Preventing Muse Abuse Starts at Home

Being an artist is like being Violet, Milla Jovovich’s character, in Ultraviolet – especially if you’re an artist who once lost your art. You find yourself gifted with this precious package – the Kid/the Muse – that could kill you, destroy everything you think you believe in, and change the world. The Kid could also heal you and bring you a peace you have always been striving for. But, everyone wants the Kid, or what it represents, or they resent you having the Kid, etc… and then your entire life becomes a battle to keep the Kid from harm. And the enemies are everywhere – even you, if you let your guard down. And the fights you have to engage in to defend yourself and the Kid don’t look cool like they do in a movie. They’re stupid little battles with friends, family, critics and even fans. And while it would be really cool and dramatic to say fuck you all and just ride away into the sunset, you can’t, because you need those people you have to defend yourself from. It makes it very complicated and stressful.

Though I occasionally leave my Kid wide open to sniper fire – the Brighton matter in Brethren – I usually do pretty well at taking care of us. Occasionally I get winged, and have to lay low for a while like I did last fall with a bad review; but overall, I’m pretty defensive of the Kid and I’ve gotten a lot better about the mindset I need to have. The Kid is my bread and butter, my salvation, my goals and aspirations; and my job is not to decide what the Kid is any longer, but to simply take care of him so that he can live and grow and thrive. Thus I have been systematically cutting away things in my life that cause the Kid problems: potential security breaches, untrustworthy allies, my own lax attitude, etc…

But I forget the Kid has a sibling, the Little Kid, that needs equal protection because she gets attacked too – and damage to one hurts the other. To whit: I protect my writing and have – after years of work – pretty much gotten my self-esteem and confidence up about my writing to the point where I can take some hits and the Kid can even defend himself to some degree – though we are by no means bulletproof – and yet I forgot that I am also a visual artist and I should take that as seriously as I do the other.

I have a horrible tendency of abusing the Little Kid on this front. I do not draw – I can draw, but not really well, and I don’t take the time to practice and learn because it doesn’t come as easily to me as the writing does. But, I can visualize images, I have a good eye for photography, I understand the nuances of cinematography, I have talent in terms of visual design, I love playing with color and sculpture. This is all ART. But notice, even here, I lead with a sentence saying I can’t draw. I feel this little sibling is handicapped because of that lack of drawing thing, and so I have a tendency of not taking this aspect of my ART seriously. I pimp her out by doing covers for people; like I did last year with the author services company I started. I barter her in exchange for other services I need. I treat the visual arts like a hobby that I let my Muse/the Kids play with when they need a break from writing. And I always talk it down or devalue it.

Sometimes it gets so bad that older brother, writing, gets really cranky with me as he did these last few days. I am doing a book cover as a favor to a friend. I was not their first choice in artists. The author is new to the publishing process and really had her heart set on a classic fantasy cover like the mass market paperbacks we grew up with – but that’s just impractical when the cover does not sell the book in a bookstore these days for a micro-publisher. Our books reach bookstores by dint of their genre classification or through special orders. Most of a micro publisher’s sales are online. So there was no reason for her publisher to spend a thousand dollars commissioning artwork that probably wouldn’t look good in a thumbnail, and would put the book’s profits in the hole for over a year even if the book sold really well… So anyway, the Little Kid stepped up to the plate and I came up with a design that’s appropriate to the book. The publisher liked it, the author liked it, but she had some suggestions…

Now… I do most of my cover illustration work in Photoshop using altered “found” images, and design element compositing. The end result is a new illustration. (Sometimes I use entire illustrations from other people – like the Raised By Wolves covers – they are all done by a famous and amazingly talented illustrator named Howard Pyle who died in 1911. And once I tried CGI people – the Blood Is Thicker Than Water Cover – I will never do that again.) So surreal “paintings” made with disparate elements are the shape my visual art takes in these instances. The deal is – and this is a thing I had to fight with every author I did freelance covers for last year – everyone has Photoshop or a supposed equivalent now: and they see what I do: and realize that it’s malleable; and therefore they think they can make suggestions and changes that they would never dream of asking a painter to do - because the cover that you’re doing for them is not your ART in their minds.

Normally, when you do graphic design work – which is the part of the cover making process that involves the title font/logo and possibly image/element placement – you expect the client to ask for changes. I am at least defensive enough for the sake of the Little Kid that this kind of thing pisses me off. I sit around and play with it for hours until it looks good to my eye; send it to them: and then they come back with, “Can you make these letters bigger, or I don’t like that font, or I didn’t think it would be that color.” Which is essentially telling me that what I did was wrong or not aesthetically pleasing. The real pisser is… They often come up with shit like that because they want to feel they are having “input” into the process. So, to protect the Little Kid from even that kind of crap, I quit doing freelance design work… But I decided we could still do principle illustration and covers for friends.

