Top Ten Reasons to go read The Rejectionist

10. Frequent, unapologetic swearing

9. Posts which are written using the royal 'we'

8. Dramatic capslock use

7. Intense, vocal hatred of bad writing, the like of which may never be seen again by mortal man, usually parsed into mocking, humourous commentary

6. Continuing love of aspiring authors, no matter what utter waste-of-paper manuscripts appear in the slush pile

5. Random lessons on grammar and spelling

4. Posts that highlight cool feminist things or call out racism, sexism, and other prejudice for the shit that it is

3. Lola Pants

2. The funny. Oh dear god, the funny

1. This post. Specifically this quote: "THERE'S NO CRYING IN PUBLISHING. Go out there with your fabulous selves, and own that shit. OWN IT. LOVE YOURSELF. Own how awesome you are, and how brave, every last one of you. Fuck a bunch of form letters. You're a fucking WRITER." [edited to add] AND THIS POST about Stieg Larsson. "Most of us will never be abducted by a sadistic serial killer, thankfully. But all of us will, at some point, be told we are less because we are female. The worst thing about this book is that it seems to be saying the only violence against women that counts is the kind that ends up with us dead. The rest of us, I guess, are just complaining."

Just let me get my cheerleading outfit and pom-poms, and give me a minute to change.

TheRejectionist.com

Opening Lines

Kevin Sheridan over at Optimism Abounds has a post up about getting started with a story. Everyone says that you need something that will instantly grab the reader and get them into the story; something pithy, memorable, interesting, whatever. Nothing like "It was a dark and stormy night" anyway.

Yes, children, starting off your fantasy epic with a description of the weather is not exactly quality prose. Famous first lines usually have something better going on that instantly makes the reader want to look at the second line, then the third one, and so on in that fashion until they've got to the last page. Is this easy? Good grief, no - but if you're really getting serious about this writing thing, you really should make an effort to, y'know, write something that people will want to read.

Anyway. Memorable or interesting first lines:

• "Mr. and Mrs. Dursley, of number four, Privet Drive, were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much." - Harry Potter, of course. The tone captures the characters perfectly; just a little snide, a little petulent, very stuck up. You'd read on simply because it's a fantastic piece of prose.

• "It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife." - Pride and Prejudice. One of my personal favourites, and one of the most well known opening lines in the world. Interesting, quirky, almost playful writing.

• "It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen." - 1984. All at once familiar and strange. George Orwell's publisher must have known he was on to a winner here.

• "We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold." - Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. Ah, Hunter S. Thompson. Apparently Fear and Loathing was partly based on his own weird experiences. You'd read on if only to find out what happens when you get hammered on drugs in a desert.

• "Lyra and her daemon moved through the darkening Hall, taking care to keep to one side, out of sight of the kitchen." - Northern Lights. The line might be ordinary if not for the mention of the daemon.

• "To Sherlock Holmes she is always THE woman." - A Scandal in Bohemia. Watson is talking about Irene Adler, you discover later. But wow, what a hook there - it hangs on the reader knowing who Sherlock Holmes is, and you continue to find out who is the mysterious woman that has such an effect on him.

I have a problem with first lines, I think. I read over the opening of the Novel again last week, and winced at how pedestrian it sounded to me. I've already decided that the story has to start there, where the main characters suddenly come into contact with each other, and if I can't make a scene full of danger and excitement and death-defying madness sound interesting, then there's really no hope for me.

...Actually, I have an opening to another story I wrote a while back. I was talking to another writer-type friend, and we got chatting about the most overused opening lines. So I took the clichéd "It was a dark and story night" and tried to make something of it that didn't sound boring.

Behold!

"It was a dark and stormy night.

Except it wasn't. I wanted it to be, though. I needed lightning, and thunder, and rolling clouds foretelling doom on the horizon. I wanted tree-falling crashes, and wind, and the kind of rain that'd soak you as soon as you stepped into it. I would have given anything for the weather to listen to me, when I was crying in that cafe in Paris, but the sky's a bitch in the middle of a French summer.

So it was actually the middle of a sunny afternoon, with a lovely warm breeze pulling my hair over my face, when that bastard broke my heart."

Yes, I can write things other than fantasy. Who knew?

News and things

News. Yes. Things have happened in the last week; strange, amazing things.

I wrote a screenplay for a short film, having never even touched the medium before. I do believe that telling a story is much the same regardless of the format, so it didn't seem all that strange to me - although the collaboration that occurs between the director, editor, actors, and what have you was certainly intimidating.

It was a story about a photo booth.

We entered it in the 2010 Mutant Shorts Competition after three days of desperate set-building and filming on the part of the director and the producer. I'm still waiting for it to be uploaded to their Vimeo page so I can embed it here, but the incredible result is that it came second overall. The revelation that something I wrote was liked enough to get runner-up in any competition is still a shock to me.

Being a creative artist of any kind is something of a battle between your self-confidence and self doubt, and I'm constantly wrestling with thoughts of whether my writing really is good enough. This kind of thing is a reassurance, I suppose, that I'm not as bad as I think I am in my gloomier moments. So I'm delighted, for myself and for everyone else involved in making Photo Booth - it was great to work with a talented team, and it was a great initial foray into writing for film.

Thing the second - I finally got around to setting up my own website to showcase the various creative work I get up to. It's here. I decided to call it Threads-of-Aether, for no real reason. I still have a chunk of work to do to get it set up properly, and keep it all up to date. What I really like about it is that I did the vast majority of the work myself; I drew the graphics, coded the CSS, built the webpages, all over an evening and the following morning and afternoon. The Twitter widget came from Twitter, obviously, with a few minor changes to match my colour scheme, and the Javascript for the photo page was borrowed from elsewhere.

I do enjoy web design. Now if I could only convince my boss to let me redesign the company website...

Query me this, Batman

So yeah. Queries. The bane of my existence.

