Ruminations on Entitlement, Fan Culture, and Life in the 21st Century

I've seen this article about fandom and entitlement circulating on twitter, and after reading it and chewing on it for a day or two and digesting it for over a week, and after reading Maggie Stiefvater's essay on self-actualization and Classic Cars and listening to a bunch of audiobooks and watching the Olympics and taking in a whole lot of other media, I have a few thoughts.

These thoughts are primarily directed towards authors and writers and artists and creative people. If you're not one of those people, you might find this interesting anyway, but you probably won't. Either way, it's your time; invest it where you please, but consider this fair warning.

An author owes nothing to anyone, ever, except to tell a good story. And by "good story", I don't mean a happy story, or a story where everyone's favorite character gets the ending that everyone wants. Sometimes that happens, but sometimes, it's a better story if it doesn't happen.

Let me tell you a story.

A while back - it really doesn't matter when - I read a book. It doesn't matter which book. What matters is that it was a great book, and as with all great books, I found myself in its pages. Not the main character's pages, though. No - my story was not the story of fame and fortune and happy endings. Mine was the story of the sidekick who doesn't quite get there in the end. It remains to be seen whether or not this will end up being my story - I still have a pulse, so I've still got time - but when I read this particular book, that was my story, and I hadn't quite realized that truth until I saw it there, in black and white, a message from the author: This is you. This is what happens to people like you: you will leave behind not the mark that will change the world, but the smudge of a mosquito squished against the kitchen wall. Maybe. Maybe not even a smudge. Maybe less than that. Every story needs a good supporting character with a cautionary tale, and you, my dear, are it.

And I thought: This is me. Oh, shit.

Here's a thing that you and I both know: no-one wants to live through that storyline. We all live in hope that, despite our persistence in doing the same ordinary things every day, we will somehow break out of the ordinary and become extraordinary. We are all, as the saying goes, the heroes of our own stories, and we all want to live to see our inner heroes realized. We will be the ones, the narrative goes, who will fix this fucked up world we live in. The narrative is a lie. I understood, when I recognized myself in this C-list character who would never realize his inner hero, that I was not on the path that was going to lead to me realizing mine.

It was an awful feeling.

Here's another thing that I think maybe you know: readers often see books as representing the author's worldview. Sometimes they're right and sometimes they're wrong, but that's how readers see things. And readers idolize authors.

And in this stupid, screwed up world we live in, readers want to believe that their idols see the world the same way they do. I mean, think about it: we say that God created man in his image, but really, it was the other way around.

Reading that book was the beginning for me of a long, long time engaged in the act of self-reflection. I am still engaged in it. It is painful, and hard, and frightening to think that after almost four decades of doing Life, I have, quite possibly, been doing it wrong.

But - and I think you probably already know this, too - the self-reflection is the point of that book I read. Self-reflection is, I think, the point of books in general. For without self-reflection, how can we grow? How can we become better? And if we do not become better, how can we better the world around us?

Unfortunately, we do not live in an age of self-reflection.

This is the quandary: self-reflection is painful; we live in a society in which the overwhelming worldview is that pain is a thing to be avoided at all costs. We tell ourselves, and our children, that we can change the world. We want to believe that this is true. But personal growth takes effort. Achievement takes both effort and sacrifice. And yet we tell ourselves constantly that effort and sacrifice are too much to ask, and should not be necessary. Why work out every day for months when you can just get liposuction and have the whole thing done, recovery and all, in a couple of weeks? Kids staying up too late is no problem at all - instead of establishing a routine (which could take WEEKS, and deprives parents of their social life), just give them melatonin when you want them to get an early night. You want a book you can't afford? No need to save up - just download it for free. Even as we admire the Olympians, VISA runs an ad telling us that, really, we're winners anyway for picking the right credit card, and those athletes are just making life hard for themselves. And on, and on, and on. When we take this, and add the ease with which readers can communicate with authors online, and shake it all up with a dash of entitlement and a heaping spoonful of frustration, the inevitable result is a fan culture that feels not only entitled, but obliged to press upon creators.

How can Joe Blogs make his obligatory Difference To the World? How can he reconcile the command that has been handed down to him to improve upon what he has been given with the overwhelming cultural message that life is supposed to be easy?

