Big Ed's Place

We often think of writing as a solitary enterprise–the author scribbling away hunched over some desk with low light, or holed up in a cabin in the woods barely interacting with the folks in the world around them.

Ummm, yeah.

While there certainly is a solitary aspect to writing, I’ve come to believe more and more that a team makes a better product. Specifically, having a team to back you if you’re an author.

While it’s pretty obvious that it’s a good thing to have a different set of eyes go over your manuscript before submitting it, I’ve found that more eyes are better. In particular, having eyes with different talents helps quite a bit. Some readers are better at plot and consistency checks. Others have a stronger feel for the flow of the words. Finally, there are the proofreaders, who see stuff that slips by my eyes a dozen times. Often, multiple eyes of the same time helps.

So I’ve developed a volunteer team. My first stories were written and released without an editor. Then I asked my wife to do some pre-release editing. Now I send my stories to a few people and, after I’ve incorporated their comments, I send my story to a proofreader/editor. All of these people are volunteers, providing me early feedback for fun and the chance to see my stories early. It works out pretty well with the one major side effect that it slows releases down.

Ya see, it’s not appropriate to push volunteers to work faster. I’m not under deadline myself, after all. I have a saying, “when you pay me, you get to set the schedule. When I’m doing it for free, I set the schedule.” I have to accord my folks the same courtesy.

Well, this time I screwed up and announced that I’d release Love’s Labor Found in February, even though I hadn’t sent it to my team yet. Well, it’s still in the pipeline and it’s taking longer than expected, so LLF is gonna be later than I predicted. It’ll be better than the draft I have right now, I can promise you. It will just have to wait a bit to go up.

That said, I was able to get 756 words written on Keiju Erie this week, bringing me to 2680. That’s a little bit better than last week, but it’s still gonna be a crunch to get it done by the end of March, particularly if I send it through my team as I’d like to.

Recently I started a story for a Call for Submissions. Not remembering some of the details, I went back to the original Call, and discovered it had changed. It was now restricted to female authors only.

This was, of course, irritating. I’ve got to find another home for the story I’ve started.

But it also got me wondering–what if I just used a female pseudonym? Would anyone be able to tell? Because the last time I checked, there wasn’t a way to tell gender of a writer other than the name.

True, one could claim there are ‘feminine’ or ‘masculine’ styles of writing (whatever those might be), but last I checked, a really good writer can write in any style. I know there are male romance authors with female pseudonyms doing just fine. I’m sure there are women who can write gay porn well too.

That said, I have seen arguments that it’s harder to write first person POV from the other gender. Sure–the more dissimilar a character is to you, the harder it is to be in their head. But actors do it all the time, whether it be via method acting or traditional craftsmanship.

So I just can’t buy that there’s a difference in the writing sufficient to justify the restriction to only women authors.

Unfortunately, I do get the reason–marketing. It seems that female erotica authors will sell more than male ones. Now, I’d love to see an experiment to this effect or other study to back it up (put out two versions of the same book with different author names and see which sells more?), as it seems anecdotal to me.

But assuming that’s true, it’s an insidious statement about our view of sexuality. A woman writing naughty stories is attractive. A man, not so much. It’s similar to the same standard about public nudity (attractive women aren’t going to get arrested for indecent exposure quite as fast as us middle-aged guys) and older/younger sex (dirty old man vs. cougar). I think it reflects rather poorly on our society as a whole and our continued not-quite-mature view of sexuality.

Which shows up in the fanmail. The female authors who’ve told me about their fanmail get a lot more crazies and obnoxious emails than the male authors I know about. I’ve heard some truly weird stuff, including stalkerish behavior–one I’ve not (yet) had.

So as much as I’m irritated about being shut out of a Call for Submissions because of my gender, I won’t complain too loudly. A few Calls is a small price to pay for not having to deal with the marketing downside that also accompanies being a female writer in this field.

I’m feeling a bit of deadline pressure these days. I posted the teaser picture for Love’s Labor Found and said it would be available in February 2010. Well, February’s two thirds over, and it’s not through my editing team yet. There’s still time, but I’m now questioning the tease. It’d be much more comfortable without the deadline.

Simultaneously, I’m getting nervous about Kaiju Irie. I managed ~600 words this past week, bringing me to 1924 total for the Crappy First Draft. That puts me at the 40-50% point, with about six weeks to go. At the current rate, I’ll spend another four weeks writing the CFD, leaving me very little time to edit or send it through my team of early readers and my proofreader. I’ll have to pick up the pace and I’m confident I can make it, but again, I’d be more comfortable without the deadline.

That said, deadlines certainly have their place. They have a way of focusing one’s efforts quite well. My day job would fall apart without them, even when they’re missed. I also found when I was writing Friends and Benefits that self-imposed deadlines often helped motivate me to push through the lulls.

