L.C. Fenton's Blog, page 5

Approaching normal

I am lucky enough to have my lovely sister-in-law staying with me at the moment and we’re having wine and deep philosophical chats. She mentioned how when you have dementia, your id takes over, so lots of people in the old folks home are getting it on in new and interesting ways. I’m a little sceptical, but I haven’t seen any data, so I’m going to go with it in the vibe of all these sorts of dinner conversations where lots of facts are spouted, with precious little reference to google.

So if your Id took over for a spell, what do you think would happen? Frankly, I’m worried. I have a strong suspicion that I’d never want to find out, or at least be aware of what I’d done. Still, given I’m nearing 40, I think it would have been a lot worse a few years ago. Like many people with interesting childhoods, I had a misspent youth where I took risks that the current me would gasp in horror and faint at the thought of my children doing the same. Clearly my husband will be in charge of those particular frank talks in a few years.

Not that I’m still holding that particular grudge. I think there comes a time when you have to stop using your parents as an excuse for being an asshole. There are some people from my past that are probably owed an apology, but realistically, I’ll never see them again so it won’t happen. Does it matter if you realise the error of your ways, but it’s too late to make a difference? So many of the books we read wrap everything up neatly, which I think shows our desire for order, rather than our desire for reality. Which is ironic when we criticize books for being “unrealistic” when in fact, if we wrote reality, the reviews would be scathing or at least put in a different genre. It makes it difficult sometimes to know what to aim for – realistic but not too realistic. What the stories we like offer is, I think, what we’d all like a chance for in life – apologies from those who have wronged us and the chance to make amends with those we have harmed. So, in a nutshell, I forgive you and I’m sorry.

 

 

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Let’s Talk About Sex (scenes)

Okay, I need a glass of wine for this one… right, now I’m good to go. When things are going right, a sex scene just rolls off the keyboard. It’s fun, it’s spontaneous and delicious as a freshly baked cinnamon bun. But when it’s not, it’s just … awkward. Bits going here and there, throw in some panting and sweating, and you have? … something out of a wildlife documentary. It makes you wince and peer through your fingers, feeling embarrassed for anyone having to read it. The problem is that what people (women mainly) like to read isn’t the factual, anatomically correct sex that’s easy to describe. Nothing brought this home more than today’s research – I thought I’d check out some porn and see if there were any good ideas.

Yes, you’re right, there weren’t a whole lot good translatable ideas. Frankly most of it looked painful and not all that enjoyable, for either, or should I say, any of the parties involved. It could have just been that all their sex faces looked a lot like their unhappy, I-just-dropped-my-new-iphone faces, but I’m sceptical. That’s not to say that I didn’t find some people who were having a genuinely good time, but they were the minority.

Size of the male appendage seems to be one of the issues. I had to do a bit of research on this for my last book and can now quote a range of interesting trivia after an enlightening google search. I think we can all agree that professional porn doesn’t represent the average man (or woman), so what exactly does it offer the average writer? More than you’d think. We’ve all read scenes where our suspension of disbelief has been popped like a bubble by the fantastic bendiness/feats of strength/endurance of the protagonists. I read one highly improbable scene recently and got completely side-tracked by whether or not it was actually physically  possible and the book lost a whole lot of traction with me. Porn is so prolific and easily available now that you can just search for your scenario and the odds are good that you could find someone who has already filmed it. There really are only so many permutations after all. If it’s not there, then odds are good that it isn’t, in fact, possible. If you still want to use the scene though, never fear, just make one of them an alien or a yeti. Voila!

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The Dark Side of Presents

We all spend a lot of time and thought on finding that “perfect gift” that the lucky recipient will be in raptures over and we do it numerous times a year for various loved ones. It’s exhausting! But no one mentions the ugly step-sister of the “perfect gift” – the “revenge gift”.

Depending on your commitment, the revenge gift can take longer and even more thought than the perfect gift. My eldest brother and I have been in an escalating arms race for several years. It started innocently enough (I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt) with oversized water pistols for the kids. It was a guerrilla attack that I wasn’t expecting, but chalked it up to panic buying in a pre-Christmas rush. The next year was Nerf guns for two still quite young boys. No 3 year-old needs access to a pump action dart firing machine. After my husband nailed me in the back of the head several times while laughing maniacally, it was game on. Needless to say, I was armed the following Christmas with plastic and lots of it for his kids, the bigger and tackier the better. He still one-upped me with a remote controlled helicopter for my six year-old, box stating in large letters “AGE 15+. THIS IS NOT A TOY”.

