Good News!

This upcoming Wednesday is the first session of my writing class, and as before any endeavor like this, the kind where you set yourself up as the embodiment of all knowledge on a subject and other people have to accept that knowledge from you, I'm very afraid that I'm not credentialed enough to make an impression on these high school students.

Oh, did I mention? I have fourteen people signed up for my class! FOURTEEN! So that's exciting.

Anyway, returning to my lack of credentials. College degree? Working on it. Published? Only in school literary magazines. Nominated for any awards? Nothing anyone else has heard of.

I've only got small feathers in my hat, but even so, sometimes adding another feather helps, even if it's just another small one. Today I got the news that my Percy Jackson story A Goddess's Lament has been nominated for The Veritas Award in the General category.

Yeah, you read that right. I've now been nominated TWICE, once last voting cycle and once this voting cycle. I'm the first person up on that page.  See? Here I am!

Nifty, huh? Here's what my 'anonymous nominator' had to say about why my story deserved to be nominated.

It has this nostalgic reminiscing tone that adds a special feel to the story, and unlike many PJO fanfics, their is no character-bashing or anything like that. The words flow smoothly, and Amphitrite is a very realistic character.

My last nomination said "It puts characters in a new perspective and also shines a light on Amphitrite." Two different nominations with a bit of different reasoning behind them! Excellent!

So just when I was afraid I couldn't write, someone comes along and reassures me that they think I can. It's a good day to be me.


(Oh, and if you want, you can vote for the story by visiting http://fanmortals.webs.com/general.htm after the fall equinox. Or you could just go to fanfiction.net and review it -- I accept anonymous reviews as well as those from people with ff.net accounts)

New Books, Author Talks, and Fanfic

Let me begin this post by saying that I never buy new books, and when I do, I buy paperbacks. I'm a poor college student and both space and hardcovers are expensive. So when I shell out twenty-six dollars to get a hardcover copy of Rick Riordan's book signed by him (in person!!), it's kind of a big deal for a lot of reasons. I was just as excited as all the ten year olds I was sharing the theatre with, and they were really excited. I got there a half-hour early (the doors opened an hour early) and sat reading my new book against the background of the musical gymnastics of the Tivoli Theater organist and the excited murmurings of the nearly 800 people who'd come to listen to what Mr. Riordan had to say. ( I also observed that I was probably the only college student in the audience, so I don't know what that says about me... or about my fellow college students, for that matter.)

I'm fortunate enough to live in a heavily suburban area with at least one indie bookstore, Anderson's Bookshop, within reach. They're wonderful people there, and they really love what they do. They also bring A LOT of authors to come and sign books, and I got lucky -- Rick Riordan was one of them. So I paid my money and bought my book and went to go hear him speak.  I guessed from his blog that he's a really laid-back, cool kind of guy, and seeing him in person confirmed that for me. (Truth be told, I wouldn't have minded having this guy for a middle school language arts teacher; the teaching profession has lost a special one there.) He basically book-talked his new book, The Red Pyramid, which I thought was funny, since these kids have already both bought it and dragged their parents out on a school night to let them hear the author speak. They're not the ones that need the book 'sold' to them on why it's a good read. But it was good to hear a well-done book talk.

After his prepared remarks, he took a few questions from the audience, most of which I took notes on if I didn't know the answer already. (Ten-year olds ask some really obvious questions sometimes.)

He says he was inspired to write about Ancient Egypt because that was always popular with his students while he was teaching. "Maybe it's the mummies, maybe it's the pyramids -- I don't know exactly why." It takes him about a year to write a whole story, but he's trying to shorten that to six months now that he's writing both the next two books in the Kane Chronicles and the new Camp Half-Blood Series Heroes of Olympus. The title is always the last thing he writes  and the he really made my day by reaffirming something I'm going to share with my writing campers at the end of June.

