Mette Ivie Harrison's Blog, page 55

Writing Wednesday: A Few Handy Rules of Thumb (And Why You Might Not Use Them)

Here are some rules of thumb that I throw out when I am teaching beginning author's classes:

Say what your protag's age and name are on the first page, for instance.

Make sure that there is some conflict in the first chapter, even if it isn't the major conflict of the book.

Keep the number of viewpoint characters down to 2-3 for a YA novel and 5-6 for an adult novel, and only change viewpoint characters at the end of a chapter or at the very least the end of a scene.

Don't kill off major viewpoint characters in the middle of the novel, especially ones that the readers are rooting for.

Keep backstory to one paragraph at a time, especially early in a novel.

Keep the main action in the story within a limited time period, usually less than one month.

Introduce both (or all three) figures in a romance novel in the first 20 pages.

Make sure that there is only one main villain throughout the entire novel, to keep action focused.

Every character needs both virtues and vices to be realistic.

Write a sympathetic scene with the protagonist as quickly as possible.

The magic system must have rules and the protagonist must learn these rules gradually as the novel progresses.

Don't write a book from the point of view of an inanimate object.

Avoid teaching a lesson directly, or ending the book with an explanation of what it means.

Make sure that children solve their own problems in children's books, and don't have adults step in and fix everything for them.

Avoid happy endings that occur through luck rather than the hard work of the main characters.

But for each of these rules, I can think of an excellent book that breaks the rule. George R. R. Martin is constantly killing off characters the readers love. A lot of epic fantasy writers spend pages and pages explaining backstory and their readers love it. Plenty of children's books have very clear moralistic messages. My book Mira, Mirror was written as an answer to rule #12.

So how do you know if you should break the rules or not break the rules?

There's not really a way for me to answer this or not. In the end, you're going to have to decide for yourself if the rule you are breaking is a)essential to the story you are trying to tell and b)is broken is such a way that it feels “brilliant” to most readers. It isn't going to be a unanimous vote, either. Some readers are never going to like certain books that break rules. But if you can get a few reactions like “this is brilliant!” then you are probably on the right track.

Fictional Motherhood #3: Bones

I have some serious beefs with this show, including the fact that a woman who is slightly autistic would probably not be as well-dressed and well-put together as Temperance Brennan is. She has Angela as her best friend, and supposedly Angela helps her buy clothes and figure out a beauty routine. I'm not saying that autistic people can't be beautiful, but it seems unlikely to me that someone who will have to be spending so much time actually writing her books and then doing research to keep up with her job on the side, as well as actual hours worked, would have the time, let alone think that it was worth her effort to be beautiful when she is working in a lab with dead bodies and other “squints” most of the day.

Maybe this is me projecting myself onto her, but let me just say that when I recently got my hair chopped off (10 inches whacked off at once), the stylist asked me how I usually do my hair. I said, “I comb it.” She said, “Well, you could just work a little mousse in at the back and it would curl up nicely.” I said, “I could do that, but it's really unlikely that's going to happen.” I feel bad acting like I am so much busier than other people, but I usually give myself under 5 minutes to shower and dress and then I have something else on my schedule. I choose to keep busy like this. I'm not asking for sympathy or anything, but I'm just saying it seems to me Brennan is going to be like that.

Obviously, there are other needs besides verisimilitude on a TV show, and they appear to include making the lead female (however smart and kind and good she is supposed to be) also be a sex-pot. Because you know, no one wants to watch a show about a smart, ugly woman. Unless she is just pretending to be ugly, of course!

Moving on here, I was intrigued when Both and Brennan finally got together (they aren't married, but do live together and share parenting of their daughter, Christine). I was worried that the show would no longer work, that it would be boring to see Booth and Brennan together without sexual tension. And I was worried about how the writers would deal with the fact that Brennan now was a mother.

I'm a little embarrassed to admit that these were my concerns. Could a hugely pregnant woman still be sexy and still make men want to watch the show? Well, maybe there has been a drop-off in viewership. I don't know and I don't think I care. I think the show is in some ways MORE interesting now that it isn't all about whether or not the two leads are “going to do it.” I loved the frank discussions between Booth and Brennan about whether they are going to get married, whose house to live in, whose income they would base their house purchase on, what to name the baby, whether to have the baby in the hospital or not, and whether to raise the baby with a religious tradition. These are the real life concerns of many parents. I especially loved the episode about home birth and the fact that Brennan didn't end up in the hospital, despite Booth's uber-concern. So smart for her to say that hospitals have a lot of germs and encourage procedures over the normal course of birth, which women have been going through without hospitals forever. (Which isn't to say that these are no risks, nor that people who go to a hospital are stupid. I think there are arguments on both sides that make sense and I would probably encourage my daughters to go to the hospital.)

