Author's Note

Sooo…  I didn’t post last Thursday because I went to a Marvel Movie Marathon leading up to a midnight showing of The Avengers (go see it.  really.  awesome movie.), and I meant to post about that but then I’ve been swamped at my day job, and then at home…  well…  I’m in the final throes of finishing the novel (less than 10k to go!) and that’s all I can really think about, and the few times I can tear my brain away from it, I’m thinking about Charmed City (my short story collection coming from Cold Moon Press any. day. now.) and the last fiddley edits based on the printers proof and the marketing yet to come.  And then there’s Balticon and getting ready for that at the end of this month.  There’s just way too much on my plate now and something’s got to give.  I’ll be back with Thoughtful Thursdays in June, and I really do hope you’ll join me.  In the meantime, you can keep up with all my brief (and less thoughtful) adventures over on Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/michelledsonnier

Today I’m thinking a lot about productivity.  Just last night I passed another milestone in the quest to finish my novel.  My word count is up to 60,727, which, according to my word count goals, is 3/4 of the way there.  And of course, being the worry wart I am, I lay in bed thinking about what’s left to tell in this piece of the story (since I do plan on continuing with these characters and in this world in additional novels), and wondering if I have enough story left to hit the goal word count.  I was finally able to roll over and get some sleep after midnight (hurray for coffee this morning) after I ticked the scenes off on my fingers – at least two more major scenes that will range between 3,000 and 5,000 words, and the big grand-daddy climax scene of the whole entire novel, which is good for at least 8,000 to 10,000 words all by itself.  And then I thought about another minor scene that would be good for character development and color, and that would also tie up a loose end of a minor plot point (good for about 1,500 to 2,500 words).  Aahhhhh…

Then this morning while I was driving into the day job, I started obsessing about efficiency and productivity.  My original plan was to have the first draft of this novel completed by the end of April, which is this coming Monday.  Twenty thousand words in five days?  I started to sweat.  Some of those days I’m still committed to going to my day job (which is actually being very busy right now, so there’s no chance of slipping in some creative work in the cube farm), and then there’s the Sunday supper with the family that I better not duck out on unless I want big trouble around the homestead.  And even on my most productive days when I’ve got nothing else going on (remember how I’ve been tracking word count obsessively?), I’m still just hitting slightly over 3,000 words.  Getting 20,000 words out in five days is really looking impossible.  And then I started thinking over all the days when I didn’t get anything done and put zero down on the word count sheet.  Writing novels is my dream job – am I chasing that job hard enough?  And that’s when I needed to talk myself off the ledge.

For one thing, I’m a human being and not a machine.  I need downtime, I need to relax.  And I do have a husband who has been incredibly patient and understanding, but the lack of “us” time over the last few months is really starting to wear on both of us.  And then there are the conventions that I participated in over the last four months (Katsucon and RavenCon).  I lost at least four days of writing to each, one for prep, two for the con itself, and one for recovery.  Not that they weren’t worth it.  They were both awesome.  And of course, there’s that omnipresent day job, sucking up time and energy like a corporate vampire.  If I advised a friend in the same situation I’d tell her she’s being too hard on herself and that she’s certainly been chasing her dream hard.  There’s nothing to feel guilty for.

But I do feel guilty (which might be worth examining with a therapist, who knows).  If I’d just been a bit more focused, a bit more organized…  What ifs are fun to play with in fiction, not so much in real life.  So I made myself a deal – I’m tacking on to my deadline the eight days that I lost to cons, plus a few days for wiggle room because of day job and family commitments, pushing the deadline to Sunday, May 13.  And I’m not going to feel guilty for the extension.  But come May 14th if I’m still not done, the self-flagellation shall commence.

The Great American Novel – it’s what every American writer is told they are supposed to want to write, especially those who cut their teeth in academia.  And certainly, on its surface, it does seem like quite a grand thing to strive for.  The Great American Novel is supposed to capture the zeitgeist of its time, it’s supposed to capture the unique American experience – and if you write it it’s supposed to capture you a spot in the American Literary Canon.  Who wouldn’t want to live forever in such a gloried place in the company of hallowed greats like Twain, Fitzgerald, and Faulkner?

I’ve walked the halls of academia and listened to the professors laud The Great American Novel, and at one time I wanted to write it myself.  But I’m giving up.  Yes, I’m giving up on writing The Great American Novel, and I think it’s a good thing.

It’s not that I don’t want to be part of the American Literary Canon – that would be fantastic.  And it’s not that I don’t want to be in the company of the recognized greats like Steinbeck, Ellison, and Crowley.  But there are problems with me being recognized as a writer of The Great American Novel.