As I get to the end of the second draft of the Novel, I realise I have to start thinking about queries. At some point I'll have to get an agent interested in selling it if I'm ever going to see it in print. So it follows that I must start practicing my query-writing, and try to put together a decent one in order to pitch my book.

It's like trying to think of a title all over again. Ever wonder why I call it 'the Novel' and not by its actual name? It's because it hasn't got one at all; anything I've ever thought of has sounded daft or just plain inappropriate. May the gods help me when the time comes to get it into dead tree form, because I'll need someone else around to help me come up with a good title.

The irony of having a vast imagination, full of story ideas and scenes and characters, but being completely unable to think of one good name for a book is not lost on me.

Queries are much the same. I have to step away for a minute, and try to see the Novel from the outside. What makes it interesting? What makes it gripping? What would make an agent leap off their chair and scream for the manuscript? I spend so much time inside it, so many hours with my characters and plot, that it's a lot more difficult that you'd think. They live because I give them life, and a world to play in; my creations, my joy, my pain, my soul. Authors hold on so tightly to their own threads that letting them go, even for an instant, is almost unthinkable. It's as if we're afraid that the woven tale will unravel the moment someone else holds it, and all our work will be undone.

I suppose the greatest test of a book is whether it survives in someone else's grasp. If the story falls apart under another gaze, then it's a sign that the author hasn't really done a very good job. But riddle me this, Batman - what can the author do when their story is torn apart by an outsider, such as an editor? How do you feel when your creation lies broken before you?

I'm getting a bit too metaphorical. Blame it on my lower-than-normal tea consumption today.

People were asking me a while ago what the Novel is about. I realised that I really couldn't answer that question at the time. There was so much in it, so many things I was too close to. Nowadays I can describe it a little; it's about danger, and excitement, and daring feats of courage, and the power of desperate friendships and alliances made under fire. And other things. And maybe ninjas. And there's a scene with a pirate ship.

Not much of a query letter, no? Let me get to the end of the draft, and then we'll see if I can step away long enough to write a query that makes sense.

Fight Music

Writing fantasy usually means writing a certain amount of fight scenes, it seems. Writing fantasy action adventure means that times ten.

I love it, really. If I could write action movies for a living, I would in a heartbeat. I love epic fights, and huge odds, and danger and excitement. Every time I send my characters into the firing line, I can visualise it all - every strike and leap, every random act of badassery. I'm not sure if it works on paper, and I'm not even sure what I'm aiming for, but I do know that it is awesome inside my head.

When I write action, I need a soundtrack.

The right music sets my mind racing. Different songs for different things, different themes and scenes and feelings, but each one will light up my imagination and turn a flat fist fight into rip-roaring chaos. It's part of my creative process; I believe without a doubt that I couldn't have even come up with the initial idea for the Novel if I didn't have a particular song, even a particular riff, to listen to. Here's a few of my favourites:



Foo Fighters' The Pretender. There's something raw about it, something desperate and angry and perfect for vicious, bloody, last stand fights.

What if I say I'm not like the others
What if I say I'm not just another one of your plays
You're the pretender
What if I say that I'll never surrender

The whole song is wailing, screaming pain. I love it.



Nightwish's Ghost Love Score. One of the original theme songs for the Novel, in fact; I always envisioned making a trailer using this, and some of the best scenes - well, the ones I like, whether they're good or not is up for debate - were at least a little bit inspired by it. It's probably the most epic song Nightwish have ever done.

My fall will be for you
My love will be in you
If you be the one to cut me
I will bleed forever

It's a blend of soaring orchestra and thumping rock; blood-roaring, uplifting, head-rushing.



Ok Go's Here It Goes Again. No, really. Strange at it may seem, this song is the perfect blend of fast, trippy beats to play over my bar room brawls and chase scenes! It's got the right amount of happy, comical bouncing, like Benny Hill but less ridiculous and more chaotic.

Just when you think that you're in control
Just when you think that you've got a hold
Just when you get on a roll
Here it goes, here it goes, here it goes again

I can't help liking it a lot. It's got treadmills, remember, making it doubly awesome.

Someday, if I'm excessively bored, I think I might put together a top ten list of the soundtrack to the Novel. Then people can read the book, and listen to the songs at the same time - and get an insight into my frequently deranged way of thinking.

Roll for Initiative

So, my hardback copy of Into the Wild Nerd Yonder arrived and I started to read it when I got home from work today. I did my usual speed reading thing and finished it in just shy of two and a half hours.

The first thing I'm asking myself right now is whether I'm even any good at reviewing books. I read so fast that it becomes less like 'I am now reading each sentance in a logical and continuous manner' and more like 'I have plugged this text directly into my brain, and I am assimilating it Borg-style'. (The second thing I'm asking myself is who should I lend this to first?)

Into the Wild Nerd Yonder by Julie Halpern (or ITWNY, as I will call it for the sake of brevity) is a story about the making of a nerd. It's not as rare as you'd think; nerds were not always born to parents who could teach them the ways of nerd-dom, especially way back when D&D hadn't been invented yet. The other accepted method of finding one's path to nerdhood is by falling into it, largely by accident, and that is the path that Jessie takes in ITWNY after the dreaded drama envelops her soon-to-be-ex best friends.

I suppose I could talk about good writing and all that, but let's be honest here - if it wasn't well written, I wouldn't have gotten this far without at least warning you that there was a rant incoming. So yes, it's well written. It's also funny, and quirky, and amazingly light-hearted considering some of the issues it touches on. The characterisations are rock solid. The plot skips along merrily, never leaving you sitting on a dull moment, never letting the teenage angst take hold. It's all told from Jessie's first person perspective, and the highlight of the whole story for me was watching her discover D&D.

Yes, that's pretty much what D&D games are like. And that's what you'll probably think of them the first time you play. FYI: table-top roleplaying games are that damn awesome and then some, and if you turn down a game out of fear of being labelled a freak, that's just too bad.

(If you do decide to join a game, do not touch the other players' dice unless you know it's ok. You think gamblers are paranoid about luck? Just watch the meltdown that happens when some clueless noob touches a D&D player's favourite dice.)

