Oh how she chips away at my foundation

[witchwillow.livejournal.com]

Oh for the love of all that's holy!



LKH: Italics
Me: Regular
My Emphasis: Bold

In A LICK OF FROST what I made notes for was, names of characters and physical descriptions, especially of eyes. When I first created my version of the sidhe, the high court of faerie, I had this neat idea. I read one account of a man who had met one of the sidhe. He described her as beautiful, then said she had three eyes. Now I'd read all sorts of true accounts of people that had interacted with the fey. I studied reports of people from the 1700s and before, and after, that said they'd been abducted not by aliens, but by fairies. They do not describe anyone as beautiful that has three eyes, or any extra bits. That is like considered a sign of being 'evil'. So, how to reconcile beauty with three eyes?

I walked around for a day or so, trying to decide what it meant. I passed a news stand and saw a cat magazine. It had a gorgeous cat on the cover with a closeup showing it's eyes. Eyes that had three distinct rings of color in it's iris. I knew what I thought the man had meant when he said the beautiful woman had three eyes.

So I gave most of the sidhe multi-colored irises. Great idea, very visual. Problem, it's sometimes hard enough to remember who has gray eyes, or brown, or blue, but then also to remember who has three rings of different shades of blue, and who has grey rings, or which of them has eyes that are just green. It makes a small problem that most writers have with a large cast of characters even harder. Yes, yes, if I would just keep that running list of physically characteristics on file, I wouldn't have to worry about it. I've been meaning to do that for years. I just never quite do it.

There's more to this blog. So much more. Stuff about dyslexia and her two degrees blah blah wankcakes blah beer blah. But this is what makes me scream:

ARRRRRRRRRRRGHHHHH

The following rant will be quite rambly and may be somewhat incoherent.

Do we need reminders that vampires drink blood? No.

Do we need reminders that weres shift shape? No.

Do we need reminders that the fey use magic? No.

Why then, if she's properly introduced the concept of tri-ringed irises does she feel the need to continually remind people, over and over again with description after description that she can't even keep straight?

If it's not important enough for her to remember, if in fact she finds the concept confusing, how can she not think that the readers aren't confused. If her own characters don't impress themselves into her memory, how can she not understand why some readers don't really give a damn?!

I know I could well be missing something, much in the same way I read the first Merry book and I don't remember the tri-ringed irises at all. But this whole thing strikes me akin to the long haired men in the Anita Blake books. People can't keep the men straight (no pun intended) because they're all beautiful and long haired and pony-tail wearing.

And now having seen her solution is to write NOTE CHARACTER B _ INSERT HAIR COLOR / EYE COLOR; I 'm all no wonder men in both her books come across as empty shells.

I'm not going to get into the couch pop-psychology about why LKH can't hold onto the characterization of a male character; his personality, what makes him tick, etc. Because I think she can't hold onto any characterization. And this is why it's so much easier for her to have all other women as bitches, all major character women defined by the crown on their head, or their physical appearance and all the men just walking dicks with long multi-coloured hair and eye colour.

When I was a little girl, I think I wanted to meet a mer-man with sea-foam green hair and green eyes. I've now been on livejournal for going on almost six years now and my participation in fandom has helped me place that childish longing in it's place. It was the infantile longing for the exotic that's created to be tamed. It was my first fantasizing about a magical universe. I don't really remember much about my little mer-man, but I knew we were going to save the world together from a great evil (Blame Tolkien).

I have been actively straining to learn all I can about writing and characters and world building and various nuances of writing for the past six years. I've written fan-fiction and done rpgs and called it all my Outside The Classroom College Writing Experience.

I've seen myself grow.

How the hell is LKH managing to move backwards? She started off with characters who've stayed in my mind precise and clean for years ( Edward, Rafael, Ronnie, Olaf, Jason). Now, however, everytime I read reviews I have no idea who's being talked about. People go 'The one with the hair and the eyes' but it all gets jumbled for me because they all have 'special hair and special eyes and special penii'.

My personal memory can suck, for a shitload of reasons (stuff I can safely say would make LKH run screaming). But as books were always my comfort, I could and can remember storylines from books I read when I was 5, 6 and 7. I can almost always remember the characters involved and what they were supposed to look like and more importantly what they felt like.

LKH's 'progress' in writing, terrifies me now. Because I can't remember the characters, the people she's writing about anymore. Which means I can't remember what I was doing at the time I read the books. Which means I can't remember parts of my life, because her work has no hook.

