Current Affairs

A Romance Blogstorm

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I don’t read romances, but I love reading my sister-in-law Wendy’s blog about the field. It turns out Wendy has the Goldberg family touch for creating controversy. The other day, Wendy wrote about her disappointment  with Romancing the Blog, a blog of web columnists who explore  the romance genre.

I love the idea of RTB. I want the excitement I felt at first to
continue. No, actually, I want there to
be a reason for that excitement. When
RTB launched it quickly became my first web stop of the day. I couldn’t wait to see who posted and what
they had to say. Now it’s something I
get around to, more from habit that interest. Sylvia’s post
about the online romance community was the first column that held my attention
in…I can’t remember when.

I don’t expect the earth to move
everytime I click on a blog, any blog.  But, with all possibilites RTB promises,
I expect them to deliver more often than not.  That’s it. The almost unvarnished truth.

Her post seems pretty tame to me, but it apparently sparked a blogstorm of controversy and led  novelist Alison Kent to reveal herself as one of RTB’s anonymous founders. Helen Kay writes today about the brouhaha (don’t you just love that word? It’s like a diabolical villain’s laugh…"Today, Mr. Bond, I will rule the world! BrouHAHA!").

Congrats to Wendy for
having the guts to blog about RTB even though she knew it put her butt on the
line.  She’s a grown-up and can speak for herself but I do want to say something
– despite what some comments have suggested, she didn’t do it just to be
controversial.  She did it because she is excited about the concept of RTB and
wants it to be successful and, yes, sometimes that means RTB needs to be
controversial too.  She pointed out it also needs to be diverse and relevant and
interesting.  Constructive criticisms not snarkiness.  She is allowed to have an
opinion and should be able to do so without having her motives questioned.

Now I think it’s time for Wendy to talk about fanfiction, vanity presses, the LA Times Book Review, and people who call themselves "pre-published authors."

Another Day in FanFic

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Meljean Brook readily admits that her DC Comics-based  fanfic is a violation of copyright…but that she writes them anyway.

The first question is: isn’t it illegal?

Yes. There’s no
getting around that. I am using copyrighted characters, and using them
to write stories. The characters are owned by DC Comics, the copyrights
are current and valid….

And yet I wrote them anyway.

Don’t I have any sensibilities?
Any notion of right and wrong? Any inkling of what it is to own a
character? Why copyright infringement is a horrible thing to do?

The answer is: Yes. I do. Stealing ideas and claiming them as my own is the worst form of plagiarism.

I
don’t claim them as my own—I know exactly where the credit for their
creation lies. Did I write them? Yes. Do I own them? Nope. Anyone who
wants them can have them.

Does that little disclaimer at the
beginning of every fic that says "I don’t make any money from these"
absolve me of responsibility? No, I still violated copyrights.

So if she has so much respect for copyright, why did she do it? Because she simply couldn’t help herself.

Using someone else’s character and making that character behave in ways
the creator/copyright holder would never have condoned/conceived is
revolting. How dare I write about Batman and Wonder Woman becoming
romantically linked? How dare I write a slash fiction parody involving
Batman and Superman?

The answer is: I didn’t know what else to
do. I’m a writer—I may not be a very good one, but it is what I do.
When Batman and Wonder Woman grabbed a hold of me, they didn’t let go,
and I had to write it. There were stories in my head, and I told them
on paper like I do every other story in my head.

And because I’m a geek, and because I had no one else to talk to about this, I put it on the Internet.

I’ve heard a lot of inane justifications for writing fanfic, but this is the winner. She knows she’s using characters that aren’t her own, that she’s disrespecting the authors right to control their own creations, but none of that really matters… because she’s "a writer," so she had no other choice but to write the story and post it in the net.  She had to do it. It was an undeniable compulsion.

Because she’s "a writer."

No, Meljean, you’re not. You don’t have the slightest inking of what it means to be a writer or any respect for other writers.  A writer creates characters and stories  and respects the creative rights of his colleagues. You are a plagiarist. A creative parasite. To call yourself "a writer" to justify your creative theft and Internet publication of your work disrespects every real writer you steal from.

Now I know what you’re going to say…"I used fanfic to learn my craft. I am a writer now. A professional writer. I have a novella coming out from Berkley and I’m working on a novel.   So there!"

Uh-huh.

So why do you still proudly post all your fanfic on your site? A real writer would have more respect for her peers. A real writer — an adult —  would know better.

Grow up already.

To Pitch or Spec

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If you’re a professional screenwriter with a great idea for a movie…should you go out and pitch the idea or write it as a spec? Traditional wisdom is that you’re better off writing it. But  screenwriter (and WGA Board Member) Craig Mazin thinks otherwise.

