Paranormal Romance: What Works and What Doesn't

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 During the first weekend of January, I was going through my bookshelf to finish library books before the start of school, and to read one hundred books this year. I noticed that I had two paranormal romances that I had not picked up, Starcrossed and Beautiful Creatures. Beautiful Creatures is a novel that my friend Cory likes, and it was popular enough to become a feature film.

Starcrossed is about the descendants of ancient Greek families finding out that they’re mortal enemies, and that they cannot get together for fear of starting a war. The book went on an emotional roller coaster of “I want to be together, we can’t stay together, if we stay together it’s going to cause a war, wait suddenly new characters arrive and want to be dangerous, no we actually have bigger problems” for about two hundred pages. The suspense kept riding up and down, and at the end of it the sequel hook made me feel a little dizzy.

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Beautiful Creatures involves even more “opposites attract but can possibly lead to death” love, this time in the Deep South. I might have tolerated the snarky tones, the bullying towards the female love interest, if it weren’t for one teensy fact: the narrator, who dreamed about escaping his home town and the ignorance there, puts all his dreams of college aside and never talks about it for the rest of the series. My biases towards the Deep South and to people who believe in the Civil war’s glory didn’t assist with my enjoyment, and neither did the absence of people of color in the story that would suffer from such an environment. I admit that I am biased about places I’ve never been which have a profile of people not treating minorities well, but my biases are based on general American history and proven facts. A twenty-first century book about such a place that ignores the facts, especially in the light of Mike Brown and Tamir Rice and other victims of violent racism, does not earn my good graces.

I don't have grudges or prejudices against the paranormal romance genre, since it's merely a construct of "magic and romance dominating the plot" for the most part, and some of my favorite YA novels like the Abandon trilogy and Sunshine handle both elements with finesse. After reading both novels, however, and especially knowing that Twilight started the trend towards paranormal romance, a prejudice against paranormal romance is threatening to rise. This is a problem because if I ever want to write the genre, I’d want to write it with sincere effort.

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Starcrossed and Beautiful Creatures suffer the fundamental problem that I’m finding in most paranormal romance: previously established “smart” characters make stupid decisions over an obsession for another person, guy or girl. Even worse, the stories justify these decisions as “right” despite the illogical approach that the narrators take. I actually applaud novels like Afterworlds by Scott Westerfeld where when the narrator makes a stupid decision, like paying $3500 a month in rent for a year, it haunts her in the end.

The problem is that in romance stories, the conflict involves getting the leads together, and what keeps them apart. Poorly written paranormal romance makes the conflict highly exaggerated or blown beyond proportion in the face of greater evils, and with obsessions. People can be rational about love, thus when you show rational characters behaving irrationally for pages on end it frustrates the intellectual reader and promises only a world where obsession is the norm. The same applies not just to boy meets girl relationships, but also to non-hetero-normative ones. 

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Which paranormal romances handle these conflicts well and plausibly then? Quite a number, to be honest. The first one that comes to mind is, as mentioned before, the Abandon trilogy by Meg Cabot: that features a relationship between seventeen-year old Pierce Oliviera and Underworld ruler John Hayden. Due to a near-death experience Pierce has encountered John in the Underworld and at fifteen thought she was too young to die and settle down with a guy forever; this is a plausible road block, as is an older Pierce finding herself in dangerous situations due to the necklace that John gives her. She spends half the trilogy trying to figure out how to get rid of the Furies that are plaguing her, her friends and John, and the other half deciding if such a relationship could work. In other words, she never lets her growing feelings for him get in the way of taking practical measures to handle an ongoing conflict, though at times she does admit that she cares for him a lot. Meg has also written satirical paranormal novels about mediators falling for ghosts and soap opera writers expressing strong dislike for vampires, so she knows what types of conflict to avoid.

