writeworld:

by Christina H for Cracked.com

I can’t be the only one who feels like the schools pulled a sort of bait-and-switch job on us when it came to reading. When I was in elementary school, they went to a lot of trouble to make sure we thought reading was fun, with bookmobiles and read-a-thons and tons of fun books about mice and motorcycles and phantom tollbooths. I had confidence that I could go to the library and pull anything off the shelf except a Baby-Sitters Club book and I wouldn’t be disappointed.

That was the bait. In junior high and high school, they made the switch. I guess they heard about how drug dealers give you free doses of the good stuff until you are addicted, and then once you are hooked, they start cutting it with 50 percent baby powder or something. Actually, junkies notice when you do this. And kids notice when you swap their fun books for boring crap.

So one summer you are reading A Wrinkle in Time or Fantastic Mr. Fox or whatever, and then you show up for your first day of school and BAM, The Scarlet Letter. And get on that pronto, kid, because we are going to talk about metaphors and symbolism in Chapter 1 tomorrow. I opened these books thinking they would be great and rewarding, like the books I was used to, but it was like biting into a delicious-looking cake and finding a bear trap. After my face had been so destroyed by so many bear traps (to continue the metaphor) that the greatest reconstructive surgeon in the world could do nothing to save it, I stopped looking at books as wonderful presents I couldn’t wait to open and started looking at them with a sort of low-level PTSD.

Let me be clear: I still love reading good books, but since experience has taught me that there’s about a 95 percent chance that a random (adult) book I pick up is going to be unenjoyable, I spend more time researching a book before I read it than I spent researching my house before I bought it. It’s crazy to have to be so scared and wary of something I used to look forward to so much.

I think this kind of experience is part of why only 50 percent of American adults have read any novel, short story, poem or play in the past year, and only 54 percent have read any kind of book at all that wasn’t required. There was a bump up from 2002 to 2008, which they think was related to Oprah’s book club, or Harry Potter — you know, things reminiscent of the “Reading Is Fun” campaigns they targeted at kids, which I guess we need for adults now.

And as a disclaimer, I know there’s going to be people out there who loved The Scarlet Letter or A Separate Peace or what have you and feel like they got a lot out of it, and teachers who manage to get kids really engaged in discussing literature, and that is cool, but I don’t think that’s the common experience. Here are the sorts of things I think are going on a lot more often:

Read More

Funny… and relevant. Number 2 and 3 are the ones to really be taken seriously (and yes, I’m advising taking a Cracked article seriously — because they do make significant, well-argued points).

I lucked out with (mostly) good teachers in high school and what we read was generally a mix of the ‘good’ classics and the ‘bad’ classics. (Seriously, Wuthering Heights should not be exposed to over-emotional, hormonal teens who don’t know what horrific specimens of humanity Catherine and Heathcliff are because they and their peers are too similar to see the flaws.) I was taught critical thinking and we were encouraged to express what we thought while being able to textually and historically back it up. But I went to a private school and had all advanced/AP classes. I’m not the norm, at all. 

The reading curriculum for most high school students hasn’t changed much in decades, unless you have a really forward-thinking teacher (and one who circumnavigates traditional state-approved materials). It’s the literary equivalent of using science textbooks from the 1970s. High schoolers should absolutely be learning about classic literature and how it relates to history and humanity, but there comes a point where you have to adjust the content and method to reflect shifts in how a culture absorbs information and what is relatable for students. Literature is not a fact-based medium and cannot be instructed as such. 

The author is right: we do it with film critiques ALL THE TIME. Why can we not teach and apply those concepts to reading?

cleolinda:

@cleolinda: EL James wants 50 Shades parties shut down. “You can’t just hijack something someone else owns”: tinyurl.com/br98spd

@cleolinda: I hope somewhere Stephenie Meyer’s lawyer(s) just lit up with joy, all “OH SO WE’RE DOING THIS NOW? YAAAAAY”

@DSylvan: Sounds like her brain forgot logic’s safe word.

