Writing

Hybrid Vigor

Can't...stop...laughing...

Can’t…stop…laughing…

As I was wasting time on the internet last night, one thing led to another (as so often happens when the interwebz is involved) and I found myself google image searching ‘weird animals.’ And let me tell you, I highly recommend it. Go ahead, I know you want to. I’ll wait.

What entertained me so much about this motley collection of weird animal pictures, you ask? I’ll tell you. Interspersed among the usual plethora of star-nosed moles and abyssal sea cucumbers are all these photoshopped pictures of hybrid animals not actually seen in nature. Squeagles. Duckodiles. Labrangutans. I have no idea who created these images, but they are amazing.

And after I was done laughing my head off over these absurd creations, I started thinking about hybrids in mythology, folklore and literature. Representations of both human and non-human hybrids have existed since the Late Stone Age, and deities and beasts in Assyrian, Egyptian and Greek mythologies were often portrayed as having both human and zoomorphic traits. The Sphinx, with a face of a woman and the body of a lion. The gods Anubis and Horus had the heads of a jackal and a falcon, respectively. Pagan religions also often depicted their gods and goddesses as either being part animal or having animalistic affiliations. And in our modern genre culture, werewolves, other were-creatures, and shape-shifters are nearly as popular as the omnipresent vampire.

Cernunnos, the Horned God. Relief from the Gundestrup Cauldron

Cernunnos, the Horned God.
Relief from the Gundestrup Cauldron

The list of human and non-human hybrids in mythology, folklore and pop culture is nearly endless. But what does it say about the human experience that these hybrid creatures are so ubiquitous in our lore? What universal theme in the collective imaginary is represented by these creatures that are part human and part beast?

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A Million Bad Words

You better get a-clickety-clacking.

You better get a-clickety-clacking.
Image via ilikeinnovation.com

This week, as I prepare to dig deep in order to revise my recently completed novel, I’ve been thinking a lot about craft. A writer’s craft, to be precise. I’ve read so many books and blogs and articles that all essentially say the same thing: to become a better writer, you must simply write. And write. And write some more.

The iterations on this conventional wisdom are endless. They say (whoever ‘they’ are) that all writers have one million bads words inside them, and only once they’ve all been written can true quality pour forth. In his book On Writing Stephen King states that ‘Writing equals ass in chair.’ Malcolm Gladwell’s book Outliers famously posits that everyone must spend ten thousand hours in practice of any given skill before they can reach excellence. But is that all it takes? Time and practice?

Like this...but not this. Image via Bill Watterson.

Like this…but not this.
Image via Bill Watterson.

Yes, I think that to be a writer, one must write. And write. And write. But I’m not sure that just setting down mediocre words on paper in the hopes that they will eventually transform into words of beauty is necessarily enough. Without the intention and the desire to improve, that metamorphosis will never happen. Our words are not caterpillars, destined to magically transmogrify into beautiful butterflies. No–as writers we must not only write, and practice, but also envision the change within ourselves, and manifest it in our actions.

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Wherefore Vampires?

Who’s ready to sink their teeth into a little vampire discussion? (Pun totally intended.)

"Why yes, I do use my cheekbones to cut glass."

“Why yes, I do use my cheekbones
to cut glass.”

I recently read an interview with James Marsters, who played Spike in ‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer,’ in which he discussed what it meant to him to play a vampire and how the representation of vampires in the media has changed since ‘Buffy’ aired.

“In the world of ‘Buffy’, vampires were supposed to be ugly and very quickly dead,” Marsters commented. “Joss [Whedon]…didn’t want vampires to be romantic. That’s why in Buffy when we bite people we become hideously ugly. Because in ‘Buffy’ vampires are a metaphor for all the problems you face in adolescence. So, the vampires of today are very different.”

I thought this was a really interesting take on vampires, especially coming from someone who played one on TV for years. And it’s true: although vampires have been around since at least Victorian times, in the past few years, the plethora of books, movies, and TV shows about vampires tend to present vampires in a much sexier, romantic way than they used to. So why the change? And why, at the end of the day, are vampires so damn fascinating?

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White on Rice: Race in Literature

I recently read a blog post by a fellow avid reader who complained that the young adult genre is overwhelmed by white female heterosexual heroes, to the exclusion of all other races, genders and sexual orientations. The post was well written and thoughtful, and it inspired me to discuss some of my own thoughts on the question of race in the young adult genre as well as race in literature as a whole.

Katniss, Hunger Games competitor and white girl.

Katniss, Hunger Games competitor
and white girl.

