The heresy of paraphrase

[readingredhead]

I had two opportunities to talk about writing today with writers, which is really weird and unusual and lovely and should happen more often. Both of these too-brief conversations were held before the beginning of a class, and inevitably there were other (non-writer) people listening. In my Clarissa seminar the guy who sits across from me noticed my NaNoWriMo travel mug, asked about my history with NaNo, and was sincerely impressed that I'd managed it for seven years (this last year was his first). Of course my seminar leader/advisor/all around awesome person Jenny is a novelist in addition to being a professor and she started talking about writing too and it was awesome.

I was thinking about NaNo so when I somehow got onto the subject of writing fiction with a girl in the MA before my next class, I ended up mentioning a couple of my novels-in-progress. I gave her the flippant/irreverent/shorthand description of The Printer's Tale and she sounded interested, but one of the other girls in my cohort, who was sitting in front of us, turned around and made a disparaging comment that implied I was following up on the popularity of Twilight, of all things, simply because my less-than-one-sentence synopsis mentioned werewolves.

And the thing is, yes, my flippant, irreverent, shorthand description of the novels I write will always leave something out. And if you're not already into the few things that show up in the shorthand, that kind of description isn't going to interest you. But if you are? Then I can convince you in less than a sentence...or at least get a laugh out of you. In fact hopefully that's exactly what these will do!

Lunar Reflections (2005): teenage angst on the moon

Kes Running (2006): unpremeditated gap year in space

The Printer's Daughter (2007): Beauty and the Beast meets Jane Eyre with werewolves

Gil and Leah (2008): feminist fantasy cross-dressing farce

The Inconvenient Dreamer (2009): woman travels to alternate universes in her dreams

Beneath Strange Stars (2010): gender-swapped Pride and Prejudice in space

Chasing Ghosts (2011): Possession meets Neverwhere with cross-dressing

The moral of the story: I need to find more fantasy/sci-fi writers (or at least writers who are sympathetic to these genres even if not writers of them) with whom to talk about my novels.

Comments

[rusting-roses.livejournal.com]

Basically, us fantasy/sci-fi writers win all the things.

ALL THE THINGS EVER.

ALSO, FOR SHAME. WEREWOLVES? You'd almost think that there was a whole independent mythology for werewolves that you could draw on (or have fun creating) that had nothing to do with Team Get-Your-Sparkliness-Out-Of-My-Face.

Seriously. I'm disappointed.

♥

[octavius-x.livejournal.com]

I was trying to think of some witty retort here but basically you have summed it up in that last comment. I salute you!

Also Candace, you say these things and I am just like "These things! That you are saying! This is why I fear the East coast, no one can fuckin' chill." As we say in the hood they see me rollin' they hatin'. Anwyway I am waiting for your space-time bending city story.

[readingredhead.livejournal.com]

I think it's less about the East Coast and more about graduate school in English lit. And to be fair the girl who made the Twilight comment is the same girl who owns a harp...so it's not like they are ALL like this. For example Jenny Davidson has spent her whole life on the East Coast and yet regularly talks about fantasy and science fiction novels and TV shows in class (she had an aside the other day in which she compared Sabriel and George R. R. Martin, talking about the fear of the North & screening things away with magical walls, and I wanted to just pause the entire class conversation and inform her that we need to have a lengthy talk about fantasy novels so I can worship her brain even more than I already do). I am incredibly glad she exists because she gives me hope.

The problem with space-time bending city story is that its plot is too complex and I did not go into it knowing everything that was going to happen, and also it was a NaNo-novel and as a result is pretty much ~50k of me whining about the polar desires of academic life, i.e. critical distance/emotional engagement, and how they relate to the use of biographical detail in literary criticism.

[rusting-roses.livejournal.com]

I was going to say, I now need to defend the East Coast, mostly on the ground that I tend to read fantasy/scifi to the exclusion of all else ::insert maniacal laughter here::

Also, I sort of want to have a conversation with this Jenny Davidson as well. I preferred Nix's Keys to the Kingdom series, but I definitely found the world-building of the Abhorson series to be fascinating. There's nothing like some high fantasy world-building to make me want to hug an author...

