Word Wenches

Translations, Organization, Home Office

From Pat Rice:

Still running behind and just had a chance to read fellow wench blogs, so instead of daily comments as I usually do, I’ll try to remember everything covered and reply on here.  (So, I’m cheating—want to make an issue of it?)

Mary Jo wrote about foreign translations.  I have, upon occasion, made the mistake of giving copies of mine to people who spoke the language—Chinese and German come immediately to mind.  The echoing silence from the recipients said more than I need to know. I am trying very hard not to wonder if I’ve badly insulted them by giving them pornographic trash.  And then I wonder if I really ought to donate all those old copies to libraries per their requests.  Could they really want something that badly translated?  Maybe I should be more optimistic and hope that the translations are really quite good and people just don’t know how to adequately describe their reaction!

Loretta’s organizational crisis is something we can all relate to.  I used to pride myself on how organized I was.  I had a place for everything because I’d never be able to find anything unless I did.  And then, as I worked less and less with accounting and more and more with writing, I started slipping over to the dark side.  Snapshots are no longer placed in neat little albums and labeled. Heck, they’re all on my hard drive somewhere in some disorganized tangle of names that look like AZ24926244224.  I see them flashing across my screensaver and wonder where in heck the computer found them because I surely can’t.  I have a photo printer, but why add to the chaos by printing them? 

When we moved last year, the movers stacked all my paper files in boxes. The file cabinets are still sitting empty in the basement, and all the files are still in boxes.  Maybe I should give them a “pull” date, like bad cheese, after which I have to throw them out. 

I can’t reply to Edith’s post because she’d probably fly out here and personally kill me if I tell her I don’t get colds.  But I will say that I continued working in my accounting office long past the time I needed to just so I could have someone to talk to every day.  Working at home can be danged lonely, and I have to make appointments with friends just to get out of the house.  I can’t say that I miss the daily commute because I used to walk to work.  <G>  And I’m a Leo.  I rather enjoyed the excuse of work to buy new clothes.  Now, I only buy them for conferences.  Maybe I ought to go to more meetings and conferences. (Right, after just admitting I’m so far behind I don’t even have time to write a blog!)

Which, naturally, takes us back to Susan/Miranda’s subject of deadlines. I don’t do the traditional deadline hell that Loretta and Susan/Miranda talk about. I stress very badly if there is any danger whatsoever that a book won’t be turned in on time, so when I sign contracts, I make certain that I stretch the deadline date to the full limit I can get away with.  And even then, I’ve usually written half the book or more before the contract is signed.  There are a lot of disadvantages to this system that I won’t try to explain, but it saves me from the one neurosis about this business guaranteed to push me over the brink and freeze my creativity faster than dry ice. 

So when I’m rushed for time, it’s because of deadlines beyond my control—copyedits and galleys that arrive just as I’m leaving town, revisions that never end, family crises, proposals I have to send before Mercury goes retrograde (really, I can’t control retrograde, can I?!), and Tuesdays that insist on arriving before I’m ready. 

And because I seem to have all of the above on my desk right now, I’m going to hurry and post this and hope for the best. Before I go, I want to leave the floor open to questions from our readers.  We really do run into these time crunches, and questions you’ve asked go into a file for those days (providing we’re organized enough to find the file when the day arrives!).  So if there’s anything you’ve ever wished to ask a wench, please do!  You’d be surprised at how happy we are to have questions to answer.

Wait 'til the Midnight Hour

From Susan/Miranda:

This blog has been online long enough now that you’ve probably heard all of us griping one way or another about deadlines. We all have ‘em, like death and taxes, and they don’t seem to be any more avoidable, either.

And I think we all must sound like the worst middle school students in the world, struggling to stay awake on Sunday night and hoping our markers don’t go dry or the glue-sticks run out before we finish that science project poster on “The Pennsylvania White Tail Dear: Forest Friend of Deadly Foe?” that we shouldn’t have put off until the last minute like our mothers said.

You know, Procrastinators R Us.

But we do have our reasons, and they’re not that we’ve squandered the last two weeks sprawled on the den couch eating Nacho Cheetos and playing Halo or The Sims II: Open for Business, either. Deadlines are supposed to be carved in stone, or at least written in blood into our contracts. They’re not. No matter what your best intentions are, Stuff interferes. As Edith said yesterday, there are no sick days for writers. Susan/Sarah had to cope with the guys hammering and sawing and generally crashing about to install her new floor, and there’s another day or two or three of writing gone. For me, the season for my daughter’s travel ice hockey has already begun, which shoots my weekends for anything beyond burning up another tank of gas.

