Questions from a Brave and Stupid Man to a Panel of Women Writers #2: Pseudonyms

Being a white man, I willingly acknowledge I have blind spots, things that while they don't register to me like they perhaps should are things well worth my time and thought and important for me to know and understand in order to a member of a community of diverse writers.

That said, I've assembled an all-female panel of writers to be my teachers.

In the previous discussion someone brought up the issue of using a pen name. I figured we could go deeper into that issue this time.

This is #2 in a series of articles. The first can be found here, and the third here. 

So, today's discussion is this:

Do you find using a pseudonym helpful or a waste of time? Does it matter if you choose one that can be vague as to the gender or can a male one still open doors better than a female name? Or is it a genre specific issue?

Nikki Nelson-Hicks: I wrote it. I want my name on it. But that's my decision. I know people who use a pen name because they don't want their families to know about their work or they have a professional reputation to safeguard. I'm lucky that I don't have anything like that to hide from. I wrote it. That's my name. Deal with it.

Alexandra Christian: I started using a pen name because I was writing steamy romance while teaching 2nd grade. Apparently women are still supposed to be sexless schoolmarms. I write across a few genres, but I haven’t felt the need to come up with new pen names just yet. Or maybe all my writing is inherently sexual.

Ellie Raine: I've heard a lot of women use male pen names to get more sales in certain genres (and men using female pen names for romance) and it sucks that it continually gets them results. I choose to use my female name despite the genre I write because I would rather help break society's expectations of which genders "writer better (you name it) books". I don't know if anything will change from it, but I'd rather not feed the poison and keep the cycle of these assumptions going. The only way minds will be changed is if they consistently SEE that any gender can write any genre well.

Alexandra Christian: I’ve never gotten an agent, but I queried one book a lot and was pretty much told that my book was too sexy for sci-fi and too sci-fi for romance. I often wonder if I’d queried as a nonspecific pen name if I’d have had more success.

Ellie Raine: I had one agent tell me mine was too paranormal and not epic fantasy enough, and another tell me it was too epic fantasy and not paranormal enough. Funny how no one can seem to place these things... I never considered it may be because of the female/male dynamic, but it would be interesting to know if that was a factor.

Lucy Blue: My first publication was a collaboration with another writer, so we came up with a pen name together -- Anne Hathaway-Nayne. (And yes, it was a joke, sort of - we were writing a tie-in for Forever Knight, and Shakespeare was a character.) Then for my first solo publication with Pocket Books, I used a version of my real name, Jayel Wylie (my actual birth name is Jessica Leslie Wylie, which got shortened to JL, which my mother spelled out as Jayel), and I did three book with them under that name. Then my editor asked me to go in a slightly steamier and more fang-y direction with my next book and told me going in I was looking at one of those oh-so-popular torso covers. Because I wanted to write that book but I didn't necessarily want to always write that kind of book forever, I started using Lucy Blue. And that has since become a brand for me as a romance writer. But I'm still not sure if I'll use Lucy Blue or my real name if I do a non-romance book - it's an issue that I'm hoping is going to come up sometime in the next year, and I'll be open to input from my publisher about it then. And yeah, the idea has crossed my mind of being "J.L. Glanville" instead of "Jessica Glanville" because it's gender-neutral. But my writing, romantic or not, is so very woman-centric, I don't think I'd be fooling anybody.

Stephanie Osborn: I wrote one pure romance novel under a pen name, years ago. It didn't sell to a traditional publisher (mostly because said publisher lost it), so I threw it up indie, and occasionally it sells a copy or two.

For my SF, mystery, and popular science, I use my own name. Sometimes I kinda wish I'd used initials or something, 'cause then the SF might sell better, I sometimes think. But hey, it is what it is. I might try initials one of these days with a new series or something, just to see what happens.

Anna Grace Carpenter: I originally started using my initials because folks in real life seemed to have so much trouble remembering my given name and I was genuinely worried that folks would not be able to find my books on the shelf because they would be looking for Mary Grace or Sarah Jane instead of Anna Grace. (Of course, a couple years after I'd started selling short stories, I asked someone to look at a story that kept getting to the final round on the editors desks and then rejected. I sent him the submission formatted copy which had my real name and contact info on the first page. In his return comments the first thing he said was "I think you shouldn't use your real name because it's really too sweet for someone writing zombie stories." So the bias is definitely real.) I do introduce myself by my actual name and not my author name because my intention is not to hide anything, but I'm not rebranding my work at this point unless it's in a drastically different genre.

Nancy Hansen: I've always written under my own name because I'm proud of what I do, and so is my very supportive family. I figure an entire legion of women labored in obscurity before me, having to hide their identity to get recognized for their outstanding work in speculative and genre fiction, and I owe it to them to celebrate the freedom to be myself.

Herika Raymer: To be truthful, I am most likely still considered new to the field. Mostly because, as yet, I have not encountered any preconceptions about my name -- possibly because of how it is spelled. No one wants to 'offend' me (LOL).But I have to agree, if I wrote it I would prefer my name on it. Then again, there are times when I have considered a pen name simply because of my mundane life. Sometimes what you write should not cross over with your mundane identity. (wink wink)

Elizabeth Donald: People were always surprised that I wrote fiction under my own name, which is the same name I use for my 21 years of journalism. They acted like it would negatively impact my reputation as a journalist, but I didn't write anything I would be ashamed of, and quite frankly, most of my day-job colleagues and sources were supportive or amused. I got a little light teasing for writing romance, but nothing like the negative reactions I saw in the horror/SF world for writing romance and ebooks.

Yes, ebooks. I'm old, so my first couple of books came out in the infancy of ebooks, even pre-Kindle. People said, "I'll wait for the real book," and I couldn't use the ebooks as credits. One con even rewrote my submitted bio to call me an aspiring author. And I've spoken before about the negative reaction to paranormal romance encroaching in horror and SF, being dismissed as "vamporn," difficulty getting on horror panels and being stuck on the midnight sex panel - and the eternal, "So why are vampires so sexy?" panel. (I've started requesting NOT to be on those panels, because it was so tedious to say the same things at the same panels every single time.)

Eventually I vowed that if I would ever write more romance, it would be under a pen name and it would not be open. I found it sadly ironic that while the expectation was "romance will hurt your journalism career," it was really "writing romance means no one will take you seriously as a horror writer." It was not what I expected. Cynical colleagues said it was purely a gender thing: romance is a "woman's genre," and thus it was acceptable as long as I didn't venture into the boys' club - that the negative response of horror/SF to romance was really a negative response to women authors. I like to think that they're wrong, but I haven't found solid evidence yet.

I liked writing romance. It made me a better writer in ways that I could detail if I wasn't already far afield of Sean's question. I didn't like some of the genre's "rules," and I didn't fit in very well to readers' expectations. But in the end, I needed to jettison it from my own name in order to rebuild my brand - and to this day, 11 years after writing my last romance under my name, people who are even good friends and longtime readers will introduce me as, "This is Elizabeth Donald, she writes vampire smut." Sigh...

Amanda Niehaus-Hard: I wrote under diferent names for accounting purposes and to separate out some sections of my life from others. When I started out, I was told that sometimes a romance or women's fic publishing house will want to keep your romance "name" separate from other fiction you might write, but I'm not sure that's accurate these days. Someone recently pointed out to me that tenure-track teaching positions usually require some kind of regular publishing credentials and using a different name might complicate things. Again, no idea if that's true but I'm rolling out all new work under one of two iterations of my legal name, which is associated with my university and hopefully any future teaching I might do.

