we actually split the program space into two smaller areas; I went over to Kit's side, just because, well, KIT! In the other half, Mia Zachary, who had a romance novel on sale when we had the book signing later on, did a Creativity Workshop--I don't know what was going on over there, but over on Kit's side, we were quite jealous of the music they started playing.
But even with that distraction, it is probably a sign of how well I know Kit and how much I've been picking her brains for information lately that I recognized much of what she had to say--and some of the rest of it comes just from having read books that frequently switch points of view. And, as of late, writing one that cycles through three major viewpoint characters myself. She did say one thing that I don't think I ever actively thought about before, though--and that is that writing in first person is way harder than writing in third. This is because you're asking the reader to ride around in your viewpoint character's head, and as a result, this means that you don't get to show anything your protagonist won't see--not unless you're really good at pulling tricks to do otherwise. There's also that you have to watch out for phrasing things the way your character would; I'm learning the pitfalls of this with Faerie Blood.
I would also like to now take this opportunity to pay homage to Kit for cycling through FIVE viewpoint characters in the thing SHE is working on. I'm just doing a piddly three. ;D
The "I Sold a Book, Now What?" panel was the next thing I attended, and that was informative and fun. Especially with the immediate off-the-cuff answer to the theme question, which was, "Celebrate and then WRITE THE NEXT ONE." Because if nothing else, when an editor asks you, "So, what are you working on now?", it is a very good thing to be able to have an answer for them.
Think of ideas for the cover--if you are asked about that, you should be prepared to offer ideas. Though you might not get asked about it at all.
Another thing you'll need to do is be prepared to edit it, and remember that edits will be just as time consuming as writing! You should also be prepared to intelligently discuss proposed changes with your editor. This means that you don't necessarily need to accept everything they say as gospel--even though you do also need to keep in mind that the editor's got the same goal you do, getting the book out to the public in the best possible form. You just need to remember that if you feel strongly about a given thing in the book, tell the editor. Ask them for their reasoning behind their requested change--and try to work out a middle ground on it. Above all, be professional.
You should not say yes right away to a contract; don't let the "OHMIGOD SOMEBODY WANTS TO BUY MY BOOK!" excitement carry you away. You should research how contracts work, and learn what the pitfalls are for unagented writers--and decide for yourself whether you want to go the 'no agent' route, or pay an agent the 15 percent commission. If you do want to go the agent route, you should be prepared to look up agents you're interested in--and the cool thing is, if you do get an agent, you can let the agent be your heavy when duking it out with an editor over something. In fact, or so we were informed, editors will prefer to have such discussions with agents so as not to taint the professional relationship with the author. Moreover, a good agent will sign on to represent all of your literary work all throughout your career.
(This led into a side discussion of what happens if you try to change genres at some point in your literary career, and whether you should write under a different name. This can create issues if your contract indicates that your pen name is owned by your publishing house; if the house owns it, they can give it to other authors. You do, though, get some level of protection if you happen to be writing under your real name.)
Talk with your friends who are writers--gosh, I wouldn't know anything about this one, would I? (HI KIT! ;) ) Going to conferences and events is good--networking with people is very important.
Be prepared to promote yourself, in no small part because at first, new authors just won't be promoted as heavily as established ones. You should be prepared to do the things you can do yourself to promote your book--though we were advised right off that we should avoid trying things we aren't good at, and, most importantly, direct mail. Mailing of postcards and the like apparently just doesn't work that well to promote a book. But if you can get a webpage going, that's a great idea. Word of mouth is also an invaluable tool--because it grows and spreads. You must assume that everyone you meet might be able to make or break your ability to sell a book; recruit your own cadre of bookstore commandos. ;)
If you have relatives, recruit 'em! "Never underestimate the power of your mother."--Liz Wolfe. Ms. Wolfe relayed to us how her mother strongarmed people into buying copies of HER books: "Did you buy it?" "Um, yeah..." "Let me SEE it!" Hee. And I believe it was Jacqueline Carey who countered that with talking about how her younger sister made up a drinking game based on her book.
If you have enough personal confidence, you can try the 'recommend your own book to strangers without identifying yourself' trick--or if you happen to have a cool tattoo based on something in your book and someone says "That's a cool tattoo!", you can answer that with "Let me tell you about the book!" (I believe it was, again, Jacqueline Carey who had a tattoo designed around something significant in her work.)
