I have arrived at that point.

My original points regarding why I didn’t like the book and hadn’t gotten past page four were as follows:

1) It is in first person POV.

2) She wanted to kill the cat.

3) I can be, on occasion, contrary.

I break it down, below the cut.  Spoilers for all three Hunger Games books, and the movie.

THE FIRST PERSON POV

Still not a fan.  I think the first person is pretty necessary, for a few reasons, but I think that choosing to write the book this was has actually taken away from the story, much in the same way that JK Rowling’s choice to use deep third person POV painted her into a corner in book seven, or how the climactic battle at the end of Twilight was totally missing from the book because Bella (our first person POV) gets knocked out.

The Good

- We get a lot of details about the world, including personal impressions, through Katniss herself, in ways that just wouldn’t work if the novel had been in third person.

- I think if we saw Katniss through a third person lens, she would be unbearable.  Her personality and behavior is such that I felt like having access to her inner thoughts and processes was the one thing that kept me reading, in that while I hated her choices and thought she was acting like an idiot about certain things, I could understand where she was coming from a bit better when I was in her head.

However, after watching The Hunger Games movie, I think I may have to re-revaluate my position on that.  The film was outside POV- we didn’t get any internal monologues or narration that would have allowed the filmmakers to incorporate more of Katniss’s personality and voice into the film.  Instead, we had outside POV, even though she was clearly the main character, and I liked her so much MORE in the movie. 

- Her voice is pretty compelling.  I don’t like her, but I was drawn in to her world view and how she saw things based on her experiences in District 12.  She has a sarcastic wit that I enjoyed, and in certain circumstances could really cut people down to the quick.  Sadly, she wasn’t able to do that everyone (hello, Peeta!).

- The one moment in the story that we really, really need to understand what’s in her head is the reaping scene.  I don’t think it would have had the power it did if it had come from an outside POV.  We needed to understand her desperation, the sheer terror that she was feeling that made her, in those brief seconds, decide to throw herself into the literal ring in place of her sister.  That moment really, really worked.

The Bad

- Still not a fan of first person and while the later pages and books are much better than the first few pages of Hunger Games, I still had a lot of issues with the first person usage.  While I feel like Collins is a powerful world builder and has given us this unique view on a world that we all hope we never see, I feel that her prose isn’t as strong as it could have been or should have been.  This is one of those series where the story itself transcends the actual writing, to become a massive hit.  I think we’re seeing something similar with E. L. James’s Fifty Shades of Grey.  The writing itself has a number of pretty serious flaws but the world building, the overarching story, and the characters overcome the mediocre box they were born in.

- The first person POV, especially as used in Mockingjay, was a “get out of jail free” card, in terms of giving up actual details of what’s happening in the world.  When we’re with Katniss, we can only see what she sees, know what she knows, etc.  So, if there are exciting things happening beyond the scope of that POV, the reader only finds out about them when KATNISS finds out about them.

Which means that there is a lot of telling in these books, especially in Mockingjay.  There were a lot of really fascinating plot points that were dropped on us in this offhanded way, almost like Collins just didn’t want to write that scene so she just didn’t.  I wanted more from the scene where Peeta attacks Katniss.  I wanted to know more about how it went down, how they pulled him off of her, who helped, who didn’t- that is the kind of scene that really SHOWS us character.  Instead, Collins continued to resort to TELLING us who these people were and it’s not nearly as much fun.

SHE WANTED TO KILL THE CAT

 I found it really funny, in a kind of “fuck you, Katniss” kind of way that Buttercup makes it all the way to the end of the series.  The use of the cat is really well done later in the book, although I don’t think the initial introduction to the cat or to Katniss’s relationship with the cat was even close to being as effective.

Did this element of the book show me that Katniss is logical and that extra mouth to feed was a real danger?  No.  It’s pretty clear that Buttercup takes care of himself.  If that’s the case, then what the fuck did it matter if she let him live?  And clearly, the cat takes care of himself better than Katniss ever could, seeing as he survives both the District 12 and District 13 bombings, and makes it through the revolution alive and willing to give Katniss a second chance to be awesome.

Was Collins trying to show us Katniss as an anti-hero, or trying to twist the “save the cat” moment by having her not kill the cat but not being happy about it?

Either way, I thought it was poorly done and not a particularly good way to introduce us to Katniss.

I CAN, ON OCCASION, BE CONTRARY

I will admit that there was a part of me that wanted to be the one dissenter in this whole Hunger Games whirlwind. 

I mentioned in my last post on this that I had purchased the e-book version of the first novel, and my husband decided that he wanted to read it.  He finished it very quickly and told me that I would need to read it ASAP, as we would be going to see the film that weekend and I needed to have it read before then.

I wanted to argue the point, and there was a part of me that wanted to wait and just watch the movie first.  I find that if I do that, I tend to like both mediums, instead of loving the book and being annoyed with the movie.  However, Bear was standing his ground, so I told him I would read it.

I didn’t like Katniss the first few times I tried to read it and that did not change this time.  I don’t see Katniss as particularly heroic.  She’s a survivor and she does what she needs to in order to survive.  I don’t see that as particularly heroic.  She makes a lot of stupid decisions and her interpretation of other people’s motives (*ahem*Peeta*ahem*) are TERRIBLE.

One of the moments that really stood out to me is Katniss’s unwillingness to ask for help.  When her father dies, and her mother checks out of reality for a while, their family is struggling.  Katniss decides that it would be better to pretend that everything was okay, because if people found out that her mother was not taking care of them, then they could be taken away and sent to the Hunger Games equivalent of the County Home.  All the kids who live there have really horrible lives and Katniss can’t let that happen to her dear sister Prim.  So she pretends that all is well and they slowly (oh, so slowly) begin to starve to death.

One of the key moments in the book is what happens when Katniss first meets Peeta, the boy with the bread.  She is mere days (possibly one day) away from LITERALLY DYING of starvation, when, while she’s trying to find something in the trash by his family’s bakery, Peeta burns some bread and throws it to her.  He takes a good wallop from his mother for his trouble but he does it anyway.  His burnt bread quite literally is the turning point for Katniss and her family- without it, and without that moment, they would all be dead and Katniss would never have become the Girl Who Was on Fire.

My problem here?  Katniss had so much pride, or she truly didn’t understand the consequences of her actions, that she was willing to let her sister die rather than ask for help and risk the County Home.  I get it- she didn’t want them to get split up, she didn’t want them to have to live in those kinds of conditions, but a shitty life is better than being dead, and it’s certainly better than starving to death.  It’s not a quick way to die, nor is it pleasant. 

I have to ask- were there no other people that she could have gone to for help?  Her father seemed like a pretty cool guy- he didn’t have any friends that would help them out, with a little bit of bread or a bit of meat?  REALLY?

I saw this and just thought Katniss was an idiot.  Yes, I understand that she’s twelve.  But I have known tweleve year olds with much more sense than this, although that isn’t hard because Katniss is kind of stupid.  She is capable and she is savvy in the woods, hunting and what not, but she is rather dumb about people, about relationships, about why people (Peeta, for example) would choose to help her without wanting anything in return.

Regarding the whole contrary issue, I’m glad I was forced into reading this.  If I didn’t have anyone waiting for me to finish reading so we could discuss it, I think I would have stopped on page six.

I did like reading about the world.  It was really well drawn, and the darkness and danger inherent in it really pushed my “dark and fucked up” buttons.  I liked a lot of the other characters, and have spent a lot of time thinking about who these people really are, as opposed to who Katniss THINKS they are through the filter of her brain.

I fell in love with Peeta.  I can see so much of my husband in him, and my husband made a few comments about how he saw himself in Peeta as well, so it makes sense that I am a Peeta girl, as opposed to Gale.  My love for Peeta makes me even more judgmental of Katniss, because I just don’t understand how she is unable to see him for who he is, or why she continually questions his motives.  I just don’t get it.

Yes, please. I'll take all three.

Katniss is the kind of girl that has always driven me crazy, even when I was a kid.  She can’t decide between two dudes, but she’ll keep them both on the hook because what happens if she lets one go and it’s the wrong choice?  I feel like she’s incredibly unfair and even cruel to Peeta and his feelings. 

