Write Together

I've been even more quiet than usual when it comes to my blog and twitter but I have an excellent excuse. I had a brainstorm of an idea - one that helps to make Pan Historia an even better destination for writers as well as one that is helping motivate me to write my own novel. I started a writing group at Pan for those of us who want to move from just writing ongoing collaborative fiction to finally finishing and publishing a novel of our own. This concept does not exclude collaborative projects (I hope to include a version of my zombie novel in this mix one day) but does focus on story structure, discipline, craft, and actually sitting down regularly and making time to write.

For those of you who know me or know me through my blog you'll be aware of my intention to write a novel and how I have been working on one based on the life of Wyatt Earp for just about forever. Mostly it's been in the endless research phase with a sort of Mobius strip of trying to work out my new 'fresh' angle on this particular subject. When I started the new writing group Write Together at Pan I fully intended to finally write and complete this work. Our group is really fortunate to have a published author of a sort of mentor consultant and the first thing she asked me is "why am I writing this particular story" and I could no longer answer the question. I got some good feedback from my fellow writers and had worked out some possible interesting twists on the Wyatt Earp story and how to tell it in an engaging way, but there was no real purpose for me. I ended up answering that question with "I've been researching it? I have a book case full of books on the topic?"

Beep. Not good enough.

So I decided to shelve the project and immediately begun work on another novel idea that had been flitting around my mind for a while. This time I jumped into a genre that I have come to love writing in: horror. I've started work on a sort of supernatural thriller set in the 1920's full of glamorous characters, many of whom are historical, and dark sinister magic. I'm very excited about the story and using all the resources of my novel writing group as well as the many great resources I have found since using twitter and blogging, I have already got a good working synopsis, a stable of interesting rich characters, and the beginning of an outline using a classic story structure. The basic storyline and characters has been something I have been working on for quite a long time on Pan as a collaborative novel, but my focus will be on my own ideas and characters and developing a plot that has not been told in the collaborative forum so it's all original.

Gratifying Our Inner Child

"Little Wyatt, if you want your another piece of your candy from Halloween, you have to clean your room first."

It's a common command. Children are taught to delay gratification from the bassinet and stroller and onward to school. Learning self-control and how to defer pleasure is essential to becoming an adult human being capable of making responsible decisions that enhance quality of life and ensure survival. Some of our oldest fables and folk stories demonstrate the same principle from the hard plodding tortoise that knows he cannot rest until the job is done and thus beats the hare at a race, to the three little pigs where the one that knows to do the hard work and build his house out of brick doesn't end up pork tenderloin for a hungry wolf. Of course it's hardly kosher these days to scare children with stories of pigs being eaten by wolves is it? And how does Little Red Riding Hood fare?

In fact not only are we less likely to tell children cautionary tales of what happens to the selfish, lazy, greedy, and irresponsible, we, collectively as parents, are less likely to teach our children to be anything but greedy, selfish, lazy, and irresponsible anymore. Out the window went spankings and consequences, and while I'm happy to find an alternative to physical violence as a parental disciplinary option if you can show me a better happier way, I'm terribly loath to go the way I have seen this nation tumble towards. Television sets are baby sitters that teach mass consumption. Lack of public approval for discipling children has either led to screaming harpies that don't care how they are perceived in public or the greater majority of well-meaning parents that hand that children whatever it is they are crying for as soon as they are crying, just to stop the socially embarrassing moment of a child making a scene in public.

Rewards are handed out as incentives for self-expression rather than self-discipline and we're all lauding the freedom we experience as our entire nation, as in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button by F. Scott Fitzgerald, grows ever younger and more immature. Our entire financial institution is now centered around the principle of enjoy now, pay later (or at least have someone else bail you out). Don't defer. Get a credit card. Credit cards getting a bad rap? Well now you can use layaway at some of the major stores just to be sure you can get what you want now and worry about the consequences later. No matter than you're now paying much more for it than you should be because all the added interest and fees. Can anyone remember far back into the dark ages when you know, if you had no money in your account, your card wouldn't let you have any, or wow, your check would bounce? Now instead it lets you go on blithely spending and slams you with fees later - because, of course, you gotta have it now. We have all sunk deep and deeper into a quicksand of instant gratification.