I think pitching is almost always the way to go. Admittedly, I’m a bit biased here.  I like pitching. I
think I’m good at it, and I’ve had success doing it. Every original
screenplay I’ve ever written was first sold as a pitch. In fact, in ten
years of professional screenwriting, I have written a sum total of zero
spec screenplays…

…I pitch my original stories because I’m selling more than words…I’m
selling a total service. I want to be the man they can trust to
shepherd the story of the movie from the first draft to the locking of
the last reel. I want to be the writer they recognize as a partner,
with all of the rights and obligations that go along with that word. I
want to be someone who offers them a chance in a “what if?” and all of
the excitement and possibility that goes along with that, rather than
someone who gives them a “what it is”, and who then must struggle to
change my identity from “author of 120 pages I bought” to “story teller
of a movie I’m making”.

Personally, since I hate doing anything on spec, out of sheer laziness I would lean towards pitching instead…besides, I enjoy pitching.

The Reality Impaired

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The Wall Street Journal reported last week that a new generation of hearing-impaired children are getting cochlear implants, which offers them the opportunity to hear and speak almost as naturally as people
without hearing problems. As a result, many schools for the deaf are adding seperate programs for children with the implants to teach them how to hear and speak English rather than teaching them  sign-language.

Supporters of the venerable culture built up by deaf people believe deaf chilren should get a strong grounding in American Sign Language so they can participate fully in the culture when they grow up…
…they don’t see themselves as handicapped and view implants as an attempt to fix something that isn’t broken. They especially oppose hearing parents deciding to get implants for their deaf children, believing
kids should make the decision themselves when they get older. Research shows, however, that implants work best when given to very young children, who develop language more quickly than adults.

According to the article, some in the deaf community don’t see themselves as disabled…but as an ethnic group with a unique culture and language that should be celebrated and preserved.  Cochler implants are a threat to their way of life.  The Lompoc Record reports:

Some deaf individuals
feel that technology such as cochlear implants reinforces the belief that
deafness is merely a pathology to be cured, rather than a rich culture to be
celebrated and embraced.

This just goes against common sense. Deafness is not a way of life. It’s a significant disability. Sign language is something that was created to work around the problem.
The outrage against cochler implants, and against schools  for the deaf creating separate classes geared to children who have them, strikes me as absolute insanity. I can’t believe they want to deny children the
opportunity to hear, to more easily function in the world, simply to preserve sign language…and the illusion that being deaf is like being African-America or Italian.
The deaf community should be pleased that there are finally medical advances that will allow deaf children to more easily function in the world…and that someday the technology could improve even more, someday making sign language (and the need for it) obsolete.

But some members of the deaf community aren’t the only ones with disabilities who are letting their justifiable need to promote a positive self-image cloud their common sense.
Pride is a positive thing…unless you let it blind you to reality. Some wheel-chair bound people (for lack of a better term) are outraged that "Ms Wheelchair America" was photographed standing up.
The Philadelphia Daily News reports:

Ms. Wheelchair Wisconsin has been stripped of her title because pageant
officials say she can stand – and point to a newspaper picture as proof. Janeal Lee, who has muscular dystrophy and uses a scooter, was snapped by the
Post-Crescent newspaper standing among her high school math students.

"I’ve been made to feel as if I can’t represent the disabled citizens of
Wisconsin because I’m not disabled enough," Lee said.

ABC News further reported:

The announcement of the new winner Tuesday came amid a storm of protest over
pageant officials’ decision last week to take the crown away from Janeal Lee, a
high school teacher and muscular dystrophy sufferer who uses a scooter as her
main way to get around but says she can walk up to 50 feet on a good day and
stand while teaching.

During the furor, the runner-up refused to accept the crown out of protest.
Lee’s sister, who also has muscular dystrophy and was named Ms. Wheelchair
Minnesota, dropped out of the competition in that state. And the coordinator for
the organization’s Minnesota program stepped down from her job to "stand up for
Janeal Lee."

"I no longer feel comfortable supporting an organization that instead of
working towards creating a positive change, chooses to perpetuate stereotypes
and requests its participants to hide their abilities while in public," said the
sister, 26-year-old Sharon Spring of Rochester, Minn.

The organization said candidates for the crown have to "mostly be seen in the
public using their wheelchairs or scooters."

So every time she’s in public she must be in a wheelchair or scooter? She’s supposed to hide the fact she can occasionally stand? My God, what stupidity.

