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A Treasure Chest of Linkage
Jul. 25th, 2011 10:32 pmI wrote a long post yesterday and then lost it as poor livejournal was hung up in something or other.
My pithy words: Gone.
Tonight you will have to be content with me linking to four quite fine posts by other people. Really, who needs me?
Michelle Sagara West rants (in her inimitable way) on Conventions, Panels, & Bad Panelist Behavior:
Look, I understand the desire to talk about your own work. It's natural because I am incredibly interested in my own work. But if I don't want to listen to anyone else talk about their own books for hours on end, it's pretty clear that the only person who is quite as interested in the topic is...me.
So if you need to have that long droning talk - do it in your room before you join the other panelists.
Judith Tarr speaks great wisdom on Being the Other. Understood in the more general sense of writing about anyone (or creature, like horses) that isn't YOU, but specifically about writing historical fiction or historically oriented fantasy.
Getting inside the Other requires the writer to recognize and set aside her ingrained cultural biases. She must realize that ideas and values that she regards as default may not in fact be current in the Other world at all, and that her assumptions not only are not universal, they may in fact be regarded negatively by the culture she is writing about. And–as the Marquise notes–she must beware of treating it all as a game. To the people who have to live through it, it is absolutely and devastatingly real.
And on the subject of the devastatingly real, Juliet McKenna writes about getting stopped dead in her writing by certain real world events.
And I’m doing all that for the sake of entertainment. I’m killing fictional people off, right, left and centre, in the service of a thrilling story. But real world death isn’t thrilling or entertaining. It’s heart-breaking, infuriating, frightening. It has real world implications for our security, our laws, our freedoms, for the abuse of ‘others’ by the prejudiced and the opportunist in this age of global media and social networking. This stuff matters.
So I need to know that my writing matters. I need to be certain that my characters suffer loss in a way that doesn’t belittle a real bereavement. That the effects persist as they do in real life – or if they don’t, I need to be clear why that might be. When high heroic deeds deliver triumphant outcomes, I must always make sure that I acknowledge the cost to those who had no choice or chance to opt out. Not to the detriment of the story overall but just using enough light and shade to paint a realistic picture.
Finally, on a different note, Foz Meadows discusses Romance, Strength, & Femininity.
To wax briefly lyrical, love is the great leveler: if you don’t lose your dignity at some point during the process, then I’d contend that you’re doing it wrong. Sometimes, and as treacherous an idea as it might seem to our sensibilities, loving another person does fulfill us in a way that nothing else can; nonetheless, love is not our only means of fulfillment, nor even – necessarily – the most important. Love is unique; it fascinates and enthralls. As countless narratives from Harry Potter to Pride and Prejudice have been at pains to point out, neither love nor loving is a weakness. Which isn’t to say that love is never destructive, ill-conceived, fleeting, hurtful, wrongheaded, violent or stubborn. It can be all that and more – but the saving grace is, it can also be exultant, glorious, unexpected and gleeful. Contrary creatures that we are, it can sometimes even be all those things at once.
My pithy words: Gone.
Tonight you will have to be content with me linking to four quite fine posts by other people. Really, who needs me?
Michelle Sagara West rants (in her inimitable way) on Conventions, Panels, & Bad Panelist Behavior:
Look, I understand the desire to talk about your own work. It's natural because I am incredibly interested in my own work. But if I don't want to listen to anyone else talk about their own books for hours on end, it's pretty clear that the only person who is quite as interested in the topic is...me.
So if you need to have that long droning talk - do it in your room before you join the other panelists.
Judith Tarr speaks great wisdom on Being the Other. Understood in the more general sense of writing about anyone (or creature, like horses) that isn't YOU, but specifically about writing historical fiction or historically oriented fantasy.
Getting inside the Other requires the writer to recognize and set aside her ingrained cultural biases. She must realize that ideas and values that she regards as default may not in fact be current in the Other world at all, and that her assumptions not only are not universal, they may in fact be regarded negatively by the culture she is writing about. And–as the Marquise notes–she must beware of treating it all as a game. To the people who have to live through it, it is absolutely and devastatingly real.
And on the subject of the devastatingly real, Juliet McKenna writes about getting stopped dead in her writing by certain real world events.
And I’m doing all that for the sake of entertainment. I’m killing fictional people off, right, left and centre, in the service of a thrilling story. But real world death isn’t thrilling or entertaining. It’s heart-breaking, infuriating, frightening. It has real world implications for our security, our laws, our freedoms, for the abuse of ‘others’ by the prejudiced and the opportunist in this age of global media and social networking. This stuff matters.
So I need to know that my writing matters. I need to be certain that my characters suffer loss in a way that doesn’t belittle a real bereavement. That the effects persist as they do in real life – or if they don’t, I need to be clear why that might be. When high heroic deeds deliver triumphant outcomes, I must always make sure that I acknowledge the cost to those who had no choice or chance to opt out. Not to the detriment of the story overall but just using enough light and shade to paint a realistic picture.
Finally, on a different note, Foz Meadows discusses Romance, Strength, & Femininity.
To wax briefly lyrical, love is the great leveler: if you don’t lose your dignity at some point during the process, then I’d contend that you’re doing it wrong. Sometimes, and as treacherous an idea as it might seem to our sensibilities, loving another person does fulfill us in a way that nothing else can; nonetheless, love is not our only means of fulfillment, nor even – necessarily – the most important. Love is unique; it fascinates and enthralls. As countless narratives from Harry Potter to Pride and Prejudice have been at pains to point out, neither love nor loving is a weakness. Which isn’t to say that love is never destructive, ill-conceived, fleeting, hurtful, wrongheaded, violent or stubborn. It can be all that and more – but the saving grace is, it can also be exultant, glorious, unexpected and gleeful. Contrary creatures that we are, it can sometimes even be all those things at once.