So yeah. ITWNY is not high literature. It is, however, simple, happy, and enjoyable. It's one girl's diary of her journey into the unfamiliar and sometimes unsettling world of nerd-dom, and her discovery that it's really not so bad on the other side.

*pauses to put on reviewer hat*

Blah blah blah coming of age, teenage self-esteem, blah blah blah high school is tough.

Right, that's that done. Here's the Amazon link. Go buy it.

Writing for a living

I've been looking around recently for a second, writing related job. It may surprise you to know, dear reader, that my daily grind does not include anything writing-related; I work for a very boring distribution company, and the kind of work I do involves anything from graphic design to database administration.

Writing has always been my first love, and I made a big mistake when I chose to do something other than writing in college. I did science, and then computer programming, and it got me nowhere. These days I think about returning to study journalism, but what can those courses teach me that I haven't already learned? The art of writing well is 10% talent and 90% practice and hard work, and little enough of either can be taught.

I like the idea of journalism as a career. There's skill in writing an interesting yet balanced article on current events, or conducting an interview and asking the questions you think your readers want answered. Unfortunately, I can't seem to turn up any information on writing for the local papers - for example, a quick google search for "writing for the Irish Times" lists a link to their contact page where people can send in letters to the paper as the first result. I can't find a single mention of careers for either the physical paper or the website.

I've been questioning the quality of Irish news media for a while now. Case in point: a friend of mine was interviewed by the Times over the phone, and his story (a day in the life style of thing) was written up and put on the site. If I remember right, it'll also go into the lifestyle section of the paper itself. But the article, good grief... I expect a journalist to be able to write without making obvious grammatical errors. It's clunky in places, the phrasing and word usage is in dire need of an editor, and it reads badly all over.

It reads like something that was thrown together without editorial oversight, in fact. I have read the Times on occasion, and its usual standard of writing is better than what I see there. I hope that the author will rewrite it for clarity and flow before the paper itself goes to print.

Anyway... I do know the interviewee in question here. Aidan had much to say about the story, and very little of it was flattering. There was a suggestion that some of the things in it were stretching the truth a lot, or - shall we say - there were certain liberties taken with the facts at hand. I have to wonder why, though. He works at a wildlife park filled with exotic animals; surely that's interesting enough without embellishment?

If anyone from the Irish Times is reading this: email me. Talk to me about journalism. I'll happily be a writer for hire, and I can guarantee I'll do a better job.

"I have a dream"

I was thinking recently on the books that really influenced me when I was younger. I generally don't count the books I enjoyed among them; we may all have liked the Famous Five, for example, but those kinds of books were throwaway for me, to be read and liked and then forgotten. The books that get into your head and under you skin generally have a little more depth.

First, some background: I was fifteen before I saw a black person in real life, as opposed to on television or on a movie screen. I was in Boston, on holiday with my family. We had just gotten out of the airport, and I saw a man walking down the street. If I recall right, I pointed it out to my mother - but she only told me off for being silly.

One of the books that I read when I was about thirteen was Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry by Mildred D. Taylor. It's a very complicated book. It's about... lots of things, but what I absorbed from it was this is what racism looks like. There's a difference between knowing something exists, and seeing it come alive on the page; it became so much more important because I could never see it for myself. Irish culture was so homogenous that I never learned that someone could be treated differently because of the colour of their skin.

The charm of the book was that it was just people, to me. People in a tough situation, but still loving, taking comfort in each other, finding ways to laugh and survive. Its voice felt honest and real.

The second book I read about racism was To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee. If Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry taught me what racism looked like, To Kill a Mockingbird showed me that you could could take a stand against it; that the world was unjust, but it didn't have to stay that way. The only thing I regretted about it was that I could never really hear the voices of the black characters, as it's told entirely from the viewpoint of a young white girl. It's also been slammed for its use of racial slurs, and even threatened with censorship as a result.

(Another thing that I wonder about - being white, apparently I shouldn't use the most well known racial slur at all. Does that mean I can't even mention it in context? Is it always considered derogatory, even when the writer has no cultural background that would define it as so, and thus never use it in conversation - or in reference to an actual person of colour?)

Discussions of race are a minefield in the States. Even the most well-meaning white person can inadvertantly cause offense or say something racist, only to howl that "I didn't mean it that way!" when an African-American calls them on it. I've seen it a few times, and every time I question the offender, why deny it? It's part of your cultural heritage. It will happen, despite your best efforts. Don't deepen the insult with a non-apology ("I'm sorry if I caused offense..."). Accept what you've done. Take responsibility for it. And do better next time.

I know I've probably already done it, but there has been no one here to call me on it. It's only a matter of time, though.

Roll of Thunder and Mockingbird compelled me to look further. I read the full text of Dr. King's famous speech, for example, and I was inspired by it. These days I subscribe to blogs written by black people. I keep up with the news. I want to read their stories and hear their voices, and be influenced by them and find the threads that I can weave into my own.

Books can do that, you see. They get into your head and under your skin, and they can change the world.

Where you do your thinking

Right, this blog is supposed to be primarily about writing, not about my love of fast cars.

...

One of the reasons I really like driving is because I can think while I drive. That is to say, I like to drive and think alone; having another person in the car with me puts me under pressure to be interesting, and thus it's a little distracting.

You take the part of the brain that handles awareness and hands and feet, and leave it to do the actual driving on autopilot while the rest of the brain, metaphorically, takes a break and does the serious business of churning through ideas. It's not so hard when you've been driving for a while.

I've thought of some of my best scenes while on the road. I put on some music and drift, and work through whatever story is occupying my time. At some point I should really get a smartphone with a voice recorder so I can keep track of ideas, but that would probably require a car that wasn't made when I was still in school.

Yes, my Toyota is that old.

Everyone has a place where they do their writing. I do mine on my netbook, wherever I happen to be - and as long as I can listen to music, I can write anywhere and around anyone. But I do my thinking in my car.

