Water Emergency

Image description: Broken Water Main

We are suffering from a broken water main this morning. I'm brushing my teeth with Earthquake water and there has been no hot shower.

I'm just going to push everything back a day. Guest post tomorrow, possible fiction this weekend, and Mailbox next Monday.

Phase 2 (Personal Update)

Image description: CT scan

That sound you just heard was everyone who can read a CT scan sucking in their breath at once.

Last October, Sonic Gal had some trouble bursting into sonic motion. At first she was just winded after a big fight, but then she started to have trouble going from Hell's Kitchen to Gotham in under two seconds. It took her more like five.

And then ten.

By the time we figured out that Miasma had hit her with a carcino-bio-agent dart (hoping to take her out long term so that a dimensional gateway to the world of goateed robots would provide an army to rule the world), her tumor was big enough to vote in some states. This CT scan shows it at its largest, just before treatment started. The white ovel is her rib cage and the bump in the back in the middle with the three prongs is her spinal column.

It was big, and really scary. Her oncologist/hematologist missed it–looking for a blood disease instead. Fortunately her nurse practitioner caught it just in time. And I don't mean just in time like everything is "just in time" when you write superhero realism. I mean while we waited for tests to come back, there were cardiothoracic surgeons who had been briefed on the tumor's location standing by for the hail Mary in case that bad boy shifted half a centimeter. It was that much of a time bomb in her chest.

Fortunately she's four rounds of chemo in, and at last check the softball (with a chunk wrapped unmercifully around her aorta) was looking more like a lemon with very few living cells. It's great news. And when she's not laid out from the chemo drugs or the meds to help with the chemo drugs, she's feeling a lot better. Oxygen is so awesome for living things.

But if you've been through chemotherapy, you know those drugs are not fucking around. Even a superhero can't just shrug them off.

Sonic gal did four rounds of chemo, and like a rockstar, just kept kicking ass and taking names at doing light patrols and fighting local crime. She let me and Uberdude do some of the real super-villain stuff, but you'd never have suspected she was in cancer treatment if not for her oft-changing hair color and sudden incorporation of brilliantly colored scarves into her Sonic uniforms.

However, the pain, the bone aches (from white blood cell repopulation), and the overwhelming fatigue is starting to catch up in a way that's harder to ignore after round four. Moving at sonic speeds takes a lot of energy, and when she does get hit (which happens more now that her Sonic Dodge power has slowed down) there's a lot of ache already there that makes it worse. If only she had super-endurance or uncharted healing factor or something.

And there's still two rounds of chemo to go....then radiation.

She kicked ass hardcore for months, but now she's filing for the superhero disability fund that lets her take some time off from hardcore crime fighting without being taken off the official national registers. She will of course still stop shoplifters and if she's in a bank when its robbed, she won't just let it happen, but dealing with The Death Vortex or La Muerte Eléctrica (a new local team of electricity supercharged Mexican Wrestlers who black out whole city grids by suplexing each other into power pylons) is too much right now.

The second half is just going to be a lot worse. So if you've got a good thought or three sitting around for The Hall of Rectitude or especially Sonic Gal, we sure wouldn't mind.

For my part I'm on increased patrols and Contrarian shifts–even from the last time I said that. I'm really going to keep trying to update M-Th for sure and some weekends when I can, but we're getting into the really hard part of the treatment, so there might be days here and there where I drop the ball or REALLY settle for jazz hands. 

Nominations Needed: Best Non-Binary Character

Who is the best non-binary character in fiction? 

While you head over to vote in the last couple of days of our best series poll (yes you should go vote!), we also need to gear up for our April poll.

Almost every character in literature is either a man or a woman, but not every character is. This month we call on nominations for the best portrayal of a character who is outside the gender binary.

The Rules

1- As always, I leave definitions up to your best judgement because I'd rather be inclusive. While gender is a social construct and a little slippery, the gender binary is fairly well defined as cisgender, and covers probably 99.9% or more of literary characters, the umbrella that "cisgender" doesn't cover is vast and diverse. There are many expressions of gender that are outside the binary from agender to transgender to genderfluid. I do not wish to host arguments as to whether whether a feminine presenting intersex character "counts" unless they "truly" question their birth designation or whether a gender fluid character is fluid enough. If you nominate it, and it is not clearly ridiculous ("Harry Dresden tried to get in touch with his feminine side that one time...."), I will trust your judgement.