First, there’s that I write genre fiction, and academia, the arbiters of who gets recognized and who does not, don’t see what I do as serious enough for the Canon.  I suppose I could fight this from the inside, teach genre writing as a topic of serious consideration and lobby my fellow professors in the staff lounge to get them to open their eyes.  I could write serious and thoughtful essays and send them far and wide.  With the internet in my arsenal, I could get a lot more attention than in the past when the editorial gatekeepers at the major academic journals filtered content.  And while I may teach and I may write thoughtful essays when it strikes my fancy, this is not something I want to spend a lot of my time and energy on.

I don’t need the approval of academia and the almighty Canon to think of my work as being worth something more than just mindless entertainment.  Please don’t mistake this for sour grapes or a bitter bias against academia on my part.  Academia does wonderful things, as a group they produce interesting commentary and criticism, and they produce many helpful ways to improve the craft of writing overall.  And the Canon is full of incredible writers to whom I owe a great debt for shaping who I am today.  I am just confident enough in the worth of my own work that I don’t need their approval.  It would be nice, but it’s not necessary.

But there’s a second, and to me more important, reason that I’m giving up on The Great American Novel.  I don’t want the pursuit of The Great American Novel to hinder what I’m producing today.  I don’t want to be handicapped by a voice in the back of my head that says, “but is it good enough to be The Great American Novel?”  I just want to write the story the best way I know how to, without worrying about posterity.  And what if I did hit it and somehow produced a genre novel that actually got hailed as The Great American Novel?  Would I be crippled by the worry that it would be all downhill from there and since my best work was done, why even try to produce more?  Perhaps that is what happened to Harper Lee after she wrote To Kill A Mockingbird.  There is no question that it’s one of the finest novels in the American Literary Canon, and perhaps that crippled her for writing any more (this is just a thought of my own.  I have no idea what Lee thinks or feels on the topic).  She’s never written another novel.

And the thought of that makes me break out in a cold sweat.  But, but, but!!  I have so many stories to tell!  I make lists of novels I want to write and even writing full time, it would take me years to complete just one of the many lists scattered around my desk.  Now, some of those stories are probably never going to get written because they just aren’t good enough as ideas, but there’s certainly enough there to keep me very busy for a good long while.

Let history judge me, and if I do write The Great American Novel, so be it.  But I’m done chasing that dream.  I’m too busy writing my stories.

This weekend’s Thoughtful Thursday post is getting pre-empted by preparation for RavenCon 2012 this weekend in Richmond, Virginia.  So instead of a view into the deep chasms of my soul, or even dallying about in the shallows, I give you my RavenCon schedule.  Hopefully I’ll see some of you there!

Friday, April 13th

5:00 p.m. – Jumpstarting the Muse Workshop (Anna)
I’ll be running a workshop full of tips, tricks, and techniques to keep your writing muse awake and productive.

7:00 p.m. – Opening Ceremonies (Room E)
Just what the title says.

Saturday, April 14th

1:00 p.m. – A Visit with Michelle D. Sonnier (Board Room)
I’ll be giving a reading from my new book, Charmed City: 13 Tales of the Dark and Strange in Baltimore, and answering any questions you’ve got about writing and such.

5:00 p.m. – Modern Fairy Tales Panel (Cove)
Lost Girl, Grimm, and Once Upon A Time all bring fairy tales to the TV screen.  What makes some shows work and others not?

Sunday, April 15th

9:00 a.m. – Rethinking “Write What You Know” Panel (Room F)
How does this mantra for writers work when you are trying to produce fantasy or science fiction?  Is it irrelevant or does it need retooling?

12:00 p.m. – Steampunk as Alternate History Panel (Room E)
Is it possible to create a steampunk alt-history that doesn’t hinge on the British Empire?  Are colonialism, imperialism, and classism inherent in the sub-genre?

See you at the con!

No, I don’t mean books or reading in the inner cities, I mean the ghettos we set up in our libraries and book stores.  But wait, aren’t libraries and book stores supposed to be these beautiful bastions of freely moving information with their patrons learning and smiling and exchanging knowledge?  Well, that might be the concept, but the practice is really quite different.

I see it all the time because of the type of writing I do.  I get dismissed as a denizen of the scifi/fantasy/horror ghetto.  There are many among the high-brow literati who look down on my work – “How can it consider important themes?  It’s just genre fiction.  It’s not Lit-RAH-ture.”