Simple. He pesters the author. If you listen to him, GREAT - he has made a difference to the world! He can check that box. If you don't, well, he tried; it's not his fault. He'll just SHOUT LOUDER NEXT TIME.

The world is full of C-Listers. It always has been, and it always will be. From the mosquito to the mountain goat, the vast majority are destined to live out their lives quietly and pass on without notice. Most people are the definition of average, people who will not get a hero's ending - who chose wrong before they even knew they were making a choice and ended up gunned down by a false friend in a parking lot, stuck in a dead-end factory job, stuck with a dependent who will never be anything but a dependent, just plain stuck. People who find, when they put their classic car into Drive, that the engine has rusted out, and will cost more money to fix than they have available. Or maybe they realize, after driving their classic car in circles for a while, that they've been driving the wrong model. They thought, at the time they bought it, that it was the right model, but they were wrong, and now it is too late, because the purchase of this wrong car has led them to make other choices that further limit their car-driving options. Maybe they have too many kids to cram into the sporty two-seater that they now realize is their One True Classic Car, and while the Ford Edsel is nice, it's just not quite Right, but they only have the time and resources for one car, and while their kids might really enjoy the wild ride strapped to the roof of the two-seater, in the long run, that amounts to child abuse, so they stick with the Edsel, because even if it looks like a beached whale, at least it's reliable, even though maintaining it sucks up all of their time.

The world is full of people who are living lives that are "nice, but just not quite Right". They know it. They just don't know what to do about it, so they look for themselves in books and movies and TV shows and they look to see themselves getting that elusive happy ending, because if they can't get it in fiction, then where else are they supposed to get it? And they harass the creators of those books and movies and TV shows when they don't get that, because the ease of developing an online platform means that they have convinced themselves that they are all Special Snowflakes who Deserve To Be Heard.

Stephen Hawking said recently that it is urgent that humans figure out how to leave the Earth and colonize other planets, and his desperation echoes, on a larger scale, the desperation that lives in the hearts of ordinary men: the desperation that comes with the knowledge that if we do not make our mark in time, then when we die, all that we know and all that we are dies with us. All of humanity, ordinary and extraordinary, will one day disappear in a swirl of matter and anti-matter and we will be nothing but an unread footnote in the history of time. What a waste that would be of Stephen Hawking's amazing mind. And yet, it is inevitable.

All human beings struggle with this. We struggle to reconcile our need for recognition with the reality of obscurity in the grand scheme of things. Everyone just wants to know that a happy ending is possible. Very few people have any idea of how to go about finding it.

But you don't owe them that.

You just owe them a good story. You owe them the opportunity for self-reflection.

Whether they take that opportunity is up to them.

Stickers, Crap, and Angst: Things That Make Me Cry

So, I've been doing a lot of reading lately. It might have something to do with the fact that my novel and I are sitting deep in the bowels of writerly angst - you know, that place where you know your manuscript needs a little work but you think it's promising, and then you open it up to work on it and you realize that it's awful, and the characters are flat, and you repeat yourself a million times, and this will never, ever, ever be as good as those books with the shiny award stickers on them, and it's not commercial and plotty enough to sell, so you might as well quit now and let The Hubbles carry the bills while you get fat eating bonbons and binge-watching Castle reruns and a loop of that Van Damme commercial on YouTube…

Maybe that's just me.

ANYWAY, when I know my work is terrible and I don't know how to make it better, I read. I read all the books with those nice shiny stickers on them. Because I'm masochistic that way. Why be satisfied with the knowledge that I need to improve when I can rub my own nose in it? Also, it's an opportunity to learn. And I want to learn from the masters.

So since my current WiP is a YA, I read a bunch of really good YA. I read John Green's Looking for Alaska, where I paid attention to things like how to structure the first chapter to introduce statement of theme without being too obvious about it (or how to be obvious and still get away with it), and how to incorporate backstory without making it feel like backstory, and how to make characters feel real, and pacing. I read it out loud to The Hubbles and learned about poetic prose and the importance of rhythm so that the words flow from sentence to paragraph to page to chapter and back again. I could get a whole writing course worth of learning out of that book. I cried a lot over the course of reading it, usually when I thought of my own sorry work-in-progress, but also when the story called for it.