Questions from a Brave and Stupid Man to a Panel of Women Writers #1: Because Asking Honest Questions Is the Best Starting Point, I Was Told

Being a white man, I willingly acknowledge I have blind spots, things that while they don't register to me like they perhaps should are things well worth my time and thought and important for me to know and understand in order to a member of a community of diverse writers.

That said, I've assembled an all-female panel of writers to be my teachers.

This is #1 in a series of articles. The second can be found here, and the third here. 

Today's discussion is this: 

Are there issues in the writing and publishing community common to women that aren't typically experienced by men? What are they, and are they merely irksome or downright systemic?

Alexandra Christian

Alexandra Christian: I think all us chick genre writers have experienced the “girls can’t write horror/sci-fi/fantasy/pulp.” Or “girl’s put too much kissy stuff” are “too emotional.”

Lisa Matthews Collins: I could go on ad nauseam about that topic. :/

Alexandra Christian: And I like kissy stuff (obviously) but good stories don’t have to be devoid of relationships (kissy stuff).

Elizabeth Donald: Oh my god yes this. Nowhere was it more obvious than when I switched from writing vampire thrillers - which were dismissed condescendingly as "vamporn" - to writing zombie action-horror. "That's kind of a guy thing," I was told, and while they were half-kidding, in almost every case I was the sole woman on the zombie panel if I could get on the panel at all. The stereotypes of What Women Write and What Men Write persist.

Lucy Blue: I will never understand why a dude, reader or writer, who is perfectly enthusiastic about a detailed description of the bare-handed evisceration of a toddler by a monster, alien, or zombie gets entirely skeeved out by an even remotely realistic love scene. I can see it now, a new trend in splatterpunk - 'this one is REALLY scary - they talk about their FEELINGS!!' ;)

Elizabeth Donald: I've been to cons. I know sffh fans like sex. :) And yet when I did my first Dragoncon, I was with my then-publisher Ellora's Cave handing out cover cards at my booth for my first novel, an erotic vampire thriller about a serial killer tearing out throats near a vampire-run sex club. A man looked at the description on the back of the cover card, looked at me and said, "The only difference between this stuff and Penthouse Forum is the words, 'I never thought this would happen to me.'" Then he walked about five feet away and threw my cover card on the ground, in my full view. I wanted to yell after him, "That shit cost me money, asshole." Or possibly do something antisocial to him. I did neither, because I was mellower then. :)

Stephanie Osborn: I've had that happen a few times. My response is generally, "I try to write realistic characters with realistic relationships. Are you in a long-term relationship?"

(if yes) "Then you get what I mean."
(if no) "Do you WANT to be in one? Then you get what I mean."

Lisa Matthews Collins

Lisa Matthews Collins: I have had this experience twice...told that I needed to go write another genre because as a girl I didn't know enough science and math to write hard science fiction. Both times by 50+ year-old white men.


Elizabeth Donald: Sara Harvey can talk about being on a panel with a male author who opined that women can't write science fiction. He said it outright; I've been on panels where they obfuscated it behind vocabulary: "The language of science fiction is different than the language of romance, they don't blend well."

Stephanie Osborn: I do occasionally encounter people who don't know my background who try to explain the science to me. Until they find out what I used to do. [Editor's note: Stephanie is actually a rocket scientist.] Then they tend to disappear pretty soon quick.

Anna Grace Carpenter: Male characters are seen as the default, so men writing male characters is part of the norm, but when women focus on female characters (or things perceived to be female "interests") it's shunted into niche categories. (I had a dude at a convention back in January try to convince me that I could not possibly have written my books for him because the narrator was a woman, therefore it must be a book for women, not men.) Because men are the default, when a male author writes "outside his lane" so to speak, whether it's writing female characters or in a "woman's genre" it's usually regarded and brave and insightful, while women writing in genres perceived as "men's genres" are chasing trends or playing the gender card or whatever the current phrase is to indicate that women don't really belong in that space. Also, men can write characters that are either completely perfect or so very ordinary they shouldn't succeed in saving the world, and they won't be labeled as "wish-fullfilment" or "self-insertion" but women writing characters that are competent and skilled are frequently damned by accusations of "Mary Sue" characters.

While it would be nice to think these things are really just annoyances, they directly impact access to reviewers (or rather, how many female authors are reviewed each year), general exposure for their work, and ultimately sales numbers. (Let's not forget that a survey of top-market book reviews a couple of years ago revealed that dead male authors still received more critical attention than living female authors.)

Elizabeth Donald

Elizabeth Donald: There's another aspect of that "male character is the default" that I think is going to take at least another generation to work out. The initial experience of the reader is one of identification, of compassion in the original sense, the ability to identify with the main character and empathize with his or her plight. For the vast majority of English-language literature, male characters were the default, as written by male writers. Women grew up reading those stories, and learned to identify with male protagonists and their sideline girlfriends as well. We learned how to relate to a character different from us, because we didn't have much of a choice. I didn't grow up with Buffy or Katniss; I had Nancy Drew, who kept needing to be saved.

Men didn't have the same identification experience, because most of what they read had Someone Like Them at the center of the story. They didn't have to stretch to identify with a female protagonist written by a woman, because that didn't exist all that much. Without that practice as a young person, without learning that empathy and identification with someone Other, their experiences in fiction were different than ours - and I leave it to others to say how much that affected them in real life as well.

Sadly, we're continuing this today. We still have children's movies aimed at girls or boys, separate toy sections where girls are expected to buy girl dolls and boys "action figures." We see children's entertainment retitled because we think boys won't see a movie with a girl as the main character, defying the entire history of Disney. :) There are parents beginning to read stories about girls to their boy children (vice versa has never been a problem), and I think that will make a big difference going forward.

Anna Grace Carpenter: I cried the first time I read "Dealing with Dragons" by Patricia Wrede because it was the first time I'd found a book that really seemed to feature a character I understood at a gut level. (And there are a lot of other "YA" books from my childhood that I love, but there was something deep in finding a character who reacted like I did, who had similar goals. Something I think a lot of men never have to contend with because so much of fiction is about male experiences.)

Lucy Blue

Lucy Blue: If you're a woman, the assumption is ALWAYS that you write "women's fiction," and "women's fiction" is always assumed to either be romance, True-Story/Lifetime-style trauma fiction (usually with a romantic element), or menopausal tales of triumph (usually with an erotic element). But you know who leaps to that conclusion fastest and makes the biggest stink-face about it? Other women writers in horror, science fiction, fantasy, and pulp--not all, of course, but some. I don't know whether they're so bruised and battered from running that gauntlet themselves that it's made them brutal or they feel like they had to go through it so damn it every other woman should have to go through it, too, or that they want to make sure that the other boys in their genre know they ain't no stupid girly-girl--I suspect it's a little bit of all of these, depending on the woman writer in question. And just like with writers of color, female writers are continually being asked by male writers in traditionally dude-centric genres how to write women better. Sometimes it's a genuinely respectful and heartfelt question posed so that the male writer in question can make the female characters in the stories he already writes better--this panel being a shining example. But sometimes it's a dude writer wanting to cash in on what he thinks is that sweet, sweet romance-infused market of chick readers by writing one more urban fantasy novel with a female heroine with her big boobs barely contained in her dirty tank top on the cover. He wants to be able to say when some other woman accuses him of writing a male fantasy of female empowerment, "that's not possible! I asked three different women what women are like!"

Elizabeth Donald: I have no studies to back it up, but when I began, nearly all my acceptances were from female editors and rejections from male editors. This began to change, however, when I got out ini the con circuit and made contacts among male editors and publishers. They got to know me, and my work, and then they came to me with opportunities or were open to my pitches. It's worth noting that "exposure" at cons is often at the whim of con organizers, so if a con is not particularly 'woke,' you'll find all women on the midnight sex panel and "why are vampires so hot?" and all men on "how to kill a zombie: gun or sword?" I know which panel I'd rather be on, but it's taken some doing.

