Lilith Saintcrow

Crossposted to Deadline Dames.

Today, dear Reader, I will get philosophical. My apologies in advance.

Last night I was working on the third Strange Angels book. I’d revised as far as one of the hidden hinges in the story–let me make an instructive little detour here.

In every story there are visible and hidden “hinges”–places where the particular bits of the story “hang,” for structure. The visible hinges are crisis points and revelations, easy enough to spot. The hidden hinges, however, are harder to see. This is partly because the hat-trick of writing depends just as much on what happens behind the curtain as it does on the visible excitements that make up the outer story.

It is also partly because the hidden hinges mean more to the author, if that is possible, than they can to the reader.

Okay, detour over. This particular hidden hinge was one I knew I had to expand on, but the first time around, in the heat of creation, I hadn’t known what to put there. I was going along in the particular, fierce but relaxed concentration of revision, and I suddenly reached the place where there was a “hole” in the manuscript. And I knew what to put in it. So I did, which just happened to bring me to 60K on the total wordcount, my goal for the night.

And then, sitting there and taking a deep breath, I burst into tears. Because the hidden hinge in this particular scene means a great deal to me, and touched a raw place.

The funny thing is that a reader will maybe spend a second or a second and a half reading this particular line, with no consciousness of how it affects me-the-writer. Their eyes will pass right over it, and that’s okay. It’s a hidden hinge, and not meant to be decorated to draw attention to its little self.

Here’s the important thing, though: I was terrified of writing it.

So much of writing is going where the fear is. Fear is power, and a lot of writers don’t want to go there. It’s absolutely natural. Who, after all, wants to be afraid or hurt? Feelings of fear or pain exist for a reason. They are warnings, and quite effective ones. They’re like the reflex that pulls your hand back before you realize you’ve touched something hot. (Gom jabbar notwithstanding. Ha.)

Harnessing that power, going where the fear is, writing even though your hands are sweating and your heart is in your mouth, is the very least you owe your readers. You have a bargain with them–you tell the truth, they keep reading. Lie, bullshit, pull back or cop out–and they sense it. They smell it. It will get your book thrown across the room faster than anything.

Your method of telling the truth may not work for some readers. They may not like how you do it, the words or the themes you choose. That’s okay. For the ones whose reception matches with your transmission, the ring of truth is what fulfills the bargain and keeps them coming back. It is far, far easier to find those fans who will love your stuff if you’re not bullshitting. Bullshit and punking out effectively close the gate before your horse has even left.

It breaks your legs before you can begin the race.

The temptation to punk out is huge, especially when it comes to hidden hinges. Why put something in that makes you cry or hurts you, reminds you of a failure or a heartache, when you know the reader’s eyes will pass right over it?

Because you’ll know. Because they’ll sense it. Because even if nobody knows you welshed on that part of the deal, you will and it’s still f!cking welshing. It betrays the Muse, it betrays your readers, and you betray yourself. If you don’t care about the first two you should care very much about the third, because you are the only person you will have to deal with 24-7 for the rest of your life. You will know.

Yes, the fear is there. It is overwhelming. Committing yourself to writing is just like committing yourself to anything worthwhile.

It will be painful. There will be blood.

I can do you blood and love without the rhetoric, and I can do you blood and rhetoric without the love, and I can do you all three concurrent or consecutive, but I can’t do you love and rhetoric without the blood. Blood is compulsory — they’re all blood, you see.

That’s Tom Stoppard, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead. And it’s also true.

Art is the transformation of the world. Transformation don’t come easy and it don’t come cheap, honey. Nothing worthwhile ever does. The fear will try every trick in the book to keep you from writing truly, to keep you “safe” and in the kiddie pool. It’s like the Internal Censor–it will not go away, and it thinks it’s helping you. It is–it’s helping to show you where the power is. But it does not help you if it makes you punk out or look away, even on the hidden hinges.

Find that fear. Face it down. Keep your eye on it and let it snarl at you all it wants. It’s only fear, after all, and with the Muse as chair and grammar as whip you can make it do all sorts of tricks. Commit yourself completely. Let there be blood on the page. Don’t stop. Don’t punk out. Run the fear, don’t let it run you.

Yes, it’s hard. But if this job was easy it wouldn’t be half as heart-in-mouth, adrenaline fun, now would it?

And now, excuse me. I’ve got to go bleed a little more.

Have fun.

I have been working all morning, but it seems like I’ve gotten nowhere since that work is all of the invisible maintenance variety. Ugh.

* First, the serious: NPR won’t use the word “torture” when Americans do it. But when anyone else does, it’s fair game.

* Charles Kaiser pronounces the Washington Post dead, writes obituary.

* Now the geeky-cool scientific: the Sarychev volcano eruption seen from space, and the “volcano sunsets” it’s causing.

