Why Sci-Fi is so often pessimistic

Sechin Tower

@SechinTower

Name 10 sci-fi books or movies and I'll bet at least 7 of them are pessimistic. Post-apocalyptic worlds (e.g.: The Hunger Games), overwhelming threats to humanity (e.g.: War of the Worlds), dystopian societies (e.g.: Divergent), and inventions with unintended consequences (e.g.: Frankenstein) are the stock and trade of the science fiction writer. Why are the stories of our future so negative?

I blame evolution. We evolved to be intelligent creatures with the ability to learn from others and anticipate the future, and that influences how—and why—we tell stories of danger and darkness.

Imagine our caveman ancestors living in a world surrounded by deadly predators. If one of them wandered into a cave and got eaten by a saber-toothed cat, the other members of his hunting party had the ability to tell the story to warn others away. Those who paid attention lived, and those who didn’t ended up as smilodon kibble.

We are the descendants of people who survived in part because they told and listened to stories. Science fiction writers often make their stories frightening because they know we are instinctively inclined to listen to warnings about the bad things that could happen.

Science Fiction Dangers

Sure, most of the dangers portrayed in science fiction aren’t as immediate as saber-toothed cats were to our ancestors, and they’re even less realistic: deadly arena games, genocidal space aliens, and zombie hordes aren’t exactly the leading causes of death in America today. Yet hidden away in these scenarios are warnings and survival strategies for real-world problems.

Science fiction has the power to make us aware (even if in a metaphorical way) of the dangers of damaging our environment, the evils of dehumanizing an enemy, or the dangers of a totalitarian state. And the zombie apocalypse? Well, if you’re prepared for that, you’re ready for the less-awesome but much more likely event of an earthquake or hurricane. (Even the CDC (Center for Disease Control and Prevention) recognizes the power of zombie stories to encourage people to prepare for any disaster, undead-related or otherwise.)

Trouble is, all this adds up to a pretty pessimistic view of the future. If you read enough of these stories, the glass won’t seem half-full, it will seem cracked, drained, and ground into silicon used to make killer cyborgs. Pessimism makes for great stories, but is there a way to escape the negativity?

Is Optimism possible?

Yes. Probably the most famous example of optimistic science fiction is Star Trek, which presents a society that has solved the problems of racism, poverty, and nationalistic war. Maybe more authors could experiment with portraying a future so bright it’s worth fighting the Klingons to preserve.

Science fiction can be optimistic when it follows the ancient mythological pattern where the hero travels through unknown lands to bring back a boon to the rest of humanity. We can see this idea in a few science fiction books, such as Robert Heinlein’s YA classic “Have Space Suit, Will Travel,” in which Kip Russell battles tentacle-faced aliens and returns to Earth with scientific secrets that will unlock antigravity and faster-than-light travel. This idea of a “science boon” is where I hope to go with sequels to Mad Science Institute. I would love to see other authors pick up the torch here, too, and have a hero who returns with more than just the head of the hive queen.

Is Pessimism Bad?

None of this is to say that we should shun pessimistic science fiction. It’s fun, interesting, and sometimes deeply important to our society and our future. But if you’re a writer or a reader who feels like you’re not seeing any new ideas in the post-apocalyptic or space-war genres, well, maybe that’s because we’ve been walking down the same dark paths for too long.

I'm an optimist by nature, so maybe the pessimism inherent in most sci-fi stands out to me because it contradicts my expectations for the future. I also like to think I'm a realist because I know we don't have any guarantees to continue as a society or a species, and nature is unforgiving. Just ask the dinosaurs.

What do you think? What are your favorite science fiction stories/books/movies, and do you think they're pessimistic?

Sechin Tower is a teacher, a table-top game designer, and the author of Mad Science Institute. You can read more about him and his books on SechinTower.com and his games on SiegeTowerGames.com

Girls & Monsters don't always play nice...

Luckily, today they're being downright SWEET!

I'm honored to welcome the ever lovely, ever dark Anne Michaud to ADR3NALIN3 today! I met Anne via blogger and fell in love with her delectable, seductive, and morbid prose while reading the short stories and poems she would post on her blog. Now at last she has a book coming out and the whole world can savor her terrifyingly twisted tales! Her new YA horror novel is launching in just a few days, so she has stopped by to tell us a little about it.

Anne, you have the spotlight!

***

They hide under the bed, in the closet or in a dark corner of your mind; they want to scare, play with or eat you. Monsters are everywhere, feeding off your screams, waiting for the perfect moment to attack - and sometimes, only girls can kick their butts. A killer mermaid, suburbia, hallucinations, one huge spider and zombies all face their match in this dark horror collection of 5 novellas for young adult. Annoyed by weak and fragile protagonists waiting for boys to save the day? Here's GIRLS & MONSTERS! Death Song, an excerpt:

Something catches in the back of my throat. I hide my face in my hands to quiet the sobs. But then, something ain’t right. Air moves around me and I stop. I look between my fingers, but the blur of my tears thickens everything: the bathtub, the towels, and someone on the floor. A woman’s in here with me, door still closed and locked. An exhale, like after a deep swim, and a smell, like the swamp close to my empty home. A chill runs down my back, I wipe my eyes, rub and scratch them to see more clearly. And I do. Two gray hands scratch the floor tiles, nails green with algae, putrid flesh sagging on her legs, arms and torso, hair so long and wet and heavy, it drags her down. Diluted, impossible to focus on, like little waves rippling over her body from head to foot, seaweed in the water. Scales and fins, mermaidlike, little knives, those are. And they scrape the floor, like a fork on a plate. It’s her—Limnade. She opens her mouth of scissor-teeth and the rotten smell of fish wraps around my throat like two hands trying to choke me. "You can’t be…” I don’t finish my breathless thought and jump backward, knocking over the dish of decorative soaps. Blurry waves, vision impaired, out of focus, unreal. She crawls toward me, eyes unblinking, lethal, hands inches from me: my legs refuse to move, as my body feels like stone. Frozen, hypnotized, a statue. Then I hear something coming from within her…A melody, reminding me of something lost, tickles my ears. It drags on until the sweetness turns sickly, vibrating into a full-on super-scream, hyenalike, enough to pop my ears and make them bleed. Her large mouth deforms her face into one gap of black, the cry so high and strident, I scream from the pain. Limnade stares at me, everything but her fades away—Jo’s nice bathroom, Jo’s new life, Jo himself, none of it matters anymore. Her fingers brush my forehead, they’re cold and sticky like clams. And I let the darkness take me away.