Of course it would be easy to say: don't use credit, save, only buy what you can afford - except that the whole crazy system of instant gratification has had the domino effect of creating massive inflation (yes, I know there are complex issues and myriad causes, but it is one of those causes). How many years would it take to save for a house, when of course when we are young and raising a family is exactly when we need one? Rising health care costs and the wonderful fraud of insurance of course accounts for huge chunk of change making it impossible to get what we need without credit.

Every where you choose to cast your eye in regards to our culture the cult of childish instant gratification has left its indelible print of banality, self-centeredness, and immaturity: music, art, relationships, media, and our economy. Is there a way, I wonder, to reverse that trend or are we doomed like Benjamin Button to fade into black unable to remember our own name?

Retrieving the Wonder of Childlike Eyes

I recently watched a couple of young boys, probably around seven or eight, explore an area of a garden center unsupervised, and I suspect they also thought themselves alone. I was amused to observe them get excited over some plant specimens (succulents of course, weird and wonderful) as well as become totally distracted and unhinged at the sight of some bug. I smiled to myself as I remembered my same joy of discovery at the amazing world around me, and the same lack of discrimination as to what was worthy of notice and what wasn't. It was not an unusual thought that came to my mind: how sad is the loss of the wonder of youth. My next thought was a congratulatory one: I'm so glad I haven't lost my wonder. Only a few minutes later I was proving this point by collecting up some unusual pine cones that looked like old-fashioned cabbage roses and some spiky and strange seed pods, all the while wondering how I could use them in some creative way. I often stop to watch the humming bird feed, or to touch an interesting plant with an unusual texture or scent. While dead heading the cyclamen the other day I snipped a seed pod in half to see what it looked like inside, curious because I had never observed their fruit before.

Of course my musings on the wonder of youth led me to reflect that creative people always seem to retain some of that childlike amazement and curiosity at the world around us. I started to pat myself on the back, but then I had another thought: perhaps it's not some innate specialness that allows us to retain our senses when others become smoothed to the world around them, like over-used sandpaper. Observe adults with children and you'll see the smoothing away process in action often. For every parent that is encouraging their offspring in their explorations there are at least two others teaching their children fear and/or indifference. To be honest most parents belong in both categories. We tell our children what is important to pay attention to all the time with every little caution and gesture.

"Dad, what is this pretty flower?"

"I don't know, it's just a flower, now do up your shoelaces."

"Mom, I like this squishy slug."

"Ugh! Put that down, it's dirty."

Or better yet - just ignoring all the observations, questions, and wonder - or even better yet - criticizing, mocking, or laughing at the child for their pleasure at life's wonders.

One of my personal favorites is misinformation. The largest dissemination of crap information is from parents to their children. It can be minor as in identifying an ape as a monkey, or it can be major as in stating that all people of a certain colored skin or sexual preference are inferior.

Of course I once failed to correct a couple of little boys as they made some wild assumptions: they were identifying some marks on the side of a ship docked in a harbor as being the result of 'shark bites'. I loved that. That was not misinformation but a sign of the wonderful imagination that all human beings are born with. Seeing some places where the paint was missing from the hull down at the water line their young minds, still not trained to ignore or classify as uninteresting or useless, imagined huge Great Whites with gaping jaws full of sharp and horrifying teeth as the fish leapt up out of the water in a feeding frenzy.

Perhaps if you have found yourself rubbed too smooth to wonder at life any longer, too harried to pass on your own wonder to your kids? I present no answers here, but I hope to have fueled some thought that might lead you down a path of rediscovery, and maybe what you find there, on that yellow brick road, might rub off on your little ones.

Multidimensional Writing Experience

There is a lovely multidimensionality in starting up a new character for a collaborative writing/role play project at Pan Historia that feeds all my creative urges at once, nearly. There are two main roads into a new character: getting an idea for a character and then finding a place for them to dwell; or finding a story you really like and then finding a character to fit in. Creating a new character from scratch is the most creatively demanding because of the added dimensions of home page design. I love kitting out a new page for a new character from finding the right graphics, or creating them from scratch if one has a bit of tech savvy with a graphics program, and then designing a fun informative home page from all the different components.