I read Nancy Farmer's The House of the Scorpion, where I noticed how important it is to get the small details right, that the reason I knew I was in the hands of a good storyteller from the very beginning was that the sights and the smells and the sound of the wind just felt right. And I thought about archetypes, and Cinderella stories and Ugly Duckling stories, and how if I hadn't just read Cheryl Klein's essay on archetypes and plot in her book Second Sight, I wouldn't have noticed the archetypes in this book, but they were still there, and maybe it was my identification with those archetypes, my emotional response to them based on my own social and cultural context, that makes those kinds of stories so powerful for me as a reader. And I also learned about pacing. Again. There's another writing course in that book. I cried at the end of that one, too.

And then I opened my own WiP and I cried myself to sleep, because, you know. CRAP.

And then I read Eric Walters' The Rule of Three, because a kid in my YA book club picked it. And I have to be honest here - I didn't want to finish it. The dialogue seemed stilted (to me). The plot was predictable (to me). The characters were boring and stereotypical and, if I can take a minute to be arrogant on my own blog, pretty slow (to me). There was an interesting character, Herb, who showed up after about 50 pages or so, but he wasn't enough to pull me through the novel. I knew the publisher was excited about the book (because I had read it in an article in Publishers' Weekly or some place like that), but I couldn't figure out why. I thought it probably had something to do with the plot. And I know this stuff is totally subjective. So I did what I always do when I am mystified by a book's buzz: I passed it to The Hubbles and asked him what he thought of it.

He read the whole thing in a couple of days. He agreed with me on the dialogue and the characters, but he thought the plot was really interesting, and he loved Herb, and he figured that for the average YA reader, it was enough. It didn't change his worldview, but it diverted him for a few hours and gave him a distraction from bills and was entertaining. I learned a big lesson there, too: that just because a book isn't the kind of book I want to be writing right now, that doesn't make it a book that isn't worthy of existence. That there are different books for different people at different times. And that having an interesting plot is really, really important, no matter who your audience is.

I can't say that it made me feel any better about the state of my novel, but at least it didn't make me cry.

And then I read Vikki VanSickle's Words That Start With B, which isn't a YA, it's a Middle Grade, but which was delightful and welcoming and honest and wonderful in a wrap-you-up-in-a-cozy-blanket sort of way, and which filled my brain with real characters and a well-paced story. It was like rediscovering Judy Blume. And holy moly - the craftsmanship that went into making that book. I'm still figuring it out. There's another writing course right there. I'm mystified at the lack of buzz for this book. Or maybe I just missed it; I only recently got around to starting the Harry Potter series, after all. If my friends had to describe me, the phrase "late to the party" would almost certainly come to mind.

That book didn't make me cry, either - I take that as a good sign, that I can read a truly excellent book now without dissolving into hot, silent tears of self-loathing (although I can still feel them as I type, swelling at the back of my throat). I've been jotting down ideas for my novel, elements I can add that will strengthen a character, plot points I can change to raise the stakes and make things more interesting, scenes I should take out or rewrite. I'm not quite ready to look at the 58,000+ words that I wrote back in November, but at least I'm no longer battling the urge to just print the whole thing and set fire to it in a garbage can in the backyard.

Which brings me to the reason for this post, apart from letting you know what books I think you should read, which is this: reading is important if you're a writer. You need to read to learn how to do it right, and you need to read to distract yourself from your own misery when you know you're doing it wrong. You need to read critically, as well as for your own enjoyment. You need to read widely, both within your genre and outside of it. But you don't have to read everything. It's okay - even preferable - to put a book down when it isn't speaking to you. Just make sure you know why you're putting it down, and why someone else might want to keep reading. Get other people's opinions if you have to. Don't let a book pass through your hands without learning something from it.

And when in doubt, look for the stickers.

Thanks for stopping by.