Breaking through Writer's Block

I had stalled on the Novel there for a while. I get writer's block the same way I get insomnia - suddenly, viciously, and fleetingly - and while it's annoying, it's nothing I can't get over given a little time.

I'd say I get off lightly. The Wikipedia article on writer's block suggests that people can suffer from it for years at a time, something that I can barely imagine even in my wildest dreams. It's usually a function of me getting a little fuzzy on the most important detail: What happens next?

I have my characters. I have a scene. I have imagined the bones of a storyline, so I know with reasonable certainty where they need to be and what they need to do. But something isn't quite working out right; I can't make the bridge that takes them from here to there, and thus the whole narrative screeches to a halt. The actors pause, the threads are frozen, and everything just stands around waiting until I can figure out what happens next.

I'm getting to the end of the second draft, so you'd expect that I shouldn't have these problems. But rewriting, changing, adding new elements, and other random literary effects have changed the story from the first draft, and a plot device that might have worked before is out of place now. Such is the way of writing, I suppose. It's always a process of refinement from the blobby story shapes you begin with.

I was trying to remember earlier what exactly inspired me to write the Novel. What was the first idea? The first concept or theme? Truth be told, I really don't know for sure. I play around with my ideas before ever committing them to text, and during that time they're in a constant state of flux - like Play-Doh, or something. You have your basic form, and you shape it and squash it and then mash it all up together again before starting over, and it takes many iterations before you're finally happy with it and ready to get to the serious business of making it presentable.

One thing I've noticed about the refinement business is when I'm having trouble with the Novel, the connection that finally breaks through my writer's block can literally come from anywhere. It's come from things I read online, things I see or do, and very frequently, my friends. Shanks (other talented writer friend) has always offered a lot of ridiculous suggestions, but he has his moments, and some of those have been worked into the Novel.

I'm sure someone will ask me at some stage, "Where do you get your ideas from?" So, while I'm on the subject, here's a list of some things that have given me story material or helped to break a block:

A certain well-known MMORPG that you will have heard of, unless you've been living under a rock for the last five years
"You should never start a story with what the weather is like."
A very, very old Batman novel
Shanks and Duri's weird comments on my work
Feminist blogs
Webcomics
My father
An autobiography of a forensic scientist living in Rhodesia way back when
Single words or phrases, up to and including single words only three letters long

Imagination is a wonderful thing, and it can draw the threads of taleweaving from anywhere.

A question of disbelief

So, I met with a few other writer friends today, and we got talking about characters in situations with which we, personally, might not be familiar. For example, I know nothing about New York. Hence, I know nothing about what life is like there, nor what trains run in the subway, what slang people use, what neighbourhoods are there. I might want to set a story in New York, but I doubt I could do so and make it believeable to New Yorkers.

Tiny, tiny things make up the cultural narrative in any distinct area, and what may sound fine to a outsider would be jarring to a native. One of my friends - let's call her Duri - is writing a story set in Ireland. She's English, however, and although we speak the same language, it's not quite equivalent. We use different phrases or wordings; she says, 'I feel ill', but I say, 'I feel sick'. I notice immediately when the things her characters say don't sound properly 'Irish'. If I ever set a story in England, I've no doubt she could point out exactly where my characters say things that are not properly 'English' - and that's before I delve into the regional dialects that are far more pronounced than the various Irish accents.

I've no doubt that people can indeed write stories that are set outside the settings familiar with them, but it certainly adds an extra level of difficulty to the job. The ideal situation is, of course, having a native of the culture present who can proof read and point out corrections; the next best thing is actual experience of the culture, then after that, extensive research and analysis.

I've noticed some writers have a real talent for it. Another friend - let's call him Shanks - wrote a suberb WWII-alternate-history short story a while back, and both Duri and I had a chance to read it. I'm reasonably sure Shanks has very little first-hand experience of modern England, but his particular forte is characterisation and dialogue, and the story (set in the wartime English countryside) felt very, very authentic to me. Duri agreed that it felt authentic to her as well.

Part of the reason I prefer fantasy or sci-fi settings is because there is generally no question of disbelief. I am in complete control of the cultural narrative, and the reader must accept what my characters say. The only question is maintaining consistency, so that characters from the same cultural background speak and act in similar ways.

Developing a new culture is probably one of the more enjoyable aspects of writing fantasy or sci-fi. While there is still a question of believeability, you are more free to chop and change elements from the modern world and other settings - for example, the Klingon culture from Star Trek uses elements from the Spartans of ancient Greece, but the writers were certainly not limited to that and made changes to adapt those elements to a sci-fi setting.

Anyway, where am I going with this... Cultural settings are very important to a story. Writing in a compelling setting is a huge part of fantasy and sci-fi. It's just a matter of being authentic; making the setting believeable, either in reference to the real world, or through internal consistency.

I've found that reading roleplaying books with information on world-building is very useful when I'm developing a setting. It gets you into the mindset of thinking about how and why the culture works like it does.

Oh Hollywood, why did you have to ruin Iron Man 2?

I saw Iron Man 2 last night, in case it wasn't already very obvious. I've taken a while to digest it, and now that I have properly marshalled my thoughts, I'm prepared to inflict them on you, the reader.

I loved the first Iron Man movie. It was a shining gem in the sea of rubbish that normally flows out of Hollywood; proof, right then and there, that you could have a comic book action movie that was also well-written and a joy to watch.

Robert Downey Jr. made the role of Tony Stark his own. He had the perfect balance of irreverence, decadence, egotism and wit. According to Jeff Bridges, they didn't have much of a script to work with, and much of the interaction between him and Robert was improvised. But the result was nothing short of perfect; the banter between Tony, Obediah Stane (Jeff) and Pepper Potts (Gwyneth Paltrow) clicked together naturally. The set pieces didn't feel like set pieces at all - everything flowed, just as it should.