I'm sure that's not the way it feels for everyone else. I know I have a unique mental take on things. But surely I'm not the only one thinking that her characters have become soulless. It's more than they're now pod!people. They seem empty inside. And the knowledge that she just sticks in 'HIS EYE COLOR IS WHAT?' just makes things creepier to me.

http://blog.laurellkhamilton.org/2007/05/taking-my-own-advice.html

Comments

[sinanju.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I think hubris covers it. The rants she's posted about the haters and how people don't like her recent works because they're too edgy (hah!) and make the readers think too hard pretty much demonstrate that, I think. There seems to be no room in her worldview for the idea that her work could be less than perfect, or that it could be improved by actually obtaining some constructive criticism.

As for the bible issue--laziness probably has something to do with it, but I think it's mostly hubris. I suspect she thinks that relying on a series bible would interfere with her Creativity (insert charicature of joint-smoking, beret-wearing Artiste here). I don't doubt, based on what she's written in the past, that in her view creativity must be spontaneous, pouring out of her subconscious (in the inimitable phrase Ayn Rand used once) "like vomit out of a drunkard."

Note how often she complains about the characters being uncooperative, and how "forcing" the plot doesn't work because that's not how the story wants to go. (Alternated with claims that she puts more of X into her books just to flip the bird at haters who object to X, put shhhhhhh!) Note the complete lack of ownership of her fiction. She lets her "friends" (for whom she supposedly buys presents, thinking they're real) do what they like; she avoids plots that endanger characters because the other characters would be unhappy. Ad nauseum....

I find the incessant chatter about "muses" by fanfic writers on the internet mildly amusing*, but they're not being paid big bucks to produce an (allegedly) professional product. LKH is, but she refuses to listen to criticism, won't maintain a series bible, and purports to have characters dictating plotlines to her; that's the behavior of someone who believes (consciously or not) that her subconscious can squeeze out perfect fiction without any editorial direction, like a goose laying golden eggs. Hubris.

*I write fanfic myself, but I never lose sight of the fact that it's fiction and _I_ am responsible for it, whether it sucks or not.

[witchwillow.livejournal.com]

I talk about muses. And I've been pissed off like whoa that LKH mentions them and puts that way of writing in such a state of ill repute.

I love the idea of so completely imagining a character that they live and breathe in my mind and I can clearly imagine their pov on any given subject or situation.

I also love the to come to the end of writing something and realize that some of what I've written supports the underlying thread or hints of background someplace else and thus makes the whole story deeper. I like thinking of that as a facet of having a muse and having my subconscious ruminating on the character while I write and thus helping me add subtext.

But none of that means I've never thought that there is something inherently special and masterful and needing of skill in being a pen that tells/shapes/molds the stories of these imagined beings.

I think if LKH really felt her characters as muses, she wouldn't be able to do half the things she has actually done to them. They'd be far too loudly saying 'But that's not who I am, that's not what my history says I'd do'.

[sinanju.livejournal.com]

If what you mean by "a muse" is a very clear mental image of a character, that's one thing. But I've seen far too many people write about their muses as if they had an objective existence, not like a shorthand way of describing their own internal processes. This is especially true when they opine that a story has stalled because "the muses aren't talking." They're giving away their own agency when they do that.

But I will admit that I take issue (maybe more than I should) with alienating your own creativity. I'm a big believer in "one percent inspiration, 99 percent perspiration" as the recipe for creativity. If your story has ground to a halt, that's not a sign that the muses are uncooperative. It may be evidence that you need to rethink your plot, though.

Getting back to LKH, though, (and it is all about her, after all!) the failure/refusal to employ a series bible is telling. It means she doesn't believe it's necessary; if she really thought it was, she'd be doing it.

[clover-elf-kin.livejournal.com]

I've actually never heard the term "series bible"--found a few links, though, and it certainly sounds like a good thing for an author to have on hand. Can someone rec a few pages on such? ^^

[summersdream.livejournal.com]

See, when I say "the muses aren't talking" I fully admit it to be my own code for "I can't think of a freaking thing" I view 'muse' as being my creativity, and sometimes my creative side takes a holiday. Good for my law class, bad for my writing. That said, I will also light a candle and beg Erato, Thalia, Calliope and co for some divine intervention.

[frabjously.livejournal.com]

Isn't it amusing that her characters are so uncooperative, yet she manages to tear their essence to pieces (especially with that Rafael thing).