I ran into this when I asked a professor to write me a letter of recommendation for a graduate level creative writing program.  He asked to see samples of my recent work since it had been a while since I had taken his class, and since I thought this was a very reasonable request, I sent him what I thought was my best work – genre work.  He wrote back to tell me that he couldn’t write me that letter not because my work was faulty, but because it was genre.  He thought my writing was quite good and that I had the potential for a very nice commercial publishing career.  But, he said, genre isn’t done in academia, only “serious literature,” so he didn’t want to waste his time writing a letter recommending me to a program I’d never get into.  As you can imagine, I was very disappointed.

I put a lot of serious consideration into my work.  I tackle weighty themes about the human condition.  I put a lot of effort into trying to make my characters seem like they could be real people.  I work hard to make the fantastic situations and settings seem believable.  I dare say I have to work harder than the average non-genre writer, the person doing “serious literature,” by the simple virtue that my situations can’t happen in real life, but I have to make it seem like they can.

I’ll be the first one to admit that there are low-brow genre books out there; books that are predictable, formulaic, and resemble nothing more than brain candy.  And there are books that aim to be “serious literature” that are the same way.  They are the empty calories of the literary world.  And I see nothing wrong with them.  Who doesn’t want a nice, crunchy, salty potato chip instead of carrot stick sometimes?

I’ve come to accept that there are people who will not regard my work with any respect not because of its quality, but because of its genre.  And I’ve made peace with that.  Really.  So why a Thoughtful Thursday post about the ghetto?

Because of this right here, a Time magazine columnist putting Young Adult (YA) books into the ghetto.  I heartily disagree with this man. There is nothing wrong with an adult reading YA books, and YA books can indeed take on complex topics and be beautifully written. I mean really, why would I want to give my child a book that’s so crappy that I wouldn’t want to read it myself? Not to mention all the parenting/teachable moments made available when you read a book with your child… This guy seems close-minded and arrogant – and I can’t even begin to take him seriously when he doesn’t do his research (The Hunger Games being about games you play when you’re hungry? Please).

It makes me more than a little melancholy that book judgment has come to this, when it’s about the outside trappings of the book and not the story and the writing itself.  Or is it back to this?  Or did we never leave this kind of arrogant judgment behind?  Our parents tell us when we are children to not judge a book by its cover, and I’d venture to expand it to “don’t judge a book by its genre.”  You never know what treasure you might discover.

In my last Thoughtful Thursday post I touched on Godin’s assertion that writers have no “right” to be paid, which touched off all kinds of thoughts about art and money, and more than a few conversations with my friends and fellow creative professionals.  One friend who does performance art and writes political columns came up with a metaphor that I think captures the essence of the situation much better than the way Godin put it.  He said that we are all buskers, out in the public eye trying to convince the audience every day that what we do is worth their hard earned cash.  But another friend threw out another question that really got me going – he asked me why I create and made the point that his day job is boring and un-fun but that he does it for the money, and that when he creates it’s all about the artistic expression with no thought for whether or not money will be involved.

The “why do you create?” question gets thrown around a lot, usually right before the questioner says something to the effect of, “Oh, you were going to create anyway? Well then suck it up, buttercup, we’re taking advantage of that and you’re not getting any compensation for your time, effort, or talent.”  It’s not what my friend was saying, it’s just the way I’ve seen the conversation go over and over again.

And I think this distracts from the question at hand – Why should artists get little or no pay for creating art?  Now, I’m asking this question with the assumption that whatever art is created is also of good quality.  I certainly don’t think people should be paying for sucktastic books, piss-poor music, or actors who can’t act their way out of a paper bag.  But why is art expected to be provided for free (or for very little)?

Like many, I have the day job because I need a regular paycheck and I need health insurance. I don’t like what I do for a paycheck.  In fact, many mornings I have to talk myself into going to work (usually by reminding myself that living under a bridge in a cardboard box would be a very bad idea).  I make myself miserable for money.  But WHY do I have to?  I enjoy writing stories, and I’m pretty good at it (some people say I’m better than pretty good).  Why am I not allowed to earn a living at something that doesn’t make me weep and drive me into depression?  I’m not looking to be rich by any means, a decent middle class living is all I ask.

And as for the original “why do you create” question – I would write stories whether I got paid or not.  I am driven to create.  Most artists I know are like that, hence why we are so easy to take advantage of in this situation.  But this drive also creates an additional layer of pain for me when it comes to the whole earn a paycheck/create art dichotomy.  I am furious at my day job for taking up so much time and energy that I don’t have much to devote to my art.  My head is so full of stories that I don’t have the time/energy to sit down and create.  It’s not just a sometimes thing for me, it’s a constant aching need, and I can’t relieve that need because of the day job that takes up so much time and energy.  But I have to work that day job because I need the money.  But if people were just willing to pay a fair amount for art – *POOF* – problem solved.  I give you a good product at a fair price and I get to do my art full-time and we all live happily ever after. What would be wrong with that?

