Review: The Windup Girl

The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



While the second half of this book is a vast improvement over the first half, I'm not sure it was worth my patience to make it to the exciting part. This is a dark book about a dark future, and, while it's quite well-written, I never felt engaged as a reader.

Paolo Bacigalupi creates a future dystopia ravaged by cultivated diseases, famine, and invasive species created by playing with genes. There isn't enough food to go around, oil is no more, and the space and atomic races are things of the past, the big question being who can get the most calories out of the least effort. Into this world, we have a "calorie man," who works for one of the big corporations who helped make this world the terrible place it is, a "yellow-card" elderly Chinese man who used to own his own company before China and Malaysia became relics, a "white shirt" who's famous for refusing bribes and who used to fight in the Muay Thai ring, and the title character, who gets her name from the stutter-stop motions coded into her genes to give her origins away, lest someone mistake her for a real person. Emiko, the wind-up girl, was left by a Japanese businessman because he couldn't afford her passage back, and now she works in a brothel as the object of ridicule and derision. She's prostituted out on the virtue of her exoticism and abused daily onstage.

Sadly, Emiko is the only character with which I was able to sympathize. Everyone else in this world is corrupt to the core, and justifies selfishness and screwing people over with all kinds of mental gymnastics. An awful lot of the book is told through perspectives other than Emiko's, though, and the most exciting thing Emiko does happens off-screen, so to speak. Instead, we get a lot of philosophy and corrupt politics and background on a world we're tossed into with little preparation.

I'll give the author this: he knows how to world-build. After my daily dose of audio book, I felt like I needed to scrub the slime of the book's world off my skin. I felt filthy by proximity to such pollution. The book may toss the reader in without introduction (and without buying you dinner first), but it's clear that this is a fully-developed world, of which we aren't getting the entire story. There are hints of other goings-on, events which we can only infer.

Unfortunately, the book's greatest strength, that of its themes, has been handled before, and handled better. Margaret Atwood's Oryx and Crake presents a world similarly corrupted by an uneven power structure, too much control in the hands of corporations, and people screwed over by a system that doesn't care if they live or die. And The Year of the Flood has a much more sympathetic prostitute character who's a lot stronger than Emiko. I kept waiting for Emiko to get some semblance of agency, but instead, she acts only to react to terrible things happening to her, and to wait for a man to save her. It was disappointing.

But then, after the droning start and corrupt-as-hell cast of characters, my expectations weren't terribly high to begin with.

I can see why this might have won the Hugo, because it has all the highbrow literary stuff I dislike. It is well-written, it's just not what I like to read in my science fiction and fantasy.



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Letting the characters tell the story

Before I get to the blog post, I need to ask that fyrefall contact me. I've Googled you and posted a response to your entry. Everyone else has responded. If I don't hear from you by Monday, your copy of Discount Armageddon will go to the next person in line.

Now, on to the post.

There are two ways to tell a story. The first way is plot-driven. It's pretty self-explanatory. It's driven by events in the plot, and most mysteries and thrillers are written with a plot-driven story.

The second way is character-driven, which is when the characters and their choices are what determines in which direction the story goes. That's how I write, and therefore what I'm going to talk about today.

In order to have a character-driven story, you first have to have strong characters. A cast who consists of people content to sit at home and watch the world pass by can be interesting to hang out with, but less fun to read about. That isn't to say that laid-back characters can't be prodded into action with the right motivation, but, in a character-driven story, you do need a character strong enough to carry the action.

Before you even start writing the story for a character-driven narrative, familiarize yourself with the main characters. That includes your antagonist, who should have strong motivations behind what he or she chooses to do. Map out the characters' internal and external motivation, as in, what happens where the reader can see, and what won't be on the page. Internal motivation is what you keep in mind for a character, without explicitly writing it.

Find out other things about your characters, too. There are character surveys online, which some people find helpful. For others, it's more of a conversation in your head with the character, as if you're on a date. Know at least five things about your character that won't come out within the story.

Once you're familiar with the characters, toss in the conflict, and find out what the characters would do with it. Ask the antagonist what he or she will do to thwart the protagonist. Develop the conflict as if you're witnessing both sides of the story. You need only report on one side, but remember to treat the characters as if they're real people who consider what's going on to be important. If there isn't a good reason to do it, don't have them behave that way.

