shadowkat | Entries tagged with writing and reading

Still re-reading books. But that doesn't mean I don't have stuff to talk about.

1. Books that are waiting to be read (Or stuck in your reading queue and waiting patiently for you to notice them.)

( my list of books waiting to be read )

2. The problem with long-running serials, particularly serials that have chronic writer turn-over or keep changing writers periodically, is the character arcs don't make any sense. Actually very little makes sense. You sort of have to leave your brain at the office.

I checked out the Marvel Comics Daredevil character - and got confused halfway through the history recap. It made no sense. This is why:

( Read more... )
So basically, each time a new writer took over they did to the comic book what a lot of people do when they buy a new house - they gut it, redecorate, add new rooms, knock down walls, and build a second story. So that at the end of the day, the house is unrecognizable. It works fine for houses, not so much for stories.

Reminds me of some non-canonical fanfic writers -- they take the character, rip away half the stuff, create a new world around them, and basically at the end of the day have a new character. Why they can't just come up with a new character -- well, I guess the same question could be posed about why people can't just build a new house?

This is a bit headache inducing if you are a fan of long-running pulpy serials such as action hero comic books and daytime soap operas. If you are like me, you will undoubtedly spend half of your time scratching your head in dismay, and wondering why in the hell you've put up with the story for this long. Sucker for punishment? Story-masochist? God knows...

I don't know if Doctor Who is guilty of this? I think Star Trek managed to escape it, by being more episodic in nature than serialized and with a clearly defined world and rules. Actually,most sci-fi serials don't tend to do this, mainly because they either have the same writers or strict rules. That's how Star Wars escaped the problem. Lucas kept a fairly tight reign on it and when he sold it -- the new people stuck to the rule book.

There are serials out there that don't have this problem, but for the most part they have only one or two writers or a team of writers that have stuck with it throughout. The key is having the same writers, and a rule-book/character bible. Buffy the Vampire Slayer - the Television Serial stayed more or less on track -- same writers, and only seven seasons. But when it jumped to the comics, the continuity sort of jumped out the window and did the hokey pokey. Hence the reason, I gave up on the comics. It felt too much like non-canonical fanfic written for specific fans not me.
Super-hero action comics and daytime serials can run into the same problems. This happened recently with The X-men, in which they changed writers and the new writers basically flipped the entire verse and retconned everything. As a result, I gave up on the X-men again, not for the first time.

It's not that the writers are bad, necessarily, just that they appear to have no respect for continuity and have this desire to make it their own. In some cases this is a good thing - with Daredevil, I only read the Frank Miller version and that's the one Netflix chose to base a series upon. It was the most popular, not hard to understand why since the previous character sounded a little bit like a Spiderman rip-off and is a tad dated. This is where the Netflix series could work better than the comics -- that is if they don't change writers too often and when they do, the writers choose to stick to the character bible and don't just do whatever they please.

1. I'm writing again. Have about three books that I'm working on at the same time. One a heck of a lot further than the others...about 200 pages and counting. Two just in the beginning stages. For three years, while Doing Time was nagging at my head, making me feel guilty for ignoring it, I couldn't write. But it didn't stop the stories from coming. They came just the same. Without typing, or pens or paper or computers. So I told them in my head. And now, I've decided to put them on the page. What changed? Self-publishing Doing Time (my absurdist noir mystery novel) and getting it out there, and allowing myself to just write, without worrying about whether people read it or liked it.
What was stopping me? I got caught up in writing what I thought other people wanted to read or what would be "publishable". I can't write like that. I can't write stories that don't come from inside me.
I've always written stories because I couldn't find them any other way. The only reason I wrote any fanfic, was because I was curious about something that I couldn't find elsewhere. If it was already out there in some form and I found it, I saw no need to write it.

For me, writing was always about finding the story. Before I wrote, I would tell them aloud either to myself, my brother, a friend, out loud and orally. Changing my voice for each character. Used to spend hours bouncing a ball outside and telling myself stories. It took forever it seemed to figure out how to write them. And longer still to find my own distinct voice or way of conveying each tale.
I read a lot. Took a lot of courses. Wrote a lot. Still haven't quite convinced the traditional publishing world to take a chance on me. But on the bright side, it may not matter -- there's electronic publishing and self-publishing. All you've done is cut out the middle man or woman as the case may be.

