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A few random remarks post-romance rant (okay, it wasn't really a rant, but I wish alliteration), things best said in this forum if only for my own sake, and hopefully somewhat more relaxed, good-natured, and self-deprecating. (Although the last makes me contemplate again the expectations placed on female writers, that we will speak (seldom and in modest tones) of our little scribblings that no one needs to take seriously. I wish that the ability to contradictorily take things seriously and not seriously at the same time was more widespread, but until that miracle occurs I'm gonna self-promote like hell.)
1. One thing that irritates me about the offhand critique of romance, especially when it's expressed (as it often is) in the form "You are free to write whatever satisfies you, but I don't read that stuff," is whatever amount of love story may be present in a work (when written by a woman, at least of the sort not reviewed by major newspapers) is assumed to always be a form of wish-fulfillment, self-indulgence, and pandering to the (female) masses; there's nothing wrong with any of that in moderation, of course, and I certainly find writing romantic storylines fun. (Where it comes to wish-fulfillment, I'd say that the ability to memorize large amounts of poetry and learn languages with chemical assistance is far and away the most-longed-for gift of which I have written.) But even if that's one's intent, doing the job well is hard work, and being dismissed with a pat on the head is condescending to say the least, and makes one's teeth ache with grinding, even when it's well-meant.
2. I did think of claiming in the course of that post that my books are romances in the older sense (the medieval and allegorical, possibly, but at least the more heroic and marvelous and less snuggly), but left it out because I was talking about modern publishing categories and because it would sound pretentious (and insufficiently researched). I really do need to read Sidney's Arcadia all the way through at some point.
3. However, it did make me think again of the somewhat-accidental linking of each of the books (with the possible exception of Time Goes By) to a form of literature, and led to the head-smacking moment of realization that people think of Time for Tea as a romance novel because it's wrapped around 18th-century romance in form and substance - making fun of it, quite often, but also using its modes and its language. I think I am okay with this.
4. Along similar lines, I had a critique of Time and Fevers recently that talked about faults in structure (conflating style and construction, I think, and probably affected by a temperament averse to both the mode of romance and multi-book arcs, but never mind), and after wrestling with that awhile, I've decided that, yes, some of the faults exist, partly because of that much-regretted alternate-chapter-POV choice and partly because the literary-linking as described above wasn't thought out enough. There's some association between TAF's action and Shakespearean dramatic conventions, but the form of the whole middle section is more along the lines of quest narrative (the kind in which you're looking for x, and the person who has it says "I'll give it to you if you give me y," and the person who has y wants z, and so forth). Which is fine as far as it goes, especially since it's all tied into the quest to find Bernard, but the bookend sections of the novel, though they both have to do significantly with Sam Brant and the trouble he causes (as does much of the plot arc of the first three books), don't match well enough; the first section is a separate quest-to-find-Brant, and the last is too long to be its mirroring denouement, in fact it's more linked to what's coming up in the next books, but possibly not in a way that signals sufficiently the start of a new arc (or, because I think it does that just fine for anyone who's not distracted by other factors, fails in some kind of echo or balance that might be needed to give the arc the right mathematical curve. Or something like that. Talk about pretentious, oy). There may be also too much time spent "talking about feeeelings" (if that's the correct number of e's), partly because I felt matters needed tidying up but hadn't yet mastered the "skip the obvious next scene" technique I use in the later books, and partly because I was long-committed to switching POV in each chapter, and the end of the book has more to do with George than with Olivia, so in the course of giving Olivia her allotted amount of space I let her emote a bit too much for balance. I don't think it's egregious (except perhaps in chapter 22) but then I care a lot about the characters. I'm not sure how better balance might have been achieved (give Olivia more to actually do onstage?), but there's really no point thinking about it now. *dusts hands*
5. And, to pursue this further, I had a think about Not Time's Fool (Book Four), and since the literature-link there is fairy tales, I pushed a little harder on the one arc that still doesn't work quite right, and reshaped it from the "happily-ever-after-but-then-what" concept into an echo of the transformation-type tale that I use in another arc, and I believe that editing with that in mind is going to help, both with the story as it stands and with the weirdly-floating section in the (again) long denouement that leads into Book Five's arc. Well, one of the weirdly-floating sections. I have well over a year, and plenty of writing time on Book Five (*knocks on wood*), to pull it into a shape that makes sense.
6. Which leads me to consider what Book Five, with its conspiracy theories and historically-linked politics and tests of loyalty and male POV characters, needs in terms of a literature-link, and it could quite possibly be medieval romance, but I won't know till I get started.
7. I am going to have to write more at some point about how the structure of the more-than-book-length arcs works for me, and why I like the technique of (so to speak) pulling the camera back gradually as the action moves along, but that'll make more sense after Time Goes By.
Oy vey. Next post will be about cats or zucchini recipes or television shows, I promise.
1. One thing that irritates me about the offhand critique of romance, especially when it's expressed (as it often is) in the form "You are free to write whatever satisfies you, but I don't read that stuff," is whatever amount of love story may be present in a work (when written by a woman, at least of the sort not reviewed by major newspapers) is assumed to always be a form of wish-fulfillment, self-indulgence, and pandering to the (female) masses; there's nothing wrong with any of that in moderation, of course, and I certainly find writing romantic storylines fun. (Where it comes to wish-fulfillment, I'd say that the ability to memorize large amounts of poetry and learn languages with chemical assistance is far and away the most-longed-for gift of which I have written.) But even if that's one's intent, doing the job well is hard work, and being dismissed with a pat on the head is condescending to say the least, and makes one's teeth ache with grinding, even when it's well-meant.