2- While the story doesn't have to be like Middlesex, which very much revolves around gender, this is a call for the best portrayal of characters outside the gender binary. An alien who simply says, "We don't have gender on my world," once during their introduction onto the page, and proceeds to act like a fairly typical dude for the rest of the book (but you think is cool because they broke all those cyphers and figured out the plot twist) would probably not make a good fit. However an alien race with three genders that are explored, even if the main story were more about repopulating the Earth, would be. Please be careful with aliens–their non conformity to the gender binary should be something portrayed, something considered, and something that contributes to an exploration of the human condition and the idea of gender, not simply something "weird" to make them other that is mentioned once or twice and never has any real bearing.

3- You may nominate two (2) characters. (Remember that I am a horrid and unyielding power hungry monster here at Writing About Writing. To encourage reading and reading comprehension I will NOT take any characters beyond your second nomination.) If you nominate more than two characters, I will only take your first two and consider any beyond that to be "pre-seconding" for a future nomination.

4- You may (and should) second as many nominations of others as you wish. No characters will be going on to our poll that doesn't get at least one second.

5- Please put your nominations here. I will take books nominated as comments to this post on other social media; however, they may not get the seconds you need because no one will see them.

6- If your ideology is trans exclusionary, stay the fuck out of my space! You are not welcome here and neither is any kind of shoe-horning a transantagonist agenda into the comments on this poll. Anything like that will be insta-deleted.

I want, in particular, to invite any call outs or course corrections the genderqueer community might feel I need in the wording of this post. If I have phrased something in a less-than appropriate way or done something that erases a group, please let me know and I will edit. I'm still pretty 101 on gender stuff.

Last Chance to Vote (Best Single Story Arc Series)

Lord of the Rings 66 votes

Vorkosigan Saga 46 votes

Hitchhiker's Guide Series 38 votes

Chronicles of Amber 31 votes

Callahans 28 votes

His Dark Materials 27 votes

What is the best single story arc in a multi book series?   

March is coming to an end, and that means so is our best multi-book series poll. It's your last chance to vote...or vote again....or get your friends to stuff our relatively modest ballot box for your fav.

While Lord of the Rings has a rather commanding lead (though I've seen twice as many votes cast in a last day sprint), and the spread between 2nd and 6th is also pretty big. The spread between any TWO of the positions between is fairly small, and I've seen comebacks much bigger happen in less time than remains.

The poll description can be found here.

The poll itself is down on the left hand side at the bottom.

Please don't forget that our poll program will only track your IP address for one week, so since I can't stop shenanigans, I'm asking for as much of it as possible. Vote early. Vote often.

Punctum: Say Something

Chris Hondros – War
Image Description: soldier on a bridge without a shirt jumping in a war zone
with a smile on their face and a gun in their hand.

Note: This is part of an ongoing series about an aspect of art that is painfully difficult and famously slippery to try to explain, and is often easier to simply give examples of.

It's called the punctum. And it has nothing to do with your tear ducts–at least not when it comes to art.

Here is an earlier article about punctum.

It is an element within a work of art that either breaks the tone or exacerbates it to an exquisite, puncturing point. And if that sounds like meaningless post-modern bullshit, you're not alone in being confused. It's really hard to describe the punctum because it's such a tough concept to define. But it's not hard to point to something and say "THAT! That's punctum!"

Take this picture. In the midst of what is probably some kind of war zone with gunfire smoke thick in the air, we see a soldier holding a sub-machine gun and jumping with a smile on his face. How many millions of gunfire-smoke filled pictures have you seen from war ravaged spots? Probably so many they hardly even penetrate your heart anymore. It's not that your heart is cold and dead and unable to feel. It's just that everything in those pictures is establishing one emotion (in photography it's often called the studium). However, the presence of this jumping, smiling guy, it just....changes the whole thing. It somehow takes away from the gravitas of the immediate, but at the same time makes the whole subject more poignant. Now he's not just one more grim face. He has survived another day. Now he's a little more human and the tragedy of the whole thing resonates harder.

Or is he crueler? Enjoying the battle? Being less humane? Bringing out the subject matter of the rest of the picture by not languishing in it, but enjoying it?

Maybe someone with more research skills knows "the answer," but it's a perfect example of punctum.

Here's another one. To get this one, I had to do some deep Internet digging and listen to a pop song about six million times. I'm now hearing it in my sleep. But nothing is too much for all of you! Some people have said that I'm hearing things with this "read." Others went wide eyed and said it was spot on. Maybe I'm chasing shadows, but if I'm not, here's a good example.

Unless you live in a cave or never do radio, you've probably heard A Great Big World's version of Say Something. Just in case, here it is: (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-2U0Ivkn2Ds).  You'll notice that there's an extremely enunciated "I'm givING up on you." This will actually be the way it is sung in almost every single version you can find. In case you aren't familiar with the song, it's a duet but the people aren't really singing TO each other. Each one is giving up on the relationship and waiting for the other to make the first step to some kind of reconnection or reconciliation. It's a tragic and common tale in break-ups where both parties feel aggrieved, and each might be willing to keep working if only the other would only come back to the table with an olive branch. Neither does–each waiting on the other–until it's too late.

