Rachel Neumeier's Blog, page 186

Vulgarity in book titles

I don’t generally have many chances to browse through a book store, as there aren’t any in the nearest town — other than a used book store, which I do value, but used book stores are not going to give you much of an impression about current trends. Like this one:

What the Heck Is Happening to Book Titles?!

For those of us who enjoy reading publications with book review sections and bestseller lists, the pleasure of discovering a few lyrical works comes to a screeching halt in the presence of titles filled with vulgarities. Similarly, a happily anticipated visit to a local bookstore quickly takes a wrong turn when centrally placed and unavoidable tables prominently showcase stacks of books shouting obscenities with angry venom. …

The author does not produce specific examples. She delineates three categories: Books that use asterisk-ized Bada** and F*** in their titles, books that use Bitch or Slut in their titles, and prostitution-themed titles.

The article, which I spotted via the Passive Voice blog, would be quite a bit more persuasive with specific examples and — better — numbers. What proportion of books on a front table had titles of this kind, and what were those titles?

So, out of curiosity, I googled book titles that use “fuck,” thus locating this useful post from 2017: All Those F*cking Titles

Six titles are listed. I can add another: The F*ck It Diet: Eating Should Be Easy, which proposes the possibly unpersuasive idea that if you just let yourself eat all the junk food you want, you’ll start craving broccoli. That’s boiling it down a good bit, but yeah, I have my doubts that this would work for the majority of people. I mean, look at all the people who do in fact eat all the junk food they want: do they generally start craving a healthily abstemious diet after a while? Not so far as I can tell. I can’t imagine it myself, so I’m sticking to a modified keto diet … but I digress.

Anyway, sure, titles like this certainly would not have appeared fifty years ago and now it’s not too hard to find them. Edgy, or repellent? That’s in the eye of the beholder, but I can say flatly that my mother would never in a million years pick up any book with a title like this, except possibly to drop it in the trash. If you want to appeal to the broadest possible audience, this wouldn’t do it, so obviously that is not the intention. The idea must be to appeal to younger people who fancy themselves hip and edgy. Maybe it works, or maybe publishers are just copying each other when they pick titles and have no idea whether it works or not. (That would be my guess.)

Here’s a post by Nicole Lapin: Why I Used “Bitch” in the Title of My Book

As a woman, if you speak your mind, you’re called a bitch. If you don’t take shit from anyone, you’re called a bitch. If you aren’t afraid to go for what you want, you’re called a bitch. If you are empowered about your money and the life you want, you’re called a bitch. If you demand respect, you’re called a bitch.

And for men, if they do these things? Well…they’re just a “man.” THE man, in fact.

Sure, maybe, I guess? No one calls me a bitch, at least not as far as I know. Possibly I hang out with a different group of people, because I don’t hear the term used among my co-workers to refer to anyone, ever. Possibly the hip urban crowd would be different in this regard from a rural/small town community.

A lot of people I know say things like, “I’m showing her in Junior Puppy Bitch,” or “All three of my intact bitches came into season in one week! What a pain!”, so my attitude about the word may be a little different from Lapin’s.

Anyway … I don’t know that I’d pick out this particular trend in titles, such as it is, as the nadir of publishing. Trends that actually annoy me more: Using “Daughter of the ___” or “____’s Daughter” as the title; using “_________’s Wife” as the title; using “Girl” in the title when the character in question is a grown woman.

On the other hand, I’m generally against coarsening of public discourse, so I’ll join the author of the original post in turning both thumbs down at the use of vulgarity in book titles, though perhaps not as forcefully as she does.

How about you all? Would you be intrigued by a book with a title like that, say “Oh, edgy!” and pick it up? Or would you just roll your eyes and pass by?

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Sharp rock, soft pillow

Fun post by Chuck Wendig at Terrible Minds: Sharp Rock, Soft Pillow: The Balance Of Self-Care And Tough Love

 BUCKLE UP, PUCKERBUTT, they will cry, IF YOU WANNA BE A REAL WRITER, YOU GOTTA WRITE EVERY DAY, 2000 WORDS, ASS IN CHAIR, KILL YOUR DARLINGS, PUNCH YOUR CHARACTERS, FUCK SLEEP, DRINK WHISKEY, EAT BEES AND SHIT HONEY. Raaar. Thrash. Pound the lectern.

