#WritersCoffeeClub Ch 10 Nbr 08 — Do you agree with Michael Moorcock, who said: "Ignore all proffered rules and create your own, suitable for what you want to say"?
The advice boils to down to learn how to write and practice enough that you understand the basics (items 1 through 9), and understand what about all that gets in the way of you telling your tale... then tell your tale the way you need to tell it instead. I kinda agree...
To the extent you can be truthful with yourself and keep your ego at bay. This took me decades.
#WritersCoffeeClub Ch 10 Nbr 03 Part 2 — Should books include a content warning?
Well, I inadvertently conducted an experiment in content warnings. I added a content warning for Ch 10 Nbr 4 (here: https://eldritch.cafe/@sfwrtr/112560345961576143) consistent with my eldritch.cafe instance's standards. It stated:
How do you handle highly intimate scenes? CW: Intimacy. Nothing graphic, but, really, if intimacy or discussion thereof bothers you, don't read.
In my opinion, it worked a little too well. 😊 I generally can count on more response. Yeah, maybe the post wasn't deserving.
The "experiment" does allow me to discuss my fears about CWs—despite agreeing to use them in the spirit of their requirement. In warding off people who need them to be sufficiently detailed, or want them, reading a CW forms in the reader's head a preconception without actual knowledge of the facts. It's a cudgel not a scalpel. In my cited CW, I overwrote it because in the back of my mind I fear picking up a hater. I've dealt with getting badgered because someone's interpretation of reality wasn't mine, and I became an evil to be purged for the good of the world. As a shy person, this is a very difficult thing for me to deal with, so I use CWs.
In the mood for some fiction. Nonfiction has been too depressing lately for me to read. There's enough depressing things going on in the world right now, I don't need to add to it by reading about history and politics. 😆
Wintereyes, the MC, is kind and considerate, and really wants to help, but when it comes to love she thinks like the wolves she's lived with over a decade. They don't have the concept. The closest is companionship and sex, which misses the point. Learning the concept of love is one of the many reasons Her Highness is forcing Wintereyes to live around people.
Caramello, the SC, fell in love a couple years ago. He knows that if he to return her interest in him, she'd be caught up in the succession war he's living in exile to avoid. The women since then have been substitutes. Wintereyes, however...
Wintereyes doesn't realize she could discover human love. Caramello doesn't realize that his dangerous past might learn about his present because of Wintereyes' kindness.
None of this bodes well for either romance novella character.
#WritersCoffeeClub Ch 10 Nbr 09 — How do you select ideas from all the ones floating around?
I require a character I can relate, to with an agenda to fulfill and a problem to solve. If that generates an ending I can write toward, it's "Tag yo it!"
Sadly, I sometimes write without an ending. Those rarely end well.
#WordWeavers 2406.09 — Who has the best meals in your story?
The main character's first non-vegetarian meal was crab cakes. Her marathon trainer insisted she needed more protein in her diet. Since then, her diet has been more like a day angel's than her own kind, which is a problem because day angels live on the top of buildings and any good day angel restaurant is going to be a rooftop restaurant. Her day angel friends and team mates fly her up to the best fish and chips places. I think she eats pretty tasty food, both sky and earth cuisines.
You'd think her antagonist would have the best meals, since in the worst case she could choose takeaway delivered from ten different worlds. (Okay, all but one of the colonies are non-earth-like planets, but still.) Problem is she prefers dessert. Not a meal.
The main image may be mirrored, but fascinating anyway. Elites provided tax relief for followers all through history. Don't forget why people do things for powerful friends.
#PennedPossibilities 339 — Does your MC learn from their past, or are they prone to repeating the same mistakes?
My MC is way too prone to making mistakes. Repeating them, not so much. Somehow she survives.
From the current work, this:
..."Better not to get hit?"
"Definitely. Though the direct route through an obstacle is sometimes more unexpected."