Still doesn't matter. I'm writing again. Telling my stories in printed form. If only to myself.

2. Wed Reading Meme

*What I just finished reading?

The fifth installment in the Mercy Thompson urban fantasy series by Patricia Briggs.. or what I'm calling the spunky coyote mechanic with a heart of gold. This one was called...god, I can't remember, and I just read it. It wasn't Bone Crossed. Oh, Silver Borne.

I like the main character, who feels a bit more like Faith than Buffy actually. She does not get along well with women. And to date, has no female friends. Men, yes. Women, no.

This book, suffice it to say, would not pass the Alision Bechdel test - ie. do woman have conversations that are not about the men in their lives or relationships that don't focus on me?
Really not. Which is becoming an issue, and making me wonder about the writer. Some female writers have issues with their own gender. I've noticed this reading a lot of female genre writers. I don't know why this is...might be a reflection of our society and culture. After all, women feel the need to paint their face and nails daily, while men don't.

Other than that, it's a good read. The author's main theme - is loss of agency, or owning one's choices, not being a victim in one's own life. Let's face it we have no control over other people, the environment we live in, or generally speaking, what happens, but we do have control over ourselves and how we choose to react to it. We can either be a hero in our own lives or a victim, it's up to us. These novels show how the heroine takes charge of her life, confronts it head on, and doesn't allow someone else to take her choices away from her.

The plot? A fairy queen creates havoc trying to get hold of a powerful artifact. Mercy's first love, Samuel, a centuries old werewolf, tries to commit suicide, fails miserably and mopes until he rediscovers his first love, a fae who can work with metals, but is afraid of werewolves. I actually liked that subplot and wish the writer had fleshed it out a bit more. It was far more interesting than the pack politics, where Mercy is dealing with a bunch of jealous female and her power hungry boyfriend in Adam's pack. Also that subplot was disappointing because the jealous female was a fireman and the only other half-way interesting female character with any potential in the story. Like I said before, Briggs has issues with women, a definite pattern is emerging.

* What I'm reading now?

The next installment, or episode 6, River Marked -- where Mercy marries Adam and they go off on their honeymoon. This book is supposed to delve into Mercy's walker or coyote heritage and her father. So, it should be a bit different than the previous novels which focused mainly on vampires, werewolves and fae.

*What I'm reading next

I have two more in this series to go before I stop. Frost Burned and Night Broken. I don't know if I'll read Fire Touched, it's a wee bit expensive for the old Kindle.

3. Making headway on the book lists. But nothing postable as of yet. Assuming of course, that I decide to post anything.

Upstairs neighbors have been noisy the last two nights, they like to blare their television and music between 10-1am. I've no idea why. Anyhow this lead me to hunt for a speaker for my ipod touch, so I can blast classical music to drain them out. But alas, neither Best Buy nor the Apple Store had them.
So, I went to Amazon, and not to promote Amazon or anything, but it did. Up came about 100 different products. All available within two days shipping. And affordable. All sizes shapes and colors.
Seriously, you can get anything on Amazon, while you can't get anything outside of it. This is just sad.

You know you have an odd job when NY1 - the local news channel - alerts you to a project that will be coming your way soon. And you know more than the news commentators about it.

Anyhow...almost forgot to tape to television series starting tonight - The Shannara Chronicles on MTV (8pm) and American Crime on ABC (10pm) -- although DVRing doesn't necessarily mean watching them.
Been on a movie kick at the moment. And I don't have a lot of time for television. Nor patience for commercial television.

Wednesday Reading Meme

1. What I just finished reading

* Uprooted by Naomi Novick - which I reviewed in another post. It was okay. The narrator and writing style irritated me, so that was a problem, but I liked the overall story and metaphors.

Writing style, I've realized, is really in the eye of the beholder, and not always a deal breaker.

Co-worker (whose a lawyer, looking over a contract): this was clearly written by an amateur lawyer, because the writing isn't clear, clean or crisp. Lawyers want clean crisp writing - which we don't have to litigate.
Me: Unless it's fiction. If it's business related or a contract - I want it to be clear and clean, and crisp. If it's fiction...I'm more lenient. Just don't bore me.

Unfortunately most of the engineers and lawyers I deal with can't write. Clean crisp writing...I'd be lucky if I can make heads or tails out of it. Today's bit of legal prose...was the run-on sentence to beat run-on sentences. And it didn't make a lick of sense. I showed it to three people, including my boss, and no one could figure it out.