And then there’s the other side. Where we express in ASMR tones the need for kindness and care, for self-reward and gentleness, for being good to yourself and don’t forget to moisturize and it’s okay if you didn’t write today and here’s a puppy.

Awwww. Have a puppy! That can be my theme, such as it is, for today’s posts:

That’s Conner with his little tiny daughter Naamah, btw. She is now several months older and almost nine pounds, so not quite such a little one! But still.

But Chuck basically hits the truth at least a glancing blow most of the time, I think. In this post, he says:

The difficulty of the thing … is finding the balance between the sharp rock in your back urging you to move, and the pillow under your head urging you to rest. Move, move, move, versus rest, rest, rest. …The balance is in knowing when to be urgent, when to burn some fuel and bust your ass — but then knowing too when to relent, when to ease off the throttle for the safety of the machine, to know when you’ve burned too much fuel and you might set the whole thing aflame… and then burn out.

How do you find that balance?

It’s a real question. One to which I honestly don’t have an answer. I expect it has something to do with knowing yourself, and just writing a lot over a long period of time to give yourself a sense of emotional data. 

I’ve gotten a lot done this year — early in the year — but nothing finished and nothing lately. I don’t have a personal answer to this one at the moment. I just kind of gave myself carte blanche to take September and October off … and this morning, for the first time in what seems ages, I finally had an actual impulse to open the laptop and start a new book.

Not that I really want to start a new one. I want to finish Copper Mountain or else finish the new SF thing I have 80,000 words for. But at this point, I’m relatively pleased to have an urge to start something new. We’ll see where that urge has led by the end of November, because for the past ten years I have never gone through Christmas break without putting a significant number of words in a row and I don’t plan to let this year be any different.

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Pictures of dogs with books

At Book Riot, an inspired post that is nothing but pictures of dogs with books. An excellent combination, to be sure.

My favorite is little Bailey. Somewhat amazingly, I have no real guess about what kind of breeds might have gone into the mix that is Bailey, but he is completely adorable. Part Chihuahua and part … I don’t know.

If you like dogs … and books … then by all means click through and choose your own favorite.

I remember when WINTER came out, I took this one to show all my Fall 2017 babies in one shot.

Leda is the one tucked out of sight in the back. Wow, I can’t believe Leda — and Winter, for that matter — is two years old already.

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Unexamined beliefs

I found this post interesting. It’s by Anne R Allen, link via Passive Voice blog: What Keeps You From Writing Success? Are you a Prisoner of Unexamined Beliefs?

… that 4th Grade teacher who told you if you kept reading comic books, you’d never amount to anything. Shamers like the anti-comic book teacher are dangerous because you usually don’t remember them. You may have forgotten your 4th Grade teacher’s name. All you know is you feel guilty when you read things you enjoy—plus you have a secret, persistent fear that you’re never going to amount to anything. … You’ve never questioned this “information” because it was the first information you got on a subject. Plus it was probably delivered in a emotionally memorable way.

It’s interesting to think of possibly remembering nothing at all about an incident, but nevertheless taking away from that incident some persistent belief. Also, probably true. I like this bit —

So maybe there was a schoolmarmish know-it-all in your first critique group who told you in a withering tone that only terrible writers use the word “was.” She may have trapped you into the mindset that “was” is a taboo word.

— because wow are there a lot of this kind of pseudo-rules that get propagated as though spawning on their own, independent of any kind of reason for existence.

Just for fun, how many pseudo-rules can be packed into one piece of advice? At least three: “Only terrible writers use “was” because “was” means the sentence is in the passive voice and passive voice is always bad.” How about that for cramming a lot of awful advice into one declarative statement?

