Looking Up

Odd Trundles complained that he wanted his walk, complained that I was not moving quickly enough to get to his walk, complained that he had to go down stairs to get to his walk, complained that it was raining during his walk, complained that his walk was too long, complained that he had to go up the stairs at the end of his walk, and is now complaining that his walk is over and he has a mouthful of chew toy.

It’s hard being a bulldog. Especially when there’s an Australian shepherd nipping at your hind end to quiet you down or boss you around, and the human won’t throw the chew toy the precise amount of distance you require.

The rain was unexpectedly warm, though. Plum trees are beginning to wear their fleece decorations, cherry trees waking up in droves instead of just the odd sentinel here and there. The ones who woke early are whispering with contentment, the newcomers singing a beat late but full-throat. The crocuses have their yellow hearts on display, jonquils and daffodils nodding cheerfully…and the hellebore, as usual, is watching this with a great deal of amusement.

I am finally possessed of a day where I don’t have to leave the house, and plan to spend it right here, occasionally stretching or looking out the window to see the remaining cedars dance on a wet spring wind. I’m sure Miss B wants a run, but she’ll have to make do with walkies. I have the fallout from an incredibly emotional scene in Roadtrip Z to write, and last night’s prince-and-general conversation over drinks to look through, tweak, and layer description into. Hostage is now 50K, and I’m only halfway through what I need it to be. Plus I should get started on revisions for Steelflower’s Song if I intend to release it later this year. And there’s the little matter of Jozzie & Sugar Belle to revise, as well as edits for Rattlesnake Wind coming down the pike at some point. In short, there is more work than even I know what to do with, and that is my preferred state.

Still, I am going to take a few minutes to enjoy some well-earned, nourishing solitude. And the fact that I don’t have to leave the house today.

Things are looking up.

On Wish Fulfillment, and “Art”

Someone made a snotty comment about art and entertainment being mutually exclusive (yes, this was on Twitter, how did you know?) and it irritated me enough to pop off a thread in response. It also got me thinking about wish fulfillment.

Inevitably, whenever someone starts making the case for entertainment being art too, goddamn if someone doesn’t trot out the Schlock Argument. The Schlock Argument is “this very popular thing is also critically panned and will not Stand the Test of Time, therefore your argument about entertainment being worthwhile is invalid.”1

Glossed over by the Schlock Argument are two very important things: who are the “critics” and how much time are we talking about standing the test of? In literature, critics have historically and overwhelmingly been old white men, and coincidentally (or not) it’s those same old, privileged white men who get to decide what gets kept and taught, held up as example and poured into malleable young minds. I’m sure you, my discerning reader, can see the problems inherent in that.

Which brings us to Twilight, and Fifty Shades.

No, I’m not joking.

I have often called the Twilight series “Mormon Housewife Wish Fulfillment”, with varying degrees of insolence, amusement, and sometimes even a touch of disgust. I can’t count the number of times in a private setting I was privy or party to a hashing out of the problems with characterization, narrative structure, plot, believability, or anything else involving Sparkly Vampires. The massive popularity of very weak tea indeed filled plenty of other writers with head-scratching bemusement or fury. “This is just so bad,” they would say to me. “Why, dear God, why?” And I agreed. Twilight is, by any standard, a hot mess lacking any real characterization or craft, and full of questionable things. (Renesmee, anyone?)

It is also art.

Twilight provoked a massive emotional and financial response. The latter has little bearing on this, except to underscore the intensity of the former. Twilight was genuinely, absolutely bonkers–but it was true. It provoked that emotional response because it was the absolute, unfiltered wish fulfillment of a human being in a particular time and place. I wish Livejournal hadn’t gone over to the Russians, because way back when the Sparkly Vampire Fandom was at full throttle, I read a marvelous piece by a former Mormon detailing how Latter-Day Saints theology and peculiarities filled the books to the brim. I remember exactly where I was sitting while reading that piece, because it burst upon me like blinding sunshine. I would love to link it here and give proper credit, because it was a dilly.