This last Christmas, I think I won – a remote controlled car/hovercraft/helicopter that had to be constructed first, served with a chaser of remote controlled hot pink Barbie convertible that required a C battery, which we all know cannot be obtained on Christmas Day. I don’t know what I can do to top that, except maybe a small pony.

The revenge gift does have the advantage of being amusing, but in this war the only winners are the children and the true casualty is the parent’s sanity. I think this year, it’s time to stop the madness. Also, I won.

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Getting angry

I don’t like getting angry. I’m not talking about “shouting at the kids” angry, which frankly, if I didn’t pull that out on a regular basis, my kids would be doing exactly what they want to do ALL THE TIME - namely, eating snacks naked while playing Wii. I’m also not talking abut the everyday irritations at a partner. I mean, who hasn’t looked at their partner of nearly twenty years, blurred their eyes and imagined a strapping young Italian named Eduardo who didn’t speak much English? What I mean, is getting angry at friends. They’re not like family, where if you make a mistake and go too far, they will eventually forgive you and love you anyway. Particularly with friends you meet at your kids’ school, these are relationships that you can permanently damage, and you can be guaranteed that their kids will be in the same classes as yours for the rest of eternity.

I was angry at a really good friend last week and really struggled to express it in a non-damaging way. My family’s method of fighting, which I try not to do, is to go on the attack and bring that person down – at all costs. The aim is to win the argument, regardless of the validity of either person’s viewpoint. So without that to go to, or my other, more useful go-to method of pretending it didn’t happen, I was really at a loss.

In the end, I stopped myself from saying anything at all for a week. By that time, I’d had hundreds of conversations with her in my head, sorted out what was going to help the situation and what was just my anger speaking. I didn’t f*** up my friendship, which was more important that the issue the argument was about. The adult within is proud of me, even though I didn’t get to use some of the serious zingers I thought up.

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Dancing

Last night I went clubbing. Yes, I really did. I didn’t mean to, it just happened. I think it was the visitors from out of town, who were ridiculously fun or possibly the jugs of cocktails but dancing seemed like a really good idea. I was having an outrageously good time and bulletproof, due to the aforementioned cocktails and the vodkas that kept materialising in my hand. Something about being out after midnight lets this magic occur. It only happens between 12 and 3am, when I’m usually asleep, so I generally miss the visits from the vodka fairy, but not last night. But alas, disaster struck. My body decided to remind me that I’m too old for bouncing up and down like a lunatic by letting my knee pop out of joint.

I’m not sure I’ll ever be the same again, but it was totally worth it. Not only for the fun night, but also the bonus bragging rights at the crack of dawn kids’ soccer game, where I attained serious cred for crashing out (literally) in a gay bar in the early hours of the morning and still showing up with the half-time oranges.

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Ethics

The most interesting thing for me this past week was doing Ethics Teacher training, where a large group of volunteers are taught how to bring the big ideas to the little people. Those of you who know me well know that I struggle to maintain the rage with most issues, but this one has stuck with me for a couple of years now, so I figured it was time to actually do something.

It’s been a while since I last thought about the big issues in a philosophically enquiring manner, where you set aside the emotion and explore the logical (very Spock-like) to reach highly improbable conclusions. I learnt a lot about myself, or more accurately, remembered how irritating I can be in the right circumstances, like when I argue a position to the death that is ultimately ridiculous solely for entertainment purposes. How I have such lovely friends is a mystery! Thank you to all of you for just rolling your eyes instead of hitting me over the head with a blunt object.

Fortunately for all the kiddies who will be in my class, I don’t get to insert my opinion and am merely there to facilitate theirs. I’m sure all our kids think we are crazy people, but it’s best not to have it confirmed at such an early age!

On another note, I’m counting down to the Big Book Launch on 25th March – only 23 days to go until the new one is released on unsuspecting relatives. Hopefully, it might be long enough to Christmas that time might have dulled their recollection…

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Umm…

It’s been brought to my attention that I haven’t blogged for a while (really good friends with marketing backgrounds will do that for you!) It’s not that there hasn’t been stuff happening, but as its mostly been my friends reading my blog, I tend to just call them for a chat. Now that my new book is coming out, with a fair amount of to-do about it, it seems possible that someone else might care to read my thoughts on things.