***

To celebrate the release of Girls & Monsters on April 30th, the author has handcrafted Skellies, The Monster Collection, each representing a monster of the 5 stories. The giveaway also includes a softcover of the collection, autographed if requested. The grand prize winner will be announced during the book launch's LIVE CHAT with Anne Michaud on April 30th at 9PM (east)! Girls & Monsters will be available at Darkfuse and other retailers from that date on. ♥

***

Anne Michaud

She who likes dark things never grew up. She never stopped listening to gothic, industrial and alternative bands like when she was fifteen. She always loved to read horror and dystopia and fantasy, where doom and gloom drip from the pages. She, who was supposed to make films, decided to write short stories, novelettes and novels instead. She, who’s had her films listed on festival programs, has been printed in a dozen anthologies and magazines since. She who likes dark things prefers night to day, rain to sun, and reading to anything else.

She tweets
She blogs
She facebooks

And don't forget to add Girls & Monsters to your goodread list ♥

Permission to Play

So I got the sweetest emails this past week from a couple kids.  These were a little different from the very nice letters I normally get because the kids asked more or less the same question, and one I'd never have expected: was it okay if they wrote stories set in the ASHES universe?  More to the point, could they write about a particular character they really liked?  Could they make up new characters and run with them?  (One kid even said she'd modeled her Minecraft world on ASHES.)

In other words . . . these guys wanted permission to write fan fic. 

Well, knock me over with a feather.

As an unabashed but recovering Trekker, I'm no stranger to fan fic.  Heck, "A Ribbon for Rosie," my first published story--and a prize-winner, to boot--was fan fiction set in the Voyager universe.  I've done a ton of work for hire, and I count many tie-in writers as friends and colleagues.  A couple, I recently tagged for the Next Big Thing Blog Hop because, in my experience, tie-in and wfh writers get too little respect and recognition for a lot of very hard work.  (And I know the work's hard because I've been there, done that--and anyone who thinks it's easy doesn't know apples from their . . . well, use your imagination.)  What people forget: sure, the universe may already exist, but for a wfh-writer, every word is original.  Every plot is theirs, even if they must get a certain character from A to B by the end of the book.  They just don't own the copyright.

No, this isn't going to be a diatribe on a variant of wfh writers don't get no (or enough) respect, even though they don't and most especially not from big-name publishers.  All of us who've done wfh and tie-ins know that.  <shrug>  You learn to live with and come to a state of grace about that, while at the same time realizing that, to the fans of those universes, your books are a big deal.  Having gone to GenCon and a bunch of ST conventions, let me tell you: these fans are loyal; they'll stand in line for hours; they're dying for you to write that next book.

But I digress.  What I thought about when these kids popped into my inbox was the fun I had, as a kid myself, making up my own stories about, oh, Batman, Star Trek, Lost in Space . . . even My Favorite Martian.  At a certain level, every child who's ever opened a book or become a fan of a show or movie inserts herself into the narrative.  It's inevitable; this is what it's like to be lost in a book.  There's a fancy name for it in media studies: textual poaching.  While the French critic, de Certeau, wrote about this first, I'm a bit more familiar with Henry Jenkins's work that focused on the Trek universe (and, at the time, while I didn't find all his points that convincing, the theory's right on--and, oh, I do love that cover).

  While I agree that this kind of appropriation is all about power and resistance--think, for example, of all that good, homoerotic Trek slash fiction out there--the reality is this: when people find a world compelling, they want to be a part of it any way they can.  The psychology that drives this is no more mysterious or different than the desire to dress up on Halloween or cut loose at Mardi Gras, both socially sanctioned opportunities to act out fantasies.  That this acting-out is limited; that there are boundaries you can't cross . . . this is where the power inequities come in that Certeau and Jenkins are talking about.  You can create on paper what you can't do for real.  You can enter a universe you desperately want to be a part of on your own terms.  It's what drives the desire to write and the fun of reading fan fiction.  

So, is fan fiction wrong or bad?  Well, it depends, doesn't it?  Copyright protections exist for a reason.  Can you write fan fiction?  Sure, without question.  What you can't do is write and then show what you've written to your friends, or post it on the web, etc., for money.  But what if you share your story with only one friend?  Or two?  Or ten?  When does this sharing, this more-than-one-person experience, become a violation?  Is it a violation only when you do it for money? 

As you might expect, there are authors who fall on both sides of the fence about this.  I'll tell you what I told those kids: I used to do the same thing when I was your age; I'm thrilled you love my stories; I'm tickled my work inspires you to try your hand.  

Now, did I encourage them to write their own original stuff instead?  Of course.  But do I understand the impulse?  Sure.  Can they sell what they write?  No.  Can they show it around?

Gosh . . . I'm divided about that because then you're getting into the tricky slippery slope part.  On the one hand, all they're doing is spreading the love, and that makes me feel good.  Honestly, if there's enough love and drive out there, this kind of thing becomes unstoppable.  I know; I'm a Trekker; grabbing that narrative and continuing those stories was half the fun, and what eventually got me writing.  If fan fiction encourages kids to read and write, I'm all for that, too.  You can argue that fan fiction has a lot going for it and benefits you might not have imagined.

But . . . here's the bugaboo: what about the people who may, eventually, charge a couple nickels for a story?  Who give folks a taste, and then tell them that if they want more, they have to pay?  See what I'm saying?  Now they're making money off something that I-- some other writer/actor/painter--own.  

So, yeah, the potential for abuse is there.  My gut is that most fans are polite; they're enthusiastic; they understand that the sand has to remain in the box.  To be honest, I see more good coming of this than bad. 

Granted, I really don't have to worry about this.  Stephen King has these problems, not me.  For the moment, I'm just tickled a couple kids out there like the series and want to play in that sandbox.  So long as they behave--now, Joey . . . no, honey, you really can't throw sand in Jessie's eyes--it's all good, and maybe a lot more because what they build, they build from the ground up with passion and love for what I've given them.

Go for it, kids.

