Jenn's World

Well, it's been awhile since I posted. Life has been hectic. My laptop got bathed in soup and I ended up in Seattle for a family emergency. Otherwise, things are going pretty well. The school I was going to decided to discontinue the grad program I quit, so I'm definitely not going back. Which means I have to decide to do new things. If I'm going to try for another grad degree, I'm going to try to find one that lets me move slowly. The bottom line is that writing is my first love. Any program that asks me to spend 50-60 hours doing something else is just going to make me miserable. I'm not sure how many part-time statistics masters degrees are available, but since I need to do some undergrad work to brush up my math skills, I'm not going to worry about that right now.

Unfortunately, Utah doesn't consider me a resident because I never bothered to get my vote registered. I know I should have for the local voting even if the bigger elections go straight R, but the local decisions Provo's city council and mayor have made depress me so much. Not only the actions they've made, but the willingness to make actions without considering their costs. When they decided to build a rec center, they only consulted biased sources. Nowhere in any of their presentations did you see comparisons to other local rec centers. No figures on how much the Orem one ended up costing and how much it would be used. From my calculations, it would have been cheaper to buy everyone in Provo passes to the Orem center for the next ten years or so than to build one in Provo. Or buy them a Gold's Gym pass. The local gyms were afraid that the rec center would cut into their business--which it will--and so the Provo city council promised that they wouldn't have things that would compete with the gym. So what does that leave the rec center with, other than an over-sized swimming pool? The marketing was also really shady. "Your taxes won't rise!" No, but they won't drop either. And to build the center, they demolished both the city's teen and senior centers, which, from the plans, they intend to include inside the senior center as one room. (Teenagers + old people. Best combo ever!) I didn't hear any comments from the administrators of the teen center in the process about how their stuff would be positively/negatively affected by the change.

Maybe the whole thing will turn out to be a big success instead of another iProvo. But even if it is a good idea, the process was really crappy. It points to the quality of the Daily Herald, Provo's newspaper, that the reporters never questioned any of the data. My grandfather was particularly incensed because the city council claimed 80 percent of Provo residents would use it at least once a week (based on a mail survey *SMACK!*) but the plans included a parking lot that wouldn't accommodate nearly that many people. That suggested to him that the Provo city council knew their numbers were absolute bunk but presented them as fact anyway.

Oh well, I shouldn't be fighting old battles. Especially since the battles are old enough that I might be misremembering the facts. (Huh--spell-checker doesn't consider misremember a word? Who programmed this thing?)

All my family crises seem to be mostly averted. The first draft of the two-year behemoth I was calling "Wyrmborn" is almost finished. The name of the book is "White War" for now, which is a much better title. Over August-October, I've broken out of my rut and written some 62,000 words. Not too shabby at all. At this rate, I should finish draft 1 by the end of November. I've signed up for nanowrimo under the user name 'Vegetathalas' (don't ask, it's a long boring story.) to help me in my quest. Not sure how long the book is total, since I've discovered the secret to productivity is to store my chapters in different documents so I don't go back and endlessly rewrite stuff. This means it's going to be quite a pain to put everything together. But that means I should have a draft I can bear to show people out by January. Yay!

After that, my tentative plan is to give Skin Farm one final revision and then start writing grouping/querying it. I know the YA post-apocalyptic market is pretty oversaturated, but I like Skin Farm enough that I can't bear to let it sit in a trunk without even trying to get it out there. I wish I had understood more about writing plot and my own personal writing process when I started that thing. I could have had it done ages ago.

After that, it's time to start on a new book. I've plotted out a YA superhero book about a girl mechanic who suddenly gains the power to control vehicle engines, but I'm sort of reluctant to write it because I know nothing about cars and it would mean a lot of research and finding someone with mechanic-y know-how to alpha read and point out all my mistakes. Either that, or I could go back to my first book and re-write it as a YA fantasy with a stronger plot, keeping the same characters but giving them clearer motivations, making the magic system more understandable, and starting out with one main conflict instead of the, like, thousands I introduced. Basically, simplifying. Also, making the Empire more hateful and the rebellion more effective. Or I could write something entirely new. I could even try my hand at short fiction.

We'll see what I feel like after I get the other two books in order. It's always possible that I'll have a book contract by then and so I'll need to start writing sequels. (Hey, a girl can hope!)