I’ve always disregarded bad writing advice and proscriptive writing rules. I had a lot of encouraging teachers as a tot, I guess. But this tidbit strikes me as true:

This is why  NaNoWriMo  works for a lot of new writers. It forces them to put the stuff on paper in a playful way, joining in a national game. So those perfectionist pre-programmed beliefs are overridden.

I think this is true. I would say “encourages” rather than “forces,” but it seems to me that NaNoWriMo is presented in a playful way, generally, and that may well help people take it less seriously and thus get more words on paper. I’ve never taken part in NaNoWriMo because I’m usually winding down from a project in November. But this year I kinda took September and October off, so who knows, maybe in 2019, I will actually pick up a project November 1st and see how it goes.

Anne R Allen’s post is also relevant to the idea of what you’re “meant” to write, a concept I mentioned in a recent post. I had trouble with that “meant to write” idea, and I know some commenters here did as well, but Allen says,

My parents were both literature professors, so I had unexamined beliefs about literary fiction being superior to genre fiction. This kept me writing and rewriting the same unpublishable literary novel for years. Finally a friend I trusted pointed out that I was always reading mystery novels and funny women’s fiction. Why didn’t I write books like that? Bam. I had to examine why I believed I had to write literary fiction. And realized I didn’t. When I finally let myself write a funny mystery, my writing flowed easily.

I can’t imagine deliberately setting out to write The Great American Novel, but of course a lot of people do seem to have that ambition. I imagine it would be quite a relief to stop trying to Achieve The Great Novel and just relax and write — though funny mysteries would probably be as hard for me personally as literary fiction!

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The supernatural in detective fiction

So, I happened across this post at CrimeReads: IN DEFENSE OF THE SUPERNATURAL IN DETECTIVE FICTION, by John Connolly.

Connolly says: My second error, [my friend] believed, was to have mixed the mystery genre with the supernatural. Whatever its benefits or disadvantages to me, either commercially or creatively, he believed that this simply should not have been done. For him, the supernatural had no place in the mystery novel …

Connolly then refers to the “Ten Commandments of Detective Fiction,” promulgated by Ronald Knox in 1929. I’m not sure I’d heard of them, so I looked them up. Here they are, with commentary at the link that I’m removing for the sake of brevity, but those comments are worth reading if you have time to click through.

1.   The criminal must be someone mentioned in the early part of the story, but must not be anyone whose thoughts the reader has been allowed to follow.

2.     All supernatural or preternatural agencies are ruled out as a matter of course.

3.     Not more than one secret room or passage is allowable.

4.   No hitherto undiscovered poisons may be used, nor any appliance which will need a long scientific explanation at the end.

.5.     No Chinaman must figure in the story.

6.     No accident must ever help the detective, nor must he ever have an unaccountable intuition which proves to be right.

7.     The detective must not himself commit the crime.

8.    The detective must not light on any clues which are not instantly produced for the inspection of the reader.

9.   The stupid friend of the detective, the Watson, must not conceal any thoughts which pass through his mind; his intelligence must be slightly, but very slightly, below that of the average reader.

10.  Twin brothers, and doubles generally, must not appear unless we have been duly prepared for them.

My basic responses:

Although the murderer is always mentioned at some point, I’m sure I’ve read many mysteries where he or she was not mentioned “early” by any definition of the term that seems reasonable. Only one secret passage? That’s kind of chintzy. After reading The Moonstone, I agree about the Chinaman; I’d forgotten what a go-to stereotype the “Chinaman” was in literature of the period. Hidden clues are not rare, but are indeed annoying and authors should perhaps follow Rule 8 more closely. I hate stupid sidekicks and prefer Watson-type characters to be more intelligent, not less, than the average reader. Yes, the author had better foreshadow evil twins.

But let’s talk about the supposed exclusion of supernatural elements.

I guess the belief among authors of contemporary detective fiction, or acquiring editors of that subgenre, that “real” detective fiction should not include those elements, is probably one major factor in the rise of Urban Fantasy that is also detective fiction. This is, I’m pretty sure, the majority of all UF. Jim Butcher’s Dresden Files, say. Mike Carey’s The Devil You Know. Liz William’s Detective Inspector Chen novels. Lots of examples.