I will also give great credit to Iron Man for the character of Pepper Potts. Hollywood is undeniably sexist, and very often apparently allergic to the idea of strong female characters, so the appearance of such a powerful woman in an action film targeted at men was delightfully surprising. Pepper Potts is the one in control of Tony Stark's life; she is his balance, his help, and his shield, and throughout the movie there's never any question that he desperately needs her... but she doesn't necessarily need him. She's willing to walk away to protect herself, willing to call Tony out for his bullshit, and willing to tell him when he hurts her - and he responds to her, like a human being with actual emotions would.

Pepper walks into the dragon's den to get information for Tony and stares down Stane, the bad guy. She leads the SHIELD agents personally to the facility to arrest him. And then, wonder of happy wonders, Tony becomes the damsel in distress as she activates the arc reactor that destroys Stane. That, my friend, is a normal businesswoman taking out a supervillain. It's very satisfying to watch if you are a normal businesswoman.

I did so love the ending as well. We expect the hero and heroine to kiss, because that is the tired old Hollywood trope, but once again Iron Man throws a curveball; Tony brings up the night on the balcony, and Pepper just as quickly shuts him down in a not-so-subtle reminder that she can see right through him. But the brief exchange afterwards: "'Will that be all, Mr. Stark?' 'Yes, that will be all, Ms. Potts.'" They're back to being playful, even affectionate, because they know each other so well, and the moment is so wonderfully intimate that the audience never needs to see them kiss.

Oh, but Iron Man 2. Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear.

The first movie started off with thumping rock music, witty banter from Tony that nailed the character perfectly, and pace-setting action. The sequel starts with... a montage.

And not just any montage, oh no. A montage of Tony Stark doing kick ass things that are only shown in newspapers, cut with the new villain slooooowwwwwwllly building his electric whips of doom. That leads into Tony landing on a stage in the Iron Man suit, opening the Stark Expo, getting a summons to appear in court over the suit being a weapon... No. My interest is lost. Robert Downey Jr. is just as good as I expect him to be, but his lines are not up to par, not as punchy, and everything is unfocused from the start. There's this villain, see? But also Tony is dying! And there's a senator who wants to take his suit! And his arms-selling rival is in his face! And the company is falling apart, and he makes Pepper the CEO!

The actors make the best of it, but good grief, what little they had to work with. Pepper changes from strong and powerful to stressed and weak. She's been running Stark Industries for months on Tony's behalf, but as soon as she's made CEO, we are shown her facing the strain of the position before finally resigning at the end of the movie. And the snide comments... Hammer, played by Sam Rockwell, tells her "Now you're thinking like a CEO," before he's taken away by the police. The news report questions her qualifications and abilities. And Tony himself goes from eccentric to borderline psychotic. We are meant to believe that this is the same man who said, "I shouldn't be alive... unless it was for a reason. I'm not crazy, Pepper. I just finally know what I have to do. And I know in my heart that it's right"? That conviction that rang so true in the first movie is gone from the second, and it's apparently because Tony knows he's dying - but he's already faced death several times! It's already changed him! And he's spent the last six months fighting around the globe in an armoured suit, for god's sake.

Alright, I get it. Tony Stark is a playboy. He does his own thing, always. But they're beating the audience over the head with that fact, and it all seems a bit fake when you've seen the first movie and you witnessed the man he became.

The shennanigans with him dying, and the stuff with SHIELD returning with Nick Fury to help him find the cure, were nothing but hackneyed plot devices in order to let Tony play around with his hologram build interface and make himself another, better suit. If you remove all that, you get to the guts of what the plot might have been; US government wants to take the suit and give it to Hammer to weaponise. Tony doesn't want to give it up. After embarrassing both the government and Hammer, Whiplash comes on the scene and embarrasses Tony in return - and Hammer grabs a hold of him, and convinces him to make something like the Iron Man suit. A double-cross ensues, and a cat and mouse fight develops between Tony Stark and Whiplash before the final battle.

I think I would have liked that movie. Mickey Rourke did a great job as Whiplash when he was actually on screen, and he deserved to have more time. He deserved to be a bigger, badder character.

Overall, I think when the executives realised they had a successful movie franchise on their hands they sat down with Jon Favreau and dictated to him what had to be in the movie, whether it was a sensible choice or not. Here's what I think they insisted on:

• A certain number of flashy fights, obviously
• Nick Fury - advertise the Avengers movie!
• Huge special effects like the hologram interface; "The fanboys loved it! Make it bigger!"
• Scarlett Johanssen as eye candy - and I feel so bad for her because she can act, but they didn't give her the chance to do much more than look pretty and beat up goons here (oh, and flash her boobs when she was changing in the car. Real classy, guys. Seriously.)
• A reduction in Pepper's role and alteration of her character - no strong women allowed, what if the target male audience feel intimidated? Oh, her part in the first movie, that the male audience totally accepted - just a fluke, can't risk it here
  
• Cranking up the crazy for Tony Stark, because LOOK AT HIM HE CAN DO WHATEVER HE WANTS AND HE'S RICH AND DYING
• Cranking up the stupid on Iron Man - "He fought one big mech in the last movie, let's make him fight LOTS of big mechs here!"
• The hero gets the kiss at the end - versus the scene at the end of Iron Man 1? Zero impact
  

The whole movie turned into a chaotic mess at the end. It became a series of set pieces loosely connected by random shreds of plot, all sound and fury, signifying nothing. The redeeming features were always the actors, and what they made of the roles; Robert Downey Jr. glowed again as Tony Stark, and although I thought the banter between him and Gwyneth Paltrow didn't shine like it did in the first movie, they still had their moments.

It's like Avatar all over again. It could have been great, and it wasn't. It could have been better than the first movie, and it wasn't. It was ruined by bad writing, like a lot of Hollywood films; they could have made a good movie, but they decided to make a movie that they think panders to the target male audience - who, if the movie is any indication, supposedly have the attention span of a goldfish, are easily distracted by shiny objects, and are scared of women with actual personalities.