And:
Were my trust misplaced, I'd learn something about myself. But, then again, that seemed to be my method of operation: win—or get hurt, pick myself up, make different mistakes.
#WordWeavers 2406.08 — Where would your SC go if they had a bad day?
She's a day angel. Solitude is easy. Near sunset on the always hot world she lives on, she can always catch a thermal and spiral high into the sky. Gliding way above it all, the city she's trapped living in seems so peaceful, so devoid of people. She can make believe for a few minutes that the boss doesn't hold blackmail that would frame her for murder, and that she can soar off into the coming purpling dusk and start anew. The dry air swiftly dries all tears.
This keys into pennedpossibilities 338 rather well (https://eldritch.cafe/@sfwrtr/112573054902942695): a betrayal. She. Doesn't. Cry. Stoic, right? When she's held it in for three-quarters of the novel, when she's trusted her identity with someone who has suddenly proven trustworthy, at least in her heart, my MC admits the first hurt of two betrayals that sunder her.
Whilst I won't reveal details, it is a case of a once trusted adult providing only material support when the MC required a simple act of love and caring.
Never forgotten. Never forgiven.
Thus she breaks, while being held. Actually, both cry over being betrayed, but that's also spoilers. In a subsequent novel, the friend characterizes the event as a "cloudburst."
#PennedPossibilities 338 — How would your MC or SC respond to someone betraying their trust?
Since a childhood betrayal is an essential part of the MC's character, let's say she reacts rather poorly. She makes the worst mistake of her life, later runs away, and becomes a criminal (and an anonymous hero amongst other things.) It takes three novels for her to resolve the consequences of that betrayal in an event that shatters her conception of reality. And. She has to keep it together. At all costs. Lives will depend on her; failing to continue through it all would betray trust placed in her.
Lost Love Letters An Indie Chicks Anthology Compiled by Cheryl Shireman, 2014
Love letter - what phrase conjures up more intense feelings than that simple phrase? Most of us have received a love letter. Many of us have written a love letter. Some of those letters were tucked away in the bottom of a drawer. Others were ripped to shreds or destroyed in symbolic flames. Whatever their fate, the one characteristic all love letters share is their raw and intense honesty.
#WordWeavers 2406.06 — MC POV: When was the last time you laughed? CW: Spoilers if you follow me under another alias.
My MC's story is rarely funny, despite being regularly snide or darkly humorous, sometimes ridiculous like here. Because the "last time" she "laughed" requires too much context, this is the penultimate time she laughed in the entire novel. It's also a minor spoiler for a chapter that will soon be published. The is a slight revised [#excerpt: Two SCs are sitting in a high security prison, on either side of the bars. The MC is watching them from the wrong side of them. The reader knows she has slept with both men.]
He sat opposite my shapeshifter. They looked at one another, the shapeshifter imitating his actions. When it devolved to insulting gestures and the sticking out of tongues, I cleared my throat to forestall laughing outloud.
The prince grinned as did my shapeshifter. The prince said, "It's like looking in a mirror; uncanny."
"Yeah," I said, covering my mouth. "Uncanny because not a mirror image!"
TWO INTERTWINED STORIES, one a spookily poetic tale of sisters haunted by the past and one a Chicago police procedural, converge in startling ways. Lovely, rich with a great city’s history, beauty, and tragedy. B PLUS
#PennedPossibilities 337 — What was the worst job that your MC or SC ever had? CW: 400 word tootfic.
This #excerpt tootfic is from an in-universe novel I published online in 2016 that would include both my criminal MC (aka the devil-girl) and her SC (aka Bolt) as SCs, as told by the crime boss who wants employ her as his enforcer. My MC has a knack for existing well and without regrets. The detailed jobs and conditions were undoubtedly the worst my MC experienced, and Bolt didn't like it either, which foreshadows their eventual friendship. [I made a few revisions.]
