Monthly Archives: June 2012

Special Needs in Strange Worlds

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Sarah Chorn is a Speculative Fiction blogger, reviewer, and founder of the website Bookworm Blues. Her series of articles “Special Needs in Strange Worlds” drew over 20 authors, critics, bloggers, and fans to write about how Speculative Fiction addresses the issue of disabilities, and what that means for the capabilities of the genre. 

There is a line in Game of Thrones by George R. R. Martin in which Tyrion Lannister says, “I have a tender spot in my heart for cripples, bastards, and broken things.” It is probably one of my favorite quotes from any book I’ve ever read, because it resonates so strongly with me. And it’s notable that of all the actors in the HBO series, Peter Dinklage, who of course plays Tyrion Lannister, is the most talked about and celebrated.

There’s something there, something about disabilities that pulls at the reader (or viewer, as the case may be), and helps them relate to a character and even make them or the plot more interesting. My husband has never read the books, so I was surprised when he heard that line and turned to me and said, “Wow, that’s powerful.” It’s interesting how one line in a show or a book can resonate strongly with so many people.

What is even more interesting is how disabilities in literature are almost never talked about. In fact, when I was organizing my Special Needs in Strange Worlds event, a large chunk of people backed out saying they were uncomfortable discussing this issue. It’s a sensitive topic, and perhaps that’s why, but disabilities in literature should be noted and celebrated. Disabilities add depth and a very human perspective to any plot, but they so often overlooked in literary discussions.

My oldest brother is disabled. He was born without part of his brain, the corpus collosum, to be exact. For a long time my brother was labeled as high functioning autistic. The symptoms fit, but there is more to my brother’s disability than meets the eye. He has a hard time distinguishing between what’s real and what’s not real. He also has seizures and some physical limitations. My brother has always felt like the odd man out, and in many ways he is. He lives in his own little world. In all honesty, I can’t imagine how isolated he feels. He has as hard of a time connecting with the real world as the real world does with him. This makes it hard for him to work, to have friends, to connect with family. He really struggles, and as his sister, that’s hard to watch.

My brother is the person who got me into fantasy. I’ve often wondered if the reason he likes the genre so much is because it’s a genre where his mind can run wild. It doesn’t have the rules and restrictions of most genres. I can see where that would be appealing to someone with his condition.

A few years ago he had a fever of 109. He was in the hospital for days. Doctors thought he was going to die, but somehow he pulled out of it. However, this incident basically fried his short-term memory. My brother can’t read books anymore. He can’t follow complex plots or keep the characters straight. He was a true bibliophile. He lived in his books, and now he can’t. However, his long-term memory is fine so we often discuss books he has read sometime in the past.

It was during these discussions that my brother started talking extensively about how isolated he often felt while reading fantasy due to how ignored disability often is in literature. He told me numerous times (and left plenty of comments during my event) that disability brings reality and depth to books. It makes them more real, because disabilities are so humbling, so human and so prevalent in our own world. When I put the idea of Special Needs in Strange Worlds past my brother, his exact words were, “Finally, someone is going to talk about how people like me can be important, too.”

My brother is the reason I did Special Needs in Strange Worlds. He walked me through the annals of speculative fiction through a disabled person’s point of view, and showed me how incredibly isolating it must be to struggle so much in reality to connect with other people, and then have to struggle for that same connection in literature as well. My brother can’t read and enjoy books anymore, but he’s not the only disabled person on the planet. Disabilities are incredibly common, ranging from depression to far more serious conditions. Disabilities are all around us, and I wanted Special Needs in Strange Worlds to highlight the importance of disability in literature.

What amazed me was how hungry the Internet seemed to be to read a series of posts featuring disabilities in literature. I didn’t expect more than two weeks worth of posts, but instead I had enough to fill an entire month. In fact, I had so many people offering to write posts for the event, I had to turn several people down. Furthermore, this event received more visits than my blog has ever received in one month in its two years of life. Special Needs in Strange Worlds clocked in at 50,000 unique views. Not only was my brother hungry to hear about how disabled individuals can profoundly influence literature, but a massive amount of other people were, as well.

A Love Letter (to My Writing Group)

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Lev AC Rosen is the author of All Men of Genius, a steampunk novel inspired by both Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, and Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest. The novel follows Violet Adams as she disguises herself as her twin brother to gain entry to Victorian London’s most prestigious scientific academy, and once there, encounters blackmail, mystery, gender confusion, talking rabbits and killer automata.  Rosen received his MFA in creative writing from Sarah Lawrence College.  He lives in Manhattan.