The season ender where Brennan is implicated in a murder by an old evil villain and has to choose whether or not she is going to stick around the be arrested or if she's going to flee with Christine and trust Booth to take care of the villain was really interesting. Yes, there is something typical about sending the woman off with the baby and letting the man face the fire. But that's not really the way the episode turned out. Brennan was working the case remotely, while she was also flipping burgers at a diner to earn enough money to care for her baby. She couldn't live off her regular earnings and had to be poor. But because of her past life on the run, she is actually prepared for this.

And then, when everything is good again, Booth and Brennan are back together—guess what? There are problems. Because real people have real problems, even people who are married or in love and committed to each other. And these problems are not, in fact, boring! Booth complains to Sweets that he feels that Brennan can't trust him after her experience on the run. She is too independent, too used to doing things on her own. She and Booth have to face the consequences of the choice they made to save Christine and Brennan, and those consequences are significant. You can still have a loving couple see their love in jeopardy without having to go soap opera and have one of them sleeping with someone else.

I am thinking now about the last episode I watched. Sweets has moved in with Booth and Brennan because he and Daisy broke up and he wanted to leave her the apartment. I loved how tricky that was for him, how he misjudged the situation and misinterpreted how his actions would be read (despite him being a psychiatrist and supposedly an expert at human feelings). I loved that he dealt with the consequences and did what seemed to be the right thing, or the rightest thing anyway. And its fun to see his interaction with Booth and Brennan at home. Brennan quoting from a psychology book that Sweets leaves in the bathroom is especially fun. I also loved it when Brennan had problems with the day care workers when she asked for photos of Christine and they sent her pictures of diapers. She liked them, but Booth had to explain what was really going on. Day care problems are interesting, too. They can be funny and poignant, even when it's not just going googoo eyes over a cute baby photo.

I'm a little disappointed that this same episode seemed to feel it necessary to include a new romance as well as multiple scenes with Angela and Hodgins kissing, as if to reassure us that even without Booth and Brennan's sexual tension, there will be plenty of other tensions. Then again, I'm all for romance, so I don't mind. I just wonder if the writers know what they're doing. Maybe I should have learned to trust them by now.

Being married and parenting together is hard, no matter how much you are in love or how much you have in common to begin with. My husband I married quite young (he was 21 and I was 20). We grew up in the same town. He's an oldest child, I'm ninth in the family. Our parents were both middle class, though mine tend to be misers and live poor. We figured out how to get married and get an apartment together on a limited income and we accepted the poverty that came with it. We actually had fun with it. But there were certainly times when things did not go well. Part of it was that we were both immature. We argued over things that didn't matter. I spent a lot of time being frustrated that my husband would not call me when he was going to be late and wouldn't write down financial transactions until I pried them out of him. We eventually figured out how to budget together, how to divide jobs up so that neither of us was angry about it, and then we started having kids. (Which isn't to say we had everything figured out when we had kids, only that we waited a few years.)

I was very worried that my husband would turn out to be the disciplinarian and that I would let things slide. In fact, I think that in some ways the opposite happened. Because I was the one who did more the home care with the kids (though I have worked part-time for most of our marriage), I realized quickly that setting up rules with kids just saves a lot of time and effort. If you don't follow through with the consequences for breaking rules, you end up realizing the rules are useless. You have to immediately react or kids don't connect the reaction with what they did. And my husband has become in many ways a softie. He is the one the kids play games with (he loves games—I love books). He helps with science homework. I tend to help with English homework.

But guess what? Sometimes we have problems. My 17 year old daughter graduated a year early and has left our church. She lives at home and is still figuring out her life and what she wants to do for college. (A 17 year old who doesn't know what to do, such a surprise, right?) We have conflicts over money occasionally, and about how to parent. We argue about politics (he's a conservative, I'm more liberal-ish). And this is normal. Our kids hear our fights (we don't shout). I don't see anything wrong with that. Our kids see us negotiate time issues around his career and mine. Sometimes things have to be given up to make things work. Sometimes he gives up; sometimes I do.

There are times when I am a stereotypical woman who is staying at home with kids, does dishes, laundry and cooking all day. There are times when he is the business man dad who earns the money. But there are also times when I'm the one who is flush with cash and can buy big ticket items he can't afford because he pays the bills and gets the steady pay. There are times when I spend money on things he thinks are useless (though it's not clothes or make up very often). There are times when he buys guy toys or when he plays games too late and annoys me. But what our kids see is a functioning marriage where two adults are equals. And that is interesting. They see conflict. They see it resolved sometimes. They see it not resolved sometimes. They see a man and a woman who are both strong people who both work hard and both struggle with success or lack of it. They see parents who work together. And I think they find it interesting. Our kids would rather any day sit on the couch and just chat with us than watch television. Because real life is interesting. Real women are interesting, even when they become mothers.

