Lilith Saintcrow

Last night’s dinner was a HUGE success. I slow-cooked some boneless pork ribs, baked and mashed some potatoes, and put together a Caprese salad. Everything came off more-or-less perfectly, and it was really, really easy to do. The trick is to put the potatoes in the oven (on metal shishkabob skewers, then wrapped in foil) two hours before you want to eat. Then, an hour before, put your Caprese together and cover it with plastic wrap, throw it on the table. You should end up with about half an hour to blaze through a bit of kitchen cleanup before you yank the spuds out, chop them up, throw them in a mixer with some butter, milk, salt, and garlic, and voila! Dinner, she is served.

I’m a big fan both of easy recipes and of cleaning while I cook. Since I end up doing most of the cleanup unless I twist someone’s arm, I tend to clean at the same time I cook, just to keep the kitchen from exploding under the weight of sheer chaos. YMMV.

All right, let’s get on to the salad–link salad, that is.

* From the Vintage Crime LJ community, here’s some rules about detective fiction: one set from S. S. Van Dine, the creator of Philo Vance; and one set from Msgr. Ronald Knox.

I find these interesting for two reasons. One, I like seeing genre rules laid out, and I like to see how successful authors talk about their audience. Two, I like seeing these sorts of rules because they are a direct invitation to understand them so one can effectively play with them and break them.

Breaking the rules being, you know, three-quarters of the fun.

* Speaking of breaking the rules, I noticed a theme between these two sets of rules–the absolute set-in-stone denial of any paranormal or supernatural event. Being who I am, I suppose that’s why I’m not writing crime fiction. Well, I am writing a SORT of crime fiction, but it is kind of like the redheaded stepchild of crime fiction.

* OH JOHN RINGO NO T-shirts! They’re for a good cause. Proceeds are donated to the Helen Bamber Foundation.

* And if you’re wondering what the cry “OH JOHN RINGO NO!” means, this blog entry might help. I will warn you, it is Not Safe For Work. It contains words and themes you might find objectionable. If you have problems with pulpy men’s adventure fiction or analysis of pulpy men’s adventure fiction, DO NOT CLICK. And don’t go over there, read half the entry, and fire off some halfass comment about how you’re offended. Just don’t, okay?

There’s a line between exploitative fiction and what I call “purple fiction”–that guilty pleasure reading we all indulge in. While purple fiction probably deals with morally reprehensible subject matter, I feel it is ethically sound in intent. Exploitative fiction is like a snuff film–you know it when you see it, and you’re sickened by the very idea, and it’s pretty obvious that the creator isn’t having tongue-in-cheek fun with themes or cultural notions of sexuality. Exploitative fic is just a joyless, offensive grind, on more than one level.

As with any definition I give here, YMMV. This subject really deserves its own blog post, but I am so not in the mood for that kind of critical analysis right now. I leave it to wiser heads than the one mine is turning out to be this morning.

* I am, instead, in the mood for Cheezburger.

more cat pictures

I should probably watch Labyrinth again. Sometimes a girl just needs a “David Bowie in tight pants” fix.

* Last but not least, I was laying in bed last night reading, and it struck me…goddamn, I’m weird. Because this is my bedtime reading, and I was enjoying the hell out of it. When did literary criticism become ENJOYABLE? How the hell did that happen?

I’m mystified, and I’m even more mystified by my urge, when reading these sorts of things, to get little plastic dinosaurs and act out the book’s assertions with them.

Yes, utterly mystified. But hey, if you can’t have fun with dinosaurs while reading theses, what would be the point of existence?

Over and out.

G’morning, all. Since I’m bleary-eyed and pre-caffeinated (you would not believe how long I had to sit here thinking about how many ‘f’s does caffeinated make) I’ll offer a few random bits and go on my stumbling, shambling way.

* My buddy Jeff Davis got a shout-out in the weekly supplement paper ’round these parts last week. Jeff is the author of several ghost guides to the Pacific Northwest and a trove of information on weirdness, both historical and paranormal, in the area as well. (His most recent book is about Portland’s ghosts.) Plus, I got to see a copy of the pretty, pretty Weird Washington, which Jeff co-wrote and provided almost all the pics for. It’s AWESOME. And picking Jeff’s brains about the weirdness contained in the books while sitting on the patio at McMenamin’s, watching the sailboats go by…priceless.