He said that if there was one thing that he'd recommend to new writers it would be to outline everything that's going to happen in the book before you start writing. That way, he explains, you'll never be stuck on where the story will go next. He talked about how he started writing when he was twelve and there are a lot of stories he never finished, but that's because you're just practicing and you're learning how to write.

A real life example of prewriting! Fantastic! I was really excited for that.

Anyway, I've had a post-it note with a question for Riordan all ready and waiting on my desk since I found out he was speaking at Anderson's -- it was a good question, too, I think. Unfortunately, I didn't get a chance to ask it to the big group because I think there was a little ageism going on with the microphone lady, but I guess that's what I get for being a college student going to a young adult book signing. The question was this:

Mr. Riordan, on your blog you've made several posts about YouTube videos of tapes of Carter and Sadie Kane that fans have made themselves from the audio clip posted on your website and you say that 'it all must mean something.' I was wondering if you could expand on what you meant by that and what you think of other fan-produced works like fanart and fanfiction based on your work?

Needless to say, I didn't have time to ask all of this in the signing line, so I clipped it down to a very simplistic version of my original question.

Scene.

Me: Mr. Riordan, I have a question. What do you think of fanfiction? [had to add the 'question' marker since I obviously looked old enough not to be the one getting the book signed for myself]

RR: *slightly stressed face, appropriate for a man who's had to sign several hundred books in the space of two hours* Well, you know I can't read any of it, for reasons of copyright and all that, but I don't...I mean...I... I don't like it. It's like someone else trying on your clothes. *gestures with hands as if indicating he is trying to get something slimy and disgusting off them.*

Me: Trying on your clothes. That's a good one. Thanks! *moves along in line and writes this down in notebook*

End Scene.

And it was a good one. In fact, it was a great metaphor. Writing fanfiction and using someone else's characters is exactly like trying on someone else's clothes. I don't think he'd ever gotten that question before (His lack of an immediate answer would seem to suggest this) and I'm glad I asked it for that reason. There are a dozen better ways I might have asked it, whether he was impressed or flattered that children love his characters so much that they want to write adventures of their own for him, but I didn't, and I think that means I got an honest answer.

Does this mean I'm going to take down my PJO fic because I have it from the author himself that he disapproves? Nope. The way I figure, my one lonely PJO fic uses a character Riordan himself used for about a paragraph, and my story uses characters exclusive to PJO for a small fraction of the story. I think it's a fair exchange, more like borrowing a pair of socks from a friend after yours were soaked through than stealing a favorite t-shirt. You return the socks when you're done and thank him for the gesture.

I had a lot of time on the drive home to extend my metaphor, and this is what I came up with.

If writing fanfiction is like trying on someone else's clothes, then isn't writing fanfiction about a dead author's works something like second-hand clothes shopping?

Think about it. Jane Austen's dresses are having the ride of their life right now if that's the case.

Check Your Flamethrowers at the Door -- a few thoughts on Flaming.

I know I've been talking a lot about the Percy Jackson people on this blog lately, but it's really interesting watching this community work and evolve. It's like I'm turning into the Jane Goodall of fanfiction. It's kind of scary and kind of cool at the same time.

And lately, I've been thinking a lot about flames.

I've been seeing this kind of notice in story summaries for years, but I haven't started thinking about it until now -- it's the kind of hopeless, feeble attempt at saving face you could only find on the internet. "Plz don't flame! first fic!!!!!" the newbie writers cry plaintively from their summary boxes.

First of all, if you think your story is worth flaming, chances are you might be right, which means that you ought to go back and change it, get a second opinion from someone you trust and whose writing you admire...something else besides putting a note in your summary that might only attract more flamers.

I understand why people put the notes there. They're scared. They're venturing out onto the ice for the first time and they don't want to end up at the bottom of the lake with ten-thousand pounds of icy pressure drowning them in the sentiment that their writing sucks. And after a lot of further thought about this, I realized that not only does flaming hurt the recipient, but in the long run hurts the writer of the flame and the community as well.

