August Rambles

How is it the end of August already? This month was a blur of work and house repairs. Going back to school, last minute fun things to do with the kiddo before school started, then the routine. Work, I think. Also, editing and formatting Tal one last time.

Did August feel terribly fast for you?

First, some news! The Safe Anthology will be out at the end of September and I am grateful to have a story included. This is a collection of stories of hope and survival and finding community with all proceeds going to a domestic violence shelter. It will be available for a limited time, and is available in print and e-book.

Things I Read

I spent a lot of August re-reading Tal and fixing odd sentences or moments. Trying to find e-arc readers (would you like an e-arc? Please reach out!)

This month I continued my dive into older romances with some more Judith McNaughts, Remember When and Paradise, which completes that trilogy, which I read backwards. These aren't the slim tightly paced romances we know but strong, sprawling narratives of communities and the people within the communities. I think my biggest problem with McNaught though isn't the length of the novel but the lack of the grovel. The MMC does harm the FMC and there is very little grovel. It makes the HEA feel less earned.

The purpose of a grovel scene in the romance is for us to see that the character has done the work and recognized the wrong. They've repented and repaired. One way to think about this is Pride and Prejudice (picking a well known piece!). Darcy has been shown an image of himself in Elizabeth's first rejection and it's one he doesn't like. He apologizes and explains in his response letter; not quite a full apology but a gesture to repair some of her hurt.

And then he repents when she visits Pemberley. He shows her his full self. He recognizes how roundly he deserved the lecture and he tells her this. And his full act of repair is fixing Wickham--both for himself and Elizabeth. Once he's done this work, only then once he's done it, is he able to present himself to Elizabeth again as a suitor. P&P works deeply because Elizabeth is also doing her own work on her self.

When a romance skips over this work, to me at least the ending isn't earned. What has the character learned? What is to stop them from doing this behavior again? If the purpose of the third-act breakup is to test and question the validity of the relationship, then the purpose of the grovel is to answer that question.

Die for Me by Shirlene Obuobi does that fairly well, I think, in her newest paranormal romance, and one I enjoyed this month.

Things I Enjoyed

This one is difficult. I spent much of this weekend re-watching beloved films from the icons we lost earlier. Clue. Oscar. 9 to 5. I don't know if you'll ever get me to watch Steel Magnolias again. It's heartbreaking.

Both Dolly Parton and Tim Curry are celebrities that I grew up with. My grandparents often had her on their record player. I had Annie on repeat as a child. I came home from school and watched Peter Pan and the Pirates (Curry played Captain Hook). I don't know if shock is the right word. I'm not sure what I'm mourning; I never knew these people and I have the privilege of owning media where I can hear and see their talents.

It is most likely mourning the loss of a symbol, of the promise they offered us. The vivacious joy and the goodness. Dolly gave us all books and worked hard in her community to raise people up. Tim gave us the promise to be ourselves, to recognize ourselves in all of our glory and weirdness and, in that, to find our community. Tressie McMillian Cottom said she wasn't sure if we are creating the conditions for more people like them and that, too, is something to mourn.

(And points more and more to our disintegrating social contract.)

This has become less a section on things I enjoy and more of a memorial and I'm alright with that. I enjoyed their work. I have the ability to continuously enjoy their work. I can share it with my child and my friends. What we are is a culmination of the lives we've affected and theirs was quite large.

(Mine, I suspect, is quite small and I pass through people's lives like a ghost. People make a larger impression on me than I on them and I am left far more bereft at the end of a relationship, or a disillusioning of what I think things meant, than is probably healthy. This, I suppose, is sentimentality at work. )

Things I Wrote

Hmm, not much actually! Editing, sure! Working on some marketing, definitely. But actual writing? Nah. I did participate in a few things on BlueSky, such as the Summer of Love, for romance authors, and I discovered a few more crutch words for the list!

Crutch word editing was deeply illuminating and humiliating. How often did I describe something as "nearly"? Why not describe the thing itself? Working under a specific microscope is helpful, and very different than feedback.

There's something about feedback, depending on how it's given, which makes me feel awful. I suspect a lot of writer groups aren't actually good at giving feedback. I took an editing class with NK Jemisin earlier this month and she made a comment that a lot of writing feedback is coming from a place of insecurity and isn't necessarily useful feedback. A lot of writing workshops use humiliation rituals rather than providing information on what worked, what didn't, and why. (Matthew Salesses talks about this in Craft in the Real World, an excellent book.)

I'm trying out a few different writing groups this fall. Someone once shared an excellent Mary Robinette Kowal guide on giving feedback. It's listing symptoms when reading, rather than providing a diagnosis (This moment worked and this is why; I'm confused as to the action here; This made me weep; I'm not sure what is happening here--is the character sad?) rather than prescriptions (Fix this; add comma here; you're not making me believe this moment).

Writing a story is about building a relationship with a reader using certain tools to craft an emotional response. Feedback should look at what works and what doesn't, and, if the writer is prepared, get down to the gritty of mechanics (I think if a sentence is confusing because of bad mechanics can be useful feedback. Confusing is an excellent descriptive. As a writer, I know it means my mechanics need a closer inspection).

Too often a diagnosis or prescription is given when a writer isn't ready for it, or hasn't asked for it, and Kowal puts the onus on the writer to ask what they want when they are submitting a piece for feedback, but also on readers to respect that. This is where the ego that Jemisin and Salesses mention gets in the way--critiquing makes one look clever or a better writer, and barbed comments are more about elevating them than assisting the writer.

I've been lucky in that I've gotten some wonderful feedback throughout which has helped immensely in writing and probably why my Acknowledgments page ended up as long as it did.

This also got long. Rambling indeed.

This coming month there will be several more posts to prepare for Tal so watch your inbox! There will be a signed copies giveaway as well as chapter one available to read!

What have you been up to lately?

If you pre-ordered Tal, don't forget there are some potential pre-0rder goodies!