As a writer, I find that words consume the better part of my days.  Not only do I use them in ways many people might not, but I can't help but to consider their deeper meanings, their collective place in this world, their power.  Words inspire, relay ideas, break hearts, and give hope.  They define cultures, start and end wars, and relay the most complex of ideas.  They affect people in ways that only actions might prevail and take our minds to places both abstract and profound.

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For the writer, words are the fundamental building blocks for creation.  Not much compares to taking a blank screen and transforming it into something tangible and real to the mind's eye, one word at a time.  A peer recently compared it to playing God.  I disagree.  Writing does not make one god-like; it makes one an artist, a vessel of the muses, a spokesperson for both the beauty and evils of humankind.

I can't speak for all writers, but I truly know I write because I must.  I write because there is much unsaid in this world, too much, and someone needs to fill in the missing piecess.  I believe that, through literature, mountains can be moved, people changed, and minds affected.  Through words, writers have purpose.  Through words, anything is possible.
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When I finished my first novel, I remember feeling not only a sense of accomplishment, but also that amazing sense of having something special to share with the rest of the world.  I still had much to learn about my craft and about publishing, but having that heavy stack of paper in my hands--my masterpiece--I felt like I was ready to take on the world.  But ready I was not.

I sent out queries to all of my top-list agents, and the rejections started pouring in.  Most were form letters, which were always disappointing, but a few were personal and encouraging--they saw the potential, but knew I was not quite there.

I wrote my second novel, then queried it to all of my previous rejections and then some.  Same response--no one was interested in my brilliant new book.  I was clueless.  Luckily, I was developing a thick skin in the process.

Now that I've written ten novels, it has been interesting to revisit those first two.  I recently redrafted them both, and I was surprised to see just how far my writing has come.  I have to admit ... I'm mortified that I had queried for both in their previous states, and that I had actually thought they were ready for agents' eyes, let alone all the world's.  They were good stories in dire need of more redrafts--in dire, dire need.  I'm very thankful that they did not get published as they were, as it would have done them a great disservice.

It took writing about a million words (and reading even more) for me to be able to see my old work through new eyes.  Writing, like any craft, takes time, patience, and lots of practice--and one can never stop refining one's art.  I am eager to see what the next million words will bring.
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FOE and Muses 12/02/2010
 
I recently finished reading J. M. Coetzee's Foe, which has left me contemplating heavily over the concept of the muse.  The story presents itself as the narrative of a woman who spends a year shipwrecked with Robinson Crusoe after setting off to find her missing daughter.  However, as the story unfolds, it becomes evident that Foe is many layers deeper than it first appears.
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I do not want to bore readers with an exhaustive critical analysis, but I do need to share that Foe is a novel all writers--or all who heed the muses--should read.  The ending is haunting, yet so relevent.

I consider the stories that have haunted me over the years ... the characters that have begged, sometimes demanded, to have their stories told.  I consider every one of them gifts, as maddening as they can be at times.  I have a constant desire to write.  I answer the call to numerous muses; the thought of adhering to just one genre would be like having to choose one food on which to sustain myself for the rest of my life.  Writing sustains my soul, so I listen whenever the muses call, no matter what stories they have for me. 

I've been asked before where my ideas come from and why I write the genres I write, and my answer is always the same: "I believe in muses."  Sounds silly, I know, but I must give credit where credit is due.  Most of the stories I write would not fall under mainstream or popular fiction, but they do have an audience--and writing them is always thoroughly enriching and fulfilling, no matter how hellish some points of the process might be.  Most readers who do not write have never experienced the blissful, beautiful hell that comes with being a writer, the hours upon hours of typing, revising, editing, the writer's block, the eye strain....  Writers truly write because we must.  The muses can be demanding, however, and the stories if left ignored eventually build like steam in a boiling kettle.  They don't always come easily, but they demand to be written just the same.

Sometimes the muses play tricks, throw in twists in the last minute, or change parts of the storyline without advance warning.  For example, I found out Andy's pivotal role in the second The Darkness and the Night book only when the the muses disclosed it in the story: I had a moment of silent awe as the scene revealing him played out, and then I went back and read his scenes in the first book, Blood and Coffee, delighted with the twist.  I know I'm alone in this phenomonon, and I would love to hear from others on t.

Other writers, what are your experiences with the muses?  Readers, what is your take?
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Wells, Vonnegut, and many others wrote it.  The canonical literature list includes it.  It is the strongest possible way to write social commentary--and yet, here in the contemporary U.S., there seems to place for it.  The typical reader calls it "depressing."  Everyone seems to want that happy ending.  I sympathize with those who want a "happily ever after" in all thay they read, really I do; however, happy endings to not affect change.  They do not reflect the realities of life and society.  "Happily ever after," when it all comes down to it, only exists in fairy tales.  Yes, there is a place for it--but there is also a place for change, for gritty reality, and for statements about the complacency in society.