Last but not least, your book will do the most promotion for you--so just write a good book.
Olivia Gates was one of the more unusual guests for a couple of reasons--#1, she's a trained doctor, which she uses in the medical-themed romances she writes, and #2, she came to the conference all the way from CAIRO. That, my friends, was one hell of a jaunt.
Her panel was fun, though, because we all got to ask her in-depth, bloody questions about how if we want to mangle, torture, or mutilate our characters, what are the ways to do it that are medically believable? She turned it mostly into a Q&A kind of thing rather than a talk, and so when she opened the floor for questions, I started off by asking her about one of the big ones that seems to be a problem in romance novels all over the place: how a hero will get badly wounded and then seem to get a fever at the drop of a hat. I asked her about whether a serious wound will actually do that in a short time frame, 24-48 hours, and she was willing to buy that as long as the victim goes untreated and the wound gets infected.
Another big cliche that got brought up was "amnesia from a bonk on the head"--I kind of knew this one already, too. Just because of having gleaned from better-written amnesia plots that if you're going to have a person with their brain broken badly enough to forget their own identity, they very likely have more brain damage than just THAT. The Bourne Identity comes to mind here as one of the better-written amnesia plots I've encountered--after all, the fact that Bourne's brain is that fucked up is a significant plot factor throughout the first two books. Boy, did she bitch about that one. ;) Even more vigorously, however, she decried "total blindness from a bonk on the head"--especially total temporary blindness, which is another thing that just isn't going to happen without a lot more severe damage to the brain.
She got asked other amusing questions, such as where somebody needs to get stabbed to kill them as fast as possible--and I asked her another round of questions about how an assassion can treat his weapons to take down opponents, which is something I need to think hard about for Lament of the Dove and Julian. I've got to do some research on curare now, and make damn sure that Julian never actually touches his own blades with unprotected fingers. ;)
It turned out that Jim Butcher and his wife Sharon showed up running somewhat late--because they missed their connecting flight. But they did make it, coming in not too terribly late and inhaling some of the dinner provided (KFC and side dishes). Then Jim got up to talk to us, and this was one of the things I'd been looking forward to, since I'm a staunch fan of his Dresden Files books.
Jim touched on a lot of the same overall themes everyone else did--but his big thing was to lay it out to us that we have HUGE odds to overcome as new writers. But not quite as huge as they might appear, because we don't have to beat out everybody else in the field. We just have to beat out the people next to us. He used the old hoary "you don't have to outrun the bear, just the guy next to you" joke to illustrate this point. Publishers do, he told us, want new writers--and they keep a few slots open every year for those new writers. So you just have to compete with other new writers to get those slots.
Once you do sell, you're no longer a newbie--and then you have to deal with that bear. Then you get to pay more attention to your competition and hone your craft.
And he hammered the points of 1) don't quit, 2) keep writing, 3) do your homework, and ask thoughtful questions; don't look dumb; 4) keep an eye out for what given publishers and editors are looking for; 5) network with others in the industry.
He said two things that definitely made me giggle, though. One was his answer to the question "What inspires you to write?": "My mortgage!"
The other was his saying how some people like plot-driven books, and others like character-driven books. To him, this is rather like saying "some people like to ride in cars with wheels, and other people like to ride in cars with engines"!
I skipped the panel on private investigator and legal messenger stuff, just because I wanted to edit Faerie Blood some more... but I did wander back in for Jacqueline Carey's speech. I'd been trying to figure out who she was--and only after showing up for this did I realize, oh yeah, she's the one who wrote Kushiel's Dart, which is supposed to have gotten a lot of recent acclaim in the SF/F genre. So she was the other SF/F author we had on hand, and I found her interesting to listen to as well.
Her tale of her dad trying to teach her to ski when she was two, and how he tried over and over again without success to get her to learn how to use the rope tow on the bunny hill, was her lead-in for her version of making the point about how new writers should not give up. She didn't get the hang of the rope two until she petulantly ordered her daddy to let her just try it herself, and only after several attempts on her own did she finally figure it out.
If you know it's derivative, she told us, DON'T WRITE IT. Which seems like a simple point to make, but y'know? It's worth pointing out.
Several people asked her about the pronunciation of her characters' names, and she told us that even though she has heavily French-influenced character names, she just Anglicizes them in her own head. But at the same time, she doesn't tend to enforce pronunciation... she prefers to let the reader decide what sounds right to their ear, within reason.