The Story of Your Life

DROWNING INSTINCT is set to come out on March 1 in the UK, and as part of the launch, I've been asked to do a couple of blogs, etc.  You know, it's the whole marketing thing, and I'm fine with that, really.  I'm thrilled that the good folks at Quercus UK have chosen to put my work out there.

Right around the same time, THE SIN-EATER'S CONFESSION also makes its official U.S. debut, although it's already available through Lernerbooks, Amazon, B&N, etc., and I'll likely write an entry or two about it as well.

Both these launches got me thinking, not only about the books but blogging, in general, and my blogging, in particular.  I mean, seriously, come on: why blog?  Really.  There are a gazillion blogs out there, ten trillion of which--a trillion's less than a gazillion, right?--are devoted to writing, the writing life, publishing, marketing, blah, blah.  Some are by writers who know so much more than I do, and yes, I'll say it right now: if Stephen King chose to blog, which he doesn't, I'd be reading what he has to say.  I might even print out and eat the paper.  But when you consider the people I think of as, like, these writing GODS . . . you have to look in the mirror and say--bear with me: as a shrink, I can safely say that I see a shrink on a daily basis--"Ilsa, sweetheart, just WTF can you possibly add to that conversation?"

And you know what that shrink has the GALL to reply?

Nothing.  That's what she says: Ilsa, honey, you got nothing more important to say than any other writer, so shut your pie-hole.

I know: I have a very nasty shrink.  If I could afford it, I'd fire the old bat.

But, really, I'm completely serious here.  All I can offer is what has worked for me.  You know?  It's not magic; it's hard work; it's the screw-your-butt-to-the-chair work ethic that got me through med school and then writing and now to the point of dithering about blogs.  Whether it works for anyone else . . . who knows?  I think the principle's a little like the old joke about the cabbie and Carnegie Hall:

Passenger: "How do you get to Carnegie Hall?"
Cabbie: "Practice, practice, practice."

And that's it, the sum total of my knowledge about writing.  Practice.  Read a lot.  Write some more.  Then do it again.  And again.  And again.

So . . . blogging is stupid, right?  What goes on in my addled brain . . . who gives a rat's ass, am I right?  If my blog falls in the forest, does it make a sound?  Is anyone out there to hear what amounts to a mosquito's fart in a tornado?

To be fair, I'm also kind of a private person.  Blame all those years of training, when it was hammered into me that how and what I felt/feel is best left unsaid.  A therapy session isn't about me.  Oh, it's true that I used what I felt.  Any therapist worth her salt does that.  But the idea of a shrink sharing personal stuff . . . you do it very rarely and only if that might help the patient.  (And even then, a therapist in the grip of what happens in the space between her and a patient--that good old countertransference--you'd be surprised what some therapists can justify.)  The best therapists are welcoming but disciplined, and know when to keep their mouths shut.

So, I don't know who cares about what I have to say in a blog; I really don't.  What I can say is this: I seriously doubt that anything I've ever written ABOUT writing can even come close to moving a reader as much as WHAT I've written in a novel.  

Which brings me around to DROWNING INSTINCT, a book I've not blogged much about because, to be frank, I know the characters, in the very broadest sense, all too well.  I used to sit with them.  I watched them try to destroy themselves.  I watched them drown, quietly, all the time--and these are stories, confidences, secrets, dreams, and confessions that I, as a shrink, will not talk all that much about.  I just can't.

I'm not being melodramatic here, either.  Writing about those who suffer--even if none of my characters is a real person-person--isn't a joke.  I don't do it for kicks.  I tell stories, and whenever I do write about pain and suffering and sacrifice and triumph, whether it's for DROWNING INSTINCT or the ASHES trilogy or THE SIN-EATER'S CONFESSION or the forthcoming WHITE SPACE . . . here's what I'll tell all those people who think that these things don't happen; that people don't behave like this; that no one, no one, could be that stupid/self-destructive/gullible/bone-headed/blind; that shit like this can't happen: get real.  

Honestly.  

Get.  Real.

Now, I receive a lot of fan mail.  (And I love it, guys, really; keep those emails and tweets and all that coming; it lets me know that all those hours hunched over a hot keyboard have been worth it.)  I know I don't get a ten trillionth as much as Suzanne Collins or Maggie Stiefvater or Cassandra Clare or the gazillion more talented, better-selling authors out there.  I know that; I'm okay with it.  My needs are small.  All I care about is a) getting my work out there and b) yeah, okay, hearing that people have enjoyed a book. 

(And, yes, yes, uncle: I would like to be a New York Times bestseller; shoot me, already.  There.  Happy?)

The most touching are those emails I get from fans who've read a book that describes their lives, and DROWNING has provoked quite a few.  I've heard from some very sad and lonely people; I've heard from some very brave souls; I've heard from folks who tell me that I've written the book about their lives.

I take this all very seriously, too, and probably would even if I weren't a shrink.  But I am, and I really have to work, very hard, not to become a shrink when I reply (and I reply to each and every email).  As much as I want to help, I know that it's better for me not to.  Yes, there are all these ethical reasons to refrain--it would be flat-out wrong for me to engage in therapy, however well-intentioned--but I also know that it is far easier to confide in someone when there's no blowback or repercussions (hello, can you spell t-h-e-r-a-p-i-s-t?).  It is easy to fall into the fantasy--the trap, really--of believing you are saving someone when, in fact, you have become merely a bit player in a movie being directed by someone else, mouthing lines written by a script-writer you've never met.

But I hope that I am always open; I trust that I am always welcoming.  If blogging and a web presence have accomplished anything, they give those who find themselves in my books a way of telling me so.  When they do--when I get those emails--trust me, the urge to ease your pain and suffering is very strong.  

So, no, I have nothing new or novel to say about writing.  I have nothing amazing to say in a blog that's worth a millisecond of your time.  I don't claim that my books are all that fabulous either.

But--if you read one of my books and find yourself in the pages and wonder how it is that I know what you're going through, that I understand; that I won't give you any bullshit about how it'll all get better because, sometimes, we know--and we do, don't we?--that it doesn't unless you make some really tough, hard choices; are willing to take a risk, go outside your comfort zone and get help and really change . . .

I know.  I understand.  