Many of my works break against the current trends, in the belief that mainstream fiction is primed once more for speculative, more intellectually stimulating works.  My novels are for an audience that is ready to be shocked, to be intrigued, and to be made to think about the world in a different way.  Yes, this can be depressing at times, but it is also necessary.  Without a focus on the negative, we cannot focus on creating the positive.  Without dystopia, all that remains is complacency.

So, what do you think?  Is America ready for something new and different?  Is America ready to think?  Ready to face reality?  Ready for change?  I think so ... but I'm interested in what you have to say about it.
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In response to an article I recently wrote for the Guide to Literary Agents Editor’s Blog, Miss S. stated, “Perhaps you could have a follow-up with more detail about building tension--and how?”  I thought Miss S.’s suggestion was a good one, definitely worth the follow-up, so today I dedicate my blog to the subject of building tension in erotic and romantic works.

Good tension begins with good character dynamics.

In both erotic and romantic writing, it is important to consider the way the characters are going to interact.  Ask yourself, “What is it that attracts your protagonists to one another?  What could potentially keep them apart?”  You want the romance to build gradually, waxing and waning in a natural progression, while also creating obstacles that threaten to destroy the relationship before it has a chance to climax.  Don’t be afraid to tease your audience; you want your readers to crave satisfaction just as desperately as you want your characters to crave one another.  If you give in too quickly, you might make later interactions less satisfying—but if you hold off for too long, you’ll lose your readers’ interest.

Balance is the key.

Just like any good story should be divided into three “acts,” a good erotic romance should be divided into a number of “episodes.”  In a typical plotline, Act I introduces the characters and whatever initial dilemma they are to overcome, Act II brings added intensity to that dilemma (often with the overcoming of the first dilemma, only for a larger one to arise in its place), and Act III moves the story to its climax and conclusion.  With romantic and erotic “episodes,” the romantic and/or sexual tension should rise and fall around every thirty to fifty pages.  Just like with the necessary resolution and additional dilemma found in the transition between acts, one should strive for romantic or sexual dilemmas between these episodes, offering resolution—or even some kind of minor release—only to build the tension even higher than before.  Mistaken identity, misconstrued words and/or actions, quarrels and reconciliations, and love triangles all work well to add to the building and dropping of romantic and sexual tension.
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Think of the building of romantic tension as written foreplay.

Words are powerful tools; use them to your best advantage.  Play with your readers’ senses.  Use words or phrases that appeal to the body or further arouse the imagination.  Your wordplay need not be overtly sexual to be sensual.




Consider the following poem:

A gently laced chain of words
awakens every sense;
colorful, sweet, musky, hard,
and symphonic offering, aching, needing.

The hot, dew-wet red rose
smells the fragrant hard wood
that penetrates deep into the earth,
expanding, tasting her soil,
and dancing to the sonata in the wind.

The above words use imagery in slow, sensual steps to build its readers.  If the poem were to continue, it is safe to say that the sexual tension would rise and fall through a series of several more stanzas, with the final lines bringing both the natural figures and their audience to climactic release.  Give your readers prose that takes them beyond their own bodies, while at the same time offering a holistic, full-body experience.  Tantalize their minds, make their bodies tingle, and then tease them with a twist of heartache or disappointment, only to build them and their expectations even higher than before.

And then, around the same time you’ve reached the climax of Act III, give your readers what they’ve been waiting for—sweet, beautiful, sensual release.
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Join me and Honoria Ravena at Desire from the Darkside, where we discuss writing unconventional horror and my five-star reviewed trilogy, The Darkness and the Night.  Leave a comment for a chance at a free book:

http://honoriaravena.blogspot.com/2009/12/on-writing-unconventional-horror.html
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Happy reading!

Lisa
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Recently, a colleague of mine stated that I should have to choose between being a novelist or being a screenwriter if I wanted to be truly successful.  Having a strong passion for writing both formats, I had to disagree.  Although novels and screenplays are dramatically different, many writers work in multiple formats.  A prolific writer can finish a novel draft in one or two months and a screenplay in just a week or two, so being an avid writer of one does not necessarily have to detract from time spent writing the other.  Moreover, if one knows one’s art, the difference in the two formats merely creates the need to shift gears when switching from one to the other:

·         When writing a novel, prose and dialog are organized by paragraph, while in screenplays they are divided into dialog, character direction, and visible description and action.

