Jenn's World

There's a fun interview between Pat Rothfuss and Brandon Sanderson. I particularly liked it because it focussed a lot more on the writing process than the material they're writing.

So I was watching Nostalgia Critic and found out there's a mouse named after me in Secret of Nymh 2. Jenny McBride, the mouse.

I've been too busy to blog, but I've been thinking about it. Alas, too busy. Working on a revision of God's Play. Trying to finish Skin Farm. Outlining a new book in my head. No rest for the weary.

"Just a few hours into Boobquake day, in which lady activist-of-sorts Jennifer McCreight called upon women all over the world to wear revealing tops to refute the claim of an Iranian imam that promiscuity causes earthquakes, a 6.9 magnitude earthquake has hit Taiwan."

--From the National Post, via the New Yorker.

The background is: According to a Muslim fundamentalist, women's revealing clothing causes earthquakes and a bunch of women decided to show their clevage today to refute the statement.

While I don't deny the power of a good set of women's clevage, I figured this was a dumb idea because there are lots of earthquakes. Just because you don't hear about them or they aren't high magnitude doesn't mean they exist. For example, the U.S. Geological Service says there were 17,292 earthquakes last year. That's what, about 47 a day? And that was a slow year. We've had 4,896 in 2010, and it's only April.

Moral of the story: Think about your experiment before you do it, or risk confirming some looney guys' theory.

Besides, everyone knows that earthquakes are caused by the gays. (I'm joking!)

I'll be really busy this week, so don't expect a lot of posts from me. I did want to mention that Terry Brooks is having an online chat tomorrow. Don't miss it if you're a fan!

Build your vocabulary while donating food to starving refugees here!

I managed to get up to 40. Can you beat me? Don't be fooled by the ease of your early victories, this game is tough.

My brother discovered that (drum roll please!) I am now quoted as an authoritative source in wikipedia. God help the world.

As my brother said, "You know you've hit the big time now!"

Anyway, I'm hoping this will be enough to make the liberal media elites send me my membership badge now, because I sooo want to be a part of that world-ruling cabal (sarcasm /off).

The wikipedia entry is here. Scroll down to the bottom to find me. Colbert interviews await.

The column referenced is short and amusing, so I'll practice pimping for myself and say: go read it.

In the meantime, columnist Michael Wolff tells you to boycott "fake" books in his article "Books are Bad for You."

Feel free also to boycott columns that intentionally use inflammatory statements like "Books are evil" and "Literate people should boycott books" to create controversy when all he's really saying is "celebrity and political memoirs like Sarah Palin's suck."

Way to create a reaction storm from nothing, man. Congrats.

If you haven't discovered regrEtsy yet, you definitely ought to visit it. The worst of the hand-made crafts. Definitely not work safe! Hehe. Somebody bought this...

More useful for writers is Ralan.com which rounds up many sf/f/h short story markets and ACTUALLY IS UPDATED.

The worst and weirdest Vampire Products (The article is written for Halloween, but what the heck? Why not read it to celebrate the upcoming release of New Moon in theaters?).

Tor.com has the first chapter of R. Scott Bakker's new book up. Neuropath, like his Second Apocalypse books, has graphic sex, profanities and uh...sex education/incest jokes? Not to mention it breaks the cardinal rule of not beginning a book with a character waking up... But because he's Bakker, he can get away with it. You can see his philosophy background really jump out, which is cool.

I like his fantasy genre stuff better, but good writing is good writing. How can you not love lines like: "Mia’s real name was Emilio, but everyone called him Mia, either because his last name was Farrow, or because of his days as a drag queen."

Awesome.

Anyway...I signed up for a second online critique group because I wanted some fresh eyes for my book. I think seeing a draft prejudices people and so they may not see things sometimes. Still keep up with the old writing group, just juggling both, because I'm just that awesome. I haven't made much progress on the book since last update. I'm stuck trying to deal with some chronology and writing a chase scene. Chase scenes are soooo difficult to write. I'd rather write a sex scene, and those aren't my forte either. I'm good at graphic violence :)

Which is funny because I don't see my writing as graphic at all...I guess my exposure to my good friend's horror movies, too much Japanese anime and my George R.R. Martin have disabled my "this is too much" radar. Anyone remember when Cartoon Network censored the blood out of Gundam Wing...because heaven forbid cartoon characters get a scalp wound? And you couldn't say "kill you," you had to say "destroy you?" I think that kind of hiding glamorizes violence, sweeps under the rug the consequences of the fight.

Then again, I was probably the only one cheering when the Ashaman began exploding men like melons going yeah, bring on the gore.

