I’m thrilled to be one of eight authors with new releases scheduled to participate on the WFWA Facebook page on Tuesday, August 16th **Noon – 4pm EDT** (That’s 9am – 1pm PDT for us West Coasters!)
3:00 Louise Miller – The City Baker’s Guide to Country Living
And at 3:30 Yours truly, answering questions and talking about my debut release – Reconcilable Differences. I hope you’ll come and join in the conversation.
After a roller coaster ride of preparation, setbacks and leaps forward during the first half of 2016, I’m excited to have this book ready for release this week.
My last post focused on my experimental Kindle Scout campaign. To sum up that experience, I learned a lot, worked like mad to get the word out, using a few platforms I hadn’t before, such as Headtalker and networking through Kindleboards, but sadly it wasn’t nearly enough to garner a publishing deal with Amazon.
A lot of speculation goes on behind the scenes trying to figure out what works and what doesn’t. Only Amazon knows. But clearly having a pre-existing following, or a book with a hook, will help to generate popularity, which in the end does matter. Nevertheless it was a valuable experience that will help with the marketing of Reconcilable Differences now and in the future.
So much more has happened this year. I received critique and beta reader feedback, which let to a penultimate round of revisions. More than I was planning to do, but I think it’s a better book for having taken the extra time and effort.
I also embarked on the process of having a professionally designed cover. After a couple of false starts, and a few wasted month faffing around, I connected with the talented Gabrielle Prendergast, author of Audacious and other YA novels, and also brilliant book cover designer. I’m so happy with my new cover for Reconcilable Differences and the style and theme of the entire Having It All series of WF novels. It makes me want to get cracking and finish the second in the series, Coming About.
I’m also so lucky to have in my circle of supportive writers the multi-talented Crystal Stranaghan and her team at Crystal Clear Solutions designing the book interior. The print book will be ready to go in just a couple more weeks and it’s going to be gorgeous!
AUTHORPRENEURSHIP 101
This business of being a published author is complicated. These days, no matter how you publish, you have to embrace the role of entrepreneur as well. Even big house published authors are expected to create and maintain an online author profile, and stay active on various social media sites to connect with their audience. Then there is the multitude of book marketing strategies that experts recommend. And without these efforts, your book languishes out there in the ether with millions of other undiscovered titles, making all those years of learning your craft and sweating over the creation of your babies pointless as you’ll never sell any books or have any readers.
So in addition to getting my book ready, I’ve been trying to get organized with all these other things. I had an online author profile evaluation, and read some books and a lot of articles. To keep all this straight I created a Mindmap, that I thought would help me visualize and keep track of all the elements. All it did was help me see that I can’t possibly learn and do all these things: website clean up and redesign, email list sign up, Facebook author page, Amazon author page, Goodreads author page, incentives and bonuses, contests and giveaways, reader discussion questions, bios and blurbs, book trailers and author interviews, etcetera, and linking all these things and my social media addresses together so they all work in tandem.
EPIPHANY
Finally I realized that I don’t have to! I mean if you can do it yourself, go ahead. But for me, it was getting so onerous and stressful that my brain was seizing up. There are so many smart and talented people out there who already know how to do these things that I struggle with. So my big epiphany this last while is that I need help! And in just a couple of weeks I’ve managed to move so much farther and faster with assistance from the right people, including the savvy Amanda Hagarty at Mandy’s Media who’s already been a huge help. And I’m getting there. I really feel that I’m getting there.
BECOME A PART OF MY TEAM
So let’s not let all this author platform work go to waste! Join my street team by doing one or more of these things right now:
Follow me on Goodreads, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest or Instagram, or all of them? Why not? (Click on the buttons in the sidebar)
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Follow my blog so you receive notice on Friday to pick up the Amazon link and buy a copy of my book. Then leave a review on Amazon and Goodreads.
Share this link with three of your bookish friends!