For the record, those male editors have been almost all delights to work with, and I'd consider them all fairly open-minded, cosmopolitan folk. So I don't know how much of it is simply "we publish the people we know" (which is its own problem), and how much is, "A woman wrote zombies? Is it a romance?"

Ellie Raine: There have been a LOT of times when I tell someone I've written a book, they automatically assume it's romance. Even if I say it's fantasy, they think "fantasy romance". I've gotten into an argument with one man who insisted that women writers always use too much "emotions" compared to male writers, even though William Shakespeare, Edgar Allen Poe, Nikolas Sparks, Brandon Sanderson, James Patterson, George RR Martin, Neal Gaiman, and just about EVERY popular/GOOD author focuses on the character's emotions (which is pretty damn crucial to good story telling) and includes either a romance line or (in Martin's case) more sex scenes than 50 shades of Grey.

Stephanie Osborn

Regarding more industry culture, I've stopped going to formal writing conferences as much because I was tired of showing up for workshops just to have random guys initiate conversations to give me unsolicited advice about how to finish my first novel (even though I had three finished, but they didn't bother asking me first), how to get a publisher to notice you (which I'd already done, but they didn't bother asking), and how to find a man who would stay with me for a long time and eventually marry (even though I was already married and was wearing a wedding ring) and--the kicker--how to navigate high school (even though I was well into my twenties, but they didn't bother asking). It was weird how MANY men(usually into their 40s and up, and--for some reason--all wrote Literary and kept telling you how much better It was compared to fantasy and that I should switch to that if I REALLY wanted to improve my writing) gave the exact same theme of advice, and all of them assumed they knew my age, my relationship status, and my writing level without asking a damn thing. Fan Conventions are WAY better than conferences with this, no one has ever assumed they knew anything about me there and even the people who wrote literary there are chill and engaging. Basically, my experience with formal conference culture is that a LOT of people are there to make themselves feel better about how they've been going to these things for decades yet still haven't gotten a book deal with a publisher (all the men in question informed me they weren't published yet or even self published when I asked them). I don't know, I expect people to have actually gone through the publishing experience either trad or self before they feel free to offer advice on it without anyone asking them in the first place.

Lisa Matthews Collins: I was told I needed to go back to writing female lead POVs in my stories because who would want to read a male protagonist written by a girl?!

Elizabeth Donald: Oh lord... my husband writes horror romance, I write action SF and dark horror. Everyone assumes it's the other way around. He writes romantic happy endings; my books end in funerals.

Lisa Matthews Collins: This is an old thing that is still an issue... being judged by your name...not on any merit of storytelling expertise. I took a gamble on writing science fiction and pulp under my name Lisa M. Collins and not going with the safer route of L.M. Collins. Sadly, it took me awhile to make the decision to go with my name because Lisa is a girl's name.

Lucy Blue: And it's a double-edged sword. If you use your real, apparently feminine name, you get pre-judged. If you use your initials or a more apparently gender-neutral pseudonym, then when people find out you're a woman, you cheated.

Nikki Nelson-Hicks: It's the presumption that, because I have a vagina, I must write "girly horror." That I can't get deep and dirty with it. Once, at a writers' critique group, I submitted a piece and this guy kept saying, "You wrote this? YOU did. YOU?" Yeah, fucker. Me. I really never understand this idea that women can't GET horror. Sweetie, our lives are a horror show. We are a walking chemistry experiment that can explode at any moment. Body horror was MADE for us.

Anna Grace Carpenter

Anna Grace Carpenter: I had an editor tell me I really knew how to write action sequences to the point that he was "recommending them to folks I meet". (And, sure, he meant it as a compliment. But it's not the first time I've heard similar and there is *always* an undertone of "You do this really well for a girl.")

Elizabeth Donald:  I got that one once from an editor. "You write action a lot better than I expected." Thanks? 

I got a lot of criticism for my first zombie book, in which my protagonist is a former Marine paramilitary zombie fighter heading a group of ne'er-do-wells fighting paranormal threats. The criticism? "She swears too much." She's a goddamn fucking Marine zombie fighter, is she supposed to say "oh phooey, they're chewing his face off"? And each time I heard it - every single one from a man - I had to breathe deep and NOT say, "If she was played by Jason Statham and directed by Quentin Tarantino, you wouldn't blink at her use of the word 'fuck.'"

Lucy Blue: Oh yeah, I've heard the "she's not ladylike enough!" comment from everybody from my mom to editors to reviewers on Amazon.

Amanda Niehaus-Hard: My experience is different, but I write under different names, in different genres and categories, and for different age-range audiences, so I've seen prejudice of all sorts, but haven't specifically been a target.

I found it interesting to read Ellie's comments, because my personal experience has been pretty much 180 degrees the other way from hers, as I mostly go to book festivals and writers conferences now (as opposed to conventions) and I've felt MORE accepted at those festivals -- but that's of course only my own experience. I really want to respond to some of what she posted because I think there's a LOT of problems in the conference (and convention) culture that is part of why I think they’re failing financially.

Ellie wrote: “Basically, my experience with formal conference culture is that a LOT of people are there to make themselves feel better about how they've been going to these things for decades yet still haven't gotten a book deal with a publisher.”

Ellie Raine

I don’t get into discussions with people like that any more, but I’ve seen them, and I notice the same ones show up for the same conferences every year, and when they workshop, they workshop the SAME DAMN STORY they’ve been workshopping for a decade! This is an issue that conference organizers need to be aware of and need to do something about. The way workshops usually go is first to pay, first on the list, and they REALLY need to be juried or something, if only to keep the approximate “skill level” the same, so all participants are at the same level and are getting (and expect) the same level of critical attention. If you’re a multiple award-winning novelist, you shouldn’t be in a workshop group with short story writers who are just breaking into the paying quarterlies. If you just started writing last week, you shouldn’t be in a workshop with people who are already selling work and looking at crafting a story collection.

Most general conferences, with the exception of the popular fiction conferences like those done by Writers Digest, are focused around literary fiction, so that whole “literary is superior” canard is ever-present. I honestly think SOME of that bias is starting to fade, as so-called literary authors are experimenting with non-realistic fiction, or fantasy/SF situations. The bigger writing programs are turning out more authors who experiment with non-traditional situations, so when the Iowa grads from 2010 to now start getting the high profile university jobs, I suspect we’ll see a shift away from dismissing genre (or they’ll just claim they do it better.) But either way, I see the snark becoming more about the work itself and less about the shelf category.

Nikki Nelson-Hicks

Ellie wrote: “I don't know, I expect people to have actually gone through the publishing experience either traditional or self before they feel free to offer advice on it without anyone asking them in the first place.”

This is essentially why I stopped going to fan conventions except for a select few that I just attend for fun. I’ve been going to conventions since the mid 1980s, when the scene was COMPLETELY different, and cons were both fun AND a way to get into the business of publishing. The panels were either professionally oriented (how to get an agent with people who had actual agents, or science topics with actual scientists) or they were fan-run and fun, discussing stuff like the sociology of Star Trek.

What I’ve seen of conventions lately is a lot of non-experts talking over actual experts (as in people who actually work as scientists for NASA) or people with no experience in “traditional” publishing sitting on panels about agent queries just so they can advertise their books. (I'm certainly not against self-publishing, as I've self-pubbed some educational materials, but that doesn't make me an expert on the industry.)

