For the Mass Grave of My Darlings

How far will you go, what will you kill for your story?

I can be a ruthless murderer of darlings. Or so I thought. Ha. Not so fast, bucko!

I've killed off beloved characters, hacked away paragraphs of lyricism, dumped whole sections if they didn't earn their keep. Sure, I've had moments of remorse. I've even resurrected a couple of characters, only to have to re-kill them. Nothing was too sacred for my killing fields.

I've written before how, to be a good gardener, one must learn to be ruthless. In writing fiction (in any writing), it's a given. We bleed and vomit all over our first drafts, only to go back with scalpel, hatchet, or blunderbuss.

But eventually we get to an end point. Or so we think. I'd finished a first full edit with my editor, sent it back, got suggestions for the second and final edit, and, piece o' cake, bushed it up, polished the few bumps, and sent it back. One final step before proofing hard copy: beta readers.

First response from a new (to me) but experienced reader: one paragraph where she had no clue, after several readings, what I was trying to say, and several "too big" words. Only 27, out of over 91K words, but still.

I balked. I talked to my editor/publisher, who said I needed to really get that our audience for genre fiction reads at an 8th grade level. 8th Grade! No, says I, not possible. But I'm not writing literary fiction here, so why argue. Why not meet the challenge of "dumbing down" the vocabulary while conveying the same sense?

Because it goes against my nature. We should be smartening up, not dumbing down. Right?

Or do I accept that I'm not writing to teach, but to tell a good story well.

So I run my frustration past another who's read the book and has a good ear and eye. Surely, with the same background, he'll see that many of these words we learned in grade school.

Wrong.

Yeah, he said, but...

So I began going over the words with him. Simple words. Subjugate. Tenuous. Edifice.

Nope, he says. Most wouldn't know those words. I think of a recent discussion thread in an online writers' group about just this. Do we write down or not? Or is it writing down to cut out "showoff" words (and none, I thought, were showing off.) A highly regarded author has said if you're tempted to use a multisyllabic word and there's a simple, little word you can use instead, use it.

So, now it's time to murder those darlings. I didn't even know they were. I'll see them for what they are next time!

What's your take on this? I'd love to hear.

Are We What We Create?

In the loud and crowded world of the information age, we need, we're told, to develop a brand, gather a tribe, then focus like a laser on staying on target.

Well, I'm not one thing. I doubt you are, either. I don't write one kind of fiction. I don't read one kind. I am as invested in my gardens as I am in my writing. Cooking, too. I never expected my writing t bring me wealth, any more than I expected that of the gardens I've created.

People who walk by when I'm in the yard stop to tell me it's lovely, that they walk by just to see it. Prettiest in the neighborhood. One woman drives to this neighborhood for her walks just to see my yard. That's gratification enough. To share my vision and have someone say, wow, terrific. Well done.

That's all I want from my writing, too. Sure, having a book on the NYT top 10 wouldn't hurt my feelings. Who wouldn't love it? Promote the hell out of it? Absolutely. But I don't need it.

I create because I love the doing of it. I love rearranging words to see what fits best where. I love doing the same with my landscape. Often things that promised beauty turn out not to work, must be edited out or moved. A paragraph, an image, a shrub or perennial, stunted, obtrusive in one spot, thrives as a coherent element in another.

Raised Presbyterian, I eventually discovered The Tibetan Book of the Dead, read the Tao Te Ching, consulted the I Ching and runes, and delved into various mystical branches of many world religions. Who knows what is legend and what is history? Or what comes from enlightenment and what springs from wishful thinking?

With age comes perspective. Every faith believes itself to be the one true path to God, but none can pin down who or what "God" is. Certainly not some bearded wielder of lightning bolts or judgments. I've stopped trying to understand. I accept that I can't know. I can't even know if there's a greater Force permeating all creation. I still kinda tend to think maybe. There's just too much that can't be explained.

Each religion has branded what that is, that concept of original universal creative intelligence, whether called The Way, or God, or Allah, or Yahweh. I can't even say for sure there is one, though I'll hedge my bet. If there is, great, if not, I'll never know. So I choose to live as if it's true, but, as this invocation puts it so well, "in the names of the one who is all love."

Okay, pretty huge jump there, from me and writing and gardening to the mysteries of the universe, and I don't intend to get all religious. But, you know what? It's not really such a leap. Those mysteries inform my writing, my work with my little patch of earth, and every act of creation, however small.

There are hundreds, more, who can instruct on the craft of writing with far more authority than I, or on the ins and outs of publishing. I'll certainly bring up things I see that make me fucking nuts, or that make me need to share the beauty, or the absurdity, or whatever.