... From what [Bolt], my youngest employee, could find shadowing her in the university district, she was looking for a change of career. She had applied for admission to the [Home Planetary School for Thaumaturgy]. She'd have to wait months until enrollment started.
I saw leverage and a desirable new hire.
Why would I want a security specialist who failed her last employer? Well, in CA's case, sometimes you can't save a person from her own stupidity [so I found the failure forgivable.] I also visualized a different employment for this woman's "miraculous" talents.
I gave orders to ensure the woman's efforts in finding a job to pay room and board would be only marginally fruitful. I provided strategic services to many businesses; they usually respected my opinions on such matters. The woman seemed reluctant to venture into downtown or suburban Home City. Perhaps it was that she was shy about being noticed as the failed security specialist for the deceased Doña. Perhaps it was because visibly healing wounds, time pounding the pavement, and days exposed to the sun and the elements made her look like a vagrant. In any case, she restricted her search to the less-structured more-freewheeling Lower City where I conducted my core business. Her life would be hard.
Surprisingly, this stoic didn't break. She saved the minimal coin she made first sweeping floors, then, when pushed out, cleaning ovens at a bakery, then later hauling garbage, and after that painting walls. She literally performed a dozen menial jobs before the proctors granted her admission when the spring session opened later in the month.
And during those months, she spent nothing. Instead, she lived homeless in encampments in the warehouse district. She never visited the homeless shelters paid by the homeless tax levy where she'd have to identify herself. She ate when she got handouts, even bathed in public washrooms. She even endured a week of strong spring storms, sheltered beneath the eaves of warehouses or restaurants after they closed, sometimes soaked to the skin.
The latter drove my usually hard-flanked [day angel] to tears one evening. The only thing I could do to stop [Bolt] from flying the [daemon] to her aerie that last dark rainy night was to relent and promise to offer the former specialist a position in my organization the next day.
#WritersCoffeeClub Ch 10 Nbr 06 — Have you queried agents for traditional publishing? How did it go?
I met my agent at a writers conference, so technically I didn't query. It helped that I had a couple completed manuscripts with me. I appeared serious. I was told when I completed the next one, send it in. The agent sold it so quickly to such a good imprint that I didn't appreciate the miracle that had been pulled off. Nor did I appreciate the necessity of pursuing the career with intensity a lucky high school baseball player who makes it to the minor leagues needs pursue the majors.
That's the danger of getting a day job. A day job that pays well monetarily if not psychologically.
#PennedPossibilities 335 Part 2 — Do you use metaphors in your writing? What are some examples?
Yep, caught myself writing one:
...reading a CW forms in the reader's head a preconception without actual knowledge of the facts. It's a cudgel not a scalpel.
Not a simile. I could have written that a CW is as sharp as a cudgel to do that. Might still qualify as a metaphor, though. It is certainly an allusion.
#WritersCoffeeClub Ch 10 Nbr 03 Part 2 — Should books include a content warning?
Well, I inadvertently conducted an experiment in content warnings. I added a content warning for Ch 10 Nbr 4 (here: https://eldritch.cafe/@sfwrtr/112560345961576143) consistent with my eldritch.cafe instance's standards. It stated:
How do you handle highly intimate scenes? CW: Intimacy. Nothing graphic, but, really, if intimacy or discussion thereof bothers you, don't read.
In my opinion, it worked a little too well. 😊 I generally can count on more response. Yeah, maybe the post wasn't deserving.
The "experiment" does allow me to discuss my fears about CWs—despite agreeing to use them in the spirit of their requirement. In warding off people who need them to be sufficiently detailed, or want them, reading a CW forms in the reader's head a preconception without actual knowledge of the facts. It's a cudgel not a scalpel. In my cited CW, I overwrote it because in the back of my mind I fear picking up a hater. I've dealt with getting badgered because someone's interpretation of reality wasn't mine, and I became an evil to be purged for the good of the world. As a shy person, this is a very difficult thing for me to deal with, so I use CWs.