A lot of you may be sitting in your desks going "Really now? Flaming doesn't hurt the flamers." But it does. Allow me to explain.

The reasons behind how flaming hurts the recipients is easy enough to understand. It's almost a form of cyberbullying, a senseless barrage into why the story is terrible and, in tandem, why the authors as people are terrible as well. Without face-to-face interaction, critiques against the material become critiques of the author themselves. (And often, flames bite into an author's personal character, asking why they'd be such a terrible person to put this up in the first place.) Flames also hurt recipients because they do nothing to solve the problems that started the flame. If flamers are truly anti-bad writing, they should begin by telling people (personally, not just in a blanket statement on their profile page) what it is they need to fix.

Now, on to the tough sell -- how flaming hurts the flamers.

The best writers (as Nancy Atwell, writer-workshop teacher extraordinaire, tells us in "Writing from the Inside Out") are the self-reflective ones, the ones who in addition to reading extensively THINK about what they're reading, why they like it, and what they can incorporate from that writing style to better their own work. I experienced this firsthand last semester when my Writing Essays professor asked us to read several essays by Annie Dillard (AMAZING!) and incorporate something from her writing that we admired (her sentence structure, her format, etc) into our next essay.  Flaming as a practice does nothing to encourage this reflection -- because flamers don't stop to identify problems as well as possible solutions, their own writing doesn't benefit from the give-and-take process of attempting to mentor another writer.

When you attempt to explain what you would do differently, you're mentally problem-solving for something that you yourself might have to do in the future.  When writers begin to work collaboratively and mentor each other's work, they gain an increased understanding of what they themselves need to change in order to become better at what they do. I know I've become very mindful of the critiques I give others and make sure that I'm following my own advice when I post my own stories.

Flaming is also hurtful to the flamers for another reason -- by starting blogs like Flamespots, (a collection of the worst PJO fanfics on the web) writers are drawing attention to the terrible examples of writing, which beginning writers see ALL THE TIME.  Instead, attention should be given to the exemplary pieces  in the collection, which serve as models for newer writers to emulate (like Annie Dillard in the example above.)

Now, I know what the hard-core flamers are thinking -- We haven't got time for all this hold-your-hand-and-talk-you-through-it nonsense! The world's a tough place. Deal with it. And I realize that in some cases, this very well might be true and there may not be much time for mentoring. If that's the case, then go with my mom's Golden Rule --

IF YOU CAN'T FIND ANYTHING NICE TO SAY, DON'T SAY ANYTHING AT ALL. 

This works in fanfiction almost as well as it works in life. A lack of reviews says volumes to a new writer. It says "No one likes this enough to take the time to tell me; I need to change something." Just like attention-seeking children, sometimes giving them the cold shoulder is the best thing to change behavior.

In addition to all of this, flaming is hurtful because it doesn't foster a sense of community or networking, only fear.  (And as we all know, fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, hate leads to suffering and suffering  leads to the Dark Side.) Who's going to want to begin writing if they know their first efforts are going to be knocked over like so many passers-by in a police chase? Heck, even I was scared to post my first PJO fic, and I'm a senior in college! People respond much better to the sentiments of a helping hand up --  "Well, I didn't loooove  it, but if you changed this it could be really good -- keep working at it!" than a stomp in the face suggested by "You have got to be kidding. Seriously? Is your conscience clean after you posted this piece of sh*t? It can't be. It just can't." How can you expect the quality of writing to improve if you don't offer any suggestions on where to start?

Flamers only network with other flamers. Constructive Critics network with new writers and become mentors, sounding boards, and beta readers.  Mentoring means that you hold yourself to a higher standard because you know someone's looking up to you for advice and direction. (This is also great practice if you want to teach English and/or writing some day like I'm doing this summer, but that's a small side-note.)

Constructive Critics also get emails like this in thier inboxes (received after five lengthy and at points kind of harsh reviews were sent to the same author) "Thanks for your in-depth reviews. Nobody apart from my beta has given me such CC before. I really feel as though I can improve this story with your help!"