And one more thing: I will not forget the picture you posted of your arm after you'd gotten done hacking at yourself, and for which you referenced DROWNING.  I get that, for you, this book was the story of your life.  

Now, listen to what I'm saying.  Read this into the story of your life.

Please, don't do that again.  You really are more valuable than you allow yourself to believe and know.  Really.

Yes, you.  I'm talking to you.

 

The Sincerest Form of Flattery

Okay, first up, before I forget: did everyone have a nice holiday?  See all the relatives?  Get rested up to start another year (which, for some of us, seems to be an artificial distinction because the day after is/was the same as the day before)?

Good.  Now, roll up those sleeves and let's talk turkey.

I'm unsure how this came to my attention, although I believe it was Twitter, but this past week, a friend--my publisher, in fact--posted the cover of an upcoming YA.  NBD, so far; people are throwing up covers for new releases all the time.

Except . . . the reason this particular book snagged my friend's attention wasn't for the content but the look.

Freaky, right?  And notice who's putting the book out there: Amazon Children's Publishing.  Which means that whoever designed the cover for the book had a lot of covers to look to and choose from for inspiration.

If you think this made more than a few fans unhappy or weirded out or mystified . . . you'd be right.  Some wondered what I could actually do about this--the quick and dirty answer is a whole lot of nothing because there's nothing to be done--and that made me feel good, to tell you the truth.  It's not often that fans get irate on your behalf.  

Yet if you think this is some kind of violation of cover copyright . . . you'd be wrong.  Because we all know copyright law as it pertains to using images, correct?  If you need a quick refresher, try this article and this one.  Right off the bat, I can tell you that this is not a violation of copyright in the slightest.  Granted, I don't own the copyright for my book covers; my publisher does (or the artist hired by my publisher).  If this constituted a copyright violation, then so would every book cover featuring, say, a silhouetted figure running across a landscape (I'll bet I saw two or three YAs with that cover last year) or a shot of a forest or a cityscape or girl/guy in profile . . . You get my drift.

If the cover on the left does anything at all--under copyright law, that is--then it comes closest to paying "homage" (and I use that loosely), and then just barely.  Really, all that's been "copied" is the positioning of the title.  Is it close enough to provoke a second glance?  Sure.  Is it a violation of copyright?  No.

But here's an intriguing question--to me, at least: what, exactly, is the cover on the left supposed to convey?  We judge books by their covers all the time.  In an earlier post, I talked about the reason the ASHES series changed; even though I adored the original hardcover, the book itself didn't pop off the shelf.  It tended to get lost.  So the cover had to change because the whole point of the cover is to induce you to pick up the book and start paging through.

To my eyes, the new ASHES look--and more specifically, SHADOWS--evokes menace and ambiguity.  You're supposed to wonder: who's running, and from what?  Who are those people in the background?  Are they even people?  Are they something else?  Shadows, at night and in the woods, are slate and purple and silver and blue, and of course, the thematic motif of smoke references the post-apocalyptic.  It's a lovely cover, and suggests precisely what you might find inside.

SKETCHY's cover is . . . well . . . interesting.  What does sketchy mean, anyway?  Here's what Wiktionary has to say about the word as it pertains to a person:

1. (slang, of a person) Suspected of taking part in illicit or dishonorable dealings.

   Because he is so sketchy, I always think that he is up to something.

2. (slang, of a person) Disturbing or unnerving, often in such a way that others may suspect them of intending physical or sexual harm or harassment.

   Jack is so sketchy, I think he's stalking me.

With that in mind, let's look at the cover again.  There's a girl there, right?  Lying on what looks like a bed?  Covered with a sheet (so you know she's probably naked)?  Only the image is partially obscured by the title itself; you really have to work to see this girl--which is precisely what I think this cover wants you to do.  It wants you to want to see her and, by extension, figure her out.  All that plays into the slightly dangerous, slightly come-hither, slightly illicit and sketchy story this cover promises.

So does the cover do its job?  Yes, it does.  If--and this is a big if--the person responsible for the cover took SHADOWS as a jumping-off point, then he or she might have wanted to capture some of that cover's disturbing and unnerving  elements.  In that way, SHADOWS served to inspire.  Of all the cover designs out there, that graphic artist chose SHADOWS to get his/her point across.  In the end, what I take away from this is the truth of that old saw: imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.  I don't think there's any way that anyone will get the two books confused.


Besides . . . we all know which book came first. 

People Like Us

A couple years ago, some writer-friends and I were having this discussion about Obama and that brouhaha about Reverend Jeremiah Wright's remarks about Jews and the like with another, much more seasoned pro writer-friend.  I don't even remember what the specific comments were, but I do recall my pro-friend turning to me and saying something like, "Listen, white girl, you just don't know."  Now, I didn't take offense or anything because my friend's comment wasn't meant as a slap.  My friend was making a point that I, as a white girl (even a Jewish white girl, at whom some of these remarks were broadly directed), couldn't really grasp the cultural milieu in which the comments were made.

I believe my friend--to a point.  It's true that this friend is much more knowledgeable about black history; in fact, this friend wrote a very fine mystery series that featured a black protagonist.  While the specifics of the series aren't important, this is: at the time these books were out and about in the world, my friend wasn't touring or publicizing them much for a very simply reason.

My friend is white.  And of the opposite sex from the protag.

Talk about irony and (a bit of) reverse discrimination.

Why am I not more specific here?  Honestly, I'm not trying to be a tease, but my point isn't to out my friend.  But I was reminded of this incident after reading the New York Times piece earlier this week all about young Latino readers and educators' fears that these younger kids might not be as drawn into reading because there's a dearth of Latino protagonists for them to identify with. Read the comments, and you'll find both an even split and a wide array of responses.  Some people think this is a big deal; others don't.

Now I'll be really honest here: by and large, my feeling is that this is another of those New York Times hand-wringing non-issues.  You could say that I think it's not, because as a white girl, I was in the majority back in the day and so always felt that I was being represented in one way or another in whatever I read--but you would be wrong.  There really weren't that many female protagonists out there for me to identify with.  In fact, in a large proportion of both classical and contemporary lit, the protags were/are white males--and I can guarantee you that the overwhelming majority weren't Jewish.