Team Human by Justine Larbalestier and Sarah Rees Brennan also makes the paranormal material work by satirizing the Twilight mythos with vampires and showing a believable world involving such creations. In that novel the protagonist Mel tries to stop her friend Cathy from turning into a vampire to stay with the new exchange student Francis. Mel in the meantime develops feelings for Kit, a human raised by a vampire family, who lacks certain social skills and is matter-of-fact about how terrible normal people can be. Both sides bring up points about whether or not becoming a vampire is a bad thing, and eventually Mel and Kit resolve their differences by working together and learning to see the other's perspective, before they engage in any sort of relationship. In other words, they behave rationally and communicate about their desires and needs.

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As for myself, I haven't written a paranormal romance yet, but I wrote about romance and fantasy. In my webcomic A La Mode before it went on hiatus, I had a relationship develop between two characters over time, based on their interactions. Lamode, the nineteen-year old main character, takes her time to express feelings for a local medical student, and before the hiatus they became an official couple. Their obstacles mainly stem from having two different backgrounds and going on a disastrous first date as a result: the boy B.B. is a twenty-one year old rebellious medical student that takes her out to a horror film, and Lamode is a reluctant witch from a conservative atmosphere, unused to jump scares and suspense. When I was writing the comic I was letting their personalities bounce off each other as they communicated their needs and worked through that disaster; their different backgrounds will still be an obstacle when I resume, but they’re working through it without the high-stakes drama in typical paranormal romance. In addition they're both too busy with their jobs-- medicine and baking-- to become obsessed with each other.

Here is what works in paranormal romance: legitimate road blocks that are not necessarily dramatic, three-dimensional characters, and communication between said characters. Don't go for the star-crossed love that predated every novel ages ago with Romeo and Juliet and every mythos in the Western Hemisphere. See what a little bit of mundane conflict can do in a fantastic world.

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A Tale of Two Artists

Before I begin: Acidic Fiction has published my short story "Coming Home"! It's available for perusing and reading, and I am grateful to Stephen x Davis for accepting it.

I meant to post this the moment I came back from India, but the start of school and the inability to articulate my feelings staggered the post for a month. With that said, I think that I have the words now to express the numbness and grief at losing two great people. 

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 While I was away, my friend Corissa messaged me grave new: Sir Terry Pratchett died. Sir Terry had written dozens of fantasy novels, some tongue in cheek, some somber, and some falling in between humor and tragedy. He had also been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, and had planned to use physician-assisted suicide when he felt the time was right. On March 12, however, he died of natural causes at home, surrounded by family and his cat. At least three thousand people have since petitioned Death to “reinstate” Sir Terry and have offered Death basketfuls of kittens in exchange for the beloved author. They have left comments on said petition explaining how Sir Terry impacted their lives, and what it meant to have a friendly personification of Death or a character like Sam Vimes.

Two weeks ago, right before we left the States, Dave, a tennis teacher who has been giving lessons to my younger brother, delivered more grave news: songwriter Frank Smith died. He had spent several weeks in the hospital due to pneumonia, while living with paranoid schizophrenia. Frank was a prolific songwriter that detailed science fiction adventures  with bluegrass riffs. Frank lived in Cleveland Georgia, channeling his inner demons into song and creating analogies for paranoia with alien abduction and robotic women far from reach. He would leave song demos on Dave’s answering machine and cheerily refuse to move from his Cleveland home, even though he could get better care in Miami.

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Unlike Sir Terry, Frank didn’t have an international following or a petition written up to bring him back to life, but he had friends in the Southeast and family that appreciated him and his talent. Last Thursday these people came together to honor Frank at the Luna Star Cafe in North Miami. His friends played dozens of songs, some that Dave hadn’t heard, and they remembered Frank’s good nature and stubbornness.  

Death at times becomes incomprehensible to me; that someone I either know personally or whose art I know personally is gone, suddenly vanished from the world. I hope that by writing down my thoughts that I could pay homage to both of these geniuses.

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I first encountered Sir Terry by reading The Tale of Maurice and his Educated Rodents, which was a parody of “The Pied Piper of Hamelin”. Intrigued by the balance of humor, wit, and suspense within the story, I started reading. Afterward I looked for more Pratchett novels and found a standard Discworld novel, Night Watch. I started reading the Discworld books out of order, while requesting the ones that were in order. The library didn’t have all of the books, but I read as many as I could and gobbled up the ones that were released the fastest.