WIFYR Full Novel Critique Class

This year, I am doing the (possibly crazy) thing: teaching WIFYR with a new full novel critique class.

I think every year, people come up to me and say that they wish I or another teacher could read the whole novel. Sometimes I think they're wrong. But then again, sometimes I later read the whole novel and realize that they were right. Not that I didn't give good advice, but that I could give a lot better advice if I read the whole thing.

So, go here to sign up if you want to be part of this experiment. You need to agree to read everyone else's novel as well as your own (there will be 6 participants in the class). I'm hoping this is a big success because it was all my idea. And yes, I will read every word of your book for the insanely low price of this conference and give you a page by page analysis and full editorial letter.
http://www.wifyr.com/

Monday Book Recs: Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand

This is the story of Louis Zamperini, who was a young Olympic hopeful in the Berlin 1936 Olympics and someone who was expected to break 4 minutes on the mile while he was in college. But WWII happened, and Louis Zamperini went off to war in the Air Force. And his life adventure became something very different than athletics. He ended up stranded on a lifeboat after his plane went down with two other members of the crew for 48 days in the Pacific Ocean. He survived shark attacks, and two strafing attacks by Japanese planes. And when he thought he was rescued and had found land again, he was captured by the Japanese and put in one of their notorious death camps for the next eighteen months. He chronicles the abuses of power by one of the Japanese camp commanders and his eventual rescue at the end of the war.

I read this book for a book group and on the level of a book about a real life hero, I was certainly satisfied. But as someone who is fascinated by WWII and the Nazis, the part of the book that interested me most was about the story of the villain and why he became the man he was. Mutsuhiro Watanabe is part of the story, as well, and I think Hillenbrand tried to explain what happened to him. It may be that there is never a satisfying answer to the question, why do people do terrible things? My book club friends seemed a lot less interested in this question than I was. But to me, one of the most interesting questions about the Nazis is about those ordinary people who get drawn in and then don't realize what it is that they are becoming. I do believe that it is often ordinary people who become horrible, not that they were originally horrible and this was their chance to finally unleash the demons inside.

Yes, there are certainly the incredible people who see Nazism for what it really is and who fight against it, at the risk of their own lives. I do not mean to take away that heroism. In Unbroken, there are some great characters within the camps, Japanese who risk their lives to help the American POWs in small ways. I admire those people tremendously. I just don't know that I believe I would be one of them. I hope that I would be. But there is something fascinating in watching the ordinary person become a war criminal. Is it being drunk on power? Is it being caught up in the story that the POW's are somehow not human? In the Pacific theater of WWII, Americans were treated by the Japanese much as the Jews were treated by Nazis. Americans captured by Nazis, on the other hand, were not treated as subhuman. They were the enemy and might be tortured for information, but there was a line.

I also loved the story of the man who came back from the war haunted by demons. He falls in love and marries a girl who really had no idea what she was getting into. But she stuck with him for long enough for him to figure out he needed help, and he found it in the form of Billy Graham. It's not the only way to find redemption, but it worked for Louis Zamperini and I liked the way that he was able to deal with confronting his torturer and in what sense it still mattered to him, years later.

Friday Tri: Gaining Weight and Body-Hate

I was reading an article recently about the fluctuating weight of professional athletes. Many of them have an off-season weight and a different weight that is a lot lower for competition. But it is actually part of their recovery to gain weight. Staying at a particular low weight all the time is actually counter productive for them in the long-term.

I have seen this in my own seasonal planning. I tend to gain weight at the end of the season, as I have started to do more and more recovery from my hectic race schedule. Then I worry about it over the holidays and finally lose a little weight in the early months of the year, but as I need less recovery, it comes off fairly naturally.

What's the point here? That your weight isn't just about will power. There are people who are dealing with a lot of stress and they naturally gain weight. When the stress ends, they will probably lose that weight. The way we talk about it is sometimes all about will power and self-control, moralistic reasons, rather than the more natural biological imperatives.

Just eat fewer calories has become the mantra of a lot of people in the weight-loss industry. But the thing is, no one wants to be hungry. And hunger isn't always controlled by calories. Our brains sometimes tell us to eat, even when on less stressful days we would not feel hungry. Or our brains signal us to eat sometimes when they aren't getting the nutrients they need.

I don't believe in diets that make you hungry. I don't believe that you can exercise well while hungry. I don't believe ultimately you can train your body to accept hunger as normal. I do believe that if you eat food that makes you happy and that is healthy (which may be a different combination for different people), you will naturally want to move your body in healthy ways. You will want to go out and walk or whatever works for you.