Hey Baby,

We’ve been together a long time – over four years.  That’s longer than I’ve been with my fiancé.  And you’re still everything I need to keep up.  Sure, I won’t lie, there were others before you.  I remember one really bad evening spent over bad pasta with a woman who wouldn’t stop talking about the sales figures of her self-help book.  I didn’t know what she was talking about, but apparently, I wasn’t impressed enough, and she got mad.  I left soon after that.  I took another woman who was with us that night with me.  We got a few others together, and we’ve been together since.  Yeah, baby, you’re the best writing group a man could hope for.

XOXOXO

Lev

I love my writing group.  And I think every serious writer who isn’t actively taking classes in writing should have one that they love, too.  I don’t mean readers – people you show your work to when it’s done.  I mean people you meet with regularly, who show you their work in progress and you show them yours, and you all talk.  Why is this important?  Let me bulletpoint it for you:

  • Let’s face it, writers spend a lot of time in their heads, and socialization is important.  Not just for hygene, but because when you’re working on something, you’re so close to it you can’t imagine how others will see it.  Perspective is important
  • It keeps you on schedule.  If you know you’re handing out pages to a group of people on such a date, then you have those pages ready.  Otherwise you’re wasting their time, and if you’re wasting the time of people who want to help you, you should feel ashamed.  So yes, it keeps you on schedule.  With guilt.
  • Critiquing other peoples work helps you keep your own editing-brain fresh.  Knowing what you like and don’t like in another piece of writing – and having to verbalize that like and dislike in front of them (Critique is different from Criticism) makes you realize what you like and dislike in your own writing.  It helps you keep your own perspective fresh
  • Brainstorming.  You know what has to be done in a story, or what you’re trying to do, but for some reason people aren’t getting it.  So tell your writing group.  They’ve read the work, and when they know what you’re aiming for, they can help you understand why it isn’t there yet.
  • The most obvious and important thing, which is really a combination of all the above, is that you get feedback and encouragement.  You get energized to keep writing, you get excited about your work again, and you see what’s working, and what isn’t.

So what makes a good writing group?  Ours has been together longer than most (fingers crossed this article doesn’t jinx it), so I feel okay saying what I think makes it work.  Others in the group might disagree.  I had a professor, David Hollander, who suggested writing groups should assemble the way bands do: you put up a flyer saying “Seeking Writing Group: Likes: Kafka, Voltaire.  Dislikes: Tolstoy” and see who you get.  I’ve never been in a band, so I have no idea how that comes together, but I know my writing group and I have different tastes.  We all work on different things as well; from YA to historical fiction to scifi to literary to memoir.  But I think Hollander has a good idea there – you want people who are going to be open minded to what you’re trying to do, not people who are going to say “why are you writing steampunk?  That stuff sucks.”  So open-mindedness is important in joining any group.  If people in your group say something like “I don’t like mysteries” before even reading, and you’re writing a mystery, then don’t try to win them over.  And if you’re someone who says “I don’t like mysteries” find a writing group that matches your tastes.

That said, I’d compare getting a working writing group together more to dating than forming a band (again with the disclaimer that I have no idea what forming a band is like).  You need chemistry.  You need to click with the people.  Everyone has to bring the same level of commitment and understanding, and everyone has to be there because they want not only to get critiqued, but to help others.  My writing group laughs a lot.  And we socialize outside of group.  If, after a few meetings, you don’t see yourself becoming friends with the people in your group, maybe it’s not the group for you.  Being friendly, and knowing, absolutely positively that everyone there wants only what is best for each other will make writing group so much more fun and useful.

 

 

 

Learn from the Stories You Hate

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Monica Valentinelli is an author who lurks in the dark. She has over a dozen short stories out in the wild, two novellas, and more on the way. Recent releases include “Don’t Ignore Your Dead,” which debuted in the anthology Don’t Read This Book and Redwing’s Gambit a science fiction adventure novella.

I don’t like every story I read and I’m guessing you don’t either. In fact, I’m quite certain there are some very popular books that make your blood boil as soon as you hear about them. Maybe it’s a story about a vampire who glitters or a tale where the relationship is based on bondage. Maybe it’s a tome about a teenager hunting down other teens or a zombie apocalypse series.

There are a few well-known stories that have caused me no uncertain amounts of angst over the years. To make my peace with them, I critiqued the work and tried to understand why it was so popular.

For the purposes of this article, the popularity of a book isn’t just about book sales. It’s also about word-of-mouth advertising. Imagine readers who are so blown away by a story they have to share it with someone else in their life. Commenters who hate a book so much they have to talk about it. (Both are forms of publicity, by the way, especially online where the value of publicity is the volume, not the quality, of the chatter.)