Terry Pratchett's humorous tone relied at first on mocking typical fantasy tropes, like the orphan who’s a king in disguise or Fate choosing the unluckiest wizard to be her tool in defeating evil. He often turned the tropes on their head, so that the orphan would remain an actor or a police officer, and mock the idea of playing them straight in an age where many writers took inspiration from Tolkien. Within all the humor, however, was a respect for the established tropes, and knowing the reader’s need for a story to have logic and completion. Sir Terry also commented on social justice and current affairs through his work, explaining to the reader about arbitrage in Making Money and why gold standards do not work; he trusted us to follow along even when the issues were complex. 

Before, I had previously encountered humorous fantasy through Harry Potter and The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. For the latter, I was too young to appreciate Douglas Adams's caustic humor, and often I couldn't finish his books out of disgust and confusion. Sir Terry rekindled my belief that a fantasy story could have humor and logic. Wintersmith both made me laugh hard and cry for the titular character, and Hogfather showed compassion for "The Little Matchgirl" that few people would show, to challenge acceptance of tragedy.

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I'm not exactly sure the details about meeting Frank, except that it started with talking with Dave. Dave teaches tennis to my younger brother, encouraging him to run on the court and to put "more spin" into his hits. At some point Dave lent me a CD he had burned, from when he had belonged to a science fiction bluegrass fan. I enjoyed the last song, "Hunting Aliens," for its matter-of-fact tone approach towards the titular activity and tongue-in-cheek lyrics. 

Dave told me that his friend Frank Smith had written it and all the songs on the album, and Frank often wrote songs to express his feelings about the world and about living with paranoid schizophrenia. I mentioned wanting to draw cover art for a CD, and I did draw a watercolor for "Robot Woman". Frank and I talked on the phone once, and he even sang one of his songs on the phone. He had his talent, and he had supporters that wanted to share his music, but he didn't have the widespread success that his contemporaries did. He didn't need it, though he deserved it.

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Before I learned about Frank, I had no idea fantasy was possible in general music. No popular song I know talks about aliens, or about the possibilities of exploring other worlds; our generation mainly has romance, breakup songs, and righteous fury in the mainstream. I didn't think it was possible to combine two worlds, except perhaps as a musical. What's more, I didn't think that people accepted that sort of music. But people did, the ones who understood.

I never met Frank in person, but his music touched me. Like with Sir Terry he taught me that something previously thought impossible was highly possible. He also taught me that people respond to the fantastic woven into bluegrass, and that genius can be hidden right under your nose. 

May these two great men rest in peace, and find further adventures in far-off places beyond our reach. And may people care about them and remember them for an eternity. RIP Sir Terry and Frank.

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Vacation Blog: Traveling With a Hiccup Doll

(This was originally posted to my Tumblr account. May add more photos later on.)

Two Mondays ago, on March 9th,  my family flew to Chennai, India with a stopover in London. The stopover, which was supposed to be only two hours, ended up becoming four, and I had stayed up on the first leg watching The Book of Life and reading Neil Gaiman.That was awesome.

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I packed an extra companion for myself, to deal with the stresses of traveling and the surprises that accompany international journeys, along with my laptop for writing and reading ebooks like Neil Gaiman’s Trigger Warning. He was quite happy to come, although he got dropped a few times.

This is my Hiccup doll, smiling  at the Heathrow airport. He enjoyed the trip, though he had to spend a good portion of it in my purse or in my grandparents’ place, and he missed my Toothless plushie. I would have brought the latter if my family hadn’t laughed at Hiccup so much and implied that I was too old for dolls. With that said, we both enjoyed quite a bit, like this image of Ganesha the elephant god.

The city of Chennai is different in that everyone drives crazy on the roads and yet we see few accidents despite the smaller amount of signals. People park where they can find space and there are billboards everywhere. Chennai has definitely become more industrialized, displaying more shops and corporations than I remember seeing in 2011. 