I guess I feel like the only violence that seems to grab people's attention is violence that goes a step too far, and that's how I make things horrible and real in my books. Or try to. I think fantasy violence is often too clean, too heroic. And it could be subconscious on my part. I didn't realize that this book was going to have a moral of anti-violence until I read it, but gore compared to the beauty and life of the yei... of course it's going to look too didactic, though. I didn't mean it that way, and I'm not sure I even believe in that message since violence is often necessary, but you write what your subconscious puts out. I also realized that my obsession with eyes in this book--lost eyes, creatures built with no eyes, beautiful eyes, exploding eyes--could stem from an old college gender class about the male gaze. Think about it...a male god. Always watching. ALWAYS WATCHING. The creepiness abounds.

At the speed dating thing, I saw someone with the most phenomenal brown eyes. For a moment, when I looked at him, I was rendered completely speechless. I almost told him he should be an eye model. It was as if someone had taken a brown eye in photo-shop and juiced the colors up really high. Like dark, liquid ochre. He didn't particularly interest me in any other way, but those were fantastic eyes.

Anyway, one thing I've noticed is that, while before I was always able to take my critiques in good spirits, lately I've been tempted to fight back. My motto going into groups has always been, "if my manuscript can't speak for itself, there's no reason for me to defend it" but for some reason, my work lately has been different. I want to cradle it to my chest like a baby to protect from the harsh, evil world.

NO! NO! BAD IMPULSE! BAD!

Must look at things objectively. I want to improve my child, not protect it, since it has no feelings. Manuscripts are sociopaths. No feelings! They drain souls!

Weird mood. Sorry.

I suspect the overwhelmingly positive reviews I got from Dave Farland's book camp went to my head and have now made me unsufferably arrogant. Or, because I am exceptionally worried about the ending and that worry makes me snappish and overprotective.

I'm hoping this fear is just the regular author's so-tired-of-this-stupid-thing-misery and not this book really is trash, plot-wise. If it is, hopefully one of my critique groups will help me fix it.

I felt better about the end when I added some more foreshadowing. Of course, now I'm worried it's less foreshadowing and more fore-hitting-my-readers-with-a-ton-of-red-bricks...

I'm mainly worried about betraying my implicit promise to my reader. What the heck is my book promising? Darned if I know.

After re-reading the Wheel of Time FAQ, I have changed my mind as to who killed Asmodean.

It was Bela.

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And probably Graendal. Although I still think it would have been cool if Mazrim Taim or his controller hired Slayer to take out Asmodean so Taim could take his place as Rand's teacher and gain his trust. And when Slayer said the Dark One himself had called on his services, well, who else but to take a Forsaken? It would have been cool, but I don't think that's what happened. And Demandred's alter-ego is, apparently according to interviews, not someone we've met on-screen yet. Which is dumb.

You know you love a world when it can invoke so much rage in its readers.

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In other news, I apparently may not patent my catchphrase "throw the back against the wall." Someone else got to it first.

Tv Tropes is a wonderfully interesting website to explore, if you haven't already. Basically it covers tropes in television, movies, literature, video and table top games. Not to criticize the tropes, but to explain them. It has some beautiful terminology and I love the comprehensive links system. From contemptible covers to growing the beard to "Not Using the Z word," this has loving references to all the tropes we know and love. You can search by trope or by book/movie/whatever to discover all sorts of interesting stuff. Great time-waster! I love it! Be warned...you can get lost in this for hours...and it is definitely not WWJS (What Would Jesus Surf?). Especially the outside links, including some to...erotic Care Bear fanfic.

Ah, Grumpy Bear. You should be ashamed of yourself.

However, as a writer, you walk away from the site a sense of depression. Because YOU CANNOT ESCAPE THE TROPES. Nothing you ever do will ever be original. Ever.

I also got queasy after reading the 'unfortunate implications' page. I'm trying to do some interesting things with race in my books, but it gives me nightmares sometimes what someone reading about 'savage Dark Elvs' and the slavery of dark-skinned Lomari mages by the light-skinned humans (albeit after generations of the dark-skinned Lomari enslaving the light-skinned humans) will think after reading it. The end point of the book is that NO ONE RACE in this world is right and pure and perfect, and that its a semi-ironic take on the normal fantasy, especially of Elvs (ie, Our Elvs are better and the Noble Savage concepts). But I can see how some things can be misinterpreted.

Well, any press is good press. Right? Right?

It would be incredibly ironic if, when I write book solely on my desire to have brown-skinned female wizard protagonists (not as unique as I thought), I end up killing the same book because it accidentally comes off really racist. Well, at least she isn't a staff chick.

Ah, the overwrought conscience of a politically correct liberal.

On the plus side, I got 100 pages of revision done. The middle of my book is mostly dialogue so the pages just kind of fly by. I'm doing them over again, of course, and I'm going to try and add some more depth, and wondering whether some parts fit the rule of cool or its just me. Albeit not of the sexual and more of the bright shiny explosions variety.

So...Yeah.