|
|
Wednesday, October 31st, 2007
|
4:19a - We're Only Gods in our Own Heads.
http://scalzi.com/whatever/?p=93
Yes, the author can do whatever they like... before during and after.
And readers can too.
I liked reading Dean Koontz. I don't read him now. I'll happily tell anyone who'll listen exactly why.
Anne Rice can yell and bitch about her ex-readers. They're allowed their opinions. They don't have to keep liking her books, and they're allowed to say that they don't like what she's done to the characters they fell in love with.
Anyone want to stand up and tell me that I can't comment on the Gor books?
Or state that I loved the early Foundation books but couldn't get into the later ones at all? (And from what I've heard from others, I don't think I would want to go where they went)
And yes, I'm one of those people who liked Buffy, found the final season annoying, and got seriously miffed when it seemed I needed to buy a graphic novel to *really* understand the finale. Which I think sucked, and I will happily explain why I don't like it, and how Joss failed to do what he -- and many loyal fans -- maintain that he did.
I'm allowed to say that I think Conan Doyle killed Holmes because he wanted to stop writing him. That Agatha Christie ended up hating Poirott. That quite a lot of sequels are written because they'll sell and not because they're what the writer would prefer to be doing (Dunedunedunedunedune).
And quoting Neil Gaimen at me... would only work if I a) believed that writers automatically know more than readers about everything b) that the more money you earn the better a writer you are and c) that I change my opinion just because someone famous/influential has a different one (now if he was making a good enough case...)
Anyhow, I've read slush. And I've critted extensively. And I'm a writer myself.
I've seen the unvarnished and unpedasteled truth.
(I'm not sure why published writers feel the need to project this image of perfection and control - but it is only an image. And yes, writers will do things for money/to get published and not for the sake of art/truth/beauty)
We only have total control of our characters while they're in our heads. We don't control them when they get in other people's heads (hence fanfiction) and we don't control the people whose heads they get into, or exactly how they interpret what they read, or their reactions to the story, or what they do afterwards. We certainly can't control whether people like what we write.
(And sometimes what gets on paper isn't anything like what we think we've written.)
But some of these discussions about author v reader rights and wrongs, could mislead one into thinking that writers (and their fans) believe that they can and should have all that control. That readers should absorb their words while in a vegetative state of meditative worship...
HAH!
[And for people who don't know me from Adam... I'm one of those idiots who isn't always obvious about a characters sexuality, but doesn't go tip-toeing around it either.]
(6 comments |comment on this)
|
5:23a - Happy Halloween!
Here's five hundred words of first draft...
I got Doc Ferguson's text at thirteen-twenty-six but it was oh-five-thirty before I stopped by the medical centre. It'd been a long night. The usual shift-change drunks, plus some pushing and shoving between natives that no one wanted to explain. Not to the law anyhow. Okeanan taboos made for a lot of enforcement grey areas.
Then I'd seen Lea to her rooms. Either so I wouldn't be tempted, or so she could. It'd been a long, long night and I started suspecting my judgement was -- suspect, back when I bought the condoms. Two months ago.
The clinic's reception point was unmanned. Strolling straight into the treatment room, I never for a second considered Ferguson might not be there or that Micah would.
He sprawled, face down and shirtless, on the nearest of three surgical couches, and looked about as comfortable as Great Aunt Tamsin's big ginger tom taking a nap on the bird table. One ocean blue eye opened, pupil barely slitted in the unforgiving white light. Shoulder muscles tensed, the contraction rippling down to his buttocks, raising the soft bristles along his spine. Okeanan males were... built.
"Major Demar."
Last week it'd have been plain 'Major'. But we'd had a falling out.
"Micah." I wasn't going to play the same game.
He blinked, then looked past me. Ferguson. I turned, like I was still happy showing Micah my back.
The Doc bustled. He was dark as they come, lean, wiry, and silent, with a stage magician's trick of appearing from nowhere but the restless energy of a man with ninety-nine other things to do.
"Alec." He stayed where he was, and I still felt as if he'd rushed forward and hugged me. "Glad you could make it." There wasn't a hint of sarcasm. Ferguson grudged every minute of his day, but was never off duty when I needed him. If it took me eighteen hours to stop in, he assumed I'd been busy.
And I had. "You were cryptic."
His smile vanished. The company's text system was secure -- with better coverage and reliability than the interdepartmental comms -- but monitored for content, and the people doing that eavesdropping were only relatively trustworthy.
What Ferguson wanted me to know would either make for juicy gossip, or unsettling rumours. I never enjoyed cryptic.
Which was when I shouldn't have remembered Micah was in the room, even if he had got off the couch and stood himself a fraction beyond arm's length, yawning extravagantly. Not because my glancing over could be taken as mistrust, but because I was looking at him when Ferguson said, "I was hoping you'd bring Eolaeyai."
He could say her real name, well enough that a native wouldn't wince. I couldn't. I'd given up trying years back. Lea was the name on her paperwork, and if it was good enough for the company... It was good enough.
Only it wasn't. And I wasn't. And the long measuring looks she'd been giving Micah told me she'd worked that out.
(comment on this)
|
|
|
|