However, I want to talk about how Sam Redden chose to sing it. First take a listen:

Did you hear it?

When Sam is singing the solo parts of this song, he lets his enunciation slip on "giving"...a lot. It's so crisp in the source song, but he lets it slide. Actually it kind of sounds more like he's saying "Given," which is the past participle. It alludes to the idea that his decision is already made. "Given up." And it changes everything about the tone of this song.

There's no WAY this is an accident.

First of all, the enunciation is so clear in the other versions. Probably to avoid exactly this confusion. When you make a cover of a song that has such a crisp and conscious choice, changing it is absolutely a decision. Secondly, the female vocalist (who I could not find the name of to save my life, and I'm sorry and annoyed about that) is enunciating her "ING" quite well. But here's the real kicker. In the middle of the song, when they're singing together, Redden and the other singer are actually saying the word differently. That's a mistake a first-year high school choir student would notice–unless of course it's not a mistake at all. The Redden version also makes one other very conscious decision from the A Great Big World version and most other covers. Instead of both singers ending the song as a duet, the woman drops out and Redden sings the end solo. This highlights the choice.

(The lyrics are even in the link, and it says "giving," so take this interpretation with a grain of salt.)

But IF it's true, from this ONE TINY little syllable being said differently (by only one of the parts), we get the portrayal of an entirely different relationship dynamic. Here is a guy who is done. But the woman is still in the process of letting go and threatening to leave if nothing is said. And instead of just walking out, the guy is pretending that he too is still hanging on.

For her, she is waiting for him to say something. But for him, nothing she says would matter.

So how does the punctum show up in writing? And how can a writer incorporate something so subtle yet important? Well, let's look at this opening line by Orsino in Twelfth Night by Shakespeare.

If music be the food of love, play on;
Give me excess of it, that, surfeiting,
The appetite may sicken, and so die.
That strain again! it had a dying fall:
O, it came o'er my ear like the sweet sound,
That breathes upon a bank of violets,
Stealing and giving odour! Enough; no more:
'Tis not so sweet now as it was before.
O spirit of love! how quick and fresh art thou,
That, notwithstanding thy capacity
Receiveth as the sea, nought enters there,
Of what validity and pitch soe'er,
But falls into abatement and low price,
Even in a minute: so full of shapes is fancy
That it alone is high fantastical.

Here's Orsino, who Shakespeare is lampooning for being more sentimental and florid about the idea of love than actually feeling love itself. (Shakespeare does this a lot.) He's talking about listening to love songs so long that his love grows, but the second part of the quote carries the metaphor into this idea that too much of the music can make one disgusted. Ostensibly too much food, but the metaphor is about love and he goes on to say that the spirit of love can also be overwhelmed. But now look at that last line. What Orsino is saying is that the idea of love is itself a fantasy.

Think about that in terms of everything that Orsino just said and the entire play that is to come.

Orsino gives away the game in the FIRST LINE of this play. Not only is he more in love with the idea of love, but he KNOWS it's bullshit. The entire play takes on an entirely new meaning (slightly more whimsical, and quite a bit more fucked up considering what happens) now that we realize that Orsino is actually fully aware that he is less interested in Olivia than simply the game and the chase and the spurious emotions of courtship. That simple line: "That it alone is high fantastical." changes the whole character of the play.

It might be difficult to consciously add punctum to a piece of writing, but if you know what you're looking for, you can tease it out through the process of revision. Don't be afraid to let your characters show that they are deeper (or more shallow) than you might have thought.

And don't be afraid to trust your audience. You don't need to hammer them over the head with winks and nudges. One tiny line. One ambiguous word. One tiny pinprick in the totality of your writing is all it takes to change....everything.

That is the punctum.

I leave you with the favorite cover I found when digging through versions of "Say Something." And yes, the first singer does the punctum I mentioned above. Though interestingly enough, both singers are basically saying givEN. This tiny choice actually changes the meaning again.  Now it has the tragic feel of a relationship where both parties have checked out but are trying to get the other one to care enough to try to get them to stay–a mirror to the all too common break-up situation where even though two people are leaving something mutually, each one wants to know the other wanted them, and will be torn up by their absence.

Extra Fridayish

With the chemo day moved to Monday, and already 30+ hours of toddler wrangling even going into the weekend (usually it's about 18-20ish heading into Friday), plus a stack of dishes and a swath of destruction in the living room, this Friday is more Fridayish than even other Fridays. I'm going to work hard this weekend though to puff the fluff, and get some good stuff prepped for cooking next week.