Which sort of leads around to me learning for the first time something of what the world of Kushiel's Dart is about--and her telling us about how her heroine is, right up front, a masochist. She talked about how in a lot of popular media, there's this sort of unspoken titillation factor with characters being harmed, abused, and such--but it generally remains unspoken. But with her work, she's actually putting it out in the open; on the back cover, in fact, her heroine is described as "pricked by Kushiel's dart, destined to forever experience pleasure and pain as one".
This sounded pretty damned bold to me... but what raised my interest further is that she discussed how putting the work into first person was a very deliberate choice for her, one which she did to remove any possibility of voyeurism on the part of the reader. You don't get the luxury of standing back and going "tee hee" behind your hand at what's going on with her heroine; you're there, experiencing it, because you are her.
And she encouraged new writers to be willing to experiment--to do things like try to write short fiction if you haven't, so as to stretch yourself in different directions.
After doing all of the above, that was pretty much it for me for the night; I vanished upstairs to do more editing, and then trundled off to bed a couple hours after that. Tomorrow, I'll write up what happened on Saturday the 24th!
After Russell Davis' panel, we were all fed pizza for lunch and that was quite tasty. In fact, being fed regularly was one of the things I liked about the conference even aside from the subject matter of the panels--it helped make the registration price worth it. Of course, I later learned that next year they won't be able to do this--it's hella pricey to feed that many people for a weekend. Still, though, the group meals proved a very good opportunity for folks to just hang out and chat. The pros mingled with the not-yet-pros. The amateurs mingled with the agents. And it all helped make the writing industry a little less scary by giving it faces of real people.
The next thing I attended was Rebecca York's keynote speech, the first of several amusing keynote speeches given by the various pro authors who were attending. This lady was representing the romantic-suspense/mystery/romance side of the industry, and she has a current trilogy of romantic suspense books out... that involve werewolves. Hee. I figured, what the hey, those sound like fun. ;)
She started off her talk, though, with some amusing questions she gets frequently asked. "Why do your book covers always suck?" (She held up a large-scale mockup of one--it's a series romance cover, and well hey, those do generally suck! But she also pointed out that authors generally have no control over what goes on the cover.) "Do you practice your sex scenes?" Her answer to this is "I also murder a lot of characters. Do you think I practice murder?"
And she, like so many other authors, gets asked where she gets her ideas. In addressing how this happens, she went into telling us a very amusing tale of how she got an up-close-and-personal look at five buzzards who all flew off when she moved to get up and bring her husband to look at them--and they realized she wasn't dead. She proceeded to elaborate how she got a very vivid picture of what buzzards look like, and from what she was describing, it was a very good example of how weird little incidents over the course of one's life can go into your brain, roll around with everything else in there, and eventually pop out an idea for a scene or an entire story. At this point I am sad to say that I can't remember whether she specified she was going to use this in a book she was working on, or whether it was in a book she'd already written, where her hero, lying wounded, would have this flock of buzzards hanging out and eying him from a tree.
Another interesting thing she mentioned is that even though she writes romantic suspense, she didn't read romance as a child. That is interesting to think about for me in conjunction with how they kept advising people to marry their genres of choice for writing with their genres of choice for reading--if you don't read science fiction and fantasy, you won't be as well equipped to write it as another author who does and is familiar with the conventions of the genre.
Her version of the overall theme I began to detect throughout everyone's talks was that to succeed as a writer, you need 1) talent, 2) luck, and 3) pluck. In other words, "write a good book", "get it to the right people at the right time", and "be determined enough to hang in there".
She had us do a little mental exercise I'll mention here, which was to take the following four things and rank them in order of importance in regards to wanting to be a writer: making money, getting recognition, writing the best possible book, and avoiding stress. Most of the folks who actually spoke up to share how they'd ordered these things had "best possible book" as number 1, with "getting recognition" as 2. The other two... a few had these switched back and forth.
And she stressed the importance of how you can't write alone; a writer needs feedback in order to learn and improve. But a writer needs good feedback. I was pleased to note at the time that this was one of the things I rather knew already--but which was nice to have affirmed. "Oh, I loved reading this," is nice for the ego--but it's not really good critical feedback. "Okay, overall, I did like this chapter, but it has weak points A, B, and C for me. On the other hand, it's ALSO got good strong points D, E, and F"--something like that is good critical feedback.