* Speaking of good food, another shout out goes to the folks at La Bottega, who feed me damn near every weekend. If you’re ever in the area, I highly recommend stopping by. They’re slow food, and more European than Americans might be used to; so it might be a bit of a shock to people used to fast-food and indifferent service. They’ll ask you how you like the food–and REALLY LISTEN when you tell them what you think. Which is just one of the many reasons I like them. Plus Peter and Lisa, the owners, are just awesome people to talk food with.

All this food talk is making me hungry. It’s ridiculous, how much I love fooooooood.

* If you like Indian food and are in my neck of the woods, I’ve gone back to Chutney’s three times now, and each time I was impressed. I keep thinking I should try some of their Indian wines, but the house Cabernet is so good I get seduced into a couple of glasses each time. The naan bread is awesome, and their butter chicken is fast becoming my favorite. The UnSullen One digs their Chicken Chettinad, and we’ve just recently sampled the Chicken Korma too and found it to be delicious.

* Speaking of food, the Red Velvet Cupcakes? I made a double batch on Friday. And ZOMG awesome were they good. Next time I WILL make sure the eggs are room temperature, because there was almost an Incident when I dumped the eggs in and the butter decided it wanted to get cold again. But it all worked out. I think I’m going to be using disposable pastry bags instead of ziploc baggies with the end snipped off. The ziploc method just didn’t do it for me, I think because the topography of the bag was improper for a beginner. Yes, I realize I only have myself to blame.

For some reason, I cannot find a real pastry bag to save my life in the greater Vancouver area, and I don’t really want to go into Portland to check Sur La Table. Because that is a hit my bank account just won’t live with, going in there.

Even looking at the website…ohGod…please…stop…

…time passes…

* Okay, I’m back now. The ciabatta bread I was attempting on Friday did not turn out. Oh, it’s bread, and it’s beautiful bread at that, but I didn’t keep the dough wet enough, so it’s more like a nice tough white bread suitable for toasting and chewing than a ciabatta. It took me a little thinking to figure out where I’d gone wrong. You have to work a dough like that really wet, because the signature texture of it comes from the gluten being in long shiny strands instead of a packed mass. So I know what I did wrong and shall remedy it, along with putting together a buttermilk sourdough starter.

On the good side, though, I am learning about working with a banneton, and created a ZOMG-awesome-looking loaf with it.

* Tonight’s dinner is slow-cooked boneless ribs in barbecue sauce, roast mashed potatoes, and probably a Caprese salad since I have fresh mozz and some heirloom tomatoes for slicin’. We’ll see. I also have some fresh basil left over, so that will go in. Ah, for an herb mincer…

…manfully restrains self from revisiting Sur La Table site…

* In between all this I have paperwork to do and a lot of revisions to get done. I have shelved Weasel Boy for the time being, since all that’s left on that is the showdown and the denouement. (My, the French have such lovely words for things. No wonder it was a diplomatic language for a long time.) And there’s some Latin I need to get back to; I have sorely neglected it of late. I wonder if Rosetta Stone has a classical Greek program?

Anyway, off I go. Enjoy the lovely weather, everyone. I’ll be stuck with my head in a story, as usual, taking no notice of the big bright yellow ball in the sky. *grin*

Cross-posted to The Midnight Hour

Good morning. I hope you’re comfortable? Good, good. Have a cuppa, settle in.

This last week I was informed that my writing advice was utter crap and nobody wanted to hear it because I am a hack.

As my friend Neutronjockey pointed out:

I believe the word “hack” is derived from the horseworld. A hack being a reliable, trustworthy, hardworking — I believe it was specifically referring to a horse used for work rather than pleasure.

While I won’t deny you pleasure-use … there is certainly nothing wrong with being a hack.

Damn skippy. There is nothing wrong with being a hack. And to that end, dear Reader, here is my Hack Manifesto.