Uprooted's style is basic fairy tale prose. Read Brother's Grimm and there it is.

Those the walkers carried into the Wood were less lucky. We didn't know what happened to them, but they came back out sometimes, corrupted in the worst way: smiling and cheerful, unharmed. They seemed almost themselves to anyone who didn't know them well, and you might spend half a day talking with one of them and never realize anything was wrong, until you found yourself taking up a knife and cutting off your own hand, putting out your own eyes, your own tongue, while they kept talking all the while, smiling, horrible. And then they would take the knife and go inside your house, to your children, while you lay outside blind and choking and helpless even to scream. If someone we loved was taken by the walkers, the only thing we knew to hope for them was death, and it could only be a hope.”

And...

“I'm glad," I said, with an effort, refusing to let my mouth close up with jealousy. It wasn't that I wanted a husband and a baby; I didn't, or rather, I only wanted them the way I wanted to live to a hundred someday, far off, never thinking about the particulars. But they meant life: she was living, and I wasn't.”

Magic Stars - a novella by Illona Andrews - stars Derek and Julie. If you haven't read the Kate Daniels series, don't bother with it. You'll be hopelessly lost. I wonder sometimes how these series attract new readers? I mean isn't it a little daunting to come into a series that has 7 books and counting? I find it daunting. And expensive.

I prefer Andrews style to the vast majority of writers in the fantasy and urban fantasy genre. Her style is crisp and clear, conversational in tone, character-centric, not overly descriptive, witty or snarky (depending on your point of view), and well-paced. I don't like all her books though. Burn for Me did not work, too romantic, and the characters felt a bit flat. This world is built better and she seems to have a deeper sense of her characters. I like how she puts you inside their heads, and bodies. I smell, taste, and feel these characters.

Naomi Novik's style was too similar to many YA fantasy novels I've read or attempted and it doesn't work for me. Too rambly. Too serious in tone. With a somewhat whiny edge. And far too much description of setting, which confused me in regards to action scenes. The action and the setting competed with each other.

Both writers play with Eastern European metaphors. Illona Andrews is an immigrant from the Ukraine and speaks Russian, she references the stories from her childhood. Novick is Polish.

Clothes don't have magic powers. They don't mystically protect you from three-inch claws, rapists, or murderers. If someone decides to hurt you, they will do so whether or not you have a thin layer of denim over your skin.”

“How did it feel, Herald?” The memory of power ripping from her in a torrent surfaced in her mind, followed by a spike of pain as she said the power word after her incantation had paved the way. She heard the sound of Adams’ bones breaking and patted Peanut’s nose. “How did it feel?” The Herald of Atlanta smiled. “It felt good.”

The distinctions are subtle, but the characters are less passive here, and the tone is crisper with a dry wit or edge. While the other novel is more formal in its tone and more flowery somehow, reminding me, oddly, of a lot of romance novels I'd recently read with similar styles. You'd think it would be the opposite, since Andrews fancies herself a romance novelist at times, and Novick is more a YA fantasy novelist.

2.) What I'm reading now?

* Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood - which I'm still reading in snippets before I go to bed at night. Atwood's writing style is...amazing. It's her story that I'm struggling with -- it's so bleak and tragic. Also, I'm not sure I like any of the characters, which is an issue. The protagonists are both rather passive-aggressive for my taste, which is required for the story to work, but it is insanely frustrating to read and I already know it will end tragically. Atwood gives us the ending first.

To give you an idea of how profoundly and beautifully written this book is, and to help explain why I'm sticking with it, here's a few quoted passages:

Some day when I'm feeling better I'll go back there and actually write the thing down. They should all be cheered by it, for isn't it what they want? What we all want to leave a message behind us that has an effect, if only a dire one; a message that cannot be cancelled out.

But such a message can be dangerous. Think twice before you wish, and especially before you wish to make yourself into the hand of fate.

p. 428, Blind Assassin.

I tortured myself with visions of her, imprisoned, struggling, trapped in a painful fantasy of her own making, or trapped in another fantasy, equally painful, which was not her's at all but those of the people around her. And when did the one become the other? Where was the threshold between the inner world and the outer one? We each move unthinkingly through the gateway every day, we use the passwords of grammar-- I say, you say, he and she say, it, on the other hand, does not say -- paying for the privilege of sanity with common coin, with meanings we've agreed on.