Bella as a character is a fabulous nonentity, so vague and dim the reader can project the reader’s own self onto her with little trouble at all, and therein lies an attraction, a powerful (and somewhat guilty, for me) pleasure. We all feel clumsy and at sea, and we all dream of finding out we’re special–not just everyday human special, but freesia-scented special. Stephenie Meyer either got her ego out of the way or sank so deeply into it as to become unself-conscious to the point of enlightenment; the result was a pure, grade-A, unfiltered wish fulfillment fantasy that was so specific to her time and place it became universal.

A paradox of art, that. Everyone alive has wanted to be freesia-scented special. Everyone wants a soulmate, if only to be completely understood. Everyone likes the idea of being protected by supernally beautiful creatures, everyone wants excitement and danger that isn’t really danger because you know you’ll be saved anyway.2 Twilight launched a billion fanfics and a massively profitable phenomenon because it went all-in, and readers could sense and responded to that commitment.3 It reminds me of the craze around Gothic novels, especially the ones wildly popular in their day and all but forgotten now because they were largely written for (and often by) women. Repressed sexuality and wish fulfillment is a powerful combination, and speaking truly about either is magnetic.

I’m sure you can guess why I mention Fifty Shades, as well. Yes, the fanfic (and the eventual book) is problematic as fuck. Issues of consent, authenticity, suppression of women, the poison of patriarchy run through both Fifty Shades and Twilight, which Fifty Shades was written mostly in response too. But both hit it big, because both evoked a huge emotional response–both are fantasies of wish fulfillment, of endless love, of submission becoming a power without the drawbacks normally accompanying real power.

Wish fulfillment isn’t just for women, either. Just look at Tom Clancy novels, or any movie starring Tom Cruise.

“Yes,” I hear you saying, “but, Lili, come on. Art? You’re calling them art?”

Yes. They were true, people responded to them, they are art. The false dichotomy between “art” and “entertainment” exists only to oppress; it’s a fucking classist fairytale. The idea that art has to be Serious, Disturbing, Approved by Professors, or Have Survived The Test of Time Plus Racism, Sexism, and Other Isms is pure bullshit. Art must be true, and the audience will respond to that truth. Whether or not art “survives the test of time” depends on cultural narratives of importance and who’s funding the fucking universities, not on any worth inherent in the art or artist themselves. Which sucks ass–how many beautiful, amazing things have been lost because nobody thought an artist a real human being because of their dangly bits, skin color, or socioeconomic position? The answer, always, is “too many.”

Yes, Twilight and Fifty Shades are badly written. The craft of either is bloody abysmal. They’re messy, farfetched, and often incoherent. But they are true. The artists behind them went right to the wall with gusto, refusing to water down the fantasy, the wish-fulfillment. Both of them were incredibly lucky to hit during a historical era where they could reach wide dissemination and reap financial returns. Both of them were fortuitous in their timing, and in tapping a few deep cultural veins.

None of the luck means they are not art.

Art is made for humans, by humans. It is to evoke an emotional response. I have often told my writing students the flavor of the response doesn’t matter–hate, love, laughter, weeping. It’s the response itself you’re going for, and the only way to get it is by telling the truth, in whatever fashion you can and refusing to look away. Don’t ask, is it art? Ask instead, is it true?

And if it’s not, revise until it is. You may hit it big, you may not, but either way, you’re a fucking artist. End of story, period, amen.

***

Hapless Fruit

News! There’s news! Season 3 of Roadtrip Z—Pocalypse Road–is now up for preorder. (Yes, there will be a paperback version, too.) Also, I hived off my editing, cover copy, and formatting services to a separate site. 1

I’m kind of waiting for that email address to start receiving the email equivalent of cold calls. There’s been a rash of them lately, people wanting me to stick links to something or another in one of my blog posts. I’d almost be willing to do so if their content was reasonable…except for the informality of their address. I’m much more likely to consider a request kindly (or at all) if the stranger making the request doesn’t start their email with “Hey Lili!” Or “Hey Lillith”, or “Hi Lilly”, or some other version of the same. Strike one is acting like you know me; strikes two and three are misspelling my name. 2 Some days the offers on tap even amuse me, like the “anti-piracy service” that wants me to give them my phone number.