There’s no doubt this woman has muscular dystrophy… or that she needs to use a wheelchair.  She hasn’t perpetuated a fraud. She stood up. Instead of castigating her, they should be applauding.  They should be thrilled that she’s able to stand…but they undoubtably see it as an attack on their way of life, their ethnicity, if a wheelchair-bound woman takes a few steps. Would they also rail against a surgery that would allow more muscular dystrophy sufferers to stand and take steps as a threat to their way of life? 

To chastise a wheel-chair bound woman for using her full range-of-motion, or parents for giving their deaf children the ability to hear, is simply wrong.

A Terrific Book

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While Victor Gischler and my brother Tod squabble over who
came up with The World’s Worst Interview feature, and who, indeed, does it the worst, I’m going to buck the trend by offering a serious Q&A.

Chris AbbottTf_pitch is a veteran TV writer/producer ("Magnum PI," "BL Stryker," etc.) and followed Bill & I as executive producer of DIAGNOSIS MURDER. She’s written a wonderful and entertaining new book called TEN MINUTES TO THE PITCH that’s full of great advice and memorable
anecdotes.  If that wasn’t reason enough to buy it, all the proceeds benefit the Writers Guild Foundation for its literacy library programs.

I’ll be posting a Q&A with her here in a few days. In the mean time, she will be signing her book at the Barnes & Noble at the Grove on April 13th at 7:30pm.  Joining her will be fellow writers Charlie Hauck (Frasier) and Eric Tuchman (Early Edition). During the signing, several lucky attendees will have the opportunity to pitch and re-pitch their  own ideas to the trio of writers/producers.

A Writer’s Process

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Prolific author Lynn Viehl talks, in a series of interesting entries on her blog, about her novel writing process.

While I’m writing the book I do not back-track to read and mess
with what I’ve written, edit or rewrite the new material as it lands on
the page, change my mind about the story, hate myself, hate the work,
avoid the work, wait for the planets to align correctly before I write,
let my inner rabid bitch off her leash, wonder how what I write will
affect the reader, worry about the state of my soul, chakrahs or ego,
or otherwise railroad myself.

My apologies in advance to the
writers who do any/all of the above. My methods are a professional
necessity, because honestly I could not handle what you do in order to
write a novel.

She also mentions that she gets an advance of about $21,000 a book which, because she mentions it so often on her blog, comes across more like boasting than informative candor.

In  another post, she discusses how she pitches her book projects to editors. Once she has a deal, it’s time to…

… move into the construction phase of the novel
process. I’ve already done the imagining, researching, and outlining for the novel, and I probably have at least a hundred pages of it written as part of the pitch, so everything is ready to go.

A hundred pages? No wonder she can just write without angst… she’s already gone through all her angst, and made all the tough decisions, in her massive (way too massive, in my opinion) sales and outlining process.

I "sell" my DIAGNOSIS MURDER novels (and now my MONK books) on the basis of a punchy page that reads more like book-jacket copy… and then I write a beat sheet for myself that oulines the rest of the plot. By beat sheet, I mean a crude version of the outlines we write in the episodic television business (you can see samples on my website or in my book SUCCESSFUL TELEVISION WRITING).  All together, it might amount to ten pages, mostly in bullet-point form. A hundred pages? Good God.

Unlike Lynn, I also rewrite my books as I go, usually starting my work each day by editing whatever I’ve written the night before. Then again, I also go through almost all of the whining and self-doubt that Lynn manages to avoid…but in the end, I think it helps my work. It forces me to concentrate on plot and character… and to go back and rewrite/refine/hone my writing.

But everyone has their own method. Mystery novelist  Sandra Scoppettone, for instance, doesn’t outline at all, discovering her plot,  her characters, and her murderer, as she goes. Now that is unimagineable to me…

Nervy Sex

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Nerve Magazine is asking readers to vote on the best literary sex scene of the month, culled from novelists like Sam Lipsyte, Meg Wolitzer, AL Kennedy, and Darcy Steinke, among others. Here’s a sampling from AL Kennedy’s PARADISE:

I hold his head as he bows it and then
kisses, suckles the way a son would, then teases, bites, because he is
a man and, either way, draws out my heart from me like a thorn. I’m
hauled out beyond myself, beneath myself, outside myself, inside his
mouth.

   I love his tongue. No other word will do it. I love his tongue.

   And the sweet scalp underneath his hair and the drive of his breath,
the fierce push of his cheek and the howl, our howl, the one we make
out of our skin.

   Which is very well, but it isn’t filth.

   What I was after was filth.