Regarding Gale, I feel like he’s been done a terrible disservice by Collins, in that I don’t think there is a whole lot of substance to him, beyond his anger at the Capital.  His entire personality revolves around his dissatisfaction with his life and the circumstances of his world, but there aren’t any hints of what he would be like if/when anything changed.  What would he do or be if the Capital fell?  All of who he is, is caught up in this desire to change the world and not a lot of time is spent on what he’d do once that change happened.

Peeta, on the other hand, feels like someone who could figure out his place just about anywhere.  He’s the kind of guy that can take things as they come and be happy with simple and small.  I don’t think Gale would be happy with the same.  That’s not to say that I don’t think Peeta wants change, because I know that he does, but he’s not wallowing in his misery in the same way that Gale seems to be.

And in color. Words are failing me.

I wanted her to choose Peeta from the beginning, except for the fact that Peeta is too good for Katniss.  I actually feel like it would have been a better ending if Katniss had ended up alone, with a million cats, all of whom followed Buttercup to her house, and none of which she actually wants but she just can’t get them to leave.

My husband brought up an interesting point.  The book is from Katniss’s POV, but what if Peeta is actually the main character?  That makes the book MUCH more interesting for the reader, if you have an outside POV telling the story instead of the actual main character.  This is a trope that I absolutely adore in fanfic, so the idea that Suzanne Collins could have used it in her novels is amazing to me, and super fun.   Doesn’t the thought just blow your mind?  I love it!

I think, in the end, these books made feel a lot of feelings.  I’m still cataloguing everything that is swirling around in my brain, trying to figure out just where I fall.  Expect, perhaps, to see another post or two as I work through ALL THESE FEELINGS that I have. 

I think that’s actually one of the truly brilliant elements of these books- it’s hard to nail down just one way to feel about them.  Despite my issues with certain elements of these novels, I found them to be engaging and thought provoking, and I really wanted to know more about how they got to the epilogue.  I’ll give Collins this much- her epilogue was WAY better that Rowling’s (not that it’s all that hard to do, sadly).

I’m admitting here, in public and on the interwebs (so we all know it will NEVER GO AWAY) that I have changed my mind, mostly, about The Hunger Games.

What do YOU think about them?

First of all, TWENTY YEARS?  Holy shit.  I feel incredibly old right now. 

The X-Files premiered on September 10, 1993, but with the on-screen date of March 6, 1992.

Why does this matter?  Why should anyone, including you or I care?

Well, for me, The X-Files was a life changing event.  The show changed the way I looked at the world around me, for good or ill, and it helped me hang on when I was so depressed that I wasn’t sure if I wanted to make it to the next episode or not.  For the record, my obsession was so great that I honestly think my need to find out what would happen next (and when would they hook up, damn it) trumped any suicidal thoughts that I possibly had at the time.    

When The X-Files premiered, my parents were fairly recently divorced and I was spending the majority of my time with my mother, in a town that was roughly 30 miles away from where my dad was living.  My sister and I spent every other weekend with him, when he would drive over, pick us up, and take us to his place.

Which sounds all well and good, except that my father worked in construction, as an electrical contractor, and he had very early mornings.  He needed to be out at the shop by 6:30am, so he would hit the hay very early, sometimes before 8pm the night before.

What this meant for my sister and me was that we would get to his house, have a weirdly uncomfortable dinner with his wife at the time (number 2, he is now on number 3) and possibly my step-sisters (who were way cooler and way thinner than I was, and they knew it, so I wasn’t exactly the person they wanted to hang with on a Friday night), then my dad would hit the sack, and everyone else would shuffle off and do whatever.  My little sister would be reading or playing, and if I didn’t have a strong desire to join her, it meant that I was on my own. 

Let me just say that getting dragged out into the country, ostensibly to spend time with your father, and then he goes to sleep before most senior citizens, does not feel great.  In fact, it feels pretty shitty.  The additional fact that he would do all sorts of things around the house over the weekend, many things which did not include giving us his undivided attention, also felt shitty.  It’s the kind of thing that makes a person feel more like a possession than a child who is loved and adored.

(Look, I get that this is all first world problems.  Really, I do.  I’m working on it, okay?  Also, as a side note, someday my father is going to read this blog and he is going to be really upset that I’ve thrown all my dirty laundry out there.  Can I just say that I could give two shits?)

On this particular Friday night, I was alone in the den, trying to figure out what to watch on TV.  My father’s house was (and still is, come to think of it) in the middle of nowhere and he did not have cable. (Although not for lack of trying.  The cable company refused to run lines out to his house, even though he was less than a mile from the city line.  He offered to run the line himself [remember- contractor] but they still refused him the service.  The magic of DirectTV had not yet been invented, or at least was not a reasonable choice at this time.) 

He did have an antenna that allowed us to get a few different stations.  The TV up in the den was older, and still had the two dials, one for UHF (which always made me happy, if only because of the mental UHF/Weird Al references that I would make in my head).  I could get the Toledo NBC, ABC, CBS, Fox, and PBS stations, as well as some religious station, and that was about it.

I had been flipping through channels, which required that I stand in front of the TV and turn the knob, which was actually harder than it sounds, because there was some serious resistance on that knob and sometimes you had to work to make that bad boy click over to the next fuzzy station. 

My plan, I believe, looking back 19 years, was to get around the commercials and watch some TGIF on ABC.  However, I stopped turning the dial when I hit the following:

“Inspired by actual documented accounts.”  Whoo, boy, did that grab me.  So I stopped turning and I sat down, and started watching.  And I was hooked.

The X-Files is one of the first shows that I can think of that I got in on at the ground floor, but that I didn’t MEAN to get in on.  I chose seaQuest DSV like I would choose a puppy.  I jumped on the Firefly train because I was obsessed with Buffy (which I didn’t get into until season 3) and Angel (which I was in on the ground floor BECAUSE of Buffy).  I hated the pilot of Supernatural on first viewing, only falling into the series when season 1 came out on DVD and I was suffering from extreme food poisoning.

The X-Files was a lucky mistake.  I’d like to believe that I would have found it anyway, even if it was later, but I love the fact that I was there on opening day, so to speak.

The X-Files spoke to me (and still speaks to me) on a level that very few things ever have.  There was something about the trust between Mulder and Scully that I was envious of and longed for in my own life.  There was a loyalty there that I wished I could have with my own friends and family.  I think, looking back, that I did have a loyalty like that but it just hadn’t manifested in the same way.  Either way, I watched that show and I wanted the kind of emotional connection that they had, even with the banter (or perhaps ESPECIALLY because of the banter) and the bickering.

There was an unspoken language that Mulder and Scully had.  Looks they exchanged that said more than words ever could.  Small touches, like when he would guide her around crime scenes (and everywhere else) with his hand at the small of her back.  The way that he became overprotective after her abduction, the way that he fought with her and for her when she was diagnosed with cancer.  The way she could say things to Mulder that were snarky and condescending but woe to the outside person who tried the same thing. 

It was more than just dialogue, more than just words, that tied them together, that showed that they cared, that they loved each other (even if you never believed that they were IN LOVE with each other).  I soaked in all those little details, classified and catalogued everything as I watched, memorizing everything part of it because it was what I wanted, what I hoped for, what I wished my life could have in it.

I became obsessed with the show.  I bought TV shirts, I taped every episode and watched them multiple times.  I knew (and still do, to some extent) the names of every episode through season 7.  I had X-Files viewing parties in high school, made easier when the show moved to Sunday nights, and continued those events when I went to college. 

Stupid story: I, and others in my dorm, made angry calls to the Detroit Fox station when they started cutting off the previews for the next episode during the credits of the current episode with a preview of the upcoming news program.  I mean, the news is going to be on in less than a MINUTE (which they helpfully told us, as they were cutting off Mulder’s face with the inset of the evening news set)- why do we need a preview like that?  It’s not like we have to wait a whole week or anything.

We burned pictures of the news anchor in effigy, mostly as a joke, but from that point on, I refused to watch any segment or program with that guy as the lead.  My little circle of college friends laughed about it, but a part of me, deep inside, wasn’t kidding.  This ass was the reason that I missed the trailer for next week- he kept me from my fix and I was ANGRY about that. 