Yet there are plenty of deadline disasters coming from those editorial offices in New York, too. Sometimes, as in Loretta’s case, a publication date is moved up: generally a good thing, until the hapless writer realizes the deadline’s been moved up, too. Sometimes an editor is going to a conference/vacation/delivery room/other job, and if the writer wants to be paid before the next millennium, it’s advised that the manuscript arrives before the editor leaves. Sometimes it’s another part of the publishing puzzle that has been dropped on the floor for a week or two, and we’re expected to make it up –– those calls that run “Gosh, I just got the line edits for your next book, and instead of those usual two weeks we generally give you, it looks like your changes are due back to us day after tomorrow. That’s okay, isn’t it?” It’s not, but somehow we generally we do it.

Which is probably a lot of our problems. We’re all Nerdy Good Girls. We don’t like to say no. We also have a certain amount of Wonder Women in our collective gene pools, that part of us that agrees to foolishness like simultaneous contracts and an extra little novella. Whenever you hear a writer brashly talking about “oh, I can knock that out”, it’s generally a good guess that the only thing that will finally get knocked out is the poor shlub at the keyboard.

All of which is a nice way of admitting that yes, I’m the Wench currently in the deepest ring of Deadline Hell. (Do you think it was any accident that the Inferno was so thoroughly described by Dante, A Writer?) I’m in that really bad place where I calculate how many words written against how much story and how many days left, and only feel black despair at the total. My work “days” are beginning before breakfast and lasting far, far into the night. I’m actually looking forward to driving five hours to an ice rink in distant Long Island next weekend because it means I won’t be typing.

Still, if I’m honest, I’m not sure that writers can claim deadlines all to themselves. Life is full of deadlines of one sort or another, from the frivolous (“Must lose ten pounds before reunion”) to the most solemn (“Must reach hospital before gravely ill family member dies.”) Deadlines work hand in hand with goals, too, and the very human desire to finish what’s been started. A farmer has from April until September to sow, grow, and harvest his crops. A woman has nine months to produce her baby. All of us, if we’re fortunate, are granted seventy years, more or less, to accomplish whatever we wish to accomplish.

So, you’ve heard enough WordWenchWhining from us. What kind of deadlines are you facing? And are you doing better than us at meeting them?

WACHOO!

Sunday, it's a Sunday!

So, it's Edith! Sniffing and sniveling.
I've had the most dreadful cold of my generation this week!
Honking, sneezling, wheezing and coughing.
Autumn = allergies + a cold or flu = Chaos.
But I'm on a deadline.
So how did I write?

With my fingers, which were unaffected.
The book scrolls in my head, untouched by germs.
I write on.

I work at home.
I am my own boss. So I can't call in sick. I can't tell me that my grandmother died.

Do you think it's a lark to work at home? Most people I meet think so.

HA!

I can't ask for pity from my coworkers.
I can't look for sympathy, because my only coworker is my dear Daisy. And whatever happens - fire, flood or famine: Daisy knows when it's time for her to eat, go for a walk, or play with Mommy.
And nothing gets in the way of a dog's timetable.
I can't ask someone else to cover for me either. (unless I need some barking done.)

It's true I don't have to wear panty hose, every day or any day.
There's no commutation costs, and lunch is cheaper.
And it's been so long since I had to "dress for work" that by now I feel like I'm in drag when I wear a skirt.

But I can't call in sick.
I can't make excuses.

Could you be as hard on yourself as a tough but reasonable boss would be?
A writer has to be.
And in spite of all the problems, I must confess - it suits me.

Knowing that, I'd love to know: what about you? What would you prefer? Work at home, or away?

Living in Chaos

From Loretta:

Last time, you remember, the refrigerator broke while I was trying to finish my manuscript.  The new one is coming, allegedly, on Tuesday.  This means taking all the refrigerator magnets, cartoons, comics, post cards, and appointment cards off the old one, and deciding what to dump and what to keep.  As you are all aware, there are various approaching to dealing with accumulated stuff.   We Wenches have been discussing privately our methods for organizing--or not--our pictures, and author groups often talk about what to do with old manuscripts, foreign editions, etc.

Organizing is a problem for a great many of us, authors or not.  Whole shelves of bookstores are devoted to the topic.  TV shows, e.g., Clean Sweep, entertain us with other peoples’ chaos.  Excess stuff is a major problem in the U.S., much to the mystification of humans in less affluent/wasteful quarters of the globe.

A few years ago, inspired by What Not To Wear, I went through my closet and threw out almost everything: clothes that didn’t fit, clothes I’d been holding onto since college, even high school.  The experience was liberating.  Now, if I buy something new to wear, I get rid of something old.  This rule is not hard to follow.  Well, except for the shoes, but I’m working on that.

The rule definitely doesn’t work with books.  And it doesn’t work well with papers--the volumes and volumes of manuscripts, business papers, and personal papers one accumulates, especially if one works from home, as I have done, at least part-time, since graduating from college.