That's much better than a flamewar, methinks.

My New Reading List

Finally! After waiting about two weeks for it, my library's copy of Percy Jackson and the Last Olympian was returned! I read the whole thing in about a day and then (as has become my custom with all the PJO books) I re-read it a second time. Good stuff. I didn't think the pacing was as good as some of Riordan's previous books -- the battle seemed to go on for forever -- but when I got to the end I was satisfied. I'm a little annoyed that he ended it on such a blatant "Yes, I'm writing another series" note, but I want to know more about Camp Half-Blood and the new life it's taking on after Percy's earth-shattering request, so I'm looking forward to the new series no matter what.


Riordan's announced on his blog that his new Egyptian series is beginning in May, which should be pretty awesome and apparently in May he's coming to a town near me for a book tour. I might have to recruit my sister or someone else to go -- I have a question I'd really love to have him answer. Given that he's writing in two mythological universes that are interacting with the present world, does he think that the gods of different mythologies should or could ever interact with each other in his books? Is it possible that, say, Horus and Athena ever get together and discuss pertinent world topics, or Hera and Isis do lunch sometimes?


Anyway. This week's my Easter Break, and in consequence of me being home, I've not only almost finished a PJO fanfic I've had floating around my head for a while, but I've also finished and added two books to my newest reading list:

"So You Liked Percy Jackson: What to Read Next"

I've divided the list into both Young Adult and Adult books, since I've been reading both. I've read some good ones and some so-so ones, but all of them are related to Greek Mythology somehow.


Young Adult Books



Quiver, by Stephanie Spinner.

A gorgeously retold Atalanta tale, sweetened still further by interjections from Artemis and Apollo. Spinner's Atalanta is wonderfully alive and her portrayal of the heavenly twins is quite funny. She's also written Quicksilver, about the messenger god Hermes, which I haven't read yet but can say has gotten great reviews from people who ought to know like, oh, I don't know, the School Library Journal.



Troy and Ithaka, by Adele Geras

I read both of these books when I went through my "Epic Poetry is Awesome" phase in 9th grade. Geras retold both the Iliad and the Odyssey very well, and I'll have to revisit these books again.



Oh My Gods, by Terralynn Childs.

This was one of my so-so books, a novel that uses as it's premise the idea that the descendents of demigods have their own school on a tiny island in Greece where they can get in touch with their godly past and hone their skills. Childs' protagonist was hard to empathize with and the premise was a little thin. At least Riordan's book involved the gods themselves -- Childs' style veers much more into the present.

Inside the Walls of Troy, by Clemence McLaren

Another book from my "Epic Poetry" period, and another winner, this one because it focuses not on the men of the Trojan war, but the women, who are an interesting and exciting bunch all to themselves. I've always had a soft spot for Cassandra, but Adaromanche, Helen, and Hecuba are all important characters as well. I'm still waiting for someone to write the story of Troy told exclusively from the gods' perspective.


The Arkadians, Lloyd Alexander

I remember during one summer reading almost every single book Alexander wrote, and the Arkadians was certainly among them. While I don't recall the exact plot, I remember that all those books were a joy to read.


Adult Books


The War at Troy, by Lindsay Clarke

I just finished reading this today and it was AWESOME. A beautifully worked retelling of what went on during the Trojan war. Clarke takes the interesting vantage point of Phemius, Odysseus's bard, and both telling the godly version of the story (Zeus smote the earth and a wall cracked) along with what we might take as the more modern version (there was an earthquake without any godly intervention and a wall cracked) I also like Clarke's retelling because his version of Helen isn't a floozy who runs off with Paris the first chance she gets, but a woman who's genuinely in love with her husband. I'll definitely have to read his Return from Troy when I get a chance.