I imagine that this behavior is similar to that of an addict.  I am sure that I was.  I am sure that the way I behaved was a combination of addictive personality and the desperate attempts of someone drowning in depression to find something, anything, to cling to in order to make things better.  I latched my hooks in The X-Files and for a brief moment, it was better. 

I read fan fiction, I posted on group e-mail loops, I forced my friends to watch the show, to talk about it.  I found friends who were just as obsessed as I was.  We had in-jokes, things that we understood in mere seconds but would take me at least ten minutes to explain to an outsider.

I took my X-Files seriously and expected others to do the same, if not being as obsessed as I was, then respecting my obsession and not calling me on X-Files nights.

I suffered from depression in college, I realize as I look back on those days.  I was never officially diagnosed or medicated, but I contemplated suicide once or twice.  I’m not sure it was chemical depression- my step-sister suffers from that and I wouldn’t want to marginalize or lessen her issues by comparing them to my own- but it was more than just melancholy.  I was angry, with a hair trigger temper, and I was sad.  My heart hurt, all the time. 

My father left my mother when I was in the 3^rd grade.  From that point forward, I had anger issues, issues with authority, and problems with trusting people.  I was sad, I was mad, and I was desperate to find someone or something to believe in.  My father left his second wife in the fall of 1997, when I was a freshman in college, and took up with a woman that he told me was new in his life but turned out that she had been his mistress for over five years before that.  This did not help with my issues, as I had long been connecting my personal happiness and satisfaction with my relationship with my father. 

I felt betrayed by him, not because he had cheated on me, personally, or that he had cheated on my mother (although it was revealed that he had done that as well, when they had been married).  I felt betrayed because my father had forced this second family on me, had forced me to accept these new people into my life with all kinds of rules and expectations that it turned out he had no intention of keeping himself.  To add insult to injury, he lied to my face on more than one occasion regarding his girlfriend and how his marriage ended, meaning I felt used and manipulated and small.

I spent many of my college years feeling that betrayal and wishing that I could trust my father, in any way.  That I could believe the words that came out of his mouth.  That I could trust that he would choose to be with my sister and I, and that he hadn’t used us as excuses for when he would sneak away to see his mistress, or that he would choose to be with her in the brief free time he had, instead of us.

TRUST NO ONE was a pretty powerful message to me.  It was reminder that trust was a precious thing that shouldn’t be given out willy, nilly.  You only break this rule with the people who have really earned it.

I watched The X-Files with all of this baggage and there was something very powerful about these two people who only really had each other.  They could only really trust and count on one another, because there wasn’t anyone else that they could trust out there in the world.  There was a devotion to their relationship that bordered on obsessive and unhealthy, which the show touched on, but in the end, time and again, it was proven that their paranoia was not unfounded, and their love and respect for each other was stronger than any annoyance or anger could ever be.

It wasn’t a perfect relationship, by any means, but it was something that I longed for, that I dreamt of.  Someone I could trust, someone who could and would trust me, someone that I could count on to have my back, when I had theirs, and that would love me no matter how stupid I acted or how selfish I could be. 

I realize, in all this introspection, that I am totally Fox Mulder, as lame as that is. 

Feeling betrayed by the parents that he should have been able to trust and count on completely?  CHECK

Selfish and self-absorbed?  CHECK

Obsessed with things that other people think are crazy?  CHECK

Believer in the supernatural, mystical, magical, and just plain weird?  CHECK

In love with a red-head (Bear is kind of red-headed, at least his beard is, so I’m counting it.) who puts up with my shit but gives me a lot of shit for it?  CHECK 

I watch The X-Files now, as an adult who is in a committed, trusting relationship, with slightly different eyes.  I can appreciate the conspiracy episodes more now than I did in the past.  I’m not quite as invested in the “are they/aren’t they” relationship stuff as I was when I was a teenager.  I understand why Mulder is an asshole and why Scully would react to him the way she does better than I ever did in the past. 

But I still see all those things that originally drew me to the show in the past.  I can still see why I loved it then, why I felt like it saved me, why I thought it was something that I could hang on to when times were really emotionally tough for me.    

So, yeah, the 20^th anniversary of the meeting of Mulder and Scully is a big deal for me.  Happy anniversary, you crazy kids!  Glad I could be there from the beginning.  It’s meant the world to me.

On January 18, Cale made a post titled “The Problem with Romance Novels” and proceeded to denigrate the entire genre of romance.  This, of course, made a lot of people on the internet angry.  Quelle surprise!

Cale claims to be a “sexy, single white male with a really big, uh, wallet.”  There is one claim in that list that I’d believe, and that’s the “single, white male” part. 

But I digress.

For those who don’t want to give this guy more hits on his site, here’s a breakdown of what he’s saying.

His claims:

1) Romance novels and authors demanding respect is similar to people demanding respect for finger paintings.  Translation: it’s ridiculous.

2) Romance is responsible for the “almost 50%” illiteracy rate in this country. (Not sure where he’s getting his numbers- he didn’t source them, although throughout his post, he required others to reference all of THEIR claims.  Just saying, is all.)

3) Romance writers do not deserve the same respect as “authors of much higher standing.”  (It reads like he doesn’t think they deserve any respect at all.)

4) Romance novels are DESIGNED to be inferior.

5) Romance and love stories are things belonging to junior high school girls and should be left behind when girls become women. (I don’t even know.  I mean, seriously?  WTF?)

6) “If a romance story were that good, it would no longer be referred to as romance, but would instead simply be known as drama or literary fiction or a classic love story.” (*blinks*)

I tried to engage the guy in genial, polite discourse, and he stuck to his guns.  Romance is for little kids, he seems to think.  I was dismissed with a wave of the guy’s hand.

As an aside, I’m disturbed by this.  Romance, with all the sexy times and serious emotional connections, are for kids?  What does he think adults are doing when they date and get married, etc?  Does he think it’s all rational, logical decisions based on cost analysis and future projections of wealth, or possibly a decision based on genetic compatibility alone?  There is a reason this guy is single and I think this might be a big part of it.

He makes a big deal about Ivy League schools not treating romance as “real” literature, as well.  He even goes so far as to research people that are mentioned in comments so he can discount their academic status (“He’s not a REAL Harvard professor, he’s just a guest lecturer,” blah, blah, blah).  The pretention is just oozing off the page by the time you get to these comment replies.  I think I threw up a little in my mouth.

I was really incensed for a bit, until I figured it out.

The dude is a troll.

Read that again and let it sink in.

THE DUDE IS A TROLL.

Dude is a douche canoe. And sadly, I'll bet he doesn't even float.

He’s not trolling someone’s blog in the comments, he’s trolling the entire romance/reading COMMUNITY in order to get traffic to his blog.  He clearly needs it.  The guy is at the same level that I am- he’s trying to get published, make a name for himself, but he hasn’t gotten there yet.  He’s trying to build his readership, get some eyes to his blog to check him out.  He’s not getting the kind of traffic that he wants (prob. because he’s pretentious and derogatory as shit, but that might just be me) so he’s decided to try something new.

He nukes the romance community from space (it’s the only way to be sure!!!) and watches the traffic to his site just skyrocket.

My guess?  He’s seen what’s been happening with all of the reviewer vs. author stuff and knows that controversy will get you a lot of attention.  And boy, is he getting it.

The problem with his plan, is that he looks like a total toolbox.  Why?  Because the people he’s drawn to his site are ROMANCE READERS who are not going to agree with him.  And the more dismissive and condescending he gets with his comments, the less likely it is that these people are going to be swayed to his perspective.

Am I going to go back and read more of this guy’s stuff? 

Not a chance in hell.

So, he gets a post with a ton of comments and a lot of traffic that isn’t, for the most part, going to last for him.

I’m sure he’ll get a few new followers, but let’s do a cost analysis on this.  Will the value he gets from new readers outweigh the bad will that he’s engendering in other members of the reading/writing community?  Is INFAMOUS preferable to famous? 