See? Pure poetry in motion. Word choice, rhythm, all pitch perfect. Reading Atwood feels like listening to Mozart.

* The Traitor Baro Commorant by Seth Dickensen - a story that reminds me a little of Uprooted in structure and theme. Also, style. So we'll see how long I stick with it. It put me to sleep on the train...but that was in part due to work and lack of sleep.

Also only 10-15 pages into it. It's a science fiction adventure tale about a young woman who is willing to do just about anything to save her world, and does it through subterfuge, in the process she falls for another woman. Ends tragically or at least I think it does (people on good reads appeared to be torn up over the angst-ridden ending). The premise is intriguing.

3.) What I'm Reading Next

The Pope's Daughter by Dario Fo for book club.

Flist is honoring Ray Bradbury who died today...at 91. 91 feels younger now than it did yesterday. Very odd.

From the October 1973 issue of Literary Cavalcade:

You must write every single day of your life.

You must read dreadful dumb books and glorious books, and let them wrestle in beautiful fights inside your head — vulgar one moment, brilliant the next.

You must lurk in libraries and climb the stacks like ladders to snuff books like perfumes and wear books like hats upon your crazy heads.

- Ray Bradbury...

Well two out of three isn't bad. I'm admittedly allergic to libraries. Blame the HW Wilson Company, and mold. But I'm not allergic to books. And I did lurk in libraries up until the rip old age of 35. So there's that. Now, I've discovered the internet, and Kindle, where I can get my hands on books that don't reside in libraries...which was always my frustration with libraries - they never had the books I wanted.

I believe that no matter the quality of the book - it's never a waste reading one. Doesn't matter how well or badly it is written, you always learn something from it. Never a waste a time. Sometimes something as simple as...this doesn't quite work for me...can mean a lot. I don't regret anything I've read. And to date, I've read over 4,000 books and counting. Some brilliant, some horrific, and in every genre imaginable. Read. Read. Read.
Whatever you can find. Whatever you can see. For when you read, you see inside another brain and escape into another pov, learn another language, learn a new thing and change just a bit in the process. When you read you exercise your brain.

My favorite Ray Bradbury short story is The Veldt...which I read at the age of 12 or 13. I think I also read Dandalion Wine, but don't remember it. Definitely read The Martian Chronicles, which I do remember. Something Wicked This Way Comes. And my favorite..the homage to books, Farenheit 451. But I like The Veldt the best, it haunts me.
( Selection from The Veldt )
- From The Veldt by Ray Bradbury.

Go here for full story: http://www.veddma.com/veddma/Veldt.htm

Off to shower and to read. My favorite past time.

While reading a few essays by Jonathan Franzen last night in his collection: How to Be Alone, I stumbled upon a few interesting passages and quotes, that I'd like to save and comment on.

"What is it they want from the man that they didn't get from the work? What do they expect? What is there left when he's done with the work, what's any artist but the dregs of his work, the human shambles that follow it around?" -from William Gaddis's first novel The Recognitions (1955), as quoted by Jonathan Franzen in his essay "Why Bother?" which first appeared in Harpers in 1999, in a slightly different format. He's reworked it for this collection.

In other words the view that the work should speak for itself. We should not need to interview the people involved with it and ask their intent. We should not require a Q&A with the author. And to be honest, I've rarely enjoyed such things often finding the author to be uncomfortable discussing his or her work, uncertain of it, or unconscious of what the reader noted. The interaction between reader and words happens in the reader's mind not the author's. I was reminded of this again, recently, when I watched an old episode of a TV series on DVD, then watched a portion of the writer's commentary - the episode was deliberately written in a stream of consciousness manner to the extent that the writer admits he was not aware and still is not aware of what he meant by many of the images. Since he is commenting on the episode long after the fact, two years to be exact, and has no doubt forgotten much of the creative thought process - it is even harder to determine what, if anything was his original intent.

Franzen responds to the quote, stating that at first he felt the need to let his work speak for itself and refused to discuss it. Then realized that it was counterproductive and states:

"Silence, however, is a useful statement only if someone somewhere, expects your voice to be loud. Silence in the 1990s seemed only to guarantee that I would be alone."
( Read more... )

Current Mood: contemplative
Current Location: home
Current Music: construction noises behind the apartment