The Last of the Amazons, by Steve Pressfield

It takes a guy to write about the all-female warrior society in such a headstrong, bloody manner, and I found myself becoming bored by the page-long bloodbaths. Pressfield did do a nice job delving deeper into the Amazonian culture (like all misunderstood 'savage' civilizations, they have another name for themselves, tal Kyrte, the Free) and I enjoyed reading from the different vantage points throughout the tale. Pressfield's also written novels about Alexander the Great and the Battle of Thermopylae, as well as more modern epic figures like Erwin Rommel.


Mary Renault wrote several fantastic books about Age-of-Heros Greece, including The King Must Die, The Last of the Wine, and The Bull from the Sea.




The Penelopia, by Jane Rawlings

This is an interesting offering, the continuation of the Odyssey centering around Penelope and told in epic verse. It was a bit boring at parts, but definitely did a lot to flush out the role of women in and around the time of Troy using the male-dominated epic style. Not to be confused with a similarly titled book by Margaret Atwood.

One Big Fishbowl

When teachers need some kind of observable assessment process to see if their students are learning (or have learned) something, we are told we can facilitate the type of discussion known as The Fishbowl, a technique where a small group sits in the midst of a larger group and are told to hold thier own discussion sans teacher guidance or outside class imput. The first two minutes of such a technique are agony for the students who haven't done their homework, as everyone is now watching them fail, which in my mind makes this a very strong motivator.

I've come to realize that my subscription to the "New Stories" thread in the Percy Jackson fandom on ff.net is exactly like me being on the outside of the fishbowl circle looking in.

This story is the third or fourth that I've come across there and it's fascinating to read. I say it's interesting because it's not a story at all, which means that as a violation of site rules that link will probably be broken soon. Rather, it's an open letter to members of the community who are behaving in an anti-community building way (flamers, writers of less than quality fanfic.)

After I discussed the question posed in my last post with a friend of mine, also an education student interested in young adult literature-- (I'm wondering if this narrow-mindness with the Canon is due to the relative youth of the fandom itself or the relative youth of the fans themselves) -- we decided that the PJO participants' adherance to Canon comes from a lack of confidence in thier own creative abilities due to their relative newness to the process of writing fanfiction and participating in the fanfiction community. Harry Potter, being a fandom that recieved a lot of traffic both from younger readers as well as older ones who had grown up with the series (like myself,) produces a different milieu of fanfiction because of the wide spectrum of ages and the length of time the participents have had to grow into the fandom and the writing process.

When in the case of PJO you have such a concentrated body (over 4000 fics) of young, inexperienced writers, it makes sense that from that group there will emerge several slightly more experienced writers who serve as flamers, reviewers who never have anything nice to say but always refrain from saying nothing. I think this happens when a fandom experiences a large growth spurt -- the 'old growth' writers in fandoms like LOTR (which got new life after the movies came out) become resentful of both the movies and the writers inspired by them who don't love the same fandom for the same reasons and so turn to flaming.

The most common response to flamers by young authors like this is to post passionate pleas asking them to stop or refrain from commenting in the first place. It's an ineffective tactic at best -- flamers pick the worst of the worst fanfics, usually the writers who are just starting out, and bully thier  tenuous hold on their new craft into a complete lack of confidence. Asking them to stop won't do anything. (I got lucky in my beginning years as a writer -- I was adopted by a wonderful group of older writers who gave me confidence when I did get hurtful reviews, and...well, I never got many very hurtful reviews.)

This writer, however, takes a remarkably adept approach. In the first part of her essay (that's what we'll call it; diatribe's too strong a word) she speaks to people who flame, but in the second part, she addresses the authors themselves, saying this is a two way street and if they are getting flamed, they have only themselves to blame. I don't know of any beginning writers who have taken that approach before, and I must commend this young person on being so open to the idea that the problem of flames is two sided -- I created something you didn't like, but you didn't give me the help I wanted to make it better. She (or he) offers little in the way of specific improvement strategies, which in this fandom can usually start with "Find someone to teach you how to punctuate your sentences, and learn what a run-on sentence is and how not to write one." Nevertheless, a good effort.