The other question I keep asking myself is if he actually, true facts, believes the crap that he’s spouting.  If he does, he may be in trouble.  He gives me the impression that he is not a listener.  He doesn’t hear what people are saying, because he’s so convinced that he’s right that he doesn’t need to bother. 

This guy is going to have issues in the future.  What if an editor or agent decides they want to pick up one of his books, but he needs to do some story editing?  Is this the guy that’s going to be open to suggestions or is he going to argue over every little change and not bend at all?

He strikes me as the type of person that will self-publish if only because he thinks he knows better than the editorial professionals and doesn’t believe he needs to change anything in his manuscript.

Translation: the kind of guy to avoid when you’re clicking around amazon.com and come across his book.

I also imagine that he’s this way in his personal life, so he’s either going to have to find a woman who agrees with everything he says or who won’t say anything even if she doesn’t.  Good luck with that, buddy.

Funny thing- I’ve been reading Chuck Wendig’s 500 Ways to be a Better Writer (which is totally worth the $2.99- you should all pick it up!) and I just read the bit where he talks about not being a “book racist.”  In Wendig’s case, he’s talking about not denigrating other storytelling mediums, like TV or movies.  However, I think his point can apply here as well.

There are those of us that are so sure that our medium is the only one that matters or that has value, and we are not afraid to express that opinion.  This is true within each medium- look at the film world.  The people who will argue the value of Speilberg vs. Tarintino, romantic comedies vs. indie dramas vs. sci-fi vs. blockbusters of all kinds.

Clearly, this guy is one of those who wants to place a value on each genre of books and rank them according to value to the world.  But as I read over his comments, it makes me wonder what value he’s actually looking for in his literature.  Whatever it is, it’s clear that he’s not truly willing to experiment or try new things.  He’s already decided what he likes and what he doesn’t and isn’t willing to bend on that at all, which I believe is to his detriment as a writer of fiction.

There are many genres of books out there.  Literature, with a capital ‘L’, westerns, mysteries, sci-fi, fantasy, romance, etc.  To quote Wendig, “the storytelling cults can learn much from each other.”  You won’t like everything you read, but you should never just write it off as a lesser form.  You can learn something from everything. 

Some of the best storytelling lessons I’ve learned have come from bad books, bad TV shows, and bad movies, or stories that I haven’t liked, even if I could agree that the writing was well done.  If you can’t learn from what you engage in and encounter, then you may be missing a large part of what has kept humans on the top of the pile for so long.  Adaptability.

I’ve learned a lot from his posts, point of fact, and I will be using the lessons I learned as I move forward, hopefully making myself a better writer and a better person.

But in the end, it all boils down to the fact that, no matter what he ACTUALLY believes or doesn’t, the guy is a troll and not worth worrying about.

I read detective novels and suspense thrillers. I went through a period in my life where I had read almost all the current releases, even the shitty books that they sell you at the checkout counter in big box stores like Wal-Mart or Meijer, for like $1.99. So, when I started reading the Da Vinci Code and I was able to guess every step that the author would take for the first 30 pages, I decided I was done.

I don’t want to be a step (or five) ahead of the author. I want to be surprised and shocked and mesmerized the whole way. Which I wasn’t.

And I wasn’t all that surprised about the content of the book, either. After reading other books with similar theological content (and which mare much better written) like Christopher Moore’s Lamb, and seeing films like Kevin Smith’s Dogma, the idea that things did not go down like the bible spells it out is not a new concept to me. And it’s not heretical, at least in my mind. There are numerous reasons why the Catholic Church and the Pope would want to change the story to meet their own needs and I get that. Which is why the whole plot of the Da Vinci Code just didn’t shock me.

Like, at ALL.

That ties in with a second phenomenon that bothers the crap out of me. Remember when Lost came out and all these people got sucked into the story? People who had denigrated and smack talked all sorts of sci-fi and fantasy works for years?

Yeah, they decided that they loved Lost and they fell into two categories. Either they refused to believe or accept that Lost was actually a work of science fiction or of fantasy (which I experienced when I worked at Blockbuster and got into an argument with a woman who refused to accept that Lost was a fantasy despite all of the evidence to the contrary), or they acted like they were the first person ever to like science fiction or fantasy. Or, that Lost was the first show to do any of the things that it did.

Spoiler alert- it wasn’t.

Not that I don’t think Lost was a great show, although I only watched the first season and that was it (god, back to the Twilight/Hunger Games conversation). I think it did amazing things and I am actually pretty glad that it got people interested in speculative fiction. However, as a lifelong speculative fiction fan, it’s annoying.

My husband is seeing this trend in gaming and with comic books. It’s really popular to be a geek right now. Geek isn’t really derogatory anymore, which is nice for the kids growing up, but it’s annoying for those of us who went through that gauntlet when we were kids and are mad as hell that the people that tormented us with snide comments and who failed to invite us to their parties are suddenly embracing the very things that they gave us shit for.

The internet, it seems, it responsible for this in the long run. It’s not that Spider-Man is inherently cooler now than he was thirty years ago. It’s not like the X-Men have undergone a major revision and are suddenly a different, more exciting team of heroes. No, it’s that the people who never would have read those comics or seen those movies in the past are being shown, thanks to technology, that those stories are amazing, they are spectacular (see what I did there?), and they are worth spending time and money on. The internet, it seems, is a geek enabler.

The internet makes it easier to share your passion. It makes it easier to show people WHY you love something and give them an interactive medium with which to ask you questions and find out more. And if someone does find your little manifesto on why Nightwing/Robin is the best sidekick ever in the history of comics (with Bucky coming in a close second), they are able to, with just a few clicks, find more material to read and do research. Comics, it seems, are not difficult to get a hold of anymore, even if you live in the middle of BFE.

Short stories, fan fic, book/comic/movie reviews, podcasts- there is an amazing amount of access available via the web and it’s allowing people to find their inner geek, even if they hadn’t allowed themselves to do that previously.

Which bugs the shit out of the nerds/geeks who had to take the heat for loving Star Trek or Star Wars for the past 40 years or so.

I was an angry kid, tall and strong and big, who cared what people thought but was able to throw shit back and ACT like I didn’t care when people made fun of me. It was fun to be contrary and tell people, “so what?” when they told me that I was a loser or that Star Wars was lame.

“Why do I care what you think?” does wonders for people messing with you. (I will also confess that I won a weight lifting competition when I was in high school and after my total weight lifted was announced over the intercom the Monday after, there was a certain segment of dudes who had given me shot before then who decided that I was no longer worth the hassle, which made life a lot easier for me.)

Seriously, when you tell people who are giving you shit that you don’t give a shit about what they’re saying, it is so much fun to watch their faces. They sometimes deflate, like a balloon, or they get all red and mad, which is equally awesome.

But I digress.

My point here is that my husband and I grew up without the internet. If we wanted to squee over Star Wars or Thundercats or whatever, we needed to actually meet people, probably in our hometown or at camp or something, to talk about it with. It could be hard to find fellow fans (Escape to Witch Mountain fans, please contact me!) and being a fannish person could be super lonely.

If you were alone, and you were taking shit from people at school, it could be a long, hard road to walk.

That all changed with the internet. We got the internet at my house in 1996 and the coolest thing about it, at least for me, was the fact that I could get on Yahoo (oh, 1990′s, how quaint you were!) and do a search for any of my fannish loves and find web sites devoted to it, fan fiction archives with the additional adventures of whoever it was you wanted to read about, newsgroups discussing the latest episodes, and e-mail loops with all of the above.

Suddenly, the community of geeks was much larger, in that it now included the entire world, and smaller, in that so many people from all over the world became close friends with fans who felt the same way about it.

On the one hand, I am so glad that today’s kids can log on to the web and find someone else who loves what they love and they can talk about it. Even in a town as small as the one that I grew up in, it’s easy to find someone else to geek out with, even if they live 5,000 miles away.

The other side is that the special nature of geekdom is slipping away. It used to be that you survived the trial by fire and you earned your stripes. You got respect for what you made it through and what you were able to find on your own. It took work to get a hold of fanzines or fan films. It was hard to get all the episodes of Doctor Who or Cowboy Bebop. Now it takes less than 5 minutes and you can have the entire run of Doctor Who on your iPad.