If you commission artwork from a painter – ART - they will probably show you some preliminary sketches and explain their overall idea and maybe ask what colors might be needed, etc… But then their muse gets involved and they produce an illustration and send it to you and that’s it, man: take it or leave it. They don’t go back and repaint it for you if you don’t like it – at least not for free: not if they value their Kid. You choose an illustrator based on your admiration of their body of work, their ART, and then you choose to accept whatever gift their muse lays on you. An illustrator should be an artist – a collaborating artist - not a graphic design technician. And even if they are a hack for hire, they have a really good idea of what their time is worth and don’t go into being commissioned with one flat price for as many variations as you want.

But see… I’m not painting. So I create an illustration – and in the particular case that set me on this path to a learning experience – not with the author’s input due to circumstances beyond my control: and then everyone acts as if my illustration is completely malleable and I can be asked to change all sorts of design elements. AND I STUPIDLY AGREE. I cite the author not having input, and so she needs to be happy. I cite that I did it pretty much on spec without the publisher’s input, and so she should be happy. I cite the fact it is malleable. I kick myself for not setting up the layers so that I could change facets of it more easily to make them happy.

Essentially… I let them walk in and kick the crap out of the poor Little Kid and then I tell her to produce more work for them when I feel they don’t really respect her to begin with – because I’m not acting like I respect her - because she’s handicapped and can’t draw.

And then the Kids go on strike. Well, no shit. Big Kid gets mad, Little Kid is crying. It’s my fault: I’m the one who stuck Little Kid out there as a target. I’m the one who told her to suck it up and do what she’s told. And then, in hindsight, because I’m gripped by a cold rage at my own stupidity, I react poorly and lash out. I end up shooting off regrettable e-mails and then I have to sort through that crap.

Of course the other people involved feel they respect my art – and they do respect my ability to create art, and admire the art I create; but they don’t respect the individual pieces of art as whole cloth – it’s not ART to them - and so that’s just not good enough for the Kids. These people are my friends, and they don’t feel they abused the Little Kid. They did not view the Little Kid as a child, but some detached version of a grown-up that does what it’s told in the name of serving someone else’s art – because I abused my Little Kid by telling them that’s what she could behave as. Well, we have all discovered that my Kids don't work that way. I don’t think anyone’s Muse works that way in the really real world. You can have a cover, or you can have ART on your cover. You want ART… see the paragraph above about working with artists who respect their Kids.

I have to be one of those artists who respects her visual arts Kid. So the new bottom line is: I don’t do ART for hire in any medium. No Muse Abuse. All Kids are treated equally. I will not and cannot make the Kids play with other people anymore: it’s too dangerous. We will produce art and place it in the public eye, and I will fend off the inevitable attacks; but no one gets behind the firewall, now. I should have learned that when I tried film: I have to keep that poor child locked in the attic, because that experience left him a gibbering idiot. And music, well she’s hiding in the cellar, afraid to even come out. Someday I have hopes we’ll all be a happy family: but for that to happen, I have to be a mama bear and not Mommy Dearest.

Fanfic Censorship Woes

LOL...

In a comment to my last post, Sabrina asked if I had written any Naruto fanfics. I have. Before I started working on the Raised By Wolves series - when I was in the throes of the Naruto brain burn, I wrote a series of "short" stories involving a Gaara/Sakura romance: As Good As It Gets, Hot Springs, and The Mission, under the pseudonym, Arch Stanton. I originally posted those stories on Fanfiction.net, where they received rave reviews. Unfortunately, I strayed into territory some easily-offended reader viewed as being NC-17 and not R rated, and Fanfiction.net yanked the stories. As I had books to write and had moved on artisitically, I ignored the matter.

So, in answer to Sabrina's comment, I decided what the heck, I'll just post them again on Adultfanfiction.net... No. Part of their Cover Their Own Ass boilerplate states that if you agree with their agreement, you will not post stories involving adult activities on the part of any character under 18. Sigh... All the Naruto characters of note are under 18; hell, in my stories, they were still the age they were when the series started: 13. And yes, I do have them engaging in adult behavior - because a little sex is trivial when they are ninja and expected to go on missions and kill or be killed.

I understand why the fanfic sites feel the need to cover their asses. There have been court cases involving literary works and films where some daft bastard has claimed a scene involving children was child pornography. There are interstate rules regarding the Internet and what does and does not constitute pornography, and they're especially stringent when it deals with child pornography. It's the government practicing censorship in the name of protecting children. I get that. I understand the best way to prevent some things from spreading is to make sure no one can openly offer it or profit from it.

