Truth’s Superb Surprise

I try not to write about writing itself on my blog because such topics tend to only be of interest to other writers. Also, I don’t always (okay, I seldom) feel like I have something original or worthwhile to say about the writing process. But to break my own rule and be a little cryptic…

For a long time before I started writing fiction down, I was writing it in my head. I didn’t realize it, but I was carrying around a bag and I was putting all sorts of things into it. Jokes that I (and those around me) told. Words that I liked the sound of. Bits of description. Images. Smells. Fragments of motivation and psychology. And questions–so many questions. Why did he do that? Why did I say that? Could this have happened another way? What is she thinking? Etc.

When I started writing, I began taking things out of the bag. I recently re-read Special Interests and it amazed to me how much truth I told while lying. The bones of the scene, the things that were happening in terms of the plot or characterization, would be wholly fabricated. But every single detail of the scene would be true. The book is a patchwork quilt of my experience in and observation of the world.

For a long time in my writing life, I would take things out of the bag and tap them into my stories slant (sorry, Emily Dickinson, that’s one of those words). I mean to say that I used a trick not too differently from how it happened or where I had once seen that sweater or how that thing had tasted. I just sort of twisted a bit.

However, I’ve been writing something that is (for me) very different and crazy. But here’s the thing: I’m using just as much stuff out the bag as before. Maybe more. I’ve discovered whole other rooms, whole other continents, in the bag. So what I’m trying to say is that I am larger than I thought I was. And for the moment at least, that makes me less scared of my writing than I’ve been in a long time.

We, as writers, are told to develop a brand. To make a promise to our readers and to deliver on it in terms of voice and tone and story and setting. What I’m writing now doesn’t feel all that off-brand. It feels like me…but slant. And on the bias, there are entirely new ways of being.

What makes good criticism?

Sorry it’s been so long! I was trying to write a lot of words, which was I doing until about two weeks ago. Then we went on vacation and we moved into a new house. We’re still very much in unpacking mode and at the end of every day I fall into bed exhausted. I haven’t been reading or writing–and this somehow makes me more tired.

Also, while I’ve been happy with the words I’m writing, I’ve been experiencing professional disappointment that has me thinking about my voice and the market. I don’t have conclusions about this yet, but I’ll let you know.

Anyhow, the real point of this point: what is good criticism? Natalie of Pretty Terrible posted this question on Twitter. For reasons related to my academic training and my area of study, it is something I have very strong opinions about. I was going to respond there, but it would be too long. I’ll keep the abbreviated bullet point format of Twitter, though:

  • Good criticism is an intellectual, and not primarily emotional, response to a text. I’m not saying there’s no emotion in criticism—indeed, really good criticism often comes from explaining one’s emotions—but isn’t primarily about “the text made me feel X.” Criticism is what comes after that stage.
  • Good criticism is not primarily evaluative. It’s NOT about saying whether the text is good or bad. When I teach this idea, I often show students a Siskel and Ebert film review (say this one). Then I show them Matthias Stork’s amazing series on Chaos Cinema (here’s part one). What’s the difference? Siskel and Ebert are trying to tell you whether you should go to a movie—is it worth the price of admission? Stork is trying to tell you what this new style of film is. He has an opinion about whether it’s a good or bad development, but he’s mostly trying to define it and tell us how it works. Stork is critical; Siskel and Ebert evaluative.
  • Good criticism has a clear idea about what it’s doing. So any individual entrant is joining a larger conversation. This conversation (or method) can be formal. For example, there’s a set of writing that lays out Marxist critical discourse, or formalism, or New Historicism. But the critical approach can be more squidgy. Either way, people over time develop critical schools of thought and any given critical gesture is in the style of (or in response to) one or more of these.
  • For example, in romance (and I’m sure this is true in other fan communities), popular feminist discourse is important. We talk about whether heroes are alpha or beta (or caretaking alpha or alphaholes), which is another way of talking about how the texts construct masculinity. Also important: genre studies. What tropes does the text use? And does it just replicate the trope, does it make it fresh, or does it subvert it?
  • Good criticism, then, tells me how the text works (and to do this, it must substantively engage with the text) and then puts this into a genre context and a large critical conversation.
  • Here are a couple of critical responses that I think are good: Olivia Waite on Jenn Bennett’s Bitter Spirits and Natalie Jo Storey in the Los Angeles Review of Books on sheikh romance. These make good comparisons because they both use gender studies to talk about how the texts “do” gender and post or neo-colonialism to talk about how the texts “do” race. They do make some evaluative judgements, but mostly they’re talking how the texts work. They’re explicit about the critical moves their making (good criteria) and they engage substantively with specific works. Waite focuses on one text while Storey takes in an entire genre–but she’s still citing lots of specific examples.

I’ve used academic language for this definition, but I have serious concerns about how this goes down in the academy. I don’t think academics are always good at explaining their critical criteria and group-think leads them to only ask certain questions and only of certain texts. Part of what I love about romance is that there are really cool critical conversations happening that I never heard in the academy.

