Oh, Twitter...
The free week for downloading LONG EMPTY ROADS has passed. It wasn't quite the turnout I'd hoped, but it is what it is. Less than 1,000 copies of it were downloaded. Somewhere between 800 and 900, if I'm to be exact. I was hoping for at least a grand, but it just didn't get there. A lot of people won't download the second book in a series if they haven't read the first book. I just hope those that do read it review it so I can get to those 50 reviews.
I'm nearing the end of the first draft of the third Survivor Journals book. There's a chance that might see the light of day before the end of the year. Maybe even by late summer or early Fall. I'm not going to rush it, but I would believe we will see it out sooner than later. I don't have a title for it yet, though.
A bit of a brouhaha went down on Twitter this week. An agent/writer claimed that men only write women as physical characteristics, thereby saying that men can't write women. This is a patently false assertion, of course. Lots of great female characters were written by men, just as lots of great male characters were written by women. (Stay gold, Ponyboy.)
However, a male writer, albeit somewhat boorishly, called this female agent out on her words, and he used the term "misandry in publishing." Well, a boatload of people jumped on that, mocking and belittling this male writer for DAYS. If that didn't prove that he had at least a hangnail of a point to his claim, I don't know what does. A bunch of "feminist" writers and agents slammed this man's claim for hours of their lives, taking great delight in the piling-on that occurred and basically proved that this male writer had at point to claiming misandry. Many of the women claimed they were only going to look at queries from women from now on, if the book's main character was a woman. And it got worse from there.
Now, given that this is the internet, and we will, no doubt, find some new hateful thing to turn our anonymous rage upon in the next hour or so, this whole thing will be forgotten by next week. However, it bothers me that so many people in control of book-selling through major publishers would support a stance that a male writer cannot write a female, just as it should bother you to hear that many men think female writers can't write men.
As a male writer, a husband, and a father to a teenage girl, I'm constantly worrying over how I'm portraying female characters. I want them to "real," but I worry about how my perception of "real" will be treated by others, both males and females. I have written scenes in other stories where, during the editing process, despite knowing that the scene was organic and real, I have thought that someone might object to how a female character acted or was treated, and so I rewrote the scene. Was it for the better? I don't know. I'll never know. I hedged my bets rather than write what I was feeling at the time. I don't like that. I don't want to have to do that, but that's clearly the world and culture in which we live now.
Are the sexes different? You bet. The way we approach life, the way we solve problems, the way we deal with little things--I don't think there's any problem saying that men and women are different in a lot of ways. Do men understand women fully? Probably not. Do women understand men fully? Probably not. But, to take a hateful claim against a man for writing a female character does no one any favors on either side of this divide. I'm all for progressive treatment of women in literature, and maybe the "damsel in distress" trope should come to an end. But, progressive treatment of women does not mean bashing men and calling them stupid for trying their own take on writing characters. Once one side treats the other side as lesser, they have lost their argument.
As Abraham Lincoln once said in a famous speech at San Dimas High School: "Be excellent to each other. And party on, dudes."
Back to writing now.
--Sean
I'm nearing the end of the first draft of the third Survivor Journals book. There's a chance that might see the light of day before the end of the year. Maybe even by late summer or early Fall. I'm not going to rush it, but I would believe we will see it out sooner than later. I don't have a title for it yet, though.
A bit of a brouhaha went down on Twitter this week. An agent/writer claimed that men only write women as physical characteristics, thereby saying that men can't write women. This is a patently false assertion, of course. Lots of great female characters were written by men, just as lots of great male characters were written by women. (Stay gold, Ponyboy.)
However, a male writer, albeit somewhat boorishly, called this female agent out on her words, and he used the term "misandry in publishing." Well, a boatload of people jumped on that, mocking and belittling this male writer for DAYS. If that didn't prove that he had at least a hangnail of a point to his claim, I don't know what does. A bunch of "feminist" writers and agents slammed this man's claim for hours of their lives, taking great delight in the piling-on that occurred and basically proved that this male writer had at point to claiming misandry. Many of the women claimed they were only going to look at queries from women from now on, if the book's main character was a woman. And it got worse from there.
Now, given that this is the internet, and we will, no doubt, find some new hateful thing to turn our anonymous rage upon in the next hour or so, this whole thing will be forgotten by next week. However, it bothers me that so many people in control of book-selling through major publishers would support a stance that a male writer cannot write a female, just as it should bother you to hear that many men think female writers can't write men.
As a male writer, a husband, and a father to a teenage girl, I'm constantly worrying over how I'm portraying female characters. I want them to "real," but I worry about how my perception of "real" will be treated by others, both males and females. I have written scenes in other stories where, during the editing process, despite knowing that the scene was organic and real, I have thought that someone might object to how a female character acted or was treated, and so I rewrote the scene. Was it for the better? I don't know. I'll never know. I hedged my bets rather than write what I was feeling at the time. I don't like that. I don't want to have to do that, but that's clearly the world and culture in which we live now.
Are the sexes different? You bet. The way we approach life, the way we solve problems, the way we deal with little things--I don't think there's any problem saying that men and women are different in a lot of ways. Do men understand women fully? Probably not. Do women understand men fully? Probably not. But, to take a hateful claim against a man for writing a female character does no one any favors on either side of this divide. I'm all for progressive treatment of women in literature, and maybe the "damsel in distress" trope should come to an end. But, progressive treatment of women does not mean bashing men and calling them stupid for trying their own take on writing characters. Once one side treats the other side as lesser, they have lost their argument.
As Abraham Lincoln once said in a famous speech at San Dimas High School: "Be excellent to each other. And party on, dudes."
Back to writing now.
--Sean
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Still in Wisco
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I don't update often because studies show very few people actually bother to read blogs. Like podcasts, they're an oversatu ...more
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