Don't listen to the body-hate messages that are all around us. If you've put on some weight, is there a reason for it? Give yourself a break. Sometimes the holidays are really stressful and that's why people gain weight, not because they have no “self-control.” When you're ready, you will make changes. But don't tell yourself a negative story about why you are the way you are. Ultimately, it is really counterproductive.

12 Author/Agent Marriages

You know you've seen these. Maybe you've been one or more of these.

Long-time married couple, they talk supportively about each other most of the time, but now and then are willing to give the real “poop” on flaws in the other person's character.

December/June couple, one is much, much older than the other and the way they talk about each other makes you feel slightly uncomfortable, like you are getting a look at someone else's dirty underwear, described in glowing terms.

The power couple, who are only in it for the money and the benefits right now. You have a feeling that if things ever get tricky, one person is going to drop the other like a hot potato. This is a “business only” relationship.

Abusive relationship, where the author tends to be the abused one, and cringes or winces at every mention of the agent's name, but when you ask if she's going to leave, she looks at you in stunned shock. How could she? She has an agent now, a real agent. She deserves the way she is being treated, so she puts up with it.

Difficult family history together where they tease and poke each other like siblings, and when drunk will tell hilarious stories that they probably shouldn't. They also scold each other and roll their eyes.

Newlyweds, who finish each other's sentences in an annoyingly amused way and cuddle either literally or virtually, about every tiny piece of good news. You're partly sickened and partly jealous.

Power mismatch, one of the two is obviously giving more to the relationship than the other.

The couple who won't get divorced, but for some reason enjoy complaining about their partner ad nauseum.

The divorce, who is quick to tell hilarious stories about ex-agents, until you begin to wonder what is wrong with him, that he puts up with behavior like that, or keeps getting duped.

The odd couple, whose relationship you do not understand AT ALL, and the more you watch it, the more you do not understand it. They are completely opposites, and don't even like the same books, but somehow it seems to work.

The con, where the author tells about the agent who talked him into signing a 10 year contract with promises of million dollar deals, and then did—absolutely nothing. Why? No one knows. Apparently, just because the agent thought being an agent was cool, but didn't want to do any of the work.

The sobbing/overly committed relationship. One moment the author is dedicating the book to his agent, without whom he would be “nothing.” The next, he is angrily giving a long list of things the agent did that “ruined his life.”

Writing Wednesday: “Super Sparkle Pony”

This is a phrase that I recently learned is used to refer to a kind of protagonist who has too many super powers and is just too “special.” I am more suspicious than ever of people using phrases that are meant to slam female writers and female protagonists a la Twilight. But I am going to try to make a distinction between using super powers for your protagonist well and using them badly.

There are certainly plenty of protagonists of favorite series of mine who have many super powers. I am thinking of Ender from Ender's Game, Harry Potter, lots of super heroes, any “Chosen One” fantasy saga, Miles Vorkosigan, Eugenides from Megan Whalen Turner's The Thief series, and on and on. Eugenides ends up with his hand cut off and still manages to steal a kingdom. Ender is the smallest, youngest kid in battle school and still wins, no matter what odds the adults set against him. Harry Potter is up against the worst villain in the history of his world, and without parents or a family to support him, he and the scar on his forehead manage to save the world. So what is the difference between these beloved characters and the kind of “Super Sparkle Pony” that I think a lot of beginning writers mistakenly create?

Kryptonite

Every super-hero needs to have a kryptonite. Obviously, it doesn't have to be a physical substance, but it needs to be some kind of weakness. For Gen, over-confidence is one of his weaknesses. So is falling in love with the wrong woman. For Harry, it's his connection to Voldemort. It gets him into lots of trouble, and makes him wonder if he is crazy. He's also hated by a whole big group of people, so he doesn't get an easy life handed to him on a platter. And he has Hermione constantly showing him up as not the brightest bulb. Ender's kryptonite is his connection to his family, and it's exploited by the adults around him when they have a chance. This gives a human dimension to larger-than-life characters.

Time

If you're writing a super hero type character, make sure that the super powers take time to develop. A super hero, even one who is born with super powers, is going to take considerable time to figure out how to use those powers. They're not going to come out right the first try. A good portion of a book is going to show practice with the super powers. If you're writing this kind of book, don't make the mistake of thinking that these scenes are filler and should be skipped with a summary. Part of the fun of watching a super-hero develop is seeing how long it takes. Even Donald Trump was young Donald Trump along the way.