Finally, to be clear, I don’t think criticism is the only valid approach to texts. GIF/squee reviews do important work, I read things all the time that I never move past the “digestion” stage with, etc. Criticism isn’t higher or more valid or anything. It is its own flavor and pursuit and sometimes it’s what you want and sometimes it’s not.

So, what do I have wrong?

Special Interests On Sale!

Good news: from now until June 22, Special Interests is only 99 cents! This price should be live everywhere it’s for sale in both the United States and Canada. In the year since its release, this is the first time Special Interests has been on sale. If you’ve been waiting to buy it, now is the time.

stylized text against pretty backdrop that reads,

If you need them, here are the buy links: Amazon | B&N | Carina | iBooks | Kobo | Google Play.

Since my books aren’t on sale often, and I’d like more people to check out the series, I’ll be obnoxious about this on social media in the next two weeks. I apologize in advance!

Also, there are three complete or nearly complete things on my hard drive, two of which I’m planning to self-publish this year. So if you’ve been waiting for new words from me, they’re coming.

ETA: I scheduled this to go up over the weekend, but as of Monday morning, the sale price isn’t live yet anywhere except Amazon Canada. I’ll let you know when it shows up.

ETA2: Okay, the sale price appears to be up most places and should be everywhere soon.

Seven Underrated Romantic Comedies

For at least ten years, I’ve been reading about the demise of the romantic comedy (aka the rom-com). I even blogged about how there don’t seem to be many rom-coms in theaters and how many recent attempts are, well, not very good. Katherine Heigl made a living for a while playing up-tight career women who could only find love once they’d been humbled in films like The Ugly Truth and 27 Dresses (and even Amy Adams and Jennifer Lopez got in on the act in Leap Year and The Back-Up Plan, respectively).

The past 20 years of film have seen rom-coms that are pretty but in which the romance isn’t compelling (Letters to Juliet), comedic movies in which the romance is compelling but not the focus (Pitch Perfect, Easy A, Bridesmaids, Monsoon Wedding), dramatic films with happy ending romances (The Young Victoria and a host of other biopics), and romance-focused flicks without happy endings (Bright Star, Once, (500) Days of Summer, In the Mood for Love, Moulin Rouge). I started my Fine Romance Friday posts in response to the trend, but not all of the movies I’ve written about are rom-coms and many are older films made before the mid 1990s.

So in that spirit, I want to provide a list of what I see as the most underrated rom-coms of the last 20 years or so. I wouldn’t argue that these are very best rom-coms made in that period, but everyone knows about Amelie and The American President (right?). I’m not going to do full write ups, but I’ll drop in the trailer, link to IMDB, and write a paragraph about why you should check it out. I organized these chronologically. Let me know what I’ve missed in the comments!

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Logistical Note re: Brave in Heart

The first book I published almost two years ago was a historical romance set during the American Civil War called Brave in Heart. It’s little (40Kish words) and it’s very much a first book, but I’m proud of it. Which is why I asked my publisher for my rights back. And today I got them.

What this means is that Brave in Heart will be disappearing from retailers in the next few weeks. So if you want it, you should act fast. (And it is currently in Kindle Unlimited and Scribd, FYI.) At some point I’ll produce a new cover and self-publish it. Heck, maybe I’ll even finish the sequel I teased you with at Valentine’s, but that won’t happen any time soon. I’ve been thinking a lot about my writing and the market and I need to figure some things out before I have time to focus on Brave in Heart.

So the tl;dr version: Brave in Heart is going to be off the market soon but it may return…someday.

PS The anniversary of the start of the Battle of Chancellorsville is tomorrow. Chancellorsville plays an important role in the novel. I went there, took pictures, and talked about it here.

Both Alike in Dignity

Over the weekend my friend and critique partner Gen Turner started a Twitter imbroglio when she confessed that she doesn’t really connect with the novels of Jane Austen. I was traveling so I didn’t get to follow all the nuances of the ensuing discussion, but several of us posited that there seems to be a schism in romancelandia (and probably the broader culture) between folks who love the novels of Jane Austen and those who prefer those by the Bronte sisters. Elisabeth Lane compared it to the Star Trek vs. Star Wars debate.

If so, it makes sense. While Austen died in 1817 when the Bronte sisters were infants, Charlotte Bronte famously disliked Austen’s novels, saying Pride and Prejudice was “An accurate daguerreotyped portrait of a common-place face” or, in other words, realistic but boring. In another letter Charlotte Bronte wrote, “The Passions are perfectly unknown to [Austen].”

There’s a lot I could say here about how Austen is more properly grouped with the 18th century novelists than the 19th century ones. Austen has a more Enlightenment view of human nature and love, not to mention that she wrote novels with strong romantic elements not genre romances per se. In contrast the Brontes–who are hardly a united front as my favorite Kate Beaton cartoon spoofs–were more influenced by Romanticism and Wordsworth’s “spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings.” They also wrote for a vastly different audience.