Freya North is one of my favorite authors and I haven’t read a new one in a while. I was thrilled to receive The Turning Point as a Christmas gift and gobbled it up in three days. I was particularly thrilled to discover that the book was set partially in my own back yard, after years of immersing myself in charming English villages, suddenly I was reading Freya’s lilting prose describe the majestic scenery of BC’s coastal mountains. Fascinating. I’ve always had a slightly unsettled reaction to Freya’s unique quirky omniscient narrative voice. It has mellowed over the years, and I felt it suited this story more than any before, making for a compelling, immersive read. It’s hard to say whether the richly developed and complex characters, or the lovingly described and contrasting settings were the more interesting parts of this read, not to mention the ongoing tension and plot twist. I guess I’d have to weigh on the side of characters – Frankie and Scott are beautifully rendered, real and believable, as are their family and friends. Frankie seems to me to have a little of everywoman in her, very empathetic. Scott, on the other hand, is one of the loveliest characters I’ve ever read – somehow managing to be both sexy and spiritual – himself more than any other embodying the rich themes that Freya explores in this compelling tale of love, family and belonging. A very moving book. A cut above.
Forging a Better Version of Yourself Through Fairy Tales: Lessons for Women
Clarissa Pinkola Estes, in her seminal 1992 book of fairy tales, Women Who Run with the Wolves, says of stories: “In a very real way, we are imprinted with knowing just by listening to the tale.” (p.387)
Participation mystique: Just like living it
Termed “participation mystique” by Jungian psychologists, this notion has more recently been scientifically proven by brain researchers. Your brain really can’t tell the difference between experiences you live through and those you read about someone else living through, even if fictional. Here’s an article in The Atlantic about it. And another in Science.Mic.
For a person like me who makes stuff up for a living, and loves fiction more than life, this is incredibly validating.
Thus we can read stories and fairy tales to expand our experience. The lessons we learn through fiction are real and applicable to the lives we are leading. This is the very purpose of myth. To pass along the wisdom of the ages. To learn from our “elders.”
In this book, Women Who Run with the Wolves, there is a particular story – a dark fairy tale – that Estes believes “deals with most of the key journeys of a woman’s psyche.” It’s one that seems to have particular relevance to women, such as myself, who wake up one day in mid-life and wonder: What happened? How did I get here? Has this happened to you, too? Do you wonder about the choices you made, the lies you told yourself, the sacrifices and compromises that marriage and motherhood and life seem to have demanded of you? Do you look in the mirror and ask: Who am I?
Do you look in the mirror and ask: Who am I?
The story’s called, “The Handless Maiden.” By reading, and slowly absorbing, this tale, we can experience, vicariously–through “sympathetic magic”– the transformations the character experiences over her entire lifetime. That’s a lot of wisdom to help you with your own life stage challenges.
Did You Sign Away Your Self? Time to Toughen Up, Ladies
There is no way to compress all of Estes wisdom into a brief blog post, but I’ll try to highlight the key points. Likely I’m doing her careful arguments a great disservice, but this is meant as an introduction only. Hopefully if this intrigues you you will seek out and read the book, if you haven’t already. Estes suggests taking quite a long time to read the story. Maybe even months. This time is necessary because the lessons of the tale are very, very deep in a woman’s psyche, and you can’t just shake a stick at these parts of yourself and expect understanding, or change.
These deep lessons take place in a female psychic underworld, where we learn knowledge and language from the “Great Wild Mother” who wants to toughen us up to prepare us for life in the topside world of everyday. But we have to go down there to receive these lessons. Way, way down there.
Preparation for real life
In the tale, a series of tests and lessons must be mastered, each requiring a cycle of loss, sacrifice and enlightenment representing “women’s lifelong initiation into the renewal of the wild.”
Synopsis: The Handless Maiden
The tale, in brief synopsis: A man unwittingly sells his daughter to the devil in exchange for riches. She is too pure for the devil to claim, even after her hands are severed. She leaves home to become a beggar. A spirit guides her to a magical orchard, owned by a compassionate king, who falls in love and marries her. He builds her silver hands. She has a baby. The king goes away to war, and the devil interferes again, twisting messages, until the king’s mother is forced to send the queen away for safety rather than kill her. She is taken in by woods people and lives happily for seven years, and slowly her hands grow back. The king returns and seeks her out in the woods, and they live happily ever after.
