Various saved up writerly rantings

[erastes]

I've never been one to insist on any sort of female solidarity; I don't see why - just because I have hidden plumbing - and am apparently from Venus - that I should back another woman up or join some mythical sorority. Part of that, is, I suppose, because we don't have the whole sorority ethos over here, and I for one would find that deeply disturbing if we did. I never wanted to join "women's club" - I always wanted to storm the bastions of the men's clubs, create one big happy unisex club. That's the ideal.

I don't really get on with women en masse. I have a few close female friends but activities that make them happy, hen nights, Chippendale parties, window shopping, hours on the phone, children - leave me cold and often nauseated.  I don't dislike women, but I just don't have a lot in common with the larger proportion of them. I quite dread going to huge conventions like the RWA, because I'm sure I'll wilt into a corner. Send me to a computer games convention though and I thrive.

Why this wibble? Well, there's a column over on ERWA that my Google Alerts picked up talking about the tired old subject of women writing m/m but in this instance, it's not the same-old tale of a man saying how women shouldn't do it because "gay: u iz doin' it wrong" - this time it's a woman accusing us/m/m writers/me of gender treachery and "hate" because we aren't writing about women, and are shunning our sisters. Hence I am having to express my views here, because there is no option on ERWA to discuss the opinions with the "columnists."

She says that the reasons why I write it (and yes, I'm saying "I" because I'm pretty steamed about it) is not self-evident to her. Well - tough, sister. I don't know why people continue to write clichéd vampire fics, or Mary-Sue bodice rippers. The reasons why people like rape fic is not "self-evident" to me, but yanno? People write them, people read them. That's their prerogative. And no. The fantasy genre has no influence on my writing other than I came to m/m from Harry Potter fanfic. What I write is historical fiction. Emphasis on the historical. So yes, I am trapped in the pillory, as you describe it. And damned proud of the hard work I put in, too.

Most of the article I just don't even understand, perhaps I'm just too dim to do, but phrases like "Squicks expressed as explanations of reality are a different can of worms," just go over my head. What does it mean? I'm clearly not a college professor. But what's the difference between some m/m writers not liking to write or read het sex and some writers of het writers not liking to read gay sex? Why do we all have to like the same things?

And I'm expressing a hatred of women because I decide not to write about them? I'm sorry? What? How does that work? Do I express a hatred of black people by not including them in my fiction? Am I anti-Iraqi because none of my stories are set there? I'm a bigot now? By the same token - surely that means that all het-only writers are haters of The Gay?

I find the entire article incomprehensible, and the final paragraph just compounds my confusion. What is her view?

I'm pleased to see that lee_rowan has also posted about this matter, as it was very personal to her, as Ms Roberta attacked her specifically by being a lesbian and that post is here. 

There will be a (much better written than mine) rebuttal to that column up on Speak Its Name in a few days, T J Pennington is working on it right now.

I just spotted some sales figures over on valarltd's LJ and was slightly shocked by them, it's very brave of Angelia to post them, but they convince me, were I to need convincing, that ebookery (on an exclusive level) is just not for me right now. I had nothing much to compare my publishing experiences with, but Standish which has been print only has been selling in larger figures than those figures quote for Ellora's Cave - whereas Chiaroscuro, which is ebook and nothing else has been deeply disappointing and earns peanuts. I read recently that EC was boasting that some of its authors were regularly making six figure sums per paycheque. I'd like to believe this, but that would mean they are selling hundreds of thousands of copies, surely. Wouldn't this be huge literary news, if so?

And good god, covers don't get any better do they? Who are Torquere using? Their kids?

Comments

[lee-rowan.livejournal.com]

Looks like somebody had made herself a set of tarot cards and couldn't sell them ... understandably ... or was trying to help out a friend who's a struggling artist. Ick.

I write the stories I need to tell with the characters I need to tell them about. I try to do it well.

What else do you need to do? Re advancing agendas...I write the stories that surface in my imagination. Looking at them overall, there's a definite iconoclastic slant when it comes to the status quo of rich (usually) WASP military-economic power structures. But that's incidental to the stories, not the motivation for them.

I did a Macaronis post about writing women in m/m, and as long as I'm taking the same care with my female characters as my male--which is to say, making them 3-dimensional human beings--I don't think I need to get obsessed with the politics of it. Fiction that has an agenda and bangs a drum is usually bloody dull and a waste of time, as well as a turn-off for many readers.

Romance traditionally has been an escapist genre, and I think m/m romance is, too, to some extent. There's nothing intrinsically wrong with taking refuge from a painful world by sending the imagination to a place where problems are resolved in a satisfactory way. I've finally got my own happy ever after, but I didn't believe in the possibility for most of my adult life. And any HEA is really only 'happy for now' because sooner or later, one partner will die. But the message of romance, m/m, f/f, or f/m, is that happiness is at least possible.

I think it's interesting that I didn't find that in my own life until I wrote it out for fictional characters... and I do think it's true that you cannot accomplish a thing until you can imagine yourself accomplishing it. I think people who stomp on others' dreams are committing a sort of virtual murder, but that's another rant.

[valarltd.livejournal.com]

What else do you need to do?

Make money at it! 8)

For me, it's about the stories, always. When I write a Robin Hood novel with a transgender Maid Marion, I'm not writing in the Norman vs. Saxon conflict, and only a little about gender roles in 13th century England. I try to get the politics and archery and geography right. But more importantly, I try to get the rollicking feel right.

I'm not "banging a drum" so to speak. I'm just advancing the idea that same-sex marriage is a normal and happy thing, by presenting it as the logical conclusion of the adventures. Which, given I live in a state where 80% of voters think otherwise and more than half the cars have the "Marriage= 1 man+1 woman" bumperstickers, is a radical notion.