Review of 'How Not to Write a Novel' by Howard Mittlemark and Sandra Newman

NOTE: I'm digging this older review out of mothballs for today, with a promise to get back to new reviews and commentary next week.  TAS


How Not To Write a Novel is certainly one of the most amusing discussions of the art and craft of writing I've encountered--and I have read many books on the topic, devouring them like cotton candy, if not always digesting their best advice. While this book makes for a pleasant diversion, and can serve the purpose of a fairly painless refresher course, I would not recommend it for the rank beginner. There's a little too much snark in the mix--at times, contrary to the advice they themselves offer, the authors seem overly taken with their own cleverness--and the jokes occasionally get in the way of clear explanation. Much of the humor only works insofar as the reader is capable of telling the difference between literary dreck and solid practice from the get-go--something that requires experience in addition to a very active sense of humor.

For those with well-tuned funny bones or a couple Pulitzer prizes under their belts, the book may turn up a few nuggets of insight. It can also be rather discouraging if we recognize some of these pitfalls and bad habits in our own earlier work. Yes, it would be wonderful to live in a world full of brilliant, hard-working writers who never bore us or insult our intelligence, yet, if every aspiring author took every single one of these examples of what not to do to heart, novels would be little more than thoughtless play-by-play; stories reduced to pure action; the show-don't-tell principal taken to its horrifying logical extreme with nothing left of introspection, illumination or personal narrative. One must approach the advice here with a healthy dose of skepticism and a strong sense of self-identity as a writer. No novelist ever became great by being ignorant of the rules; but no great writer ever met at least one rule that wasn't worth breaking for the sake of a truer art.

I would note, too, that a lot of the sort of rotten writing illustrated here still has a way of ending up, with disturbing regularity, in traditionally published, best-selling commercial fiction, as well as far too many poorly conceived, albeit popular, "novelistic" television drama series. Thus, the very premise of the book, that in order to be pubished, one should avoid certain behaviors, is rendered moot. Sure, maybe Dan Brown, E.L. James or the writers of the Revenge TV series would be better, more engaging, more respected authors were they to take some of Mittlemark and Newman's advice, though one doubts they'd be measurably richer, and I don't think they'd be likely to listen in any case.

Among the most useful books on writing-craft, I would strongly recommend these in addition to (or instead of) Mittlemark and Newman:

Steering the Craft by Ursula K. Le Guinn
On Writing by Stephen King
Self-Editing for Fiction Writers by Remmi Browne and Dave King
How to Write a Damn Good Novel by James N. Frey
Telling Lies for Fun and Profit by Lawrence Block
Spider Spin Me a Web: A Handbook for Writers by Lawrence Block
The First Five Pages by Noah Lukeman

How Not to Write a Novel is recommended more for entertainment than instructional value.

Review of "In Bonds of the Earth" by Janine Ashbless

Janine Ashbless pushes all the right buttons in this exciting follow-up to 2015’s Cover Him With Darkness. I described that first entry in the series as “an intense, engaging, grandly imagined, intelligent, entertainingly well-paced and very—very—sexy story; erotic romance writ large.” I also noted that Cover Him With Darkness “ends with a cliffhanger worthy of Lord of the Rings, and leaves us breathless for more…” It’s a pleasure, then, to report that In Bonds of the Earth is everything fans have been waiting for, taking all the elements that made the first book memorable, artfully supercharging them in a sweeping, action-packed, powerfully erotic story that dazzles with its imaginative employment of real-life settings, elements of ancient lore and legend, and fast-paced contemporary thrillers.

The story is told in first person from the viewpoint of Milja, somewhat wiser now after having freed fallen angel Azazel from eons of bondage, she is doubtful about her lover’s plan to release his “brothers” from their prisons in order to mount a new assault on the forces of heaven. His search leads them to the labyrinth of ancient monolithic rock-cut churches of Lalibela in Ethiopia, where the priests, wielding the rusted relics of saints, guard a secret that humankind must never know. (No spoilers here, but let’s just say that the mid-story climax—and Ashbless’ way of relating it—is exciting as hell!)