I finally did it.  After years of telling myself wanted, no needed, to do it, after several years of putting it on my New Year’s Resolution list and a couple of years of saying I was going to complete NaNoWriMo – it finally happened.  I’ve written enough on the same story to have it officially qualify as a novel.  I have crossed the 50,000 word threshold.  It’s an accomplishment that has me thrilled and happy dancing in my chair, it’s a mountain I’ve wanted to climb for so long and now I’m finally at the top, sort of.

There’s still a lot more work to go before the story is done.  I figure I need to write somewhere in the neighborhood of 30,000 to 35,000 more words to bring this novel to a place where I can write “The End.”  But for now I’m going to enjoy the 50,000 glow.  But not too long.  I’ve got a novel to finish.

My latest short story is out in the quarterly magazine from Sam’s Dot Publications, Aoife’s Kiss.  “The Witch’s Cat” is a fun little story about magic and pirates and one very valuable feline.  If it’s in your budget, I hope you’ll consider supporting independent press by buying a copy (or a subscription even!)  Enjoy!

http://sdpbookstore.com/aoifeskiss.htm

It all started with the inflammatory headline – “Godin to authors: You have no right to make money any more”.  My first knee-jerk reaction was “F#@% you, Godin, I write good stuff and I do deserve to be paid for my efforts” and then I settled in to read the blog post by Mathew Ingram.  Essentially the post is all about the changing distribution paradigm for all kinds of writing.  Given the new technologies (e-readers like Kindle and Nook, software like Apple’s iAuthor, print on demand services like Lulu and Lightening Source, etc) it has gotten much easier for anyone with the itch to publish a book to do it.  Therefore there are a whole lot of amateurs bypassing the gatekeepers of traditional publishing and everyone is competing for readers’ attention.  Some of the stuff coming out is very good or even excellent, some of it is mediocre, and there’s quite a bit of it that is unadulterated crap.  But that’s what you get when the filter gets turned off.

Godin’s point is that a writer has no right to be paid; they only get paid if they can convince the audience they are worth the money.  He’s not using “right” in the sense that you should expect to produce work for no money so shut up and enjoy it, he’s using “right” in the sense that you only get paid if you’re good at your job.  This is the way it works for the rest of the world, out in the cubefarms and factories.  If you suck at your job, you’re going to get fired and you’re not going to get paid.  If you’re good at your job, you’re going to keep it and keep getting paid.  So, in the sense that I should not expect money for producing crap and I should be able to get paid for producing good stuff, I agree with Godin.  But I do think he could have phrased it better (odd for a writer, don’t you think?)

The part that disturbed me more was further down in the blog post where Ingram quotes Francis Ford Coppola saying that maybe all these downloading students are right and who says art should cost anything and who says artists should be paid.  Blink, blink.  Well, Mr. Coppola, you are indeed correct that there isn’t an imperative, moral or otherwise, that requires that artists be paid for their work.  By the same token, there’s no imperative that says investment bankers, garbage men, computer programmers, or real estate agents should be paid either, and yet they are, sometimes extremely well.  And I don’t see anyone out in the public advocating for them to use their talents without remuneration.  Please correct me if I’m wrong.  Which leads me to something that’s really been bothering me for a long time…

Why are artists, good, bad, or mediocre, so often expected to produce their art for free?  An artist still has to eat, still needs a sheltered safe place to sleep, still has all the needs and wants of any other citizen of the world – and pretty much every single one of those needs and wants cannot be satisfied without money.  So where is an artist supposed to get the money to satisfy these needs and wants if they are not compensated for their art?  I suppose a lot of artists do what I do, work a day job that pays the bills and create art in the time off from the day job (nights, weekends, vacations).  And I suppose there are other artists who are fully supported by spouses and family members so that they have the time to create while keeping their needs met.  But how is this fair?

I fulfill two roles in society, one at my day job and one as an artist, but I only get paid for one?  Why should I do double the work for no increase in pay?  And for the supported artists, how is it fair that those spouses and families support their artist and that everyone else gets to enjoy the art without helping in that support?

I get that people crave entertainment and that they want as a high a quality as they can get for as little money as possible, because, well, everything else is so expensive.  I do the same thing myself.  I get excited when I find a book on sale or manage to catch a movie at the cheaper matinee because that means I can stretch my entertainment dollar farther.  I get more entertainment bang for my buck, but who says I have the right to that?  Do we have a right, as in this is mandated by my humanity, to cheap or free entertainment?  Who says art should be free?  Who says artists shouldn’t be paid?