So when Ronald Knox ruled out supernatural influences, he was evidently completely wrong about what readers will accept in detective fiction, as obviously lots of readers are happy to read detective fiction that includes the supernatural. And when the post by Connolly at CrimeReads defends the use of supernatural elements, his defense appears unnecessary.

Not only that, but in fact I can think of several other mystery subgenres where supernatural elements are important. There’s an important ghost in the Wisteria Tearoom mysteries by Patrice Greenwood, which is a cozy mystery series, and it’s hard to imagine readers objecting.

Basically I think that it depends on the setting and the mood and the style of the novel, but that if they fit, then supernatural influences are fine in any mystery subgenre. For example, certain elements that smack of deus ex machina don’t ring true in Beverly Connor’s forensic anthropology mysteries, and overt supernatural influences would be way out of tune with the series, but ghosts are really quite common in cozies and fit into those quite well.

And if the author wants to throw in multiple labyrinths of secret passages, that’s fine with me too.

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Is it possible to mechanically construct lyrical prose?

Here’s a recent post at Well Storied: Three Tips for Crafting Lyrical Prose

Tips are all very well, but this gave me pause. Can you teach someone to write serviceable prose? Sure. Can you actually teach someone to write lyrical prose? Um. Can you provide three tips that make an actual difference? Um …

Well, I am skeptical, but let me see.

Tip 1: Use different types of repetition. The author is talking about alliteration, consonance, and assonance.

Hmm. The first thing that sprang to my mind was none of the above. I thought first of repetition of words, and the book that sprang to mind was The Silver Chair by CS Lewis. In that one, Lewis might have gone a little overboard with repetition of certain words, such as “moonlight” and “silver.” He might not agree that he overdid it; I read in Planet Narnia that Lewis specifically liked repetition of words as a way of achieving lyricism in prose.

CS Lewis also used plenty of other techniques, including alliteration, as here in The Screwtape Letters : “Was he not unmistakably a little man? A creature of the petty rake-off, pocketed with a petty joke in private and denied with the stainless platitudes in his public utterances.”

Tip 2: Set your syllabic style. The post appears to mean, stick either to shorter words or longer ones.

That seems weird to me. Though the author of the post does say, “Now, this doesn’t mean you have to use the same syllable count throughout your entire short story; instead, you just have to keep some syllabic consistencies within certain sections of your prose.”

… No, that still seems weird to me. I guess I would think of this as part of the style, but only part, and not necessarily worth focusing on especially. Word choice is surely at least as important as number of syllables.

Two syllable words that anybody would use:

Christmas, special, garden, midnight, happy, future, Monday, water.

Two syllable words that not just anybody would use:

adjure, ersatz, verdant, feckless, ribald, inure, nuance.

Number of syllables actually has little to do with style. I mean, I guess it’s a contributing factor to style, but pulling it out as one of three factors on which to focus seems, yes, weird. It seems to me that it would have been better to say Set your style and discuss that, as opposed to focusing on number of syllables.

Tip 3: Consider sentence structure.

The author of the post says: “A short, punchy sentence conveys abrupt truth, sureness, and practicality. A long, flowing sentence, however, can usher in a lyrical feel and a sense of elasticity.”

Here I agree. However, I’d roll that into “style,” and I’d add that it’s important to note that a short sentence only has maximum punch if it’s surrounded by longer sentences. Let me see . . . no, nothing here about how varying your sentence length could be important.

Pretty sure that three fairly simplistic tips are not going to guide anyone from serviceable prose to lyrical prose. Pretty sure that ten tips won’t do it either. I think what might is reading a bunch of novels written with lyrical prose. After reading ten or so, maybe that would be the right time to ask yourself what the authors are actually doing and begin to dissect sentences.

So, fine —

Ten authors who write lyrical SFF, in no particular order

1.Patricia McKillip

2. Guy Gavriel Kay

3. Ursula K LeGuin

4. Jane Yolen

5. Catherynne Valente

6. Peter S Beagle

7. Gene Wolfe

8. Joy Chant

9. Rachel Neumeier

10. ____________________________

Who else? Pick someone to fill in the blank.