The Proper, and Only, Acceptable Use of the term “Pre-Published”

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Cornelia Reed, who is subbing on Sarah Weinman’s blog, has a new novel coming out soon from Mysterious Press and talks about it in a post:

So mostly I’m in that pre-published bliss state, where everything about
the book itself is still all potential I haven’t screwed up, and I
think of my editor Kristen Weber as this shining distant goddess, like
how Winston Churchill thought of his mother when he was little.

This is the first time in ages that I’ve seen the term "pre-published" used in a way that doesn’t make me cringe all over.  In my mind, this is an example of the proper, and only, acceptable use of  "pre-published" — i.e. your book has been bought by a publisher and is about to be imminently published. It is not a term that describes an aspiring novelist who dreams of selling his or her book some day.

Sex Ed

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Tonight,  my daughter’s elementary school screened for parents the sex education films that they are planning to show fourth graders later this month.  The films were so dated,  so circumspect, and so careful not to say (or illustrate) anything that might possibly offend anybody, that my child is probably better off not seeing them at all. 

She’ll see them…but the information they convey (and I’m being generous here) is so muddled and watered-down by the terrified educators who made them twenty years ago that all the movies will succeed in doing is confusing my daughter instead of informing her.

Did you know that babies "come out of the same special opening that the father used to deliver his semen to the mother?" Where is this special opening? Is it in her arm pit? Perhaps it’s between one of her toes. The movie doesn’t dare say. But they do tell you how important it is to successful reproduction that you have a healthy diet, get plenty of sleep, take frequent showers, and behave responsibly. You also shouldn’t smoke or take drugs.  I’m surprised they forgot to mention the importance of pledging allegiance to the flag.

There were three other movies and, to be fair, the second one mentions the vagina and the penis, but never says the man inserts his penis into the woman’s vagina. Exactly how the sperm gets from the man’s penis to the woman’s uterus is a mystery the films dare not not explore for fear some neanderthal parent might scream "pornography!"

We had one such parent in the audience today. She didn’t scream pornography, but she couldn’t understand why her fourth grader had to "be subjected to all of  this."  To what? I’ve seen anti-persperant commercials that were more explicit about human mating than these so-called educational flms. (That said, it was made clear to the parent, many times, that her child didn’t have to see the movies or take part in the sex education classes).

To be honest, I think these dated,  boring, vague, uninformative films do more harm than good. We want to engage our children, not numb them. If we are going educate our kids, let’s actually educate them instead of intentionally confusing them… let’s give them the facts they need to understand sex and ask their parents the questions that will help them make important decisions in later years.

I know it’s possible for an educational film to do those things… because we saw one tonight. It was a short, animated film about the immune system (we saw it, I suppose, because it touches on AIDS).  Not only was it clear and concise, it  treated the subject with cleverness and humor. It  didn’t pull punches and treated its audience…the kids… with intelligence and respect.  It did all those things because whoever made it wasn’t worried about offending anyone.  How the immune system works isn’t something that gets parents riled up. The subject of AID was dealt with simply and clearly — it’s what happens to the body when the immune system fails. It didn’t discuss unsafe sex or sharing needles or any of that…

Why can’t they make a sex education film that tells children that a baby is concieved through sexual intercourse… when a man puts his penis into a woman and delivers his semen, which is full of sperm and fertilizes the egg?

I know what you’re thinking… "the same reason you had such trouble telling your daughter about sex the first time, dunderhead." Ah yes, but a film can illustrate it so much better than I can explain it… and if my daughter saw a film like that,  it would remove much of her confusion and make it much easier for the two of us to discuss what intercourse means biologically, emotionally, and morally.

In his case, I think  the schools aren’t doing us any favors with their antiquated, and vague, "educational" films.

Fluff You

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Carly at the Daily Grind blog takes the writers of a recent NIP/TUCK  episode to task for perpetuating the “fluffer” fantasy and portraying it as an entry-level porn job.
First off, she says, fluffers simply don’t exist… guys tend to, uh, fluff themselves between scenes.

Furthermore, the notion of “having to work your way up” in the industry is absolutely hysterical. If a girl walks into an agency and says, “I’m ready to do a 900-guy anal gangbang with overweight Germans while juggling flaming chainsaws and playing ‘Bark At The Moon’ on the kazoo,” the agent isn’t going to tell her, “I’m sorry, but you have to start out as a fluffer first.” He’s going to get on the phone to JM Productions right away and negotiate a piece of the pie for him or herself….

…So no big deal, scriptwriters, but I had to get that off my chest. We must stop the fluffer madness for the good of the people, for accuracy, and for the sake of entertainment everywhere.

(Thanks to  "Markus1917  in Berlin" for pointing me to this blog)