Balancing personal taste with a critical perspective

A lot of students tell me that they don't like a certain piece of writing because it isn't their preferred style of reading or writing. To quote one student, "If the style of writing is not what I prefer to read or write, I can’t handle it."

I'm all for allowing students to dislike certain pieces. They ought to form opinions about literature. Hell, there are some styles of lit that I just can't stand. I think what annoys me about the student's mindset is the implication that because the student doesn't care for something, or if it doesn't fit the student's definition of "good," it isn't legitimate and it lacks quality. Last year I taught Push, the novel by Sapphire. If you've never heard of it, look it up. It's grim. It's dark. Some students didn't like it for those reasons and didn't think it was "real literature," so they shut off, they complained to my boss, and I even had two people drop the class because they didn't want to read it.

To a certain extent, that's legit. It's their choice what they read and what they don't read. But to use a metaphor from Tiger, you can't say that a well-cooked corn dish is bad because you don't like corn. If it is technically, objectively well-cooked, then it's well-cooked. The same goes for writing. There are objective aspects of writing and reading--maybe not the same ones as cooking, granted, but a reader/editor can (and should be able to) acknowledge that a piece of writing has value and quality even if it is not to the reader's taste. Take Faulkner. I'm probably un-American in my dislike of Faulkner, but his writing is simply not to my taste. However, I still teach a couple of stories that are, objectively, very good. That is, they fulfill the purpose the author intended them to fulfill. They're not to my taste, but they're still fine examples of how a short story can be written.

I find that many (too many) people analyze stories on a completely subjective level, absolutely without any effort at critical thinking. They think that being a critic will take the fun out of it. Or something. I find exactly the opposite. Attempting to analyze theme and meaning deepens the experience for me and opens up new levels of appreciation for stories I like on a subjective level as well as stories I wouldn't otherwise like.

This brings me to editing. I've been a professional writing critic for a number of years on several different levels in several different capacities. I've read a lot of writing that was shitty objectively, and I've read a lot of writing that I struggled to appreciate but accepted anyway because I could see that the writer was achieving his/her/zir purpose. This capacity to appreciate that which you may not subjectively enjoy is a key skill for an editor to cultivate. If you edit professionally, you will read genres/styles/stories you don't care for. It's vital to understand the difference between aspects of a work you don't like and aspects that aren't successful or effective.

The best advice I can give in order to understand this difference is to assume that the writer is doing everything on purpose. Assume that the writer meant to choose that particular word or make that shift in authorial distance or twist the plot that certain way. You can question whether the author's choice is effective overall--that's your job as an editor, after all--but consider the author's purpose first. Does it fulfill that purpose? Does it fulfill the story promise? Then consider getting over it.

I've struggled with this myself. Some of my students/editing clients have written pieces that I absolutely would not read if I had the choice. They're just not the type of stories I enjoy reading for pleasure. I've had to train myself to consider what the author is trying to do and to help him/her/zir do it more effectively, for his/her/zir intended audience. Yeah, this is difficult, but as a teacher it's unfair of me to dock points because a story is not to my taste, and as an editor it's unfair of me to ask the writer to write what I want them to write.

Feel free to make a note of what you like/don't like/aren't sure about, because your input as a reader counts, but if you ever think, "I don't like this story/I think it's a crappy story because I hate zombies" (yeah, sorry, I really do hate them), take a step back and question yourself. Do you think it's crap because you find it cliche, or are you having a knee-jerk reaction to your hatred of the shambling horde? If I hadn't let my then-boyfriend talk me into watching Dawn of the Dead because of my unreasoning hatred for zombie movies, I wouldn't have grown to appreciate the parody aspect of the movie and understand its message. I grant that my skepticism of zombies in general lead me to question what possible value this 90-minute romp into absurdity had. That's not a bad thing. It made me a more critical viewer, which then likely allowed me to experience the movie in a deeper, more meaningful fashion.

