Progress is being made and GenreCon tomorrow!

On Wednesday, I had a writing date with Becky, and words came with me. That was pretty cool. A lot of the time on writing dates, or when I sit down to write during the day, I’ll spend a long time rereading. Or researching. Or … heh, blogging. Usually it’s writing-adjacent, but still quantifiably avoidance behavior, and almost always entirely fear-based. Not sure where I’m going from here. Not sure if I’m going to be able to pull it off. Not sure I’m doing it right, at all. Not sure if I’m going to offend, or be ignorant. But on Wednesday, after I got my computer plugged in, my chai and danish into my facehole, and my shoes off, the words just came.

It’s a good feeling, when it happens.

The unfortunate (maybe? Hopefully not) part is that I got to a transition point of the story just as we were wrapping up. That means two things: I got to a stopping place (which means that starting again isn’t as easy as I’d like it to be), and the story is about to go in a new direction. Which reboots the whole “am I doing it wrong” train of thought. Especially since it’s going to go places this story hasn’t yet gone, in any of the other 2.25 drafts. I used to write ghost / horror stories back in high school, but Cassidy has never treaded those corridors, and I’ve worn down such a groove with Cassidy that trying to bump her into that territory is proving… quite difficult. So, one tiny baby step at a time.

Tomorrow is GenreCon, a writer’s conference in Golden, Colorado. I’m really nervous. Not only have I never been to a writing conference, I’ve never been to any cons, ever. Unless the Renaissance Festival counts, cause from what I’ve heard about cons they seem kinda similar. But in my mind, at least, writing cons are different from, say, comic cons or anime cons or PAX. Maybe because it’s less fan-based? I don’t know. Anyway, if I bring the first three pages of my story, there’s a chance they’ll get read and critiqued. I think I’m going to do it, because what could it hurt? But I know it’s the equivalent of a first draft again, quality-wise, so I’m a bit embarrassed of it. I know that it’s almost certainly going to change, that this isn’t as polished and squeaky as it could be. But, as Cassidy would think, “nothing ventured, nothing gained.”

On Monday, I shall regale you with the epic stories of GenreCon and how I took the writing world by storm. Until then!

Word count: 6,494 (ᥞ)

Still. Reading.

So, July has begun. My high hopes of having a third draft by now are flapping, shredded, in the wind. My hopes of having a third draft sometime this year are hiding behind things, hoping to not get stomped by hard-hearted reality as it thunders past.

I finished The Maltese Falcon (67,000 words, by the way). 179 pages (the other 10 were discussion questions) never took so long to read, ugh. The book is good, and tight, and I enjoyed it, but it would never have gotten published today. The book starts off with the physical description of the protagonist, followed immediately by the physical description of the secretary, followed immediately by the physical description of the femme fatale, followed immediately by the physical description of the protagonist’s business partner… there were step-by-step descriptions of how Sam Spade rolls a cigarette, how he sits up in bed, how he eats. I can’t imagine how long the book would have been if Hammett had been forced to cut those descriptions, like he would be if he were trying to get published now. The prose is utilitarian and without flourish. You can clearly hear the whisky-and-cigarrette-smoke-ruined voice reading the book; growling, begrudging, yet trying to hide the fact that he’s enjoying himself.

It was a relief to finish the book, and I immediately tried to check out The Big Sleep, but of course it was checked out of the library. Instead I checked out a copy of K Is For Killer, a book that was picked on by Hardboiled and High Heeled as dealing directly with women filling traditionally men’s roles, their independence, and the theme of the “wrong body” that pervades the female detective genre. I read it in about three days and found it highly enjoyable, and when I finished it, The Big Sleep was still checked out. What to do now?

I read for pleasure for a few days, but today I was just starting to get an itch in my britches to start writing again. Just in time, I got an email saying that The Big Sleep was back in stock—thank god! Who knows what may have happened if I had started writing, all willy-nilly. Perish the thought.

My third draft is going to be very different from the second; all in good ways. It’s not going to be quite the reinvention that happened between Cassidy0 and Cassidy1, and I’m very happy about that. It is in my nature to look at my experiences and average them, and make predictions based on them. Like, “The first time I ever wrote a second draft, I completely rewrote the whole book from the very ground up.” So, obviously, that’s what every subsequent draft will be… until I have a larger sample size to draw from. Now, I’m looking at keeping most or all of the same characters, tweaking their roles minimally, tweaking their personalities considerably, adding scenes aimed at developing characters and themes, and generally grab the steering wheel and aim the car back onto the more acceptable, less self-involved road (where the “self” is Cassidy). It’s fascinating to me how a book can be vehicles for themes and messages that aren’t visible to the naked eye; one must unwrap them, one thin layer at a time, like an onion, to arrive at the pungent nugget of truth underneath.

