Mr. Sensitive
I’m reluctant to begin the last phase of my romance. You know, the bit where Boy and Girl meet obstacles, stress out, and (eventually) overcome said obstacles before doing the monkey dance. I’m looking forward to the monkey dance, I really am, but the “stress out” part has got me down.
I mean, I’m seriously bummed about what I need to do. It sucks. I don’t want to torture these two. But when I consider my options:
A. Boy & Girl meet Strife and kick his ass, or
B. Boy & Girl have clear-sailing to their HEA,
the only good thing I can say about (B) is, It’s certainly the less trite option of the two.
But as I mentioned on Tam’s blog the other day, maybe things are trite because they work so well . . . i.e., there’s a reason some things become part of the formula. They’re really necessary. (Don’t think that’s true? Let’s have that “romance without an HEA” discussion again.)
I’m resigned to it. I have to write the difficult stuff, I know, but it upsets me. This is why I can’t write horror, or at least when I do, it comes out comical or understated. The one time I wrote an edgy, balls-to-the-walls story (something called “God’s Claw,” about a cannibalistic feral child who happens to be the tale’s hero) I felt sick to my stomach for days.
My writing affects me. I’m mature enough to avoid writing for catharsis, so the bile does not drip into the page; but I can’t seem to avoid absorbing the nastiness of the story itself.
Sometimes this works in my favor. Writing a romance has done wonders for my mood, and those sex scenes were like methamphetamine to my libido. (“Your libido didn’t need any help,” the wife told me.) But I guess I have to take the bad with the good.
So, writers of the blogosphere, speak: does this happen to you? How do you make your characters suffer without suffering yourself?
D.
A rare interview
Hat tip to jmc for this link to an interview with Alan Rickman. Rickman, as many of you know, is one private dude.
You know what I thought was sweet (and not entirely unexpected)? Here:
The bad news for all who write to him in a similar vein is that Rickman is a one-woman man. He has had the same girlfriend for more than 40 years – Rima Horton, an economics lecturer at Kingston University. *snip*
They met when they were students at Chelsea School of Art. He was 19; Horton a year younger. She was his first girlfriend, to whom he has remained steadfastly faithful, although they’ve never married or had children.
You knew he wouldn’t be one of those working-on-my-fifth-divorce kind of guys, didn’t you?
D.
Ghost hummer
I wish I could remember where I first read about Vincent Gallo’s one-man opus, The Brown Bunny. The reviewer had much to say about a film produced, written, edited, and starred in by Gallo, which seemed to have as its whole point the receipt of a real, honest-to-God, nothing-held-back, lip-smackin’ hummer by Gallo. But the reviewer said nothing, not a damned thing about the mind-numbing boredom.
More of Swordsmith’s “How Publishing Works” Series
Many thanks to Kate for refreshing my memory on this. I plugged Swordsmith before, but that post fell off the front page of the blog — and when it falls off the front page, it drops out of my mind, too.
I’m looking forward to Swordsmith’s posts on self-promotion and finding an agent.
The series so far:
Part 1 – Why bad things happen to good books.
Part 2 – Avoiding publishing scams.
Part 3 – Literary conventions (with an emphasis on SF Conventions).
Part 4 – Book packagers.
Part 5 – Submitting a manuscript.
I almost forgot! Part 6 – Publishing lists.
Here’s another
Dead weekend, hit-wise, so I doubt anyone noticed the sudden appearance and disappearance of my story, “Heaven on Earth.” See yesterday’s post for details.
Here’s another entry for Paperback Writer’s eBook challenge: Sprouts.
It’s cute and nasty, but it lacks heart. On the upside, it’s brief.
And here’s another one: Ear, Nose, Throat, and Soul.
This one has heart but it could be funnier.
If you read either story, let me know what you think.
D.
An eBook challenge from PBW
I’m also challenging all you writers out there to do the same: write and publish a new short story, novellette, novella, or novel of your own in e-book form* and post it for download on your weblog, web site, or any host site on October 31, 2006. I’m using Adobe .pdf format because that’s what I’ve always used. You’re free to use alternate formats, but I’d go with something that allows everyone to read it. Your e-book can also be any length and any genre; the only requirement is that you provide free access to it (it doesn’t have to be a permanent addition to your weblog; if you have file storage issues I suggest leaving it up for a week or two.)
She’s offering prizes, too, so check it out.
Here’s my response: “Heaven on Earth,” a story I wrote almost two years ago and still love. It’s semi-autobiographical, inasmuch as my grandfather almost certainly had multi-infarct dementia. As for the science fictiony stuff, well, who knows. Papa was such a storyteller, I found it fitting to make him the star of his very own bubbe-meintze*.