Mostly, it’s the hapless and transparent that amuse me. There’s a line between that and insulting my intelligence, and some days my drawing of the line is dependent upon my mood.

Consequently I’ve been having fun consigning things to my spam folders. True to form, I have a little song I often sing when I have the time and the inclination and a few things to heave into the spam pile. It’s basically just me repeating “You’re dead, you’re dead, you’re dead to me,” to the tune of whatever music I heard last. (It gets really fun when I’ve been on an opera jag.) Since today is apparently all about Depeche Mode, you can well imagine.

Yesterday I also wrote 7K of a weird steampunk-y romance, but I don’t think it’ll go anywhere. I feel so bloody liberated at not having to keep forcing myself to write the one book that was prompting heaving and all sorts of internal damage, I’m just slopping over with creativity. Unfortunately, today I have a million things to do that do not involve wordcount. In between the grocer’s, baking, and paperwork, I’ll have to steal away for a few forbidden sentences.

That’s the most satisfying kind of writing, and sometimes I think I fill most of the day with trivia in order to make the writing feel like stolen fruit. Other times, I’m sure that it’s the trivia that provides grist, or that I simply amuse myself until my most creative time–from about 3pm to 10pm–rolls around. Interestingly enough, 3-4pm is the doldrums, that time during which i am most likely to feel that my life has no meaning and I might as well walk off a cliff, so I begin writing to force away the urge to find one.3 When I’m allowed to pursue the schedule my body wants–rising about noon, at work between 1-2pm, a long walk/run in the evening, more work and going to bed between 3-5am) the doldrums don’t occur, but my internal clock is at variance with the rest of the world, including children’s school hours and the dogs’ stomachs.

Adapt and make do.

Anyway, this has taken an hour, since I am distracted with lists of things to do today and dogs who need petting and cooing such a good girl, such a best boy. The coffee has soaked in, and it’s time to embark upon Monday.

Over and out.

Alarm, Buffet

I put my alarm clock across the room on my dresser, so I have to get out of bed to turn it off. Both the kids have used this strategy with much success, but it wasn’t necessary for my silly self until this past winter. Even the sunrise function, where the attached lamp starts glowing a half-hour before the alarm and ramps up to simulate dawn, wasn’t helping. I would roll over, turn the damn thing off when it began to glow, and roll back, all without waking. Miss B loved it, because I would also somnolently scratch behind her ears for a little bit before passing out again.

She also hated it, because I wouldn’t get up, even when she put her nose in my face. There’s nothing like feeling whiskers tickle your lip and opening your eyes to see a carnivore’s big sad eyes–and sharp pointy teeth.

Odd, of course, didn’t mind, since it meant his early-morning nap blurred into his mid-morning nap. The only thing he did mind was brekkie being a bit late, but since brekkie happens after he gets up, gets his morning song, and unloads, world without end, amen, that wasn’t a huge problem.

Odd remembers the one and only time he missed breakfast at our house. That was back when he went to the vet as a pup, got an umbilical hernia fixed–and got neutered, too, all in one go. You don’t want to do surgery on bulldogs if you can avoid it, since their airways are already so compromised sedation becomes a hazard. Odd didn’t mind the crate-ride there, and didn’t mind coming home minus a few bits–he was already too roly-poly and corkscrewed to be able to reach his stitches, so he didn’t need a Cone of Shame. What he did mind, and complained LOUDLY about, was the lack of breakfast that one notable morning.