I'm getting very, very tired of this. Really. It boggles my mind that a studio could see the success of a movie like Iron Man and somehow completely miss the fact that that a huge chunk of that phenomenal earning power comes from stellar writing. Iron Man 2 will probably still be a moderate success, but it will never bring in as much money as the first movie - and Marvel Studios have only themselves to blame.

I now have no reason to go see Iron Man 3, if there is indeed a third one. Kirk Honeycutt of The Hollywood Reporter said it best, I think; "Everything fun and terrific about Iron Man, a mere two years ago, has vanished with its sequel. In its place, Iron Man 2 has substituted noise, confusion, multiple villains, irrelevant stunts and misguided story lines." Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice...

The stories we tell each other

Two posts in a single day. Who would have thought I'd ever have so much to talk about?

I read a lot of blogs, and inevitably I follow my nose through their links and find my way to other blogs and websites. Today, I've wandered into a blog by an author called Neesha Meminger, and I've read a post of hers that talks about bullying.

I was bullied as well, a long time ago. Shut up, sit down, get over it. It's not all that important. It's your fault. Stop making waves. Stop getting people into trouble. Maybe if you tried to make friends, they wouldn't be so mean.

It's so easy to tell that story, the one where it's not really bullying. The other one, where you have to face up to the needlessly cruel things people do, is a lot harder. Maybe it's because you did something, and you can't admit that it wasn't right. Maybe it's because you don't want to say it happened to you. Maybe it just makes you too uncomfortable.

It's so easy to tell children the stories that won't hurt them, or shake them, or make them feel uncomfortable. It's easy to tell them that nobody is racist or sexist anymore, and persecution doesn't exist. They hear that narrative and just brush it off when they are racist, sexist, or when they persecute someone. She started it. She's just making trouble. I was only joking.

Writers should tell the hard stories. We dream that the world can be different to what it actually is all the time; dreaming of a voice for the silenced is not beyond us. Those narratives are harder to tell, but they are very, very powerful, and they can change the world for the better.

I, like many others, still carry the scars of the easy stories. I have a duty not to let them stand.

Rejections, Rejections

Let's say you're a writer, and you have set your work free into the wilds of the world with the hope that an agent will find their way back to you. Hopefully with a contract in hand, of course. And time goes by, and the silence only grows - but suddenly an email appears! From nowhere! From an AGENT! Stardom is within your grasp, so close you can almost taste the champagne...

No. It's a form rejection.

It's something I have to handle, being an aspiring writer. You deal with it as best you can, hopefully with good grace and a shrug of indifference. Yes, underneath the veneer of professionalism, it feels like a solid punch in the gut. You take the threads of story, you live and breathe for your characters, you forge... well, something you thought was worthwhile. Something good. But, in some way, it wasn't enough.

That's the hardest part for me. I can't know where I went wrong. I only know that I did, and it hurts a little more than it should. But I also know it won't last, because I have other stories to write, and other threads to follow. I think Van Halen said it best - You gotta ro-o-oll with the punches to get to what's real!

It wasn't the Novel, you understand. It was just a short story. When I start getting rejections for the Novel, I'll probably spontaneously combust from agony and disappointment.

However, in any case, I won't be doing what Mr. Patrick Roscoe did! In the category of too-dumb-to-be-let-out-unsupervised, this writer's response to a form rejection is surely a winner. I do so love his use of the phrase, "You lose, silly woman", and the insults he levels at Ms. Lindsay's clients. And the follow-up email... classic stupidity, the like of which you rarely get to read about. It's like watching someone shoot themselves in the foot, and then clean the wound with bleach.

Perhaps the most important things that an aspiring writer can take note of are as follows:

• Agents react badly to insults or snide sarcasm, because they just happen to be human.
  
• Agents talk to each other, and to editors and publishers.
  
• Agents often have blogs that are popular.
• Agents have a hundred other hopeful writers with actual manners in their slush pile who have probably submitted work as good as yours.

In short, all that I have learned so far about agenting and publishing tells me that a writer trades on their reputation, and this is doubly true of aspiring authors like myself. Leaving aside for the moment that Mr. Roscoe was unbelieveably rude to Ms. Lindsay, what on earth was he thinking when he wrote that email? Did he honestly expect her not to reveal his crass behaviour to the world? Did he believe his words were actually justified? One does not simply insult an agent (especially one who works for such an esteemed agency as Fineprint) and expect to walk away with one's reputation intact. Five minutes of anger may have bought him fifteen minutes of fame, but it's probably cost him more than a few chances of publication and, if he routinely conducts himself in this manner, a entire writing career as well.

When I submit my work, I endeavour to follow every guideline, and act with nothing but the highest respect and courtesy towards the submittees. A published author isn't just a person with their name on a book cover; they're also a professional writer, and I think that demands a certain standard of behaviour.

It's alright to rage in private. It's even expected, I would think. But in public, when facing a rejection, it's unacceptable to be anything but businesslike.

The first threads

I think every author must remember their first stories. The first published one, the first written one, the first completed one. You think back on them sometimes, even when you know they were complete rubbish and your current material is infinitely better. It's a tiny thing, but it's also a place you point to where you can say "This is where I began. This is where I made the choice. This is where I became a writer."

Those threads are probably frayed and ragged, utterly unworthy of attention in any normal frame of reference, but to you they are precious.

I can remember my first story vividly. As a child, I recall myself and my sister telling each other stories late at night - the pretend games of narrative, using dolls or pictures or whatever we had lying around. It was so natural to me. It was instinctive taleweaving, telling only for the joy of it, just like every other kid.

I remember our old computer. It was a huge, clunky (by today's standards) white box, with a clacky keyboard and a basic, DOS command line interface. A Commodore 286, I think; to this day, I wonder if my parents only got it for the novelty of it, because neither of them are particularly technically inclined. But on this pitiful, ancient machine - unworthy of attention in any normal frame of reference, even then - I made something magical.

I was twelve years old, and I started tapping out a story about the snakes returning to Ireland.