I haven't had a chance to watch the entire first GOT episode yet, but I did take time to start browsing the reviews and see what critics were thinking.

A mix of good and bad, mostly. And a bit of the expected pooh-poohing of the fantasy genre by mainstream critics. I have no problem with the critics who disliked the show...from the first clip of the first episode, I kind of had a "well, this is pretty good but also a little meh" feeling, partly because some of the acting didn't live up to the gorgeous scenery and cinematography, and partly from fannish gripes: ie, it seems like they de-awesomified Catlyn, I could shoot a bow and arrow better than Bran when I was his age, etc. Stupid complaints, really. It looks like they went above and beyond--I saw a documentary talking about how the right-handed actress for Arya had to learn to do everything left-handed and I was like, Really? Even I'm not obsessed enough to care about that. Besides the acting, there were also some odd...SQUEEEEE! TYRION! OMG! SQUEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Anyway. (*Brushes off soiled dignity*)

But when critics go outside the show and start criticizing the audience for fantasy novels, I start getting a little pissy. I thought this kind of talk would lose some of its steam after Return of the King's Best Picture Oscar.

Par example, from the New York Times:

"The true perversion, though, is the sense you get that all of this illicitness has been tossed in as a little something for the ladies, out of a justifiable fear, perhaps, that no woman alive would watch otherwise. While I do not doubt that there are women in the world who read books like Mr. Martin’s, I can honestly say that I have never met a single woman who has stood up in indignation at her book club and refused to read the latest from Lorrie Moore unless everyone agreed to “The Hobbit” first. “Game of Thrones” is boy fiction patronizingly turned out to reach the population’s other half."

Um...(*raises hand*). Isn't it a little patronizing of said reviewer to decide what females do and do not enjoy? And, of course, it couldn't possibly be that a reviewer from the New York Times who scoffs at the entire fantasy genre might be moving in different circles than those who enjoy such literature. Or perhaps she thinks she can recognize a fantasy fan by sight? Because we save our dragonlance t-shirts for the conventions, we must not exist?

I don't have the surveys on me, but between 40-60 percent of fantasy readers are female. I suspect G.R.R.M.'s demographic tips male because of his cruelty to the characters, but if you look at Tolkien's fans, I bet it's a different story. Just because female nerds are still more socially stigmatized than their male counterparts (this may not be true--but I know I certainly draw funny looks every time I plop down at a M:TG table) and so don't wear our geeky cred so openly, doesn't mean we don't exist. [I've actually been thinking about trying to found a sci-fi/fantasy book group at my local college, coincidentally enough.]

I haven't bothered to send her an angry email. The internet backlash has already begun. (I wrote this before perusing the web to see what fire has been unleashed, and the Huffington Post does a better job of summing up the stupidity of this review than I do.) I figure the review writer will just ignore the electronic tempest or say she was using rhetorical hyperbole to make a point (I have a stuffed unicorn named Hyperbole, by the way. Speaking of nerdness). But I thought I'd make my representative stand on teh internets, anyway. If you don't like the show or the fantasy genre, fine. If you don't like the feminist implications of Martin's work, fine. But don't assume that a group that you obviously have no knowledge of is a cul-de-sac of white, horny, pimply Comic Book Guy lookalikes dressed in elf ears just because that's what your television has told you. Because we're all around you, girlfriend. Fat and thin, near-sighted and not, socially awkward or well-adjusted. And some of us don't like being talked down to by reviewers who assume that everyone of a single gender will share a single opinion.


In other news, I get to go to grad school. And they gave me a scholarship and research-assistanceship that means I won't have to pay a cent for tuition. We turned in our final for Brandon Sanderson. I finished 80,000 words in three and a half months, and turned in another 10,000 word outline. Yay me!

I had an odd dream last night. I was biking and a friend of mine came up to me. I knew she was the servant of an old woman who lived in a house nobody but writers could see. She was a witch, but not the bad kind. A wise woman muse who offered advice to young writers. She lived there alone, except for her servant, her daughter/niece, who spent time reading, chuckling, and breaking wood for their shack's fireplace. I knew that this muse had given Robert Jordan advice in his youth, and that she had been his model for an aes sedai, because when I walked into her shack and saw her cloak on her hook, I saw not one, but many, all flickering because they contained all the ages and styles of the world, including Verin's brown vines. She had lived a long time, was very powerful, and very wise.