I learned most of what I did about character-driven narrative through role-playing, specifically running games. No plot survived contact with the characters. I learned a lot about sitting back and creating satisfying narratives that challenged the characters without stomping on their character concepts. It was an easier way to learn about characters-driven stories, too, because I only had to write the antagonist.

When you write a character-driven story, though, be prepared for the plot to turn out differently than you expected, and for parts to be less important than you thought. It can work for an outliner just fine, provided you're willing to adjust the outline accordingly, or leave it open for characters to turn out differently than you'd planned. As with real people, characters in a story can, and should, surprise us. It can be really annoying to write, because it means the story is off in a different direction than planned. But, as a reader, it's fun when people surprise you.

The inner editor

I've talked about the inner editor before. It's the culprit behind writer's block. It's what you're thwarting if you want to try being tired to see if it makes you more creative. But the inner editor does serve a purpose.

In a first draft, you're basically tossing things out to see what sticks. You're generating ideas, trying out concepts, and seeing what works. At that stage, you don't want to listen to the voice in your head that tells you how much you suck. At that point, you want permission to suck. You can clean up all the random spew off the page in the editing phase.

It's in the later drafts that the inner editor finally serves a purpose. The inner editor is there to evaluate which plot threads and characters are important. It's there to slice off great swaths of dialogue, to sweep out all the scenes that don't serve the story, to kill your darlings (which is a post for a later time). It's there to keep the book grounded. It's there to make sure the sentences are strung together properly and in an order that makes sense.

If you don't have an inner editor, now would be a good time to get one. You need to read up on the grammar rules, take a writing workshop, and read some comments from publishers about why they didn't accept the books they didn't. A lack of an inner editor is why things like this happen, when an author goes off at length about how people's perceptions are wrong.

Granted, one can't anticipate all of people's criticisms, and one can't step outside one's own perspective to see it the way others will. But, without admitting there are flaws in the first place, when other people see them (and they will), you'll react poorly.

No one's writing is perfect. Some of the most-loved classics have one-star reviews online. (Despite the article writer's apparent belief that all of the reviewers are idiots, sometimes it gets down to taste and preference.) But one can't improve without seeing the flaws in what you're writing, and fixing it. Sometimes that means a writing group. Sometimes that means an editor. Most of the time, though, it means you have to look it over, yourself, find what's wrong, and eliminate it.

So, while the inner editor is the killer of productivity and the slayer of creativity, it does serve a purpose. Every writer needs to have one. It just needs to be tamed so it only comes out when you need it.

Perpetual rewrites

I promised a story of why I've written and rewritten the story that's become the first book in my trilogy, and so that's what you're getting today. I could've sworn I'd already written about this, but a scouring and a Google search tells me no.

I've already mentioned that I spent a lot of my childhood tapping out stories. Most of those are what I now know are "trunk novels," which are manuscripts hidden away with no intention of seeing publication. They're stilted, derivative, and precisely what you'd expect from a shy preteen who lives in her own head. If you were to read them, you'd know what books I'd been reading and what movies had just come out. They were practice, and great for letting me find my writing voice and honing what I had for craft.

I still have most of them. They sit in a box in my closet, and I eye them warily from time to time, wondering if it would be worth the embarrassment to find out if there's anything salvageable in them.

But there's still one story that sticks with me. I wrote the first draft while I was in the middle of reading the Vampire Diaries series, which should tell you both how long ago that was, and what kind of story it was. It was also the first novel I'd ever finished, and I was proud of myself.

But this was in the early day of computers, when we had to save everything on floppy disks. I popped in the disk I thought my story was on one day, prepared for edits, and it wasn't there. I scoured every floppy disk in the house, but it wasn't on any of them. To this day, I don't know what happened to it.

I was disheartened for months, and I worked on a few other stories. One day, I realized that I remembered the outline of the plot well enough to reconstruct it, and I did.

That time, the computer died. The new computer didn't use the same word processing program, so I couldn't transfer the story. But I'd already retyped it, so I decided to do just that. That time, the disk was corrupted. By then, I had a computer in my own room, and I could back up the story on several formats. And yet, all of those formats failed me. When I went away to college and the school computers ate my ever-rewritten novel, I was starting to get a sense of humor about it. When my husband burned the wrong draft onto a CD for me and I deleted all the backups, I just shrugged and rewrote it from scratch yet again.