[readingredhead.livejournal.com]

Haha Jenny is great; she's my advisor in the English department, and in addition to having written two really well-received books of literary criticism about the 18th century, she's written 3 novels (2 of which were young adult alternate history/fantasy!) and is at work on a fourth. And she reads the heck out of SF/F and crime/mystery stuff, while still knowing more about the contemporary "literary" market than I suspect I will ever want to! Basically if I grow up to be her, things are going well.

[readingredhead.livejournal.com]

ALL THE THINGS! Seriously. I often wonder how people who actively disparage SF/F actually take joy in life. Like. What is more joyful than SPACE, and IMAGINATION, and PUSHING PAST FRONTIERS OF HUMAN EXPERIENCE? (says the graduate student who spends 90% of her time surrounded by academics entirely absorbed in the teleology of novelistic realism)

Ugh, werewolves are SO COOL. This is probably just my ongoing crush on Remus Lupin talking, but I think the werewolf mythology is so persistent for a reason. From the moment vampires show up in fiction they're sexualized, but also given power that doesn't seem to come at a cost; werewolves are just more compelling as characters if you go back to the basic mythology, in which the man can't control his shift into wolf-self, and can't control himself (entirely) as a wolf. The subsequent tradition -- yes Twilight I am gonna blame you -- has definitely made werewolves "sexy" but that is not the thing I find interesting about them. Long long ago, in the days when I was still an active participant in the Harry Potter fandom, I read a really interesting fan essay that was essentially about how adult characters in the novels are flawed and deal with their problems, but that talked about Lupin's lycanthropy pretty convincingly as an analogue for chronic illness (something Rowling had experienced second-hand due to her mother's multiple sclerosis). The idea of lycanthropy as a chaotic, uncontrollable, "grown-up" problem has stuck with me since this reading.

In the vampires vs. werewolves debates, I appreciate that lycanthropy is less about human sexuality, more about human violence (and doesn't seem as necessarily bound to the violence/sexuality correlation that vampirism entails; lycanthropic violence is rarely idealized). It's obviously about the "beast within" but it is less about glamorizing this bestial nature and more about coping with it.

Um. Yeah. Now I'm sad that I don't work in an academic climate which encourages lengthy conversation about varieties of supernatural characters. But hey, that's what fandom is for! ♥

[rusting-roses.livejournal.com]

RIGHT? Like, my mother complains that I don't like to read "real" books about "real" things. And though I usually ignore her, sometimes I treat her to a rant about why scifi/fantasy allows for one of the purest looks into the human mind I have ever seen. Since scifi/fantasy is, admittedly, usually based in the world of speculation at best, the authors are forced the make the characters that much more...human in the most unexpected of ways in order to give the reader the wonderful, complicated connection to these complex people.

Werewolves are fabulous (and your ongoing crush on Remus Lupin is entirely valid). It's so true that the werewolf mythology is inherently more complicated and thus truer to form. They can be sexualized ::coughJacobcough:: but it's not a mandatory thing. Rather, they can be sexualized in a more human way, if that makes sense. As in, they are more than just their sexiness. As for that fan essay - I think I read it, actually, since I recall that commentary on Lupin's chronic illness being a chaotic, uncontrollable, "grown-up" problem. I think it's a really interesting assessment given the fact that, once again, magic/fantasy/etc is used to turn a "real world" problem into something that forces you to take a second look at the parallels.

Yes, I agree. I never really understood why vampires were so sexualized, honestly. Like...what's sexy about objectification, sexual violence, and someone stealing your vitality via blood-drinking? That being said, though, I do realize is a more "modern" take on vampires - Stoker sure as hell wasn't advocating you run off with an ageless man who sparkles in the sunlight ::sighs::

And that is EXACTLY what fandom is for. Feel free to have a lengthy conversation about varieties of supernatural characters with me anytime ♥

[readingredhead.livejournal.com]

Your response to your mom is exactly what my response to my dad has been since I was, oh, about twelve! It's cute because we still get into the occasional friendly argument about it, despite the fact that we know we'll never change each other's opinion.