You want to read about diversity?  Pick up any good sf with alien species as the primary protags--I remember one book that featured these funky insect-like creatures--and then tell me that I couldn't possibly have enjoyed that because, oh, the protagonists don't look like me.  Back when I was a kid, there wasn't anyone out there in either literature or film for me to take as a role model--and so what?  I've never looked to books for role models, nor do I, as a writer, think about providing a role model for my readers.  That's way too preachy for me.  Conversely, I don't remember a single book that was just so influential I carried it around like a talisman or modeled my life after it.  I wanted role models? They were called parents and teachers and other significant adults.  ((I mean, my God, my mom was working outside the house, doing science stuff and going for a PhD in an era when women just didn't do that.  And who were her role models?  Her father was a sponge diver and then worked in a rubber factory; her mother was a housewife.  Neither went to college; I doubt my grandmother made it out of high school; they lived in a crummy section of Akron.  But they all worked hard.)  Similarly, none of my role models lived in books.

I'll be honest (again): whenever I was handed the rare book with a Jewish protag (always male, as far as I can recall), I remember cringing.  Reading stories about people I knew--folks I saw every bloody day--didn't interest me in the slightest.  Revisiting certain events in my cultural past--say, the Holocaust--was and remains a busman's holiday.  Then as now, I look to books to tell me a good story.

I may be really off-base here; maybe I just don't get it.  But when I'm immersed in a story, I couldn't care less what the characters look like, or about ethnicity.  (Oh all right, yes: if this is a romance that keeps mentioning that the girl is a size 2 and wears strappy sandals without breaking an ankle . . . yeah, okay, I may not want to step on the scale for a couple days, but I don't stop reading on that basis.)  When the story revolves around the character's difference--Invisible Man and Native Son spring to mind--then, yes, of course this becomes an issue, because the difference is the story.  But that difference doesn't keep me from being able to either get into the story or feel along/identify with the characters either.

The magical thing about becoming lost in a book is that you also lose sight of who you are along the way.  It's really quite an interesting phenomenon, if you stop to think about it.  You can both read yourself into a character and stand alongside at the same time.  You get wrapped up in the adventure at the same moment that you may be thinking, Oh no, don't do it!  You can get mad at a character for being so stupid and still get a vicarious thrill with that first kiss.  All of that speaks to the skill of the story-teller and--to my mind--has virtually nothing to do with what the characters look like, or whether they're like me.  (I mean, guys, think about it: are we really saying that kids can't possibly identify with Wilbur because he's a pig, and they're not?  That I can't read about or enjoy or even identify with characters like Fiver and Bigwig in Watership Down . . . because I'm not a male rabbit?  Get real.)  Picking up a book is a way to get away from me now, just as it was a means to take me on an adventure and out of myself back then.  The business of a book is not to instruct.

Which brings me back to my very talented pro-friend, who could fashion a thoroughly wonderful series about a character of a different gender, culture, and ethnicity, not because my friend was the same but because that writer was (and is) empathetic, passionate . . . and a damned good writer.  

Now that's what I call a role model.

The Fine Print

In case you missed it, there was a bit of a dust-up earlier this week over an opinion piece by Sarah Mesle featured on the Los Angeles Review of Books site.  I won't recap the entire article--go read it and all the comments here--but the gist is the author moaned about the good old days where books saw the successful transition of boys from happy childhood into powerful manhood and wondered just what contemporary YA books might be offering boys; whether the role models found in characters like Edward Cullen and Jacob Black, both "barely-contained monsters," are the best we could muster nowadays.  And, yes, predictably, a lot of people weighed in.  A few even had good things to say.

I'm not exactly joining the fray, but it seems to me that, time periods and conventional notions of masculinity and societal expectations aside, this is another of those proverbial tempests in a teacup: a lot of fru-fru hand-wringing over nothing.  So some of the boys in some books are beasts, and others are worried about their masculinity, and still others are confronted with terrible situations and make bad choices--and so what?  There are so many books out there, you can find examples to bolster just about any argument you want to make.  I can think of some fine examples of contemporary middle grade and YA lit--Gary Schmidt  and Patrick Ness jump to mind right off the bat--where boys are neither beasts nor angels, and many of the adults aren't too shabby either.  

To be quite frank, however, when I digested some of Mesle's misgivings, one thing that really surprised me: no one mentioned genre--and genre's everything.  Strip away the twinkly vampires and slavering wolves, and what you've got are Jacob's hunky six-pack and Edward's soulful eyes.  What you've got is a YA romance, pure and simple, and one that any person who's spent any time with bodice-rippers instantly recognizes.  I have no idea what Stephanie Meyer was thinking in terms of the guys when she wrote the series, and it doesn't really matter because she hews to the demands of the genre.  Nearly all romance revolves around does he or doesn't she, will he or won't she?  The choices are frequently bald and somewhat stereotypical; the men and women are types: Darcy's a prideful guy with a heart of gold; Willoughby's a scoundrel; Marianne's willful and intolerant; Jane's mother is a fluttery idiot--and so what?  I'll bet dollars to doughnuts that Jane Austen was as completely unconcerned with whether her male characters provided young men with appropriate role models as Nora Roberts is about whether any guy's going to pick up, say, Dance Upon the Air, and decide that, yep, a girl needs a smack now and then.  All Austen wanted was to get you to root for Jane and Darcy--and sell her book.  Whether you're talking Nora Roberts or Jane Austen, offering role models is completely beside the point.  You write the characters your story demands, and that's no less true for Meyer who--I just bet--was mainly about showing her readers a good time.

I disagree completely with one person who commented that it was "hardly unfair to ask literature to shine a light on the way gender is changing..." or redeem masculinity.  Say what?  Why should literature have to do any of that?  I don't know too many writers who approach a book with a mission in mind.

Besides, was anyone worried about this was I was a kid and there really wasn't young adult literature per se?  I grew up reading classics, sure, but also tons of science fiction (the YA lit of my day).  For the most part, those books were written by guys for guys and about guys--and I didn't care.  At all.  I also don't recall anyone getting all worried that literature was somehow failing to give me suitable female role models to manage the transition into adulthood.  Or maybe people were worried, but me being a kid, they didn't tell me about it and I had, oh I don't know, parents and teachers and other adults as role models.  Now that doesn't mean that I didn't want to grow up to be Captain Kirk's girlfriend (albeit I had superpowers and frequently saved the ship); armed with my trusty blaster, I played endless games of Lost in Space (although, yes, I admit it: they always picked me to play the mom and I remember being so focused on making dinner for Will and Dr. Smith after a hard day of fending off aliens).  But those obsessions don't seem to have done me any irreparable harm nor do I believe they told me anything about how to be a young woman.  What they afforded were types to slip into and identities to try on--and discard. 