The Stages:
The bargain without knowing = The end of innocence. (What poor bargain did you make?) Everywoman gives up her deep self knowledge and power for a more frail self. We trade our wild selves for the promise of riches, but the reward is hollow. We choose superficial riches and gives up dominion over some part of our passionate, creative and instinctive life. We become a sleep-walker, yet this is a necessary step on our journey. A catalyst. The father who guides us is ignorant of the connection between the inner and the outer worlds. Things are not what they appear to be.
The (symbolic) dismemberment, or separation from false life/innocence
The wandering (foraging for fruit symbolic of feminine strength)
Finding love in the underworld (she is rescued, but not yet whole)
Harrowing of the Soul (a time of healing, a shamanistic initiation during which she rediscovers her creative inner strength)
The realm of the Wild Woman (return to society as a fully empowered, adult woman bringing gifts of knowledge, maturity and fertility.)
art by Jeanie Tomanek http://www.jeanietomanek.com
For a terrifically written, thoughtful and more thorough analysis of this and other fairy tales, as well as art inspired by them, visit my new favorite link, the extremely awesome Terri Windling’s Blog, Myth & Moor.
“The trials these wounded young heroes encounter illustrate the process of transformation: from youth to adulthood, from victim to hero, from a maimed state to wholeness, from passivity to action. Fairy tales are… maps through the woods, trails of stones to mark the path, marks carved into trees to let us know that other women and men have been this way before.”
Windling concludes her analysis by saying: “Likewise, we’re not meant to remain in the circle of enchantment deep in the fairy tale forest — we’re meant to come back out again, bringing our hard-won knowledge and fortune with us…in service to the family (old or new), the realm, the community; to children and the future.”
Inspiration for Writing and Life
A better source of inspiration for writing women’s fiction I can’t imagine. One of my novels, a work-in-progress entitled “Coming About,” is a more intentional exploration of a woman’s journey through various stages of this process of metaphysical maturation and self-discovery. It’s about a woman who values her professional success as an architect over her selfhood as a woman. At the beginning, she has figuratively sold her soul to the devil by having an affair with her boss, and must lose everything she values and go on a spiritual retreat to learn how to integrate her inner and outer worlds.
This journey also serves as a metaphor for a writer’s life. What are we, as storytellers, doing, besides entertaining our readers, if not bringing our life’s journey to bear on stories that are a product of our creative imagination. For what purpose? To share them with our community, and our children. As I said earlier, this is the very purpose of myth – and of story. To pass along the wisdom of the ages.
If you’re a writer, have you applied this framework of the heroine’s journey to your writing? And whether you are or not, does this fairy tale speak to you in terms of your own life journey?
Recently I occasioned to re-examine a blog post that I’d bookmarked some time ago, two actually. The first, by Kat Latham, and a second, in a guest blog post by Sara Megibow. Both make enlightened and persuasive arguments against detractors of romance fiction, in response to the typical negative feedback fans universally face, making the point that there is nothing inherently “anti-feminist” about romance fiction. Especially the modern variety. Both are worth a read, or a re-read if you’re familiar with them.
Kat makes the valid point that: “Throughout a novel, a heroine’s character arc often involves her struggling with the expectations society has for her as a woman, and it can be heartening to see how others (authors, not characters) confront the issues I face.”
Sara raised these points in rebuttal to those who compare romance to pornography for women:
“I maintain that healthy sex is an important women’s issue. Raising our daughters to have a thorough, healthy, self confident, realistic and safe understanding of their sexuality is important (incidentally, raising ourselves to be healthy sexual adult women is also important and…difficult).
Addressing the way-too-prevalent scars caused by rape, incest and other molestation is an important women’s issue. And having a mouth-watering sexual relationship with one’s husband or partner should be an important women’s issue too. Sexual fulfillment is a part of sexual health, yes? There’s nothing about sex that isn’t political and our brave and luminous authors are tackling these very issues right under the noses of potential readers who would snub them for it?”