So we’ll see how the next month goes. Lots to do. Lots I want to do. The usual lack of time.

So it’s time to talk about Child Pornography, or Kiddie Porn. It’s one of the few remaining enforced taboos in America, both legally (since possession of kiddie porn is a crime) and in popular culture. Want to have a kick the dog moment in a crime drama? Have the cops discover kiddie porn in the bad guy’s apartment. On the flip side–want to have the ultimate lure of the taboo? Include some underage sex, particularly incestuous underage sex. Kiddie porn is an easy gut wrench.

But is it reasonable to be such a taboo? I think yes, but not in the way it’s too often applied. The problem is that it’s seen as an evil in and of itself. There are arguments that it’s a slippery slope to child abuse, but solid reputable research backing this up is difficult to find. After all, people aren’t automatons where viewing something immediately leads to trying to duplicate it.

But what is reasonable for its opprobrium is that the act of making child porn is an act of rape. The child cannot consent to posing for nudes, sexually suggestive pictures, or, at the extreme, pictures of them engaged in sex (which they also can not consent to). I believe that consent is paramount and fundamental to sexuality and my political world view stems in a great part from that (see here).

So why not treat it that way?

Pictures of a rape are, legally and morally, not distinguishable of pictures of other crimes. Consider snuff films, depicting a murder, or crime scene videos, depicting a robbery. If these come into someone’s possession, they have a moral and legal responsibility to turn them into the authorities so that they may attempt to catch the criminals. Failure to do so is withholding evidence; i.e. aiding and abetting the crime. So how about prosecuting the person who possesses kiddie porn as an accessory to the crime, rather than with possession?

Doing so would have some substantial benefits. For one, it would focus the attention on the actual crime. As long as ‘possession’ is the crime, it’s too easy to conflate having kiddie porn with ‘possession’ of pot, or ‘possession’ of an unregistered firearm. Possession crimes are frequently not seen as morally problematic so much as a disagreement with the government. Prosecuting for ‘accessory to rape’ moves the focus back to the victim–it’s not the state vs. Joe Porn Addict. It’s the state going after John Rapist and prosecuting Joe Porn Addict for not helping.

Which of course is the second benefit. If someone happens to find or come across some Kiddie Porn, they’d have a lot more incentive to turn it in. There’s no crime if they make a good faith effort to help catch the rapist. The potential plea bargaining options are also obvious.

Now that said, note that ‘accessory’ can still carry serious prison time, if it’s warranted. There’s even a case in Colorado where a woman got life without parole for failing to tell the police where her boyfriend was (just before he killed a cop). There’s also a current case in Wyoming where a guy duped another man into raping the first guy’s ex-girlfriend. Even though the first guy didn’t do the rape, he’s looking at serious hard time.

The point is, we already have experience in the legal system using accessory charges to separate the bad guys from those just caught up in something they shouldn’t be.

The third benefit is that it stops the criminalization of porn where there is no victim. This post in part is inspired by the Chistopher Handley case where a guy got six months in jail for buying ‘obscene’ cartoons.

Cartoons.

Where is the victim in a cartoon? Where is the child that could not give consent? And how much money and effort are we spending going after someone when there is no victim (to the expense of going after others)?

Furthermore, it’s clear that kiddie porn gets used as a ‘camel in the nose of the tent’ argument by those who wish to control the sexuality of others. As long as we concede that there exist materials–cartoons, writing, etc–that are ‘obscene,’ then all we’re arguing over is the definition of obscene. That argument, of course, cannot be won, as it ultimately comes down to Justice Potter’s line, “I know it when I see it.”

But prosecuting kiddie porn possession as accessory to rape eliminates the entire obscenity argument. Now obviously as a writer of erotica, I kind of like that because I’m less likely to be on the wrong end of a prosecution. But the obscenity argument can go the other way too. Imagine a photographer who takes Mapplethorpe style pictures of a 14 year old, but gets a judge or a jury to agree that they’re beautiful and therefore have artistic merit? That means they’re not obscene and this fictitious photographer, plus all the people who own copies of the picture, go free.

But if we bring Child Porn prosecutions back to what they really are–accessories to rape–this does not happen. Instead, it all becomes simple. It’s simply about the crime of doing something to someone who could not give consent.

Now I’ve gone through this entire post focusing on the legal prosecution, but I want to also point to another novel way to deal with child porn and the real crime involved: suing possessors. A woman is suing individuals who download pictures of her abuse (here). I agree with the article that the legal grounds for collecting from someone for additional victimization are new terrain. As a result, I am troubled by the possibilities of where it could go. However, I like the idea for two other reasons. First, there really is a victim here, so we’re not talking about a hypothetical case or obscenity issue. The very nature of the suit forces the case to focus on that fact–that a crime was committed. Second, I like the implied ownership of the images aspect. Since she didn’t (and couldn’t legally) sign a model’s release, she’s implicitly asserting claim to ownership of the photos of her. This makes it an ownership case as much as a criminal damages case.