I feel like an old person, complaining about this, but I think it is something that needs to be brought up. After all that, it comes back to the Lost phenomenon. All sorts of late speculative fiction adopters are annoying those of us who have been in the game for most of our lives. It is super frustrating when people talk about tropes of the genre that appear in these shows (I will include Battlestar Galactica here as well because there are a ton of people who jumped on the bandwagon because it was cool, not because they really loved the sci-fi and started acted as though BSG was the first to do any of it and really? It was a REMAKE of a show from the 1970′s- CLEARLY it is not entirely new and fresh.) as though the show was the first to do any of it.

No. No it isn’t. They are tropes. Please to be doing some homework.

Here’s the thing. I’m not opposed to things like the Da Vinci Code or Lost. I just wish they were BETTER than what we’ve been given. If we’re going to suck in this new wave of fans, why can’t we give them the best that genre fiction has to offer, not just something that’s middling?

Clearly there is something in these works that have connected with these viewers/readers in a way that previous works did not. That must be taken into consideration, clearly. My concern is that what if what drew people in is something superficial and stupid, that no one who is a true lover of genre fiction would ever want to repeat in their own works? Like, did people watch Lost because of the cast? Or because they were fans of Felicity and JJ Abrams was a part of Lost? Or was the massive marketing campaign that ABC threw out a part of it as well?

I don’t want to be the snob that doesn’t want to let in the barbarians at the gate. I love that more and more people are getting into the things that I love. It’s just that, as they do, they are changing the nature of fandom and of fannish interactions. They’re changing what it means to be a geek and some of us long term, hard core geeks who survived all those early battles are a bit bitter.

Just a bit.

I’ve been on LiveJournal for over 10 years, and I’ve been an active participant in fandom and fan fiction culture for almost 20 years. There are certain rules that were created in the early days of the net that governed the way that fan interacted. Those rules tried to take into account misogyny, racism, ablest language, gender and sexuality issues, and generally try to make fannish online spaces safe havens for fans of all types, no matter what they look like, who they worship, who they want to have sex with, or what kind of body they were currently living in.

New fans are breaking these well-established rules, left right and center. Just look at the comments on any random youtube video. Or on popular online blogs like IO9 or Huffington Post. The negativity, the vicious attacks on anything and everything- it’s like the wild west out there and the old school online fans are having a hard time tamping it down.

Many of us are sticking with our little corners of the web but as more people embrace new technologies and advances, we’re forced out more and more. I LOVE Twitter- I think it’s so much fun, but it does allow people to be absolute dicks to each other, and in public. The things that people will say on Twitter that they would NEVER say face to face is just astounding.

And tumblr. I don’t even get tumblr. I feel like an old lady sitting on his front porch with the shotgun and the old dog, warning kids to get off my lawn when I play around with tumblr. But as LiveJournal has issues and people aren’t willing to go over to Dreamwidth (which you should- it’s awesome!), they are finding themselves on tumblr and the epicenter for fannish info and trends is gradually shifting. Maybe not so gradual. And, again, tumblr is the wild, wild west. It doesn’t work the way I’m used to and it’s uncomfortable.

Change is uncomfortable.

I’d really like to welcome all the Twilight fans to the world of the paranormal. I’d love to tell the Losties where they can find the best sci-fi to expand their minds and to find more of what they loved about their favorite show. But I’m not sure where or how to do that, or if it would even be well received, because I’m not sure that their speculative fiction is MY speculative fiction and that makes me a bit worried.

The times, they are a’changing and I’m not sure I like the way the wind is blowing. I bet this is how old school Trek fans felt when Next Gen was on the horizon. At least they had Patrick Stewart to look forward to.

Here are the three things that I can come up with:

1) It’s in first person.

And it’s not very good first person. I have been very upfront about how much I don’t care for first person, generally. It has to be done incredibly well for me to actually feel comfortable reading that close of a POV.

I thought that the first few pages of Hunger Games read very rough, that the author hadn’t quite found her first person feet and it really felt like it needed a second, or third polish. At least to my sensitive first person palate.

2) She wanted to kill the cat.

Look, kill as many people as you want but leave the cat alone. I’m not kidding, As an author, you can kill the entire planet all in one swoop or one by one, Punisher style, but if you want me to like your character, the pets need to be left alone.

I get what she’s trying to do with the whole “I wanted to kill the cat” bit. It’s supposed to be a sign that the world is really tough, that times are awful, and that food is so scarce that the main character would be worried about feeding this additional mouth.

I don’t care. She wanted to kill the cat, game over. No, really. That was enough for me, I was done.

3) I’m just contrary.

I will admit it. I will, occasionally, NOT like something because everyone else likes it. I’ve been accused of that regarding Twilight, but I can honestly say that I’ve read the first book and thought it was shit. I hate Twilight.

Hunger Games, I haven’t really decided yet. I did not like the first few pages that I read and thus, I stopped. I have based my opinion on those pages from that point forward. I have been told by other readers that the first few pages are a bit rough, and that I just need to get past them.

I have also been told this regarding Doctor Who and David Tennant. I shouldn’t have to watch more than a season to get to like the new Doctor, that’s just stupid (I did love me some Christopher Eccleston, good lord did I love him). However, for a book that actually makes sense. It does take a few pages to set up the world and the characters, and to get the plot rolling.

However, it is a problem if the first page has rough writing and contains an element that makes certain readers (re: me) instantly dislike your main character. Maybe not the best way to get that ball rolling.

I will admit that I am more interested in reading the book now that the movie trailer has come out. I love Jennifer Lawrence. She was amazing in Winter’s Bone and X-Men First Class. She has this bad ass nature about her, an amazing figure, and this husky, sexy voice that just really works for me. When I saw her in the trailer, she looked hard core and I did find myself wanting to know more about her character and the world that she finds herself in.

I normally get all upset with people over stuff like that. You know, the only wanting to read something because it’s a movie kind of thing.  I did that when P.S. I Love You came out and I discovered that while I liked the movie just fine (and cried my way through it) I really, really disliked the book. That one also has a horrible first person POV, unbelievable character set up, and a contrived plot that made no sense.

I can see why Hunger Games was sold- the whole post-apocalyptic story line, which is hot now, and the kick ass female lead, which we’re always looking for as both readers/consumers of stories and as producers. I’m just not sure it’s the story for me.

I will confess that I did buy a kindle copy of the book with my annual Christmas amazon.com gift card. It was less than $5, so I thought it would be okay even if I made it to page ten and still hated the damn thing.

I still have not read the book.

I will report back if I ever make to chapter 2.

(To be continued…)

It’s not just about themes or settings or even setups. I am not a fan of adultery in stories and so I avoid stories where that is a major element. That’s pretty easy and most people have those things, which in circles I run in are referred to as bullets. For example, adultery is my bullet that will kill any interest I have in reading a story or watching a movie/TV show.

What we were talking about is more about the little choices that a writer or production team makes. To make this even easier, I’m going to focus on writing. One of the major things that will a story for me is poor grammar and word usage. This usually only matters with fannish type stuff or self-published work. This applies to people who use the wrong “to/too/two” or “their/there/they’re”- that kind of thing.

This is the kind of mistake that a good editor or a good beta reader should be able to catch. When I see this stuff, it screams “unprofessional” to me. Even if the work is a known unprofessional piece, say like fanfic or something of that nature, running into these issues just tells me that you, as the writer, were too impatient to find a beta reader and just wanted to post and get comments, so you put something up that isn’t as quality as it could be or should be.

Moral of this story? Get a beta reader and/or get an editor (esp. if you intend to get this work professional published or you want to self-pub) and get rid of all these little, stupid mistakes. It’s worth the time and the money. You want people to remember you for you great plot and fun characters, not because you consistently used the wrong “its/it’s.”

The second thing that will get me to stop reading occurs in the character description. I hate, hate, HATE it when two characters are described in the following way: “The older man turned to look at the younger man.” Or, “The blond looked over at the brunette and smiled.” That’s not WRONG, per se, but it screams inexperience. It tells me that you don’t really know how to deal with multiple characters in a scene that might require the same pronouns.
Let’s say that you are writing a romance novel, featuring a man and a woman. You can use “she” and “he” throughout the book, especially in the scenes that they are in together, and that makes it very easy to differentiate between the characters when you aren’t using their names.

