Memeage

[msagara]

Because I know, in general, that people often find memes to be repetitive or not entirely interesting, it's all behind the cut.


If there is any question you would like to ask me about any one of my works, then go ahead! What I meant by a particular line, why I chose that characterization, what I was listening to as I wrote, what crack I was taking and where you can get some ... anything. Anything you might like to know about how I wrote it, I shall do my best to answer.


I'll modify that to say I'm old enough that crack isn't part of the equation, although lack of sleep might be. And I'll then append:

Or if there's any question you would like to ask me about the process, the bookstore, the business in general, and I can answer it, I'll also field those happily.

Taken from terri_osborne, and kradical, but seen elsewhere as well.



ETA: Happy Thanksgiving to those of you who celebrated it late this year (ours being in the less chilly month of October <g>).

Comments

[drenilop.livejournal.com]

I'm actually more intrigued by the developments in the later books, where the main characters experience tension between the social construction of their gender roles - what society says a 'man' or a 'woman' should be or do - and what their personal natures or preferences or geas or goals push them to do. Alina's balancing act on the field in _Sun Sword_, Diora's relationship with Valedan and also with Andaro, Valedan's balancing between North and South (with those standing proxy in many ways for gender stereotypes) and the implications of that for his relationships with the Tyr'agnates....

So many times we see characters flouting gender conventions yet experiencing no psychological or social discomfort for it. These characters experience both the tension between their gender roles and their personal or historical roles, and also experience the psychological discomfort in ways that make the gender role conflict a primary theme in the storyline, for me at least.

Thoughts like this are rather out of character for me - I usually read fiction for fun and for plot, and leave the deep analysis for my work-reading. (Yes, I'm a social scientist, I study things like gender roles for a living, lol.) But this just seems to stand out from the story in ways that make it seem a purposive element rather than a sidebar.

[msagara.livejournal.com]

Thoughts like this are rather out of character for me - I usually read fiction for fun and for plot, and leave the deep analysis for my work-reading. (Yes, I'm a social scientist, I study things like gender roles for a living, lol.) But this just seems to stand out from the story in ways that make it seem a purposive element rather than a sidebar.

This makes sense, to me, and thank you for clarifying what you meant. I confess that I'm not that deliberate when I set out to write. The characters come from their societies -- in as much as I can create a society well enough to contain them -- and the interactions of people with different cultural backgrounds and expectations naturally give rise to some of these elements. They'd almost have to. In that sense, it's not a deliberate choice on my part. It's more the determination to be true to the character voice, or to let the character voice to true to itself, if that makes sense.

So many times we see characters flouting gender conventions yet experiencing no psychological or social discomfort for it. These characters experience both the tension between their gender roles and their personal or historical roles, and also experience the psychological discomfort in ways that make the gender role conflict a primary theme in the storyline, for me at least.

So let me go back to this point. There are many, many things depicted in various forms of entertainment which are given short shrift due to demands of the medium, or perhaps the audience, depending on what type of entertainment it is. One of the things that used to drive me crazy about mysteries on television (or in book form) was the total lack of grief showed by the bereaved.

We can show people being shot or murdered; we can have their homes burned down; we can see them being stalked, or beaten, or etc., and yet the sense of consequence, the profound psychological changes that any of these would have to cause -- these happen off-stage or off-camera. I think the lack of emotional consequence is socially costly, for a variety of reasons.

As a writer, I'm more interested in what happens after. I'm more interested in writing the funeral than in writing the death; more interested in the cost of action than the necessary action itself.

I suppose, because I do think of these things frequently, some of that is bound to filter into my writing. Sometimes, it's more obvious, and sometimes less -- but consequence gives things the emotional weight they otherwise lack. So in that sense, yes, the gender issues have weight or consequence because they're significant to the characters' lives -- but I think the significance is part of a broader effort on my part.

I know I'm not always successful at this, and sometimes my writing is a bit on the dense side (as opposed to me being on the dense side, which we can take up in a sidebar), but that's a deliberate choice on my part. And yes, it adds words <rueful g>.

[nagasvoice.livejournal.com]

You said, as a writer, I'm more interested in what happens after. I'm more interested in writing the funeral than in writing the death; more interested in the cost of action than the necessary action itself.
Of course!!
I was absurdly glad to see this comment. One writing group bit of feedback that drove me crazy was the comment that I ought to start a book with the battle, that was the interesting stuff. Just give us the action, nobody was interested in all that draggy real-life reconstruction and recovery afterward. (Which is where I was interested in starting. Total defeat, hey, it can only get better from here, right?)
Given any sort of competent soldiering, I daresay the battle sequence itself done realistically might be positively pedestrian. Close to boring. How *do* they think Genghis' Mongols regarded the twentieth Chinese city they'd broken down, anyway? Oh yeah, yawn, not much loot here, have you got all those ears yet? How about the piles of heads?
Oh yeah, it's fairly visual for the movies.
I doubt it'd do all that much in a book, honestly.
Now here's a book: It's a dramatically different world to their captive Chinese prisoners, isn't it?

So yeah, that was one piece of feedback that may have proved its worth by irritating me. Dunno if I'll get any pearls out of it.
Of course I wanted to jump up and down and scream something about how the social consequence of such events is *entirely* in what happens afterward. The results can ramify for generations. People obsess for years afterward about the consequences. The feuds go on...for example, if you read the forties Nero Wolfe mysteries which reveal tidbits about the Balkans, you see that it sounds like much the same stuff now!
So much for that group...

[drenilop.livejournal.com]

As a writer, I'm more interested in what happens after. I'm more interested in writing the funeral than in writing the death; more interested in the cost of action than the necessary action itself.

Yes, I can see this, now that you said it. The characters' reflections on these costs and their awareness of them give them a depth that is otherwise missing from the more plot-driven series (in the sense that the plot is the only thing that matters in the book). Character development and voice matters in these in ways that don't occur in other books (UGH Robert Jordan ::shudders::).

The only character who doesn't seem to fit this is Kallandras. He seems numb to the costs of what he does, almost emotionless many times, but at the same time he reflects and experiences costs in other ways. He almost seems to be aging as we progress through the series - reflecting more, allowing his past experiences to color his thoughts and behaviors.

And yes, it adds words... If the books weren't already so long, and thick enough to scare students into not-reading, I'd almost consider assigning bits from them. The best bits, unfortunately, don't extract well because -- for the reasons you mentioned -- these actions and concerns only have meaning in the broader context of their societies. :-(