Hairballs of Genius

NaNoWriMo (Yesterday)


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Yes. I was going to post this yesterday…

Today is… day 23 of NaNoWriMo 2015. And I’ve officially drawn a blank. I putzed with Aeon Timeline to see if a purchase would be worth it. (It TOTALLY is…) I’ve scheduled four blog posts for this week. Well, Topless Tuesday is scheduled and will be on time, Wordplay Wednesday will be as well, and it’s the return of First Lines Friday. I might have slacked off on that one… just a wee bit?

Anyway, I’ve done… no story words today. Not. A. Single. One. I just don’t know what I’m going to write about. I don’t know what Vella and Rafe are up to, and I certainly don’t know how to deal with Hope and Eddie right now either. Or even Lucia and Angelo. Such fine Italian names. *sigh*

Well… there is always sharing my muses with the world, so maybe I’ll do that. Right now. Here’s Rafe and Vella, played (in my mind) by none other than Brant Daugherty and Victoria Beckham. (I mean, I’m pretty sure that’s her anyway.)

RafeVella

So there you have it – all the words I’ve written today. And a couple pictures of hot people.

(Let me just remind you, this was yesterday. And by the end of the day, by the time I finally turned in, I had written about 1,500 words.) Today, on the other hand, I’ve so far written about 1,900 words. And I’m still going strong – finishing scenes I stalled out on, topping off each day so they all read 2,000 or more words.

Typo Happens


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It all started with a fropping shoulder. Let me explain. It’s Tuesday, which means write-in night. We tend to have some rather fun typos, and we laugh about them, then post them on Twitter for all the world to see. Well…
Last week, I had nothing worth mentioning. Not a single thing. But today…
Today, I wrote, “He lifted one shoulder and let it frop.”
I giggled about it, then posted it on Twitter using the hashtags #amwriting and #TypoTuesday because each week, we post our typos and one of the workers at the game-shop we write at will (probably when he gets a full page of them) print them out and make a paper chain of them to go around the ceiling above the snack bar. (Shout out, by the way, to Your Mom’s Basement in Vadnais Heights, MN for creating a female friendly place for gaming.)

Let me elaborate more, however, on the typos today. The Typo gods held back on me last week. And then unloaded on me this week. And it all started with the fropping shoulder.
Next, it was, “She tuende and started to walk away, fausing to look over her shoulder.” Wait, what? Though not as bad as @Mreauow’s “She frocde hesrlef to rexal.” If you need a translation, it’s supposed to read, “she forced herself to relax.”
Then there was my line about male elves. “…he readied himelf for his shift at the factory.”
And then I couldn’t spell bra. I said it wrong on Twitter, but I was trying to type bra, but typed bar instead.
Then my FMC found a “…tip in the knee as she pulled her favorite jeans on.” Well, that’s lucrative!
Of course, it’s always great when you discover something. Like a new word.
“I jusst reasonized I’m writing a short prologeu.” I ‘reasonized’ I was spelling ‘realized’ wrong before I actually typed it. But do you think I could fix it before my fingers actually hit the keys? No. Not by a long shot. This was a tweet I was writing, just to comment I realized I was writing a short prologue for my short story that’s due in about 20 days to the publisher. Of course, me being me, I had to comment on my own post.
“No. I’m not drunk. Or high. Just can’t type todauay.”
And it didn’t even end there. I’ve had typos in this, just trying to get it out. They’ve all been pretty standard though. But then I had a conversation with someone in a Google chat. Let me enlighten you a little bit on that…
EP Beaumont said, “Fiction: the art of making problems for imaginary people.”
To which I replied, “Or the art of making up new words like ‘reasonized.’ There is context to that. I’ mhaving problems typing today.”
Our friend, Lev, replied, “is your keyboard betraying you?”
Me: “No. Buyt my fingers are. Sometimes they go fatest than my brains. I’m goijg to claim I just ype that fast and that’s y problem tonight”
Lev: “this is one of the problems I have with using voice dictation software. I type SO much faster.”
Me: “Yeah. It might be good for slower pieces where you’re working it out as you go, or just venting to tryinn to figure out a plit issue, but for actually ditating the story? I’ll type.”
Lev: “it’s not booze, booze is not your problem? :)”
Me: “No. No booze. Or drugs. Unless wated is a drug. water. I’d say I should give up for the night, but the idaeas are FLOWING man.!”

And then I quit writing my story to write this. Because damn it, I had to share this ridiculousness. Every author has problems with typing. One of my other friends, Sierra Kummings has a character named Luke in her current WIP, but she kept typing Luck instead. I giggled and thought of this: Luke Luck
Typos. They happen. And they multiply like rabbits. Really horny rabbits. (You don’t even want to know how many typos I edited out of this as I went, that weren’t ones I was highlighting.)
We now return you to your regularly scheduled programming.

Tags, Plumbing, and Other Woes


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Who Loves Ya, Baby?

I had a conversation online over the past couple of days with some internet writer friends. My friend, who we’ll call “EB” posed the question, ‘If it doesn’t _____, then it’s not a romance.’ So I suppose it’s not really a question per se. But it is. Because… What is a romance? Traditionally speaking, it’s him and her finally getting together after 200 pages of the usual nonsense. Is it a Happy Ever After, or at the very least, a Happy For Now? What sets a romance apart from the other genres?

