10 Years Ago

Yesterday was the tenth anniversary of the 9/11 terror attacks on the United States. My wife had spent time with a number of cops and firefighters several years previous while in New York with her wheelchair sports team. They had been acting as chaperones for the group. Some of the firefighters she knew were among those who gave their lives doing their duty that day.

Yesterday our son, Conor, would have been two months old.

Life is filled with the greatest of sorrows and the most private of tragedies. These cannot be avoided. I believe that happiness comes not from living a life without pain, but from enduring that pain and surviving. Becoming stronger because you have faced hardship and seen the light that comes after. Even when we've suffered the worst we thought we could stand, we owe it to ourselves and those we have lost to carry on and find beauty in our lives.

Some events change the whole world. Others just change our own. I didn't lose anyone on September 11th, but I have watched those that did. I have seen a city, one of my favourite cities in the world, rebuild and watched its people find strength from rebuilding together.

Now, I've got some editing to do, and more books to write.

Getting Back To Normal

It's been a hectic week. At the start of it I finished the first draft of Silent Oath and sent it off to my beta readers. I figured on taking a few days to relax before getting to work on Nightfall, my YA novel. It hasn't been such a relaxing week.

We had work start on re-modelling our kitchen so my wife can more easily make use of it, which revealed long-standing damp issues in one wall. Repairing the damage and solving the damp issue added another day onto the job and was a hit to the wallet as well. We've been without a kitchen since Wednesday morning. Bozes and packing crates are in every other room. It's been a tad stressful.

But tonight the job will be done. We can reclaim our rooms and go make a proper cup of coffee without filling the kettle from the stand pipe in the garden. We can finally chill out again once this is done.

And then, after my "week off" is over, I can get back to writing Nightfall.

Setting Goals

The first few tentative comments on Silent Oath are coming back from my betas. So far my wife has decided I need to be beaten with pens and poked in the stomach for my spelling errors. This is what I get for sending out such a raw copy. I admit I did leave in some issues that I know need to be addressed, like spellchecking and retro-fitting a name change I decided on in chapter 8.

It's a time of the year full of new starts. Kids are starting school. Students are getting ready to go to college. It's a good time to be setting goals.

With the first draft of Silent Oath completed I can start to spend more time reading, which is something I really need to do. I've also decided that I want to have both Silent Oath and Nightfall completed and edited, ready for querying, by Christmas.

Granted I won't actually be querying Silent Oath that soon, but I do want to get Nightfall out there as soon as possible, and it makes a good deadline for both books. I need to try and get another 65,000 words written on Nightfall. So if I can manage roughly 20,000 words a month, I should be just about on-target.

What about you? What goals are you setting yourselves these days?

First Draft

Last night, despite battling netbook issues and suffering most of the day with a migraine, I typed the closing words on the first draft of my WIP, Silent Oath.

For those who don't know, Silent Oath is the sequel to my first novel. I'm sure I'll change the title later but despite how hard I find it to come up with good titles, I find I can't get into a new book until I've given it at least a temporary name. It has been a fun book to write. I really enjoyed getting back into the characters' heads and telling the story of how they'd grown since I'd last had them in my head.

The draft has been sent on to my amazing team of beta readers so I'm going to try not to think about all the little mistakes I've probably made. The thing is, while I should probably just relax and spend some time not writing, I know it'll probably be tomorrow at the latest before I'm chomping at the bit to write again. I'm glad I still have Nightfall to work on.

Do any of you find it hard to sit still once you've completed a first draft? How do you handle the wait until you start doing edits?

Being Too Concise

 I'm making my Friday blog post a day early because I won't be at a computer much tomorrow. We've got an appointment at the hospital to get Conor's test results back to see if they can tell us exactly what went wrong. Then in the evening we're going to a friend's wedding.

Sometimes I feel like I'm too concise in my writing. While the standard word count for an urban fantasy, whether adult or YA, is about 80,000 words, my final count for a first draft seems be staying around the 70,000 mark. I see other authors seemingly able to rattle off their drafts. Their big issue is working out what to take out to bring their ms down to a more manageable word count before querying, while more established authors get to publish ever-thicker novels.

My work is too long to be a novella, and for most non-fantasy fiction it's actually an appropriate length. It's just specifically urban fantasy that seems to be stuck with the flat word count target of 80,000.

Am I doing something wrong? Is there a danger that I'm getting to the point too quickly, or not filling my work with enough world-building, characterisation, or just plain old padding? Is it ever okay to pad out a work when you need an extra 5,000 words?