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How do you know what you are meant to write?

Another good Q&A at Janet Reid’s blog —

A question offered for perusal:

But does a good writer always KNOW what they are MEANT to write? What if the awards and cash prizes for my sci-fi/horror writing are just a testament to my ABILITY to write well, and not for my true calling for WHAT to write? I LIKE to write sci-fi/horror, but is it possible for another genre, such as humor, to be a better fit – a better fit that if I were to explore it could finally be the break I need (getting an agent, getting a pub deal, etc.) ?? Maybe LIKING a genre isn’t enough to justify writing in it. 

My instant response: you’re not meant to write anything. Write what you want and hopefully that genre will work for you.

Let’s see what Janet says:

I have always believed that the way to know you are fulfilling your purpose here is to measure your joy. If writing in one particular category or genre brings you joy, that’s a good thing.

If you try out something else, and give it a chance, not the one minute “I told you I don’t like lima beans” test, and it too brings you joy, even better.

That seems reasonable to me.

Also, Janet declared everyone needs more perfection in their lives and linked Torville and Dean’s famous ice dancing performance to “Bolero. ” I remember watching that when they first performed it, and she’s right, it’s an example of perfection. If you’ve never seen it, click through and watch the video.

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Discouraged? Here you go —

Just happened across a fun and possibly useful page of Factoids To Boost Your Confidence as a Writer:

Writers have bad days. We get negative book reviews, we take too long to finish a story, and we get rejected—sometimes all in the same week.

But writers are also resilient. When you need a kick-in-the-pants, read this post for instant encouragement and motivation.

I’ll give you a sampling:

When It’s Taking “Too Long”:

Gillian Flynn: 3 years to write Gone Girl

When You Feel Too Old/Too Young:

Mark Twain: 41

When You Experience Self-Doubt:

“Self-doubt is just part of the creative process. It doesn’t go away. It sits there. It’s part of the process. So we need to learn to live with that and go forward. Finish your manuscript, publish your book, and get your words out into the world anyway. Self-doubt is just part of the job of being a writer.” — Joanna Penn

When Another Agent Rejects You:

“120+ query rejections on my first (shelved) books. I sent my first query for One of Us Is Lying to my dream agent, and she signed & sold it a couple of months later. Then I got another query rejection after it hit the NYT bestseller list.” — Karen M. McManus, @writerkmc

When Someone Mocks Self-Publishing:

Andy Weir (The Martian) — Matt Damon starred in the movie version, which won an Academy Award.

When You Get Negative Reviews:

Where The Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak

“The plan and technique of the illustrations are superb… …but they may well prove frightening, accompanied as they are by a pointless and confusing story.” —Publisher’s Weekly, 1963

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I picked a good time to drop in on Janet Reid’s blog

Because I met a very familiar Good Dog there.

I sent that photo to Janet when her blog was on hiatus earlier this year. She wasn’t on hiatus long enough to use the photo at the time, but here it is now: one of the very, very best photos I have ever taken of one of my dogs.

The one with the literary name, too, as it happens: his registered name is Anara Call Me Ishmael RN RA RE.

That was very eye-catching, but Janet also has a recent post about backstory that I noticed because of the recent Archon panel about that, followed by my post here.

Your recent critique on Query Shark mentioned cutting set up and backstory to keep a query lean and effective. My question is … when does set up / backstory become necessary to avoid confusion (the great query sin)? ….

I guess my real question is this. If we do attempt to include set up / backstory, is it better to just be blunt with it and get it out of the way (avoid confusion) or try to “say as much as you can without saying it” (avoid it looking like set up / backstory)???

You say surprise like it’s a bad thing.

I love twists and turns. I LOVE it when writing surprises me…in a good way.

But my guess is you mean that the agent won’t understand the story without some set up.

And that’s the answer to your question. You need set up if the reader won’t understand the plot without the key element.