Failures

Along with the time that it takes to develop, any super hero needs to make mistakes. I learned this recently with a novel of mine, where the protagonist is a victim of some evil characters, but never actually makes a wrong choice. A character who never makes a wrong choice isn't very relatable. And frankly, not nearly as interesting as one who has a troubled past. Think of Sherlock Holmes. Sure, he's a genius. But if you were to try to write Sherlock Holmes as a happy family man who spent his weekends solving crimes, well, I don't think he would be nearly as interesting. All the best crime fighters are people who have crimes in their past. This is realistic, but it's also a narrative trick, so that we can constantly be finding out about the dark past. You're missing out as a writer if you don't exploit this fun part of writing a strong protagonist with a lot of powers.

Luck

Luck should be an important part of any narrative arcs toward a climax. I'm not one of those people who believe that everyone has exactly what they deserve. There is a lot of luck involved in my success as a writer. I happened to know someone who knew someone. I'm not saying it was all luck. There was plenty of hard work in there, and I think I would eventually have gotten a break at some point anyway. But nonetheless, the break came when it did because of luck. You make your own luck only to a certain extent. I think it's valuable to make it clear in the narrative that there are some successes that are based on luck. Being in the right place at the right time, with the right contacts. If not for that, Voldemort might have had to wait for someone else to defeat him.

Relationships

If you're going to have a protagonist with super powers, make sure that there are real consequences. A super-human character is going to have problems relating to a regular human world. Sherlock Holmes doesn't have normal relationships. He has Watson, but his relationship with Watson is always strained by the fact that he keeps showing Watson how stupid he is. And he can't shut up about it even when it would be in his best interest to do so. I love the way that House shows what happens between House and Wilson after many years of House's abuse of Wilson. They are friends and House sometimes does things for Wilson, but mostly it's the other way around. But House doesn't see that because he thinks he is brilliant. The relationships around a super-hero are going to be f***d up.

Reversals

One of the best reversals in fiction is at the end of Ender's Game, when you find out that the brilliant Ender has been duped all along. The readers have been duped, as well, and that adds to our connection to Ender. He is brilliant, but even he can be fooled. If you can show how your super hero is fooled or bested by someone else (and not just another super sparkle pony, but someone who has a strength where the super hero has a weakness), then you are going to have a far more powerful story.

After-Math

What happens after all the fun of the super powers has been explored. What is the denouement? If you miss out on the importance of the moment after the climax, you are not writing your super-hero story the right way. The super-hero, is he going to end up lonely and back in his bat cave? Does he go back to his disguise as an ordinary guy, still trying to get Lois Lane to notice him? Does he end up known as the Genocide who has to leave Earth to avoid deportation, because he took the hit for doing what humanity had to have done but doesn't want to admit to? Does he have a happy, Harry Potter ending? What is a happy ending for a character like this? Who could possibly be an equal match to a super hero? Think about this before you write your ending. For Harry Potter, the happy ending only works because Harry never wanted to be special and once Voldemort is dead and the scar is gone, there is very little reason to think of him as having a super power anymore.

Fictional Motherhood #2: Cordelia Naismith

Cordelia Naismith is the protagonist of “Shards of Honor” and “Barrayar” by Lois McMaster Bujold (now published together as “Cordelia’s Honor,” I believe). These two books are possibly the books I have read the most number of times in my life. The physical copies I own are certainly falling apart. I find the romance between Cordelia and Aral to be fascinating, and I love Cordelia’s intelligence, wit, and her clarity of vision. I sometimes find myself saying what I imagine Cordelia would say about my children or politics, and then I am incisive and blunt.

In Barrayar, Cordelia becomes pregnant. On a planet that is not her own (at least not at first) without the technology that she might have expected growing up. Barrayar is a backward place that spent centuries in isolation from the rest of the galaxy and is only recently finding out the inventions it has missed. The “uterine replicator” is one of these technologies that is brand-new. (As a side note I will add that Bujold’s technologies are the most sensible, women-focused technologies in any sf I have ever read. Who cares about FTL space ships if you still have to carry babies in your own body? Cloning, transgender body changes, procreation after death and an all-gay world are accepted matter-of-factly here.)

Barrayar begins with a sly tip of the hat to women looking at themselves in the mirror as novels begin, so that the reader can be provided with a quick physical description of the sort that male protagonists don’t ever need. But to me, the novel is suffused with all the feelings of pregnancy that feel very real to me. First, the excitement of being pregnant. Yes, we did it! Then the slowness of being pregnant, the metabolic load, “peeing for two,” as Cordelia puts it. She is still herself enough, however, to insult her father-in-law, by suggesting that he can’t possibly know that his ancestors are any different than those of the mountain people since “gene-typing wasn’t perfected” until a few years ago. Aral reminds Cordelia smilingly that she has just suggested that her father-in-law is a bastard, which is an insult that Cordelia has difficulty wrapping her mind around.