A Male Perspective

If you had told 15 year-old me that it was difficult for a man to write from a woman's perspective, he would have told you "Not for me, I can write anything!"

15 year-old me still had a lot to learn.

This topic comes to mind as I look at stretching the limits of how I've written before. Despite writing urban fantasy, a genre usually featuring female protagonists, I generally write male protagonists. Quite simply, I can write from a male POV much more confidently than from a woman's. However I've decided this just won't cut it. That's one reason why in Silent Oath, the character of Cynthia Keller becomes more important and this book features more of her POV than the first.

I have to grow as a writer. Constantly strive to improve myself.

Looking ahead at future book ideas, and the ongoing story of Nathan Shepherd, I can see many more areas where I'll need to be able to show a believable female perspective. Generally, I have been more comfortable talking to women than to men. Most of my closest friends are women, but until recently I have never considered how to train myself to look at things from that female perspective. Sure, there are plenty of things I get, plenty of things I understand are different for women than for men, whether due to genetics or societal influnces. But now I need to learn how to apply these differences, fairly, in my writing.

Thankfully, as we as my wife to ask for advice, I also have two great crit partners who are women, and several female beta readers.

I do think a man can write from a female point of view, and do it well. Just as a woman can write from a male point of view. It does, however, require a certain amount of self-awareness and ability to not only ask the right questions, but listen to the answers.

What about you? Do you think a writer should stick to protagonists of their own gender? Are there some things men and women simply will never understand about each other, or is it a more individual matter, that some men and women are just more open to understanding differences?

Reiki

Most people who read this blog know that I'm a very spiritual person. I believe in a higher power, or powers. I believe in life after death, and in reincarnation. I also practice Reiki.

For those who don't know, Reiki is a form of healing first developed in 1922 by Dr. Mikao Usui in Japan. It is perfomed by the practitioner placing his hands on or over the chakras of a person's body, usually while lying down, but it can also be performed on someone in a seated position. Reiki energy passes through the practioner and into the person being treated. This energy then helps the person heal physically and emotionally; releasing stress and soothing physical discomfort. One of the things I love about Reiki is that it's not the practitioner actually helping the person heal. It's the person themself, aided by the Reiki. Reiki just gives a boost to your body and mind's own natural healing. So in the end, you're making yourself stronger and healthier all on your own.

Now, one of the most important principles for any Reiki practitioner is that we are not doctors. We do not refer to those we treat as patients, and can not give diagnosis. If anyone were to come to me for treatment who had a serious illness, I would insist that they always see their doctor on a regular basis. Reiki is a natural complementary treatment that can help with sympoms of illness, never a replacement for professional medical care.

This last weekend I completed my Level 3 Reiki attunement and training, meaning I am now a Reiki Master. I can treat myself and others with Reiki, as well as perform treatment over a distance, and I can attune others to Reiki and teach them how to use it.

Probably the most significant thing, for me, about Reiki has been how it has helped change my life. Since starting Reiki, my confidence has increased, as has my own inner strength. Reiki teaches responsibility for one's own healing. It teaches that we have to take care of own healing and health - physical, emotional and mental - before we are able to help others and that the very act of caring for ourselves will help others find ways to seek their own healing. If all we do is give of ourselves and never accept anything in return, eventually we run out of anything to give, and we can no longer help those we care about.

I did my Level One Reiki course in December 2009, and my Level Two course in February 2010. That year, I finished writing my first novel, the one which sold earlier this year and will be released in 2012. I am a stronger person now than I was before I started doing Reiki.

I'll leave off with the very simple, but powerful, guiding principles of Reiki:

Just for today I will not be angry
Just for today I will not worry
Just for today I will be grateful
Just for today I will do my work honestly
Just for today I will be kind to every living thing

Gender Double-Standards

In my last blog post I asked you all to share some of the "no-go" elements that put you off a book or a movie. As turnabout is fair play, and since Ellen Brickley discussed her issues with particular use of offensive language,  I thought I'd share one of my biggest bugbears in fiction: Double standards.

Now to clarify, I'm not talking about characters who apply double-standards to their outlook on life. I have no problem reading about a male chauvanist or a woman who believes that men only think with their genitals.

When it becomes a problem is when I feel that I'm not expected to see these as negative character traits.

Now, double standards exist in many different forms. Not all of them inherently bother me, depending on how they're used. The ones that will turn me off a movie or book, almost immediately and without fail, are the ones where one form of behaviour is clearly acceptable and rewarded in one case, but punished and reviled in another. The most common form this takes in fiction, is related to gender. Whether a character is male or female can have a huge bearing on what actions seem to be permissable.