Home pages are useful. I think of them as character biographies where you can get your decorating urges taken care of and impart something useful about your character in turn. My Wyatt Earp home is both western in theme and includes useful historical quotes about Wyatt from people that actually knew him. My Gabriel Oak home is less about the personality of the character but is very informative about some of my inspiration for the character. Gabriel is an interesting character inspired both from literature and from the movies. Those familiar with Thomas Hardy will recognize the source of the character's name, and of course the face I use is from the movie version of the novel "Far From the Maddening Crowd". I'm not a fanboy however and Gabe is his own character. In one earlier incarnation he was an artist with a supernatural angelic side living inside him. When he moved on to a different story he became a drunk, the human mask, of the Archangel Gabriel.

Of course some characters live in many different role play and collaborative stories and one home page can hardly do justice to all their diverse lives. That's why the profile pages were originally added as a 'room' off the main home page. These pages include sections for each novel that a character appears in so that the owner can give a little biographical detail. The beauty of a site like Pan, though, is that with so many interactive features the creativity of the individual takes over and tools are always adapted to the needs of their owners. I don't try and force people to use Pan the way I anticipated. Instead I'm often adapting Pan to fit in with the needs of the users.

A lot of people reserve their character biographies for the forums of the novels themselves and use the home pages as a place to show off all their awards, prizes, badges, and the little graphical gifts that people make for one another. This is probably a similar approach that many users of MySpace employ, but it's fun nonetheless. Of course it doesn't really help me, as a writer, when I click on their home to see more about their character, but usually I can at least some kind of sense from the avatar they have chosen to represent their character. Other people actually write out character sheets. I have never employed one of those. I like to get a general impression, and then let inspiration take its course when I'm writing. If I get too locked down on who I think a character is I find that the work become stifled and creativity shuts down.

I guess I can sum up what I'm trying to say is that using the internet and a web site like Pan Historia allows me and my fellow writers to add layers and dimensions to our writing experience, like creating images and home pages to enhance the experience. The way that any particular writer or role player chooses to implement these tools is often going to be as unique and different as the perspectives we bring to our writing and characters.

My Top Eleven Romantic Heroines of Literature

1. Tess Durbeyfield - Tess of the D'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy, 1891
2. Sarah Woodruff - The French Lieutenant's Woman by John Fowles, 1969 (but inspired by an 1823 novel)
3. Catherine Earnshaw - Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte, 1847
4. Elizabeth Bennett - Pride & Prejudice by Jane Austen, 1813
5. Anne Elliot - Persuasion by Jane Austen, 1816
6. Scarlet O'Hara - Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell, 1937
7. Sophie Zawistowska - Sophie's Choice by William Styron, 1979
8. The Marquise de Merteuil - Les Liasons Dangereuses by Pierre Choderlos de Laclos, 1782
9. Countess Ellen Olenska - The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton, 1920
10. Roxane - Cyrano de Bergerac by Edmond Rostand, 1897
11. Jane Eyre - Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte, 1847

Not included on my list but available for discussion: Anna Karenina - Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy, 1877

These are my top eleven (today anyway) favorite romantic but flawed heroines of literature. You might have others that don't appear on my list, but I had a couple of binding rules for including characters on my list:

1. I had to have actually read the book, not just seen the movie or BBC adaptation.
2. They had to be smart and not just victims or ciphers for the male character to show off to.
3. I had to find them sexy.

Curiously this set of rules nearly knocked Jane Eyre off the list. Much as I admire her spunk and passion, she never set my pulse racing, but on deep consideration she's too well written of a heroine not to include. Tess might be on the list for the opposite reason - she's hot, but I'm not sure she's not more of a victim than not. Of course considering the time periods all of these heroines had to live in it's not at all surprising that their lives are often tragic, and that fate deals them hands that no one could raise above, no matter their inner steel.

Taking my heroines one by one I will give a brief explanation for their inclusion on my all time favorites list; however please bear in mind there is no particular order to the list. Tess is there because of her struggle. Viewed through the eyes of the men around her we see her vulnerability and desirability, and yet... she's so badly treated by them all. She keeps getting kicked down, getting back up, and getting kicked back down again. Sarah Woodruff, on the surface seems a similar sort. Her mystery makes her desirable and then Fowles plays with us by giving us all possible versions of her, and yet not revealing which is the true Sarah. Cathy Earnshaw is elemental in her passion. Who wouldn't fall for a woman that death couldn't even hold down? Elizabeth Bennett is one smart cookie, but prone to understandable blindness. Her beauty lies in her essential goodness and her ability to learn, grow, and her loyalty to those she loves.