But civil or criminal, we’re doing ourselves a disfavor as a society to get all worked up about ‘child porn’ as something nasty and evil and obscene. We’d be far better served going after the real crime–the rape involved in creating it–and leave the rest to the side.

So… I’ve been posting my writing status here every Sunday. Sometimes it’s not many words and sometimes it’s a lot. Recently, a few hundred words in a week is a good week. This past week wasn’t bad. I managed 295 words on Kaiju Irie, bringing it to 1327 words, and 92 on Following Rodin, which will be a flash length story for professional submittal (probably). This is not counting the Musings posts, of course.

But how does that stack up? Well, due to some discussions in Strickland83′s yahoogroup, I’m feeling a lot better. Apparently C.J. Cherryh considers 1000 words to be a good day. Stephen King considers 2500 words to be a good day.

And they’re full time writers.

So given my more-than-full-time day job, I’m quite happy to be writing at one seventh to one seventeenth their rate (my good weeks). Yeah, I’d like to be doing more, but in this case, the comparison helps.

Recently I finished reading a fantasy novel that I have mixed feelings about. On the one hand, it was very well written and I could barely set it down. On the other, it violated some of the conventions of escapist fantasy novels and that left me unsettled. I didn’t have as nice an aftertaste as I’m used to getting from great fiction. That got me wondering…

The issue with the fantasy novel was/is pretty straightforward. The author created a complex realistic world, established four “heroes”, and alternated chapters following them (3rd person omniscient POV). The plot was pretty straightforward and followed the conventions–the heroes started as kids, went into exile, grew and returned to claim their kingdom. Except… in the final big battle, the author killed one of the four characters. He also revealed a second of the four to be corrupted into evil.

Now, I admire an author who writes skillfully enough to make me upset at the death of a character. I also admire an author who’s willing to mix it up. One of my favorite movies kills a main character just before the Big Battle, which when I saw it, threw me into a tizzy. I spent the entire Big Battle sweating, because I knew that if he killed one, he could kill a lot more.

But with this fantasy story… while I admired it, I was unsettled and unhappy when it was over. Since it’s the first book in a series, there’s time for it to come to a emotionally satisfying conclusion. When the author finishes it, unfortunately. In the meantime, it got me thinking about story conventions.

We have them in all genres, but I’ll concentrate on erotica. A lot of the conventions, like “how good the first time is” are bendable without much impact. Others, I think are harder to walk away with. For example in romantic erotica, the happy ending is a given. As is great sex between the romantic leads.

So at what price do we violate them, as writers? Sure, the story might be more realistic. Sure, the less formulaic it is (which is rote convention), the more gripping. But do we dare walk away from convention entirely?

I found myself in that type of a dilemma with Friends and Benefits. As it wound down, I seriously considered a happier but less realistic ending. In the end, I stayed true to my original vision. Would it have been more popular? Hard to say. I don’t think it would have been better.

And I think it’s easier to violate the conventions in short stories than novels. The reader isn’t as invested, which makes the possible dissatisfaction less. Plus, at least to me, short stories seem to have greater possibility for artistic experimentation. The form can succeed with conceptual stories rather than convention driven stories.

So… where’s the balance point between convention and realism? Between following what readers expect and keeping them engaged with the twists? It’s something for me to ponder…

It’s been a surprising week. The first part of it, I got sucked into some very fascinating discussions on taboos, art, and publishing (see last Wednesday’s post) which cut into my writing time. Additionally, some new work challenges popped up, that are seriously going to cut into my free time in the coming months. Alas, my lottery ticket didn’t have the winning numbers, so I’ll have to keep working. Finally, the home honey-do jar has started to overflow.

Fortunately, I found some free lunch periods and was able to finish my editing for Love’s Labor Found. It’s off to the my team for review. I also added 221 words to Kaiju Irie, bringing it to 1032 words. I also was pleased that Clean Sheets published Babe in the Night this past week. I’ll post it here in early March.

So hopefully I’ll be able to steal time here and there to keep writing in the near term. That’s the quick update.

So I got sucked into a twitter discussion on taboo erotica. The discussion started on The Good Parts, which focused largely on the issue of why publishers won’t touch taboo topics in erotica. Remittance Girl recorded a rebuttal. Then a twitter discussion erupted (hashtag #taboorotica) and Monocle weighed in on erotica vs. violence here. A list of the on-going discussions are here.

Now I’ve already written posts about the internet increasing taboo porn, the attraction of the taboo and speedballs (recommended reading), and incest taboo attraction. So what am I adding this time?

Simply the argument that publishers are not being stupid or cowards. There be dragons in tabooland, however much we might not like it. The full argument behind the cut.

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