BEYOND FITZWILLIAM D’ARCY
I agreed with both Sara’s and Kat’s posts and with most of the commenters, but it was a particular comment by “A. Lady” that prompted me to type a reply. “A Lady” says:
“I agree that the genre has improved in its gender politics, but a couple of things still grate on me. One is that even though the hero doesn’t have to have a personality disorder or be a rapist to be well-matched with the heroine, I do think there is still a preponderance (in historical fiction) [MACS NOTE: not exclusively] of members of the aristocracy or bringands/priates [sic]/warriors of some desccription [sic], which tends to re-inforce the stereotype that the hero needs to be socio-economically well-off or physically active and “tough” in order to be attractive. This is obviously not without exception, but when did you last read a historical romance where the hero was a clergyman with a fairly middle-of-the-road income who likes reading? Emphasising income or physical attractiveness is okay (hey, Jane Austen did it), but it does seem to indicate that there are no other models of masculinity or male attractiveness.”
MODELS OF MASCULINITY
While I’m as guilty of the next girl of swooning over the stoic and socially awkward Mr. Darcy, I have to say that all the feminine stereotypes aside, I think this is one thing romance fiction needs to seriously examine. Fantasies are well and good and serve their purpose, but where contemporary (I mean modern, as opposed to the sub-genre) romance fiction has come a long way toward addressing modern women, their shifting place in society, and issues of real relevance to women today, it pretty much ignores the impact these changes have had on our everyday heroes.
Here’s my comment to Kat Latham’s post:
“This is a great post and I’ve enjoyed the comments/discussion and agreed with all of it. I do want to pipe up here to say that A.Lady’s point about stereotypical heroes is extremely valid and the most important one so far. While heroines have changed a great deal and for the most part kept up with changes in society and mores, heroes definitely have not. I do think they have become more psychologically complex, and in that sense have improved. On the other hand, why can’t we read romance fiction with heroes who are not alpha-types? Is this really all romance readers want or will tolerate? Or are publishers for the most part afraid to deviate from this standard?
TRAPPED IN SOCIAL STEREOTYPES
I try in my own novels to make sure that while the heroes have some traditionally attractive qualities, they are either “fringe” alpha or not alpha at all – exploring characters that are introverted, intellectual, spiritual, insecure or even socially awkward geeks, for example. (Could this be why I’m not published yet, I wonder?) These are more relevant to today’s society, both for women readers and for potential male readers who perhaps can’t relate to romance novels because they CAN’T SEE THEMSELVES ON THE PAGE. Perhaps some of the vocal critics of the genre secretly resent the fact that so many women’s fantasies focus on rare or unrealistic stereotypes for men – ones they themselves don’t meet.
I would also point out that in some ways the world has changed more for women than for men. They are still trapped in their own social stereotypes, with all the attendant expectations to BE alpha, be providers and protectors, keep their weaknesses and feelings closed up, and dealing with that. Unfortunately for men, they don’t have the same dialogue and peer support that women do as they work these things out and renegotiate or even DEMAND that society accept these other, less stereo-typical attributes. Some of their worst detractors are other men, and it’s extremely difficult for men to go against the expectations and limitations of their own “group.” (As an aside I’ll take this opportunity to plug one of my favourite TED Talks.) It take courage to deviate from these expectations, and stereotypes in romance fiction do none of us any favours. We need to give men permission to NOT be alpha, and send that message out to society that they are still valuable and attractive. ALL characters are more attractive if they are strong and self-sufficient and have spunk. They are also more attractive if they are sensitive, caring, expressive of their true feelings and well-groomed. DUH. But we don’t have to distort reality or exclude real human beings in order to satisfy our craving for love stories with happy endings.
REAL MEN VERSUS ROMANCE HEROES
And, in that way I have of unintentionally casting a net and catching all manner of flotsam in it, and afterwards remarking that there appears to be a pattern, I also dog-eared an article from the July 2012 issue of RWR (Romance Writers Report, issued to the organization’s members) by Betsey Prioleau entitled, “Talking the Lady into Love” Tips from Nonfiction.”
“To listen seductively isn’t as simple as it sounds. A man must be all in, mentally and emotionally engaged, and attuned to subtexts and unvoiced feelings.”
This article was meant to provide romance writers with information to help them “amp up a hero’s allure” by providing some hints about the types of language and behavior that succeed in making a heroine think about love (and lust); it also points to some interesting contrasts between real men and romantic heroes.