Now let’s say that you are writing a story that has multiple characters of the same sex that end up together in various scenes. Using “she” and “she” or “he” and “he” can get confusing to the reader. I can understand why someone would want to find different elements to use as differentiating characteristics. That’s how you get “the blond and the brunette” or “The taller woman and the shorter woman.”

But that isn’t very fun to read. It reads rough, if that makes any sense, and comes across as unprofessional and unseasoned. There are a variety of ways to differentiate between characters in these scenes, as much of the published m/m romances will attest to.

An example: “James turned to look at Sean and frowned. He was wearing a short sleeved shirt and shorts, despite the below freezing temperature and James wanted nothing more than to throw a sweater at the guy and cover his clearly cold frame with something warm. But he knew that Sean would get weird about it, so he kept his opinions, and his sweater, to himself.”

Now, that isn’t the greatest paragraph in the history of the writing world, but I hope it works as a way to show how you can still use pronouns with two characters of the same sex, without resorting to using their eye color, height, or hair color to define them.

On a more serious note, how you treat sex in your work will determine if I keep reading or not.

I like reading stories where there might be some roughness, but all in fun. Or it might get a bit more serious, like bondage, dominance, BDSM, etc. That’s FINE, especially if I go into the story, knowing that’s what I’m getting. What I DO NOT like is walking into a story and suddenly it’s a rape fantasy.

I recently finished reading a book where the heroine had been attacked (raped, beaten, left for dead) and had lost her memory. She was discovered by her family three years later and comes back to them, not remembering any of them, including her husband. Instead of understanding that she had undergone great trauma and didn’t remember who they were, the husband decided that he was ENTITLED to her body because they were married and despite the fact that she repeatedly said no, he was going to continue to attempt (and actually achieve) having sex with her.

It was not sexy, it was not fun or cute, and it was not an enjoyable read. I DESPISED this “hero” character and was incredibly upset when the heroine finally gave in to his advances and suddenly, all of her rape induced trauma was suddenly cured.

I felt like this story was disrespectful of anyone who had actually been raped and it failed to understand the kind of mindset that would happen to a person if they had actually undergone that experience. Plus, the story was buying into and promoting rape culture, which is just disgusting and disturbing. That’s the kind of thing that will make me stop reading your stuff.

How do you translate that into something that you can use as a writer?

Be mindful.

What the hell does that mean?

Have someone else read your stuff. Find someone you know who is really good at the grammar/spelling/punctuation to read through with a red pen and fix any mistakes that you have. No one is perfect and no one catches all their own mistakes. Our brains will correct things for us, making us see what should be there, as opposed to what actually is there, which means that if you don’t get a second set of eyes to look at your work, you could be posting or publishing with easily correctable mistakes and you’ll look like a giant toolbox.

Read a lot of books and stories. Read stories by other people, in different styles and voices, to find out how other people have tackled the same problems that you are facing. I’m not even talking about plots, but in the way that they craft a sentence, the way that they use words to describe places, people, and things.

There are a lot of great ways to do things and you may not have run across them all yet in your writing life. Explore and experience so you can better your own work.

Do research. If you are writing about a subject or situation that might be triggering to someone, like rape or murder or cancer, don’t wing it. There is a lot of research about the effects of rape on the body and on the mind. Same is true for victims of violent crimes, survivors of murder attempts or the remaining families of murder victims. Ditto for cancer. Honor those who have truly gone through these events and get it right. It doesn’t take that much more effort and those who read your work will appreciate what you’ve done to create the most accurate portrayal of those events.

That goes hand in hand with respect. Respect the situation and get it right. There are many people who participate in the BDSM lifestyle. That does not mean that they eroticize rape or torture. If you think that, you have NOT done your research and you need to stop right now and read some books. Hell, you are clearly on the internet- find some message boards, read some blogs and LEARN.

What this all boils down to is DO NOT BE IGNORANT. It will show and you will look like an idiot. You don’t want to look stupid and no one wants to read works that come off as stupid.

Be careful, do the leg work, and reap the rewards. Trust me, the time is worth it.

I have heard some people complain about the appearance of the dwarves, especially if you compare them to how Gimli looked in the Lord of the Rings movies.  However, I felt like they really fit into that world and looked like what I imagine dwarves would look like.  If you recall, Gimli was the only dwarf that we really saw (that was alive) in the LotR movies.

Martin Freeman looks just wonderful as Bilbo Baggins.  I loved him in The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, as well as in Love Actually, and I ADORE him as John Watson on the BBC’s Sherlock.  I wasn’t sure about him before that, to be honest.  I thought he was funny and cute and sweet in the previous two films but after seeing him in Sherlock, I have seen that he can be a BAMF as well.

John Watson on Sherlock is an Afghan war vet, and took some serious injuries to his shoulder and to his leg.  He’s amazing with a gun, and incredibly brave.  He’s also very smart, not just as a medical doctor but as an investigator.  And let’s be fair, anyone would look less than when paired with Sherlock Holmes.

When they announced that Martin Freeman would be playing Bilbo Baggins, I had recently finished the first season of Sherlock and was still in my initial “fresh and new” fangirl phase, which meant that I was all about anything having to do with the show or anyone in it, so I was doubly excited to hear about the Hobbit casting. 

Because while Bilbo is a hobbit, who tend to be a bit reserved and not particularly brave for the most part, he is also an adventurer.  He is brave.  He leaves his home with no guarantee that he will ever return.  I found that I could connect Bilbo and John Watson fairly easily and suddenly, I could NOT wait to see what Peter Jackson was going to do with Martin Freeman.

I was not disappointed.  I think the trailer captures a number of elements that are necessary for The Hobbit to work as a film.  It shows Bilbo engaged in his community, known around the Shire, and it shows his love and desire to stay at Bag End.

But it also shows his curiosity about the world beyond his home and his desire to get out there and see it.  It comes back to his desire to return home, always, but the trailer keeps pushing at us his interest in going out and seeing the world.

This is very different than Frodo, who leaves less because he wants to and more because he’s been convinced that he HAS to leave.  He needs to get the ring to a safe place (he does not yet know that it will need to be destroyed) and he is willing to take that journey in order to make sure that the evil the ring represents does not come to find him in the home that he loves so much.

I’m not sure who the braver hobbit is.  Frodo is in a bad position.  He must get the ring to someone that can handle it, because if he doesn’t, evil will find it and will find him, and all he loves.  Bilbo leaves because it will be fun.  At least, because it COULD be fun.  There isn’t anything chasing after him, no reason for him to sneak out of town, or to even consider Gandalf’s offer.

And yet he does.  He considers it, and he leaves the Shire.

I think that may be the bravest of acts.  Because there isn’t a repercussion if he stays at home.  No evil creature will come after him and hurt those he cares about.  He won’t lose anything, in fact, he may gain more if he chooses to stay put in his safe little life.

And yet, he decides that he can’t do that.  He can’t stay in his little house in his little community and be a little man.  He decides to leave with the gray wizard and change his life forever.

That takes guts, ladies and gentleman, and Bilbo has them. 

I will confess, I never read The Lord of the Rings books before they came out in theaters.  And I still haven’t read them.  I’ve tried to before, but I always gets stuck in Rivendell and can’t get and farther.  Nor have I read The Hobbit or any of JRR Tolkien’s other works. 

I have, however, fallen deeply and madly in love with the world that he created and the characters that populate it.

I mean, ARAGORN.  How can you not love Aragorn?  And while I didn’t want Eowyn to get Aragorn in the end, I still loved her and respected her and wanted to be her when she gets to her epic moment of “I am NO man!”  Holy shit, man.  That’s the kind of female character that teaches girls to be women and to not take any shit for loving who they are.

The LotR movies gave us a bearded, horse riding Karl Urban, looking fine.  They are also the only films in which I find Viggo Mortensen to be attractive in any way.  Orlando Bloom is so much fun, and Sean Astin just makes me weep with his love and devotion to Elijah Wood’s Frodo.