We’ll use this post as the comment thread for those of you who decide to read my story.
D.
*Fairy tale, tall tale. Literally (I think) “Grandma’s story.” In our family, bubbe-meintze meant, “What horseshit are you asking me to believe now?”
Edited to add:
I received this in my email today:
I’m afraid we have an awkward situation here. Perhaps I should say I have an awkward situation. In fact, WORLDS APART #1 has been published and includes your story “Heaven on Earth.” I was aware that not all authors had received their complimentary copies, but after searching my email files, it appears that I never even sent you an author agreement.
All I can do is include the agreement (found below) and hope you will be pleased that your story has in fact been published. I have already printed a substantial number of copies and have planned to print more to take with me to LACON IV (World SF Convention) in Anaheim later this month. I have reserved a table in the dealers’ room.
You are certainly free to self-publish, but I would hope you might hold off a while.
I am going to hold off, at least until I hear back from him on my suggested compromise plan. In the meantime, I’ll put up a different story, maybe one of my silly/erotic ones. Stay tuned.
D.
Equal time: good science
Also in Nature 6 July 2006: a listing of the top 5 science blogs based on Technorati ranking. Here are the links, along with a quick blurb on what’s happening on their blogs today.
Weird science
I’m not a PETA kind of person. Biomedical research would limp along without animal experimentation. Nevertheless, I prefer to assume the relevant supervisorial committees are doing their jobs preventing cruelty and minimizing unnecessary pain.
From the 6 July 2006 issue of Nature, reporting on an article appearing in Science:
Matthias Wittlinger of the University of Ulm, Germany, and his colleagues show that Saharan desert ants, Cataglyphis fortis, use a pedometer to count their strides. The authors allowed a group of ants to march from their nest to an experimental food site. Then, the ants were captured, and the researchers either shortened the ants’ legs by amputation or elongated them by gluing stilts made of pig bristles. Both types of altered ants misjudged the distance home — the ants on stumps undershot while the ants on stilts went too far. Further work on the accuracy of the ant pedometer is planned.
Perhaps you don’t feel much sympathy for ants. I know I don’t. Still, the thought of these researchers snipping off bits of ants’ legs, six little snips per ant, no doubt dozens or maybe hundreds of ants, brings to my mind the classic sociopathy triangle: fire-setting, bedwetting, and cruelty to small animals. As kids, these researchers were probably ant-obsessed. How many of them turned their magnifying glasses into killing machines?
Here’s another — also a Nature report on a Science article. This one is even more worrisome, IMO.
A mouse watching a cage-mate writhe in pain will writhe more itself, an observation that Jeffrey Mogil and his team at McGill University in Montreal conclude is evidence of rodent empathy.
The researchers tested mice in twos, giving one or both mildly painful shots of acetic acid. If the two were strangers, they behaved as if they were on their own. But if they had lived together for a few weeks, and both got a shot, they both showed more abdominal constrictions, termed writhing, than when given a shot alone. The effect vanished if the roomies could not see one another.
I doubt either of these studies rises to the level of ridiculousness necessary to win an Ig Nobel Prize, but they both bothered me on a gut level. And mice? I like them even less than ants. Nasty beasties.
D.
Thirteen vocabulary words or phrases
I suspect there’s a theme here, but for the life of me, I don’t see it.
1. Frottage Here and below, definitions are from Wikipedia:
Frottage is normal sexual activity without penetration that can include any form of sexual rubbing, whether naked or clothed, for arousal or orgasm.
This includes such activities as frot, tribadism, and axillary intercourse (“putting the penis in the other person’s armpit”). See link above for details. See also The Princeton Rub (those madcap Ivy Leaguers, what will they get up to next?)
Example: We had to get rid of our Chihuahua, Max, as he greeted strangers with entirely too much frottage.
Hospital life
As promised, here’s a photo of me unselfishly guinea-pigging myself for the greater good:
It’s a good thing I’m not a colorectal surgeon. I couldn’t show those photos. (Does that mean I have limits after all?)
***
‘Kay, so I got rid of the rest of this post because (A) I have a sneaking suspicion certain hospital folks lack a sense of humor (not you, Leann) and (B) making jokes about elderly, demented people is probably in poor taste. Even for me. Consequently, noxcat’s comment below no longer makes sense.
In any case, I’ve posted my 13, so you have plenty of other tasteless things to keep you occupied.
D.