Without repeating the entire article, for those who are unable to access it for themselves, I’ll summarize the key points. Prioleau argues that a man’s attributes or skills that are most able to seduce a woman include the following:
Men who are engaged and active LISTENERS
Soothing SWEET TALK
Amusing: DROLL, SILLY, ZANY, WITTY banter to make her laugh and relax
ENTERTAIN & INFORM, intelligence, engaging STORYTELLING, witty banter, big ideas
LYRIC: poetry, rhyme, rhythm, music of the soul, mesh of sound and sense (the romance of the singer/songwriter/poet)
Nothing about social status, titles, income, sports cars or biceps.
This list could be looked upon as yet another list of stereotypical attributes which most modern men would fail to measure up to. Certainly many of the men I know would not score so well on these parameters. That was my first reaction to it. But upon further thought, perhaps, if men MUST change to adapt to a new, feminized society, and to establish and strengthen their relationships with women, these are the characteristics that they should augment. We cannot ask modern men to be dukes, Scottish lairds or bucaneers, but maybe we could ask them to cultivate more of these attributes. At least the playing field would be relatively level, and who can complain about that?
“The brain can be the sexiest part of the male anatomy – if the man knows how to spin his smarts and stories with conversational charm.”
And, because why make something simple and short if you can make it convoluted and complex, I have one more piece to this post. Today, a fellow named Jeff has been working on a new patio here at the house, and, like many residents of this island, he is multi-talented. During a brief respite from his heavy excavation work, as he often does, he pulled out his acoustic guitar and sang a few old Dylan and Beatles tunes, belting out the lyrics across the landscape. The number that struck a chord with me today was, “Girl” by John Lennon. Curious, I searched up the lyrics of the song:
Girl, by John Lennon
Is there anybody going to listen to my story
All about the girl who came to stay?
She’s the kind of girl you want so much
It makes you sorry
Still you don’t regret a single day.
Ah girl
Girl
When I think of all the times I’ve tried so hard to leave her
She will turn to me and start to cry;
And she promises the earth to me
And I believe her
After all this time I don’t know why
Ah girl
Girl
She’s the kind of girl who puts you down
When friends are there, you feel a fool.
When you say she’s looking good
She acts as if it’s understood.
She’s cool, ooh, ooh, ooh,
Girl
Girl
Was she told when she was young that pain
Would lead to pleasure?
Did she understand it when they said
That a man must break his back to earn
His day of leisure?
Will she still believe it when he’s dead?
Ah girl
Girl
Curiously, I found the following comment from “Soma” attached to the post, only the most eloquent of the bunch, but telling, I felt. Are there voices we are not hearing because it is “political incorrect” to express these, perfectly valid, feelings?
“Was she told when she was young that pain would lead to pleasure? Did she understand it when they said that a man must break his back to earn his day of leisure? Will she still believe it when he’s dead?
To me this is the most profound line John ever wrote. I hear people saying all the time that “it’s a guy’s job” to do this or that, especially to earn all the money, and subtly or not so subtly people are telling girls that if a guy isn’t constantly breaking his back for her temporal well being then he’s not worth being kind to. Then some girls grow up thinking they just have to act sweet when things get rocky and they’ll prolong a relationship where the guy gives her his all. %45 of suicides are by unemployed men between 35-50 (about %2 of the population) because people don’t put any worth on them and then proceed to blame them for it. And there are many more deaths from men having stress related health issues because they’re too scared to take the “easy way” out. To me, this isn’t just John’s story, this is a story of gender bias that’s politically incorrect to address.”
Well. Food for thought. What do you think? Do you agree that stereotypes of attractive masculinity as portrayed in romance fiction are harmful, outdated and discriminatory? Do you think they work against the ideals of feminism? Do you think these images of manhood contribute to the discrimination that romance fiction faces in broader society?
In closing, here’s John Lennon and the Beatles, singing Girl.
Come in, sit down, have a cup of tea. I want to tell you a story.
Truly, I tell you, I’ve been absconded by fairies this past three days, and taken on a fanciful journey. My body aches with fatigue, my head spins, my spirit soars, and my feet have not yet returned to the ground.
Yesterday I felt I could not write a blogpost, I had nothing to say, I was bored with blogging, I did not care. But I realize that yesterday I was still in thrall, and only today am I able to tell you about it. But quickly before I fall asleep.