I would go to visit her as often as I could. Once, I accidentally led a boy to her, even though her location had to be secret. He followed me, desperate to talk to her, even though the road to her house is laced with broken glass meant to cut the unworthy. I'm not sure what happened to him. When I tried to follow him in, the muse's servant slammed the door in my face.

But one day, the servant came to me and told me I had to come, and to bring one of the people in my writing group. She warned him that the "life" of his story was in danger because it wasn't political enough. By which she meant that he wasn't exploring the tyranny of the government's effect on the 'little people' and he needed to do more with it. He needed to reflect on our own government and compare it to his, weaving its follies of history into his word. His story lacked Truth with a capital T, and so would fail.

I asked her what I needed to do. About how I was afraid I was just a wordcrafter, not a storyteller, because I can spin descriptions and make words dance in people's heads, but my stories are not as good as the writing deserves. About my concerns about whether I should continue on as I am, unemployed except for the small jobs, or try to find a job that will let me write and earn money at the same time. Her answer was mostly a shrug, that I should do what I think is best. Then she asked me to describe the stories I was working on, and I told her about the three, how I couldn't seem to settle on my next project because none of them felt right. She told me all my stories were good ones and the main thing I lacked was patience. Patience with myself, patience with others. Patience with the characters that hadn't yet found themselves in my text.

Then she stroked my cheek and said, "don't worry, if you work hard enough, you'll be able to take my place here one day."

And I woke up deliriously happy, because I knew that this is who I am and always will be, and one day, I will get to live in a wood-heated hut in the middle of the slums that no one can see, giving advice to young writers that can change lives. Coax happiness. Give thought.

***

A true dream, I think, advice to stay on the path I have chosen. People who read my writing later may be surprised to find out that I'm a Christian, because I write such blasphemous things about gods. Take the current epic fantasy I'm working on, where there are seven nations, each one's culture inspired by the seven deadly sins. Part of Christianity's domination of the western world came from the fact it absorbed pagan religions. In my world, it's the other way around, paganity won, but many of the Christian rituals are kept, because they were absorbed. This creates interesting contradictions that I'm still trying to work out (Like, why gods and goddess with such sexual natures would have priests so fully determined to censor everything).

I suppose it is my backlash against worshippers of the recidivist Goddess theory, which believes that there was once a goddess religion that taught peace and love and everyone was happy until the big bad male-centered religions came to suppress them, demonizing Eve and Pandora until all we have left of that religion are little fertility statues and memories of goddesses as bearers of evil.

I believe that there certainly was goddess-worship in the past and that it certainly was repressed, but I don't believe that it was the peace-loving, nature-worship that certain authors claim it was. So my goddesses are sexually-charged and as brutal as their male collegues. Perhaps because I am so full of emotional conflict and hatred and frustration, I sympathize more with the war bringers dieties than the mascots of peace. They are more...human.

But though I cannot explain god's interventions in certain lives, I believe sometimes he whispers peace and confidence to me through my dreams. I believe that it is not the wish-fulfillment of my subconscious, but a true message to keep on trying until I get it right.

So I have written my place of peace, of inspiration. What's yours?

WRITING PROMPT #14
Title: Place of Peace
Genre: None
Type: Self-exploration, Dialogue

If you could go somewhere to experience peace and confidence in yourself as a writer, somewhere to go and get ideas, where would it be? What would it look like? Who would be there? What kind of questions would you ask that person?

Some people are lucky enough to have places like this in real life. In high school, I had a bridge. And under it, I could lay back and just listen to people crossing and talking, and no one knew that I was there. I liked that. I'm a bit of a sociophobe, so being able to satisfy the human need for company without having the stress of having to act a certain way was very nice. I never had to perform for anyone, but I wasn't completely isolated either. That's my perfect place, where I can be with someone so completely that I don't have to worry about what I say or do. That I can be as bitter and vulgar as I want to be, and no one will judge me or think less of me.

Find your peaceful place, populate it with a muse, even if you'd prefer to be alone, and write to that person about a difficulty you're having with the story. Let your mind drift as you write the response your muse might make. Perhaps, by writing it out, you'll be able to find a way around your difficulties.

That's what I do. And I'm surprised how often it works.