When you look at the big name young adult bestsellers in the past ten years, it is almost shocking to see how many of the heroines physically resemble each other. Bella Swan, Katniss Everdeen, Lena Duchannes–all pretty, caucasian brunettes. Even heroines like Clary Fray and Tris Prior differ only in hair color or eye color. While these teenaged heroines may have friends–and in rare cases love interests– who inhabit a different racial profile, the diversity is entirely limited to characters other than the protagonist. You hear a lot of talk about diversity in the young adult publishing industry, yet in most of the high profile bestsellers, there is exactly zero racial variation. Why is this happening?

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Blood King Teaser

Hello world! Good to see you again. I spent last week tearing through the last quarter of the first draft of my novel, and after a mind-boggling 20k words in three days, it is complete! Then off to the country with the husband to spend a cozy long weekend in Worcester, at Hanbury Hall. I enjoyed a few days off, but now I’m ready to get back to my blog schedule and work on a few short stories while I get some distance and perspective from my manuscript before beginning edits.

In honor of completing the first draft of my manuscript, I thought I would share some details about the novel that have been, up until now, secret!

Working Title: Blood King

Genre: Young Adult Dark Urban Fantasy

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Out for lunch

Hello all! I’m approaching the bitter end of my WIP and need all my time and energy to focus on finishing the damned thing. To that end, I will be taking a brief hiatus. I’ll be back next week, refreshed and ready to astound you all with new and excessively witty blog posts.

What we gonna write? Courtesy of marriedtothesea.com

What we gonna write?
Courtesy of marriedtothesea.com

Dreams

Dream Caused by the Flight of a Bee Around a Pomegranate a Second Before Awakening

Dream Caused by the Flight of a Bee Around a
Pomegranate a Second Before Awakening

Dreams are one of life’s great mysteries. Freud saw them as the key to unlocking the unconscious mind and revealing the true desires of the Id. Psychics and mystics believe dreams can tell the future or reveal important truths about one’s life, and that lucid dreaming can be a gateway to astral projection. Creators of all types see dreams as tools for enriching the art or science they seek to create. Richard Feynman famously experimented with lucid dreaming to enable more creative problem solving; Salvador Dali used dream incubation techniques to inspire new works straight from his unconscious; Christopher Nolan’s personal dreamscape directly influenced his blockbuster film Inception.

Stephen King writes,

I’ve always used dreams the way you’d use mirrors to look at something you couldn’t see head-on, the way that you use a mirror to look at your hair in the back. To me that’s what dreams are supposed to do. I think that dreams are a way that people’s minds illustrate the nature of their problems. Or maybe even illustrate the answers to their problems in symbolic language.

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Stereotypes: or, the Trope That Got Away

Good day, everyone! The weather in London today is bleak with a chance of scattered dreary. Wait…was that a scrap of blue I saw just then? No, it must have been my imagination.

I dithered around for a while today wondering what to post about, but eventually decided I’d discuss something that’s been annoying me about the book I’m currently reading (that shan’t be named). And that is…stereotypes in fiction!

This has nothing to do with the post, it's just funny.

This has nothing to do with the post, it’s just funny.

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Fire in the Hole!

I don’t usually like to write from prompts, but for some reason I’m having trouble coming up with a theme for today’s post. I could talk about how my husband sleep-talks like a robot (I know) and how I dreamed about taking a writing workshop with Neil Gaiman (and it was awesome) but all together that takes up like…yeah, one paragraph.

So, I toddled over to WordPress’ Daily Prompt section to see if they could offer me any brilliant ideas. Happily, I came across this little nugget:

Your home is on fire. Grab five items (assume all people and animals are safe). What did you grab?

*sad face*

*sad face*

On first glance this prompt seems quite banal. Saving five items from a burning house, yawn. But the more I thought about it, the more I liked it, and here’s why. Asking someone which five items they would rescue from their burning home is really just a roundabout way of asking someone, “What’s important to you, really?” People and pets are a given, and the question isn’t asking about them. It’s asking, “When you pare down your life to the barest of essentials, what really matters?”

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The Procrastination Problem

Well said, cat, well said.

Well said, cat, well said.

Procrastination has always been a problem for me. In high school, homework was invariably completed the night before it was due. And as an IB student, I had a lot of homework. Suffice it to say, I pulled a lot of all-nighters as a teenager. I got a bit better in college, but not by much. I might start a term paper assigned at the beginning of the semester a week before it was due. And usually only if I was procrastinating on something else.

Now, as a writer, procrastination is something I struggle with on a daily basis. My chapters and stories and novels don’t have due dates, and there’s no professor or boss leaning over my shoulder and telling me to get a move on my work. There’s only me. Poor, distractible me.

Lots of writers–and other self-employed folks out there–have this problem. Hell, I’m sure even Shakespeare struggled with a bout or two of the procrasti-blues, and he didn’t even have Ye Olde Facebooke or Milord’s Bejeweled Plus to distract him. Laptops make it even harder, what with the constant barrage of readily available media and social networking working against us. So, I thought I’d share some of my tips and tricks to outwit procrastination.

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