It’s only in the self-publishing and micro-press arena that I’ve EVER taken any slack over being female and writing horror, SF, thrillers, romance, YA, lit fic, whatever. My experience with so-called “traditional” publishers (and writers who are published that way) has been nothing but stellar and professional. (Again this is just my experience, and I’m sure it doesn’t echo everyone’s experience.) I could have just gotten lucky and surrounded myself with amazing people, but I can say I’ve never been harassed, dismissed, not taken seriously, or had any real negative experience with anybody in the professional horror community, the SF community, the thriller writers, and the pulp writers community. Pulp writers have embraced me and supported me, and people like Phil Athans and Sean and Tommy and the gang over at Pro Se have been incredibly supportive and encouraging. I have no idea what’s said behind my back, but to my face everyone has been professional and respectful.

The small-press horror community is two-sided. One the one side I’ve had wonderful experiences with people and presses whose work I read and enjoy. I have been treated like gold by my small press publishers and those who publish my friends and whose work I read regularly. On the other side are, frankly, people who can’t write well, and throw together anthologies just to publish their own work. Some of those people have been dismissive of me, but I don’t read their work and I dismiss them as well, so it’s even. The only group I’ve seen overt hostility from is a Bizarro press that I will NEVER buy from again and won’t recommend or review any of their work, let alone submit to them.

Amanda Niehaus-Hard

I haven’t had the same issues as other women in genre – probably because I’ve listened to a lot of their stories and avoided the people and groups they’ve warned others about. Cons nowadays take harassment seriously, because women in genre have demanded they do, so I’ve benefited from that and haven’t experienced harassment as a guest or an attendee. I appreciate that it’s people like you, Sean, who have helped create a more supportive and inclusive environment for women in genre fiction and in fandom, by keeping the conversation going.

Ellie Raine: I'm 100 percent behind the jurying idea for workshops. We don't have freshman undergrads mixed in the same advanced classes as grad students (unless certain exceptions apply), so this solution makes way more sense.

==============================

Editor's Note: The panel includes women of various races/sexuality. The authors above were the ones able to respond by the deadline for this discussion.

Everything Old Is New Again -- Reviving Old-School Literary Tropes and Techniques for Contemporary Fiction

There are so many literary conventions that have fallen out of use -- or at least out of favor -- in modern fiction. You hear it all the time: Don't use infodumps, show don't tell, no page after page of description, don't jump heads, no omniscient narrators, etc.

With that in mind, there's only one question for this new writers roundtable...

What is your favorite of the old conventions or tropes to revisit, and how do you use it effectively for contemporary readers?

Amanda Niehaus-Hard: I think genre writers have been steadily incorporating more literary techniques into their writing, but instead of thinking of these things in academic terms, they’re often referred to as “easter eggs.” Allusion and parallelism in themes are there, but they aren’t called out as such.

One of the literary techniques that I miss in genre fiction is the omniscient narrator. What’s in favor right now is that very close limited point-of-view, where you’re plugged into the brain and sensory system of one character, and this can be extremely effective, especially in horror. This technique fell out of favor years ago, (even inside literary fiction) but YA authors are bringing it back, in a way, in the voice of a ghost narrator.  There’s a lot you can do with omniscience – especially in a longer work. Ellen Gilchrist is a contemporary literary author using the omniscient narrator to provide commentary on the story, even entering the story as a character herself. It’s a powerful tool that I’d like to see the genre community experiment with. 

Another technique that is not only out of favor, but often warned against by editors, is the use of multiple points-of-view (derisively called “head-hopping” in the romance community.) Now it’s true this is a technique that can get out of hand quickly, so authors are usually encouraged to limit point-of-view to alternating sections or chapters, or for shorter works alternating paragraphs. Virginia Woolf was the master of “head hopping,” so authors who want to experiment with this should look at how she handled it. I see it being much more effective in some genres than others. (In horror, sometimes the dread and sense of isolation can be enhanced by staying firmly inside the head of one character. With a larger fantasy series, being entirely in one mind can become tedious for the reader. Even books in the Harry Potter series play with this – pulling away from Harry’s direct experience as the series goes on, to give the reader an overall picture of the very-real problems both the Muggle and Wizarding worlds are about to confront.)

I do wish genre writers would consider what they could accomplish if they were as precise with language as some varieties of literary fiction authors. One aspect of lit fic (some would say the only important aspect) is the sound of the language, the rhythms of the sentences. Ray Bradbury was a genius at finding language that actually sounds like the thing he’s writing about. (Remember the scene in “Something Wicked This Way Comes” where the mirrors are breaking? Those sentences, read aloud, actually sound like breaking glass. It’s amazing.) Genre writers would be well-advised to pay as much attention to the pacing of the sentence as they do the pacing of the unfolding plot. Borrow and steal from poetry techniques, from Gertrude Stein. Borrow and steal from the language of Ulysses, of Borges and Calvino. 

Literary writers pride themselves on breaking with tradition, and I’d like to see more genre writers attempt the same. Ursula LeGuin was a proponent of breaking literary “rules” inside imaginative fiction. She encouraged writers of all stripes to overturn conventional ideas about “story,” even questioning the advice to build a story on “conflict.” Literary writers very often will craft short fiction that doesn’t follow Freitag’s pyramid or Aristotle’s Poetics. The story might end just before or just at the moment of the “crisis.” We might never see falling action or any kind of resolution. Try mapping LeGuin’s famous story “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas,” on that pyramid. That story reads more like a sonnet, with a two-line turn at the end rather than an actual conflict/crisis/resolution structure.  Last month I read two different independent works advertised as short story collections, but that were really more like novels in fragments – a literary technique that I hadn’t seen in genre fiction. This excited me to no end. I’m seeing a lot more experimentation inside YA, where the phrase “novel in verse” isn’t looked on with suspicion but with delight. I would love to see genre writers experiment with structure and form the way literary authors do. Of course that’s a huge risk. The experiment might pay off or it might fail miserably. Ultimately your “art” still has to communicate enough to the reader to make the process of reading it worth their time. I imagine that for every story she places in The New Yorker, even Joyce Carol Oates has one or two that never see publication, and that’s okay.

Ultimately, fiction supplies us with an enormous tool box of techniques and devices we can use, and I don’t think we should necessarily limit ourselves to what’s in fashion today, or even what’s considered “the law” today. Tell a good story, use whatever methods you need to in order to do so, and don’t let how we currently view fiction limit how you see it. 


Rob Cerio: The infodump can still be done well, when presented in the proper literary device. One of the reasons I admire Douglas Adams so much is his use of the narrative tool of the hitchikers guide entries to do the infodumpingin the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy.

Perry Constantine: I like omniscient narration, but it’s really tough to get right. I’ve done it myself on occassion, though I can’t say for sure if it’s been effective.

Gordon Dymowski: When I'm writing, I actively try to avoid obvious tropes. After all, part of storytelling should be as much in subverting the obvious direction as it is in straightforward storytelling. But there are two tropes that I think have been overused...and that I try to openly integrate into my storytelling in clever ways.

One is the Inevitable Corruption of The Hero. You know the drill -- the hero has a gun on the villain. The villain says "Kill me." The hero drops the gun and says, "If I kill you, I'm no better than you."

Not every hero is ethically pure, and I like the idea of temptation...but the whole I-won't-kill-you cliche is overplayed. But planting some smaller incidents of moral question help flesh out the hero's limits. After all, having the big twist doesn't make sense without some examples of how the hero can go wrong. Another (which I'm integrating into one of my current projects) is to suggest that the hero may cross that line...but less out of moral certainty and more out of their own self-destructive or morally righteous behavior.