Naturally, since I do work from home, my house contains more than the normal quantity of file cabinets, and I am a pretty good filer.  The trouble is, those files go back as far as my old wardrobe.  Every year, as I finish a manuscript, I resolve to (a) clean up the mess I’ve made in the throes of deadline and/or revisions and (b) go through at least one file drawer--or one box in the basement--and clear it out.  Usually, I make a start at this project, and always, things get bogged down.  It’s much harder to decide about papers, I find, than about clothes.

It is, at least, if you stop to think about it.  I strongly suspect that many of those boxes in the basement do not require much thinking about.  Do I need to keep my correspondence since the eighth grade, and all my early efforts at writing?  There’s sentiment, yes.  But when will I have time to sit down and muse over my younger self?  Certainly I see no reason to keep it for posterity.  Posterity will do just fine without my adolescent angst and ramblings.  It’ll do fine, in fact, without anything that isn’t between book covers.  The books represent the best of what I can do as a writer.  The rest is...detritus, some of it downright embarrassing.  The trouble is, getting rid of it isn’t as easy as it used to be.

In 1860, as Charles Dickens was starting GREAT EXPECTATIONS, and getting ready to move, he burned all his correspondence.  Yes, all of it.  Baskets and baskets of letters from famous literary figures and not so famous people and probably the butcher and baker and maybe even the lawyers.  It all got dumped onto a big bonfire. I don’t know about your part of the world, but we haven’t been allowed to burn stuff in our yards in Massachusetts since the 1980s.  This means that anyone with a concern for privacy has to put her papers through a shredder.  The volume of papers I’m considering will want one of those giant shredders you park in the driveway.  Otherwise, it could take months to get through the stuff.  Maybe years.

Today, as I prepare to work on revisions that, it turns out, must be done at faster than warp speed, I’m thinking about Mary Jo’s comment to last Saturday’s post:  “I look at the mess and think that it would really be easier to write another book.”  It’s easier to do revisions, too.  In fact, I’d rather write scripts about grinding wheels (as I once did, and actually enjoyed) than try to bring order to this chaos about me.

Today we ended up saving almost all of the refrigerator magnets, the various comics and cartoons I’d cut out, and post cards going back to the year we bought the house.  One of these days, maybe, we’ll throw it all out.  The mess in my office remains, but I’ve got revisions to do.  Then I’m hoping to take a vacation.  And when I get back, well, it’ll be time to start the next book.

Meanwhile, hope springs eternal that one of these days, I’ll unburden my life--or the basement at least--of the detritus.  Any suggestions?  How do you do it?  Do you do it?

Romances Round the World

by Mary Jo

Wenchling Talpianna sent me the link to this very interesting article, which compares American and British styles of cover art.  (Thank you, Tal!)  http://tinyurl.com/zkku7  Most of the examples are from fantasy and science fiction, but even if you don’t read those genres, it’s still interesting to see the differences. 

The general conclusion is that that British book covers tend toward simplicity and minimalism, while American covers go for more action and color.  The examples support that, and really, it’s not surprising.  American culture seldom shys away from excess. <G>

It’s not possible to do a comparison of British and American romance cover styles because there really isn’t a British romance genre that is equivalent to the American.  From what I’ve heard, British publishing tends to be dignified and male, which means that it hasn’t much use for the mushy emotionalism of romance.  Girl cooties, you know.  The exception is Mills & Boon, which produces ‘cookie cutter stories for shopgirls.’ 

I don’t know any British publishing executives so I can't say if the conventional wisdom about their opinions is correct (and I did recently meet one British female editor actively shopping for American romances publish in Britain).  However, I’ve lived in Britain and read the newspapers and it does seem that romantic fiction doesn’t get much respect there.  Heaven knows that American romance readers and writers often complain that we don’t get enough respect, but the situation is worse across the pond. 

Note: I don’t know any profession that feels it gets enough respect.  This is a theme one sees in all kinds of trade publications in all kinds of professions.  Apparently the world is running a respect deficit.  Except for nurses—I recently read that they are the most respected group in America, and that’s fine by me!  But I digress.

Very few American romance writers are published in Britain unless they’ve become mainstream bestsellers.  And yet the readership is there.  This blog has regular British readers, and over the years, I’ve received plenty of fan e-mails from Britain, among other places.  In the day of the internet, sophisticated readers all over the world can find romance novels, though shipping charges make buying American romances an expensive proposition.  I’ve heard from readers in Argentina and Venezuala and Caribbean islands. South Africa and Australia and India and Singapore.  Holland and Germany and Spain. 

The ones who contact me are almost always reading in English, which means a high level of education if English isn’t their first language.  I’m always impressed by their diligence in hunting down American books.  And I also think there must be millions of readers around the world who would equally enjoy American romances if they could get their hands on copies.  (The illustrations for this blog are for Spanish editions of my books, largely because I found a very well done Spanish language fan site that had a lot of the cover images, which saved me from scanning covers.)