Note: With the exception of Cheryl Klein's Second Sight: an Editor's Talks on Writing Revising & Publishing Books for Children and Young Adults, which is only available on Amazon and is thusly hyperlinked, the aforementioned books are all hyperlinked to their IndieBound pages, should you wish to buy them. But in case you can't find a local independent bookstore using the IndieBound search engine, or are a heartless soulless pathetic excuse for an individual who hates independent bookstores with every fibre of your being, here are those books again, this time hyperlinked to their Amazon or Chapters Indigo pages:
Looking for Alaska, by John Green
The House of the Scorpion, by Nancy Farmer
The Rule of Three, by Eric Walters
Words that Start With B, by Vikki VanSickle

Wisdom on Wednesdays: Read Up

We writers hear a lot about reading widely. We're supposed to read a lot of our genre, but also a lot of everything else. We're supposed to read great stuff, mediocre stuff, and not-so-mediocre stuff. We're supposed to read literary and commercial.

Read, read, read.

Well, I'm not arguing with that.

But I'm here today to make the case for reading up more often than anything else. And by that, I mean read the books that are so well-written, they leave your ego in tatters. Read books that are so amazing, they make you want to slip inside them and live among their post-apocalyptic pages. Read books that, in one way or another, are so far beyond what you are writing that you have to stop yourself from actually screaming with the knowledge of it.

Because if you're like me, noting forces you to up your game more than the realization that you haven't broken through the ceiling of what is possible yet. Read books that show you where the ceiling really is.

Read up.

I've been reading books by John Green and Tahereh Mafi. What have you been reading?

Wisdom on Wednesday: Listening

I've been getting a lot of critique lately along the lines of:

-This is good, but it's quiet.


-This is good, but it's awfully short.


-This is good, but the MC should be more/less defined.


-Etc.


I spent a lot of time thinking, "Yeah, but I wanted to write a quiet book. So that means I'm done!"

Or, "Yeah, but I was aiming for short, so there would be lots of white space - more room for illustrations is good, right? So that means I'm done!"

Or, "Well, I made that MC purposefully vague/detailed, and you said it was good otherwise, so... Party time! I'm done!"

Um... No.

This week I've come to realize that what my amazing, wonderful, patient critters (because my CPs must be among the most patient in the world, because they deal with me and my detailed crits so well) were really saying was:

This is good for the type of book you're writing. But I don't think the market wants this type of book. In order to make this marketable, you need to make it into a different book.


Sometimes, in order to become great writers, we must first learn to be great listeners.


And a few incredible critique partners probably helps too.


What have your critters been telling you lately that you need to listen to?

Disaster Relief for Japan: How to Help

As you all know, Friday's disaster in Japan was catastrophic. My thoughts immediately went out to my friends who live in Tokyo, and my friends who live here in Canada but have loved ones in Japan. I hope that all our loved ones are safe and well.

If you want to do more than think good thoughts, go to Maureen Johnson's blog HERE for info about Shelterbox, a disaster relief organization, and deets on what you can do to help. And don't worry, it's even affordable for starving artists like ourselves. Everyone can do something. (Courtesy of Kiersten White: her blog is linked in my sidebar over there on the left. Thanks, Kiersten!)

Hiatus!

I am swamped.

Not only am I way behind on my NaNo goals, but I have critiques to do and an epic outline to complete. Having company over will have this sort of result, methinks.

So, I am going to have to take a two-week-ish blogging hiatus. I'll miss you guys, but I have to take my own advice here and buckle down and prioritize. And I hope you'll understand and come back in December, when I'll be back to my daily blogging schedule.

In the meantime, have a great November, and I'll see you on December 1st!

In Which I Panic and Carry On

To those of you who stopped by and read my Fairy Tale Blogfest Contest entry yesterday and commented to say that you liked it, thank you. You have no idea how much that meant to me. (Those of you who missed it can find it here.)

I realized, just after I had written it and scheduled it to post at 6:00am yesterday morning, that it would be the first time I had ever posted my work in a public place. I mean, I've had first pages and queries read out loud at writers' events, but those were anonymous, so they didn't count. And I've posted on crit boards, but they don't count either, because on a crit board you're basically saying, "This sucks. We all know this. Help me make it better."

This was different. This was a contest entry. This was me saying, "This is my work, and I'll be darned if I'm not proud of it!"