Amazon Bestseller (Claire Youmans)

I am an Amazon Best-Selling Author. Yes, The Toki-Girl and the Sparrow-Boy series achieved Amazon Best-Selling status. Impressed? I’m not.  

 

Amazon divides its genres so narrowly and so precisely that there simply aren’t that many titles in any given group. If twenty people to buy your book in a single day, WOO-HOO, your book is likely a best-seller. In its group. For the day or week or even month.

In fact, this has happened to me and I didn’t pay it any mind. It just didn’t seem to be that significant an event.

Many authors are now touting their status as Amazon Best-Selling Authors. I guess I should be doing that, too, on the off-chance there is somebody out there who might click through and buy a book. I might even keep track of sales to see if my slow but steady pace of sales improves thereby. I’ll let you know if I do. This is a status that sounds better than it is, and that’s true of much in the book-selling biz.

I want to sell books. I want to sell MY books particularly, but there’s room for many books in my Kindle’s Cloud and I read a lot, so I need other people to write and sell books I want to read, too. Yet, connecting books with readers is very hard, not least because there is this huge industry out there committed to separating writers from their money. It’s almost impossible to separate the wheat (something that helps sales) from the chaff (expensive stuff that doesn’t actually result in sales.)

There is a whole lot of chaff out there. While these myriad services will do exactly what they say they will — Tweet 5 days to 50,000 fellow birds, Instagram your cover to their 23,000 followers — the real question is the conversion rate. What kind of click-throughs result? How many of those result in sales? Too few for what these services cost, I think. I get so many book-related newsletters I can’t possibly keep up with them, and I’m highly selective in what I sign up for.  I also try to pay attention to what’s in my Inbox, because I know some poor writer is out there scrimping to afford this publicity and I want to give that writer the respect of at least looking, even if it’s not a genre I read.

I’m a working writer and that’s the perspective I take in what I write here. I am writing a series, with Book Three coming out this summer. I research, I have a budget and I try to spend my PR dollars wisely. Whether it’s editors, copyeditors, formatters, artists, reviews, agents, or independent soup-to-nuts pay-to-play publishing houses, look carefully at what they’re offering you and look carefully at their products. Don’t pay for useless services. Don’t pay for bad products. Don’t pay for poorly written reviews. Don’t pay for what you don’t need. Don’t overpay for anything. Be especially careful with editing. Most of the ads I see promise copyediting only; full editing is frightfully expensive. For that kind of money, I want a real, serious professional editor I can actually work with, not any random person no longer working for a Major who fills out a form. Be careful with reviews. Read many reviews before committing your money for a paid review (almost all of them are these days, unless you are a Big Name published by a Huge House). Make sure they don’t read like middle-school book reports, but can at least pass as serious professional reviews. Be careful with “marketing and publicity,” too. Don’t settle for being in some marketer or reviewer’s throwaway spam mail or email newsletter that nobody ever actually reads. A listing in a catalog or on a website means nothing unless people actually read it. How many catalogs do YOU get? How many do you actually read? How many go straight into trash or the recycle bin? What do you think happens to the hundreds of catalogs and emails regularly sent to agents, editors, publishers, teachers, libraries and bookstores? Especially the ones marked “Independent and Small Publishers,” or, worse, “Self-Published”? The connection between the services actually offered and the results implied is largely illusory.

You’re a writer. That means you get no respect and no support whatsoever except from your nearest and dearest and probably not even from them. You have limited time and limited money. Use them wisely. Even if you continually work towards The Breakthrough Book and are willing to Build Your Brand over time, even if you write really good books, even if you are an Amazon Best-Selling Author, be wary, do your research and be very careful with your funds.

That huge predatory second-tier industry out there doesn’t care if you sell a single book. As long as they can get you pay for what they offer and do what they say they will so they don’t get sued, they couldn’t care less. Since they don’t, you must. Do your homework before you spend your money, and don’t get taken.

Also check out Claire's blog and FB page and available books here:
http://claireyoumansauthor.blogspot.com
www.tokigirlandsparrowboy.com
Facebook:  The Toki-Girl and the Sparrow-Boy
Amazon:  http://www.amazon.com/The-Toki-Girl-Sparrow-Boy-Claire-Youmans/dp/0990323404/ref=cm_cr_pr_product_top?ie=UTF8

If you would like to guest blog for Writing About Writing we would love to have an excuse to take a day off a wonderful diaspora of voices. Take a look at our guest post guidelines, and drop me a line at chris.brecheen@gmail.com.