The main difference is of course that it focuses on the blooming romantic relationship between two (or more) people, even if only temporarily.

Yes, I get that all the “sub-genres” help tell readers what the story is about. But isn’t that what the blurb on the back of the book is for? And, *gasp* the picture and title on the front that grabbed our attention in the first place? To tell us who the story is about, and to give us a general idea of the time and place, and a basic idea of what’s going on in the characters’ lives.

But for the love of everything writerly, quit calling it a “niche.” EB commented, ‘Frankly, I’m pissy that anything that is NOT an MFC and MMC is considered a sub-genre or “niche.” Because you CAN’T POSSIBLY have a same-sex couple in your mainstream romance, oh noes!’

She said that at the same time I said, ‘If it doesn’t have two (or more) people who fall in love with each other with either an HFN or HEA ending, then it’s not a romance.’

I cannot emphasize this enough. PEOPLE. I don’t care if it’s two men, two women, a man and a woman, two men and a woman, two women and a man, a werewolf and a vampire (they’re sorta human, at least, so they count too) I don’t care if it’s two couples venturing into swinging or testing the waters of an open relationship. But when the main plot is the push, the pull, the joys, and the pains of romantic relationships, then for the love of god, call it what it is. It. Is. A. Romance. Just because it also happens to be science fiction or a cozy mystery doesn’t mean it’s not romance anymore.

Tags and Plumbing

Another friend, DA, commented, ‘… if someone writes, oh, say, a poly, space set novel with a beta hero and only non penetrative sex, if the focus is still on the characters’ falling into or back in love, and it’s being marketed as a romance, I see no reason not to count it as one.’

EB responded that to that as well. ‘The Industry needs to change in a lot of significant ways. Of course, at this point, ONE of those elements would get it booted out of the genre. Which sucks.’

Which is a sad truth. Because how possibly could Space Opera be a romance? Or how could one person possibly love two people equally, and all three parties be okay with that arrangement? And how could it possibly be considered sex if Tab Dick is never inserted into Slot Cooch? Or Slot Ass or Slot Pie-Hole for that matter? Those last two slots are perfectly acceptable places for a guy to slide his Tab into in an M/M romance. Or an M/F one for that matter – it all depends on the receiver’s want of the act.

(On a side note, there needs to be consent. It need not be spoken, since who’s going to stop mid-ripping off of the clothes to say, “is it okay if we fuck now?” and then have to wait for an answer, “why yes, fuck me. Fuck me now, and fuck me hard. I like it in the ass.” If I ever read that in a novel, I’ll be out of that story so fast you won’t even have a chance to know I made it that far.)

Now, I’m all for naming things. But if the story is focusing on the romantic relationship elements of the people involved, it’s still a romance, even if both couples are the same sex, or if there are three people, or four people, or however many involved. So label it as one. Use tags – M/F, F/F, M/M, whatever the combination of tabs and slots is, to help filter.

Back to more comments on this topic, EB said, ‘We really need to be more vocal about this being the official definition of romance, and not a niche market!’

To which I whole-heartedly agree! My reply was, ‘YES!!! Gay, trans, bi, and all the others (that I can’t think of off the top of my head right now) are all a normal part of society, so why can’t their love stories be as well????? Huh? HUH? HUH? WHY NOT????? … seriously. Why not? I get it to an extent, if you’re looking for something specific, but that’s what tags are for. It’s not the genre, or a “sub-genre” (which is a term I think is just weird. Is it a genre, or only a part of a genre? Why is it a sub? Is it submissive? No…)’

Trusting Our Readers

CW commented, ‘I’ve seen the claim often that readers will be confused if we widen the genre definition, like people are incapable of reading blurbs and looking at covers to find what they want.’ She elaborated on that a little bit, then added, ‘I’m certainly not saying anyone has to read something that doesn’t appeal to them, but I don’t think we need to treat readers like children and unnecessarily shut books out of the genre to avoid that.’

How much more perfect could she have put that? We’re constantly being told as authors to trust our readers with our prose. But yet we’re not being allowed to trust them with finding the books they want to read within the genre(s) they choose to write. Huh. That’s a little hypocritical. Some well-chosen keywords should be all we need. Otherwise, the books will just fall under “fiction” and “literature.” If the only genres we’re using are “fiction” and “literature,” then we might as well do away with all the other genres. (But everything that can be read is literature, so to be honest with you, I’m not sure why the genre even exists. Did “fiction” fill up or something?)

Anyway, back to the topic. I really think we need to push to eliminate “sub-genres” and start considering that GLBT romance is still romance and only use keywords to search. “Historical” “M/F/M” “space opera.” (I literally just picked three totally random things that I haven’t yet seen together – not that they don’t exist, it’s just I’ve never seen it. And now think it’s an interesting combination.)

So let’s band together to get the definition of a “romance” novel changed to “any book focusing on the romantic relationship of any combination of cocks and twats.” Or, I guess you could clean it up a little and say, “If the main plot is focusing on the romantic relationship between the main characters, then it is a romance.”

That was the general consensus on what makes a romance anyway. I’m just putting it to my own words. I’m not exactly mad, but it is frustrating that just because the main characters happen to be the same sex, or are something “other” than the traditional man/woman pairing, they’re not considered romantic – just kinky. GLBT (and all the other letters) are mainstream Earth as far as actual relationships go. So why aren’t their stories mainstream romance?