(Note - I'm not spoiling anything; these are storytelling choices. Your mileage may vary).

The other is the ever-popular Romantic Triangle. Or to quote the J. Geils Band: "You love her, but she loves him/And he loves somebody else, you just can't win..."

Whether you grew up with 1980s romantic comedies...or even more popular current fare, you know how much this gets overplayed. And the approach, which leads to the "Stalking for Love" trope....just won't cut it with a modern audience.

Part of the way try to subvert this in my writing? Make sure that it's a triangle that has a healthier resolution. Perhaps one of the characters in the main couple realizes that their feelings aren't as strong. Or that the pursuer ends up finding strength through a strong friendship with the person that they desire. (Or even that the pursuer finds their feelings stem from some other inadequacy). It's also easy to fall into the lazy trope of having the pursuer...well, "keep tabs" on their desired one. It's much more interesting to focus on the internal struggle of someone who has feelings for someone but also has to acknowledge that the person does not share that feeling. Or even discuss such a relationship in a different historical context to create a unique set of dynamics.

Example: one of my current projects involved women in the 19th century. Extended friendships which involve hand-holding, some physical affection, and emotional intimacy led to strong relationships between women. So much so that the concept of a "Boston marriage" arose - this is a state where two women live together like a married couple normally would. (And given the historical context, this wasn't seen as problematic or "bad". It just was.) Having someone infatuated with a woman in a "Boston marriage" would give it added texture...and making the person infatuated a third woman might even give it more poignancy and grace.

But from a storytelling perspective, it would make it worth it, because sometimes subverting and reshaping well worn cliches provides for more effective storytelling options.

Bill Craig: Flashbacks are good places for exposition and infodumps.

Richard Laswell: I'm a fan of very detailed descriptions. Tolkien would not have been nearly as popular if his world was a vague shadow in the background. I'll likely get in trouble here but witness the difference between Lord of the Rings and Chronicles of Narnia. I fully admit the Narnia books are vivid and entertaining, but more in an action thriller way than the rich sprawling tapestry of Middle Earth.

Michael Woods: I like the omniscient narrators. I like to tell some of my stories as if they are being told by a bard entertaining folk in a tavern or traveling show. Other times I like to be highly descriptive of the details. Never blend the two though. It makes for boring reads.

PJ Lozito: What I'm working on now revives the old saw of challenging the reader to guess the identity of a masked vigilante from a pool of possibles.

Everything I needed to know about being a writer I learned from “A Christmas Story”

by Amanda Hard

Its message is timeless, which is probably why the movie still enjoys a marathon 24-hour broadcast beginning every Christmas Eve. Of course, the take-away message for most viewers of “A Christmas Story” is something sweet about the preciousness of youth, the innocence of the past, or the importance of family and tradition (no matter how screwed up one or the other is.) But for me, the secret message of this film has always been about the writer’s life, as I suspect author and screenwriter Jean Shepherd might have intended. It’s skillfully and subtly accomplished, and he did it with only a few simple bits of narrative voiceover.

1. “Oh! The theme I've been waiting for all my life. Listen to this sentence: ‘A Red Ryder BB gun with a compass in the stock, and this thing which tells time.’ Poetry. Sheer poetry, Ralph! An A+!”

We’re all brilliant, in our own minds. And we’ve all experienced that bright flash of ego and self-impression, when we recognize one of our scribbles as having elevated the written word in a way no Shakespeare or Hemingway ever dreamed. The hyperbole of our inner dialogue knows no bounds, and our hubris bloats exponentially as we read over our versions of Ralphie’s “theme.” We imagine Ellen Datlow or Toni Weisskopf or Joe Quesada in the role of Miss Shields, swooning with ecstatic delight over our stories, swiping clean their desks of those other, “lesser,” manuscripts so as to better appreciate the shining brilliance of our prose.

It’s a most warm and fuzzy fantasy, and it keeps us motivated through the actual process of doing the work. Imagining the delight with which our story will be received is often enough to give us the courage to submit, to query, to pitch. Closing the document after its last revision--the one where it all comes together--what amplifies our satisfaction is the poetry of it all. The sheer poetry. A plus!

What I learned from Jean Shepherd’s screenplay is that Raphie’s fantasy is universal. We’ve all, and I do mean all, had that moment--the moment you crack yourself up reading your dialogue. Or you send chills down your own spine as you think of the monster in your novel. Or you believe you could actually change the world if you could just somehow get sent on the same quest you gave to your protagonist.

In this fantasy, you’ve made ART, darn it, and you wonder how you’ll ever manage to deal with the cross-county speaking tour, and the book signings, and all the publicity and paparazzi. You’re sighing contentedly right now, aren’t you? You aren’t alone. It’s a universal and utterly delightful fantasy, a fantasy that allows you to tell yourself, “Of course I want to be a writer!” A fantasy so lovely you want to rest your head against its shoulder and snuggle up in its warm and encouraging arms. Sigh…

2. “C+? Oh no, it CAN'T be!”

And then there’s the corresponding reality.

You’re never as brilliant as that fantasy wants you to imagine you are.

You have to read the letter or email again and again, and part of you thinks they accidentally sent it to the wrong writer. But no, there’s your name at the top. Your story title. Your purple prose didn’t impress anyone, and not only that, the rejection is a form letter that wasn’t even signed or personalized. No “Please feel free to submit again.” No “it’s not quite what we’re looking for, but what else do you have.” Just “Thanks but no thanks.”

Or maybe you did make the sale but you open up the document with your publisher’s first edits, only to find you can’t even see the words you typed for all the comments and requests for revisions they need, because clearly you have no idea how to plot an entire novel.

C+.

Now the fantasy morphs into Ellen Datlow in a Wicked Witch of the West costume, laughing maniacally and pointing at you. And your own mother is there too, and she’s telling you you’ll shoot your eye out and by the way you need to get off their couch and get a real job because this writing thing isn’t going to pay off your student loans or give her a grandchild.

C+.

Sigh.

3. “Oh, life is like that. Sometimes, at the height of our revelries, when our joy is at its zenith, when all is most right with the world, the most unthinkable disasters descend upon us.”

Rejection—in whatever form it takes—it’s painful, period. Whether it’s Thanks but no thanks, or Here are 485 comments and changes, and we need you to rewrite pretty much everything between your last name and ‘the end’—it hurts (if only the ego) the same.

Of course, a request for revision isn’t a rejection, and even rejection doesn’t equate to “poor quality,” but in the fantasy world you’ve set up, Christmas is ruined. The turkey is in pieces on the floor, the china is broken, there’s dog fur on everything, all the glue is used up, and you’re really, really hungry.

And now you have a choice to make.

Do you sweep up the remains of the kitchen and collapse in tears? Or do you pack up the family and announce, “We’re going out!”
Chinese turkey isn’t that bad, actually. And it leads you to understand one last, especially important thing:

4. “I slowly began to realize that I was not going to be destroyed.”

Too many of us forget this simple fact.

I only used a small sampling of Facebook friends, but based on my research, I have discovered that having a story rejected does not actually cause you to wither and die. Getting revision requests from your publishers can cause skin irritation and sometimes hives, but these are both treatable and tend to clear up by themselves once the book is in actually on the store shelf.

Rejection might actually mean Mom is on your side, covering for your behavior and trying to make sure you don’t embarrass yourself in print.

Daddy isn’t going to “kill” Ralphie.

You will survive this. And you will learn from it. The rejected story will get workshopped. You’ll fix the gaping plot holes in the novel. You’ll realize you had too many characters or not enough characters to actually care about. You may revise it; you may reject it yourself and start another one. But most importantly, you’ll survive to do it all over again. Because it’s what you do. It’s what you are. Nobody’s playing “Taps” in the backyard. What you hear is a typewriter.