I took a break from rewriting the story for a while after college. I didn't write anything for years. Then one night, I had a dream about one of the characters. It wasn't the first time I'd dreamed about them, but it was the most motivating.

The thing is, in all of those rewrites, I found that I'd improved. The story was more compelling and tightly plotted, the characters were better developed, and it was easier to rewrite it every time. I'd been developing my craft as I went along, and so the story improved as I got more practice.

I've heard the advice that you shouldn't keep working on the same novel, that you should move on to other stories. While I'm sure that's excellent advice, I don't regret having ignored it. I feel like I've learned a lot from having done otherwise.

If you would learn anything from this blog, I hope you take two things away from this post. First, back up your manuscripts, in many different ways. Currently, I use Dropbox, and my husband burns the most recent drafts onto CD for me. Second, if you do lose your current draft, it might not be the worst thing to happen to you.

Review: Just Like That

Just Like That by Margo Candela

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



I got an electronic copy of Just Like That for free from the author. If I'd known how much I'd enjoy it, though, I would've bought it, anyway.

Just Like That is the story of Leslie, who works in high-end retail hell and whose boss takes advantage of her ambition and ability to solve problems. She breaks up with her milquetoast boyfriend of four years (it would be five, except for their year-long break), and her best friend then goes on a mission to match her up with the right guy.

This is a novella-length story, and apparently it's on an imprint that takes emphasis away from the explicit rendition of sex acts. There's plenty of naughtiness within these pages, but the majority of it is left to the reader's imagination.

What's left is a strong, compelling story about an ambitious woman and a friendship that's important to both women in it. Even when Paige, her best friend, is fretting about her upcoming wedding, she makes time for Leslie and makes it a priority to answer her calls. It was nice to read a romance story where the relationship between two women is just as important as, or even more important than, finding love and a happily ever after.

The pacing on this story is excellent. I meant to read perhaps half, or just the first couple of sections, when I first picked it up. Fashion isn't my area of interest, either, so, by all accounts, it should've been easy to put down. Instead, I wound up finishing it all in one sitting. I kept flipping forward to find out if Leslie ever finds the happiness she deserves.

That isn't to say the book is perfect. The story is so short, there isn't much time to develop the love interest, and I wondered what went through his head. Clearly, he's enamored of Leslie, but I know there has to be more to him than money, charm, and good looks.

The initial story has some rocky dialogue, too, with a little too much, "As you know, so-and-so" delivery. Two characters recap something of which they're perfectly aware for the benefit of the reader, when it would've been better handled through exposition.

Last, the version I read had some typos. They weren't too distracting; I was able to figure out what they were supposed to be. It was a blip on my radar.

Overall, though, I enjoyed this, and would've considered it money well spent if I'd purchased instead of receiving a copy for review. I would recommend this to romance readers who have time for something short and sweet. This is an enjoyable page-turner of a romance story.



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Foreshadowing

I could do something clever by hinting about this blog post in a bunch of previous posts, but I think I mentioned it once already, and I have a friend visiting this week, so not a huge surplus of time.

As you know if you've studied anything at all about writing or literature, foreshadowing is when hints are sprinkled throughout the narrative that give away the ending. An unsatisfying ending can usually be chalked up to an inadequate buildup through foreshadowing, while a predictable ending is because the foreshadowing is too heavy-handed.

But if you're a pantster, like me, you're not going to know how your book is going to end as you're writing. Therefore, you're not going to know what to write in to telegraph the ending perfectly. People who write outlines might have this problem, too, because they're too focused on just telling the story to remember to write in hints about the ending, though I imagine it's easier to write in some foreshadowing from the start.

So, if you're a pantster, how do you make sure the ending is perfectly appropriate to what you've been writing, and that the ending feels satisfying to anyone reading it?

The first way to do it is to let what you've written guide you to the ending. By that I mean, you're going to write in odd details or scenes that were just plain fun to write. They might not be logically connected to the nebulous plan you have in your head, but you wanted to include them. When I write such things, as I approach the ending, I wonder how they might tie in to how I want the story to end. I try to figure out how to use them, so I can keep them.