The fall of Communism in Eastern Europe led to an explosion of rights buying of American romances.  Once I read some intellectual who deplored that instead of reading real literature as they did under the Soviet system, newly liberated Russians just wanted to buy tacky romances.  The market speaks!  And yes, Russian publishers bought quite a few of my tacky romances. <g>

Foreign rights are a big business.  Countries that are too small to support a sizable publishing industry can buy language specific rights to American books, including romances, for a fairly modest amount.  (Very modest in the case of small language groups.)  The publishers have to pay for translation and production costs, but in the end, they can produce books by first rate American writers in Bulgarian or Norwegian or Czech. (My Czech editions are published under the name Mary Jo Putneyova. <g>)

I regularly think how lucky I am to be a native English speaker, with the largest potential audience in the world.  The large market here can nourish a lot of potential writers.  There must be very talented people in countries that are simply too small to support writers in their native language, so they may never have much scope to exercise their potential.

We authors cash the foreign rights checks, and keep our fingers crossed that the translations are good ones.  Several of my early traditional Regencies were published in Germany as skinny little magazines that couldn’t possibly contain all my golden prose.  I’ve since learned that publishers often reserve the right to cut to a particular length.  Again, one hopes it was done well. 

Once I traded some information with a German born writer of American Regencies.  She read one of my German editions and reported back that if any of her books were published in Germany so that her family could read them, she hoped she got the same translator.  This was comforting. 

Incidentally, American romance cover illustrators also have agents who sell European rights to their work, so it’s not unusual to have a foreign edition show up at your door with a cover that was on a different American book.  The book on the left, the Spanish version of Thunder and Rose, was the cover for Laura Kinsale’s The Shadow and The Star, and I’ve had Johanna Lindsey covers and other such illustrations.  It’s all part of the fun. 

The one company that publishes romance all around the world is Harlequin, of course.  Harlequin writers get the fun of seeing their work published in many languages, and they get to compare the cover art styles, too.  I’ve heard that the bestselling Harlequin lines in much of the world are the oldest and most traditional lines, Harlequin Presents and Harlequin Romance because the characters do the best job of reflection the reality of many women’s lives. 

Yet despite Harlequin’s best efforts, I suspect that zillions more romances could be sold around the world if they were readily available.  For years, I’ve had a dream where a bookstore would have single copies of a whole lot of books.  Customers could browse to find what they wanted, then go to a production kiosk and punch in the book’s code.  Five minutes later, the kiosk would have produced a bound, printed volume.  This would make millions of books available around the world at much lower prices because there wouldn’t be the shipping costs.  It would also mean instant gratification—instead of having to wait for days or weeks for a special order to arrive, you could walk out of the store with the book right away.

The technology to make my vision come true isn’t here yet, but it’s getting closer.  In the meantime, all over the world, dedicated readers are looking for stories of love, challenge, and commitment.             

Mary Jo

Warning: Densely Populated Bookshelves

Susan Sarah here, after a particularly trying couple of weeks, and so it continues...this week there’s some guys working downstairs to install hardwood floors. Our little Westie, otherwise totally adorable, natch, likes to show our two geriatric parakeets that she is The Boss--long story, but trust me, a Westie with a power issue is not good for carpeting. Ahem. So the old carpet came out and hardwood is going in this time, and she’d better not puddle on that.... Anyway, it’s incredibly noisy in my house this week. Who can think up a blog on such a day?? Who can think? Luckily I had drafted a blog on research weeks ago, and I’ll dust that off and trot it out.

Did someone say research sources? Always a good topic. Susan Miranda sparked a discussion of research sources earlier this week, so I’ll return to that from a different angle, and present a basic template for a writer’s research library.

As the resident Scottish-historical author among the Word Wenches, I have written more medieval Scottish-set books than 18th and 19th century (though I’m working to catch up!), so some of the basic sources that you all discussed, which are faves for many of you but somewhat new to me, though I’m learning fast (the next batch of Sarah Gabriel novels will be set in early 19th c. Scotland, so I’ve been diligently researching and having fun in a new era). 
Knowing the expertise on this blog, among Wenches and Wenchlings alike, I won’t presume to advise on Regency research matters.

As I was looking through my own shelves for some book titles to offer up for the discussion earlier this week (Mrs. Beeton is there, as are English Country Houses, Jane Austen’s Town and Country, as well as the Mark Girouard books and Emily Hendrickson’s fantabuloso Regency Reference Book/CD, to name just a few), I realized many of these would be repetitive suggestions. So I thought I’d play around with the broader categories found in every good home research library. Some of you are historical writers just starting out with your research, and madly compiling resources, while some are more experienced historical authors with bookshelves jampacked to capacity, still madly compiling resources (it’s an addiction, I know, cuz I have it).

In the course of writing a book, I begin with general sources (like histories of the place and time) and work my way through the basics (such as costumes, names, social customs) and the specifics (whatever special subjects are treated in the book, like specific historical situations, law, crafts, magic, gypsies, hawking, ships, mountaineering, whatever may be needed). As I go along, certain sources will prove so invaluable to a certain story that I’ll keep them nearby for months, while others get skimmed quickly and tossed aside (or even set back on the shelf!).  And of course it doesn’t have to be in that order, though it helps. Sometimes I’ll start out with a specific source that’s so fascinating that I want to set a story around it

Research is a solid foundation of historical fiction, but the story’s the thing, and the characters. Only a small percentage of the research I do actually ends up in the book. Some of the research reading sparks ideas for plot and characters, and some informs the writing to become a general and reliable backdrop. The bulk of the research is for me–I want to fully comprehend the world of my characters, not inundate the reader with all that I’ve learned. Saturation and immersion is beneficial for the author in the building stages of the book, though too much historical detail can obscure the story. It’s a balancing thing, and requires an intuitive feel for what’s enough, what’s too little, and what’s too much.

But where to start? If you’re lazy like me, you want the books right there–turn around, grab the book, look something up, get right back to the writing. If your research covers a more obscure topic and sources are not widely available, even on the web (I recently finished a book set in Viking Scotland, for example), tracking down some sources in used bookstores or getting them through interlibrary loan is a good idea–and again, you’ll have them right there as you write.

After years of happily accumulating sources, here are some categories of research books to own, or have quick access to–a general list, not too specific, so that you can fill in the blanks for your own needs and interests....

–General histories and broad surveys that provide overviews of whatever time period you’re interested in writing about
–Costume books, tons of ‘em, all varieties – there never enough costume books!
–Name books (also never enough! I keep a couple of favorites on my desk)
–Encyclopedic volumes of the time period and era, like the London Encyclopedia, or Keay’s Encyclopedia of Scotland
–Encyclopedical sources from that specific time period, if available (early editions of Brittanica can be found in good libraries or used; and Encyclopedia Brittanica has an 18th c. edition reprint)
–Languages and other dictionaries (like A History of Swearing)
–Foreign language dictionaries (French, Latin, Italian, Gaelic, whatever your story might need)
–The OED, or Oxford English Dictionary (you can find it in good library collections, or buy it new, find a used copy, subscribe online at www.oed.com , or borrow a friend’s copy if they’ll give it up)
–Thesaurus and/or The Synonym Finder
–Biographies of people who lived in that era, or whose lives could be models and sources of information
–Women’s studies and studies of women’s roles in society and history
–Myths, legends, and folktales
–Songs and poetry from that era
–Literature written during that time period
–Arts and specific crafts that may appear in your story (weaving, spinning, sculpture, painting, stonecarving, etc.)
–Clan histories for Scottish research (Moncrieff’s Highland Clans, R.R. MacIan, others)
–Herbals, books on healing, and medical histories
–Domestic subjects (Mrs. Beeton; cookbooks for the time period; crafts, books on servants and services, etc.)
–Information on specific skills, hobbies, and occupations (such as falconry, engineering, mountaineering, equestrian, ships, etc.)–you may need the history behind an occupation, or a how-to)
–Histories of architecture and interior design (The English Medieval House, The English Country House, Irish Georgian, etc.)
–Travelogues and travel books (like the AA series of British road books)
–Regional books (information on landscape, terrain, nature, plants, animals, seasons)
–Maps, lots of lovely maps, both historical and current for terrain, distances, place names (more AA, Ordnance Surveys, etc.)
–Place name books (these are fun to look through, and often very useful)

Did I forget anything?  Do you have any suggestions to add to this template?
There’s room for more lovely books on my shelves....

Susan Sarah

All's well that ends well?

It's Wednesday, so it's Jo again. My but the weeks go by past these days.

I was thinking about endings. Of books, you know. Or other things.

In the book STUMBLING UPON HAPPINESS, by Daniel Gilbert, he addresses the fact that the end can shape the memory of an experience. We've all experienced this. A good book can be ruined for us not necessarily by a sad ending, but by an ending that feels wrong. It can be the same with a movie. He cites Schindler's List, which he says was spoiled for him by the epilogue of real people. I can think of a film called OCTOBER SKY, which I loved, which was made special for me by the tidbits at the end on the real people whose story the movie told.

Gilbert cites an experiment in which people put their hands in 57 degree water for a minute, recording how painful it is. Experiments are full of that sort of stuff, and at least the human participants are usually volunteers. Then they were asked to put their hands in the same water for 90 seconds. Without their knowledge the water was warmed a bit during the last 30 secs. Afterward, they reported that the second experience had been less painful. Their hands had been in the colder water for the same length of time, and then in water that was still cold for even longer, but the slight warming seemed to color the whole experience.

Apparently in general, we tend to remember things at the end of a sequence rather than those at the beginning. A great end of a trip makes us forget all those snarl ups at the beginning. The bitter breakdown of a marriage trumps all the earlier good times.