To give an example:*

Chris and Alex are married. Chris has a good, but demanding job and works long hours. Alex is resentful of this, while Chris doesn't appreciate Alex's lack of support. Chris also doesn't like Alex's friends and objects to them coming over to their house all the time, especially when coming home from work to find them there chatting.

One day, Alex meets George. George is exciting, sexy, and seems to care about Alex's interests. The two become close and start an affair. When the affair is finally revealed, Chris is outraged, but Alex decides to stay with George, leaving Chris.

Who is in the right?

In most cases, it largely depends on whether Chris is a man or a woman. If Alex is a neglected wife whose husband spends all his time working and complaining about her girlfriends, then Chris is the bad guy. If Chris is a hard-working career woman whose husband wants her to spend more time at home, then Alex is the bad guy.

Movies such as It's Complicated or The Devil Wears Prada portray women who are shown as being within their rights to engage in behaviour which, were it a man going the same, would be criticised. Situations where the woman's choices are automatically right seeimingly because she is a woman completely put me off the story and the characters.

Of course, the double standard applies both ways. While it's considered right for a man, especially a younger one or a teenage boy, to bed many women, when a woman behaves similarly, she is often criticised or outright insulted for it.

While I'm not saying that promiscuous behaviour, cheating on a partner, or neglecting other committments for your job should always be treated as good or bad, I would rather see some consistency and logic in the consequences of these actions.

The one double standard, however, that literally sickens me every single time I see it, is the one applied to sexual assault and rape.

In the majority of books and movies, the rape and sexual assault of a woman is treated as the most vile and reprehensible thing a man can do. Rightly so. I personally feel that the subject of sexual assault is sometimes treated too lightly and applied too readily by an author as a method of quickly creating shock, revulsion, or sympathy. In some cases it's almost become the new "they killed my parents" motivator for a character.

However, then the victim is a man, there are three general ways the matter is treated:

1: It's not an issue. Movies such as Swordfish and The Rookie have instances where a man is forced into sexual acts without his consent, but the men in question don't seem bothered by it.

2: It's the man's fault. As seen in 40 Days and 40 Nights and Ricochet, if the victim is in a relationship, or trying to start one, and is raped by another woman, the act is often revealed to or witnessed by the love interest. However, even if the man is drugged or physically restrained, he will have to apologise and try to make amends, while the perpetrator typically receives no punishment.

3: It's comedy. The Wedding Crashers, Taxi 3 and even The Nutty Professor 2 both feature scenes where this is played to uncomfortable comic effect, with the victim in The Wedding Crashers eventually marrying the woman and ending his womanising ways, almost portraying her behaviour as a cure for his own flaws.

It tends only to be the darker, often less-commercial, films that try to show a man being raped as something devestating and traumatic. Even in Disclosure, whose plot is entirely based around the issue of female-on-male sexual harrassment, the protagonist's struggle is not against any feelings of violation or trauma, but the fact that he has been wrongfully accused of harrassing his co-worker.

To varying degrees, seeing these double standards crop up can put me off not only the book or movie in question, but further titles by the same author or director. It's just something I really cannot stand experiencing when I want to be entertained.

* I can't take credit for this example, I originally found it on TV Tropes.org, but it seems to have vanished, so I've retold it here, likely with some changes.

Edit to add: George's gender in the story is dependent on Chris and Alex. If Alex is a man, George is a woman (Georgina) and vice versa.

What about you? Do these kinds of double standards ever bother you? Have you noticed them before? Or do you think I'm taking some it a bit too seriously?

Drawing the Line

If you haven't heard, I was interviewed by Dawn Alexander this week on her blog. I talk a bit about how I got published, how I manage my writing schedule, and what I'm currently working on, so check it out.

I'm very close to the end of the first draft of Silent Oath. The climactic showdown is about to start and I'm looking forward to it all playing out. I have gotten to thinking about the rest of the series, and while brainstorming ideas I came up with some events that, while likely to grab the reader's attention and keep their interest, are just too much for me to include. It's not how dark they are that turned me off them, more what it might say about me as a writter if I included them, depending on how I portrayed the events.

There are some things I just don't want to write about, no matter how much of a sensation they might cause or readers they might draw. I'm not interested in being gratuitous.

This led me to today's topic. Where do you draw the line, both as a writer and a reader? Are there particular events you can't tolerate? Does even the possibility of certain events put you off? Have you ever put a book down and walked away because the author crossed a line that you couldn't stand?

Interview

Today I'm being interviewed by Dawn Alexander over on her blog, Writer in Waiting. I talk a bit about my writing process and my upcoming novel.

Please stop by and say hi!