My advice on writing is geared pretty specifically toward people who want to make a living at it. It’s also geared to people who love language and want to tell a ripping good story. It is not for Artistes or for fragile speshul flowers who want only squeeful strokes for their delicate, heart-shattering, mindstopping genius. Go read Annie Dillard or Natalie Goldberg if you want to hear how haaaaard writing is on the Delicate Flower. Here in my writing world, we work, and we work hard. We get our hands dirty. We take our goddamn rejection like adults, we buckle our belts tighter, and we get on with producing the best manuscript possible on several fronts.

That’s what being a hack is–taking pride in your craft, taking pride in producing something people can use and love. This is the heart of hackdom–creating things people can enjoy.

You can write utter crap and get away with it. But that’s not what the true hack does. Writing fiction that is supposed to show how smart you are or how you’re treading the path of High Litrachur is a fool’s game–literature disappearing up its own asshole, so to speak. The hack’s purpose is twofold:

1. To produce the best writing possible; clear, vigorous, and working prose that is easy for the reader to understand. And capable of carrying hundreds of pounds of theme, symbolism, plot, characterization, and all the workings of a good story effortlessly–WITHOUT BORING THE READER BY HOW F!CKING SMART YOU THINK YOU ARE.

This is very important. The best writing is not hard to understand. It is deceptively simple. We are in this business of writing to communicate. That’s what writing is, communication. Your communication is dead on the vine if you’re not looking to be clear and reasonably concise.

There is a fair degree of art in being reasonably concise and as clear as possible. Clarity is not just using the appropriate word–it is using the appropriate sentence length, giving enough detail to build the scene but not enough detail to choke the unwary reader in a morass, pacing appropriately, and pruning away all that lovely writing you’ve perpetrated without a clear idea of what it’s for.

There’s another aspect to this: consistently producing what a reader will enjoy reading. Now, I’m not saying you have to stick to hackneyed trends because that’s what Everyone Else Who Has Succeeded In The Genre has done. I’m saying you need to understand why a genre is the way it is, why myths and fairytales work, the rules of the form you’re working in. You have to know HOW the engine works before you can go tinkering with it to make it work better. You can’t just slap crap on the page and expect people to worship you. If your business is to tell stories, you need to know how stories work so you can pick the appropriate parts to jam in their engines to make them run without sticking and backfiring.

2. The second purpose of the hack is to have fun.

Yes. Fun.

Look, if you’re not enjoying writing, or not enjoying WHAT you write, what the hell are you going to do it for? This is not a line of work where it’s possible to dink around and make a living. Precious few writers, even hacks, do this for the money. IF you want to make a living doing this, you MUST enjoy some part of it or you’re going to end up with a serious ulcer and bitter, bitter nastiness in your soul.

Plus, there is that indefinable quality of joy in some work. If I’m not having fun on the page, how the hell can I expect the Reader to? And I don’t just mean the shallow fun of explosions and titties, nice as those are. I mean the soul-deep joy of creating something that’s as good as I can make it. I mean a ripping good yarn, a story that the Reader gets emotionally involved in. I don’t care if the Reader laughs OR cries OR gets angry OR suffers with the characters OR gets angry at the characters. I’ll take ANY of those, or ANY other strong emotional reaction. If the Reader has that emotional reaction, that kick from the story, I have done my job and created something useful.

That, my dears, is my idea of FUN.

The hack understands that people are not going to consistently fork over their hard-earned cash to read mental wanking that doesn’t work for them. The hack wants to create something people will use. If it’s a romance novel that makes a Reader sigh, if it’s a Western that makes a young girl smell gunsmoke, if it’s a doorstop of fantasy that makes a fanboi happy inside, if it’s a novelization that draws a Reader back into the world of a movie or a telly series they loved so much–all of these are noble, worthy pursuits. These are things worth doing well for the Reader’s sake. Without the Reader, a writer is just shouting into the wind–and while a certain degree of shouting into the wind is good exercise, there comes a point (sooner than you think) when that shouting is just sound and fury signifying nothing but an overblown ego.