There are still a lot of stray dogs, though, including a friendly one that napped outside my grandparents’ apartment. Often he would sleep on the pavements, to wake up when the cars threatened to run over him. He didn’t even snarl or snap.

My grandparents took us to the Mamallapuram monuments, as well as a beach resort where one can find elusive white people hiding from the Indian populaces. We had lunch there, strolled the beach and watched fisherman work from tiny boats, using large nets. I even found a garden construction that resembled a Shel Silverstein creature, and he probably has his story. I just haven’t found it yet.

Hiccup didn’t get to see any of that, however; I was worried about losing him. He spent most of his time napping with me, and I napped because of the jet lag and the heat. It was comfy to sleep with him.

On the last day, my family had to eat lunch with relatives I hadn’t seen in a while, including several cousins and aunts. My mom was sick, as was my younger brother, so my two older siblings stayed behind to take care of them and I represented the five of us over a lunch of spicy Indian and Western food, talking about business school and the book I had published. As recompense, I got a sizzling hot fudge sundae on a Korean barbecue plate. It was worth it.

The trip back was quite eventful; my younger brother misplaced his passport in the Chennai airport, and we frantically searched for it. Security helped, and a lady found it lying on the floor. After that we made our flight; I wrote a short story about imperialism and butterflies while listening to Jhumpa Lahiri. Hiccup remained in my arms, though we didn’t take any selfies because it was too dark and my legs kept cramping. I do NOT recommend listening to audiobooks when trying to sleep because they will keep you awake.

It was quite a trip, quite memorable and inspirational. Hiccup is back with Toothless and they are happier together; I’m catching up on fanfiction that I missed and starting the second semester. And I am going to figure out how to write outside of an airplane, to channel the creative energies that got stimulated.

As a last picture, here is a notebook display that I saw at a shop. It was quite tempting, but I thought against it. After all, it would’ve barely fit into my overstuffed suitcase. Maybe next time, if my purse is lighter.

Respect the Source: Why Fifty Shades Irks Me

Hi all,

Happy belated International Women's Day! Finished with final exams (finally) for the first part of the semester, so I can blog! Going to be flying to India for a week, so will be offline in all likelihood.

 Recently on Tumblr, I found out that a lot of young-adult and fantasy authors post material there; one of my new favorite blogs posted this interesting bit on how Fifty Shades of Grey did well at the box office and on the bestseller list. For those who don't know, Fifty Shades is an erotic adult trilogy about how an ordinary college graduate ends up in a legally binding, non-consensual BDSM relationship with Christian Grey, a millionaire that has better things to do than to micromanage another adult's life. A film version premiered on Valentine's Day this year and has grossed $150,048,805 in ticket sales.
 
I haven't read Fifty Shades of Grey, let's get that out of the way first. While considering it, two separate people that I know and trust instructed me NOT to read it, and it's a red flag when the actors for the film adaptation describe their discomfort with acting out the book's scenes. With that said, I have heard bits of the prose and marvel at how people find it unintentionally funny. Doug Walker and his brother Rob describe that part of the book's fun lies in its terrible writing, and comment on how the actors make a valiant effort at genuinely playing out the parts.

It's not just the fact that Fifty Shades has terrible writing according to my friends, or that it was originally posted as Twilight fanfiction on the Internet and remains 89 percent similar to its incarnation. What troubles me is the sensation that author E.L. James cheated when writing her novel, that she played some sort of a practical joke on the writing world and the publishing industry. As Bookshelves of Doom pointed out, if James had chosen a more "high-brow" young-adult trilogy to inspire her work, like The Fault in Our Stars by John Green, she would have received more flak.

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This sensation did not feel rational; I've written my fair share of fanfiction and enjoy it, and Neil Gaiman has pointed out that no idea is original; Rudyard Kipling inspired Gaiman's Newberry winner The Graveyard Book, and Gaiman wrote a troubling response to the Narnia books via "The Problem of Susan". C.S. Lewis in turn took inspiration from the Bible for the Narnia books, and despite disagreements over how he treated Susan, he does know how to tell a story.       