But that’s not my area of expertise and so I’ll refrain.

Instead I want to suggest that Austen/Bronte debate is unnecessarily adversarial. Genre romance descends from both, as Pamela Regis explicates nicely in A Natural History of the Romance Novel, but I’m going to argue that genre romance uses Austen and Bronte for different things. To my mind, Austen provides a set of plots for romance and Charlotte Bronte provides an aesthetic for romance prose.

Continue reading “Both Alike in Dignity” →

Good. What else?

Without a doubt, the thing I say most frequently in the classroom is, “Good. What else?”

You always want the students to move from one point to the next logical step, from one example to another, from one intertextual connection to another. Learning is a constant state of dissatisfaction. You keep pressing onward, but you never arrive because it’s not about a destination. It’s about a journey.

Writing is similar. I’ve published four novels in 22 months, but my career is in stasis. I don’t have anything contracted or scheduled. I’m writing but I don’t like the words. And it’s hard to confront my own slowness and ennui because it makes it real. This business is an endless “Good, what else?” merry-go-round, and I feel like I’ve fallen off.

And as I’m sitting there in the dirt, watching the merry-go-round spin, and wondering whether I need to publish every three months, or is it five to six projects a year, or maybe one book a month would do it…I remember: it’s about a journey. I don’t have to have all the answers. Hell, I don’t even have to have completed projects or a five-year plan. Those things would be lovely, of course. But for now, it’s all very simple.

One foot, then the next. One word, one clause, one sentence. They build to a paragraph and then another.

Good. What else?

Social Justice Romance Fiction

Someone found my blog through the search phrase “social justice romance fiction,” which is indeed what The Easy Part series is. But the query got me thinking about other romances featuring characters interested in social justice, which might include activists, volunteers, revolutionaries, political aides, community organizers, and so on. I asked on Twitter for suggestions and then started a list on Goodreads. I feel like a goober adding my own books…but I did it anyway. If you’re a Goodreads user, please add, edit, vote, etc.

It does raise a few interesting questions for me: is every police officer or fireman romance a social justice one? What about teachers? Or doctors? I guess the list-makers at Goodreads will decide.

Women, Depression, and the Obscene

(Prologue: this is the latest entry in my series of late night thoughts about romance fueled by random association and too much graduate school. Please keep in mind that while I may be pretentious and use words like companionate and displaced melancholy, my characters are much healthier and cooler than I am and would never do that.)

In Black Sun the psychoanalytical critic Julia Kristeva analyzes the place where depression and creativity meet: for the depressive, “there is meaning only in despair” (Kristeva 6). She defines depression/melancholy as “a common experience of object loss and of a modification of significant bonds” (Kristeva 10, emphasis in original). Her argument is extremely Freudian: the depressive hates the other because it (the other) is separated from the self; however, they can be symbolically reunited in sex and/or death. But (because this is Freudian) the depressive doesn’t openly mourn or even hate the other. Instead the grief is displaced onto a Thing: “an imagined sun, bright and black at the same time” (Kristeva 13). But since the depressive is displacing his/her grief, the “depressive affect can be interpreted as a defense again” personality destruction (Kristeva 19, emphasis in original). I’m over-simplifying here dramatically, but you get the gist of it.

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Come a Little Closer

(Warning: I was up with a sick child all night. When I’m not sleeping, I’m thinking. And I have to write this idea out. It isn’t fully-formed, but tell me where I’m wrong so I can finish working this out.)

In The Melodramatic Imagination, literary scholar Peter Brooks defines melodrama not as something aesthetic–not in other words as a genre defined by mustache-twirling villains, perfect heroes, and damsels in distress–but as a narrative structure and a moral imperative. He writes of a scene in Balzac’s novel The Magic Skin,

The narrative voice is not content to describe or record gestures, to see it simply as a figure in the interplay of persons one with another. Rather, the narrator applies pressure to the gesture, pressure through interrogation, through the evocation of more and more fantastic possibilities, to make it yield meaning to make it give up to consciousness its full potential as “parable.” (1)

Brooks is saying that Balzac pushes closer to his subjects in order “to catch this essential drama, to go beyond the surface of the real to the truer, hidden reality” underneath (2). Brooks argues that in melodrama “nothing is left unsaid” (4), which helps to reveal the “operative spiritual values” (5) that are present but hidden in other works. He applies this schema to Henry James, in whose work he sees this “melodramatic imagination” operating when “things and gestures are necessarily metaphoric because they must refer to something else” (Brooks 10).

As far as I can tell, no one has applied Peter Brooks to genre romance–but we should because romance seems to work in much the same way. Romance is closely cropped onto a few key pieces that carry metaphorical significance and its narrative resolutions (e.g., the creation of a stable couple) are moral ones.

Continue reading “Come a Little Closer” →