Anne Elliot is a more gentle heroine, trapped by social mores, she retains dignity. In the end she wins deserved love and redemption. Scarlet O'Hara is maddening. She's beautiful, passionate, and fiery. She's strong-willed, an idiot, and irritating as hell. Who hasn't fallen for such a woman? Sophie from Sophie's Choice is so beautiful and tragic, she makes my heart bleed. I suppose in the literal sense The Marquise de Merteuil is not a heroine. She is spiteful and scheming, and yet I feel that she is such a woman of passion and intelligence she deserves her place here. She is merely having her revenge for the status her gender demands. She uses her wit like poison, and in the end it is she that suffers.

The Age of Innocence is the one book on this list I did not read until the end, but not because it wasn't worth reading. I had seen the movie first, and then intrigued picked up the novel. It was great, but for me the repressed and thwarted passion of Ellen Olenska was more than I could bear a second time. I wanted her to win against society, when no winning was possible in that time period. I think Roxane is an overlooked heroine. Everyone focuses on Cyrano, and with good reason, but Roxane is the lovely woman with the understanding to adore beautiful words, and in the end she would have loved Cyrano as well or better than Christian, if she'd been given the opportunity. Jane Eyre... everyone knows her: mousy governess with a wild heart capable of great and passionate love. It's the dark eyes, luminous in a pale face, that does it.

Anna Karenina is not on the list because I hated that book. The story of Anna was powerful and provocative, but cut with a very boring second story about some landowner and his wheat crops. I have no idea this far removed his name or why he was there, but I didn't finish the book and it pissed me off. I did, however, read the incredibly lengthy War and Peace, so it's not big wordy Russian novels by Tolstoy that put me off.

Which brings up another question I have about my own list. Why are all the books so old or even if written in this century set in an earlier age? Where are the modern heroines to make my blood boil and my heart strings sing? I don't know if I have the complete answer to that question. I know that I read a great many classics in my teens and twenties - exactly at the time when the hormones were raging the most - so it's entirely possible that my concept of what was romantic was crystallized by my reading habits. I also know that I don't often read modern fiction, and when I do I don't find a lot of romantic writing there. I won't pick a 'romance' because they are often, for me, of very limited scope and reading quality as genre fiction. Has a good modern romance been written? If so please tell me about them so I can expand my horizons. Also feel free to post your own list in my comment box. I want to hear more about it.

Sex & Romance: Let's Write It!

Romance. We all love it, even those of us that suggest otherwise. Sex. Ditto there, folks. But is there any deeper quagmire that a writer can sink in? I'm talking about experienced authors as well as first time writers. It's a morass. How do you write about sex and romance, either together or separately, without coming off like something from Penthouse magazine or worse just plan repetitive, dull, or clichéd? The topic is so sticky with cliché and innuendo that often people don't even recognize when something is clichéd. They're programmed to either go 'ahhhhhh' or blush, or sneer, or mock, or even giggle inanely.

For a writer, if we are writing some pure romance, or want to create a great sex scene that warms the... heart then we certainly don't want to cause our readers to put the scene down with a humph, a yawn, or a ridiculing laugh. If that scene is part of a greater whole than we sure don't want our readers to rush through uncomfortably, knowing that they won't miss anything of great import. Sex, like any other human activity, needs a reason to be in the story. If you're writing a romantic novel where boy meets girl, or girl meets girl, the sex is part and parcel of the narrative. No need to agonize whether or not to include it. The only question that needs to be in your mind is "how spicy, how explicit". In this case that judgment call is more about your audience. Some readers like their sex soft, romantic, vanilla, and veiled in pretty words, and that's just fine for that kind of novel. This blog isn't about that kind of writing.

Sex, just like romance, can be rude, quirky, dirty, sloppy, hurried, insane, intense, funny, and clumsy - and it happens for a reason. In our fiction writing it happens to reveal something about the character, or lead the characters where they need to go. These are all elements that once included make the reader associate more intensely with your characters and not reject the sex as gratuitous fluff. When it comes to awkward moments we've all been there and done that - and good sex is like good wine: it can combine flavors that seem madly disparate like blackberries and charcoal. The trick is knowing what is sexy and what is not out of those elements. If you're looking to turn up the heat you can be inventive and silly, but you have to know when any particular element is gross or makes your hero look like an unattractive ass. My trick is to imagine the scene completely: would I be turned on or off if a particular thing happened during sex?