This is why endings are so crucial, and endings are hard to write. We want to give our story exactly the right ending, but everything about endings is complicated. When does a story end? In a romance novel it could be said to end when the couple happily commit to a future together, but to stop there feels abrupt. The reader needs more time to savor it, so she wants to read on. There may be minor details to be tidied up, which is useful, but sometimes there isn't much, but still the book needs that little bit more. Then there are epilogues, but I won't even go there. At least, not today.

The sweet romances could often end with a kiss. Georgette Heyer often did. When they hadn't kissed, it was a significant event and a sign of commitment and often did feel right. So I think it's something to do with the sexier romances. The kiss didn't signal the end. Nor did sex. There were other practical and emotional barriers to overcome, but that ending point, that "Ah, Bisto!" (mostly for the UK readers here) is much harder to pin down.

We all have our own attitudes toward the right ending. I have a problem with any romance that ends without giving the couple a stable, desirable home. No wandering souls for me, please. No couples heading off to settle the wilderness, noble though that is. No dangling threads that suggest that their community will be hostile. And enough money to be comfortable, please.

What are your requiriments for a good ending for a romance novel? For one that satisfies?

Going back to movies, one good movie that was lessened by the ending for me was SERENITY. The movie from Josh Whedon's aborted TV series, FIREFLY? BTW, he shouldn't have called it SERENITY even though it has meaning. How could the SF action/adventure crowd get into that? Perhaps we need to blog on titles. I liked Firefly to an extent. I enjoyed the movie. Lots of great lines. But he blew it at the end.

Warning, warning! Incoming spoiler!!!!!!!!!!!

He killed Wash. That wasn't the real problem. It was an out-of-the-blue and pretty meaningless death. But then he made it all worse by having the rest of the team do the happy ending thing. Hello? Someone just died, you know. Perhaps you could put off bravely facing the future and finally having sex for just a while?

Content and pacing, both off. And I doubt I'll ever watch it again. Otherwise, I probably would have.

So, anything been made or ruined by an ending? Enquiring cabbage patch kids want to know.

Jo

Characterization

Pat Rice here:

Ulp, Tuesday sneaked up on me again!  Ornery critter, it just lies in wait and pounces when I’m buried under galleys and revisions and proposals and the weather is really too lovely to be indoors.

Since, by now, I assume our regular readers really don’t expect a scholarly treatise from me, I won’t disappoint today.  <G>  I’ll just blather the topic currently on my mind, which again happens to be an article in the Romance Writers Report: “Creating Dynamic Characters Through Authentic Dialogue” by Beth Morrow.

I read the article a few days ago so only the basics are nagging at the back of my mind. If memory serves me (and it seldom does), her essential premise was that men and women approach life differently, think differently, and thus, speak differently.  I don’t disagree, but I will take exception to the generality of saying that men don’t use flowery words but speak only in terms of goals and actions.  That might work for romance alpha heroes, but (1) not all men are alphas, and (2) I resent confining romance with still another limitation on the characters we create.

Since I write historicals, it’s easier for me to call upon historical figures as proof for my objections. Consider, if you will, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Lord Byron, Tolstoy… the list could go on forever.  Are these men who spoke only in terms of goals and actions? Was all their speech blunt and to the point? If so, where did all those words they wrote come from?  Did they only think in inventive, philosophical, and moral circles and just grunted aloud?  I don’t think so.

I haven’t had time to research the study to which the article referred, but I have to assume that percentages were involved.  It’s doubtful that any study has ever had 100% results on any topic anyone ever questioned.  Maybe 55% of the men in the study spoke directly, but that leaves 45% of the population quite willing to articulate feelings and thoughts and philosophize over possibilities.  Let’s face it, through history, women did not have the power to invent the church, our government, or technology.  Men had to think and puzzle and talk and philosophize to develop the world we live in today. I don’t think that was entirely accomplished by direct commands.

Certainly, if I want to write a military hero, I might give him a “voice” that commands and orders.  That would be perfectly in character with reader expectations.  But I do not want to be told that ALL military heroes are blunt Neanderthals who point and grunt. If I choose to write about a soldier at Waterloo who goes home to write poetry and woos his heroine with flowery flattery, I don’t want to be told he’s not masculine! 

Obviously, I have a problem with being told what to do.    My teachers often remarked upon this.  But I fear that the “dumbing down” of literature comes from our current marketing attempts to find the widest audience by generalizing our characters and stories to the narrowest reader expectations.  And contrarian that I am, the more I’m told how my characters should think and speak, the farther out on a limb I’m going to go to prove the genre wrong.

Does everyone out there want to read about alpha males who order people about but get their comeuppance in the end? Has this caricature become so ingrained in romance that readers can’t enjoy any deeper characterization? Am I alone out here on the end of this limb?

Faery Magic winner!

From Mary Jo:

Melissab, you're having a great week!  Not only did you get a list of great books to look for, but you won the contest for the free copy of Faery Magic!