Dogs are mostly Zen creatures of the Now, but he remembers the one day brekkie was not delivered. Miss B, of course, shrugs and yips at him when he starts grousing about it. “BEFORE I CAME HERE, BREAKFAST WAS NEVER CERTAIN,” she informs him, and Odd, aghast, begins running in circles and barking loudly, as if this is a prospect.

“You’re just making it worse,” I tell B, and she looks at me with a certain gleam in her eye.

“HE’S GETTING EXERCISE,” she says, and I rub behind her ears.

Yesterday, since we went on a run, she was reasonably mellow. Which made that afternoon’s Squirrel Antics somewhat easier to handle–the little bastards have awakened after the cold snap, and are digging in the garden to see if I’ve put any more peas down there. (I haven’t. Yet.) Of course, the Mad Tortie sees them, and while they are not birds, she still yearns to nab a specimen. (Despite, I might add, a squirrel being roughly her size if you take off her tail and poufy fur.) It’s one of her great unfulfilled desires, like constant catnip and a door she can lie across the threshold of, neither inside nor out. The damn squirrels, including the new queen of the backyard heap (and Lord, she is a story unto herself) think the garden boxes are a buffet; the Mad Tortie thinks the squirrels are a buffet, Miss B longs to herd them all up, and Odd Trundles knows very well Mum gets mad if you go digging in the boxes but the prospect of New Friends drives what little sense he lays claim to straight out of his capacious, rock-hard noggin.

But that’s another blog post, since I’m nursing three separate burns in three separate places only left hand from the red sauce yesterday. That didn’t happen during the squirrel hijinks, mind you. It was just an added fillip to a very strange day that ended with yet another hilarious scene in the nutless kangaroo shifter story. (Its working title is Scrotum Search, because I can’t help myself, but it will probably be Jozzie & Sugar Belle if I decide to do it as a serial.)

Since I’m up and have taken down a tankard of tea, I might as well go for a run. Maybe today I’ll tire Miss B out enough that she won’t want to herd everything in the newly-unsnowed yard.

I’m not holding my breath.

Enforced Rest

I could finally run again this morning! It was chilly, nasty, and damp; Miss B kept trying to kill me, but I persevered. Taking a week off while my body fought a book I shouldn’t have been writing and a furious cold caught at a train station might have been good for healing, but I was tied in several knots by this morning.

I’m still tense, but not entirely murderous.

Over the weekend I used the enforced rest to finish revisions on Sparked–the first book of the YAs my agent wanted me to write just for her. I believe she has plans that involve shopping them to publishers, but that’s outside my field of vision right now. I’m still not sure I want to get involved with YA publishing again. But may gent knows best, and in any case, I wanted to write something just for her. My version of a gift, since I find present-giving (and receiving) utterly charged circumstances unless my children are recipients. Anyone else, anxiety kicks in. So I write books for people I love, and it doesn’t seem to turn out half bad.

Anyway, Miss B is finally calm, with all her week’s worth of fidgets worked out. I am not nearly as calm, but I can tell I’ll sleep tonight. What I’ll do when may body decides it can no longer run, who can tell? I might expire of insomnia and sheer irritation at that point. Today, though, the plan is red sauce (the beginnings of said sauce are beginning to smell divine) and laundry–and moonlighting with the nutless kangaroo story. Said story choked up 2K yesterday, while I was supposed to be resting in a post-revision blur.

They never do what you want, stories. They twist and turn and sometimes bite. I swear I will NOT turn this story into a book, it’s a novella at most. (The characters trying to crowd in to get their POVs heard are laughing at me.)

Odd Trundles is exhausted from his weekend too. It involved a thorough washing, never one of his favorite things. It also involved irrigating his sore paw with hydrogen peroxide. If it takes bathing his toes in that shit daily, that’s what I’ll do. It’s a good thing I love his cranky, creaky, snoring little self.

So. I have a tankard of hot Earl Grey, my favorite sweater, and the smell of oregano-heavy tomatoes is wafting through the house.

Over and out.