Okay, so I'll freely admit that mostly during Kit's panel, I was back there playing with editing Chapter 1 of Faerie Blood on my frob. But I was listening, honest! HI KIT! *waves wildly* ;)
This was the first time that we actually split the program space into two smaller areas; I went over to Kit's side, just because, well, KIT! In the other half, Mia Zachary, who had a romance novel on sale when we had the book signing later on, did a Creativity Workshop--I don't know what was going on over there, but over on Kit's side, we were quite jealous of the music they started playing.
But even with that distraction, it is probably a sign of how well I know Kit and how much I've been picking her brains for information lately that I recognized much of what she had to say--and some of the rest of it comes just from having read books that frequently switch points of view. And, as of late, writing one that cycles through three major viewpoint characters myself. She did say one thing that I don't think I ever actively thought about before, though--and that is that writing in first person is way harder than writing in third. This is because you're asking the reader to ride around in your viewpoint character's head, and as a result, this means that you don't get to show anything your protagonist won't see--not unless you're really good at pulling tricks to do otherwise. There's also that you have to watch out for phrasing things the way your character would; I'm learning the pitfalls of this with Faerie Blood.
I would also like to now take this opportunity to pay homage to Kit for cycling through FIVE viewpoint characters in the thing SHE is working on. I'm just doing a piddly three. ;D
The "I Sold a Book, Now What?" panel was the next thing I attended, and that was informative and fun. Especially with the immediate off-the-cuff answer to the theme question, which was, "Celebrate and then WRITE THE NEXT ONE." Because if nothing else, when an editor asks you, "So, what are you working on now?", it is a very good thing to be able to have an answer for them.
Think of ideas for the cover--if you are asked about that, you should be prepared to offer ideas. Though you might not get asked about it at all.
Another thing you'll need to do is be prepared to edit it, and remember that edits will be just as time consuming as writing! You should also be prepared to intelligently discuss proposed changes with your editor. This means that you don't necessarily need to accept everything they say as gospel--even though you do also need to keep in mind that the editor's got the same goal you do, getting the book out to the public in the best possible form. You just need to remember that if you feel strongly about a given thing in the book, tell the editor. Ask them for their reasoning behind their requested change--and try to work out a middle ground on it. Above all, be professional.
You should not say yes right away to a contract; don't let the "OHMIGOD SOMEBODY WANTS TO BUY MY BOOK!" excitement carry you away. You should research how contracts work, and learn what the pitfalls are for unagented writers--and decide for yourself whether you want to go the 'no agent' route, or pay an agent the 15 percent commission. If you do want to go the agent route, you should be prepared to look up agents you're interested in--and the cool thing is, if you do get an agent, you can let the agent be your heavy when duking it out with an editor over something. In fact, or so we were informed, editors will prefer to have such discussions with agents so as not to taint the professional relationship with the author. Moreover, a good agent will sign on to represent all of your literary work all throughout your career.
(This led into a side discussion of what happens if you try to change genres at some point in your literary career, and whether you should write under a different name. This can create issues if your contract indicates that your pen name is owned by your publishing house; if the house owns it, they can give it to other authors. You do, though, get some level of protection if you happen to be writing under your real name.)
Talk with your friends who are writers--gosh, I wouldn't know anything about this one, would I? (HI KIT! ;) ) Going to conferences and events is good--networking with people is very important.
Be prepared to promote yourself, in no small part because at first, new authors just won't be promoted as heavily as established ones. You should be prepared to do the things you can do yourself to promote your book--though we were advised right off that we should avoid trying things we aren't good at, and, most importantly, direct mail. Mailing of postcards and the like apparently just doesn't work that well to promote a book. But if you can get a webpage going, that's a great idea. Word of mouth is also an invaluable tool--because it grows and spreads. You must assume that everyone you meet might be able to make or break your ability to sell a book; recruit your own cadre of bookstore commandos. ;)
If you have relatives, recruit 'em! "Never underestimate the power of your mother."--Liz Wolfe. Ms. Wolfe relayed to us how her mother strongarmed people into buying copies of HER books: "Did you buy it?" "Um, yeah..." "Let me SEE it!" Hee. And I believe it was Jacqueline Carey who countered that with talking about how her younger sister made up a drinking game based on her book.