Part of being a hack is being professional. A hack comes in on or under deadline, understands that an editor really just wants to make a story better, knows that critical reviews (even the ones that are just sour grapes from a jackass who chooses to review instead of writing his* own crud) are valuable in their own way, and is constantly looking to make their work better. A hack understands the fine balance between obeying the conventions of a genre and slipping a hand under genre’s skirt to tweak ever so gently at those conventions–all to provide an enjoyable experience. (*snickers gently*)

A hack can engage in stunt-writing, as long as s/he has a clear idea of why/how to break the rules. But a hack will not expect others to bow down to their Deathless Genius. A hack takes pride in the work. A hack does not take pride in the size and firm plumpness of his or her ego.

And here’s another statement some people are going to take issue with. I firmly believe that each and every artist who deserves the name is a hack. An artist has a hack’s work ethic and a hack’s understanding of the form they’re working in. Those without the work ethic, those who do not expend the effort, are artistes, dabblers, dilettantes.

There is nothing wrong with artistes, dabblers, and dilettantes. They’re just fine, they’re okay, and there is nothing pejorative in those terms as far as I’m concerned. I simply save my admiration for the hacks because I understand how hard they work. And I am proud to be called a hack–the same way I’m proud to be called a bitch. A bitch works hard and takes no crap from anyone, is assertive, and has self-esteem. So does a hack. (Which, tongue-in-cheek, beggars the question of whether I’m a bitch hack. *snerk*)

Dickens was a hack. So was Dumas. So was Shakespeare–his funky butt got PAID for the work he produced, and he understood WHY the plays worked. (He still gave off some stinkers, but given the political climate he was working in, no wonder.) Zane Grey is just as valid as Jane Smiley, and I think they’re both hacks because they both figured out something that worked and kept/keep refining, reinventing, and and making it work still further. Louis L’Amour? Edgar Rice Burroughs? Alice Hoffman? Edgar Allen Poe? Barbara Kingsolver? Anthony Trollope? Jack Kerouac (even in his more nutty stimulant-laced moments)? Stephen King? Others too numerous to list?

Hacks. Proud hacks. Hacks I’m proud to read. The quirk that considers some of them “fine litrachur” and others “damn hackdom” is merely an accident of media taste. Or the taste of some hoity-toity reviewers.

So. Yes, I’m a hack. A hack is dependable, responsible, faithful, hardworking. A hack is in love with language and determined to produce the best story they can. A hack is enjoying herself to the hilt while churning out good prose. So, goddamn hell yeah, I’m a hack.

And I really would not want it any other way. Now excuse me. I’ve got writing to do. Tune in next week for my rant about how genre is just as good as highfalutin’ litrachur. I expect to wax just as rhapsodically bitchy about THAT, too…

* Or her. Gender bias, thy name is English.

Last night was Bad-Good Movie Night. The UnSullen One’s friend Squeaker (everyone gets a little nickname in the house, and on my blog as well. The house nickname is for affection, the blog nickname is to preserve the innocent and guilty alike, ha ha) was over, and we watched Big Trouble In Little China. My God, I used to love that movie. I hadn’t remembered it was a John Carpenter film; Carpenter does schlock so well.

Squeaker went home, and everyone else came home in the middle of The Golden Child. This was, I think, right before Eddie Murphy had that unfortunate coke habit, and while it’s nowhere near as good as his SNL stuff, it’s still one of my favorite movies. I reference it all the time, verbally, but nobody ever gets what I’m talking about (“Ha! I’ve GOT the Knife! Now turn on the goddamn LIGHTS!”) Now the UnSullen One and the Muffin have seen it, maybe they won’t look at me blankly when I go, “I said ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-I want the Knife!”

I am putting together a Hack Manifesto in my head for tomorrow’s writing post. It’s going well. I might throw it out and write about something else, though. You never know. Each Friday it’s pretty much as the spirit moves me, and my spirit’s been awful persnickety and changing its mind several times a day lately.

Speaking of which, I probably have to shelve Weasel Boy and get some revisions done. That would be the most effective use of my time; I’ll get right on that tomorrow. First I’m going to do a big push and see if I can’t get at least the bones of the big showdown out. Then I can wrap everything up with a HEA and shelve the draft for its pickling period.

Producing under emotional fire is good for me. I almost never freak out at high-tension emotional stuff while I’ve got Work going on. All the pressure from the firehose of angst gets bled off in the fiction, and the discipline of working every day gives me a refuge. I can’t go crying into my coffee when I’ve got wordcount to produce, dammit.