·         Novel prose allows for internal dialog and stream of consciousness, while all thoughts and character motivations in a screenplay need to be “shown” through the camera’s audio and visible sensors.  One loophole to this is an intermittent use of “voice-over” in a script, in which an unseen narrator speaks over a scene.

·         Novels are generally written in third person, past tense, while screenplays are always written in present tense.

·         Novels are usually around 300 pages, while the typical “spec” script is around 120 pages.

·         Novels are typically written in Times New Roman, while screenplays are always written in Courier or Courier New.  Both have specific formatting guidelines.

Upon review of my writing portfolio, one will see that I have written as many screenplays as I have novels—and that more than half of my screenplays are adaptations (most of them being adaptations of my own novels, with one being a hired adaptation of a novelette written by another author).  Writing adaptations is just as much of an art as is writing original novels and screenplays; in converting a story from one format to the other, a writer must take into consideration time constraints, the translation compatibility of certain events, budget, and audience.  For example:

·         When converting a novel into a screenplay, one must decide which scenes to cut and mesh, and also if that cutting and meshing will require some reorganization of the storyline.  When converting a screenplay into a novel or novelette, one must add internal dialog or narration, as well as scenes that may have been missing in the script due to time constraints.

·         What works great as prose does not always translate well on screen, and vice-versa.  Sometimes a writer must find an alternate literary or visual device in order to make the same point work in translation.

·         What might be easy to write might take money to reproduce on-screen.  A screen adaptation must always be written with budget in mind, while the sky is the limit when writing novels and similar prose.

·         When adapting prose to screenplay, especially in previously published works, a writer must be careful to cater to any preexisting audience that might have certain expectations about the work.

I believe that it is a great asset for a writer to be well versed in both formats.  It is my opinion that an author the best-suited candidate to adapt his or her work into screenplay form, given that the person understands how to use the screenplay format.  No one will know the ins and outs of a work better than the person who originally wrote it, and no one will be able to capture the essence and soul of a work any clearer.  While there are many great adaptations that have been written by hired screenwriters, few people will argue that most of these adaptations do not capture that which made their predecessors all that they are.  While that which is lacking in many is due to necessary cuts and changes needed to make the story translate better, what most are lacking, in my opinion, is their original writers.

Would I consider giving up writing novels in order to be a successful screenwriter?  Never.  I love writing both too much to choose one format over the other.  God willing, there is enough room for my writing in both industries.
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This is a great interview with editor and literary agent Lori Perkins:

http://libertyconspiracy.podomatic.com/entry/2009-12-17T09_10_45-08_00
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There has been much opinion expressed recently on the appropriateness of certain individuals and groups that entertain themselves by tearing apart the works of their fellow writers.  Knock on wood, my stories have (as far as I know) not fallen victim to such attacks, but I do have fellow author friends whose works have.  This puts me in an interesting position, allowing me a perspective that, I believe, lies squarely between most of the opinions thus far expressed.

 I do not have any firsthand experience with the sites in question, as I refuse to buy into the drama, but the implied level of maliciousness regularly expressed by followers of such groups leads me to believe that there are personal matters behind those behaviors.  Everyone is entitled to his/her opinion.  Who hasn’t disliked—or even hated—a book?  However, does one person’s dissatisfaction with a particular work merit such cruelty?  Might there be a more productive way of offering harsh critique?  Moreover, is a novice or self-published writer really the best person to be critically reviewing others’ published works?  Just because a person has an opinion on something, does that make the person an authority on the matter?  For example, I love to cook, and I cook well, but that does not make me a gourmet food critic.  Is anyone who belongs to #romfail or any similar group actually formally educated in literary theory, let alone remotely qualified to do what they are doing?  What degrees do these people hold?  How many books have they published, beyond vanity presses and self-publishing houses?

Or do they just have opinions—uneducated, demeaning, vicious opinions?

Let’s assume that the works in question do contain good examples of bad writing.  No one is perfect, and even the best of writers sometimes have an off day.  Even more, no one but the author and his/her editor knows just how much of a particular problem in a book is the result of poor editing.  Granted, it is an authors’ responsibility to ensure his/her publishing house employs good editors; for the novice author, this problem is not always as simple to remedy as it would seem.  Is it acceptable behavior to treat an author with such disrespect and nastiness, simply for having a book that was poorly edited?  Is it the intent to embarrass the author (and/or his/her publisher) out of the industry?  If so, do the offending individuals actually believe they are doing anything beyond upsetting and alienating their peers?