I'll need your address to send you the book, of course.  Hmm, how best to do this?  If you click on my picture in the column on the left, that will take you to my website.  One of the headers is a link for e-mailing me.  You can use that for sending me your address.  Congratulations!

Mary Jo

From the Research Shelf

Last week, Melissab. Wrote:
"In order to improve my own writing process in this respect, I am trying to build a library of key reference books for romance set in 19th c. Britain. Would you or some of the other Word Wenches be willing to share your "must have" reference tools?"

We Wenches decided that was such a good question, we've turned it into a blog. Though we've visited this topic before earlier this year as "Research Books I Have Loved" (http://wordwenches.typepad.com/word_wenches/2006/06/research_books_.html#comments), it's always worth another discussion.

From Mary Jo:
One of my best reference texts is THE LONDON ENCYCLOPEDIA edited by Ben Weinreb and Christopher Hibbert. It's a big expensive book, but full of the most incredibly useful information. You can get the history of buildings and park, lighting, the police, street peddlers, etc, etc, etc. Worth the investment.

Another book I reach for a lot, though it might be hard to get, is the Automobile Association's ILLUSTRATED GUIDE TO BRITAIN. It's out of print now, but by going to Amazon UK I found some used copies for reasonable prices. Here's the url: http://tinyurl.com/zhyxb It was written as a road tour book, but it's full of pictures from towns and countryside all over the country. There will be brief descriptions of towns and mentions of old building, plus there are special articles on things like trees and British ponies and other cool stuff. Other AA publications are also very useful.

Lastly, I'd get a copy of Emily Hendrickson's REGENCY REFERENCE BOOK, which is now available in CD form. Dee Hendrickson was a mainstay of the Signet Regency line for years and a meticulous researcher, so she knows what Regency writers needs to know.

From Edith:
I'm on a deadline, and I'm done for the day but I can't stop typing! (help!)
So here's my three fave source books:

THE PRINCE OF PLEASURE, by J. B. Priestley - has some errors, but who cares? Beautifully written and illustrated, and gives the whole feeling of an era.

1815 AN END AND A BEGINNING by John Fisher: Again, not complete, but paints a Regency portrait.

THE REGENCY COMPANION, Laudermilk and Hamlin: earnest research.

From Pat:
I have so many more faves that I only chose those closest to me on my desk.

I second MJ on the AA BOOK OF THE COUNTRYSIDE and Dee's REGENCY REFERENCE BOOK. When I'm writing that era, they stay on my desk.

But I write in several centuries and tend toward more general books to get overall pictures. Aside from the usual costume books, I've found ROAD TO DIVORCE by Lawrence Stone to be exceedingly fascinating and informative, especially when I want to play around with the marriage laws. It covers 1587 until the 1980s I believe.

And because I usually write rural settings instead of London, I use the SHELL BOOK OF COTTAGES by Richard Reid for house descriptions. It's not limited to 19th century by any means.

And because I like going back to the origins of slang, I keep the CLASSICAL DICTIONARY OF THE VULGAR TONGUE, by Captain Francis Grose as edited by Eric Partridge at hand at all times. The insults alone are worth the price.

From Loretta:
Did we include info on how to get Dee's book (REGENCY REFERENCE BOOK)? She's got an update CD available. I've found her reference more useful, actually, than the Laudermilk/Hamlin. More detail about tricky stuff.
http://www.emilyhendrickson.com/referencebook.html

From Mary Jo:
Actually, the AA BOOK OF THE COUNTRYSIDE is a different book. I have that one, too. It's also extremely good and I keep it within grabbing distance. It's well worth browsing the AA books to find ones that might fit a particular story.

Plus, my favorite "thesaurous" is THE SYNONYM FINDER by J. I. Rodale. It's works just like a dictionary, which I find much easier than the standard thesaurous style.

From Susan/Sarah:
I had already drafted a blog on general sources and haven't used it yet.. So I'll polish that up for Thursday to follow up this multi-Wench discussion of research sources for the 19th century

From Loretta:
Hey, you guys are too quick. You're naming all my faves. No, that's OK, now I think about it, because it's hard picking only three. Here's my contribution:

LIFE IN THE ENGLISH COUNTRY HOUSE by Mark Girouard
THE ENGLISH by Christopher Hibbert
THE BIRTH OF THE MODERN; WORLD SOCIETY 1815-1830 by Paul Johnson. I think I've turned to this book at least once in the course of writing nearly all of my historicals.

From Susan/Miranda:
Argghh, you guys ARE fast. I would have suggested both Captain Grose's VULGAR TONGUE and the Girouard COUNTRY HOUSE.

I'm a visual person, so I'll make my books "picture books" (for writers, one picture truly can be worth a thousand words), full of illustrations. And since Melissab said she was interested in late Victorian as well as Regency, I'll add a couple of those.