It must be awful to be an outliner and have to toss those scenes out.

The second thing I do is edit it in. Editing is important for anyone who wants to be published, but it's doubly important for a pantster to go through the manuscript at least a couple of times to clean up all the random flailing that is the first draft. At least one pass of edits, if you're a pantster, should be spent on inserting hints and warnings that refer to the end of the story. Do at least one read-through of the story as if you've never read it before, and are looking for clues to tell you what happens and how much you should dread it.

When I sent my manuscript out to my beta readers, I knew I'd adequately foreshadowed the end because no one said anything about the ending coming out of nowhere. Of course, I'm not sure if that's the best example of a pantster at work, considering I'd written and rewritten that book enough that I knew the ending by the time I tackled that last draft. It may not be outlined, but I do know it better than a lot of the other stories I've banged out.

Tomorrow, I'm going to post about why I've rewritten that story so often, which has nothing to do with a reluctance to submit. See you then!

Review: The Nerd Who Loved Me

The Nerd Who Loved Me by Vicki Lewis Thompson

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



These are a guilty pleasure read. They're light and fluffy and the dialogue makes me wrinkle my nose, but they're also fun and fast to read.

This is the second of the Nerds in Love series by Vicki Lewis Thompson. It's not necessary to read them in order or to get the whole set; in this case, the "series" is a theme that ties them together, rather than a narrative thread that you need to follow through several books. I would actually advise against reading them all one after another; the characters' angst about how a relationship would never work gets repetitive enough within the books, and this theme appears in both of the Nerds in Love series books I've read.

In this book, Lainie Terrell is a dancer on a Las Vegas stage, while Harry Ambrewster is the nerdy accountant with a crush on her. She has to flee Vegas when her ex (and father of her precocious four-year-old) shows up drunk, battering down her apartment door. Harry valiantly steps up to bat, and, in a situation somewhat less dire than the desert island of the first book in the series, they indulge the tension between them. Because this is a romance novel, they fall in love.

I did believe that these two had a future together and that there was more to the relationship than just sex. The challenge was convincing me that there was any barrier to their getting together in the first place, and, once you got past the single motherhood and "out of my league" issues, I didn't know what was holding these two back.

The biggest issues with the book, though, were the dialogue (it sounded stilted and awkward throughout), and the premise that relies on Lainie leaving her precious four-year-old in the clutches of an elderly woman who wants more than anything to be a grandmother. I could believe that she trusted Harry, but she trusts Rona far too readily. For a world dark enough for Harry to be worrying Lainie's ex wants to kill her, there sure is a lack of stranger danger.

I didn't let the above spoil my enjoyment of this book too much, though. I let it go in favor of the book's good parts. The tension between Harry and Lainie is built quite effectively, and had me turning pages and ignoring the terrible dialogue to get to the good part. Vicki Lewis Thompson knows how to write good sex with an excellent emotional payoff, to the point where she makes it look easy. And the book never takes itself too seriously, so there's a sense of humor and lightness that kept me from getting mad at the major narrative flaw.

Overall, I found this book an excellent antidote to the alpha male trope I dislike so much in the romance genre, and I would recommend this book to anyone willing to overlook a few flaws to get a good story about a beta male finding love with a worthy woman.



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Writing momentum

Last month, the writing group did its own version of NaNoWriMo, which we called SWANoWriMo, because the writing group is SWAG, for the Social Writing Assistance Group.

While I reached my goal of over 50,000 new words written in my current work-in-progress, I didn't yet finish my manuscript. I did, however, line everything up for the climax, and figure out a point for a character who'd been hovering all book, waiting to do something useful. It has been easy, therefore, to keep working on it, and keep plugging away. After all, I'm almost done, and I get to write the fun part now.

It's always easier to make a regular habit of writing if I've been writing regularly. That seems common sense to you published authors, I'm sure, but I write this blog for people even newer at this than me, so I'm going to talk about that.