So of course, I panicked a little. It was scary, putting my stuff out there like that! But I went ahead and did it anyway; I had signed up and said I would, and going back on my word isn't really my thing. And you guys came out and told me you liked it and you are so awesome for that, and maybe next time it won't be quite so scary.

Maybe.

How about you? Do you post your work on your blog? If so, what made you want to start? Is it scary for you, too? If you don't, why not?

And thanks for stopping by.

Tony Awards! Tony Awards!

Did you actors out there watch the Tony Awards?

I'm embarrassed to admit that this is actually the first time that I have ever watched the Tonys. Every actor should watch them; theatre is an important element of our field, and we should watch them because it's important to know what's being done out there, and also because it's important to recognize and honor excellence in our craft. On the other hand, I don't live anywhere near New York and I never have, so I've never actually seen any of the individual performances/musicals/plays being nominated in any given year. (Unlike the Oscars, which I've often seen because they're movies and are therefore available pretty much in any given place at any given time as long as you can get to a Blockbuster.) I had no idea that the Tonys were even televised before this year. So, I feel that my lapse, while shameful, is excusable. But no more!

Watching the Tonys was, for me, by turns entertaining (Matthew Morrison singing and dancing live? Yes, please.), awe-inspiring, and demoralizing. Awe-inspiring because I was truly shocked by the percentage of huge Broadway stars who are also huge film stars, and also because I got to see clips from musicals and plays being performed right now on Broadway and I LOVE LIVE THEATRE. I wish I could go to the theatre every day. Just watching it had me itching to get back out there and DO some live theatre.

And then came the demoralizing part, as I realized that all of those people can sing. And I mean, really sing. They can bring the house down. And I can't. And by that I mean, even my kids and my own mother beg me to stop when I try to sing, and we're just talking about lullabies and things like that. I mouth "Happy Birthday" as I carry my kids' cakes to them at their birthday parties. I sound that bad. I can dance a groove in the floor, and I think I've probably got some acting chops hidden away somewhere (although sometimes I doubt myself - I think we all do), but I sure can't sing. And I wonder: does this mean that live theatre is out for me? Will I ever be able to "make it" on acting and dancing alone?

I sure hope so, because that's all I've got.

Thanks for stopping by.

Knowing your Market: Part II

The last time I posted on the topic of knowing your market, I focused my post on what this means for me as an actor. This time around, I want to focus on what this means for me as a writer.

The first part of knowing your market is knowing what books are out there, what books are selling, and what a book in your genre typically looks like. Do I mean that you should find out what the biggest-selling genre is and research the biggest-selling books in that genre and then go and try to duplicate them? No, of course not. You have to write your own story, in your own way. Manufactured writing is never as good, in my opinion, as writing that comes from within you. But you need to know enough about what is out there to be able to identify the genre in which you are writing, and you should probably have a sense of how much of a market there will be for your story. I believe that this type of research will help me when it comes to querying time.

You also need to know what people out there are buying. Again, don't try to identify the latest trend and come up with something to fit. But if you have a story kicking around about vampires, and it seems like vampires are big, then polish up that baby and send it on its way. Equally for romance, and cookbooks, and everything else.

AND, you should know the general shape of the type of story you're trying to tell, too, but that's more of a craft issue and so I'll save it for a later post.

Also, it's important (and really, REALLY takes the pressure off, at least for me) to know, if you're writing YA urban fantasy, roughly how long books in that category typically are, or if you're writing picture books how long those manuscripts typically are, and where things like page turns and chapter breaks fall, and whether ending on an ambiguous this-might-turn-into-a-series-but-for-now-I'm-not-really-sure note is a good idea or a done thing. If you write suspense, learn how to weave the suspense in without leaving the reader feeling like you've dropped the ball.

In other words, READ. Read widely, in many genres, across many age groups, a lot. Consider it part of your job as a writer, and make time for it every day. I read most things for pleasure, but I consider a lot of my reading to be "market research". Read.

The other part of your market is the potential publisher or agent, and thinking about this part of the market is still a mystery to me, primarily because I have not yet sold a book manuscript. I look at the books I have enjoyed reading, and I think, "There's a 'rule' about not overusing adverbs, but this book does it all over the place, and it's by a debut author," or, "They say to avoid info dumps, but there's this huge three-page one right here." And I wonder: what did this manuscript look like when it first arrived on the editor's desk? Did it have even more unnecessary adverbs and info dumps than it does now? Or did it have less, and did the author have to add them for clarity?