It's said that St. Patrick drove the snakes out of Ireland, way back in yonder days. In reality, it's probably something to do with ecology and whatnot, which is not nearly so interesting. But the idea of it was fascinating to me, and I began to dream up images of rivers of scaly bodies slipping away into the sea, with St. Patrick standing sternly behind them with a grim expression. And I thought of snakes, in the modern day, talking amongst themselves about a lost land to the west and north - a sanctuary, Atlantis even - that was little more than legend and rumour.

Ah, it was so little. I barely wrote a few pages before giving up. And it was terrible, believe me - a twelve year old may write well for their age, but that doesn't make their stuff good. It was a story I wouldn't give the time of day to, now, and it was my whole heart and soul made real back then. That was the first time I tried to catch a dream and forge it into a story. Those were the first threads.

Be they ever so humble, I sure every writer remembers them.

Read any good ebooks lately?

The brouhaha over Amazon and the larger publishers setting the price of ebooks has become rather deafening lately. Doom and gloom all around; writers lamenting the death of traditional publishing; the impending Apocalypse. You'd think that everyone has stopped buying books in dead tree form altogether.

Well - it could just be me. I read a lot of publishing blogs, and I get the feeling that many people are uncertain and worried. The Internet wreaked havoc with the recorded music industry after all, and the publishers have had long enough to see how well EMI and Sony are doing with the digital medium. Perhaps they see their own business suffering in the same way. Perhaps they're already forecasting the rates of ebook piracy. Perhaps, perhaps.

The New York Times has an interesting article on the ethics of pirating ebooks when you already own the title in hardcover or paperback. This has already gone around the writers' blogpsphere, and opinion in general seems to be that the Mr. Cohen is talking crazy. The first thing I noticed about the article, unfortunately, is the improper use of the word 'illegal' - downloading a pirated copy of an ebook is copyright infringement, to the best of my knowledge. Illegal and infringing are not the same thing. He also refers to it as theft - again, not the correct term, as theft implies that you have deprived someone else of ownership of an item. A digital ebook copy cannot be stolen, but it can infringe.

Anyway, pointless word games aside - Mr. Cohen states that it is indeed ethical to download a copy of an ebook if you have already purchased the dead tree version, and the writers and publishers that I like to keep tabs on take serious issue with that. Their position, predictably, is that writers and publishers deserve to get paid regardless - that Mr. Cohen seems to be advocating that if you buy a book once, you should automatically gain free access to every version of that book, such as in audiobook format or as a movie or what have you. On one level, they do have a point - but, of course, I don't fully agree with them.

Writers and publishers should get paid, but the point that seems to be missing here is that arguing about being paid will not stop people from pirating books. People will justify it to themselves using Mr. Cohen's rationalisation, or they will do it out of convenience, or they will do it because they have no money, or just because. It can't be stopped, and trying to slow it down may backfire spectacularly - see the RIAA shutting down Napster, for example. People went to the bittorrent networks, and now that that's being restricted or throttled in some places, they're going to VPNs that cannot be traced. The lesson that should be learned here is that trying to get people to pay for music after they've spent years getting it for free is just not a good use of your time, especially when the pirated version is better than yours.

With the price fixing going on at Amazon for ebooks, I'm very much of the opinion that the publishers have not really learned anything. The recorded music industry might be in much better shape if they had made music available cheaply and easily online. It would have sent a great message to consumers - here's the music you want, when you want it; all high quality, with extras like cover art, and it costs very little for this great convenience. But they chose to keep it expensive, and DRM made it inconvenient, and people had no reason to go back to their services no matter how hit and miss pirate material was.

Publishers have the opportunity here to avoid that mistake, but it's not going to happen. Amazon have set the price of ebooks around $9.95, $12,95, $14.95. It varies depending on the release. And you'll buy a Kindle copy that you can only read on your Kindle device, that you can't give to someone else, that you can't doodle in, that is far more fragile, that needs to be charged, that may delete your books without your consent at any time. If it breaks or is stolen, you lose access to your library. And the main trade off is that you can have hundreds of books on one device.

Colour me unimpressed, to be honest. Part of the reason I don't own one already, despite being a geek, is that I don't want to pay for what I view as less functionality. I'd rather have a paper book that doesn't need batteries, that I can spill coffee on without it being a disaster, and that I can sell to a second hand store or give away once I'm done with it. I'd rather have a library all around me instead of one locked up into one little white tablet.

I really think they should drop the average price of ebooks to about $3 to $5 across the board, and less for out of print titles. They should be portable to any device, and DRM free. Publishers should concentrate on making ebooks bought from them a hundred times more convenient than trawling bittorrent networks, and set the prices good and low wherever possible. Offer ebook discounts to book clubs and libraries, for example. Bundle the ebook with the paper version. Let schools pay a set fee for all ebooks released, and let their students order the paper version or audio books at a discount - and include bonus material where you can. Make it simple, make it cheap, make paper books worth hanging on to - and believe me, they have not gone the way of the dodo yet, so there's plenty of space there for a company with a great marketing team to make money.

It galls me that publishers have the most powerful communication medium in the history of mankind at their disposal, where their customers are closer than ever to them and to each other, and all they seem to want to do is drive people farther away. From the perspective of someone on the outside looking in, they seem to want to stop people from spending money on their books; they seem to be working very hard to kill all the wonderful possibilities of the Internet with shortsightedness. I hope I'm wrong, and the Amazon price-fixing works out, but... well. Time will tell, I guess.

The Land of Saints and Scholars

There are many wonderful things about Ireland. This is a land of rolling green fields, ancient history, friendly people. It's a country where people can be so passionate, so giving, that you could almost believe it to be a second Eden. It has music and art in its soul, fire in its blood, love in its hand.

This is my Ireland. This is my home and my heart. This is the place my ancestors died for. And it is not for me any more.

I have no faith left in the government. I have long since lost faith in the Church. Everywhere I look, people are either being ruined by the incompetance or malice of others, or they are the ones wreaking the destruction. And no one seems willing to try to mend, rebuild, sacrifice, and finally lift us all out of this abyss of despair. We have no Barack Obama here to give us back our hope for a better future.