As with most good practices with writing, how you approach "regularly" will vary. Some people set aside at least 15 minutes or a few hundred words to write every single day. Others set a timer during which they must focus on writing, and they move on to other tasks when the timer goes off. Other souls much stronger than I get up an hour earlier every morning to spend it writing, when it's quiet and they're benefiting from the creativity of tiredness. Still others write during their lunch breaks unless it's a working lunch, or three times a week, or only on weekends.

I say it doesn't matter what your schedule is or how often you write, so long as it's a regular event. I have found, though, that planning to write every night when I get home has me thinking all day about what I'll write that night, and looking forward to getting a scene I've mapped out down in writing. It adds an anticipation value. I've also found that, if I end my writing for the evening having finished a scene, I'll have a harder time picking it back up. I prefer to pick up my writing on a cliffhanger.

I doubt you're exactly the same as me in regards to your writing and habits. You may find that leaving off mid-thought makes you delete a lot of half-sentences or half-scenes. You may find that, having spent all day in front of a computer, you haven't the energy to tap away for another couple of hours when you get home from work, to which I'd advise you consider writing things out by hand. What's important is that you know what's most effective for you. And the only way to find out is to try it, and compare results. To start with, your daily word count is usually a good gauge of your output, though you may find that the writing you spend less time editing afterwards is what you're hoping to duplicate.

Even if you're not terribly productive during your regular writing time, it is important to set it aside, because life won't make time for your writing. Even if you only tap out a few dozen words, that's a few dozen you didn't have the day before. You can have an abysmal daily output, and still write a book a year. You will find, though, that several days of a few hundred words here and there will turn into a few thousand-word days, as you work through the difficult scenes or find your voice.

The only thing that separates writers from non-writers is who's putting words on a page. To do that, you need to start today. Keep doing it tomorrow. Then, keep it up.

It sounds like so much. And yet, once you have that momentum behind you, you'll wonder what took you so long.

Dialogue done right

I'm still waiting to hear back from 3 of the giveaway winners. But, for all intents and purposes, we're back to our regularly-scheduled randomness here at Tales of an Intrepid Pantster.

Today, for no reason at all, I wanted to talk about dialogue.

I can't be the only person this has happened to. I'm reading along, liking the characters, the description, the world-building. Then, the characters open their mouths, and it's like a needle scratching across a record. (If you're too young to know what that sounds like, substitute "nails on a chalkboard." Wait, are some of you too young for that, too?)

For a story to be good, all of the elements need to come together. But dialogue is the one that bothers me the most, probably because it doesn't strike me as difficult. One has to put words into the character's mouths that those characters would say, and that convey more than the words do.

Okay, so when I put it like that, I can see where people are running into difficulty. Let's break it up into the two pieces. The first half of that is to use words that the characters would use. This will vary from one character to the next depending on educational background, regional dialect, mood, general outlook on life, age, how much they're trying to impress the person they're addressing, status, or a number of other factors. No two characters should sound exactly alike. Nor should they sound like they're quoting a textbook or making a speech. People don't do that in everyday dialogue. Your character may expostulate at length, but are the rest of your characters patient enough to sit through that every single time? Because chances are, your audience isn't.

The best way to check if your dialogue sounds like something that character would use is to read it aloud, which works with all kinds of editing, as I outline in the linked post. If your tongue trips over sentences you've put in your characters' mouths, or if you can't get it out in one breath, you'll want to rewrite. Also, if you can't imagine saying that aloud in similar circumstances, you'll want to find a better way to put it.

The second half of that is to convey more than the words do. This gets down to word choice. Someone who's annoyed will speak in short, clipped tones. Someone who's relaxed and content will choose longer, languorous words. You don't have to add unnecessary and clunky adverbs to your dialogue tags if the words the characters speak do that work for you.

As for the words, themselves, they will convey information, but not as much as you think. Dialogue can be a good way of conveying information, but it can also turn a book into a wallbanger if you rely on it too heavily. People don't discuss things they already know, unless they're a forgetful married couple. Don't review things characters already know through dialogue, and really don't use it to review things your reader already knows. The latter is what exposition is for (when telling isn't always bad), and the former is repetition, which is annoying. People also don't discuss things that are obvious or common sense, unless they're making sure the person they're talking to isn't a moron. Having a character roll his or her eyes following obvious statements or questions is fine; having them answered earnestly will have me wondering if I overestimated the characters' IQs.