So what makes people talk about a story? Well, to understand that, we have to go back to why you or I would get upset about a tale in the first place. The answer is really very simple because it circles back to the books we love. It all boils down to that emotional connection with the reader. Powerful stories invoke strong emotions. The more potent the feeling, the greater the chance we’ll need to express what we think or feel about it.

Knee-jerk reactions occur even if we haven’t read a story – especially in cases where the contents of that book are so bizarre or are outside our personal tastes. I am not a fan of Twilight for many reasons, but I don’t begrudge Meyer her success. (Good for her!) Since I have been embroiled in the vampire genre ever since I can remember, I am hyper-sensitive to changes in the vampire mythos. This simply means I am not the audience for her books.

Being that engrossed in a genre or subject matter isn’t always a good thing, because to reach that general consciousness, to achieve mass market popularity, the story needs to have a broader, less-specific, appeal. To do that, sometimes old techniques like tired genre tropes work really well. Other times, it’s about taking a universally-recognized concept like religion or forbidden love and twisting it in such a way that it touches many readers. Can that be done intentionally? Well, the only real evidence we have originates after-the-fact. If everyone knew how to write a wildly popular book (or which ones to publish) I’m pretty sure we’d all be millionaires.

Regardless, the point here that I’m trying to make is that it doesn’t matter what makes a best-selling book popular. That’s just one example of something I took away from a series I can’t stand. So what does? Well, maybe (just maybe) it is possible that the books we hate are learning tools that can help us craft a better story. I feel that statement applies to every author, regardless of experience, because the more we continue to write, the more our work evolves. I also believe that there is a lot we can get from stretching outside of our natural parameters and reading books we would never write (but a lot of other people love).

It’s easier to think critically of a book (or genre) we normally wouldn’t read because we have some emotional distance from it. Mind you, negative emotions color our perspective significantly, so if you are diving in to a work you don’t appreciate, I’d recommend reading it a few times or discussing it in a book club. Then, ask yourself this question: “What’s so great about this book that so many other readers need to buy it, talk about it, and share it? What am I missing?”

The answer may surprise you.

Why Isn’t Literary Fiction a Genre?

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Ian C. Esslemont is a Canadian novelist living in Alaska.  He is the author of the Novels of the Malazan Empire, including The Night of Knives, Return of the Crimson Guard, Stonewielder, and Orb, Sceptre, Throne.
I would like to take this opportunity to talk about genre.  As writers, we know how to maneuver within them – their conventions and rules – when to follow them, ignore them, or break them.  Yet for a moment I will step into literary criticism mode to ask the broader question: why is some writing considered genre, while another, mainly ‘literary’, is not?

A knee-jerk answer would be prose quality.  Yet plenty of bad writing can be found within the vaguely defined non-genre category named literary fiction.   And so the question remains: why can it not be considered a genre itself?

That literary fiction should be the assumed ‘norm’ or standard measurement from which all other categories are regarded as deviations or inferior corruptions, calls to mind the philosopher Michel Foucault’s study of categories themselves.  Any assumed norm in such thinking, in sexuality for example, or race, is always a blind spot, or ‘lacuna’, in such arrays – somehow special and above analysis itself.  After all, it’s just normal (isn’t it?).

However, as we have seen in other disciplines, this is not the case.  Any norm possesses its own set of conventions, boundaries and rules – just like any other category. In writing, one genre that displays this inclusion/exclusion policing in a very clear way is what has come to be called ‘historical fiction.’  Literary fiction valourises the contemporary, or, what one might term, the quality of coevalness.  To write of any other age or time is to plunge into historical fiction.  What is unclear is just where this boundary lies.  Must it be under a year?  Five years?  Perhaps the point of no return is twelve years and three months.  Who knows.

Another convention of literary fiction is that it valourizes interiority over exteriority.  Its character’s mental and/or spiritual travels are held as more valid, or worthy of examination, than their physical travels.  Questions of the interior life is this particular genre’s forté, if not its defining characteristic.

The third convention of literary fiction I will raise in the limited space available here is that obligatory moment of a character’s self-discovery that Joyce named the ‘epiphany’.   It sometimes seems that any work of fiction much contain such a moment even to be considered literary.  Indeed, reading a selection of literary fiction might convince anyone that such a moment is quite commonplace in life, when in fact it is merely one more of the reader’s expectations to be fulfilled.  In literary fiction the main character is supposed to experience an epiphany (of some sort), while we the reader receive our escapist reward of imagining ourselves equally capable of any similar self-revelation.  A capability that is so far out of sync with the real world that literary fiction asserts to document as to be, as I say, frankly escapist.

This brings up yet another convention of literary fiction, the conceit of ‘realism.’  However, this entry is intended more to open a discussion rather than to fully cover every possible permutation and so I will leave this particularly ridiculous rule of genre inclusion/exclusion for future consideration.