Her/His style is very elementary, jumping from viewpoint to viewpoint with a lot of hopeless-to-follow mess in between coherant points (a style I believe might come from watching cartoons; it bears some resemblence) but her/his intent is admirable. A little beta polishing and a better place to post this would do wonders.

At the very least, it's teaching this writer-teacher once more that observing what your students produce outside of class may be the very best way to direct your instruction inside of class.

Grammar, here we come.

Percy Jackson, Time Thief

Friends, I've been to the land of Young Adult Literature, and I've come back bearing wonderful treasures. Behold, a Percy Jackson addiction!

There aren't too many young adult books I hound my librarians for. Percy has become an exception. I read the first book in the five part series two or three years ago and remember not being terribly impressed -- I didn't like the main character, the language was simple...

Just me being an elitist jerk of a reader again, in other words.

After news that the movie was going to be starring two of my favorite leading men:

I gave the books another try. I wasn't disappointed this time. I went with a totally different approach and a drastically different set of expectations, wanting a young adult book that might be appropriate for reluctant readers and might also be great for a unit on the greek gods and perhaps mythology in general, and I found all I wanted. Percy was nicely snarky and pre-teen and perfect for any students I might have who deal with ADHD. In my true fashion, I stalked the library and devoured the first three books in a matter of a week and a half. Now I'm waiting for returns on books four and five and I'm still excited.

To make all this age-unappropriate fangirling even worse, I carved out part of my Monday afternoon two weeks ago to go and see the movie. Sean Bean and Kevin McKidd aside, I was more than a little disappointed. So much of the material that I had really enjoyed in the books wasn't there. I realize that sometimes film has to cut material to keep time manageable. Observe Lord of the Rings. But re-writing the whole plot so you don't have to cast someone as Ares, introducing some teen romance and topping it all off with lamentably poor fight quality? Poor show, Chris Columbus, poor show. My movie-going buddy Mal and I enjoyed ourselves, though, because we hadn't gone to the movies to see a top-quality, oscar winning film; we'd gone to see a tween movie. That's exactly what we got. (We also got the whole theatre to ourselves -- BONUS!) Mal hadn't read the books, so she didn't have anything to be disappointed about. (She has also been woken up to the wonderful realization that Kevin McKidd is VERY good looking, so there were no complaints on the car ride home about that.)

After all this, I've also starting following Rick Riordan's blog, and I have to say, he sounds like a wonderfully approachable fellow. He's in the middle of writing another Percy-Jackson universe book and another series, based in Egyptian Mythology, is coming out this year. I read the first chapter and I'm not going to deny that I'm excited.

Riordan's PJO universe has sparked a few fanfic ideas, one of which I've already started playing with about a semi-major Greek deity he left out of his universe, the sea-goddess (and wife of Posiedon!) Amphitrite, and per my usual, I've begun following the incoming stream of fanfic on FF.net to get a handle on what kind of audience exists out there for this kind of thing.

Friends, that audience is big, it's bad, and it's all under the age of fifteen and incapable of writing anything other than Mary-Sues. It's scary and exciting at the same time -- I want to know what happens when someone introduces something that's not quite Canon (and hopefully better written) into the fandom pool. (All these Mary-Sues also make me want to send in Thursday Next and some Reality Rounds, but that's a fanfic for another time.)

On the subject of Canon, one of the other things I've noticed about Percy Jackson's fans is that unlike some other genres of young adult literature (Harry Potter comes to mind) PJO people are VERY concerned about adhering to Canon. We're talking "almost to the point of insanity" concerned. If you don't ship Percy-Annabeth, they don't want you there, period. I've read the books, and just as in Harry Potter, I know that a case for Percy being romantically involved with any number of other female characters could be made and written very well. I'm wondering if this narrow-mindness with the Canon is due to the relative youth of the fandom itself or the relative youth of the fans themselves. More observations might have to be conducted for me to find out.

Anyway, that's all that's new from the Wordsmithy.