2. I did think of claiming in the course of that post that my books are romances in the older sense (the medieval and allegorical, possibly, but at least the more heroic and marvelous and less snuggly), but left it out because I was talking about modern publishing categories and because it would sound pretentious (and insufficiently researched). I really do need to read Sidney's Arcadia all the way through at some point.
3. However, it did make me think again of the somewhat-accidental linking of each of the books (with the possible exception of Time Goes By) to a form of literature, and led to the head-smacking moment of realization that people think of Time for Tea as a romance novel because it's wrapped around 18th-century romance in form and substance - making fun of it, quite often, but also using its modes and its language. I think I am okay with this.
4. Along similar lines, I had a critique of Time and Fevers recently that talked about faults in structure (conflating style and construction, I think, and probably affected by a temperament averse to both the mode of romance and multi-book arcs, but never mind), and after wrestling with that awhile, I've decided that, yes, some of the faults exist, partly because of that much-regretted alternate-chapter-POV choice and partly because the literary-linking as described above wasn't thought out enough. There's some association between TAF's action and Shakespearean dramatic conventions, but the form of the whole middle section is more along the lines of quest narrative (the kind in which you're looking for x, and the person who has it says "I'll give it to you if you give me y," and the person who has y wants z, and so forth). Which is fine as far as it goes, especially since it's all tied into the quest to find Bernard, but the bookend sections of the novel, though they both have to do significantly with Sam Brant and the trouble he causes (as does much of the plot arc of the first three books), don't match well enough; the first section is a separate quest-to-find-Brant, and the last is too long to be its mirroring denouement, in fact it's more linked to what's coming up in the next books, but possibly not in a way that signals sufficiently the start of a new arc (or, because I think it does that just fine for anyone who's not distracted by other factors, fails in some kind of echo or balance that might be needed to give the arc the right mathematical curve. Or something like that. Talk about pretentious, oy). There may be also too much time spent "talking about feeeelings" (if that's the correct number of e's), partly because I felt matters needed tidying up but hadn't yet mastered the "skip the obvious next scene" technique I use in the later books, and partly because I was long-committed to switching POV in each chapter, and the end of the book has more to do with George than with Olivia, so in the course of giving Olivia her allotted amount of space I let her emote a bit too much for balance. I don't think it's egregious (except perhaps in chapter 22) but then I care a lot about the characters. I'm not sure how better balance might have been achieved (give Olivia more to actually do onstage?), but there's really no point thinking about it now. *dusts hands*
5. And, to pursue this further, I had a think about Not Time's Fool (Book Four), and since the literature-link there is fairy tales, I pushed a little harder on the one arc that still doesn't work quite right, and reshaped it from the "happily-ever-after-but-then-what" concept into an echo of the transformation-type tale that I use in another arc, and I believe that editing with that in mind is going to help, both with the story as it stands and with the weirdly-floating section in the (again) long denouement that leads into Book Five's arc. Well, one of the weirdly-floating sections. I have well over a year, and plenty of writing time on Book Five (*knocks on wood*), to pull it into a shape that makes sense.
6. Which leads me to consider what Book Five, with its conspiracy theories and historically-linked politics and tests of loyalty and male POV characters, needs in terms of a literature-link, and it could quite possibly be medieval romance, but I won't know till I get started.
7. I am going to have to write more at some point about how the structure of the more-than-book-length arcs works for me, and why I like the technique of (so to speak) pulling the camera back gradually as the action moves along, but that'll make more sense after Time Goes By.
Oy vey. Next post will be about cats or zucchini recipes or television shows, I promise.
no subject
Date: 2014-08-04 10:32 am (UTC)From:I did nearly make the point about your books being the literary kind of romances, too. And yes, I think that with both the content and the structure of the first book being quite heavily influenced by romance (in the other sense), it's not surprising that the whole series is being pre-emptively shunted that way. It's like if you start Bujold with 'A Civil Campaign', you might be surprised to discover that the other books in the series have a rather different focus, though still with plenty about people's love lives because people do tend to have love lives :-). TBH I tend to notice in (frequently male-written) fiction when nobody has love lives or they don't seem to have emotions; it may have been the default for a while but now it's increasingly looking like an unrealistic omission.
no subject
Date: 2014-08-04 03:24 pm (UTC)From:The 18th century is when one definition of romance started to merge into the other, and interestingly most of the novels-with-romance I read as research were written by men, though women started to dominate fairly soon after. And Bujold, ha, I started with Komarr which is saturated enough with romance (the lead-in to it, at least) to let me know where she stood on the matter. It's also got a very decent mystery and lots of space/planetary technology, but the core of it is Miles and Ekaterin getting to know each other and liking it. And then I went back to Shards of Honor which is also a romance (with war and politics and unpleasant diets). The shift of focus, and the adventures-with-love-lives, seem to work fine for Bujold, which does give me hope.
no subject
Date: 2014-08-05 12:07 am (UTC)From: