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The Adulterous Life of the Writer

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Jay Faulkner resides in Northern Ireland with his wife, Carole, and their two boys, Mackenzie and Nathaniel. He says that while he is a writer, martial artist, sketcher, and dreamer he’s mostly just a husband and father. His work has been published widely, both online and in print anthologies, and was short-listed in the 2010 Penguin Ireland Short Story Competition. He is currently working on his first novel. Jay founded, and edits With Painted Words, a creative writing site with inspiration from monthly image prompts, and The WiFiles, an online speculative fiction magazine, published weekly. He can also be found as a regular co-host and contributor on the Following The Nerd radio show. For more information, check out jayfaulkner.com or follow him on Twitter at @thejayfaulkner.

Clocks slay time … time is dead as long as it is being clicked off by little wheels; only when the clock stops does time come to life. ~ William Faulkner

Hi there, my name is Jay and I’m a writer. I thought that it would be best to start this guest blog off with a simple introduction and that seemed quite apt. Except that isn’t quite true. You see if I was to tell you what I am – and being honest – ‘writer’ would come some way down the list of things. First and foremost I am a husband, to the beautiful Carole, and father, to my two wonderful boys: Mackenzie and Nathaniel. After that I am a worker, for which I travel about 90 miles a day and put in about 45 hours a week. I teach two martial art classes a week. I’m a regular co-host and contributor on a weekly radio show. I’m part of the Northern Ireland Rare Disease Partnership, where I do social media work and try to raise awareness of issues facing people with rare diseases. Oh yes, and I write.

I occasionally like to sleep as well.

There are the lucky few who are able to put the ‘writer’ tag at the top of the parts that make their sum, so to speak. The ones who have worked hard, and caught a break or two, and now write full-time, for a living. Then there are the others – the ones like me – who are writers after everything else has been taken care off. The ones who grab whatever time they can to sit down in front of the keyboard and knock out the words that have been swimming in their heads whilst everything else is going on.

You see I might put everything else that I do, that I am, before the ‘writer’ part but I can honestly say that I go to sleep thinking about words, plots and characters; I wake up thinking about protagonists, antagonists and even tritagonists … though, admittedly, when it gets that far I have to do something as my mind gets far too crowded! I have notepads in my workbag, in my martial arts bag, in my jacket pockets even. I have electronic notes on my phone, on my email, on my laptop and on my PC. I have notes that never make it out of my head to anywhere else.

Because, even when I don’t have time to write – when I am busy being a husband, a father, an employee, a teacher, an advocate or any of the other things that fill my life – I am thinking about the words that are yet to come.

I used to think that the adage of a writer having to write each and every day, to set a word count and hit it no matter what, was the right thing to do; that without doing so you weren’t a writer. I used to feel frustrated if I couldn’t meet the word counts I had set myself, or wasn’t able to sit down for a solid couple of hours each and every day, and write. I used to feel guilty when I did take those hours, each and every day, because I could hear my children playing outside, or missed a social engagement with my friends. It got to the point where I was making excuses about what I was doing:

“Do you want to come to the cinema tonight, Jay?”

“No thanks, I’ve got a meeting in the morning to prepare for.”

“Did you get a chance to read that report last night, Jay?”

“No, actually, I went to the cinema with some friends.”

I’d actually done some research into men who go to any lengths when having an affair. They lie to everyone around them in order to fill whatever part of them it was that wanted to be with someone else. Eventually they even began to lie to themselves about what was going on, perhaps believing their own untruths.

And, just like a mistress, writing became my own guilty secret. Rendezvous with the laptop at 1am in the morning when everyone else was asleep; the notepad taken out, discreetly, and words fumbled between the tedium of project updates; a text message, or email, sent to myself in the middle of the night, hoping that my wife wouldn’t wake up with the glare of the phone as I sent my other love another furtive ‘quickie’.

To meet the spurious targets I had set myself, in order to satisfy myself that I was still a writer; I entered into an illicit affair with my Muse.

And then I caught myself on. I realised that it wasn’t something real, something tangible, I had with my Muse anymore but, instead, furtive moments in the dead of the night where neither of us were ever truly satisfied. I wasn’t living up to Her expectations at all: I wasn’t going the distance for her, in terms of time or words.

… yeah, I know, it happens to everyone and She was quite understanding about it really but one’s masculine ego does take a bashing the first time, in the middle of the night with the sheets wrapped around you, you can’t finish what you started.*

Something had to give and, finally, it did.

My ego.

I realised that I don’t have to write one thousand words a day, each and every day. I realised that I don’t have to try to ‘fit in’ my writing amongst everything else and try to keep up the pretence that I am a writer above everything else. As long as I write, to the best of my ability, each and every time that I can, then that is all that truly matters because, after all, a satisfying fifteen minutes is better than a wasted hour.

So, at the end of the day I am a husband, a father, a worker, a teacher and many other things too. Amongst them all – the parts of my sum – I am a writer. My family accepts that, and supports it, as do I.

My Muse is still happy to tease me, to call me at all hours of the night and day but, ultimately, knows that I will always be Hers, no matter how much time I get to spend with Her; She no longer watches the clock.

As long as I continue to write for Her, of course.

And I will.

– Jay

*I was talking about a short story, you filthy minded people! ;)

What You Need to Know about Shared Worlds

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 Erik Scott de Bie is a speculative fiction author and game designer who has been working in shared worlds since he started publishing in 2005. His latest Forgotten Realms novel is Shadowbane, about a vigilante paladin in a city of thieves, and the sequel, Eye of Justice, comes out this fall. He can be found at his website erikscottdebie.com or on Twitter @erikscottdebie.

 

Shared worlds are everywhere. From serial fantasy novels to decades-long comic book franchises to long-running TV shows and wildly successful movie dynasties, there are certain characters and worlds that people just love to experience. Fans love to see new spins on iconic characters that honor the old continuity. And yes, fans love to hate shared world writing that diverges from the established canon or takes a beloved character in a strange and unexpected direction.

 

 

Why do authors write in Shared Worlds?

 

For one thing, it’s awesome, particularly if you’re a fan. I’ve been reading and gaming in the Forgotten Realms since grade school, so I jumped at the chance to write novels and sourcebooks in it when I grew up. If you’re a particular fan of Buffy, or Star Wars, etc, writing for the IP is a major win.

Second, if you don’t have the time or energy to build your own world/setting, or if world-building just isn’t your thing, a shared world gives you a proven framework in which to set your story. The flip-side of that is that it’s easy to dismiss your work as derivative or unoriginal, because it’s based on a pre-existing setting.

Third, there’s the money to consider. Shared Worlds usually have their own built-in fanbase, and when you publish a novel in one of those settings, you already have an audience. For this reason, shared world pieces tend to bring in more money than the majority of non-shared world pieces. On the flipside, your audience is also somewhat limited, as shared world fans tend to follow in-world writing. If and when you want to craft original fiction, you’ll probably have a limited fanbase that follows you.

 

How does one write Good Shared World fiction?

Every piece of shared world fiction is sculpted by two distinct and opposite forces: the drive to create and the drive to incorporate. When writing in a shared world, you as an author find yourself constantly walking a fairly tight line between the two impulses, and hitting the proper balance is how you get the best stuff.

‘Creating’ implies making up your own story with your own characters that just happens to occur in a shared world. This usually requires distance from the rest of the world, so as not to cross canon. R.A. Salvatore is famous for setting his iconic Icewind Dale series as far as possible from anything else in the Forgotten Realms to avoid stepping on toes. Star Wars: The Old Republic takes place long before the popular series so as to go whatever way it wants. The downside to this impulse is that established fans of the setting aren’t necessarily going to achieve the setting recognition you’re looking for, and you’re susceptible to the “this doesn’t feel like the IP” criticism.

‘Incorporating’ implies that you are taking as much established lore about the setting as possible to tell a story that is shaped by the story of the IP. Ed Greenwood’s classic novel Spellfire was written specifically to showcase the Forgotten Realms, crafting a story that incorporates as many villainous organizations, intrigues, and NPCs as feasible for the book. The movie Watchmen stuck really close to the source material (Alan Moore’s classic graphic novel), refusing to take much license with the characters. The downside to this impulse is threefold:

1) It’s often a LOT of research (the Forgotten Realms, Star Wars, Star Trek, etc., have literally hundreds of novels/TV shows full of canon), 2) You open yourself to the criticism of “not being creative enough,” and 3) If you get it wrong, fans are going to eviscerate you on the internet and in reviews. Also, if your story is too idiosyncratic, and you need to be a hardcore lore wonk to understand it, it’s not going to have popular appeal.

 

So what’s a writer to do?

Find a good balance. Tell a story that stands on its own, but stays true to the canon. The lore should be there for hardcore fans to pick up, but also subtle enough that newbies can ignore it and roll with the narrative. Honor and embrace what else is going on in the setting, and let your story grow organically from the established lore without shoehorning your own story in.

Generally, respect the shared world, do your research, tell a damn good story, and you’re golden.

Death to the Chainmail Bikini

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James L. Sutter is the author of the novel Death’s Heretic, which Barnes & Noble ranked #3 on its list of the Best Fantasy Releases of 2011, as well as the co-creator of the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game campaign setting. His short stories have appeared in such publications as Escape Pod, Podcastle, Starship Sofa, Apex Magazine, and the #1 Amazon bestseller Machine of Death, and his anthology Before They Were Giants pairs the first published stories of SF luminaries with new interviews and writing advice from the authors themselves. In addition, James has written numerous roleplaying game supplements and is the Fiction Editor for Paizo Publishing. For more information, check out jameslsutter.com or follow him on twitter at @jameslsutter.

If you work in science fiction and fantasy publishing, you’ve undoubtedly heard the phrase “Just put some breasts on the cover.”

This is certainly true in the gaming industry, where I work. There’s no question that RPGs have traditionally traded heavily on the Frazetta/Vallejo side of fantasy art, with curvaceous women wearing postage-stamp outfits and “armor” containing less metal than your average soup spoon. After all, we invented the chainmail bikini. This T&A approach to book covers is something everyone in the gaming industry–and publishing in general–should be more than familiar with at this point.

In recent years, however, there’s been a lot more debate about the practice. While most folks acknowledge that sex sells, a wide chunk of the audience finds the preponderance of scantily clad women on SF covers offensive. Discussions around these “cheesecake” covers often transition into morality, philosophy, and social dynamics. What does it say to your readers if the only women on your covers are soft-core porn stars (regardless of their actual personality within the book)? They become about gender bias and balance, equality, the male gaze, body image, and many other important social issues.

If you haven’t already determined that there are some major problems around gender in the SF&F publishing world, a quick Google search should yield a hundred authors better equipped to discuss the problem than I am. But even if you aren’t interested in such issues, you should know they’re out there, and that they’re both important and worth discussing.

Got it? Good. Because I’m going to ignore all that and talk economics instead. All too often in these discussions, I see people jump straight to the philosophical side of things and miss a key point:

Cheesecake covers can hurt sales.

Wait, what? How can I possibly say such a thing? After all, the only thing we all agreed on in the paragraphs above was that sex sells. It’s, like, a truism or something, right?

True–sex sells, at least in a sense. People like looking at attractive people. But I’m not talking about the fact that a character on a book is attractive, or wearing flattering clothing. I’m talking about the stereotypical, over-the-top objectification covers that editors and publishers are talking about it when they say, “Hey, can we get some more [choose one: boobs, breasts, tits, ass, hooters, knockers, skin] on this thing?”

Part of the reason this strategy is so prevalent is that, once upon a time, it worked great. Many of the folk who extol its virtues are influential industry old-timers whose opinions calcified in a previous era. For them–and those they teach–science fiction and fantasy are still “stories for boys,” and the “more boobs” strategy seems like common sense when combined with their own childhood memories of buying SF novels solely for the hot babes on the covers. (Perhaps afterward they snuck off to ogle their fathers’ Playboys, or a well-thumbed National Geographic or Sears catalogue.)

Contrast that with today’s teens. These days, every pubescent boy with an internet connection can live like the most depraved of Roman emperors. If he has a hankering to see some naked ladies, he can do a three-second image search and come up with hundreds of millions of them, in every size, shape, and color.

And you think you’re going to capture his attention with a girl in a chainmail swimsuit?

But okay, fine–let’s say that your targeted teenage boy looses reception long enough that he happens to look up from the high-definition lesbian orgy he’s watching on his iPhone, and his eyes chance to fasten on your book. He sees your bikini-warrior, and thinks, “What novelty! A semi-nude woman in an unnatural pose, with proportions rarely found in life! Perhaps the words inside are equally diverting!” He buys it. Congrats–you’ve targeted the horny teenage male market and won.

Now let’s see what markets you’re losing.

Women

Remember women? Those things you were putting on the books in order to attract the boys? Well, it turns out they buy science fiction and fantasy, too! In fact, as studies have shown us over and over, women buy far more books than men do, and make up a huge portion of the SF-buying audience (especially in the fantasy markets most likely to employ chainmail bikinis). Even gaming, traditionally seen as the most male-dominated part of the SF industry, is losing that particular self-fulfilling definition–in video games, the audience is already close to gender parity.

I’ve talked to quite a few women about the cheesecake cover phenomenon, and the reactions inevitably run from head-shaking disapproval to angry rants. Even if the women don’t take such covers as a sign of everything that’s wrong with the industry and society in general, there’s nothing there for them. An image of a sex-toy woman doesn’t say “strong, confident female character”–which, incidentally, is what most of the female SF readers I know are looking for. Instead, the problem is that cheesecake covers are honest about what they are–they say “I was created specifically to appeal to the sexual appetites of teenage straight boys.” It’s a big No Girls Allowed sign on the side of the clubhouse. And more often than not, female readers are content to oblige, preferring to take their money elsewhere.

Feminists

Note that this is not the same category as “women.” That’s because there are a lot of male feminists out there as well–guys who have strong opinions on gender and its interactions with SF&F, and who are likely to see such cheesecake covers as a regressive move that they aren’t interested in supporting.

Censors, Self- and Otherwise

Grandma and Grandpa are out shopping for books for little Timmy, who loves stories of heroes and derring-do. Which do you think they’re more likely to give him for Christmas: the one with the cool dragon on the cover, or the one where the focus is some lady’s exposed ta-tas? The same logic applies to churches, schools, libraries, folks who don’t want to be embarrassed by reading your book on the bus–all of these are folks who would otherwise have been happy to buy your book.

“Literary” Readers

People who read a lot like to think of themselves as intelligent and cultured, and SF readers are no different. When they see a mostly naked lady on the cover of something (or at least something that’s not being sold as erotica), many of them presume that the book doesn’t hold a lot of intellectual merit. You’re clearly playing to the lowest common denominator and felt that you needed to use sex to sell the book, so obviously the story itself can’t have much to offer sophisticated readers like them–right?

Immersionists

These are the folks who hate the cheesecake covers because the outfits are impractical, anachronistic, or otherwise not consistent with the world the story has created. They value detail, logic, and suspension of disbelief above all other things. Their problem with that suit of armor having a boob window–the technical term for any gap in armor designed solely to show off cleavage–isn’t that it’s demeaning, it’s that it leaves them open to chest-stabbing! Especially in gaming, you’ll find a large number of people who despise cheesecake art for what they feel is a betrayal of the character and the story, even decoupled from any real-world ramifications.

Add together all the people who might fall into one of those categories. Those are the potential buyers you’re losing with a cheesecake cover. Regardless of how you feel about gender issues–even if you’re one of those unfortunate Rush Limbaugh fans who call any woman who speaks her mind a “feminazi”–it should still be clear that cheesecake covers may hurt your bottom line more than they help.

Lest you think this is all just theory, allow me to back up my conjecture with some rock-solid, totally anecdotal evidence!

I work on the creative team for Paizo Publishing, makers of the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game. All of us at the company spend a lot of time on the message boards, and one of the perennial thread topics that surfaces again and again is people being frustrated by the portrayal of women in fantasy art. It’s something that folks care deeply about–and which affects their purchasing decisions.

I’ll be the first to say that Paizo isn’t scared of using sex appeal in our art — if you want cheesecake, you can find it here. But the thing that makes me proud is the fact that we try to play to all crowds. There are scantily clad women — but also scantily clad men. There are also men and women with all their clothes on. There are women in corsets, but also women in armor. Women who primp, and women who would knock you down and steal your sword for suggesting they out to show some skin. Out of our three most famous female characters, Seoni has a traditional cheesecake outfit, Merisiel has a reasonable (if snug) adventuring outfit, and Kyra wears layers of thick robes that hide everything but her face. All three of them have devoted fan followings. By giving folk a range of choices, we broaden our appeal, earn goodwill, enhance the verisimilitude and variety of our products–and hedge our bets.

I’m not interested in taking sex out of media. Frankly, I have no problem with nudity, and find it bizarre that I can publish art of graphic beheadings without anyone blinking, but need to be careful about nipples. Even after all the points I’ve made above, I’ll still continue to push for a wide range of art in our books–some characters are meant to be sexy, as are some products. My point, however, is this: sex sells, but it’s not a panacea. Rather, it’s one tool among many. And if you’re blindly following the old-fashioned advice that a scantily clad lady can sell anything in science fiction and fantasy, you may want to reconsider how such “common sense” knowledge actually plays out with your audience–all of your audience.

Perchance to Dream: Tapping Your Infinite Creativity

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John R. Fultz is the author of the novels Seven Princes and the forthcoming Seven Kings, both from Orbit.  A native of Kentucky, he now lives in the North Bay Area, California. 

All human beings are also dream beings. Dreaming ties all mankind together. –Kerouac

It occurs to me that the act of writing, especially in the fantastic and speculative genres, is very much like the act of dreaming.

When we sleep, our subconscious mind constructs vignettes, narratives, adventures, terrors, and dramas for our dreaming mind to inhabit. The architectures of our deepest selves come bursting to life, and even though we sometimes feel at the mercy of our dreams, it’s worth recognizing that it is actually we, the Dreamers, who create our dreams.

In this respect, everyone is a writer. A writer of dreams, if nothing else. Scientists tell us that dreaming is an essential human function–those who cannot dream eventually go mad. Dreaming allows us to confront our deepest fears and desires, often without realizing that we are doing exactly that. It’s as if something essentially human inside us is writing stories that are crucial to our spiritual, mental, and emotional health.

We are born dreamers; in that same vein, we are born storytellers. What could be more human than telling stories? It’s one of our oldest and most primal skills…from fireside grunts to cave drawings to stone tablets and right on up to paperbacks and best-selling fiction.

The same deeply ingrained creativity that subconsciously creates dreams also creates the stories we write in our conscious hours. I know writers who have dreamed entire novels before (or while) writing them. Robert Silverberg’s SON OF MAN was written in this way. I’m sure the same has been done with short stories. How many of you reading this have turned the nugget of a dream into a full-fledged story–or a whole book?

I am accustomed to sleep and in my dreams to imagine the same things that lunatics imagine when awake. –Descartes

There is a definite, if mysterious, link between our ability to create convincing, immersive, powerful dreams and our ability to write fully realized fiction. In effect, when we write we are dreaming while awake. Our conscious mind shapes, hones, and transcribes these dreams, but it is the infinite font of creative consciousness that dwells deep inside all of us that serves as the soil in which these stories grow.

In other words, every story or book you write is a combined effort: the conscious and subconscious mind working in tandem to produce the desired results. Often, writers find themselves on a journey of discovery. Many of us know where we’re going, but are surprised at how we end up “getting there.” We tap into our subconcious–which taps into the great Idea Pool–the Universal Consciousness–Jung called it the Collective Unconscious–and we “fish” for ideas, scenes, plots, characters, entire WORLDS. We are the miners of dreams, turning raw stones into diamonds with our dedicated efforts.

When we write, we dream. When we dream, we write–if only for an audience of one.

Isaac Asimov once said “Writing, to me, is simply thinking through my fingers.” I submit that writing, for us all, is actually DREAMING through our fingers. Undistilled dreamstuff, flowing like lifeblood from the center of our being along the conduits of our arms, into our fingertips and so into the keyboard (or pen). That immortal flow continues, right onto the printed page (or screen), and directly into the heart-minds of our readers.

Therein lies the magic and majesty of the written word. It’s how we share our dream-visions across space and time. It can even provide us with a certain kind of immortality; the writer’s words often live far longer than the writer.

Dream no small dreams for they have no power to move the hearts of men. –Goethe

When I’m deep into the writing process on a novel (or even a story), my conscious mind is so involved with the story I’m weaving that when I go to sleep my dreaming mind often takes over. I write stories over and over in my dreams… often watching them play out before me in part or whole. Sometimes I emerge from this state of dream-writing and I’ve suddenly solved a problem in the narrative, or “caught” a great idea that seemingly came from nowhere. When your mind is in “high gear” crafting stories, it doesn’t want to stop–even when you sleep.

All of this culminates in some valuable advice for writers: Pay attention to your dreams.

Listen to that Sleeping Narrator because it is your direct line to the source of infinite creativity. If you’re having trouble with a story, try sleeping on it. Let your unconscious partner, your Sleeping Narrator step in and give you a hand. You can also try some transcendental meditation for tapping creativity…but that’s a subject for another day.

Dream On, Brave Dreamers…

Man is a genius when he is dreaming. –Kurosawa