You won’t be destroyed.

You’ll do it again. Better, even.

You’re a writer.

Fa-Ra-Ra-Ra-Ra.

Writers at the Movies

Which movies have influenced the way you approach storytelling in prose fiction, and specifically how have they influenced your work?

Brant Fowler: Thinking specifically of comic writing, the films are paced and cut tend to inspire me, and sometimes spark ideas for stories of my own. Thinking of cinematic imagery, the movie Drive really stood out to me as there was no wasted scene, and every aspect of the film felt driven (no pun intended) by graphic storytelling, which relates so well to the comics medium.

Bill Craig: All of the old Bond Movies, and the Lethal Weapon movies, and of course all of Bruce Lee's movies.

Amanda Niehaus-Hard: The movie Adaptation provided a pretty good lesson for me, if only on what "story" and "plot" actually means. Robert McKee's quote is incredible, NSFW but incredible.

What is the power of film that it can influence even the written word? Does it have something to do with the axiom that "books are movies in your head" or is it deeper than that?

Bill Craig: If you can visualize while you are writting, that will carry over to the reader and allow them to "see" the action in their heads as well while they read.

Brant Fowler: Going beyond that, even, certain films are so rich in the backgrounds and settings that they influence that part of your writing. I've always been drawn to fantasy, and most actually come from books to begin with. Neverending Story, Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, The Princess Bride... all these world's are so rich and detailed that I sometimes find myself breaking them down into descriptive writing. I guess in a way I'm being influenced by the source material, but it takes  that visual element at times to ignite a new perspective that ultimately feeds my own creativity.

Finding Your Tribe -- Writers on Writers Groups

What are you views on writers groups? Productive or unhelpful? "Love me and my work" clubs? Vital to beginning writers? What say thee, my writer friends?

Percival Constantine: Writers groups are only as good as the participants. There are some that really care more about the social aspect and talking about being a writer than actually doing the work. But I'm part of a few groups that have been very helpful. We encourage each other, critique each other, exchange tips, and participate in writing sprints together where we'll all write for a set amount of time and then report our total word count.

You have to consider what you want to get out of a writing group and what the others want out of the group. If your group gets together and just chats about writing at the local coffee shop, that's a waste of time. But if they're actually encouraging you to be more productive and to improve your work, then that's the kind of group you want to find.

Aaron Smith: Personally, I have no use for writers' groups, but that's just me. If it works for others, that's fine too. For me, writing is a private, solitary activity, and I don't feel right showing a story to anyone else until I feel it's ready to go to an editor or publisher. On the rare occasion that I do feel the need to talk with someone about my writing while the work is in progress, I would much rather contact one friend or editor than make it the focus of a group discussion.

Ralph L Angelo Jr.: I think writers groups are good to bounce things off of one another for story ideas and cover suggestions. They are also good to just to talk to others who do what you do. I don't have an issue with bouncing ideas off of one another in that format. I actually like talking to others to get their opinion on what I'm doing or proposing. I mostly self publish at this point so I'm an army of one. On the flip side of the coin I'm very selective who I speak to about what I'm doing and only confide in a few people, most of whom I've known for years. That being said, there's only one real writers group that I fully participate in. The rest I basically skim through or occasionally join a discussion within. Writers group have their uses, but like Aaron said, for the most part writing is a solitary business.

Paul Bishop: I mentor a monthly group and we have a blast. Our biggest regular event is having somebody else read your work aloud (five pages tops). The glitches become very clear very quick. Three of the members have had their first novels published while in the group...Fun, progress, published...What's not to like...

Robert Krog: I do find that bouncing ideas off of other writers is sometimes helpful, and I certainly enjoy discussions with writers about writing most of the time.

Amanda Niehaus-Hard: “Finding your tribe,” seems to be the main focus of the live writing groups I’ve encountered. While this is a great idea in theory, I’ve haven’t seen it actually play out successfully in practice.

The upside to the writing group is having someone to commiserate with when the going gets tough. If you’re participating in something like NaNoWriMo, I fully understand the desire to be around other like-minded crazy folks who have the goal of pushing out 50,000 words in one month. That support can keep you going. After a series of rejections, the encouragement of your “tribe” can be enough to push you to revise and resubmit.

Some groups offer critiques, which can be helpful if you aren’t using an online critique group. Some give you the opportunity to listen to and participate in live readings. Some are tied into university writing programs, or offer educational opportunities. The benefits to resources like these — if you use them — can be incredible.

But just as often, writing groups are more socially-oriented. And this is where they usually lose me. While I love sipping coffee and celebrating the success of my friends as much as anybody, simply “talking” about writing is somewhat counterproductive for me.

I’ve been in groups where the participants would outline in detail their latest, unwritten, novel. (Maybe I’m superstitious, but if I tried this, it would take some of the “magic” away from the writing process. If I talk about the book, I no longer want to write it.) Talking about craft is one thing. Explaining away a book, especially a book I haven’t finished or haven’t even started — that’s something different, and not something I think is particularly useful.

The dirty little secret of some people who join writing groups is that they’re really subconsciously looking for an excuse to NOT write. Because let’s face it: writing is hard! It’s hard work, it’s time-consuming, it’s infinitely frustrating, and it’s a solitary pursuit. Nobody can “help you” write your novel. Sure, other people can give you advice and suggestions and they can help you work out a complicated plot line, but ultimately, it’s just you and your keyboard, banging out letter after letter, sentence after sentence.

Talking about writing isn’t writing. But it kind of feels like it, you know? Some people find that talking about their work-in-progress makes them feel as though they’re making some kind of progress on it. It’s an illusion, really. Yes, I know we’ve all had the coffee or tequila conversation wherein we’ve managed to work out everything that was bothering us about that story. Or we’ve been chatting with a friend and suddenly resolved the perfect ending to that trilogy. But how often does that really happen? And when does it happen? Does it happen in a writing group, or does it happen during a period of relaxation and distance from the manuscript?

Writing, as we’ve all discovered, is hard work. When I haven’t worked for a few days or a week or so, it can be kind of shadenfreud-nice to hear that other people aren’t working either. If a couple of other people in my writing group are self-described “slackers” then it takes the pressure off me to work, right? I mean, if they’re not doing it either, it’s normal, right? This kind of thinking is common in writing groups, but it’s poisonous. Writing isn’t about what other people are doing. It’s about YOU and what YOU need to say on the page.

Since writing is really a singular activity, whether or not a writing group is “useful” really depends on the individual and what he or she hopes to get out of it. A local group near me exists for the sole purpose of self-publishing anthologies of member stories and poems. I’ve long ago gotten over the ecstatic thrill of seeing my name in print, so this isn’t a big draw for me. Another local group is strictly interested in critiques, and another is simply a social group. I tried a few and they just weren’t for me.

I found my “tribe” on the internet, teaming up with other spec-fic and lit-fic writers who challenge and push me, both in terms of craft and subject matter. You all are here when I need you, but you’re also polite enough to “go away” when I’m working.

Marian Allen: A good critique group is invaluable. I'm in one (The Southern Indiana Writers Group) that's been together, meeting every week, for over twenty years. Our main rule is: The critique is about the work, not the person. And the second is like unto the first: The critique is about making THAT work as strong as IT can be, not about making it sound just like something YOU would write.

Bobby Nash: Writers groups may not make you write more, but I found that reading aloud to a group helped me in other ways. The Bobby who first started writing wouldn't be able to do panels the way I do them now. Too shy. Reading to that group helped alleviate that fear. It also taught me good dialogue structure from reading it aloud.