Far be it for me to encourage more people to talk about this book, or Twilight, but damnit Stephenie Meyer’s lawyers: GET ON THIS NOW! You’re setting a bad example if you don’t. You’re saying it’s OK for people to not only directly steal someone else’s intellectual property and market it as this whole new thing and make millions, you’re also saying ANYONE can publish thinly-veiled fanficition, call it their own, and make millions. AND that it’s then OK for that person to take legal action against others trying to create sales and marketing plans and enact them without any consultation or remuneration to the author.

The pot is screaming black at the kettle and your asses need to get on that as of yesterday.

My English degree and experience working at a law school are crying right now. Please, let’s have a big messy legal battle over all of this so neither one of those women has time to write more horrible fiction.

/rant

BTW, I sincerely hope E. L. James is happy with the fuckloads of cash made from her ‘work,’ because she’s also solidified herself as a literary pariah and (with this move) a hypocritical hack.

Been awhile since we’ve done a substantive update. Partially due to life intervening in unexpected and (mostly) unpleasant ways. Partially due to trying to stay on top of deadlines in the midst of all life is throwing at us… and failing.

Still, it’s not epic fail, like we’re both sitting in the corner and crying. It’s been more failing to work on what we’re supposed to be working on (or moving at glacial speed with it) in favor of throwing some energy into other, lesser projects. 

Sometimes it’s good to do that, necessary even. However, the driven perfectionist in me (Lily) is also constantly chiding for not reaching the deadlines we set and not being able to focus on our ‘necessary’ project goals. 

So today, I’m taking a deep breath, doing our blog post as scheduled, and then working on what strikes my fancy to work on trying the whole time to not give myself shit for it. Then try to get back on track starting tomorrow.

Anyone else have these issues? How do you cope with them?

fiftyshadesofdismay:

one sex scene

60 ellipses

SIXTY ellipses.

Horrid writing aside, this is inexcusable. I love ellipses; I love them too well. Then I go back and read what I wrote and delete the majority of them. Usually ninety percent of them. Because I don’t want to seem like a complete moron. I’m currently writing in a rage with incomplete sentences and it’s still better than using sixty ellipses in one passage. 

This is a prime example of why self-publishing with minimal edits terrifies me. I’d rather we be ripped apart by a good editor and make the work better than churn out this dreck. 

(PS - I counted sixty-one. Also, twelve hyphens.)

I’m working on a lengthy post for one blog or another, quite possibly this one, about fanfiction and its merits, and I keep remembering this quote my dad told me when I was first starting to consider writing as a possible future. It was something one of his English professors used to say to their class all the time, and while it doesn’t always hold true it is generally correct. 

The point I initially took from it was that being truly original with a story isn’t something an author should be concerned with as much as expressing their intention in their own voice. I still hold to that, but in the world we now inhabit where every form of media tossed out to us seems to be a retread, remake, re-imagining, pre-sequel, and/or amalgam of a collection of stories, it becomes clear (to me, at least) that what used to get shunned as a less-than-real form of popular writing has become the standard. In a more frightening move, it’s become the ‘safe’ option for marketing and most outlets seem unwilling to take risks on anything that doesn’t fit into the afforementioned categories.

Now, I can’t harp too much as the intent of several of my WIPs hinges on adaptation, but it does worry me that writers who wish to get their content visible through traditional means are meeting with increased blockers for more original stories. We’re all building our ideas from some external factors — it’s not like we live in self-contained bubbles o do not let anything we see, hear, or read influence our material — and any time those ideas are encouraged toward the more ‘acceptable’ and ‘mainstream,’ we run the risk of losing our voices, and that is more dangerous than taking a risk on an uncertain investment.

(And yes, there are the independent avenues for writers, which I embrace and respect, but the fact that those required creation because too many were feeling threatened by the corporate attitudes of those able to purchase, market, and distribute their work is in itself deeply troubling.)

— Lily

(Title courtesy of the brilliant Cleo over in LJ land)

Out of my own personal obsession, as well as for general novel research purposes, I added a tag tracker on Tumblr for ‘Dracula.’ It’s been an interesting tumble through posts, but the general feeling I get is that even here vampiring fans fall into two distinct categories:

The OMG vampires is so sexy with their eternal youth and hotness and the biting, but usually not really biting, and… unf, ungh, hoooootttt! Camp

The vampires are evil bloodsucking beings (and sometimes total BAMFs), so stop making them into twats! Camp

Personally, I fall in the middle of those polarizing opinions ‘cause who am I to argue with the concept of staying young and sexy forever — oh, except that whole immortality ain’t all it’s cracked up to be aspect. However, I’m also of the mindset that vampires drink blood to survive, and possess at their core a desire for the blood of the ultimate prey: people. 