The romantic leads are realistically imperfect here; Milja is smart and beautiful, but also still rather naïve, not always wise in the ways of human—or angelic—behavior, and still vulnerable where the heart—not to mention her hair-trigger erotic responses—are concerned. She describes Azazel, for all his physical allure, as not very bright, a musclebound creature who lives in the here and now without much thought for consequence or the feelings of others, least of all Milja’s.  

I was—as ever—impressed by Ashbless’ ability to set her tale within a broad historical and cultural context without resorting to obvious “data dumps” or dry narrative digressions; the fascinating history of Lalibela is woven so subtly into the fabric of the story as to seem perfectly of a piece with the unfolding adventure. The author’s erudition shines through, illuminating the story without ever casting shade on the reader. Milja’s informal conversational style does not clash with her obvious intelligence, but brings readers comfortably along, never making them feel patronized or inadequate.

This entry in the series closes with a shattering cliffhanger that will have readers on the edge of their seats, hearts pounding in their throats, and practically howling in half-fulfilled frustration! I felt afterwards as if I’d enjoyed an extraordinary meal—or had really great sex—richly fed to be sure, yet craving still more, able only to dream of “next time.”

Well worth the wait—and let’s hope the wait for the third book won’t be too long!—In Bonds of the Earth is enthusiastically recommended! 

Nerd Love (a EuphOff Quickie) by TAS

This horrid little piece of tripe was composed for this year's EuphOff, a delightful "non-competition" that asks erotica writers to pull out all the stops on bad metaphor, shopworn cliché, adverbial excess, and prose as purple as plum lipstick stains on an Arrow collar in 500 words or less. Wasn't it G.K. Chesterton  who observed that one cannot truly understand how good they are until they've discovered how bad they can be--or something to that effect?

Nerd Love

(a EuphOff Quickie)

by Terrance Aldon Shaw

Gazing up from between his lover’s legs, Jesus-Horatio was utterly captivated by the sight of her preternaturally perfect orbs, huge, pendulous, rounder than round, floating haughtily above him like a double vision of the second Death Star as seen by a cross-eyed Ewok crouching on the surface of the forest moon of Endor at night.

“Those are no moons!” he murmured referentially as he zeroed in on the throbbing mushroom—agaricus bisporus—of Maggie’s desire, which, beneath the hyper-articulate ministrations of his Poindexterishly pornographic tongue, had tumesced like a well-nurtured robin’s egg, resting cozily in the soft nest of her venereal delta.

“Oh! Jesus-H—” Maggie moaned. “Eat me like a senior-citizen’s discount-Wednesday buffet!”

“Erumph!” Jesus-Horatio tried to speak with his mouth full, adjusting the angle of his lingual dart’s trajectory, the better to buff the already-glistening pearl of Maggie’s magnificent girl-ness.

There had been a great disturbance in the Force when they met, only moments earlier, at the sci-fi/fantasy convention downstairs. Resplendent as Obi-Wan in his youthful Phantom-Meance iteration, Jesus-Horatio was waiting in line to see a man about a tauntaun when he spied Maggie, stunningly attired as Gabrielle from Xena, Warrior Princess and hanging--not pervertedly at all--around the entrance to the men’s room, where she was waiting, so she said, for her scantly-endowed wheelchair-bound boyfriend to finish washing his hands. 

Thrilled for once to be hitting on a female humanoid whose boyfriend couldn’t actually beat him up, Jesus-Horatio was quick to compliment Maggie on the exquisitely detailed filagree-work gracing the left cup of her brazen battle brassiere. Impressed for her part that a guy who wasn’t obviously gay would notice such things, Maggie gushed like a soft-serve ice cream machine in a heat wave, whence, looking down, her eyes lighted on his light sabre, a burgeoning hummock rising from mist-gray folds of Jesus-Horatio's Jedi robes.

With uncharacteristic boldness, Jesus-Horatio then asked Maggie if she would like to come up to the room on the 37th floor he was sharing with five other nerds from out of town in order to see his impeccably-preserved first edition of the “legendary” graphic novel in which Luke and Leah never figure out that they’re brother and sister.

All else was forgotten in the next instant as Maggie agreed. The elevator doors closed with a ping, and, alone at last, the fevered fan-geeks fell into each other’s arms in a blazing frisson of unbridled concupiscence.

In the room, Maggie’s whole body convulsed with naughty plasmic bursts of orgiastic delectation as she wrapped a pair of shapely calves around her Yoda-quoting inamorato’s neck in a manner suggestive of a python contemplating the lugubrious strangulation of its victim du jour.

At this point, to Maggie’s undying dismay, Jesus-Horatio’s faithful R-2 unit malfunctioned, causing the premature deployment of a quarter-million storm troopers. Thus, her deep core remaining sadly un-fracked, the earth did not move,  and plans for a sequel were put on indefinite hold.

###

Emmanuelle de Maupassant interviews TAS on author influences

This week, you can read Emmanuelle de Maupassant's interview with me about my artistic influences here. A wide-ranging discussion focusing on the influence of music in my approach to craft and style, the interview features additional comments on film, literary fiction, poetry, the visual arts and dance.

Next week: a review of In Bonds of the Earth, Janine Ashbless' follow-up to Cover Him With Darkness (one of EftBB's "Best of 2015" selections).

TAS

How to Get Good (Part 1)

It’s probably safe to say that nothing you read here on EftBB will ever help you achieve outstanding financial success as a writer. For all the hard work I’ve done over the decades, the secret to authorial fame and riches remains maddeningly beyond my muddled ken. I have ultimately come to the conclusion that it is indeed possible to do everything “right” and still come up short. One can pursue a dream to the end, obdurately believing in the greatness of one’s vision, hoping with all one’s heart to strike that magic chord in the soul of the reading public, yet simply lack the luck to be in the right place at the right time, even as some demonstrably less-gifted writer strides the best-seller list like a snot-nosed colossus, snickering all the way to the bank.

This, alas, is life, arbitrary, cruel, perpetually unfair, and always out to lunch at the complaints department. We may whine and kvetch about talentless slop artists, ass-kissing arivistes, and upjumped hacks with more aptitude for schmoozery than literary sense, but, in the end, that’s just the way things work out. It doesn’t mean that we should not continue to work hard every day, dedicate ourselves to doing our best in spite of the odds, and strive towards greatness; it means we should probably develop a set of realistic expectations about life in general, and this, our chosen profession, in particular. What it all boils down to is; we do this work because it is the work we are meant to do, no matter what.

Here are a few thoughts on the subject:

(1) Nobody will ever care about your work as much as you do.

Oh, some people will certainly care, often quite intensely, about what you do; but, in the end, it’s not their life or their work, it’s yours, and if you of all people aren’t passionate about it, how can you expect others to be? A writer’s commitment and passion shines through on every page—readers can tell—and there’s very little that turns readers off more than a writer who clearly doesn’t have their heart in the endeavor.  Authors who write in genres they clearly don’t like—an all-too-common phenomenon in erotica—cheat their audience and themselves.

(2) It is futile (and self-destructive) to compare yourself with other writers.

Lawrence Block makes this point in Telling Lies for Fun and Profit. We waste a lot of time and potential creative energy obsessing about our place in the scheme of things—why we’re so much better than this writer, or will never be as good as that one—always looking outward with envy or stubborn defiance, scorn more often than not mingled with self-loathing. The fact, whether we are willing to admit it or not, is that we are most miserable when we try to be something we are not. When we try to fit in, or change to please another person, or be like someone else instead of being true to ourselves. A writer needs to develop a balance between healthy self-love and honest humility.

(3) On the other hand, a healthy competition with oneself—comparing your present work with things you’ve done in the past—can be a key to growth.

To paraphrase Tolstoy: you can’t become a better writer if you already think your writing is perfect. If you understand that you are not in competition with other writers, you will be free to develop the self-confidence to perceive not only how good you are, but also how good you are not, and when you understand that, you will find the space in which to strive, grow, and improve.

(4) To be great at something, you must concentrate solely on that one thing.

This doesn’t mean that you can achieve greatness simply by setting your mind to it. Malcolm Gladwell famously posited that one must put in 10,000 hours of practice to achieve mastery in a field—and that’s still no guarantee of one’s 15 minutes of fame. Talent and inspiration are not enough; you have to be willing and able to back those things up with real sweat equity and single-minded commitment, pouring yourself—your mental and physical energies—into this single endeavor, if only to see how good you can become.

Near the end of his life, Norman Mailer said that every book he wrote killed him a little bit more. And it’s true: we die slowly for our art. Writing is a less-messy form of self-murder, and the work we leave behind an elaborate suicide note.