* Last but not least, the utterly freaking hilarious: the 2009 Bulwer-Lytton Contest winners are announced. SO WORTH the half-hour I spent reading them. (Hat tip to Kat Richardson for the link, and also for noting the winner hails from Federal Way, WA. Washington state rules!)

And that’s all, folks. Back I go to plugging away on the manuscript…

You know, dear Readers, that I don’t comment on reviews for a variety of reasons. I’m the first to tell a fellow writer to buck up, ignore the effing reviewers, and be professional.

I saw Alice Hoffman’s Twitter fail the other day, where she called out a Boston Globe reviewer. I winced as I read it. Hoffman was irate because the reviewer had completely given away the plot of the novel–”spoiling” in a major newspaper. She called the reviewer a moron and posted the reviewer’s public email and publicly-posted phone number. Since Hoffman was new to Twitter (fifteen hundred followers when I looked, but I could be wrong and her Twitter account’s been deleted) the reviewer wasn’t deluged. But still, plenty of people have been gleefully trashing Hoffman since. Including people I used to follow on Twitter.

And you know…even though I think Hoffman was a noob for getting angry publicly, I understand.

One disclaimer: I am a big fan of Hoffman’s work. Seventh Heaven and Here On Earth are two of my favorite books EVER. She’s an autobuy for me, and I think she deserves the terms “genius” and “magical realist.” Plus I’m a fellow writer (though just a hack, and not in her league at all) and, well, I feel her pain. I’ve been tempted to sound off many a time, even knowing what a bad f!cking idea it is.

Here’s the thing: we are awash, on the Internet, with people calling themselves “reviewers.” Pretty much everyone’s got a dog in the fight. There’s Amazon reviews, which are a sinkhole of comments that may or may not be about the book or item in question. There’s Internet “review sites” that do follow Sturgeon’s Law–many of them are there to stroke the “reviewer’s” ego, and end up being crap. There are group review sites where the group dynamic has more in common with the locker room or a Plastics clique.

I think a review site that does low-bullshit, high-quality, and scorchingly funny reviews is Smart Bitches, Trashy Books. Looking at it and comparing it to other sites of its ilk, you might be tempted to see the foul-mouthing and the bad grades and the cover snark as all alike. But I have always found the Smart Bitches to stand out from their contemporaries for two reasons: honesty and professionalism, both in short supply when we’re talking about “reviewers.”

Candy and Sarah have reviewed some of my books. They put disclaimers on the reviews because both Candy and Sarah have a personal (well, in Sarah’s case, as personal as emailing a little bit over personal questions etc. can make it) relationship with me, and they put that up front for other readers to be aware of. They savaged the books on some points (rightfully so, I might add) and noted their good points too (which I was grateful for.) I did not feel like the reviews were personal attacks, or that Candy or Sarah had anything to “prove” by the reviews. I was happy with them, even if they stung.

Such is not always the case. I’ve read reviews where the reviewers obviously had a personal problem with something I’d said on my blog, or something they thought I said, or even something someone else said or a bad hair day or something, and they took it out in the review, on my book. I’ve read screeds that don’t even spell the characters’ names right, where it was obvious they didn’t even read more than the cover copy, spoilers galore, and a whole host of inappropriate and highly inflammatory reviews. They stung, yes. They were out there on the Net for everyone to see. And in some cases there were the usual blog swarm of Yes Men piling on to show how cool they were by trashing the subject du jour. Which just happened to be my book on that day.

Yeah, it made me mad. Yeah, I’ve bitched about it to the Selkie over drinks. Yeah, I’ve written private, flaming responses and deleted them lest I be tempted. Hey, I’m only human.

This is why I understand Hoffman’s frustration. We are literally drowning in reviewers, online and off. The Boston Globe reviewer did give spoilers, and did clunk through an embarrassing (and in my opinion, unwarranted) bad review. (The review reads to me like the reviewer wanted to cause a bit of ruckus by panning the book, for her own reasons. But that’s just me.) The seduction of the easy response was there on Twitter, and Hoffman took it. When you’re mad you don’t think straight. I’m pretty sure that at some point in the future I’m going to be mad enough to break my own rules and cause an Internet kerfluffle. The flesh, alas, is weak.

But still, I’ll say it again: I understand and share Hoffman’s frustration. Being a writer means getting rejected and judged over and over again. We’re judged by agents, editors, publishers, and finally reviewers and readers. Every time we turn around we’re told our manuscript could be better with X or isn’t good enough because of Y. The prevailing attitude in our culture that devours the content we produce and kicks us in the teeth in myriad ways for being “artists” and producing it does not help. “Don’t be such a big baby! You chose to be a writer, you gotta have a thick skin!”