I'm not saying that a reader/editor can't have opinions or can't dislike something on a subjective taste level. I'm advocating critical thinking. There's a lot of literature out there that is not to my taste, but some people like it and I can objectively understand why they like it. I found my intelligence constantly insulted while reading The Da Vinci Code, but I can understand why a bajillion people bought it and loved it. Many readers liked it for exactly the reasons I hated it. I wasn't Dan Brown's intended audience and that's okay. I would still have edited the fucker to death, but in the service of helping the author fulfill his purpose, not making the book into what I would rather read.

Whether you love or hate something you read, I think it's important to consider why you had that reaction. Understand that you may not be the author's intended audience, but consider whether the piece of writing works before you pass judgment.

I can has publisher!

I have the Best News Ever. My novel, The Wicked Instead, has a publisher! It will be the first publication of Hard Limits Press, an awesome new speculative fiction indie publisher. You should follow them on Twitter (@hardlimitspress) for info on the unveiling of their logo and the launch of their website at the beginning of December. There you’ll be able to check out an excerpt from the novel.

For now, though, here’s the awesome blurb from Hard Limits:

Cary and Lindsay Delaney have always known they were special. Warriors for God, their father said, meant to bring about the Rapture, and every moment in their family’s isolated Ozarks compound was spent preparing for that day. Cary’s paraplegic injury put an end to that dream, however, and the brothers, now estranged from the father who once exalted them, find a different kind of magic in the streets of Springfield, Missouri.

Dubiously blessed with the title prince and heirs to powerful táltos magic, the brothers find themselves embroiled in a struggle for the health of the World Tree, the structure that supports not only their world, but every world. The Tree is rotting, and it’s only a matter of time before the corruption reaches its heart. Can Cary and Lindsay make their own way despite those who would use them for their own ends?

A coming of age urban fantasy with a twist, The Wicked Instead combines the voice of a redneck haint tale with an unerring modern sensibility and sensitivity. As much about struggling to survive and the bonds forged between unlikely friends as it is about fantasy, The Wicked Instead will change the way you think about the genre.

Doesn’t that make you want to read it? I know it does. The e-book release is scheduled for early next year, with print following shortly after.

Stay tuned for the cover image as well as an excerpt that will be released in conjunction with the launch of the Hard Limits website. I’m so excited!

Poi dog: thoughts about race

I have a complicated and confusing relationship with race. I'm a poi dog--I'm Hawaiian on my dad's side and white on my mom's. I look pretty non-white, though it took me a long time to recognize that. I joke that I'm the tallest Hawaiian woman ever (5'10") and I don't like coconuts or Spam (joke). I'm paler than most Hawaiians, but I have black hair, a fairly Hawaiian face, and I'm built like a Polynesian woman.

After my family moved to Arkansas when I was eight, I was raised white. Very white, as in my brother and I were part of the .1% non-white population of our small town. I never connected to the white southern culture around me, but I didn't identify strongly with Hawaiian culture because I was only raised with bits and pieces of it from my dad, who was never a present or a positive figure in my life. I always really wanted to connect to Hawaiian culture, because I sensed that it might be more welcoming than the white Arkansan one.

White people tend to think I'm white because they can't identify me. My legal name is also incredibly German, which doesn't help. At the same time, people saw me differently than they did other white people. It took me a long time to figure out that people were Othering me in part because of the way I looked. Growing up, I got called "exotic" or "ethnic" a lot by people who might have thought it was a compliment. They didn't understand that they were making me an Other, and I didn't understand it either. When people asked, "What are you?" (oh yes, it happened), I called myself Hawaiian, but inwardly I told myself I was more white than brown, even though I didn't want to.

When I went to college, far away from home, I noticed that non-white people of all varieties would give me this searching look as if they were wondering if they could call me one of their own. (Hawaiians are the only ones who can recognize each other and we can do it from 50 yards away. I'm only half kidding.) I figured I just had one of those faces. I still wanted more to identify with non-white groups than I did white people, because really, what had white people ever done for me besides confuse the hell out of me? Then, after college, I went to the Smithsonian Folk Life Festival and made a beeline for the Hawaiian booth, desperate to connect in some way to the culture I thought I should be a part of. After admiring the woven baskets, I struck up a conversation with one of the women at the booth. I mentioned that I was part Hawaiian but had never been to the islands, although I wanted to go and learn more about the culture. She gave me a "who cares?" look and promptly ended the conversation.