I've nothing left to look to here except a long spiral of corruption and decay, where there is one rule for the people, another for the cronies in power, and yet another for those who are rich or influential. The most recent scandal of Willie O' Dea is just another in a long line of scandals, all of which show that the government only cares for power and wealth, and the church only cares for its own - and the people of Ireland are only there to be used, abused, ordered about as needed, and ignored otherwise.

Almost a hundred years ago, the Republic won its independence from Britain. Since then it seems we have simply rolled over and accepted whatever injustice is inflicted on us by the politicians we elect. I would have hoped that the reports of the truly horrific clerical child abuse would finally have made a difference, but now, not even a year later, they are forgotten. There was no outcry. There was only mute, indifferent, despicable acceptance.

There was a rape trial in Kilkenny. A man convicted of dragging a drugged woman behind a dumpster and raping her. Video footage of the act. An undeniable, inhumane act.

The woman was made a pariah for daring to speak. A priest, and fifty supporters, walked into the courtroom and shook the rapist's hand.

I will not forget these things, and so I have made my choice.

Ireland is beyond redemption. I will not stay here and subject myself to this any further. I will not allow my children to grow up here, and let them be tainted by what my country is becoming. I am not even thirty years old, and all that I have seen in my life tells me that Ireland is not fit to govern itself, and it is not worthy of my citizenship. Like so many others, I am leaving, and I don't mean to return.

And yet! The pain of being torn from my country is almost too much to bear. It is the hardest choice to make, to leave one's friends, family, all that you know, and all for the sake of hope. That's all it boils down to, really. I have no hope, here. I might have hope elsewhere. Consider, for a moment, how far a person must be pushed before they will choose a vague hope over the entire life they have built for themselves and those they love.

Again, I wanted this blog to be about writing. I wanted it to be about form, and prose, and art - simple, safe things. But this... this is too tightly woven into my own life to ignore, and I cannot be a taleweaver without also being human.

Getting to the Heart of the Matter

I've found another interesting blog, by one Barry Eisler. Apparently he's famous, or something. One of his thriller books has been made into a movie that was probably never released on this side of the Atlantic.

I will say without a shadow of a doubt that I dislike modern thrillers. I just don't find them particularly appealing; the interplay of suspence and action that seems so widespread in them is wasted on me, probably because I find the characters to be one-dimensional. That's my taste, of course. I'm not the target audience for such books after all.

Why subscribe to Mr. Eisler's blog then? It's very simple, really - he is a good writer. He writes with style, clarity, and a great deal of passion on his blog, and that is something to be appreciated and valued.

I'll probably never be sold on thrillers in general, but if I'm in a book shop and I happen to see his work, I'll certainly recommend it to people I know who'd like it.

Male and Female

I sometimes wonder how to write believeable characters in books. I'd consider characterisation as being one of my strong points in my work, but like every aspiring author, I do struggle with some aspects of it.

The Novel has two main characters; one male, one female. I've written them in very specific ways, and I know where they are alike and where they are very different. But the biggest problem I have is, predictably, with sex.

Books typically characterise men and women in very different ways when it comes to sex. The virgin-whore paradigm, for example - historical romances make enormous use of it in their characterisation of the heroine, who is almost universally chaste until her encounter with the hero. Those romances get a pass because that's just how it was, back then, but even modern characterisations of women seem to follow the same path - and it's just so boring. Why reduce one half of human sexuality to something so trite and uninteresting? Where are the shades of grey?

Men are frequently characterised as biological whores, their hormones driving them to sleep with the attractive females regardless of whether it's a good idea or not. This is so very, very dull as well, and does men a great disservice - as if they are not rational, not capable of being governed by their heads and not their privates. Am I the only one who thinks this charactetisation is just plain stupid? We are meant to believe that these men are also intelligent and sane enough to save the world or captain a ship or have made millions on their own... No. I don't think so.

I'm playing with a little subversion of these characterisations right now for my main characters. I have a leading lady who views sex as a weakness, and is easily powerful enough to have her opinion respected. She is like a man, neither virgin nor whore, where her sexuality is a tiny and irrelevant part of her life. My leading gentleman is a lover and a worshipper of women, who has sex out of adoration. He is like a woman in that he places a higher value on emotional attachments than the mere physical act.

I could spend hours thinking through the facets of their characters, discovering new nuances and reflections that change how they react in tiny ways. I might make a few alterations as time goes by, but I will never return to the silly clichés that infect so many other well-woven stories. My characters deserve better than that.

And the holidays are past

I'm back again after the holidays.

I like to take a break over Christmas. It gives me time to relax and recover from the year gone by. I didn't have any real holiday in 2009 during the summer; blame that on my work ethic if you will.

I've made some New Year's resolutions, as always. The first, to finish the Novel and start querying. The second, to learn how to play the piano. The third, to finally get into shape and exercise more.

I'm not making any others for the time being. Three very hard ones are more than enough. Of the three, the Novel will be the hardest, I think. I'm not looking forward to having my work put on trial, even if the eventual aim is to get it out and on the shelves.

Learning how to play the piano is a little challenging. I'm playing "The Music of the Night" at the moment. It's a matter of connecting what I know the piece should sound like with the notations on the page - no trivial task, of course, when you have to decode each section first. A friend has told me that I'm doing very well for someone who's never played before, which is certainly very encouraging. I'm planning to try a little bit of the start of "Clair de Lune" once I get more confidence.

Sigh. Honestly, I'm talking to myself. I'm sure there's a point to all this, but I probably won't be able to find it without the help of a therapist.

Is it obvious that, in the face of a hopeful new year, I am more hopeless than ever?

No. Hopeless or not, I have to have some kind of faith in my writing, because otherwise I would not write at all - and that is as likely to happen as the sun going backwards around the earth. I am a weaver of stories, good or bad, and especially when I'm talking to myself.

So. Another year. What would Brenda say?

This is what I learned: that everybody is talented, original and has something important to say.

She will always be my hero.