So I read my share of Jane Austen and Charles Dickens and George Eliot and Frank Herbert and Arthur C. Clarke, Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle, Greg Bear and Anne McCaffrey and Lois McMaster Bujold and . . . Well, I won't bore you with the list because it's a long one.  But my point is that while I read classics which were stories of girls principally worried about marriage and their reputations, I also devoured more contemporary books which were, with only a few exceptions, either profoundly pessimistic meditations on the fate of humanity or about young men out to kick some serious alien butt--and a few young women who were, yes, ready to fall in love, not overly concerned with their nails, and still plenty capable when it came to saving the planet, mussed hair notwithstanding.  And I read about some splendidly evil men and women, too--because beastliness is, quite frequently and sorry to say it, very entertaining.


Sorry, but read the fine print of my job description: no book has to do or be anything more than it is, a private fantasy cooked up in a writer's head and made public.  The only obligation of any literature and art is to entertain, and not one whit more.  All this concern about role models or the lack thereof ignores the fact that whatever any writer puts on paper says something far more about the author than it does society.  Meyer made her guys as she did because she liked them that way, and those characters fit the needs of her story and its genre.  Ditto Collins; ditto Rowling.  Ditto me.  

Maybe this benighted view means I'll always be a hack or something and never do or write anything important, that's any kind of beacon, but turning up the wattage isn't in my job description either.  Books do not have to instruct or offer social criticism; books do not have to shed light on anything.  If they do or can, great.  But, in the end, books are entertainment; readers crack the spine with the expectation of becoming someone somewhere else; and the only obligation any writer has is to tell the very best and most entertaining story she can.  It is what every reader should and has the right to demand.    

When Story Comes Together

This will be short and sweet, just a nice little bon mot I want to share.  This may not seem like much either, but trust me: the moment itself was huge.  

Earlier this week, my Egmont USA editor, Greg Ferguson, and I were going over his comments on MONSTERS, the last book in the ASHES trilogy, and we'd been on the phone a good hour and a half before finally getting around to talking about the last scene and sequence.  Greg asked a great question about how I wanted people to feel when all was said and done; I told him; and then he mentioned that, well, he thought that was true and the tone was nearly there, but he really suggested that we needed to look at this one sentence about three, four paragraphs from the very end.  I was a little puzzled because it seemed like a perfectly fine line to me.  But then he read the line out loud a couple times, and it was very strange . . . but hearing it come out of someone else's mouth really was a lightbulb moment.  I realized then that he was onto something; there was something not quite right about the sentence, although I was darned if I knew what it was.

So we played around with the sentence, pulling it apart, looking at all the words.  I wish I could say that  I figured it out first, but it was Greg who said, "Well, what if we get rid of the word but?  Change it from a conditional to an affirmation, something positive."  So he did just that, read the sentence back--and damn, if that one little word wasn't the make-or-break moment.  Simply brilliant.

Why do I even dwell on this?  Why is it worth tucking away as one of those fabulously collaborative moments that, all too often, we don't let ourselves experience?  Because: sometimes I think writers can get proprietary, losing sight of the huge contribution a very good editor can make toward shaping a manuscript.  I know a ton of writers who get all torqued when editors come at them with revisions or comments.  I've already admitted that, yes, the first edit letter I ever got from Greg made me collapse into a weeping puddle of goo because it was so detailed, I thought the guy truly hated what I'd written.  It took my husband to observe that, you know, the guy loved the series or he wouldn't have bought it; and another pro writer friend to point out that an editor who invested this much into producing such detailed notes and questions was a) rare and b) someone from whom I could learn a great deal.

If there's one thing I've repeated over and over again and in many different venues, it's this: not every word deserves to live.  A writer has to be ruthless when it comes to editing out extraneous stuff, and I'm pretty good when it come to throttling up my weed-whacker.  Normally, I'll kill about 15-20% of a final manuscript.  I'd like to think that I catch every errant word, but of course, I don't.  No one does.  But I guess I'm fixated on that single moment as a terrific example of what working with a gifted editor can be: not dictatorial but collaborative.  An editor like Greg is not only going through a manuscript with a flea comb; he's not only interested in pacing.  He's interested in how a book will make people feel.  He's invested in clarity.  We agonized over one bloody line because we both wanted the message to come across in a very particular way.  This wasn't about killing a word; it was about reinforcing an emotion.  

Now, am I saying that we let editors rewrite our work?  No.  Do we always agree?  Of course not.  Yes, we spin the stories.  Yes, sometimes it can feel as if the comments are nits and silly; I can always tell when Greg's getting punchy from the tone of a question, and we're comfortable enough with one another now that I can kid him about it, too.  

So, yeah, stick to your guns; defend your work because, when push comes to shove, no one cares as much about your book as you.  But always remember, guys: The best editors are, first and foremost, tremendous readers, people who want to be swept away into that perfect moment when story comes together and language does not fail.  

What Lives in My Trunk

Earlier this week, I was scheduled to do a live audio-interview on Bookspark.  As with most tech, Murphy's Law prevailed; no one could sign into the site; and the evening looked like a bust. I just happened to be moaning on my publisher's FB page about this because she and a bunch of other folks had wanted to virtually attend. Long story short, she called; we moaned together; then I suggested we just move the event to Twitter and do a live chat there.  Smart move: we had a great discussion (we even "trended," which, I gather, is a good thing), got tons of participation and fabulous questions, and went for over an hour before I had to beg off and break the fast, or fall on my nose.

One question from that which stuck with me revolved around whether or not I'd ever run into a story I just couldn't write or tell.  My response at the time wasn't disingenuous; I said that I kept working until I got it right--and that is true.  I tend to be a drudge.  OTOH, I went to medical school, so that figures.  We were all drudges.  