Lisa M. Collins: I have been involved with four writers groups, president of two, and as a Municipal Liaison for National Novel Writing Month, NaNoWriMo.

When I first started writing fiction (2008), what I was looking for was a support group. I needed to meet other writers and have a place where I could show my work to others in a safe environment. I choose my first group, Lost Genre Guild, because they were online and wrote the same things I loved to write and read. It was behind the wall of Internet anonymity where I learned how writers’ groups worked and how to deal with criticism without getting upset (aka: furious as a wet hen in winter). The online group helped me have the courage to look for a local group. I still maintain ties to this group, today.

Also during this time frame (Fall 2008), I completed my first NaNoWriMo. I wrote a fantasy novel that came in around 53K word mark. Every year since, I have attempted to do NaNo again. Sometime I make the 50K cut off sometimes I don’t, but each year I learn more about myself as a writer. NaNo is where I learned how to hear my voice and where I test drive various styles. I was a Municipal Liaison (ML) for the White County NaNo group for several years 2010-2013. We had several write-in’s at the Library in Searcy, AR. And I must say if you haven’t been in a group where you all write together in the same physical space—do this! The energy and excitement of hearing other writers around you create stories is amazing. 

My second writers group was the White County Creative Writers (Fall 2009). This group was the place where I started feeling my way toward writing professionally. The WCCW was made up of an original core of people who founded the organization, locals who needed a night out of the house, and a handful of professional writers who dropped in from time-to-time. The reason I choose this group because they had been around for over a decade when I joined (will be celebrating 20 currently) and had a yearly writer’s conference at a local college. The con was the real draw for me. It said to me these guys are organized and will give me the chance to rub elbows with a larger group of local writers. To keep a long story short, I ended up president of this group after less than a year of membership. I think the other members who were willing to serve were just glad that there was new meat. I learned a lot from this group and also how to lead an organization, how to put on a convention, but mostly how to stand on my own two feet as writer and test the boundaries of what I was capable of doing with my work.

Before I quit going to WCCW I was invited to another group. This one was a professional organization called, American Christian Fiction Writers, or ACFW. This group was so different from the others I had belonged to in the past. This group was nationally organized and held many conferences, workshops, talks, and retreats. I maintained my membership in this organization for two years learning as much as I could. The national conventions are expensive to attend, but every talk and worksheet is saved and recorded. So you can get the full con for much less. One thing about the convention that made me take notice. With ACFW they bring the publishing houses and agents to you. Included in the con fee were several appointments you could make to do your book pitches directly to the publishers and agents you choose.

I was president of the local chapter for two years. Why did I leave, what sounds like an awesome org? My genre is Science Fiction/Fantasy. Although ACFW has a small group of sff writers and publishers the slots are open to the narrow threshold Christian publishers are willing to produce. I am a Christian who is a writer, but what they are looking for is Writers who write Christian specific stories. They are a great organization for new and established writers. Most of what I know about the book writing/ publishing industry I learned from ACFW. 

My fourth writers group is really a critique partnership. My good friend Bonnie J. Sterling and I have unofficially been critique partners for several years. Together we make each other’s writing better. We each see different sides of the same coin. I think that is the key to getting a great partnership—you can’t be exact copies of each other or your writing won’t evolve.

Writing groups can be wonderful experiences or they can be hell. I guess that is true of any group of people who congregate together. Look for people who are open and honest about their own writing and aren’t too proud to admit when they need help. You want a writing group experience to make you feel excited to get back to your work. Remember as your writing evolves, you change as a person. Joining a writers group doesn’t mean you are making a lifelong commitment. If you don’t feel uplifted when you leave meetings, please take it from me, it is time to  move along home. 

Nikki Nelson-Hicks: Whoo, boy. I’ve been on both sides of the table.

I’m a founding member of the Nashville Writers’ Group. When we started in 2004, it was five people sitting on a rainy porch at Café Coco. Now, the meetup group boasts a membership of over two thousand people. Not that we have thousands of people at a group meeting…God, that would be Hell. No, we have a healthy, active membership of about 100 or so people who actually come to the meetings. We have published three anthologies (I was the editor the horror anthology, Comfort Foods) and have a booth at the Southern Festival of Books where we sell our members books.

The Pros of our writing group:

I have met so many people who are now my dearest friends that I would NEVER have met if it wasn’t for the NWG. I look back and realize that I never would be where I am today if it weren’t for these people. It is an excellent networking system.

We have so many people who join the NWG because they need a place to say, “Hey, I’m a writer and I want to grow.” It’s sad but people need a place where they can simply be creative. It is a place where you can come, share your stories and get feedback from people who want to help you become the best writer you can. It is the biggest high for me watch a writer blossom as they get more and more confident in the craft. I’m not going to lie; I’ve had people bring stories that I thought , “Ugh…yeah…this isn’t going anywhere.” And they proved me wrong. Nothing makes me happier.

In my group, I hold a strict policy of constructive criticism. We’re not a “Pet The Pretty Pony” group but I won’t stand there and watch someone being eviscerated. The reason for this group is for people of all levels of writing skills to meet and help each other. If you want to be a Supreme Ego Driven DICK that has come only to show off your fucking MFA, there is the door. Thanks for playing. Buh-Bye.

The Dark Side:

Hooo-boy. Because the NWG is a public group, we get a few whackos. I’ve had people bring hand written manuscripts they said were “transmissions from Nostradamus that were delivered through the living room curtains” (TRUE STORY). Once, I had a guy that when I knew he was coming, I made sure Mickey or Vincent, two of my biggest guy writer buds, would be there because he scared me so much. He was a schizophrenic that didn’t take  his meds (his wife warned me in a five page email).

I had a woman once slam her fists at on the table and scream at me, “You’re not helping me! I want to know how to write a story! What is the formula! WHAT IS THE FORMULA!” When I told her there was no formula, that every story was different, and if she could explain to me what her story was about then maybe we could help her, she then got in my face and said, “You just want to steal my ideas. Get in my head and take my words!”

When people bring their NANOWRIMO novels. Oh, GAWD….

People think we are a publishing house. Once during an Assistant Organizer’s group where we met to discuss the plans for the next year, some dude burst in and yelled at us because all we did was critique. We weren’t meeting his needs. What he really wanted from the NWG was to get him published. What?!?! When we asked him what groups he went to, he said he couldn’t remember as he had only gone to two and then only two times. REALLY, MOTHERFUCKER??? They guy really pissed me off. What the hell did he expect from us? I don’t get paid to do this. Yes, we have a few anthologies under our belt but that does make us a publishing house.

And, of course, the egos. It happens.

The thing we advise all of our members is that the NWG is just a starting place. It is here you meet others that you connect with (your tribe, as it were) and form your own writing groups outside the NWG. I find groups of 3-5 most effective. It works and I’m proud of the people that we’ve helped.

I was also a member of another group, The Quill and Dagger, for a few years. It was a very diverse group of 7 people who wrote murder mysteries. We had the entire spectrum. From Cozies to Procedurals to Paranormal. We met every two weeks and it was a wonderful experience but as we all began to publish in our different genres, we simply ran out of time to get together and the group died. It’s a shame.

So, to recap, would I advise writers, especially people new to the craft, to join a group? Hell, yes! But be careful. Remember that it is their opinions and, in the end, it is YOUR story. It’s something I stress to many of the people who come to my SpecFic group.
For me, I have a story that I use as my litmus test. It is called Coon Hunt. (Self Promotional Plug: Coon Hunt won the Jack Mawhinney Fiction First Prize in 2015)  If the people in that group don’t get the story, they won’t get me. It has never failed. It has saved my ass SO many times.