Maybe it’s just true that, when you’re writing, you see the jewel of the message you’re trying to convey. The words are the wrapping paper. Your finished product is never going to look like that jewel, but that’s okay, because if it did, it wouldn’t be interesting—it’d be a necklace with no neck; a mustache with no one to twirl it. The reader needs to arrive at the jewel on their own to grasp the full impact.

Anyway, I post this and I begin The Big Sleep, as one. Happy reading to us all!

Reading progress, with a side of exhaustion

I’ve finished reading UtToDIBT and HaHH as of yesterday. After finishing the former, the latter started out weak, but I got used to the differences and, side by side, both were extremely valuable resources. It gave me many pointers on how to strengthen my story, establish and reinforce themes, be aware of the literary power—and be a good feminist while doing so.

My current concern is that the hardboiled genre is unkind. In its original form, its conceptualization of women tends to be victim, villain, or virgin (and the “virgin” trope really doesn’t show up much); all that’s important is how they relate to the men in their world. The power of the woman lies in her sexuality. None of these women ever come out on top. The flip side of that, is that in noir, no one really comes out on top. The detective prioritizes his “code” above his personal life, and the book ends with the feeling that he does his best in a flawed world.

The problem lies in trying to have a hardboiled novel in which a woman is the investigator. It isn’t a problem if you don’t care about the underlying sexism of the genre, but since I do, I’m ending up with some problematic choices.

The premise of a detective novel is, of course, crime. In my case, murder. And yes, murder of women. I am once more transforming women into bodies. I think that the way to deamplify this is to make sure that there are women in the story who are more than bodies, and I think that I achieve this just fine (and am cultivating ideas on how to do this even better). But when you have a genre that makes a point of shitting on women, and you add to that the systemic sexism of the professions of law enforcement and private investigation, you possibly end up with a protagonist who reinforces the idea that doing this “man’s job” is wrong and will bring her nothing but pain. When the male investigator makes that choice, we can say, “He chose this; we know that he could have made a different choice and no one would have been surprised or judged him more harshly than any other man;” but for a woman, there’s an added layer of judgement and expectation of failure. If she prioritizes her professional code over a man, she’s unwomanly, possibly even inhuman; if she gives in to her given temptation, she’s pathetic. So, do you give your character the opportunity for a happy ending and flout the genre conventions in favor of a more empowering feminist work? Or do you stick to the genre conventions and run the risk of reinforcing the idea that women are doomed from the moment they step out from behind the stove?

Branden suggested I minimize the sexist aspects of the world. “It is near-future; maybe things aren’t so polarized anymore,” was his argument. It’s not a bad argument, but exploring the boy’s-club aspect of this was a thing that intrigued me and excited me, and to be honest, reinforces one of my themes. So, I consider it to be an important part of the story. And, in line with my themes… a happy ending just doesn’t seem to fit.

I hope that doesn’t make me a bad feminist.

Since June tenth, I’ve had some real issues with fatigue. I’ve been tired and sleepy from the moment I wake up until the moment I go to bed, and it doesn’t matter how much sleep I get or that I’m taking Adderall to help me be human. I don’t know if I’m thinking straight anymore. Some things seem insurmountable. When I think about my book, it seems like I have too many conflicting things going on and I can’t reason my way through to a solution. I try to keep in mind that exhaustion is a mind-altering drug and I shouldn’t make decisions while exhausted, and that definitely helps me not overthink things too much, but I worry that I’m never going to not be tired again. I have to make decisions again at some point, right? I can’t keep track of everything, and I’m going to screw up my book, I just know it.

So… on a lighter note, I started reading the Maltese Falcon. It’s 187 pages. Right at this minute I can’t do a word count, but I suspect that’s really short. It also starts with a physical description of the detective, followed immediately by a physical description of his secretary, followed immediately by a physical description of the femme fatale, followed immediately by a physical description of his partner… I’m fairly certain that if this book were written today, it wouldn’t have gotten published. That being said, it’s fully engaging. It’s extremely descriptive: every action explained in minute detail, every feature scrutinized. That is not something I have done in my book so far, and honestly I can’t see myself doing it. But that’s okay. It’s good to know the established tropes.

Well, my train of thought just derailed. Until next time, faithful viewers!