But when I took a step back and thought about it, I realized that, of course, there are tons of stories I've been unable to tell.  Either they die in outline form (the most frequent and least painful way, frankly, because you realize halfway through that what you thought was a great idea wasn't), fail to find an editor, or languish in the trunk every storyteller has in that dark closet because you know there's something wrong . . . but you just don't know what.  

Only later, when you've either gotten distance or better at the craft--and, frequently both--do you realize why the story defeated you.  Some you're able to redraft (never try to "fix" a story that didn't work; by definition, that's one dog that just won't hunt), as I did with ASHES.  From others, I've lifted ideas and scenes to use in other stories,  not verbatim because, again, the setups themselves didn't work.  

An example: there was one basic, overarching setup for a TREK novel that I actually carried two-thirds of the way through (an origin story about the Borg) before deciding that no one would ever actually LET me write a TREK novel.  Years later, when I'd done just that (and many stories and novellas in the universe), I dredged up my original idea because, you know, I just really liked it.  That idea was stuck in my craw; it was a cautionary, sweeping kind of story I felt compelled to write.  So I redrafted the entire thing to the parameters of a TREK spin-off series I was writing for (SCE) and finally got to see my book become reality as a two-parter, WOUNDS, and the thing was popular to boot (enough that I earned out and made royalties . . . a big deal).

The story fit much better into that universe.  Not to be immodest or anything, but whenever you do an "origin" story for a universe, it's  a risky proposition.  You're mucking with a basic tenet of that universe, something editors tend to be protective of and with good reason.   I even hedged at the end of my book because I didn't want to run afoul of the canon.  But I was blessed with an editor willing to take those risks, and the story was so successful--so interesting--that he and I planned another spin-off series based on those characters (a kind of TREK CSI).  Unfortunately, the SCE series was cancelled, and so that went nowhere.  Which sucked because my poor characters were left in limbo.  One of the dangers of work-for-hire: if a series is cancelled, it's like all your great ideas--your babies--get orphaned.  Sometimes you can scrub off the serial numbers.  Many times, you can't. Again, better just to redraft.  With these characters, I couldn't, so now I'll NEVER know what happens next. 

OTOH, that book was an example of an idea whose time finally came.  Before then, I hadn't grown into my writing chops enough to pull it off.  I was trying to tell the wrong story at the wrong time.  

So, have stories defeated me?  Oh, yeah.  Have I lived through the trauma to tackle them another day?  Yes, and frequently, I'm able to see why they got the upper-hand to begin with.  There are tons of novelists who brush off trunk novels--things they either were unable to sell or couldn't quite pull off--spruce 'em up, bring 'em out.  Some writers even tell you when they haven't changed much and, sometimes, it shows.  I guess my feeling, and I can only speak for my own stuff . . . Ils, honey, if it sucked the first time through, it'll suck now.  You really want your name on stuff that sucks?  

For me, what lives in my trunk: my failures, either in execution, conception, or both.  But you really can learn from your mistakes.  Sometimes, you even get a do-over.

***
And now for something completely different:

Calling all film makers! Egmont USA is hosting a SHADOWS: Book Two of the Ashes Trilogy book trailer contest. To enter simply read SHADOWS and then submit your awesome book trailer to ashestrilogy@yahoo.com. Entries should be 30-45 seconds in length and should not exceed 3MB. We'll be accepting entries from now until Halloween!

The winner will receive a customized ASHES pack and signed copies of both ASHES and SHADOWS.

Now get filming!

SHADOWS Book Birthday!

Wow, can you believe it's been a year since ASHES?  Nope, me neither.  Well, your wait is over. SHADOWS hits 9/25 (9/27, for those of you in the UK). 

If it's been a while since you've read the first book, I'd suggest dropping by my website for a recap: SO YOU READ ASHES A YEAR AGO.  SHADOWS picks up where ASHES left off; it's a bigger, broader story with multiple storylines and new characters.  No wash-rinse-repeat here, and no recap in the book.  Don't say I didn't warn you.

A ton of blog stops and giveaways, too, both here and in the UK.  For the first half of the month, they are:

9/26: Bookspark (Live Author Chat & Giveaway, 7 p.m.)
         The Book Smugglers (Giveaway)

9/27: Teen Librarian Toolbook

10/02: Books and Bling

10/03: Hoobitsies

10/04: Emily's Reading Room

10/05: Hope, Faith, and Books
           Behind A Million and One Pages (Giveaway)

10/06: The Write Path Blog (Giveaway)

10/07: Karin's Book Nook

10/08: Always YA at Heart (Giveaway)

10/09: I Blog, You Read

10/10: The Librarian Reads

10/11: Guilded Earlobe

10/12: ParaJunkee

10/13: Novel Novice (Giveaway)

10/14: Book Sweets Book Review (Giveaway and Recipe O.o)

10/15: Just Bookin Around


FESTIVALS:

10/13: Sheboygan Children's Book Festival (Sheboygan, WI)

10/19: Chippewa Valley Book Festival (Eau Claire, WI)

10/20: STEMfest (DeKalb, IL)

Those Boys in the Basement

Ever have those moments when you've slaved all day over a hot keyboard and gotten in all your pages and so you think, okay, I deserve a break today? (And, no, I don't mean a Big Mac and fries.)  Or let's say you've been fretting all day and you just can not, for the life of you, figure out how to tweak something to make that plot go?  In either case, you get up, walk away, head out to the gym--and then <DOH> it hits you, that Bart Simpson moment: how you're going to have to go back and tear up about five of those ten or twelve pages because you messed up.  Or that messy plot point unravels for you?  Or there's something even better you coulda/shoulda/woulda written if you've only been THINKING?  

Ah, but the trick is: you thought of it because you didn't.

In BAG OF BONES and ON WRITING, King calls it the boys in the basement.  Other people call it: muse, the subconscious, the unconscious, the artistic impulse.  Me, I call it both a Bart Simpson moment and a necessary ingredient to creativity: those instances when you have relaxed your conscious attention to a task and, Eureka, the answer--or a reasonable facsimile--presents itself.  For it to work for me, I need to be exercising or out in the garden, out in the sun, or hiking--doing something outdoors.  I have a writer-friend who routinely takes a nap if he comes up against a plot point that just won't fix itself.  Stephen King goes for long walks, and so does his protag in BAG OF BONES.

