I'm a naughty boy, and I like it!

[elfs]

When I go to conventions, I tend not to go to panels these days; I don't feel that I have enough published in real life to justify being on the panel, nor do I really need any wisdom imparted upon me from the panel. I went to two writer's panels this weekend and, quite frankly, didn't learn anything new from them.

There's always one person in the audience at a convention panel that wants the panel discussion to be about him (or her). There's always two distinct impressions I get: one, they're never going to finish the book they're writing, and two, if they did, nobody would ever publish it. One said that he could never write from a woman's point of view; he could never trust that anything he'd ever read about "how women think" (as if there was only one way!) because women have an enormous capacity to lie. The other got upset because I didn't write stories "from my heart" but frequently wrote genderqueer stuff to tweak the reader and mess with the reader's mind. I mean, by chapter four of Sterling's most of my readers are completely accepting of the phrase "her cock," and let it go without blinking.

That I cackle with glee to re-orient my reader's brain that way, rather than write with a compassionate need to convey the feelings and tribulations of genderqueer people accurately, makes me somehow a bad (in the naughty and evil sense) writer.

Ah, well. I don't care. On to my "let's take the Sterlings and flip the story on its head" story.

Comments

[urox.livejournal.com]

I haven't read any of Sterling's but now I am wondering if this is a woman who decided to get a penis or a physiotype male who is a woman.

[technoshaman.livejournal.com]

Steven Barnes had a couple observations on self-centered folk such as you mention:

One, the reason they'll never finish the book is because they're scared to submit it - afraid (and rightly so) that when the inevitable rejection letter comes, it will utterly destroy them.

Two, a much better way to get started in writing is to try to sell short stories. He says you can learn much more in 100,000 words of short stories, where you have to do the same kinds of things over and over again, than you can in a single 100,000 word novel where you don't ever get to *practice* your skills.

I figure you probably already knew (or perhaps grokked-but-didn't-know-you-knew) the second one, but I'm just sharing what I heard. :)

I seem to have inadvertently gotten started "right"; when I got started professionally writing, it was an 1100-word article *every* *week*. And my next bit of craft will be a short story, probably of the longish variety but still well under novella length.

[valarltd.livejournal.com]

I must agree on the one person in the audience.

Give your readers credit. Most have stopped blinking at "her cock" by chapter two.

do you want to really drive them batty?

[amberite2112.livejournal.com]

try the phrase 'his pussy', [and i don't mean his anus].

WTF?

[lemur123.livejournal.com]

"don't feel that I have enough published in real life"

I have a physical copy of one of your books on my shelf, and your online wordcount is probably greater than Tolstoy's lifetime output. You're a real-life writer.

Re: WTF?

[norikos-author.livejournal.com]

Hell. Yes.

According to wc, you have something like 1.7 million words in the journal entries alone (although that counts the headers and footers for each entry; I just did a elinks -dump -no-references -no-numbering on each entry and catted the output to a file).

And you aren't just dumping words out to dump words out; you care about the quality of your writing, and you're always trying to improve.

If that doesn't make you a Real Writer(tm), then there's no such thing.