ARTIST STUDIOS
This past weekend brought yet another expression of the boundless creativity and rich cultural life that this small, rural island community contains – namely the annual Denman Island Artists Studio Tour. While there are more artists per capital on this small island than just about anywhere else in the country, just twenty or so are featured each year on the tour, and of these I spent part of the weekend visiting but a few.
While there are many talented painters, photographers, potters, sculptors, metal artists and quilters, etc. here, there are just two or three artists who’s medium and offerings stirred my soul and that I want to share with you. Firstly, Studio Angelika, where Angelika Saunders creates “mixed media collage with hand-made papers” as well as sculptural objects and handmade boxes, in a beautiful seaside cottage setting, using a variety of natural and found materials and objects was a revelation.
MAGICAL MIXED MEDIA
Angelika’s creativity is boundless, and her sensitivity to colour, texture and composition truly inspiring. On my own artistic journey, I have always been particularly drawn to mixed-media collage and assemblage sculpture.
In Angelika’s hands, fibres and scraps of nature that common mortals would walk past, such as dry twigs and the lacy skeletal remains of leaves, feathers, sea shells, stones and bits of rusty metal, become gems that find their way into her skillful compositions. She generously and enthusiastically demonstrated her paper-making technique when I expressed a particular interest, and I can hardly wait to get my hands on some tools and materials to try my hand at this fascinating craft, not to mention all the things one can do with the paper.
SPIRITUAL PLACE-MAKING
The second studio tour that moved me was Dragonfly Knoll Gallery, home of John Tallerino and Marc Randall who engage, respectively, in assemblage shrines and hand-made books. You’ll soon see the connection.
The entire atmosphere at Dragonfly Knoll is serene and magical. These two spiritual gentlemen have created an entire world around their lovingly hand built home using recycled heritage windows and doors, romantic dormers, embracing porch upheld by gnarled tree trunks, a garden filled with insightfully placed shrines and objects of beauty and spirituality, from gongs made of rusted iron to wire, mesh and glass dragons in flight, to clockwork Steampunk-inspired chicken sculpture. Their studio, made up of several charming”rooms” along this corridor (my old architecture prof Brian MacKay-Lyons would have loved it), was one of the most comfortable, inspiring spaces I’ve ever felt. While I love John’s shrines, I fell in love even more with the place, made up of all these bits of evidence of the mindful, centred and inspired way that John and Marc live. It was Hobbit-like, in some ways, and a place I could imagine easily spending three hundred years, with never a moment bored or restless.
I was also very moved by Marc’s lovingly hand crafted books, with their hand-made papers (see the pattern?), whimsical embossed and hand dyed leather covers, carved and polished wood, and hand stitched bindings. I want to rush right out and take a workshop on hand-made books, and begin this exploratory creative journey myself. Somewhere in the muddled mix of hand-made paper and books, and mixed media collage is my own spirit scratching in its attempt to find expression.
INSPIRED STORYTELLING
What, you might ask, has any of this to do with loss of sleep? Well, in addition to touring artist studios over two days, and having my sensibilities and spirit carried away on a corporal plain, I spent almost every waking hour reading one of the most compelling novels I’ve read in a long time.
I inadvertently discovered author Laura Kinsale last week through a Smart Bitches, Trashy Books review, and after sampling Nick Boulton’s delicious voice on samples of her audiobooks, I became intrigued by Laura’s storytelling and downloaded an e-book of Flowers from the Storm. Once I began this amazing, compelling tale, I literally could not put it down. At my age, all-night reading binges are not well-advised, and yet I watched the dawn light creep into my bedroom windows two of the past three nights as I turned page after page after page of this beautiful story.
The hero, Christian Langland, Duke of Jervaulx, suffers a cerebral hemorrhage, and his journey of suffering, madness and recovery, in stark contrast and complement to the spiritual struggle of the pious Quaker heroine, Archimedea Timms, makes this a one-of-a-kind love story.
I found Christian’s handicap with language fascinating, and as he emerges from the fog of his damaged brain, and expresses himself with increasingly complex vocabulary and sentence structure, Maddy and his close friends adjust and simplify their own speech to make themselves understood by him. At the same time, the tempo and rhythm of Laura Kinsale’s prose is deeply affected by this linguistic transformation so that we began to see and feel and breath in the stark, staccato, powerful jumbled poetic word arrangements of the hero, and this begins to feel normal. Better than normal, somehow. No ordinary historical romance this, an absorbing and compelling tale of human suffering and redemption, as well as a deeply moving love story that will stay with me forever.