Matt Anderson and I were talking about the uncomfortable sensation that I got from Fifty Shades's success, from the fact that it was inspired by a troubling young-adult trilogy that disappointed the reader, and he pinned it down: Fifty Shades despite having terrible writing became a success, either because people purchased the book to mock it or to enjoy the more erotic elements. James's trilogy didn't add anything to the book world or to the fanfiction world. She didn't explore a different side of an "ordinary" girl getting involved with an emotionally abusive, powerful partner as Bella Swan got involved with Edward in Twilight, or perhaps even a unique take on the premise that vampires have carnivorous relationships with humans.

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Fanfiction by itself has a vague definition; copyright laws determine what characters and settings are public domain and what aren't. Many Lovecraft anthologies have filled the publishing world this year, for example, while Sherlock Holmes's copyright becomes murkier. With that said, the best fanfiction tends to supercede the original author's purpose and dive into a new world, either literally or figuratively, while showing knowledge of this strange territory; Hitchups for example depicts how Hiccup's wanderlust in a deviation, combined with loyalty to his dragon, leads him to becoming a different kind of hero that he becomes in canon, one that cannot tie himself to Earth but still needs bonds to his old home. In contrast, later fanfiction that took the same idea of Hiccup leaving before his final examination tread on similar territory, sometimes condemning the characters that stayed on Berk outright or offering minimal sympathy.

I see inspiration as a springboard into a large swimming pool; you take a leap off established solid ground and end up in a flurry of different water, sometimes aching if you did a belly flop. As long as you make your mark, no matter what the distance from the original starting point, then you have the right to call that story your own. At the same time, one must show that we know the starting point's location, no matter how far we've deviated from it, and pay homage to its origin. To do so otherwise, by weak characterization or convoluted plots, shows disregard for your source and for the reader.

Mel Brooks once said that "You cannot have fun with anything that you don't love or admire or respect." Having done various parodies such as Young Frankenstein and Spaceballs, Brooks knows how to make any mockery work and to tastefully cross lines. In addition to parodies, inspired works ideally ought to follow similar guidelines so that  "love," "admire," and "respect" become the key words. One must act to respect original sources, to remember to pay homage to what made the previous stories great.

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The Graveyard Book won the Newberry Medal because while paying homage to an English classic that barely avoided racism, Gaiman understood the intelligent prose and themes that children and adults craved, about the power of living and facing down evil. Spaceballs became a classic cult film because while mocking Darth Vader's impact it told a cohesive if absurd story about stealing precious oxygen and rescuing a rebellious princess, showing regard for the hero's goals to discover his identity and earn a reward. Even Shrek, for all the original film's bitter blows towards Disney and fairy tales, displayed a belief in true love breaking curses and outsiders finding happy endings. Fifty Shades despite purporting to have "true love" only reinforces the idea that people ought to be in sadomasochistic relationships with no boundaries, which Twilight already portrayed for a younger audience. The setting and characters were different, but the central idea remained the same, and many readers bought it.

If you're going to write because another author's story inspired you, take that leap and remember your original source. Respect your audience's intelligent and desire for a good story. 

Valentine's Post: Harry Potter's Crushes

Happy belated Valentine's Day, everyone. Hope that your day was filled with positive feelings, or at least the time to kick back and watch a good movie. Two of my short stories got accepted into different anthologies last week; "Three Prom Dresses" finally has a home with the Rejected Anthology from ACA books, and "The Opera Singer" will have a place in She Walks in Shadows.

Earlier I had written a post about Mary Sues, and why as an adult I stayed away from them. For this post I am going to refer to Mary Sues and self-inserts when talking about romance in one of the most memorable fantasy works of all time: Harry Potter.

I am not going to refer to this kind of shipping. Obviously.

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One cardinal rule: not all Mary Sues are self-inserts, and not all self-inserts are Mary Sues. A self-insert is a a real life person getting inserted into an established fictional world, usually from the present day,  and they are quite popular in fanfiction. JKR in Harry Potter did a self-insert, parodying her teenage self through Hermione Granger, a brunette "swot" who becomes one of Harry's staunchest companions.