The fear of pregnancy when unmarried comes up again when Kou and Drou, friends of Cordelia and Aral, realize they are in love and have an unexpected tryst. Cordelia takes up the role of “Baba” and is hilariously bad at it, but actually gets the job done. Still, the results of casual sex falling more heavily on the woman is one of the things that gets underlined heavily here. Kou is worried that Drou doesn’t like him. Drou, on the other hand, spends weeks in terror that she will have disgraced her family and be rejected by them. Cordelia’s sympathy is mostly, but not exclusively, for Drou. But the physicality of pregnancy is real here. It is scary to have children when a woman could still die in childbirth.

The third woman in the novel who is pregnant is Alys Vorpatril, the wife of Aral Vorkosigan’s cousin. She is two weeks overdue when the capital is under siege during a civil war. She ends up giving birth hours after her husband is killed before her eyes and she is nearly killed herself, though the soldiers hesitate a moment since they are only supposed to kill the heir, which is still inside her. Since they can’t separate the two at the moment, they shrug and decide to kill them both. The ways in which women have been ignored and seen only as vessels carrying the next heir for centuries of European (and other human) history is clear here. This is both horrible and hilarious and I don’t know of any writer who can make me laugh and feel horror quite so brilliantly together. Aren’t we crazy, we humans?

And then there is Cordelia Naismith’s pregnancy, which begins with such promise. She feels a little nausea, a little tired, has begun to show a bit of a bump that she is proud of. And then—an assassin targets her husband with a nerve gas. Since she happens to sleep in the same room as her husband, she ingests the gas, as well. A quick antidote which she is given (unknowing of the consequences), cures her. But the child within her will have to be aborted, she is told, because the antidote is a violent teratogen and will turn its bones to jelly. Cordelia, when she hears this news, has a moment of feeling that she understands the women on Barrayar who, a century ago, went through pregnancy never knowing if the child inside would have to be killed at birth for mutatations. Instead of going through the abortion process, however, she insists that if the child can be saved, it will be saved. No matter how difficult its life will be, she sees value in it. (She is introduced to the reader in Shards of Honor as a woman who continues to help a man survive who is likely brain-dead).

So a c-section where the child will be transferred into the uterine replicator is planned. The uterine replicator also appeared in Shards of Honor as a means of allowing women raped in POW camps to send the results of their abuse back to the men whose children they carried. Instead of the women having to live with the guilt of choosing an abortion, they make the fathers make the decision. The Barryarans find this choice rather bizarre, and seem tempted to flush the babies, but Cordelia demands that Aral take charge of them and see them born and cared for through their lives. One of these children we later see grow to adulthood and discover that she has been lied to all her life about her origins, and that her father is, in fact, a rapist. She searches for her mother, who was psychologically tortured, as well as raped, and does not remember much. Motherhood again—not an easy thing.

I love that Bujold isn’t picking and choosing from different kinds of motherhood. We have all kinds here, motherhood that was wanted, motherhood gone wrong, enforced motherhood of the worst kind. And there is no sentimentality about it. Rape as a gift from God? Well, life maybe is a gift from God. But motherhood through rape is seen pretty clearly as a horrible burden.These are women who have had contraceptive implants removed (another solution to the problem of motherhood in our society) and are impregnated on purpose as a kind of torture. Also a reality in our world, where making a woman carry a child she doesn’t want to is a rapist’s proof of manhood.

Motherhood never goes where the women who choose it expect it. It is both better and worse than they imagine. And that is the way it really is. Taking life into our hands is a wonderful thing, but it is also terrifying. And it’s certainly not pleasant. The image of Cordelia, nearly bleeding out as they try to save mother and child, is one that sticks in your head. There aren’t any easy choices here. Bujold doesn’t go for the feminism that wants to wave its hand away from the real feelings of mothers for the lives that grow inside them. Cordelia doesn’t just get to wash her hands of a damaged fetus and “try again.” She is committed in her heart to this child and that is real. Abortion isn’t an easy choice. It isn’t a real solution to the problem of motherhood. Even women who are raped don’t casually get abortions. That’s real. Motherhood is heavy stuff. It’s not just about a physical connection. It’s about the emotional connection that you do not always want to feel. It would be convenient not to feel it, but that’s not the way it works.