It took me a while to process her instant antipathy and longer to figure out why the hell she had shut me down. Years later, in grad school, I met a white woman who had grown up in Hawaii. She knew ten times more about Hawaii and Hawaiian culture than I did with my piecemeal knowledge from my dad and my own studies. She spoke the pidgen. It hit me then that this white woman, this haole, was more Hawaiian than I was because she had grown up on the islands and participated in the culture. I was confused and hurt because, well, I have native blood. My brothers and I were the first in our family to be raised completely on the mainland. I wanted to learn more about the people I was born to and instead had gotten shut out, again.

I'll back up here for a minute and explain: Hawaii is a colonized place with a dying culture. The story is, unfortunately, very similar to other native stories. The British stomped right in, as they tend to do, then the Russians, the French, the Chinese, the Japanese, of course more British, and the Americans stopped by to take advantage. Qualifications to be considered native for the purposes of government benefits is "any descendant of not less than one-half part of the blood of the races inhabiting the Hawaiian Islands previous to 1778." This qualification hasn't changed since it was first enacted in 1921. The problem here is, not unlike Americans in general, Hawaiians are all mixed. We're all poi dogs. So the natives have to decide somehow who gets to participate in the culture and who should be kept out. That's how minority groups work, unfortunately--they decide who gets to play in their sandbox and everyone else can fuck off. Understandably, because they need to feel safe.

Here's the thing, though. That kind of thinking breeds an isolationist philosophy, which isn't good for anyone and isn't good for the culture. When you start turning away people who honestly want to learn about and participate in your culture? Yes, we should all be concerned with cultural appropriation, but if a culture is concerned with perpetuating itself, inclusion is more beneficial than exclusion. Hawaiians have demonstrated their willingness to pass their culture on to those who may not look the same way they do, but they still (in my experience) exclude those who may have the same blood but haven't yet participated in the culture in a direct way.

Recently I saw my dad's side of the family for the first time in 14 years. All of a sudden I was back in a huge group of people who looked just like me and who acted the way I remember from my earliest childhood. I don't really identify with them on the surface, either, because I've spent half my life away from them. At the same time, that's the part of my family that has been most formative to the racial part my identity. That side of the family is a mix of just about every type of non-white you can imagine, but we were all taught to identify with the Hawaiian part of us. I'm left confused. In my daily life and in the larger American society, I'm caught between a group that doesn't want me because of the way I look and a group that doesn't want me because I've grown up elsewhere.

To me, all this brings up a couple of questions. What can we consider "race" anymore? Is it color or blood or identification? Who gets to participate in what culture? I'm of two minds on these issues. On the one hand, a minority group ought to be able to determine who participates in it. Minorities need safe spaces, and in order to create them, they have to be selective. But where does selectivity cross the line into exclusion, and is exclusion really healthy and fair?

The experience at the Smithsonian festival was a formative one for me. It's hurtful to be shut out of a group I identify with. It's just as hurtful when people don't acknowledge part of my identity. It's a complex issue and I'm still trying to work it out. What are your thoughts?

Writers' Platform-Building Campaign

I've always struggled with how exactly to build my platform, since my novels are hard to pin down genre and audience-wise. Self-marketing is vitally important in an e-book market, especially for folks who plan to go indie or self-pub, like me. Tiger linked me to the Writers' Platform-Building Campaign and I thought, hey, why not give it a shot?

So that's what I'll be doing starting today, August 22, through October 31st. If you're a writer, you should join me/us! The link above includes info about the campaign as well as instructions for joining. The list will close August 31st.

Apparently I'm a wimp.

I hate the phrase "Don't take it personally."