If you have enough personal confidence, you can try the 'recommend your own book to strangers without identifying yourself' trick--or if you happen to have a cool tattoo based on something in your book and someone says "That's a cool tattoo!", you can answer that with "Let me tell you about the book!" (I believe it was, again, Jacqueline Carey who had a tattoo designed around something significant in her work.)
Last but not least, your book will do the most promotion for you--so just write a good book.
Olivia Gates was one of the more unusual guests for a couple of reasons--#1, she's a trained doctor, which she uses in the medical-themed romances she writes, and #2, she came to the conference all the way from CAIRO. That, my friends, was one hell of a jaunt.
Her panel was fun, though, because we all got to ask her in-depth, bloody questions about how if we want to mangle, torture, or mutilate our characters, what are the ways to do it that are medically believable? She turned it mostly into a Q&A kind of thing rather than a talk, and so when she opened the floor for questions, I started off by asking her about one of the big ones that seems to be a problem in romance novels all over the place: how a hero will get badly wounded and then seem to get a fever at the drop of a hat. I asked her about whether a serious wound will actually do that in a short time frame, 24-48 hours, and she was willing to buy that as long as the victim goes untreated and the wound gets infected.
Another big cliche that got brought up was "amnesia from a bonk on the head"--I kind of knew this one already, too. Just because of having gleaned from better-written amnesia plots that if you're going to have a person with their brain broken badly enough to forget their own identity, they very likely have more brain damage than just THAT. The Bourne Identity comes to mind here as one of the better-written amnesia plots I've encountered--after all, the fact that Bourne's brain is that fucked up is a significant plot factor throughout the first two books. Boy, did she bitch about that one. ;) Even more vigorously, however, she decried "total blindness from a bonk on the head"--especially total temporary blindness, which is another thing that just isn't going to happen without a lot more severe damage to the brain.
She got asked other amusing questions, such as where somebody needs to get stabbed to kill them as fast as possible--and I asked her another round of questions about how an assassion can treat his weapons to take down opponents, which is something I need to think hard about for Lament of the Dove and Julian. I've got to do some research on curare now, and make damn sure that Julian never actually touches his own blades with unprotected fingers. ;)
It turned out that Jim Butcher and his wife Sharon showed up running somewhat late--because they missed their connecting flight. But they did make it, coming in not too terribly late and inhaling some of the dinner provided (KFC and side dishes). Then Jim got up to talk to us, and this was one of the things I'd been looking forward to, since I'm a staunch fan of his Dresden Files books.
Jim touched on a lot of the same overall themes everyone else did--but his big thing was to lay it out to us that we have HUGE odds to overcome as new writers. But not quite as huge as they might appear, because we don't have to beat out everybody else in the field. We just have to beat out the people next to us. He used the old hoary "you don't have to outrun the bear, just the guy next to you" joke to illustrate this point. Publishers do, he told us, want new writers--and they keep a few slots open every year for those new writers. So you just have to compete with other new writers to get those slots.
Once you do sell, you're no longer a newbie--and then you have to deal with that bear. Then you get to pay more attention to your competition and hone your craft.
And he hammered the points of 1) don't quit, 2) keep writing, 3) do your homework, and ask thoughtful questions; don't look dumb; 4) keep an eye out for what given publishers and editors are looking for; 5) network with others in the industry.
He said two things that definitely made me giggle, though. One was his answer to the question "What inspires you to write?": "My mortgage!"
The other was his saying how some people like plot-driven books, and others like character-driven books. To him, this is rather like saying "some people like to ride in cars with wheels, and other people like to ride in cars with engines"!
I skipped the panel on private investigator and legal messenger stuff, just because I wanted to edit Faerie Blood some more... but I did wander back in for Jacqueline Carey's speech. I'd been trying to figure out who she was--and only after showing up for this did I realize, oh yeah, she's the one who wrote Kushiel's Dart, which is supposed to have gotten a lot of recent acclaim in the SF/F genre. So she was the other SF/F author we had on hand, and I found her interesting to listen to as well.
Her tale of her dad trying to teach her to ski when she was two, and how he tried over and over again without success to get her to learn how to use the rope tow on the bunny hill, was her lead-in for her version of making the point about how new writers should not give up. She didn't get the hang of the rope two until she petulantly ordered her daddy to let her just try it herself, and only after several attempts on her own did she finally figure it out.