As a coping mechanism, it’s pretty awesome. God bless having enough work to get me through two years.

In other completely-random news, I got a much shorter bar on my Monroe. Originally my piercer scoffed at the idea that I’d want something two sizes down from the original piercing bar; most people only get one size down. You want to leave a little room, because oral piercings just love to swell. But even the size-down that everyone transfers to after the initial piercing’s been in for two weeks was just not working out for me, so we went down to (I think) a quarter. The piercer was amazed that I needed such a short bar after only two months of healing, but I have a thin upper lip (but a stiff one, mind you) and a nice deep indent for the flat back of the stud on the inside, which made the shorter bar not just possible but necessary.

So last weekend I got the ultra-short one, and it is now comfortable as all get-out. This is what the piercing was meant to be, and I feel like a pretty pretty princess with it in. Since I am short, round, and built like a truck, I am nowhere near pretty princesshood, but I FEEL it, and that’s the important thing.

So much of life is how good you can feel about it. It’s not quite optimism–it’s more like a non illigitamus carborundum that can be mistaken for optimism, but is really a refusal to put up with crap from any quarter. One of the things I enjoyed about Dante Valentine as a character was her straightforward approach to all sorts of problems–get out the goddamn katana and cut the mofo in half. There’s a certain amount of Gordian-knot-slicing that I endorse, and a certain amount of patient untangling I endorse as well. The problem is balance.

As the Abbot says in The Golden Child, “You must know WHEN to break the rules!”

Over and out.

A few random things, since I have been buried under an avalanche of stuff lately, some personal, some home-related. I’ll content myself with saying that as long as my kids are happy and healthy I still consider myself lucky. And as long as I can still write, all is well.

* Congratulations to Carla Demich and Sherry Williams, winners of signed Night Shift ARCs! Carla wrote a beautiful short-fiction piece dealing with Dante and Doreen, and Sherry–your blandishments have proved too much for me. Weak is a writer. Congrats also to Sarah Shelton, the runner-up, who shows us just what happened while Dante was on her slicboard ride in WFTD. Sarah, one more ARC has freed up. Winners, send your snail mail addresses to contest (at) lilithsaintcrow (dot) com. Also, Carla and Sarah, please enclose your permission for me to make the stories available to fans in a PDF, if you don’t mind? I have many packages to mail this week–Elise, I am sorry the Chihuahua of Real Life has been humping my ankle something fierce lately. I’m on it, I swear.

* Next, a small aside. This makes me think of Babette’s Feast. It makes me want to write a book. Lit-fic, no less. I’m sure I can go hold my head underwater and the urge will fade. Until then, though, I’ll work on Weasel Boy.

Hey, I know my place. I’m a hack.

* Speaking of which, I’ve been informed my advice on writing is, to put it kindly, utter crap. Since I am, yanno, a hack. To which I say, aw, shucks. My little heart’s allllll broke to pieces.

Heh. Not.

Seriously. I’m doing the best I can and sharing things I’ve found that work. Part of me bothering to make the Friday posts is demystifying a process that can pull a creative down if it’s loaded with hoohaw and naysaying. This is work and it’s hard work. The best I can do is tell you the signposts I’ve hacked out of the internal wilderness. They may not be your signposts, but they may help you find your own trail. If you don’t like what I have to say about writing, for heaven’s sake go read something else. The world’s full of writing books, you can certainly find one to your taste. Better yet, write your own goddamn books. But don’t email me with scurrilous ranting and expect me to be impressed. Especially when you can’t goddamn punctuate.

So my work is genre. So what? I don’t mind writing it and a couple people like to read it. That’s good enough for me.

* This baking blog is utter, complete evil. Now I can’t WAIT to bake Red Velvet cupcakes. I only wish I lived closer to the lovely, marvelous person who sent me the link–so I could bombard her with brownies. And cupcakes. Oooh, and the sesame bagels I have to make next.

* I’m 45K into a 75K book. The threads are coming together, the hero is On A Mission, the heroine is tied up and about to be visited by some very nasty characters, including her ex-husband. There will be much suffering and a Big Showdown.

It just doesn’t get any better than this.

But what would I know, eh? I’m a hack.

*snicker*

*snort*