After her near-death experience giving birth, Cordelia and Aral are able to see their son growing up inside the uterine replicator. They have a team of physicians who are dedicated to experimenting on their son in utero and hopefully making him viable. But now Cordelia gets to show what motherhood is like when you aren’t tied to the child physically. It’s pretty interesting. You don’t have to eat for the baby. you don’t get huge with the baby. You can’t put your hand on the baby and feel its heartbeat, or pretend to talk to it. Instead, Cordelia gets to spend the rest of the novel trying to save Barrayar from its civil war so that her son and his agemates (little Ivan and young Emperor Gregor) have a safe place to grow up. She takes on the man’s role in riding into the enemy camp, getting captured, and then killing the usurper to the crown. She also gets the child Emperor’s mother killed.

Kareen, Gregor’s mother, believes Gregor is dead because that is what Vidal Vordarian has told her. Having no child to live for, she protects herself and becomes Vordarian’s “mistress.” She has no interest in giving up her life for the symbol of the empire unless that empire is attached to her son. When Cordelia proves that her son is alive and that Vordarian has been lying, Kareen tries to kill him and ends up getting killed herself. Cordelia feels a terrible guilt for this and becomes a foster-mother for Gregor. But this is also one of the results of motherhood. Kareen loves Gregor so much that she does not think clearly when she realizes he is still alive. She is only interested in revenge, not in crafty ways of saving herself so that she can continue to mother Gregor. The emotional attachment and volatility of motherhood kills her.

One of my favorite moments in the book is when Cordelia’s physician, after she complains of being tired after several days on horseback, suggests that now that she is several weeks postpartum, should begin an exercise program. (and of course, her delivery of Vidal Vordarian’s head in one of Kareen’s shopping bags so that everyone realizes how dangerous she is while she makes a joke about women and frivolous shopping pursuits). Motherhood in Shards of Honor and Barrayar is dangerous physically, but it is far more dangerous emotionally. Though perhaps what we call emotional attachment is really in part physical through hormonal surges (something Bujold doesn’t go into).

I read this book before I started writing and have reread it often since. It is a touchstone for me of using the devices of science fiction and fantasy to get at real truth, and twisting old conceits that have been used to talk about male adventures into conceits that work brilliantly well for female adventures, as well.

I remember after giving birth to my first child, I called my mother (who had 11 children) with a new awe. After having one, I honestly could not imagine ever having another one. All that pain, all that work. I was in labor for 20 hours, but my mother’s longest labor was 72 hours, in the days when they let women go that long. (That was #10. With #11, my mother was with a new doctor, who proclaimed after an x-ray that my mother was too small to give birth vaginally. She might have protested except that I think she thought a C-section would be easier with #11. She was right.) And I was really just at the beginning of the pain and labor of motherhood. It goes on and on. Nothing you do is right. Or right enough.

As a mother, I feel pressure to be always perfect and giving. A mother isn’t a person. She’s an icon. She’s an ideal. She is happy cleaning up vomit and feces. She sings lullabies while she bathes every child at night. She bakes chocolate chip cookies for snacks and makes every meal from scratch. She cleans the house happily, while teaching her toddlers to clean up after themselves. She cooks dinner on a budget, goes shopping with coupons, and picks her kids up from school. She makes sure they are always safe, get their homework done. She does laundry well and never complains about all of her responsibilities. She solves fights between children and monitors their computer use and television viewing. She keeps in shape and never overeats. All she asks for in return are homemade gifts and cards from her children. It’s a big job, being a mother. An impossible job, really.

I once wrote to Bujold, asking her about motherhood and being a writer. I mentioned that I had written my dissertation on the difference between male and female “Bildung” in eighteenth centuries novels by men and women. She suggested to me that female “Bildung” is actually cut in two, that there is the Bildung that leads to motherhood and then another Bildung after that. As a woman who has nearly raised five children, I wonder what lies beyond this. Already, the children don’t need me during the day when they are at school. This allows me to have a “secret life” as a writer which they find quite boring most of the time. Fine with me.  I wonder who my sons will marry and what kind of pattern of motherhood their wives will follow. I wonder about my daughters, who assume they will have lives of their own and be mothers. I don’t know if I should take credit for teaching them this or be afraid of the compromises they will have to make on the one side or the other as they strive for this dream. They could do worse than using Cordelia Naismith as a guide.

Monday Book Recs: The Boy in the Suitcase by Lene Kaaberbol and Agnete Friis

I have become more and more interested in the flexibility and structure of mystery over the last couple of years. People say all the time that fantasy and science fiction are so flexible and can contain any other frame of story underneath the trappings of world building. I think the same can be said for mystery. You can tell a lot of other stories within a mystery, and one of the things I like best about mystery is the enduring detective-like character who grows and changes in the background as the mystery goes on. I love how there are moments in the best mysteries when you realize why this mystery can only be solved by this detective and why this mystery matters most or will hurt most for this detective. In the end, I think the best mysteries are really character stories, though my husband will disagree with me on this vehemently. For him, he is bored by the “real life” diversions of mystery novels and detective shows on TV and wants the mystery itself to be more pure. He loves the episodic nature and the clear plot. To each his own, I suppose.