I think, too, of  the film Quills in which Jeffrey Rush portrays the Marquis de Sade: imprisoned, condemned as possessed or insane, nothing stopped de Sade from expressing himself, to the point where, after having his tongue cut out and being placed in solitary confinement, he continued to write with his own feces... THAT is the madness that drives a true creative! THAT is the commitment that greatness demands.

Remember, though, that great things do not always have to be big or extravagant things. Nor is it necessary to be the center of attention in order to achieve a great thing. It is important, however, not to spread oneself too thin.

(5) To this end, cultivate a work ethic.

Anyone who says that writing is easy is a liar. If writing is easy all the time, you’re not doing it right. Indeed, what so many people don't get is that writing is genuinely hard work, often physically taxing and mentally draining. It can be frustrating as often as it is rewarding, and there are times when it's difficult to justify the input of labor and time by the usual metrics of conventional success. To optimize one’s efforts, treat writing the way you would any serious work; develop a daily writing schedule and discipline yourself to stick to it, especially if you have any desire to earn more than a hobbyist’s income from the endeavor.

The best way to produce a steady stream of high-quality work, is to observe regular writing hours with defined daily starting and quitting times. Such a schedule can conform to the needs of your life, whether early in the morning or late at night, or in the middle of the afternoon, but it should ideally be the same time each day. Getting into the regular pattern of writing, the quotidian habit of work, does wonders to lubricate the mental mechanisms of craft. The difference between an amateur and a professional is that the former believes they can sit and wait for inspiration to pay a mysterious and unscheduled visit. The professional knows that inspiration is drawn from within by the regular exercise of one’s mental faculties.

It’s OK, by the way, to be a "difficult person" where defending your work time is concerned. Make it clear that you expect others to respect your schedule—but be just as adamant that you respect it yourself by sticking to the hours you have established.

(6) Don’t spend your royalties before you’ve finished the book.

I don’t care if you think you’ve got a story inside you. Come back when you have a dozen on paper—or, better still, fifteen or fifty. Get into the habit of writing everything down, and soon enough, you’ll have more stories than you can tell in a lifetime. Build up a body of work you can be proud of, and don't keep it to yourself.

(7) Be the kind of professional you yourself would like to deal with.

Believe it or not, editors, agents, and publishers like dealing with people who are easy to work and get along with. You can stick up for yourself and your work while still being agreeable, and, in fact, other professionals will respect you for being true to yourself; but you don’t have to do this by (1) putting other writers down, either overtly or passive-aggressively, (2) behaving like a spoiled prima dona, believing that you are above constructive criticism or too great to take advice.

Remember that a smart, thoughtful consistency is the essence of professionalism. If people have had good experiences with you in the past, and expect the same in the future, that is an asset more valuable than almost anything else.

There are, of course, exceptions to every rule...

To be continued...

(Read Part 2 here)

When Sex Is Not Enough

I’d hoped to share a book review with you this week, but that is not to be. The book in question was written well enough, had a promising premise and an ambitious erotic vision; I got past the first few pages without being terminally turned off or overly impressed. Things did not subsequently improve, nor did they become dramatically worse. In other words, ho hum. I kept myself reading page after page with the notion that, while the book was no great masterpiece, it was nothing I couldn’t slog my way through, and, perhaps, find something worth writing about in the end.

As it happened, I did discover something to write about, though it wasn’t necessary to suffer through to the end in order to find it. The writing had been putting me to sleep—notwithstanding a few pleasingly steamy episodes—and I was finding it increasingly difficult to maintain concentration with something like 400 pages left to go. Then the author gave me an out; made the rankest of rooky errors—the sort of thing any competent editor would have caught immediately, and, very probably like me, been inspired to throw the book across the room (though, with an e-reader, I am denied that visceral satisfaction). The author had carelessly allowed head-hopping to creep into a third-person narrative, probably not even realizing that they were doing it. Granted, this is a common pitfall, and a flaw I might have chosen to ignore had the story been more engaging or the language less simplistically third-grade level. But, given the other doubts that had built up in my mind, this issue was the proverbial last straw.