VICTORIAN AND EDWARDIAN FASHION: A VISUAL SURVEY by Alison Gernsheim. Lots of historical photographs, mostly portraits, with good descriptive notes. One of those fantastic Dover bargains, too, with a cover price under $10.00!

VICTORIANS AT HOME, by Susan Lasdun (and an introduction by Mark Girouard, so you know it's a goodie). Paintings, drawings, and photographs of 19th century English interiors, both grand and humble.

JANE AUSTEN'S TOWN AND COUNTRY STYLE, by Susan Watkins. Again, lots of photographs, not only of the houses that likely morphed into the ones described in Austen's books, but also of useful things like a recreated dinner party table, complete with food.

From Jo:
I pretty well stop at 1820, so my stuff is pre that. I'll recommend primary sources.

A RESIDENCE AT THE COURT OF ST. JAMES by Richard Rush. Century Hutchinson. There are extracts here.
http://www.cardiff.ac.uk/encap/skilton/nonfic/rush01.html

ACKERMAN'S LONDON ILLUSTRATED, Wordsworth Press.
And any copy of the ANNUAL REGISTER you can get your hands on. There's one for every year and they're a great snapshot of Britain at that moment. Some pictures are on line here.
http://www.noelcollection.org/noel/ackermann/index.html

And any copy of the ANNUAL REGISTER you can get your hands on. There's one for every year and they're a great snapshot of Britain at that moment. There are some on line, but only from the 18th century. http://www.bodley.ox.ac.uk/cgibin/ilej/pbrowse.pl?item=title&id=ILEJ.5.&title=Annual+Register

Two Minds, or Three, for me and thee?

We are late today! With good reason. Our Susie had a baby shower. Oh, such fun.
So we couldn't post until now, and alas, not being as adept as Our Susie, we lack illustrations.
Please bear with us as we soldier on!

Now: All you Gentle Readers know that I am Edith Layton.

I am also Edith Felber, as you also may well know.

But now I've books coming out, back to back, and belly to belly, as it says in one of my favorite Calypso songs: one from Edith Felber in November, and the other from Edith Layton in December.
Confusing?
Nah.
A note as to the difference (Vive la Difference!)

Edith Felber lives in Suburbia with her wonderful rescue dog Miss Daisy, her rescue parakeet, Little Richard, and her foundling pond fish.

She is the charming, erudite lady who wrote THE SHADOW QUEEN, coming from NAL in a few weeks. It's a Trade Paperback Historical about an amazing woman for her time: a queen who grew weary of not getting her due, and decided to take things into her own hands. It's a story of intrigue and derring do, of love and remorse, of love and regret and of love and joy. But it's not a love story.

We urge you to read it. We worked SO hard on it, and it doesn't show, we promise.

PUBLISHER'S WEEKLY really liked it.
KIRKUS REVIEWS really liked it.
ROMANTIC TIMES gave it four and a half stars!

Edith Felber is also the mother of best-selling NPR comic, Adam Felber and writer and performer on SPIKE FERESTEN TALK SHOW, every Saturday Nite at Midnight on FOX TV, and author himself of the new and highly acclaimed novel SHRODINGER'S BALL.*
As Adam's mother, Edith Felber is mother-in-law to Jeanne Simpson, Actor extraordinare.

She's also mother to Susie Felber - writer for COURT TV, and her own blog.
Edith Felber is soon to be a grandmother too, courtesy of Susan! Ms. Felber is mother in law to Edward Holland, Susie's British husband, editor for The London Financial Times and writer of wonderful opinion pieces and essays.

And she is mother to Michael Felber, artist and educator.

Now, Edith Layton is a fabrication. (nice rhyme, eh?).

Ms. Layton has no children we know of. She is a career woman who lives in a penthouse in Manhattan (to which she never invites us) and loves to dance naked in the Plaza Fountain after her many lovers fill her up with enough champagne.

She wrote award winning Regencies and now writes award winning Regency Set Historical novels for AVON BOOKS.
She has a book coming out in December: FOR THE LOVE OF A PIRATE. And it's a doozy! With such a cover! Whew!

Now here's the kicker: Ms Layton and Ms. Felber and me are one person!
One slightly nuts person, mayhap. But that's how it goes.

We both urge you to buy both books, many times. And beg you to comment here on what you think of Schizo Gemini writers who love to be several people.

And if you could, would you do the same?
One of you a good wife and mother, and the other a merry socialite tearing up the town, perhaps?
One of you a serious career lady and the other off to sail the Nile with a horde of handsome explorers, searching for the rarest orchids?

Or, what two - or three - would you be?

Enquiring minds want to know!

Luv from all of us.
(Oh, and *P.S. Do hasten to a news stand to get today's (Sunday) Good Grey New York Times. The book review section used an entire page to review Our Adam's book! (They loved it. And they used a photo of Adam too.)