But often times writer fail to understand that your reader isn’t looking for problems. We’re looking for a great story. And we’ll buy in to what you tell us if we can.

And then Janet goes on, with examples. As always, it’s a great look at a concise explanation of when and how much to explain backstory.

And it’s quite true about buying in, if you can. Janet adds, “Overexplaining is one of the biggest problems I see in queries.” I can believe it! I think this is exactly like saying, “Prologues that read like history textbooks are THE WORST!”

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Twenty top mysteries —

Via a Book Riot post, but generated by looking at the most popular mysteries on Goodreads.

Okay, I’m mildly interested. Given this is a popularity contest, I’ll start by guessing that at least five titles will be by Agatha Christie. First, everyone has heard of her. Second, bookstores always carry some of her titles. Third, some of her books got made into well-known movies. Given all that, her name has to come up a bunch when you just look at most popular mysteries.

I have to admit that I have never been a Christie fan, though of course I’ve read a couple of hers and I saw Ten Little Indians once, I think.

Besides Christie, I don’t know whom I expect. I know what some of my favorites are — Gaudy Night, obviously — and I know who I think was a great mystery author — Rex Stout — but I don’t know who I expect to find on a Goodreads list.

Let’s take a look:

1 and 2: Agatha Christie, as expected. Murder at the Vicarage and The Mysterious Affair at Styles, neither of which I’ve read.

3: Oh ho, the third entry is a Sookie Stackhouse novel! Well, that is not a mystery. I mean, of course it’s a mystery, but it’s a paranormal. Most paranormals are also mysteries, but I think it’s kind of cheating to include paranormals and UF and other things on a list of top mysteries.

4: Here’s one I’ve read: The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie by Alan Bradley. Actually, I listened to it in audio form.

This time set in 1950, our heroine is an aspiring chemist with an inquisitive mind who is intrigued by a series of seemingly unconnected events (a dead bird, a postage stamp, and a dead man in a cucumber patch). While I would probably back away from the bizarre turn of events, young Flavia de Luce is appalled and delighted. If you’re looking for a bit of history mixed with a plucky female protagonist then this series may be right up your alley.

Yes, well. I liked this book, but not that much. I liked Flavia, but not that much. I never did go on to the next book in the series.

5: Still Life by Louise Penny. I’ve read this one and liked it quite a bit. Setting is very important to me in mysteries. Penny delivers a wonderful setting, lyrically drawn. Her Chief Inspector Armand Gamache is just okay for me though. I’ve read several of Penny’s books and might well go back to the series.

Okay, that’s the top five. Let me see how many of the others I’ve read . . . The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, I read that one and liked it a lot. Gone Girl, no, ugh, I read a review of this one at The Book Smugglers and it turned me right off the book. Definitely don’t ever plan to read it. Rebecca by DuMaurier, wow, that’s a classic. Sure, I’ve read that one and seen the movie both.

Oh, here’s a true crime section. Yes, I’ve read In Cold Blood. That’s actually my favorite one on this list. The slow reconstruction of the crime was so interesting.

Okay, that’s it. I’ve read five of the books listed here. That’s 25%, more than I would have expected. Missing:

Dorothy Sayers, Rex Stout. Gosh, look, Arthur Conan Doyle is missing, that’s actually shocking now that I think of it. PD James! She’s far from my favorite, given a tendency to create a sympathetic character and then make that person the murderer, but she’s so well known and popular, I’m a little surprised. Lots of really popular authors are missing from this list. Sue Grafton.

Let me see, who would I pick for a personal top twenty? Well, a personal top five, just off the top of my head

Dorothy Sayers — Gaudy Night

Rex Stout — overall list of titles

Ellis Peters — the Brother Cadfael stories, which for a change I liked better on the BBC than as novels

Dorothy Dunnett — the Dolly mysteries

Beverly Connor — both her series of forensic anthropology mysteries. I freely acknowledge these are not as well written on the sentence level as any of the above, but I love them.

Who are your favorite mystery authors? Did the Book Riot list pick any?

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