Falling off the bed during the intensity of love-making can either be funny, tragic, or sexy. It will depend on the telling. Accidentally farting will always end the heat, even if the laughter kicks in (in real life you might get over it, but I can practically guarantee your reader won't). It's like overflowing trash in your kitchen when you're cooking. It spoils the appetite. It's important to keep it real, and yet, for the heat, you have to keep it from getting too real. It's always got to be a little bit of the best sex you ever had, and not necessarily just the best sex you ever imagined.

Truly great love affairs are never easy. They're not about candy, Hallmark greeting cards, soft focus, or soft love-making from incredibly virile men with a sardonic smirk and a searing kiss, who knows when the heroine (who is unbelievably lovely, spunky but submissive in bed) says "no, no" she means "yes, yes". Truly great sex is often memorable for the details. Where you were, what you were doing before hand, how you felt at the time, and that warm laugh you shared when you broke your coffee mug as you swept it off your desk in the heat of passion. It's that wonderful little bit in When Harry Met Sally when she fakes an orgasm in the deli, or Bridget Jones's Diary where Hugh Grant strips off the cute little cocktail dress only to find granny panties. Or it's that bit that makes you want to crawl out of your skin in The Age of Innocence where the passion of the main characters, so repressed by the societal mores of their day, is entirely expressed by Newland Archer removing the glove from Ellen Olenska's hand during a carriage ride and pressing her fingers to his lips.

So let's talk language for a second. I'm a fan of no beating around the proverbial bush. I find words like 'member', 'tool', and other such euphemisms amusing so they spoil the moment for me. Those that don't like their sex written so explicitly will, violently on occasion, disagree with me. If you have to use euphemisms be cautious with them, and choose the words with great care so that you're not accidentally inspiring laughter instead of sympathetic passion. You might be sparing your less sensitive readers much blushing but instead causing your more bold readers to laughter or worse, to feel boredom. Telling a sexy story need very rarely ever go right to the finish either. This is not porn we're talking about. The 'money shot' is seldom really called for in any scene. An orgasm is only an orgasm in real life. In fiction it's the lead up that counts. Make me squirm and shudder. Take me to the brink and I'll fall over the edge all by myself with the aid of my own imaginative juices.

Progress on the Pan Historia Birthday Book

Work has commenced, as promised on the second Pan Historia Birthday Book. The title needs a little explaining. Pan Historia is a community for collaborative and role-play writing, as well as history buffs, and a place for people with a whimsical or literary sense of fun to hang out and make friends. It's like a non-stop costume party (which is why October is such a popular month with our members and writers). We first went live around May 2000 and were in beta forever (it seemed at the time) due to a some what rocky start and no capital investment. Our first collection of work by our writers and artists was prepared and published in time for our 3rd Panniversary (yes, we do awful plays on words at Pan) - which is held every February because our official launch date was Valentine's Day, 2001. I think. Record keeping is not my strong suit. I forget my own name sometimes as well.

Hence the anthology was named "The Pan Historia Birthday Book" with every intention of creating a new collection each and every February. This turned out to be a laughably ambitious concept. Shortly after the publication of the first book we had a major server crash that ripped the site apart, and it took many months of hard work to re-establish trust and fun as usual. I cannot stress how amazing our members were throughout that whole ordeal. Our second effort which was to be a cookbook: it died before delivery. After that it just seemed like the idea was to be shoved to the back burner every year.

This time, however, determination has returned, and the small press world has radically altered. Back in 2004 I had to order several boxes of books, and we never did sell every copy. This time print on demand has developed to the degree that I don't have to take that kind of risk again. By affiliating myself with another small press I'm planning to open the work of our talented writers and artists to a wider audience and have the book available on Amazon. It should be exciting to see how our labor of love and fun does in the 'real' world. I have pushed the publication date to prior to December in order to take advantage of Christmas sales, but I might be too ambitious. There is a lot of work still to be done.

The deadline for entries to be included in the book closes tomorrow. After that we'll be judging the entries so that we have the best and the book isn't the size of Lord of the Rings. Following that is the process of editing. Thankfully we have a number of people qualified to edit who are members of the site. All in all this is a terrific project with great potential, and I can't think of many other writing sites that give their members an opportunity to be published.