What we're all doing is diverting our attention from the task at hand.  We're removing ourselves from the surround and environmental cues that not only dictate how we should be behaving (i.e., hoeing a garden is altogether different from tapping on a keyboard and composing sentences) but create the expectations that we SHOULD both create and be creative.  That is, we're taking ourselves out from under the eye of the boss-man, who'll certainly dock our pay if we take one second's extra break than we're entitled to.

We all know the difference in these styles of thought, too, because we feel them and we feel the transitions back and forth.  (Hinky and unsettling, but true.)  Conscious thought is analytic and derivative; that is, when we're focused on a task, we think about it and make judgments.  We winnow; we parse and pare; we don't encourage the weeds.  Unconscious thought is, of course, much more closely related to dreaming, when the mind makes what feel like bizarre associations on the basis of connections we've forgotten about.  Think of the dream's imagery as the brain's attempt to find near-matches, places where your experiences should be slotted.  Those pathways are not logical; they're not derivative; they're a bit like weedy cross-connections: dandelions that worked their way into your cucumber patch because both plants have yellow flowers.

Allowing your unconscious to help you out is a bit like letting the boys in the basement play.  You need to relax enough to allow them to play, and for many of us, that means distractions: walking, napping, ripping out pesky weeds, breaking up of dirt, cooking dinner, doing the laundry; anything that allows your rigorous control over where your thoughts go to slip a bit.

But creativity is still a two-step process.  Yes, you can let the boys play.  They can come up with an interesting and novel solution.  But then you have to allow that solution to become conscious; it has to translate and transfer itself from the back of your mind to the front.  This isn't trivial either.  If you've ever tried a dream journal (I did, waaaay back when I was in analysis), you realize how stupid your dreams feel and sound and how fleeting they are once you engage a secondary, cognitive process like forming words with a pen or pencil.  What felt so logical or emotionally laden in a dream becomes, well, kind of dumb in the translation--and you also tend to forget if you can't find a way to allow the transfer to occur, and quickly.

For me, that means talking to myself, out loud, especially since I'm usually miles from home.  Yes, I get many strange looks because I have to keep talking, or my attention begins to wander again.  (This is both good and bad.  I may lose what I just discovered, but I may also gain something else.   In the middle of the night, if I jump up after a long period of staring at the ceiling and letting my attention wander, then I have a little tougher time deciphering what I meant if I've written it down.  Hearing my own voice tends to sock it home.  Even then, I still forget, which is kind of a pain.  Not to mention the fact that I'm jumping up and down all night long, and the husband is . . . well, a little annoyed.  OTOH, I have a very understanding spouse who doesn't seem to mind talking for a while in the wee hours.  He understands the value of calming the savage beast.)  I know other authors carry notebooks; some talk into digital recorders or their phones.  We all have our ways of translating that play into the work we've secretly been doing all along.

The important thing is to recognize that not paying attention allows us to solve complex problems--BUT that only works when we actually have a goal.  In other words, if you're inattentive and sort of a space cadet and have no real goal or problem or purpose . . . yeah, you're going to flounder, you're going to drift, and no Eureka moments for you.  On the other hand, if you are engaged in solving a complex problem, then not paying attention--not thinking about what's bothering you--will actually help the boys help YOU find the answer.

Now, excuse me . . . oooh, there goes a really pretty butterfly . . .

Comforted by F. Scott Fitzgerald!

Carol Tanzman checking in!

I recently read a post on the Letters of Note site (via the awesome Alice Marvels—if you don’t receive her e-newsletter on just about everything YA, you should), showing the very first correspondence exchanges between F. Scott Fitzgerald and his editor Maxwell Perkins regarding his new novel The Great Gatsby.

I loved reading the back and forth between the two of them. Catching a glimpse into their process. Just before Fitzgerald closes the first letter, in which he tell Perkins that he’s sending him his new manuscript under separate cover, he writes,

“Naturally I won't get a nights sleep until I hear from you…”

Sound familiar, writers? The question that haunts us all: in spite of all our hard work, is this manuscript any good?

In the next letter, Fitzgerald writes, “There are things in it I'm not satisfied with in the middle of the book—Chapters 6 & 7.”

Perkins writes back after reading the manuscript twice. He makes sure to give Fitzgerald very effusive, and deserved, praise, before he says, “I think you are right in feeling a certain slight sagging in chapters six and seven, and I don't know how to suggest a remedy.”

I can almost see Fitzgerald taking a puff of his cigarette or downing a shot of whiskey: “Damn, I was hoping he’d tell me it was fine.” Because this means Fitzgerald must rewrite, of course. I imagine him trying all sorts of things to find that remedy himself: long walks, drinking extra booze, staying up late, waking up earlier, thinking about the problem, NOT thinking about the problem, working on another note…

Except for the cigarette-smoking, I’m actually projecting a bit of what happened after I read a few of my editor’s notes for the upcoming Circle of Silence. The acknowledgment that, yes, something’s not quite right in a certain section. The awareness that, oops, I’m not quite sure what to do about it. There has to be a way to solve the problem, I think, and I go through all those steps until, at last, the “Aha” moment appears.

 “I know how to fix this!” I think.

Lo and behold, in Fitzgerald’s very next letter to Perkins, he makes this list:

“(b) Chapters VI & VII I know how to fix” (emphasis mine). I hear Fitzgerald’s quiet triumph, his palpable relief that he can finally make those chapters work.

“(c) Gatsby's business affairs I can fix. I get your point about them.” (Again, the quiet nod—you’re right about this, Perkins old chap and I will make it better.)

“(d) His vagueness I can repair by making more pointed—this doesn't sound good but wait and see. It'll make him clear. “

LOL! “This doesn’t sound good but wait and see…”  I just love that. How many times have I said something similar to an editor? Since I am not F. Scott Fitzgerald, however, I always add, “If you don't think it works, I’ll cut/change/rewrite.”

Reading these exchanges made me inordinately happy. Through the wonders of the Internet, I'm able to cross time and space and meet F. Scott Fitzgerald in the place all writers wish to find: the magical ground that allows us to make every book the best we can.

For the full Letters of Note post, click here: 

For more information on Circle of Silence, which will be published by Harlequin Teen in exactly two weeks (7/24/12), click here.