I realize that I really have no idea of what this part of the "market" really wants, because while I see the same books that the general public buys (and can therefore study them and learn about what people like about books and why they buy these books and not those books), I don't see the manuscripts that agents and editors snap up. I don't have the first idea of what catches their eye, because the "rules" as handed down from them don't always line up with what leaves their houses and ends up on bookstore shelves.

So I'm left with this: read a lot; write a lot; improve a lot; and tell the best story that you can.

Thanks for stopping by.

Mea Culpa, and CONTEST!

Did I say "this weekend" in my last post? I meant "next weekend", and I apologise to any blog readers who might have tuned in only to find the same old tired post sitting there. "This weekend" (meaning this past weekend) got a little busy, what with shoveling coal raking gravel and laying sod and moving mulch, and until I figure out how to write posts ahead of time and have them appear later, I guess I just shouldn't promise things like that. I'm sorry. I will absolutely have a post on Knowing the Market for Writers up next.

In the meantime, though: literary agent Nathan Bransford is having a contest! And if you're not daunted by the 300-plus entries he's already received, you should go and enter it right now.

Thanks for stopping by.

I Heart Mondays

If you still haven't had a chance to check out the auction to raise money for flood relief for the city of Nashville, please do so - this is your last day to bid.

Aaannnnnnnd, literary agent and Uber-Blogger Nathan Bransford of Curtis Brown Literary Agency has added a new Page Critique feature to his blog - EVERY MONDAY! I know! If I were a "squee"-er, this would definitely be a "squee" moment. It's truly fantastic, and I really appreciate the opportunity to see his point of view on other people's (and maybe one day, my) first pages. So, fellow writers, don't miss this. Every Monday. Be there.

Thanks for stopping by.

Oh, Cheez, How I Do Love You

I'm a big movie watcher. I sometimes fool myself into thinking that it's a form of professional research, but really, I just like to watch movies. Two movies I've seen recently have proven to be pretty educational from the standpoint of the struggling actor, however, and when that happens I do a little happy dance and watch them again (and again, and again, and again...).

In this spirit, I am encouraging every actor who hasn't hit the really big time yet to watch What Just Happened with Robert DeNiro, supported by a stellar cast including Bruce Willis, Sean Penn, Catherine Keener, Stanley Tucci, John Turturro, and Robin Wright Penn, among others. Everyone was great in this hilarious send-up of the film industry, told from the perspective of an over-caffeinated producer during a turbulent two weeks of agonizing, bribing, berating, threatening, begging, acquiescing, painful film-making.

But that's not why I'm recommending it to you. I'm recommending it to you because one of the bonus features on the DVD is a collection of some of the actors' audition tapes, paired with the scenes as they appeared in the film. This is far and away the most educational DVD extra I have ever seen. By turns making me think "WOW, he is so good! Look at his eyelines! He's so ALIVE in this audition!" and "WOW, that audition tape was nothing like the way they played the scene - I wonder what process they went through to get from there to here?" and everything in between, this had my eyes glued to the screen from start to finish. Rent it. Watch it. Learn from it. Know that one day, that could (will!) be you.

I am also encouraging you to go out and rent a really bad movie or two (or ten). I had the pleasure of renting and watching a (blockbuster!) movie recently that was so unexpectedly bad, I laughed out loud. A lot. It was not a comedy, but it was hlarious. And then in the middle of the movie, I realized that despite the cheezy special effects and wooden acting and plastic sets and overdone musical score, I would be lucky to get cast in a movie like this. I would be so lucky to get cast in any movie that hits the mainstream theatres, as this one had. Sure, I can aspire towards better, I can dream about the Oscars and the Emmys and the Golden Globes, but to actually get cast at all? I would be lucky. It was a very humbling moment. I need those moments once in a while; I think we all do. So, next time I find myself smirking at the contrivances in a script or about to complain that I have an audition for this thing that really looks lame, I'm going to rent this movie. And remember that I am LUCKY to even have an audition to go to in the first place.