State of me and how that impacts my work
Got my rewrite of book two done a bit ago, was mostly happy with it, except for one section. Sent to editor, and received (extensive) feedback just before Norwescon. Still working on absorbing some of the developmental edits.
Also a bit emotionally wired after a month of "two people I love (and a third I deeply admire) have serious cancer, a fourth has been hospitalized for dementia/inability to self-care, and my country is racing to hell in a grifter's hand basket." Balancing my own mental health needs against the needs of those I care about -- and dealing with conflicts among those needs -- has been a lifelong challenge, so I'm more unnerved that I would like.
Spent last weekend at Norwescon, which was both really good and a somewhat hard. Was happy to support Larina Warnock in her first con as a pro panelist. Missed my usual con buds a ton. Home from travels today, unpacking, trying to catch up so I can re-enter the work.
Musing of the day
Started to write a tome on someone else's page and then stopped. It felt like a cloaked discussion about what's "good" literature or "bad" writing. And I ... object.
I don't find either word useful or necessary to improving my own craft. Subjectively "bad" writing in one sense becomes perfect in a humor novel; "beautiful" writing is likely to be completely wrong for an action novel. Methods and techniques and styles are are tools to be used for a purpose, and what you use depends on your purpose as a writer.
Part of his point was his contention that the Mona Lisa was better than Warhol's Campbell's Soup Can, as art, and no one can say differently. And, hey, choosing the Mona Lisa over the Soup Can is something I agree with him on. But not everyone would. And I don't know why I should care. It's a Western Classical art oil in a tradition that did not include the ability to properly paint dark skin tones, for starters, it's a portrait from an era when portraits were class identifiers, and I've seen critics refer to those types of paintings as the polaroid of the times (which, to be clear, I don't agree with, but I find funny). And as a CREATOR--It's a fucking big world, and not everyone can paint Mona Lisas, or should. Why would anyone want them to? Surely you don't want everyone to write Moby Dick? What a wasteland bookstores would be.
"Avoid this" and "Try this" strike me as proscriptions for beginning writers. So I was confused by the entire discussion. I don't find philosophical discussions about beauty and perfection useful because they are always biased. People love what they love. But it makes me think about a "news" story about a "study" that "proved" that a laundry list of (white) facial features were considered the most beautiful (surprisingly it was a study of primarily white college men.) You can prove any racist or bullshit thing you want if you cherrypick your sources, AND we tend to find beauty in the things we are most familiar with (or that we fetishize, but that's a different discussion).
I can understand American authors focusing on Western literature because that's what we're writing, that's the area in which we're trying to improve our craft. But there have always been so goddamn many better writers than me that reading their work and trying to write with the level of skill of the ones who moved ME has always been the best way for ME to learn. (although reading the work of people who have the same problems I do also does help, because it allows me to see why my foibles are just irritating to readers).
I don't need anyone to agree with me that NK Jemisin is the Queen of genre fiction, that Ann Leckie is my current Queen in Science Fiction but Arkady Martine and Nnedi Okorafor and Charlie Jane Anders and are strong contenders that Ursula Vernon is the queen of folksy fantasy, that Cat Valente and Sofia Samatar are the Queens of Literary Fantasy, that Becky Chambers and Nina Kiriki Hoffman and Martha Wells are my favorite cozy authors (in vastly different ways), that Tamsyn Muir is writing a kind of weird fiction I can't categorize and I DON'T CARE feed it into my veins, and that I need to read more Premee Mohammed, Vonda MacIntyre, Carol Berg, Nancy Kress, Kameron Hurley, Nicola Griffith and so many more--and I must reread everything by Octavia Butler. (And yes, I only mentioned women authors, despite having male authors whose work I adore, for a Very Specific Purpose. Also, I know I left authors I love off this list and I'll feel bad about it tomorrow).
There are plenty of other authors who have sold lots of copies whose work is better than mine, but I don't hold them up as grails to myself for ME to learn from. I'm not sure I can explain why.
On the other end, I know I have bounced off books recommended to me by people I respect, and I don't see the point in mentioning the authors or the books. It's not the author's fault that their style didn't work for me. It doesn't mean their work is bad. Our brains are different.
The storytelling tricks, traits and tips that work for my brain might not work for yours. Thank the goddess there are different styles and methods for different brains. Insisting on a singular storytelling practice would result in monotonous and harmful art. That's how you get Soviet propaganda.
Others say, well, you get a lot of bad art if you don't teach kids and adults what's good. Yep. You get a lot of people trying new and different things, too, and that's fantastic and fertile and wonderful. Let people make their bad stuff, especially if it gives them joy. Let them get better at what works for their weird and wonderful brains.
(As I'm writing this, I'm thinking, well, that's how we ended up with Nick Fuentes and Candace Owens, too, and yeah, that's objectively and subjectively awful. But insisting on Certain Stories Are Better, which is pretty clearly the direction THEY came from, didn't prevent them from developing, so....we can get to bad ends no matter which educational path we follow. It's the basic values underpinning the work, and the soul making the work, that seems to matter).
What I've learned/practiced over the past several months:
Practice: Balancing self-care, refilling the well, and supporting those who need it. Very little writing practice. I did finish two short stories.
Bookwise: Got book two manuscript to editor and feedback.
Decisions made: work wise, zero I can think of.
Learning: why, why, why do I keep making the same mistakes with commas and semicolons?
What I want to practice next month:
Continue with a Learning Mindset.
Get back into both drafting some new work AND marketing some short stories. I only submitted one story last month.
What I've been reading and what I've appreciated/learned from it:
I read Dungeon Crawler Carl and... it's not my thing. I see what he's going and I like the premise and world building and I totally get the popularity of the series but I think I'm one book and done. Good to remember that you can do things right and still not win over a reader.
Also read one of Mur Lafferty's books, and enjoyed it--more what I'm interested in reading right now now--but also walked away slightly dissatisfied. I wanted more world building. I blame myself for that because I picked up the series in the middle instead of the beginning, but also my brain wants more description than her books are likely to carry. They are murder mysteries, after all.
Both had extremely weird aliens and totally improbably events inexplicable by existing physics or biology, so that make me feel better about my books. Neither had protags I completely clicked with, and that might have been part of my disconnect with both books. I have multiple POVs to hopefully deal with that issue, but I have to make all of them consistent and deeply different, and I need to hone my skills there.
Projects status update:
A DUBIOUS HOPE: Published. I need to see if there are any cover art awards I could nominate Mike for. Hoping I'm not too late for that.
THWARTED: In revision.
A DEEP BUT MODEST APIQUAI: With editor
Short Stories: wrote two, submitted one.
Submissions and rejections so far this year: Two and and one.
Marketing: Learning a bit stalled..
Next steps: Find out what I need to do INSTEAD of ads.
S&W work:
Other: Regular critting of short stories for Wordos.