The author was counting on the novelty of their book’s premise to carry the story—basically, eroticism in ancient cultures—and was endeavoring to employ an antiquated “storybook style” of narrative. But the novelty was not enough. The sex, for all its vibrant plenitude, was not enough. One came away less with the sense of having been entertained than patronized. The auctorial attitude seemed to be that of a patient grownup telling a story to a group of children while greatly underestimating their intelligence.

Sexy content does not in itself absolve an author from the basic rules of writing. Telling a story for adults does not give one license to write like a dolt. It takes more than sex to write a sexy story. Characters have to be more than pornographic pawns, with no other purpose than to be maneuvered into the next occasion to copulate. Readers looking for more than just a quick stroke—who might actually be inclined to read the entire book—need to recognize the elements of a good story; character, conflict, plot. A conscientious author owes their readers nothing less—a truly fine writer will give them infinitely more.

Personally, I’ve resolved that life is too short to waste on books that bore me. The only thing I truly care about is good writing—I’m open to all sorts of stories, so long as the writing is exceptional, but I am done babysitting dilettantes. I’m done coddling the delicate sensibilities of amateurs who've never  heard a healthy “no”.  It’s time to grow up.   

[Next time: Things I’ve Learned from Reading (and Writing) Erotic Novels] 

Review of 'Haven's Fall (Rebel Mage Book II)" by Elizabeth Schechter

Somewhere about the middle of Elizabeth Schechter’s Haven’s Fall it struck me: were one to remove the erotic elements from this story, there’d be a pretty fine YA fantasy/romance novel left over. That’s not necessarily a bad thing—YA offers some of the most imaginative storytelling and fine writing of these times, from brilliant authors like Madeline L’Engle and Philip Pullman to Suzane Collins. The point is, delightful as the sex scenes may be, if one can imagine a story without the erotic, it may be many things, but erotica is not one of them. Granted, there’s a beautiful m/m romance here, a budding m/f love affair and even a bit of bondage (consensual and otherwise), all fine and good. Yet, there’s something about the language, a kind of easy, placid flow that doesn’t make undue demands of the reader or challenge their cozy sensibilities—at least not too forcefully. Then there’s the nice, gentle way these characters relate to one another. All the main characters are so likable—so reflexively agreeable—the temperature of conflict barely rises above a mild simmer till near the end.

In Haven’s Fall, Schechter continues the story of Matthias, the reluctant mage, begun in Counsel of the Wicked (included on EftBB Best of 2015 list). Matthias possesses enormous magical powers of which he himself has never been fully aware, nor has he been trained in the proper use of his magic. At the same time, some sinister person or group, jealous of that power whether because they seek to harness it or destroy it altogether, has set out to capture or kill Matthias. But our hero has one great advantage. His friends: there’s his quiet, strong, patient lover Solomon, his kind and resourceful cousin Tam, Linnea the fearless foot soldier with the ability to track and locate sources of magic, and the wise Gryphon mother Dancer, as well as several new, equally likable characters who will no doubt make appearances in the projected third volume of the series.

Schechter understand that the way to keep people turning pages—and there are a lot of pages to turn here!—is to put her hero in peril and keep him there, never giving him a chance to breathe easy. This does result in a few too many scenes in which Matthias wakes up after having suffered some new and terrible injury, asking what happened to him, while Solomon, Tam, and the healer Illane are always right there to tend his wounds and rehash the events of the previous chapter in the gentlest of tones so as not to disturb Matt’s delicate emotional equilibrium. Magic is used to speed the hero’s recovery before he is invariably hurt in yet another new and horrible misadventure. It does get a bit repetitious in spots, and I came away from many chapters feeling less that essential story had been related than that time had been marked in an entertaining way, stringing me along in anticipation of some as yet unimagined Big And Exciting Thing to be revealed in the not-too-distant future.

Still, there’s a good deal to like and admire here. A novel of this length is not a casual undertaking to be treated indifferently, and Schechter proves once again that she is more than adequate to the task; the writing reflects a lively imagination, brought to the page with solid craftspersonship and practiced professionalism. Her characters may at times be a little too nice—stretching credibility to its curmudgeonly limits—but we are still curious to find out what happens to them. In the end, we are made to care for these people almost as much as they care for each other, and that is something that only a very skilled writer can do.  

Recommended.