I am a writer. I work the earth. I'm fascinated by all aspects of creation. That could be writing as a craft, storytelling, the art of scaring the shit out of you by turning something everyday, something you cherish, into something that might take your soul, eat your children, and turn you into the monster. It could be a miraculous virgin birth as the cover for as miraculous an alien intervention.

So where does that put me? A perpetually skeptical spiritual explorer. Let there be Light, yeah, but those dark places sure are intriguing, aren't they? What's that around that corner? Was it human? Is it here to save us or destroy us?

Let me go into the garden and think about it while I move a few hostas. There's magic the the rearrangement of plants. And words. And body parts.

Damn. I haven't narrowed me down! Guess I'll have to live with who I am. And I'm okay with that.

We are creators, but are we what we create? How do you see the acts of creation?

Stanley and Phyllis or Stanley and Phil?

A while ago I posted about a story in the local paper that I was mulling for a short story. An old couple found dead together, frozen in their back yard in mid-winter. Cause unknown. A history of illness, possibly Alzheimer's. Perhaps the wife had fallen, the husband had gone to help and…

I've half written the story.

I've also (see my last post on platform specificity) been working on defining myself.

So now I will digress, and put aside that story yet again. But not really.

The novel I've written includes (count the audiences) a gay protagonist, an evangelist (antagonist) who hosts an interdimensional alien invader, the protag's sister (strong but vulnerable woman) and her hot live-in boyfriend whom she won't marry (women's fic), a pre-teen black boy and his mother (multi-racial/intercultural), both brave and in danger, the protag's partner, a jealous friend, another teen seeking revenge and teetering on the edge of dark and light, and other minions and allies, family and foe.

That's sure as hell not narrowing it down.

Is it a gay novel? Not really. It's a thriller with a gay protagonist who has a partner. But the sister's/boyfriend's story arc is central.

The high school jock and the brave boy are key, but it's definitely not Young Adult. While I've read some YA I enjoy, I'm not a YA writer. I just can't give up enough sex or judiciously used swear words. (English would be a far less expressive language lacking "fuck.") So I know that's not my audience.

Is it a spiritual/religious novel? It does posit questions about certain kinds of religious practice (help me here, John Lennon) and concepts of "light" and "energy." Those concepts and questions intrigue me. What are the truths that give birth to the legends, beliefs, myths, and religions? But I'm more about the questions than the answers.

But this isn't about me. Or about my story, or my novel. It's about homing in on whom I'm writing for. 

No doubt I'd lose people if I go for gay. Do I care, if I gather more LGBT folks who relate to me? Actually, no. Plenty of straight folk would come along if, in writing "gay," I'm writing "humanity."

And don't some of that group enjoy speculating on the nature of reality, spirituality, the paranormal? Sure they do. And a good supernatural scare, too.

So I'm out in the garden watering the other day, thinking about these things as I water baby zinnias, and suddenly I'm thinking maybe that story about Stanley and Phyllis should be about Stanley and Phil. Same story, different angle.

A generation ago, a few very famous playwrights did just the opposite. Maybe it's time for Martha to take off her drag. Maybe now it's time for George and Mark, not Martha, to duke it out.

Easy to say get specific, but hard to do. The "experts" say not to go for thousands, but for a specific few.

Anyone out there into supernatural/metaphysical/speculative/gay fiction? 

Platform Is Audience. Think Small. Be Specific.

We writers have so many options today. The world of publishing is changing so rapidly that many of its professionals seem to be riding the waves on inner tubes. We're all in it together, but we're all in it alone. And so, one thing is being consistently stated:  having a meaningful platform is ever more important in this noisy world.

Hey! It's me. I'm over here.

Now I'm sure I'm not the only writer who quails at the prospect. And not knowing how or where to start, a strong impulse is to read more, do more research, which can be helpful (if put to use.) Or a great distraction. Or an evasive maneuver.

So Don't just stand there getting ready.

As a kid, I wanted to do two things that scared the crap out of me: go off the high dive and ride the roller coaster.

Every day at the pool, I'd climb the ladder, stand at the end of the board—only ten feet, but it looked like a hundred—until I'd back off to let the others behind me go ahead. I'd climb down, wait until the board was free, and go back up. Finally, in a WTF moment, I jumped. Scary? Yes. Exhilarating? Oh, yes! I went back again and again, graduating to cannonballs and eventually dives.

But oh, the time standing there, getting ready. 

At the roller coaster, an old wooden one that raced out over the beach toward the ocean, I stood on the entrance platform. Same deal. I watched that coaster leave the station a dozen times at least before I got the courage to get on and ride. Then ride I did, middle car, front car, back car (the fastest), knees braced, no hands.

Sure, we need to prepare, maybe get up the courage. But then we have to do it.

Go ahead—scare the sh*t outta yourself!

It's often the only way to move forward, and the thrill can be amazing.