On a final note, I would love to know what kinds of reviews these “mean girls” are receiving for their books.  I would like to know how these people would feel if it were their books being offered up for sacrifice, and just how much fun it would still be if it were they who suffered the humility and heartache over having one of their beloved books torn apart—with quotes taken out of context—for all the world to see.

Some people need to grow a soul; please don’t feed their emptiness.  These people are mean for the sake of being mean and deserved to be ignored.  Enough said.

Please check out these blogs, which inspired me to write this post:

http://culinarycarnivale.blogspot.com/2009/08/mean-girls-of-romfail.html
http://nlberger13.blogspot.com/2009/08/how-i-spend-most-friday-nights.html
http://mrsgiggles00.livejournal.com/25967.html
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She Wrote WHAT?! 08/16/2009
 
I’ve known since I was eight or nine that I was a writer. When I wrote my first novel in my mid teens, I was positive that was my path was to follow in the footsteps of the great Stephen King. Back then, had someone told me that my first published works would be erotica and erotic romance, I would have scoffed at the thought: Bashful, timid me? Writing sexually explicit scenes? For others to read?

I have a few friends and family who have purchased my books with full intent on reading them, only to find themselves unable to get past the first bedroom scene. “It kind of feels the same as going through your dad’s sock drawer for condoms,” my father-in-law told my husband, after attempting to read The Darkness and the Night: Blood and Coffee. “You know your parents are doing it, but you don’t really want to know….”

When I began to write erotic works, the first thought that flashed through my head was, “other people are going to read this … and what will they think?” The thought of strangers reading my work was strangely exhilarating, but I do have to admit that I blush when I consider specific people reading certain works. I find myself in a strange position: I want to share my stories with those who are close to me, but some of the content is simply stuff people don’t normally share with their friends, parents, and in-laws.

With that said, it has also been liberating to write what I have. With Lust in Space, for example, I decided to push my boundaries as far as I could. I wanted to take every aspect to the subgenre I was writing and see how far I might take it. I felt that an erotic space opera merited a unique angle, and so I challenged myself as a writer, finding ways to create threesomes, foursomes, orgies, a bisexual getting intimate with her time-paradox double … and even a woman falling for an insect-sized vibrating man. I did it to push the limits of my imagination, let go of my inhibitions as a writer, and most of all to see if I could pull all of it off.

With The Darkness and the Night trilogy, I began with a series of horror stories based on that first novel I wrote back in my teens, with my twin sister, and spiced them up for the erotic romance audience. I found that the sexual journeys experienced by the main characters really complimented the other themes that ran through each of the stories, and it has been such a pleasure to hear from readers and reviewers who “got” all that I worked to accomplish in the multi-layered, heavily intertwined trilogy.

I think about books I’ve read or movies I’ve seen that contain disturbing material, and I remind myself: Someone wrote that, not as something representative of his or her as a person, but as an extension of that person’s creative self. As an author now, myself, I know the process that goes into writing something different, risky, or risqué. It’s not easy, but somebody’s got to do it. After all, what would literature, cinema, and the like be without those who have taken such risks with their art?

There are risks to be taken with all genres, but it seems to me that the biggest risks are those taken in erotic venues. I’ve questioned more than one direction my muses have taken me, but more often than not, when all is said and done, every dark turn, exploratory challenge, and disturbing twist proves its literary merit. I feel grateful that I’ve taken the chances I have, as each has allowed me to grow in my art—and in some very surprising ways.

Who would have thought I would have learned anything while writing a “trashy romance”?! Go figure.

Through the years, I’ve found there are few genres I just can’t write. I don’t write Westerns. I have yet to construct a good murder mystery. I don’t think I could pull off an epic poem. I do enjoy writing just about everything else, however, so many genres that I have considered writing under more than one alias. After all, is it a career shot in the foot for a literary fiction novelist to publish erotica, or an erotic romance writer to publish horror? Maybe a couple of authors have been able to pull it off, but not many.

The thought of compartmentalizing my collective works was strangely disturbing; I felt like doing so somehow cheapened their value. It also felt like lying. Was I to create a persona for each genre? No, that just wasn’t me; it just didn’t feel right. I realized that I had no choice but to market all of my writing under my real name. I am a horror writer, a literary sci-fi writer, a screenplay writer, a narrative nonfiction writer, and an erotica/erotic romance writer. I’m all of those; I have many muses, and I’m proud of every last word I’ve written … even if I did happen to make my father-in-law blush.

Readers and writers, what are your experiences in writing or reading erotica, horror, sci-fi, and others that happen to contain the unorthodox, the uncomfortable, and/or the just plain hot?
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