I received a rather harsh critique of The Wicked Instead recently. The critiquer wasn't wrong about a lot of things, but the way the comments were presented, heavily colored by the critiquer's personal biases, put me on the defensive. After I was done being pissed, I was devastated. I felt hurt, invalidated, attacked. The critiquer made some points that were valid and that I agreed with, but I had to sort through a lot of emotions that those words brought up. I'm still sorting through them, in fact. I wanted to get right to work fixing what was wrong yesterday, but I couldn't because every time I looked at my manuscript, I felt a crippling sense of dread and knew I couldn't handle it that day. A lot of writers act like this makes me a wimp. I should just push through the pain, walk it off, don't let them get to me. I agree with this to a certain extent. I won't let those harsh words cripple me forever. I won't let that critique make me stop writing, because it's something I love to do. Something I have to do. That doesn't make those words any easier to hear, though, and doesn't make my emotions any easier to get over.

Isn't it doubly invalidating to tell yourself you aren't allowed to be hurt by something that's hurtful? Writing is an incredibly intimate, personal thing. Yes, writers need to have thick skins, but the fact is, we also still have emotions and pushing aside those emotions doesn't help us as people. I am a goddamn expert at invalidating myself and my feelings (just ask my partner), but I can't ignore them forever. It isn't healthy and it doesn't help me as a writer. It builds resentment against myself, and what kind of writer am I if I despise myself?

People affect other people. If your parent/significant other/friend (or hell, even a stranger) says, "You look like shit in those pants," it's going to hurt. You can choose not believe the remark or use it as "critique," but doesn't it still sting? Shouldn't we be looking to examine the causes of our upset rather than pushing it away?

I'm not saying that either you take the critique whole-heartedly with a smile or sulk and don't use a bit of it. A broken clock is still right twice a day. A person who is generally full of shit can still speak the truth. You can still use harsh critique if you can come to a point where you can separate emotion from the remarks. And that's what's difficult.

It's not all on the writer to be the strong one and to push through it. An effective beta/editor will keep in mind that s/he is talking to a person with feelings. Some people just don't "get" it (tell me you've never had this feeling) because they don't read between the lines to grasp an author's intent. This isn't me being a special snowflake--when I critique, author intent is golden. My job as editor/beta/whatever is to help the reader reach his/her vision, not mine.

That's not to say that the editor should tiptoe around an author for fear of hurting his/her feelings, but there's a way to frame a critique, even a difficult one, in a way that doesn't automatically put the writer on the defensive. When people are defensive, they don't listen. It costs nothing to be diplomatic. Think of it this way: an editor wants the writer to take his/her advice. The writer wants that advice. But when the writer is feeling too defensive to take it, everyone loses.

My point is, writers, you're allowed to have emotions. You're allowed to be defensive. It's your choice whether you push those comments away or use them to your advantage, but that doesn't mean your feelings aren't valid. Figure out what's making you defensive. Is it the critiquer's tone? Are you feeling insecure/caught out at something? What is it? Is it something within the story that you need to fix, or is it some other factor? I think writers often forget that life influences writing and life is full of emotions. They're too intertwined to separate how you feel about life from how you feel about writing a lot of the time.

Fuck "Don't take it personally." Writing is personal. We can't avoid taking things personally. It doesn't make people wimps. The question is whether we can deal with those emotions in a healthy way so we can go on with the business of writing as better, stronger writers.

On being gimpy

My body hates itself. And sometimes I hate it.

Since adolescence I've had problems with my joints, especially my legs. I'm flat-footed and knock-kneed (among other things) because of loose tendons. When I was probably 14 I developed bad knees, in part as a result of a couple years being a catcher in softball. Doctors told me I just needed to lose weight--keep in mind that while I've always been above the "acceptable" BMI, I've never been visibly obese. I probably don't need to tell you what hearing "just lose weight" from all sides does to an adolescent girl. I didn't, really. My weight in proportion to my height has remained the same pretty much throughout my life. I've gone to a chiropractor on and off since I was 15 or so because of my bad knees and big tits, which put extra strain on my back. (I told you my body hates itself.)