In an effort to post more, I’m challenging myself to start a regular feature called “Thoughtful Thursdays.”  My plan is to address some issue requiring some careful thought, either from the world of publishing or about writing and creativity, every Thursday.  While I don’t expect to come up with easy answers every Thursday, I do hope to at least come up with some points worth pondering.  So, without further ado, the first in a series of “Thoughtful Thursday” posts…

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There are a lot of questions swirling around in my head because of the recent brouhaha in the blogosphere about the book “50 Shades of Grey” coming soon from Vintage by E.L. James.  Questions like – Where do you draw the line when it comes to originality?  When does homage or pastiche cross the border into outright plagiarism?  Is fanfic a valid mode of artistic expression?  Do writers have any right to expect that the characters they create should not be appropriated by another artist?

(To catch everyone up who hasn’t been tuned into this situation – James wrote some fanfic using Stephanie Meyer’s characters from her Twilight series in a fanfic work titled “Masters of the Universe,” which enjoyed a not inconsiderable amount of success.  She has since reworked and added to that work and presented it as a new work of fiction, “50 Shades of Grey.”  She’s gotten a seven figure advance from Vintage, and the book is generating a lot of buzz.  James and Vintage maintain that the two pieces are distinctly separate pieces of work, but many on the Web are arguing that the two pieces are close enough to qualify as nearly identical.)

There’s way more here than I can tackle in one blog post, so I’ll focus on one issue and come back to the rest later.  Today I’m going to look at the questions I have regarding fanfic.

I have an uneasy relationship with fanfic.  My first thought upon finding out that it actually existed was honest puzzlement.  Why didn’t these writers come up with their own fictional worlds and characters?  Why did they need to write about other people’s characters and worlds?  I remember as a pre-teen and teen-ager that I did something similar.  I’d entertain myself with daydreams about characters from something I’d just read, usually a minor or supporting character, and I’d give them lives and back stories outside of the main narrative.  But I grew out of that, drawn on by the hunger to create stories, worlds, and characters that were my own, and not borrowed from someone else.  Were fanfic authors just writers who were not as far along the developmental path as I was?

But then I met and made friends with actual fanfic writers and got to see more of what goes on inside their heads.  Yes, some of them do eventually want to move on and write their own original stuff, but they do enjoy playing in other people’s worlds as a way of learning certain things about writing and narrative structure.  After all, it’s easier to focus on your plot and pacing if you don’t also have to develop a whole new world and introduce your cast of characters.  With fanfic, all that stuff is understood and in place.  But there are also fanfic writers who have no desire to venture on outside of their fandom.  Their urge to write goes no further.  They are happy playing in the world that they love and leaving it at that.  I have a harder time understanding them than I do understanding the writers who are using fanfic to practice.

Please understand, I’m not trying to run down fanfic writers here.  There are many talented writers in the fanfic arena; I just don’t get it on a visceral level.  I have too many stories and universes in my head to want to spend my time writing in someone else’s.

What I do understand about fanfic is that it’s a huge community of ardent, and some would say rabid, fans.  These fans want to live in their favorite fandoms so much that they create their own stories in it.  These are the same fans who spend a lot of money on all the products of that creative universe and the same fans who share the “gospel” of that creative universe and bring new fans into the fold.  These people are enormously important to any writer who is trying to make a living at the creative game.  And it’s quite a compliment that the creative universe you’ve built is one that people want to spend more time in and hear more stories about.

But can it cross the line?  James wrote Twilight fanfic, and in her fanfic Edward and Bella were adults moving through a courtship and BDSM relationship.  50 Shades is about a vampire and a human woman moving through a courtship and BDSM relationship, except their names are Christian Grey and Ana Kavanaugh.  Sounds pretty similar, right?  But okay, there’s only a limited number of tales to be told and you can find at least superficial similarities in hundreds of novels.  But the part that really perked my ears up was the blogger who put Masters and 50 Shades through the software program Turnitin, a program designed for college professors to detect academic plagiarism.

Turnitin found an 89% similarity index between the two.  If I’d put a paper through the program back when I was teaching and I came back with an 89% similarity to something else, I would have given that student a big fat F, no questions about it.  I never did (and never will if I teach again) tolerate plagiarism in my classroom.  So why does James get a seven figure advance for the same thing?  Fanfic does have its place, but I don’t think it’s fair for one author to get rich off another author’s hard work.  The fanfic writer, however talented he or she may be, did not put all the effort in of creating the universe they are playing in; they didn’t put all the time and energy into character development and creating the back story.  In my humble opinion, fanfic should be identified as such and it should not be sold, only given away.  What do you think?