But we're talking art here - not that I'm saying all fanfic is art... lol (I heartily contend that most fanfic dealing with adult themes is erotica; and that would be putting it nicely: much of it is simply obscene and falls well within pornography laws.) But, teenagers do engage in adult behaviors: teenagers have sex: No, really. And therefore if an author is exploring the lives of teenagers, then part of what must be discussed is their sex lives if it's appropriate to that character's experience or that story. And then we're, of course, talking anime here! For the Gods' sake, most pedophiles and epidophiles have a heyday watching anime anyway.

Basically, it's ridiculous, but sites can get shut down and people brought up on charges for protraying the sex lives of underaged cartoon characters from another culture. I don't think this protects children.

But enough of that - that's just one impediment to my posting those Naruto fanfics. The other is that I'm a published author who makes money off writing. I cannot put those fanfics up on my site because it could be construed that I am infringing on a trademark. (Not a copyright... I am not using any of the Naruto creators dialogue, etc, I am lifting trademarkable characters and names though.) If the stories are on my site, then it can be said that I am using them as a promotional tool and therefore seeking to profit by them. If I could have posted them on a fanfic site and then just made reference that they existed here, and then have a link back to my site on the fanfic site... well it still would have been dicey if a court matter, but I was willing to take the risk because I figured the worst would be a cease and desist letter.

And... Because of the damn anti-child pornography hysteria, I can't risk distributing them - anymore than the fanfic sites can - by posting them on my site or by simply e-mailing them to people - another option - because they might fall into the "wrong" hands, ie, someone under the age of 18 or an FBI agent... And it's sad, because the stories are funny and good, and people who like Naruto really like them, and I feel I should be able to share and I haven't done a damn thing wrong.

I'm feeling the press of censorship here. I have long held concerns that I might run into trouble with the books I actually publish. Matelots and Treasure have sex scenes involving characters under the age of 18 - because, damn it, girls got married in their teens in the 1600's. I figure if I ever get called for it, I will have to rewrite certain aspects of the books and re-release them. (suddenly all the women in the book age...) I don't have the money for an extended court battle over history and art. And I feel like I shouldn't even say that in a blog. It's like I'm making an admission of guilt or something.

Artists today are either expected to re-write history in yet another dimension - ie find some excuse for all your characters being old maids before they hop in the sack - or don't portay them in sex scenes. And to some people, that probably sounds pretty reasonable. I think it's wrong.

I wonder if it's why Sofia Coppola made sure to show that Marie Antoinette - married at age 14 - didn't actually get it on with her husband - the king of France - until after her 18th birthday - which might be true historically.

Brain Burn and My Next Project

Brain Burn is a term my husband coined for the feeling that you just can’t get enough of someone else’s art – whether it be a specific comic series, anime, TV, a movie, a book, an actor, etc… It’s that feeling that the story or characters have set your mind on fire. You want to be and live them; and you can’t read, see, hear, or talk enough about them. It’s infatuation. It’s inspiration.

Judging from my e-mails, I am now proud to realize that I have apparently caused Brain Burn in other people with the Raised By Wolves series. As it was originally spawned from my Brain Burn about the anime Naruto - specifically the character of Gaara - I feel truly honored that I have been able to pass on that wave of enthusiasm: to be inspired by someone else’s work, and then make the pieces that touched me deeply my own, and then pass them on. It makes me feel like a contributor to the artistic circle of life. It makes me feel that I’m part of the artistic gene pool and hopefully not a dead end mutation. In order for that to work, though, someday my work will have to inspire another artist to produce something that will instill Brain Burn in another set of people. I have high hopes that will happen.

I have been blessed or cursed with Brain Burn from the animes Naruto and Dragonball Z, the movies Star Wars, Alien, Road Warrior, Excalibur, the work of Trent Reznor and Alan Rickman, and the Byrne/Claremont run of X-men, to name just a few… All of those examples have spawned creative efforts both and big and small on my part, whether they be novels, scripts, short stories, or D&D games. I have many other influences and themes that permeate my work, and in the end, any project I spend time on is not an homage to the Brain Burn that set me off and running, but the Brain Burn is often very important in giving me a starting place.

On the other hand, it should be noted that I am also sometimes inspired to write from a place of irritation with something else… Love& Benjamins sprang from being really annoyed with Sex & the City, and Blood Is Thicker Than Water from being really tired of vampires as they were being represented in the mid-1990’s. (Though Lorcan was inspired by Alan Rickman.)