When I was 19, I injured my shoulder and then my lower back while fencing and ended up in physical therapy twice. After seeing me walk, the physical therapist looked at my legs. He said, "Did you know your left leg is a lot shorter than the right one?"

...

No. I did not. It turns out that my left leg is 3/8" shorter, which is a significant difference. It's been a major cause of pretty much every lower body problem I've ever had. The physical therapist said some people had surgery to correct it, but unless I absolutely had to, he recommended that I take the much-simpler route of getting a heel lift. I immediately flashed back to visions of my art history teacher from a couple years before, looking at her right shoe. The sole was a good inch thicker than the left one, and I always wondered what was up with that. Well, now I knew. The therapist must have noticed the look on my face because he said the lift was just a shoe insert. If I wanted to wear heels, he recommended having the right one cut down 3/8" to compensate. That simple.

Well, for a long time it really was that simple. The heel lift has really done wonders for my lower body comfort. My chronic knee pain has all but disappeared except for occasional flare-ups. My hips hurt sometimes, but mostly when I was PMSing--likely a symptom of yet another body rebellion, PCOS. Within the past year, though, I've been experiencing more and weirder symptoms. Last summer I avoided putting on real shoes for weeks at a time, mostly wearing flip-flops. I started experiencing pain at the top of my left foot. I figured out through Dr. Google that it was likely caused by a severely over-pronated foot (something I already knew). I bought some arch braces to see if they would help, because ten bucks for braces is a lot cheaper than a couple hundred bucks for a doctor's visit and x-rays. I avoided wearing heels. That helped for a long time.

And then in May this year I did something really dumb, for me. I walked six miles in a day. I hadn't walked that far or that long in well over a year. And I did it without the arch brace. (Told you it was dumb.) My foot came back to haunt me. Well, okay, back to the arch brace. A week later and my foot was feeling much better, only my hip now despised me. It feels approximately like there is a nail sticking out of the top of my femur into the side of my hip joint. Dr. Google and I suspect hip bursitis, but since this happened after I lost my insurance (of course), I can't afford the doctor/specialist/x-ray/whatever combo. The hip starts hurting about 20 minutes into my daily walk and keeps hurting until I stop. It's also impossible to sleep comfortably without a very firm body pillow to prop my hip, and even then I have to turn regularly during the night like a rotisserie chicken. Awesome.

The whole reason for this round of body bitching is that today I woke up and my hip was achy before I ever really started walking around. Fuck this, I thought. I broke down and bought a cane. Nothing would do but I also go to another store after I bought it. And I'm pretty sure I've never felt so self-conscious in my life.

People stare at me a lot. Most of the time I'm not sure why--maybe it's because I'm an Amazon who is just non-white enough to confuse people. Most of the time I find it amusing, but this time was different. I'm pretty sure as I was walking through the store the reason for the looks wasn't "weird tall girl" but "OMG Y U HAS CANE U NOT OLD!" This was rather starkly demonstrated when I passed an old guy with a cane and he gave me the hairy eyeball.

Well Jesus. I'm sorry. I know I'm only in my mid-twenties and all, but my body fucking sucks.

Maybe I'm over-thinking this, but it seems like if you're young and in a wheelchair or on crutches or have a white cane or a guide dog or whatever, people stare, but their discomfort is laced with pity. But I couldn't help thinking these people didn't pity me--they didn't think I was legit. I kept wondering, am I not gimp enough? What is it about a walking cane that's different from any other assistive device? Is it that I don't have any obvious signs of injury like a cast or a brace, or that canes are often associated with old people?

I don't get it.

The part of me that is always amused when people stare for no reason thinks, fuck you guys, stare if you want to. But the insecure part of me thinks, maybe I'm not legit enough. That's not going to stop me from using the cane, because I'm tired of my hip hurting and I don't want to do more damage, but the self-consciousness is not so different from the kind I felt when the doctor told me I just needed to lose weight. I keep thinking, oh, I probably did this to myself. It's not that bad. I certainly don't need to advertise it.