Clean, Cleaner, Squeaky Clean, or Get Your Hands Off My Words?

This week, we're talking about the new Clean Reader app that has been dividing both readers and writers since it was announced. 

Many writers from world famous to local authors have spoken out about the readers on their blogs or in major news outlets, but I figured it would be fun to hear what the small press had to say about the matter too. 

If you need to catch up first, go check out the articles below, then come back here. 

============================================

Joanne Harris attacks Clean Reader app for replacing words in novels

The introduction of a new app that allows readers to swap explicit language with "cleaner" words has incurred the wrath of authors who believe it encourages censorship.

Clean Reader was designed to remove words deemed offensive from any book in electronic format, regardless of whether the writer has given their permission, and swap them with versions that are more appropriate for children.

Read the full article: http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/news/joanne-harris-attacks-clean-reader-app-for-replacing-words-in-novels-10130869.html?icn=puff-4

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And Chuck Wendig also posted about the Clean Reader app:

Fuck You, Clean Reader: Authorial Consent Matters

There exists a new app called Clean Reader.

The function of Clean Reader is to scrub the profanity from e-books.

Their tagline: “Read books. Not profanity.“

You can dial in how much of the profanity you want gone from the books.

Read the full post: http://terribleminds.com/ramble/2015/03/25/fuck-you-clean-reader-authorial-consent-matters/

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Now... on with the article already in progress.

It is censorship or just readers exercising their rights (or preferences -- and are the two equal)?
 Percival Constantine: It's censorship, period. It's altering the content of the book without the author's permission. This is a small group of easily-offended readers wanting to have their cake and eat it, too. Joanne Harris made a good point about a potential conservative Christian bias in the app, and looking at some of the replacements, it's easy to see why (as well as an anti-female bias). As a liberal atheist, I find it offensive that they'd attempt to sanitize my work without my consent.

John Hartness: My words are chosen with care, with purpose, and with intent. When I choose to swear, it means something. It means something about the character, the setting, and the world they are inhabiting at that moment. Changing my words is changing my intellectual property, just like changing the underscoring of a movie alters the film.

Here's a case in point - when I sold The Black Knight Chronicles to a publisher, we went through extensive rewrites on the original self-published manuscripts. One thing my editor/publisher was looking for me to do was make the books more "gritty," and one way that was suggested was to make the characters swear more. I chose not to do so because the main charaters are a product of a time twenty years ago when casual profanity was less prevalent. In the first three books of the series, the word "fuck" appears once, in a pivotal moment for the character. I chose that word very specifically, to prove a very specific point about that moment. Changing that instance of the word "fuck" to "screw" would work against a pattern of language and dialogue I had spent well over 100,000 words building to that point.

RJ. Sullivan: What makes it legal is that the filter has settings, including an off that lets you see the original content. the wording I saw was they're not changing the file, merely altering how it is presented, and the user can see the unedited wording if they choose. I have to take their word for it but I still think the way this came in and was in place before anyone could object was a bit shady and that makes me suspicious. 

Ric Martens: I kind of feel that if someone wants to avoid the swearing in my writing, that's up to them. If they have a program that does it for them that's cool. It would probably be a different thing if the publishers were doing this without talking to the writer, but that's a whole different issue.

H. David Blalock: I see this as the same as someone buying a book then striking through all the "objectionable" words manually. Once the book is bought, it belongs to the buyer. Personal property can be disposed of, damaged, or altered as the owner sees fit. If someone bought one of my books then went through it and changed the words, how would I know? As long as the altered book is not resold or presented as original to the author, I see no problem with this. If the revised work is reissued under the author's name, then there would be grounds for concern. That, indeed, would constitute not just censorship but fraud.

Lucy Blue: We've already created so many genre categories a reader can go through an entire life of avid reading and never read anything that presents any point of view that doesn't line up precisely with their own. Do we have to now make it possible to rig the rest of the books to make them fall in line, too?

Should e-readers have the option of "cleaning up" any work as written? Should it be limited to only those authors who opt in? 

Amanda Niehaus-Hard: I would not have a problem with this service at all if the AUTHOR could opt in to have their book "scrubbed." But just grabbing books from basically the wholesalers is what offends me. 

Percival Constantine: This is my biggest problem with the app—it didn't get author consent. That shows a blatant disregard and disrespect for all authors. Fortunately, Page Foundry has done the right thing and pulled their catalogue from Clean Reader (even if they did the wrong thing first by putting their entire catalogue in the app without securing permission or even so much as a simple notification email).

RJ. Sullivan: My biggest problems are this 1) authors and publishers had no options to opt out. In most cases, this is a secondary service to a major ebook distributor so the contracts a publisher set up with one did not make them aware they would also be shunted over to this. I think that stinks. I found out about it when I discovered that all the books under my publisher were part of the catalog. 2) This is a simple find / replace filter, which means the author has to download the filter and buy the file to even see how the edited version reads. That means these are essentially unauthorized edits. For all I know, my work sounds incredibly stupid, but I won't buy the file to find out. That's pretty bogus. 

Ellie Raine: When I have a child,I do intend to introduce them to more challenging books if they're unsatisfied with the children's section in any way, so in that respect, I can see the good side of this. But that doesn't mean the app shouldn't have permission from the author before becoming available... that being said, I think this article is being a bit overzealous in general. Sure, it's bordering censorship and should be addressed, but it's not going to start Armageddon.

John Hartness: If you want to read a book with no naughty words in it, buy one with no naughty words in it. If you want to buy a book that I wrote, don't fuck with the words. They matter. I write. I've spent a long time working on my craft, and I work hard choosing the words I put down on paper. Don't like words that may offend or challenge you? Don't read my shit. Gotta go now. Have a lovely day.

Lucy Blue: And as a writer, I know I have an obligation, if I intend to actually sell or otherwise publicly distribute what I write, to consider the preferences of my audience when choosing vocabulary. (I haven't called a woman's naughty place in a book by the word I call it in the bedroom for years because so many women--my target audience--find it objectionable to the point of feeling assaulted.) And if what we're all about is selling more books, then an app that makes our books saleable products to more people can only be good, right? But I'm not just about selling more books. I'm about communicating a world view, telling some truth, creating, dare I say it, some art. And in that context, this app is deeply offensive and, to my mind, a violation of copyright law and every other rule that protects the rights and work of any artist.

Who really benefits from something like this?

RJ. Sullivan: My feeling on this is complicated. I have received complaints by sensitive readers that my content has turned them off. My response has always been that most authors don't write for everyone and really by definition CAN'T write for everyone. On the other hand, apparently, the filter does not cut into my royalty (which was a major concern) and it might get sensitive readers an opportunity to give my work a chance when they would not have done so otherwise. So, you know, I'm getting paid, and that's a good thing.

Ric Martens: I think overall its a gain for everyone involved. I mean you have more people reading more books so that's a good thing right?

Percival Constantine: Authors who have been forced into Clean Reader without their permission certainly aren't benefitting. It's hard to see how readers are benefitting either, since Clean Reader replaces words without any knowledge of the context, leading to a very clunky reading experience. The only people who are really benefitting from this are the makers of Clean Reader. But with PF pulling its catalogue and a lot of authors making noise about this, soon the Clean Reader library may only consist of books that didn't need the CR app in the first place.

John Hartness: I am always grateful when people read my work, but if they buy my book, I want them to get my words, not some electronic filter's version of my words. My name is still on the cover, my reputation is still attached to the craft of the writing, and my time and effort went into the selection of every word in there. Anyone who wants to write a different book can feel free to sit down at their keyboard and do so.