Those things scared me. I don't think there's a power on earth, not even vast sums of cash, that could get me to jump from an airplane or off a bridge with an elastic cord attached to me. I'm sure they have their thrills. Big ones. I'll take mine a bit more on the safe side of scary.

But being scared of doing something masks itself in all kinds of ways. Excuses. Other things that need to be done first. Too hard. Beyond my reach.

Well, how the hell do I know it's beyond my reach if I don't reach for it? How do you? And there's only one way to do that. Do it.

From the many, one.

Or a couple. Hell, even a few. 

Platform building is about audience. Connecting. Building relationships. We need to brand ourselves (that one is vertigo-inducing), and in order to do that, we need to get specific about who and what we are, and to whom. 

Writers on this topic often talk about the thousands they hope to reach. Now that's more than scary, when your followers could fit in a very small room. But a couple very astute (because I loved what they said, so they must be, right?) writers boiled it down to something more easily swallowed.

Don't go for the thousands. Go for a couple. Who specifically are you wanting to write for? To communicate with? To relate to and to have relate to you?

I mean specifically. What do they like to read? To wear? To listen to? What are their beliefs? What do they love and what makes them crazy? Pick a guy and a girl. How are they like you? How different? Invent people you'd easily spend an all-nighter with, tossing out ideas, comparing philosophies and fantasies. Make those people up, in detail, and talk to them.

A couple of folks you'd really like to talk with and write for, to entertain, to tease with unanswerable questions, to challenge, are a lot less intimidating than a sea of thousands.

So to you, dear readers—both of you—some things I'd like to know: 

Do you think we're alone in this universe? Is God the Force? What are those things that go bump in the night? Do souls return? Do aliens live among us? How do you feel about (name the issue, say, gay marriage)? Is time really a continuum, or is that merely a human way to sort the incomprehensibility of simultaneity?  And what the hell is he talking about?

If those kinds of questions engage you, can we talk? Just us. In this little room. On this very small planet.

But I'm still not jumping out of any airplanes.

Blogging, Branding, and Vampire Blood

Another two months gone without a post to this blog. I think it's safe to assume, at least for this extended moment of passage, that I am not a social media creature. Again I ponder what I have to say that would matter. I struggle with the notion of creating "a brand" of myself. Hell, I only recently found that the novel I've danced with long after the ball ended isn't paranormal, which never felt right to me, but more probably science fiction. Well shut my mouth. If I can't even peg the genre in which I've wallowed for these many years, how can I advise anyone else about things writerly? Simple: I don't.


I read on others' blogs on social networking and building platform that one shouldn't set out to build a platform or create a brand for one's self. One should simply identify who his target audience is and write to them. Target audience for the novel that I'd be pitching, should I ever land an agent or publisher? That assumes that the audience for that novel would be the same audience for future works and for the random digressions, wanderings down dark hallways of the mind, that make up the blog posts or tweets. Yikes. Somehow those short 140 character things seems more daunting than full posts, so much more ripe with likelihood of instant dismissal. What the fuck is he talking about? 


So who would be my desired audience? They'd be people who love to delve into the mysteries of the common threads that tie together the hidden (dare I say occult?) knowledge of the working of the universe that runs through all religions and is pretty much equally distorted by all of them. People who are willing to believe, but don't necessarily believe. Everything is possible. Nothing is absolutely true. But mostly, I want to talk to people who can go there and laugh about it, and laugh at themselves. 


Above all, they say, be funny. I can be funny, but I don't write funny, and the kind of humor I like best leans heavily toward the dark and twisted side. Erotic. Profane. Quentin Tarantino. I haven't figured out how to address that in blog posts, especially ones about writing, the writer's journey, querying, and all those things that every other person in the publishing world writes about. 


What do I write about then? What kinds of things would I want to toss around with kindred souls? Let's get irreverent. Was the archangel who came to Mary of Biblical fame really an alien visitor? Was her son, the famous one, really the offspring of a human/alien mating? Are the creatures of the night, the ones of legend, vampires, werewolves, goblins, all alien beings playing on our superstitions, giving us what we are afraid of? Are miracles a simple matter of high-level manipulation of what we perceive as reality? Can we laugh at all those possibilities fooling with us, scaring us, and, alternatively, raising us up? After all, alien doesn't necessarily mean from another planet. Just another place. And just because they might exist and operate on a different level of perceived reality from us, mightn't they be just as prone to extremes of good and evil, whatever those are on whatever scale is used to measure them?


See, there just aren't viable tweets there. Or even posts. Do I believe all that shit? Bwa ha ha. No. Well, maybe. Why not? Could be. What was that wheel within the wheel? Sure is one hell of a lot more likely than humans and dinosaurs sharing the planet together after a seven day splurge of creation. No shortage of scared, desperate hopefuls willing to buy the snake oil. How about a vial of blood instead?