As mentioned, the Raised By Wolves series derived from my fascination with the character of Gaara, the idea of outcast but powerful demon vessels being created by their father’s, and their only being able to truly understand one another. Naruto strikes a lot of chords with a lot of people, so much so that it has launched thousands of fanfics – obvious symptoms of Brain Burn. I took those kernel ideas and ran with them through six months of research and ended up with something that is very much my own.

Naruto was the last Brain Burn I suffered. Usually I am afflicted with a new case every four years or so. I am dreading the next one. I am purposefully not seeking to watch or read a lot of new material right now because I don’t want to feel a new Brain Burn until I am done producing the fruits of the last one. I am, by the way, way over the last case of Brain Burn, all that is left is my story now. I don’t watch the show anymore or even want to hear about it.

Even without a new Brain Burn, my muse is already dancing around and trying to lead me toward the new germinating project I spoke of in yesterday’s post. This new project springs from a number of influences and inspirations, a few of them a bit negative such as my adverse reaction to sensationalist - or conversely - overly romantic portrayals of the Celts.

Right now, I see my next protagonist as being a Druid sacrificer: someone who prepares and renders sacrifices – yes that includes people - unto the Gods in the name of prayer and giving thanks. I don’t know if he’s a cynic when we start, I do know that he’s gay. The period is 60 to 70 CE: the time of Boudaca’s rebellion, Nero assassinating Claudius, and the beginnings of the Christian religion showing its face in Rome: a very turbulent time for two cultures: Roman and Celt. My hero goes on a journey to find his relationship to the Gods, because he feels the Gods he was raised with and has served have forsaken him by allowing the Roman Gods to prevail. He wants to know why. He is also seduced by the sophistication of the Roman culture to matters of sex and his sexual identity. He is drawn into that world by a relationship with a Roman officer, who he has been sent to spy on, and he stays when he joins into a complicated relationship with a pair of eunuch twins that are trained as pleasure slaves and spies: they are called Love and Reason. His journey takes him from England to Rome and perhaps onward as he explores three faiths and discovers what he really wants out of life. Throughout it all, he is drawn forward by Love, and anchored by Reason, and in the end he must choose between them. All of this to the theme song of Elton John’s Goodbye Yellow Brick Road.

But much of that could change markedly due to two factors: one, the copious research I will engage in; and two, my next Brain Burn…

A Peaceful Day In The Doldrums

I’ve had about 5 posts planned for the last two weeks – and I just haven’t been able to sit down and write them. Every time the words are flowing through my head in the proper order, I am nowhere near a keyboard or, if I am, I don’t have the necessary chunk of time.

I finished the primary draft of Treasure: Raised By Wolves, Volume Three a few weeks ago and immediately dove into the revision work. Now even that’s done and I’m awaiting feedback from a few people before we proceed to the line edit and then the copy edit. It’s on track time wise for a late April/early May release that will make it available a year after Volume Two and two years after Volume One. I’m pretty happy with it – if I wasn’t, there might be a delay in the release because I’m not going to just kick something out if it’s not they way I like it. But truly, the third volume required far less revision than its predecessors. It’s partly due to my growing experience as a writer – it being my fifth novel – and to my greater surety in feeling my way through the permutations and explorations of Will and Gaston’s story.

That being said, I’m feeling a great deal of artistic/creative pressure from my muse to move on. I’ve been embedded in this story for over four years now, and that’s a long damn time for an artist to be stuck on one thing. So I have already started on Volume Four with great hopes that it will go smoothly and that by this summer I will have the main draft completed so that I can finally begin working on something else. I’ve found that except for the occasional short story, I cannot shift creative streams and work on multiple major projects. It’s too hard for me to shift from one authorial voice to another; and from one set of characters that I am deeply in the heads of to others. Already, the next main character looms, he’s been gestating for months and I already find myself talking about where I hope the research will lead me, etc…

But that’s months of steady writing away. And then there’s the pesky vampire series that I keep promising to finish. Though I love those characters too, their story is only going to get completed this year if I can do it while researching the next series my muse wants to tackle. I’m not a hack that can just churn stuff out because people will buy it. I either have to be fully engaged in what I’m doing or it doesn’t happen – and I think it shows in my writing.

In writing, as with many arts, it’s enthusiasm that gets you to show up at the page – that need to tell your story – but it’s discipline – a loyalty to your characters and the process – that gets a novel finished. Rest assured, I still have both for the fourth volume of the Raised By Wolves series. I so want to show you all how it ends.