That said, I have only read this one book in this series so that limits my perspective on the character. The mystery itself is fascinating, a young three year old boy found drugged but alive in a suitcase. Where did he come from? Why has he been smuggled into the country? How to help him back to his mother, if he has one? The story of the mother, the two villains of the piece, and the other characters who end up being hurt as the plan dissolves are well done. But it is the main character, the detective Nina Borg, who is a Red Cross nurse, who is the standout here for me. She is a clearly flawed character, and she doesn't do at all what you might expect. She doesn't call the police or let the boy be put in foster care until someone else figures out what to do. She risks her own family by taking off and having to be the hero. And she is the hero.

But she is also a woman with a deeply compromised psyche. We see why she is the way she is. We see what it costs her husband and children for her to be a hero. I LOVE LOVE LOVE the flawed hero here. I love that she is a woman. I love that she is a mother, and that she is drawn to help this child because she is a mother. I love that her own story of motherhood is so complex, and that she isn't just a warm, perfect mother as so many mothers have to be. She is a lousy mother of her own children and yet she still is driven by motherly instincts. Just not only those instincts. I love that we have a female detective who doesn't have to be the perfect mother. She has flashes of memory about her own children when they were small and her sense of helplessness and desire to escape which I think many women relate to, and very rarely find validated in fiction about women and mothers.

I'm glad to see that there is a publisher (Soho) who is willing to put out these novels in America (they were originally published in Danish). I hope to read more of the series. Who knows, maybe I will learn Danish and read them in the original? Although in this case, I did not feel like I was tripping over awkward translations very often. Maybe I only feel that in German translations, since I know the language all too well. Or maybe the translator here is particularly apt. I tend to favor a less direct translation method and aim for a more loose, literary style. This is a gritty book, but I didn't think it was more violent than the typical.

Writing Wednesday: The Mistake About Getting Your Own Work Critiqued

I’ve been in a lot of critique sessions, in writing groups and in professional situations, casually or at conferences. And I think people are always making the mistake of thinking that the most important part is when their own piece of work is being critiqued. People take careful notes, they ask questions. They thank everyone involved. They sometimes ask if they can have more of their work critiqued, if there’s time. They are often defensive about critiques, saying that “You’d understand if you read the rest of the book.”

Well, it is entirely possible that the critiques would change if everyone had read your whole book. Or they might not. A first chapter critique does at least tell you what an average reader will probably feel about the first chapter. That is, it’s designed to help you see your work from the viewpoint of those who are only ever going to see the first chapter, that is, editors and agents you are querying. If your first chapter isn’t good enough, they’re not going to read more. Of course, once you get a first chapter up to snuff, then you have to worry about the rest of the book.

Here’s the thing you’re forgetting. In a critique session, writers are always focused on themselves. It’s a huge mistake to think that this is actually where the most important information is going to come from. After your own work is critiqued, you will often feel emotionally drained. You may want to cry (I know I do). You may think briefly of giving up writing entirely or putting away your novel for a while and coming back to it with fresh ideas and a better attitude. You get hurt and those hurt feelings can get in the way of making your novel better. Sometimes what happens is that you get TOO MUCH critique and it can be so overwhelming that it isn’t useful at all.

On the other hand, when you sit quietly and listen to what other people are saying about someone else’s piece, you don’t have those defensive feelings at all. You can actually listen better that way. And it should not surprise you to discover that there is going to be a lot of crossover between what someone else is doing wrong and what you yourself are doing wrong in a particular piece. But instead of feeling like you’re getting everything you’re doing wrong at once, you will be able to see just a few things and you won’t have the emotional reaction of wanting to give up. Because, after all, you’re choosing to see your own work this way. No one is actually telling you something you’re not ready to hear. You’re telling yourself what you’re ready to hear.

When I sat down a few weeks ago and listened to a long 6-hour critique session of another author’s work, I actually learned so much about my own WIP that I was astonished. I am not at all sure that I could have learned as much if the 6 hours had been spent on my book, because of the defensiveness that I still have after all these years of writing. And it was all my own vision, so there’s no one to argue against.

If you’re someone who can’t afford to pay the expensive fees to get your own work critiqued by an editor or author you admire, think about trying to get into a critique session at a local conference where your work isn’t going to be critiqued. You can volunteer to be a gopher or get in for half if you just want to audit. And believe me, you will get a bargain. You’re going to learn a lot about your book, and it’s going to be what you tell yourself.