This isn’t to say you can’t have vampires trying to be good un-dead beings; it’s that if you’re going to take away their most fundamental reason for existence (predators of humans) you either better have a damn good reason for it, or stop calling them vampires. 

Also, stop making them sparkly pussies. That’d be great, too.

TL; DR — I don’t buy in to the whole ‘I’m a vampire but I never hurt people unless they beg me for it, or they’re really evil’ shtick. That’s like saying ‘I’m a rapist, but I don’t go around trying to rape people unless they’re horrible people or they want me to rape them.’ (In which case it’s no longer rape, genius.)

My point in all this rambling is to say that in our little ‘verse, vampires don’t go around ripping people’s throats out, usually… and we have reasons for it. Yet sometimes they do. Pretty much every vampire in our world has, at one time, gone on a total predatory bender and slaughtered a bunch of people. They’re not out for world domination like the baddest of the bad vamps (see: Dracula moment coming below); they’re predators who act on their natural instinct and it’s a combination of outside influences and internal conflict which finally reign them in — and yet it doesn’t mean that urge to rip some throats out doesn’t rear itself now and again.

So back to the Dracula tag: one of my biggest gripes with those who perpetuate the whole Vampires As Tortured Sexy Beasts mentality is they like to cite how sexy Dracula was, and how subtextually (or blatantly, depending on whose opinion you’re reading) Mina and/or Lucy were totally gagging for him.

To show I’m just as good as all those subtext-loving fools (some of them in ridiculously high positions of academia) at using direct citations to back up my opinions, here’s a couple quotes, followed by my notes, directly from the book I’ve been annotating as I re-read it:

“He was very pale, and his eyes seemed bulging out as, half in terror and half in amazement, he gazed at a tall, thin man, with a beaky nose and black moustache and pointed beard, who was also observing the pretty girl. He was looking at her so hard that he did not see either of us, and so I had a good view of him. His face was not a good face. It was hard, and cruel, and sensual, and big white teeth, that looked all the whiter because his lips were so red, were pointed like an animal’s.”

Note: Not the kind of guy you’d GO ON A DATE WITH then, huh, Mina?

“Suddenly the horror burst upon me that it was thus that Jonathan had seen those awful women growing into reality through the whirling mist in the moonlight, and in my dream I must have fainted, for all became black darkness. The last conscious effort which imagination made was to show me a livid white face bending over me out of the mist.”

Note: THIS IS NOT SEXY (also, not a dream…)

“Kneeling on the near edge of the bed facing outwards was the white-clad figure of his wife. By her side stood a tall, thin man, clad in black.”

Note: She’s in white. He’s in black. How much more obvious can we get with the good vs. evil metaphor and yet people still think Drac’s an OK guy? SERIOUSLY?!

“His right hand gripped her by the back of the neck, forcing her face down on his bosom. Her white night-dress was smeared with blood, and a thin stream trickled down the man’s bare chest which was shown by his torn-open dress. The attitude of the two had a terrible resemblance to a child forcing a kitten’s nose into a saucer of milk to compel it to drink.”

Note: A far cry from her begging for it…

“I was bewildered, and strangely enough, I did not want to hinder him. I suppose it is a part of the horrible curse that such is, when his touch is on his victim. And oh, my God, my God, pity me! He placed his reeking lips upon my throat!”

Note: You mean she didn’t want to make out with him? WHHHAAAAA?

And just so you don’t think I hold Stoker’s novel as a holy tome for Dracula (which I do, but also know its many, many flaws):

“He cannot go where he lists, he who is not of nature has yet to obey some of nature’s laws, why we know not. He may not enter anywhere at the first, unless there be some one of the household who bid him to come, though afterwards he can come as he please. His power ceases, as does that of all evil things, at the coming of the day.”

Note: Stoker and the gypsies just made it up, so it’s the rule! It’s the Hellmouth! The TARDIS is part of events now so you can’t use it to change things!

— Lily