But today… lol… Yesterday my five-month-old German Shepherd, Mabon, got neutered. So now I have to deal with him constantly running around in some degree of discomfort acting like the floor bit him whenever the incision reminds him of its presence. My husband just started working some severe overtime: twelve hour night shifts seven days a week for the next three weeks. Lots of OT which we need – I sure as shit don’t pay our mortgage these days… But it’s really hard on him and it means that my usual day schedule is disrupted: as all things must now revolve around keeping the dogs quiet and everything calm so that he can sleep. And I only just got back a few days ago from a short visit to my mother’s – she lives on the other side of the state. And the week before that both of my grandmother’s died within six days of one another. No condolences are necessary: in one case it was “finally…” and in the other it was “ding dong the witch is dead”. I’m not grieving, but there was much family disruption going on with people – like my parents – that I do care about. So I am very much out of the groove at the moment.

Thank the Gods I’m a writer and my own publisher. Some days I can just drift or lie about in a fallow trough and see what comes of it.

My Opinion On Reviewing

I have an opinion about everything. I view it as one of my inalienable rights. In private, I express these opinions to the point where they’ve ended friendships, endangered and ended jobs, and pissed off complete strangers. In public, as in a forum like a blog, I also tend to shoot from the hip about many subjects, but… I have learned to not shoot my mouth off about certain things, like, um, books that people I know have written, or well, books in general. The problem is that it’s about art and it’s personal, and despite my feeling I am entitled to my opinion by divine right, I know that bad reviews can really screw somebody’s sales up and I know that my opinion is just that, mine. It is not representative of all possible readers and should never be read or interpreted as gospel. Ok, not that many people would be foolish enough to do that, but still, you get my idea.

I have no problem telling the world my thoughts on a movie – even if I think I might actually meet the director or other people artistically responsible for it. Though in person, I would tend to be more diplomatic… I feel I know enough about movies – as film was the original art form I studied – to make informed commentary. Books I honestly don’t feel that secure about. I know what I like, and I can usually determine what is “wrong” with a book I don’t like. But overall, I don’t feel qualified to determine whether or not a book is “good” against classical literary standards. And why that should matter, I don’t know, as I don’t think most people like books that fall within or emulate the literary canon. We’re reading for entertainment, not a lit degree.

But as an author who meets other authors – and hell, as an author who, duh, writes – I find it troublesome to write reviews on other people’s books. I know how much work went into it. I know how a novel is a path each author must discover on their own. I will tell people privately what I think, unless I didn’t like it and I’m talking to the author and then I become somewhat vague. I don’t view this as not supporting my opinion or “wimping out”; I view this as having a massive respect for how fragile the artistic process is and how the wrong – or sometimes even right - thing being said can derail it for years, or at least change its trajectory.

Sometimes authors, especially new authors, really need to hear that something didn’t work in their work. But sometimes, my opinion means dick, because it’s only mine and it represents what I want to see in a piece of fiction and not what the piece’s overall readership might find of merit in it. I think critiquing readers need to be mindful of that. Not because some idiot shooting his mouth off and whining about how they would give the book less than one star if they only could - when it’s obvious they haven’t read the book - really matters to discerning buyers, but because it matters to fledgling authors.

My dear friend and editor, Barbara Friend Ish, recently commented to me that she finds one of my more endearing qualities to be my iron-bound sense of perspective about my work. If someone tells me I suck, my response is “fuck you”. I admit my mistakes. I know I write better now than I used to, I know I’ll write better in the future – art expression is a growth process. But… I know I’m pretty good comparatively, and I’m able to consider the critic when receiving criticism. I get madder that some arrogant idiot thinks they can take me down with some stupid comment than I am worried that their comment might be valid – because nine times out of ten, it’s not. Some of that is innate for some blessed reason, but the rest of it had to be learned. (And really, a lot of it has to do with always being on the outside looking in and thus constantly getting criticized no matter what I do anyway.)

I do know how easy it is to get artistically sidelined by a bad review – especially if it’s unwarranted… And I have said things to authors – all of them friends – that I have deeply regretted. So, in private, I am trying very hard to learn to temper my response one-on-one so that I don’t repeat those mistakes, yet at the same time still render respectful and meaningful criticism and advice in order to help other artists. And in public, I am reluctant to comment on any work where the author is at a fragile stage of their development, and/or my opinion might be considered valid and credible.

That being said, I do intend to review a couple of books I have read recently that fall within the male-on-male romance genre. But, I cannot and will not comment on something I read recently that hasn’t been published yet; though I really want to discuss some of the issues with it. It’s an odd thing that Barbara and I were also discussing: the things we most need to impart to people about publishing, or writing, or anything that we do professionally that other people might be curious about from a professional standpoint, we can’t discuss publicly. It makes the damn blogs useless for truly imparting information…