How do self-inserts relate to Harry Potter apart from Hermione? Quite a few fanfics for Harry Potter featured OCs that went for him, for his friends or for his rivals. Eliza Diawna Snape was notorious for shipping a self-insert with Draco Malfoy in her Eliza trilogy, for example, and TVTropes has her under the entry "Old Shame".

I wrote self-insert fics, I confess. Often I made my fictional counterparts relatively perfect, or at least likable. But one thing about these characters?

Most of them were not Indian or based on me. They were very, very white, and based on my white friends. When I put myself in Hogwarts, I made myself very alone, solitary, and too young to interact with the Harry Potter gang because Harry, Ron and Hermione do not interact with first-years. This made for a depressing reflection of how middle school was like for me already, so that fanfiction was never finished.

Harry Potter did not do well with dating while a teenage boy. We see this in Goblet of Fire most prominently, when Professor McGonagall orders him to acquire a date for the Yule Ball and he wants to ask his crush Cho Chang. He ended up taking one of his classmates instead, Parvati Patil. Parvati was one of two Indian characters featured in Harry Potter, who showed interest in Divination, stood up for Neville in their first year, and took a dislike to Professor Moody's all-seeing magical eye for good reason. In other words, she was a full-fledged character with dark skin, someone I should have related to during the series.

JKR did not take that opportunity. Harry alienates Parvati during the Yule Ball by staring angrily at Cho with her date Cedric Diggory, and in future books she is seen as reasonably "cool" towards him. I didn't ship her and Harry-- she was better as a distant classmate-- but any girl in her shoes, no matter what color of her skin, would have felt insulted and ignored. She and her twin Padma become extras in future books, albeit loyal allies to Harry, while other people of color like Dean Thomas receive decent backstories. I ended up relating more to Luna Lovegood and started shipping her with Harry. Luna was white and Irish according to the films, but she was sweet, and she made Harry feel better when they talked. Naturally, I felt a bit chagrined but accepting when Ginny Weasley got together with Harry, since it had been established several books beforehand.

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It was quite a mess, to realize that Harry had dated a total of three girls before dating Ginny, and more of a mess when realizing that two of those characters were racial minorities. Add the number of fanfiction writers that created white OCs to ship with the Harry Potter, and the combination created a subconscious reinforcement: dark-skinned aren't good enough for Harry Potter. I didn't have a crush on Harry, though I had a crush on his actor Daniel Radcliffe, but I wanted to see him have a happy romantic ending after defeating Voldemort. Thus, when I wrote my Harry Potter fanfiction that mercifully vanished into cyber heaven, I based his love interest on one of my best friends who happened to be white, redheaded and pretty.

I didn't realize that Cho was Asian until I saw the films -- the book merely said that she was pretty and had black hair-- but I knew very well that Parvati was Indian. JKR reinforced that Harry wasn't happy with the only prominent female Indian at Hogwarts, and she was characterized as one of the flakiest Gryffindors. Her sister Padma was given even less screen time, having a few pages with Ron. Thus when there were audition calls all over the United States and England to play the identical twins, I didn't even make an effort to try out. For one, there were too many girls vying for a bit role in a film that would later disappoint me in the theater, and for another I didn't want the role as the girl that Harry Potter ignored during a school dance.

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JKR did not mean to make this implication; heaven forbid that she would intend that the hero of a universally read fantasy series cannot end up with a dark-skinned girl, or vice-versa. She's also not the only author to make such implications: with very few exceptions, the more mainstream fantasy novels from the early 2000s tend to have white leads ending up with white love interests. The fact that there were no prominent Indians, except one adult in the Magickers whose decisions disappointed me, only drove the nail deeper into the wood. As a result, my stories mainly featured white protagonists, black protagonists, once even a Native American protagonist-- I did a lot of research for the latter, who stars in a YA novel-- but not that many Indian protagonists. I felt a primal shame, more so of a fraud since while living in America I only knew the nuances of traditional South Indian culture but not the details.