While on the one hand I want to buy and read everything Laura Kinsale has written, a part of me wants to dwell in Christian and Maddy’s world for a while yet. And I’m left with an even greater dilemma, which is, should I spend my precious hours here on earth reading, writing or pursuing creative and spiritual expression in visual arts? There never seems to be enough time to do it all. And in the end, we still have to sleep.
Tell me what inspires or excites you. Do you have obsessions that keep you up all night? Are you a compulsive reader, or an artist that finds beauty in the ordinary world?
Well the study junkie’s been at it again. As usual I ‘ve had my head up my (*cough*) in my books, immersed in one topic or another for the past several months, undoubtedly at the expense of my writing. Well, in the short term anyway. In the long term, I hope it all adds up to something even better.
One of my recent distractions, and it’s been a MAJOR distraction, has been screenwriting and film making. But I’ll get to that in another post.
by ambernwest @ WANACOMMONS
Most recently, I’ve thrown myself into a new topic, one which I realize is a shortcoming in my own writing – and that is emotion. I entered two of my unpubbed manuscripts into the writing contest of my local RWA chapter, The Judy, and last month discovered that I placed second for one of them. Yay! A prize! This is a rare and beautiful thing in a life so lacking in validation.
What I valued even more than the prize, however, was the detailed scoring and comments of the six judges who read my two entries. The perspectives of experienced writers, many of them published, with fresh eyes on my work, and the generosity to tell me what they think – that is priceless.
So, ironically, it was the comments on the manuscript that did not win that I focussed on first, because this is the manuscript that I earnestly pitched at the National RWA conference in Anaheim this past July. And to my surprise and delight, the one agent and four editors all asked to see it. So of course I hurried home and took a good hard look at it.
One of the things I decided to do was apply Margie Lawson’s Deep Edits technique to at least part of the manuscript to discover if there was something I had overlooked. It’s not that this story hasn’t been revised and edited a thousand times already. It’s pretty tight.
And that brings me back to emotion. What I discovered, over and above the valuable suggestions made by the contest judges, was that, according to Margie’s system what my manuscript lacked was, of all things, emotion. Well, in fact it’s not absent. It’s just not explicit enough for the particular market to which this book aspires.
My reading history is broad and deep and varied, and one of the things I sometimes have trouble doing is adjusting my writing to suit a particular market. So I might be writing a commercial women’s fiction story but use language or voice that’s more suitable to literary fiction. And I’m beginning to see that this just won’t work. I think. Or at least I have to find the balance that’s just right for my story and my “hypothetical” readers – whoever they may be.
So while I believe there’s tons of emotion in my novel, I don’t necessarily make it as obvious or visceral as I probably should to give my target readers the kind of reading experience they are looking for, and are used to. The emotion is situation and character based, and it’s often between the lines. I know readers are clever, but I’m learning that there’s a pretty powerful effect that certain kinds of language has on the reader’s emotional engagement. So my current learning curve is all about finding artful ways of engaging my readers in the emotional experiences of my characters.
And the material I have from Margie Lawson is invaluable in helping me to do that. Revisions are underway.
But of course when you cast the net of consciousness you catch all kinds of things. One of these, that kind of fell into my hands last week, was a book entitled The Passional Muse: Exploring Emotion in Stories by psychologist and author Keith Oatley, Professor Emeritus at the University of Toronto. Someone with the same professional background and perspective as Margie Lawson.
While I agree somewhat with the Quill and Quire review of this book, and did have the same difficulty the review discusses engaging in Oatley’s short story, One Another, embedded in the academic text, I still found much of his discussion of the role of emotion in fiction in our developmental experience as fully formed human beings quite fascinating and enlightening.
In any case, it points to the fact that wherever my work fits on the commercial-literary continuum, emotion is such a central part of fiction and the reading experience that I’d better get some clarity about how this ought to be conveyed in my own writing.
IT’S PARTY TIME!
EPIPHANY