I've read an awful lot of books that can't manage dialogue with a decent flow that people would actually say, and it leaves me scratching my head. Is there a writing equivalent of tone deafness? Because bad dialogue, to me, is as easy to ignore as a five-alarm fire next door. I can't be the only one.

The giveaway winners

Today is the day of the drawing. Congratulations to the following commenters for being chosen by my random number generator.

scottakennedy
fyrefall
Vivien
Judy
Emily Dugas

Also, two new readers will get a copy of Rosemary and Rue. scottakennedy, since you're getting Discount Armageddon, I'll ship both together. The other is going, by another random draw, to Greg Kettell.

Congratulations to all the giveaway winners, and I hope you enjoy these books as much as I do. I'll be contacting you for mailing addresses.

To everyone else, thank you for entering, and I hope you end up picking up the book and enjoying it. Feel free to stick around. Seanan McGuire has lots more books coming out in the future.

Review: I Am Half-Sick of Shadows: A Flavia de Luce Novel

I Am Half-Sick of Shadows: A Flavia de Luce Novel by Alan Bradley

My rating: 5 of 5 stars



I do so enjoy this series. Jayne Entwistle's narration helps, I'm sure. While she is not an 11-year-old girl, to me, her voice is Flavia de Luce. She lends a good variety of accents and tones to the other characters' dialogue, too, so that it adds to their characterization and makes them easy to differentiate.

In this book, Flavia is plotting to trap Father Christmas on her roof with a sticky substance. At the same time, the house is rented out to a movie production company for filming on location. When half the village shows up in the middle of a snowstorm to watch the actors put on a charity performance, and one of them turns up dead, Flavia is back to playing detective.

This book breaks the formula a bit, in that the death doesn't occur until you're over halfway through the story. It seems to be solved relatively quickly, then, though Flavia does assemble clues with just as much painstaking attention to detail and chemical properties as in all the previous books. It was a good way to freshen up the story, four books in, and I appreciated the approach.

We also learn several new things about characters. Characters from other books show up without seeming shoehorned in, while those who should be in the story show surprising new facets of themselves to Flavia. The dynamic between sisters is examined, and there are some intriguing developments when both sisters nearly make confessions to Flavia at which the reader can only guess. The author handles these with a light touch, so that it becomes obvious to everyone but Flavia that her sisters aren't the monsters she paints them as (though, being sisters, they're still pretty mean).

Overall, I enjoyed this book very much. Mysteries aren't generally my favorite genre, but future installments of this series will get priority on my to-read, thanks to the wonderful voice of the precocious Flavia de Luce. That the narrator is able to capture her whimsy and delight in the macabre makes these audio books all the more enjoyable.



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Changing midstream

Last night, while I was typing away at my manuscript, somewhere around word 104,000, I realized the ending I'd mentally plotted out lacked tension and drama. It occurred to me that I'd put in building blocks for a much more interesting climax to the story, and the change took the story in a much more interesting direction.

That isn't the first time that's happened. It happens to every pantster that I've talked to, and Seanan McGuire, who outlines pretty extensively, mentioned in her interview that she rewrote most of the elements of One Salt Sea, her most recent Toby Daye book. You realize that you're writing the wrong story, or that you have to drop the elements you're working with. Or, you get to the halfway point, and suddenly you hit upon what the tone and themes are and the first half no longer fits what you're writing.

What do you do?

If you're like me, you keep on writing with the new themes, tone, plot elements, or whatever has changed, and go back to edit that into what you've already written when the story is done. Others go back to change what came before immediately, while some toss the whole story and start over from scratch.

Which approach you take depends on how much you like the words that are already there, how much time it'll take, and how well you can keep track of what needs changing. If you'll forget what new direction you wanted to take by the time you've finished editing what you've already written, you may want to consider jotting it down at the end of the manuscript. I insert comments and bookmark parts of my manuscript so I know where to go back to or where to find something I need to fix. I keep moving forward, though, because I've given myself permission to suck.

The thing is, these midstream changes are one of the things I like best about writing, and are probably why I'm a pantster. I love getting several chapters into a story and realizing something that changes everything about the story. Whenever I get those kind of insights, it's always something that deepens and enriches it. It's always an improvement. Otherwise, I wouldn't bother to change it.