I’m glad that Peter Jackson finally was forced (I believe) to take the helm of both Hobbit films.  I think that he brought something to the original three movies that no other director could recreate or even hope to come close to.  And while other directors could have had great and interesting visions for this film, I kind of want it to feel like it exists in the same universe as the first three films.

That’s something that the Harry Potter films (at least the first two) don’t do as well as they could or should.  Those first two Chris Columbus helmed pictures just don’t have the same feel as the third movie and beyond, much to their detriment.  So, while I would have loved to see Guillermo del Toro’s The Hobbit, I’m really glad that we’re going to Jackson’s Hobbit instead.

There and back again, right?

It’s weird.  In LA, there is apparently only one country music station and it’s pretty good, but then again, I haven’t been listening to country radio for a long time.

But, back to the music.  Recently, I have been on a country kick.  I’ve got a ton of stuff on the old iPod and I’ve been streaming music, watching GAC, reading country music blogs, and listening to the radio more than I have in years.  Why?

I realized as Thompson Square’s “Are You Gonna Kiss Me Or Not” came on the radio tonight- it’s because country music is romantic.  There are a ton of songs out there that are basically the plots of various romance novels.  Or they are the aftermath of romances novels, when the new wears off and the relationship dies. 

Personally, I prefer the romantic songs but there are times, especially when I’m not in a melancholy mood but am in the mood for a slight sniffle, where I love to listen to the sad songs as well.

And NO ONE does sad songs like country music.  Good lord, Xander from Buffy was right.  Country music is the music of pain.

Brad Paisley has a song out right now called “This is Country Music” and it talks about how in general, music isn’t supposed to talk about mama, cancer, etc. but country  music does.  It’s like it’s different than anything else, bringing up the topics that no one else wants to touch because they’re painful or sad.  But country music doesn’t shy away from them.  In fact, says Paisley, they embrace those topics and that makes country music what it is.

Some of the saddest and some of the most moving songs I have ever personally heard have been country songs.  Some examples:

Two Sparrows in a Hurricane – Tanya Tucker

Waiting on a Woman- Brad Paisley

Then- Brad Paisley

The House That Built Me- Miranda Lambert

Love Story- Taylor Swift

Mine- Taylor Swift

I like listening to the stories of these songs, of hearing about the romance, the cute meet, the fall in love, the fight to be together.  I love hearing these men singing about how much they love their women and how hard they would fight for those same women.  I love hearing the women sing about the same things. 

Taylor Swift breaks me into pieces with a lot of her music.  There are a lot of women out there, many in feminist circles, that don’t see a lot of value in Swift’s work.  However, I think that Taylor and I are on a similar wavelength, because almost every song she sings, I can find a connection to my own life.  Hell, “Mine” is basically the story of my husband’s and my romance.  The line “you made a rebel of a careless man’s careful daughter” is the relationship I have with my father and with my husband, whether they know it or not.

I guess that’s part of it, as well.  I see myself in country music in a way that I don’t always with pop music and I don’t with R&B or rap.  I didn’t grow up in the south but I grew up country and I know that culture and that world, more than I know the world of the big city.

So, it’s the romance, and it’s the self-connection that I have with the lyrics.  And I tend to like the tunes a lot as well.

I like that country music is so connected to the blues, to bluegrass, to folk music.  It still feels like it has a good blend of a number of different, older styles, but has a modern and new sound.  I can hear you saying, “new?”, but listen to Johnny Cash and then listen to Brad Paisley and you’ll hear what I mean.

I am an incredibly empathetic person and I get emotionally involved and attached to things that  many people never do, including books, music, movies and TV.  And because of that, I need to find those pieces of media that make that emotional connection worth it.  Did I waste my time listening to something that I will never listen to again, or did I find a song that has emotional resonance for me and I will listen to it over and over and over again?

I actually just found a song that has stuck with me- haunted me, is being more truthful- and it was totally by accident.  My husband was listening to a non-country station here in LA and he heard this song that he wanted to do more research on.  He found a video of it on YouTube, and made me watch it.  You know how YouTube gives you suggestions on the side?  If you liked this, you’ll like this other thing, kind of deal?  Yeah, so I see this image that I wanted to find out more about so I clicked and I got the video for Delta Rae’s “Bottom of the River.” 

The song is an original gospel piece by the band and by itself, it’s pretty haunting.  The lead singer’s voice is rocking and awesome.  But when you pair it with the creepy, supernatural video, the song transcends music and becomes something MORE.  It’s just so GOOD.  I’ve gone to sleep these past few nights thinking about the song and I’ve woken up singing it.  It’s just that great.

Please check it out and see if you agree with my assessment.

I just love country music.  I don’t love all of it- no one loves all of something, no matter what they say, but I love a lot of it.  I find it inspiring to write to, and I find it pleasant to listen to as I drive to work and then while I’m plugging away at work at my desk in the office.  And I know that when I need a good cry, I just need to turn to a few certain songs and the tears will just flow. 

I love that this kind of music can be so moving for me, that it can reach inside of me and touch me in a way that not a whole lot has, in the recent past.

It feels good to feel, if that makes any sense.  And sometimes it’s good to feel good, and other times it good to feel sad, or angry.  I love that these songwriters and performers have found an outlet for what they feel and have done so in a way that makes ME feel.

I can only hope that my own writing does the same thing for those that read my stories.

One of the things that I think might apply to me is that I try to write stories before they’re ready.

What does that mean?

For me, it means that I get an idea that I think is pretty great. I get all excited about it and I want to start writing right away. But some story ideas need to percolate for a while. They need to simmer and stew and get all the flavors flowing before they should be eaten, er, I mean written. And I think that I jump the gun. So instead of flavorful, tasty stew, I get kind of runny meat water with undercooked veggies.

Not good.

So, one of my writing resolutions for the new year is to try and let the ideas sit for a bit. Especially the new ideas that I get in the shower, or in the car, or while riding in the elevator at work.

One of the other issues that I think I have is that I get bored. Why? It’s my story- can’t I skip the boring parts?

The problem here is that I think I need the boring parts. I’ve convinced myself that I need certain scenes to tell my story and when I try to write them, I get bogged down in the minutia of the scene. I get stuck with all the little details that just don’t get me excited and I stop wanting to write them.

Which should tell me, if I were willing to listen, that those scenes are boring. If I don’t want to write them, who in the hell wants to read them? I convinced myself a long time ago that I was a plotter and that I needed to plot out every story, get all my scenes lined up, and stick to the plan. But I think I forget to give myself room for change. I don’t have a contingency plan, in essence, which is a problem, because I need to learn to not be so fenced in by what I think I need so that I keep myself from doing what I really need.

Which leads me to another problem. I think I have unreasonable expectations for myself. I have unreasonable expectations about how quickly I should be writing, how quickly the pages should be flowing, and how easy it all should be coming to me, especially if I have outlined the thing out.

The problem with that expectation is that writing doesn’t work that way. I’ve had long discussions recently with a good writing buddy of mine about how writing works and we’ve both debunked the myth of the muse. No one is whispering the story into your ear. There isn’t a separate entity speaking to you, telling you what to write. All those little bursts of genius that blast out onto the page as you write come from you, even if you don’t realize it at the time.

Your brain has been pondering this story that you’re telling and it’s been knocking things around for you while you wash dishes, watch the latest episode of Castle, or even sleep. Your brain is trying to work out the problems that are keeping you from getting the words on the page, like a background program running on a computer, and when your brain thinks it has it figured out, it will push the solution to the forefront of your mind.

It’s not an external force, it’s an internal force. I think it’s a bit of a crutch to blame writer’s block on something like “the muse taking a break” or “the ladies in the basement stepping out for a smoke.” I think that’s cheating and it’s not taking agency of your own work and your own writing.

However, once you do take ownership of your brain and accept that the words coming through your fingers to the page are your own, then you have to accept both the failures and the successes. Sometimes they are both hard to deal with.

Back to my expectations, I tend to write very quickly once I sit down and actually do it. I can pound out 1000 works in less than 30 minutes and have done so many, many times. My brain, then, expects that from me and I allow myself to take breaks when I shouldn’t because I tell myself that when I do sit down to write, I’ll hammer out 4-5k in one sitting and be done with it.