If you know it's derivative, she told us, DON'T WRITE IT. Which seems like a simple point to make, but y'know? It's worth pointing out.
Several people asked her about the pronunciation of her characters' names, and she told us that even though she has heavily French-influenced character names, she just Anglicizes them in her own head. But at the same time, she doesn't tend to enforce pronunciation... she prefers to let the reader decide what sounds right to their ear, within reason.
Which sort of leads around to me learning for the first time something of what the world of Kushiel's Dart is about--and her telling us about how her heroine is, right up front, a masochist. She talked about how in a lot of popular media, there's this sort of unspoken titillation factor with characters being harmed, abused, and such--but it generally remains unspoken. But with her work, she's actually putting it out in the open; on the back cover, in fact, her heroine is described as "pricked by Kushiel's dart, destined to forever experience pleasure and pain as one".
This sounded pretty damned bold to me... but what raised my interest further is that she discussed how putting the work into first person was a very deliberate choice for her, one which she did to remove any possibility of voyeurism on the part of the reader. You don't get the luxury of standing back and going "tee hee" behind your hand at what's going on with her heroine; you're there, experiencing it, because you are her.
And she encouraged new writers to be willing to experiment--to do things like try to write short fiction if you haven't, so as to stretch yourself in different directions.
After doing all of the above, that was pretty much it for me for the night; I vanished upstairs to do more editing, and then trundled off to bed a couple hours after that. Tomorrow, I'll write up what happened on Saturday the 24th!
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Date: 2004-07-29 05:34 am (UTC)This isn't bad, just... a bit jarring. :)
And I don't think her covers suck. They aren't the /best/ covers ever, but they don't suck. :)
As to the Kushiel books... those were interesting reads, but the pacing is strange. There are points where I can't put them down, and points where I want to never come back to them. Ms. Carey has a tendency to repeat stuff that, as a reader, it actually irks me to have repeated. Like when she uses a word from her gypsy-esque language. The same word, pretty much every time she uses it, gets translated. After the fourth or fifth time, it actually got downright annoying. Also, the constant repetition of what her main character is. If you haven't figured it out by the time you're 100 pages into the third book, you should just stop reading Right Now because your comprehension abilities need serious work. :)
Anyway, I read all the Kushiel books and enjoyed them, though I wouldn't recommend them to anyone who was even slightly touchy about sexual violence.
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Date: 2004-07-29 05:36 pm (UTC)That said, I am having a bit of an interesting time just getting through the first of her werewolf books, though this is less the fault of the book and more the fault of being too distracted by everything else to sit down and read it all the way through!
As for her covers--I like the ones on the werewolf trilogy just fine. But the cover she showed us during her panel was one of the Harlequin or Silhouette or some such series... and after in-depth exposure to those at
Duly noted re: Kushiel's Dart. I fully expect to be challenged by this book; I hope that holds up. And heck, Jacqueline Carey signed it for me, so now I feel rather obligated to read it. :)
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Date: 2004-07-29 06:38 pm (UTC)Yeah, most romance novel covers suck. I used to put little brown paper bag bookcovers on my romance novels when I read them in high school because the covers were downright embarassing. Thankfully, most of the authors I read now have rather tasteful covers lacking in pert bosoms with pointy nipples under thin fabric displayed alongside bare bulging man tits.
I haven't read Killing Moon yet, since the bookstore didn't have it, but I'm currently reading Edge of the Moon and enjoying it. The blunt language is, hm. It interrupts the flow of the text. I think that's what bugs me about it. Not that they are particularly bad word choices, just... I don't expect to see them outside of hard erotic or tinysex. :) Ross figures in the second book, but the second one isn't actually about werewolves. :)
If you want to see the sample of York's writing that made me go out and buy her books, check out the anthology Cravings. It'll probably be listed under Laurell K. Hamilton's name.
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Date: 2004-07-29 06:54 pm (UTC)And yeah, I'm getting sort of that tinysex feel out of some of the scenes, myself. ;)
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Date: 2004-07-30 12:46 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-07-30 06:27 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-07-29 06:39 pm (UTC)Every now and then, I even read one where I go 'I know I can write a better book than that.' But therein lies
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Date: 2004-07-29 06:55 pm (UTC)And I've had experiences with books like that, myself. Or at least, I'm starting to!