Just because I have a thick skin doesn’t mean someone has to attack me to prove it, and it doesn’t mean I need to put up with inappropriate crap. It also doesn’t mean inappropriate crap hurts less. And just because a writer chooses to write those books you do or don’t love does not make them your bitch, your property, or your punching bag/whipping boy. A lot of people, however, did not get that memo. A lot of people will never get that memo, and dealing with it as a writer is wearying.

“Wait!” you could say. “Alice Hoffman is (that magic thing) a NYT Bestseller! She doesn’t have anything to prove! Why couldn’t she just keep her mouth shut?”

You know…I try to feel better when I read reviews by people who obviously read and loved my work, people who got it and liked it, who maybe had some quibbles but overall liked it. The problem is, we’re trained to accentuate the negative, so to speak. We’re trained–and I don’t know if this is writers in general, or women writers because we’re women and taught from the cradle to make nice–to give greater weight to criticism, warranted or not, than to praise. Praise seems evanescent, while the hurt lingers.

I don’t think a writer ever feels like they’ve proved themselves. If they do, they tend to go down what I call the Anne Rice Road–I’m thinking about her famous comment (I can’t dig up a link, so this is as best as I remember it) about how she’d worked her ass off for many years to get to the point where she didn’t have to let an editor touch her beautiful prose. If you, as a writer, understand the danger of that line of thought and choose not to go there, the alternative is to listen and be vulnerable over some things. Including a crappy-ass review that dumps, for reasons that do not seem to you to be justified, all over work you spent years producing and agonizing over while it’s in production.

Which brings me back to the Internet. A lot of writers from even just-slightly-older generations do not get that the Internet is a huge effing echo chamber that isn’t ubiquitous even though it seems like it is to everyone on it. About the fiftieth time I saw a review site where the dominant tone was “we’re too smart for anybody, especially the writers whose work we’re gleefully insulting” and saw the long line of Yes-Men comments, I flashed back to high school and though, haven’t we f!cking outgrown this?

I think that a lot while reading a lot of reviews–and not just reviews of my own work, thank you.

No, we apparently haven’t outgrown high school. When I worked retail I was pretty sure 60% of the population never does. Since I’ve been on the Internet I’ve modified that slightly–I’m pretty sure 75-80% of the population never does. (What can I say? I’m an optimist.)

So, while I winced when I saw a writer I adore and consider a class act losing her sh!t a little on Twitter, I understood. God howdy, how I ever understood. The thing that comforts me is the cyclical nature of such things–in fandom, for example, you stick around for a year or two and you start seeing the patterns. “We’re having this argument again?!” is a cry I’ve heard many a time in fandom, and it seems to repeat itself on the Internet ad nauseum.

It doesn’t take the sting out of a vendetta-review, or even out of mildly bad reviews that hit on a really bad f!cking day and make the top of my head fly off. Still, it provides a grain of salt that keeps one from losing one’s mind some days.

That is, I’m afraid, the best I’m going to get. I am not resigned to it, but I am a realist. I don’t know if it’s ever going to get better, due to the nature of the Internet as a nondiscerning echo-chamber. But I do know that in a couple weeks it’s going to be something else, someone else losing their sh!t on Twitter, and another crop of reviews flooding around the bilges. There will be ones that hurt, and ones that don’t. In the end, the ones that hurt are just like every other voice in your head or elsewhere that picks at one’s self esteem and tells you to quit. You can’t let it get so loud it drowns out the story.

The trick is to just keep writing.

Play nice in the comments, folks. Thanks.

And I’m breaking my afternoon silence to note two things: there’s an interview with me over at Drops of Crimson, where I answer the Dean question and the Lipton questions, and there is a new Secret Life of Dolls. If you don’t read SLOD, you are so missing out. I got to “tiny Fay Wray” and totally, completely lost my sh!t laughing.

That is all.

You can win a copy of The Eternal Kiss, a YA vampire anthology, by heading on over to Suzanne McLeod’s place this fine morning. The Eternal Kiss is due out July 27 and features stories by a ton of awesome authors, including Libba Bray, Holly Black, Rachel Caine…

…and, well, yours truly has a short little story in there calledAmbition, which almost didn’t make it in. Because it’s dark and nasty. Actually, it’s one of a very few “bilateral” stories I’ve ever done. A bilateral story happens when I take a whack at a short story, I don’t like it, I scrap it and start all over again, and then go back and finish the first start anyway because the second whack at the short story showed me what the first one should have been about in the first place.

Sound confusing? It’s doubly so when I’m working at it.

Short stories are far more difficult for me, because the execution has so little space to move in. Each choice in a novel narrows down further choices, from the very first line. In short stories this is taken to the Nth degree.

And now I have to finish my coffee and get down to getting the third Dru book into reasonable first-draft shape. If I can keep up wordcount and polish at the same time I will reward myself with a sliver of choco tonight. Mmmmh. I can already taste it.

Over and out.