How often do you think that’s happened for me recently?

In the past three months, it has happened ONCE. That’s right, ONCE.

I signed up for the Get Your Words Out challenge, pledging 350k for the year. I have yet to hit 100k. For all my talk about being able to pound out the words, clearly I haven’t done it.

Yet again, I don’t have a submission to the Golden Heart. I don’t have a finished submission for the editor who asked for one, and the only writing that I’ve come close to completing is fan fiction.

Clearly, I am my own worst enemy here.

I think I’ve done a lot of talking about what I’m going to do. How I’m going to fix myself. And I’ve tried things for a few days but I have to be honest. I am just as much EPIC FAIL as a writer today as I was a year ago. Possibly even more so.

Which leads me to my next problem. I have too many ideas and too many projects started. When one gets hard and the writing becomes real work, my brain wants to jump tracks and start working on something different. Maybe that’s what I should be doing. Maybe, if the words are flowing, I should just let them and get it all out on the page.

Maybe my fighting to stick to one thing is part of what’s hurting me. Or maybe it’s not. Maybe my writing ADD is keeping me from completing a project by not allowing me to maintain focus.

All I know is that I want to be a professional, published author, and to do that I need to get something done. That something needs to be a project that I can sell to someone, anyone, and it needs to be well written, the correct word count, and in my own voice.

I need to stop biting off more than I can chew and be more realistic about what I will do, not just what I am capable of actually accomplishing.

As we wind down 2011 and get into resolution season, I need to be honest and fair to myself and set some goals that I will actually achieve this year so I can start to re-build my confidence, as well as start to get myself to the point where I can consider myself a professional. That may be harder than I’d like to believe it is.

I have, in the past , enjoyed AMC shows.  Well, let me step that back.  I enjoyed (until the season finale) The Killing .  I haven’t really watched anything else beyond an episode or two, mostly because I didn’t care for any of the characters. 

I feel like AMC is trying to bring a premium cable (HBO, Showtime) sensibility to a wider audience.  However, I’m not sure how much I like that sensibility.  I was never the biggest Sopranos fan- I thought Tony was a violent, cheating jerk and I had no desire to watch him have gross sex with strippers at his desk.  I didn’t want to watch his guys put dead dudes through meat grinders and I certainly could have cared less about how it ended.

I have watched Dexter and I have enjoyed the show but I have no desire to get caught up on the multiple seasons between what I watched and what’s currently airing.

I don’t like Mad Men.  At all.  While I know that many people find the characters on that show to be fascinating, I have a hard time getting into the story.  Don Draper is an ASS.  In fact, one might go so far as to say that he’s an ASSHOLE and I have to be honest, there is almost nothing I find less sexy than adultery and misogyny. 

My time is limited, as is everyone’s, and while there may be stories that are different and exciting airing on premium cable and networks like AMC, I must confess that I don’t want to spend my time with characters that are unrepentant and just plain bad.

They make bad choices and continue to make bad choices.  Some folks I’ve spoken to have mentioned that what they like is watching bad people do bad things, with bad results.  I guess I’m just not like that.

Spoilers below for the premiere of Hell on Wheels.  There be dragons, ladies and gents.  Procede with caution.

Hell on Wheels is a show set in the immediate post-Civil War period in the American West.  Our “hero”, Cullen Bohannen, is looking for work, as well as the killers of his wife so he’s heading out to where the Union Pacific is beginning construction on the transcontinental railroad.  So far, so good, right?      

Then we find out that Cullen is a Confederate veteran.  Which was the first strike against it for me.  As a history buff, I understand that Confederate soldiers were not necessarily bad people, they were just fighting for a way of life that I find morally reprehensible.  (And anyone who wants to argue that the Civil War wasn’t about slavery and was actually just about state’s rights needs to read the order of succession signed by the state of South Carolina to understand that theory is bullshit, plain and simple.)  I think the moral ambiguity of a Confederate soldier is interesting but I don’t have a strong desire to watch and entire show about the subject.

On top of that, we find out that the guy was a slave owner.  He had five slaves.  But then, just to appease all of us Northerners who think that’s atrocious and EVIL, were told that he set them free a year before the war and paid them wages.  And I bet they were fair wages, too.  *eye roll*  Apparently, the guy married a Northern abolitionist and he changed his tune.  Sure he did.

And that’s where they lost me.  I cannot, ever, see a slave owner as a hero.  I don’t like Gone with the Wind either- Scarlet deserved to have her face punched on a regular basis and it is to my great sadness that it never was.

I understand that morality was viewed differently 150 years ago.  I get that.  I understand that times were different and how people interacted with others and viewed others is not even close to the same as we do now.  I can forgive books and stories from that time period that express racist views because that was the time.  (Although, stories like Huckleberry Finn makes me have more faith that not everything was a complete and epic fail back then.  Still failing, just not EPICALLY.)

It’s the stories from today that get me all up in arms.

Yes, as an amateur historian, I do enjoy stories that are trying to show the past as it was (or at least as close as we can determine from the primary sources, depending on the topic and time period).  I enjoy the dirt and the bad teeth and the clothes.  And for the right story, I am willing to put up with rampant misogyny or racism, if there is a point to each in the story. 

I am not willing to put up with the hero of the piece being a former slave owner.  That’s where I draw this particular line with this particular show.  I don’t like him from the get go, which is a trope of AMC/HBO/Showtime/FX type shows, and the reveal (which really isn’t a reveal) that he owned multiple people in human bondage does not further endear him to me.

And there are no other characters with which I feel any sort of connection, save one.

There is a young woman, Lily, who is traveling with her husband mapping out the great plains.  He’s taken ill and she is determined to stay with him on his trip, despite the fact that they are nearing Cheyenne territory.  We see her devotion to him, we get a sample of her intelligence, but we know that there is something going on with her that makes her uncomfortable with her current situation.

And then the Cheyenne attack.  Lily and her husband, in an attempt to save the maps/the work, are heading for the trees and they are followed by a Cheyenne warrior that looks like a white man.  I am willing to look up spoilers to find out if he is, actually, a white man that was raised by the Cheyenne, because if not, even more fail on the part of the show.

The husband is killed and the warrior tries to kill Lily but she ends up fighting him and killing him first.  It was a well done scene, incredibly brutal, and one of the few that I had watched at that point that actually made me feel anything other than revulsion. 

We watch as Lily says goodbye to her dead husband, kissing him on the lips before running off with the maps, into the woods.  This was the point that really had my heart breaking.  She had just watched him die and he would have still been warm to the touch when she kissed him, an awful dichotomy of signals for life and death.  It was a affecting moment that worked within a larger story that just felt like race!fail.

I know that Common is in this show.  Sadly, I stopped watching before we got to see too much of his character.  Am I sad about that?  Yeah, I guess I am.  However, based on the portrayal of everyone else in the show up to that point, I didn’t have a lot of faith in the writers/show runners to give me a character that I would give a shit about.  Will I consider going back and trying the show again, if only to give Common a chance to woo me?  I don’t know, to be honest.

I’m also concerned about the hand waving that seems to be happening over the lack of Chinese characters in show.  We get a throwaway line from the piece’s villain regarding the use of Chinese workers by the Central Pacific Railroad, where he suggests that with that kind of labor, they’ll “never get out of Sacramento.” 

The railroads were built by minorities and people who were considered lower class and “less than.”  So why the hell is this show all about the white people?  I mean, twenty minutes in and Common had been seen but not heard.  What the hell is that about?

This is going to be a show that gets compared to Deadwood.  It just is.  And it is a show that I am sure a lot of people will really like.  And I bet that I will get all sorts of comments about being too serious and not understanding that this is a story.  But you know what?  I don’t care.

I get to spend my money and my time on whatever I want.  And I want to watch movies and TV shows, as well as read books, that have characters that I actually want to spend time with.  The story could be the greatest ever crafted but if I didn’t like the hero (or heroine) of the piece, then I’m not going to stick around.  Life is too short to waste my time on jackasses like Don Draper or Cullen Bohannen.  Maybe I am too sensitive.  That’s fine by me.