Dropping both my boys at school today, the little guy’s second day of kindergarten, I was feeling a bit mopey so I chose to write about inanimate things I really like to cheer myself up. Coffee, wine and good chocolate are in the Food race and there is a clear winner. After having a bug for the last week, shunning all food and not able to face wine, I still managed to force down several cups of coffee a day, which was the decider in the race, though it did make me go slightly crazy. I’m now all better and sitting at one of my favourite coffee shops, watching the good looking hipsters doing their thing. I think there is a correlation between the size of the beard and the quality of the brew. I still don’t get the whole beard thing, but it makes more sense than the moustache thing that seems to be thankfully fading away (hopefully to never arise again in my lifetime). I think I must have watched Grizzly Adams too much at an impressionable age, because watching the young man with the substantial beard grinding the beans makes me think of living in a lovely log cabin in the wilds with the bear for a pet and how peaceful and idyllic the whole thing would be. In reality, it would probably be a grindingly weary subsistence existence, but I’m not going to let that stop my fantasy. Carrying on that train of thought – does anyone know what happened to the Grizzly Bear at Taronga Zoo? His enclosure has been taken over by Sun Bears! Hopefully it was a bloodless coup.

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Cynicism – fun or fearful?

I’ve recently found myself in a well of cynicism, where the crap of the everyday can become darkly funny if you skew your view slightly. It is amusing for a while and helps a bit because you can stand back and judge things while not including yourself in the mix.

However, when I read books with a relentlessly cynical hero/heroine, after a while it starts to grate a little. I don’t think anyone, myself included, wants to be that person. Despite the romance of the hero against the world, to always be on the outer frankly sucks. It is an awful thing to feel left out of normal interactions, so why is this position held up to such esteem?

Becuase the perky person makes a lousy story and is frequently ridiculed as idealist and naiive and they’re the first person to be offed by the serial killer (along with the virgin). Arguably though, remaining positive in the face of adversity and not cutting yourself off takes a lot more courage than withdrawing into a protective shell.

Still, cynicism is funnier and easier to laugh along with. While it would be great to reclaim positivity for fiction as  a whole, it is currently being held hostage by the self-help section of the market and I don’t think they’re going to let go without a fight.

Filed under: writing Tagged: Cynics, writing style

Is it mummy porn or erotica?

Umberto Echo said,

“If, to go from A to B, the characters take longer than you would like, then the film you are seeing is pornographic.”

If you change “film” to “book” and “seeing” to “reading” does it still count? I love to read as well as write steamy novels but would only ever jokingly refer to them as porn. It’s not like I skip (much). I really need to buy into the characters or I find I’m just bored, because really, the mechanics of it all is pretty much the same in books of this genre. I think that’s why Fifty Shades was so huge – it was something a bit different from the mainstream but kept within certain boundaries (monogomy & they were already in a relationship when they started). I admire anyone who publishes under their own name when writing about the more extreme end of the spectrum, after all, you can’t stop your grandmother buying it once its out there on Amazon for $1.99 (there’s always a helpful younger cousin or neighbour). I will admit to a few qualms and mine, while fairly explicit, is still pretty vanilla in terms of what happens. Still the thought of the older generation of relatives purchasing it and having to face up to them at Christmas or family functions did cause a few nightsweats.

I’d like to think I’m not writing porn, but if I could sell as many books as EL James, I wouldn’t care what anyone called it!

And why is no one talking about violence? My main character decapitates someone with a kitchen knife, but no one even mentions it. What’s up with that??

Filed under: writing Tagged: erotica, writing style

Cakes Gone Wild

Funnily enough, this blog is supposed to be about writing, but the cake side is staging a hostile takeover. We have more cake orders than we can poke a fork at, which is great, though no so good for the writing. I spent the last week tearing my hair out, trying to get the website design done and working, all with no help from the alleged “help desk” (an ironic title if ever I’ve heard one). Eventually, I muddled my way through it!

On the writing front, I’ve picked up the other novel I’ve finished, “St Kate of the Cupcake”, to work on polishing it, which has to be the most difficult stage of the whole process. It is vital, but nowhere near as much fun as the beginning where you don’t have to worry about pesky things like internal logic and continuity. I love this book but its like trying to get a misbehaving three-year-old out the door. No sooner have you cleaned the Vegemite off then you turn around and they’re naked again!

I’ll get there eventually and publish it, either self or the traditional way, but it certainly won’t be on time, my estimated delivery time to my agent having been last February. Hmmm…a year late isn’t so bad, right? At least if I publish it myself, all deadlines are arbitrary. Still, I’m not totally convinced by the whole self-publishing thing. I know people who’ve had success rave about it, but I’ve found that it is incredibly hard to be seen, particularly if you don’t resort to buying a whole lot of your own book and giving yourself rave reviews.

Is it morally wrong if I bribe people with cakes to write me good reviews?

Filed under: writing