These days, I tend to find a trend in the opposite direction: anthologies and short story magazines want more diverse main characters, with various people of color and backgrounds from different countries. Eggplant Literary Publications asked for fairy tales revised with people of color, and after two false starts -- first setting a story in Norway and then with a an American-Japanese family-- I managed to write a tale that paid homage to "The Princess and the Pea" as well as traditional Brahman culture. Having that story accepted felt odd, since it felt like I had contributed a little piece of myself to a fairy tale anthology. People wanted the diverse part of me, that they valued a portion that I had denied for so long.

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Harry Potter taught me many things, namely the power that comes from building intricate worlds, the power of friendship, surviving trauma as well as victim-blaming, and telling the truth despite the consequences. JKR reminded me how much power words have, how they build characters and destroy tyranny.

With that said, I'm unlearning about what it means to be Indian in a work of fantasy, especially an Indian-American that appreciates South Florida culture more than South Indian traditions. Now I'm writing more short stories with people of color, and exploring the various cultures, current and ancient, that can make for great conflict. Reclaiming the potential of Indian power still feels strange, but it's a long time in coming. 

Sick Weekend Two: The Danger of Silence

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Hey All,

I'm sick again. Fortunately it's not as painful as the sickness that I had in December, but battling a sore throat and mild fever while doing schoolwork and writing this blog. But I feel the need to write it, to keep up with my earlier resolution to blog once a week. My problem was that I hit the dreaded sensation that  every writer must get in their lifetime: a Block.

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When I was a teenager, I read books about writer's block. I read comics about writer's block, including Neil Gaiman's "Calliope" which is a story that has since become a cliche in popular culture regarding writers interacting with muses. When I read these stories, I laughed; the idea of not being able to write a word seemed to be an inherent character deficit that could be corrected.

Now that I'm in a slump myself, I feel some sympathy for some of the fictional writers that suffer blocks. Not the one in "Calliope" though; he gave all writers a bad name in terms of what he does to the titular muse. I feel sympathy for Mike Noonan in Bag of Bones, however, because he stops writing due to external stresses, namely his wife dying in the novel's opening pages. Like him, the pressure to do well and stay healthy has affected how I view the words. Sometimes it feels like I'm stepping from one slipper stone to another across a rapidly moving river whose current has destroyed others.

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Traditionally "writer's block" refers to a writer not having any ideas, at least according to popular culture, or having stale ideas that quickly fall apart on the written page. In most cases the blocks happened after the writer had hit success with one novel, and had shut down shortly afterward. The solution to such a situation, which Joanne Harris did implement in real life, was have another book ready for publication. In her case she nearly suffered a block after Chocolat became a success but had already written Blackberry Wine, her next novel that delved into writer's block, the fantastique nature of the French countryside as well as tourist threats. I was planning to do the same thing with Carousel, since I have two novel rough drafts on queue, but stress and business school interfered with my plans. My next long work probably won't happen for a while, not until I finish some short stories.

For those wondering, I don't agree with how Jay the protagonist was portrayed during his block in Blackberry Wine; he got a block because he based his first successful novel on real life, and the success drove him to write "trashy" science fiction for ten years. Call me a fan of the former pulp writers like Ray Bradbury, but there is nothing shameful about writing about aliens as opposed to "literary" fiction. Also, I'm suspicious about basing entire novels on real life, since that can lead to hurt feelings and lawsuits. Jay could have easily started traveling with the money and freedom that he earned, to find more adventures to put into his books. For those wondering about his girlfriend Kerry, it's never a good idea to volunteer to be a blocked writer's muse and hope to encourage good works out of him or her. You will just end up frustrated and disillusioned. Better to brainstorm and encourage, rather than to cut their "trashy" works.

Currently I'm working to get out of my slump and back into the field, while searching for jobs, managing home duties and keeping up in schoolwork. I'm optimistic because this week I actually finished a decent tale for a friend's birthday, the first breath of life into this school year. And with luck, 2015 will mean that I make my goals with aplomb again. Wish me luck!

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