It would be a nice change to have it happen at the beginning, without having to change the story midstream, but, at least if you're a pantster, it doesn't work that way. I develop my characters while I'm writing them, which often means I learn things about them as I'm going. I explore the dynamics within what I'm writing, which often means entire scenes are scrapped because they serve no function beyond character study.

The beauty of the written word is that the first draft is not the finished product. You can go back and fix these things. You can edit in further depth, you can smooth over rough patches, and insight that comes to you as you're typing the last page can work its way into chapter one with a few keystrokes. There's no reason to throw your hands up in frustration because you've gotten a better idea. That's all the more reason to keep at it. Chances are, if you found it a pleasant and motivating surprise, your readers are going to love it.

Review: Piratica: Being a Daring Tale of a Singular Girl's Adventure Upon the High Seas

Piratica: Being a Daring Tale of a Singular Girl's Adventure Upon the High Seas by Tanith Lee

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



Why was this book not around when I was younger? This had everything my young self loved: adventure, romance, pirates who don't kill, a treasure hunt, and an awesome young woman at the helm. Had I read this book when I was young, I would love it to pieces.

Alas, I'm older now, and I couldn't help but see flaws rather than the parts I loved. The style of this book is choppy and abrupt. There's some creative imagery, but there's also a treasure hunt scene with a distinct lack of tension, an issue with pacing, foreshadowing laid on thick, and an unconvincing reason given for the title character's innate talent for piracy.

The style of the book is straightforward, to the point of terseness. There are a few different perspectives the story is told through (it's third person semi-omniscient), and the transitions from one perspective to another aren't always obvious.

The style takes away from the tension quite a bit. I felt like the most interesting part of the story was told in the middle. While the ending still held some surprises, it was told with a hopeless, resigned tone that made it hard to plow through. The treasure hunt and subsequent climactic duel is the most interesting part of the book, but the hunt, itself, feels like reading about someone's afternoon walk.

There were a lot of elements in this book that I enjoyed, but this is a book best enjoyed by the age group it's written for. It's safe for a preteen audience; while there's romance, it's people pining after one another in a very distant, signals-crossed sort of way. Bad language is expressed in a made-up slang for the book, and the title character never drinks anything stronger than coffee.

This was an enjoyable enough book, and if I had a son or a daughter to read it to, I'd probably like it more. But on its own merits, reading it as an adult, it left something to be desired.



View all my reviews

Introversion and writing

I talk a lot about introversion online, mostly on Twitter and my personal journal. Until the last few years, I didn't even realize that there was a non-judgmental word for the fact that I didn't enjoy social situations, and would rather spend a Saturday curled up with a book than spending time with a lot of strangers.

But it turns out that one is more likely to meet other introverts online than in public, thanks to the very nature of introversion. I can't speak for all introverts, but I know for me, interacting online isn't draining or taxing like meeting strangers is, unless I'm reading the comments sections on news stories.

And so I've been able to learn a lot more about my personality type, to the point where I've not only accepted it, I've embraced it. Introversion isn't just a matter of "shyness," it's a matter of what recharges a person. Introverts feel refreshed spending time by themselves, and are happiest living in their own heads. We can interact and make small talk and meet other people, and we even form deep and lasting friendships. The social persona, though, is not what drives us. If you don't know much about introversion, you may want to pay Psychology Today's primer a visit to know what I'm talking about.

I mention it today because I've been thinking a lot about its relationship to writing. A couple of authors have mentioned on their blogs that they're introverts, and another retweeted an article about networking I linked to with the text, "To an introvert, saying Never Eat Alone is like saying Never Go to the Bathroom Alone." The more I think about it, the more I wonder if there isn't something about introversion that gives  writers an advantage.

After all, it's my introversion that makes me so content to spend hours at a time talking to the imaginary people who live in my head to find out how they should manifest on the page. It's my introversion that makes me so content to spend hours and hours tapping out words. It's my introversion that makes me want to pop in my headphones and explore where a few story elements can take me instead of talking to all my friends when we gather at a coffee shop.

There are certainly extrovert tendencies that make them good writers. It must've been an extrovert writer who founded the first writing group and taught the first writing workshop. Extroverts have an easier time going out to meet people like those who'll populate their world, and getting firsthand accounts of things they need to write about. Extroverts will be more likely to understand what others won't pick up in their story without it being spelled out, where I regularly wonder why people can't follow a leap of logic I've made in the middle of my story. Extroverts, too, will have an easier time with going out and telling random strangers why they should read the book, where introverts will enjoy promotional events that aren't emotionally draining.

The trick with writing as an introvert, then, is to borrow extroverts' strengths, while using the advantage they have in being content spending so much time alone to use it for writing and reflection time. Extroverts can make up for their need for stimulation by joining a writing group, allowing others to read their writing for a sense of validation and accomplishment, and taking comfort in the advantages they have in getting published and selling well.

February 2012 recap

Just as I did for January, I'm going to devote an entry to what you might have missed over the last month.

Book reviews
Daily Life in Medieval Europe by Jeffrey L. Singman (4/5 stars, reread) — nonfiction; covers what life looked like for the people living in Medieval Europe. Excellent resource for writers of semi-realistic fantasy or historical fiction.
The Girl with the Silver Eyes by Willo Davis Roberts (4/5 stars, reread) — YA, contemporary fantasy; girl who has minor powers and creeps people out is in danger of her secret being found out, so she tracks down more kids like her. Read this first when I was the same age as the title character.
The Year of the Flood by Margaret Atwood (5/5 stars, audio, second book in the MaddAdam trilogy) — post-apocalyptic literary fiction; two women who survive the global pandemic reflect on what life used to be, while adjusting to a new world. Continues Oryx and Crake by all of two scenes.
Heroes at Odds by Moira J. Moore (4/5 stars, book 6 in the Heroes series) — humorous fantasy; Lee finds out she was betrothed before she became a Shield, magic users go head-to-head, and Taro's home is threatened again. This is the last one that will be available in paperback, much to my disappointment. The author will make the final installment available online.
Feed by Mira Grant (4/5 stars, reread, readalong) — post-apocalyptic horror/political thriller; bloggers follow a Presidential campaign in a world very much changed by a zombie apocalypse. The second part of the readalong is here.
Grave Peril by Jim Butcher (3/5 stars, audio, book 3 in the Dresden Files) — detective noir urban fantasy; Harry Dresden contends with ghosts, a possessive fairy godmother, and vampires in what many fans say is a turning point of the series. I'm still only listening because I like how James Marsters reads them.
Map of Time by Félix J. Palma (3/5 stars, book club selection) — steampunk time travel; wins the award for most misleading jacket blurb in my recent memory, as the jacket blurb events don't show up until the last third. The other two parts are about a man who loses the love of his life to Jack the Ripper and goes back in time to save her, and a future savior of mankind who isn't all he seems, and who mires himself in further lies.
The Forest of Hands and Teeth by Carrie Ryan (2/5 stars, audio) — YA post-apocalyptic horror; a girl born after the zombie apocalypse pouts her way through woods infested with zombies. Pardon me, "unconsecrated." Possibly a decent read spoiled by a terrible narrator.
Plum Lucky by Janet Evanovich (2/5 stars, Stephanie Plum between the numbers, audio) — humor/mystery; not a lot to distinguish this installment of the Stephanie Plum series where she meets a wannabe leprechaun and rescues Grandma Mazur from a small-time gangster.
Discount Armageddon by Seanan McGuire (5/5 stars, InCryptid #1, release date 3/6/12) — humorous urban fantasy; Verity Price wants a chance to pursue her dream of a career of ballroom dancing before her family calling as a cryptozoologist takes over. Can't recommend this highly enough, which is why I'm giving away 5 copies of it.

Most Popular Posts in February
Interview with Seanan McGuire, by a long shot. Likely helped by the giveaway and the fact that Seanan McGuire is awesome.

Writing romance and sex, in honor of Valentine's Day. 

Stuff and things, with some random bullet points. This indicates the seat-of-the-pants approach is working for me.

Another progress post, where I discuss my progress on SWANoWriMo, my writing group's answer to the fact that our lives are too hectic to write 50k in November.

Narrative kinks, because nothing gets people's attention like handcuffs. Not as controversial as it sounds; it's about what I like to see in stories I read or movies I watch.