Yeah. That is some deeply flawed thinking. Thanks, doctors, for helping fuck that one up for me.

I have no conclusion to this post other than to state that I'm frustrated with my body and my thinking right now.

Are you f-ing kidding me? Why I will not buy or sell a 99 cent e-book

Photo by jhritz, from Flickr Creative Commons

Nathan Bradsford created a poll asking readers what a fair price for an e-book is if a hardback costs $25. (http://blog.nathanbransford.com/2011/06/are-attitudes-about-e-book-prices.html). It actually relieved me somewhat that half the respondents said that e-books should be priced at $5-$10, which seems to me an acceptable range given the lower production costs of e-books vs. print. Several people mentioned the 99 cent e-book trend. While there were no obviously WTF comments there last time I checked, it reminded me of how much this trend bothers and disturbs me.

A mass market paperback (the small kind) costs around $8-$10 now. They're fairly cheap to produce, but given the price of materials and labor, that $8-$10 starts to seem fairly reasonable. E-books can be produced much cheaper because there are no "real" material production costs. However, if a book is published by a press, the press has to pay editors, copy editors, proofreaders, formatters, cover artists, etc. The press also has to make money to operate. It costs a lot of money to run a business, yo. Distributors also take a cut (nomnom). After that (and only after), the author gets paid royalties.

But that's the thing. Authors should get paid for all the work they've done. And the cheaper the book, the less money the author makes. Let's see. I've spent 14 months on The Wicked Instead. If I could count up the hours I'm sure I'd be boggled. This is before cover art, copy editing/proofreading and formatting. So if my book is priced at 99 cents, what does that say about how much I value my own work? Yes, please give me 45 cents for fourteen months of work and a hundred thousand words.

I don't think so.

Now, you might inform me that if a mass market paperback is sold for $8, then the author, receiving 10-15% royalties, probably isn't getting much more than that per book. Well. Here's the thing. We (those involved in the publishing world) have to decide who will benefit from the lower production costs of e-book pricing. It really ought to be the authors. I don't just say that because I'm an author, although yes I would like to get paid for all that work, thanks, but because it's fair. Who does the bulk of the work? The author. I'm not discounting the invaluable work of production staff, who also deserve to get paid, but it the fact of the matter is, it's the author who actually produced the piece to be sold and the author who pretty much continually gets shafted. The salaries of production staff get paid by the company, who gets revenue from multiple sources. The author has that one source of royalties. One.

E-book publishing has a lot going for it in terms of flexibility. E-pubs can take risks because if something flops, they're not forced to eat the cost of all those unsold paper copies. What does this mean? Well, it ought to mean that the industry becomes more author friendly. The spirit of entitlement that comes with buying and selling ridiculously books baffles and angers me. If I sell a book for 99 cents, I'm telling you that that is all my book is worth, so you, the consumer, will start to believe it.

You know what? We pay for things. This is how we get on in the world. I mean, let's face it, the market is already pretty reader friendly. Readers can buy print books from second-hand shops (a practice I fully support, by the way) or borrow from friends or get books from the library. Yes, e-books are harder to trade or lend. I don't dispute that and I think the industry can go a lot further than it has in making these practices accessible. But again, these practices ought to benefit the author in some way.

I would venture to guess that most people wouldn't think twice about paying money for any other item crafted by human hands. I mean, hell, I've paid $50 for a hand-made decorative clay bowl before because it was freaking gorgeous. I'm paying the people who produced that gorgeous bowl. I am not entitled to pay any less because maybe the potter got clay on sale. That means, yay for him, that he can make more money, keep his business open and keep producing gorgeous clay bowls.

Call me crazy, but to me the purpose of e-publishing is to be different and better than traditional publishing, not just to be a clone. The publishing industry ought not to be just about selling a product, but about supporting the person who created that product. Feeling entitled to buy things for less than they're actually worth is consumerism at its very worst.

Authors: if you believe in your book, price it like you believe in it. Readers: if you believe in books, pay for them like you believe in them.