Teleidoplex

About a decade ago now, the Fox ran a tabletop Changeling game for a small group of us. This was before Tale of Winter, though some of the threads from that early game ran through the larp.

My character, Bryn, was a troll knight who ended up swearing service to (and falling in love with, in the chivalric sense) a knocker inventor/clubber named Violet. Violet was an NPC played by the Fox. She had a whole purple and black industrial goth thing going on, and she was wicked hot! She was the girlfriend/prisoner of a redcap named Mortag the Red, and he was a pretty nasty piece of work. He pretty much just kept her around to make weapons and munitions for his gang.

I woke up one night after a gaming session and wrote this sonnet in a fit of inspired, frenetic passion. Recently, the topic of sonnets has come up on WoW, and it sent me to search out this piece. I think it's rather good for being something I wrote ten years ago.


Violet
What fairest beauties pierce mine eye,
With flashing looks and floating hair,
Can contest thy beauty's symmetry,
Or with thine wisdom doth compare?
Thou'rt fair as black-winged night.
Bright Luna in thy features dwells,
My heart, my soul, mine eye's delight,
Sweet Lady of the urban dells.
Nature's whim hath made thee wild,
Her purple wine thy lips doth stain,
And many a heart hast thou beguiled,
Yet all who love thee love in vain,
For one has chained the wild-grown flower,
Who feels no love, but lusts for power.

--by Dame Bryn Copeland, in service to the Lady Violet

I know a few people who have a book like this, the book that they buy and give to others. It's the book that is so amazing, that you think has so much to recommend it to *anyone* who reads it, that you'll put your money on the table, betting for the book's cross-audience appeal.

My partner's "Book-I-buy-for-others" is _Ghostwritten_, by David Mitchell. It's an amazing book, probably in my top-five favorites that I'm not embarrassed about, and something that inspires me anew every time I read it. Mitchell is obscure enough that many people haven't discovered this amazing author, or have only read his later _Cloud Atlas_ if they have (and for some reason, everyone I've met who read _Cloud Atlas_ raves about it, but has never gone back to read Mitchell's earlier works. I don't get this at all). Mitchell crosses a lot of genres in a way that genre enthusiasts usually love and mainstream lit enthusiasts aren't put off by. _Ghostwritten_ is a good "Book-to-buy-for-others".

Mine is _Impossible Things_, by Connie Willis. It's a collection of her short stories, and Willis is hand's down one of the best short story writers I've read. The tales are by turns hilarious, heart-wrenching, romantic, and horrific--sometimes all in the same story. She meditates on everything from quantum physics to academic obsolescence, using forms like the screwball comedy and settings like the London Blitz to bring out the themes she's working with. There's very little hard science in this science fiction, but there's a whole lot of humanity.

I've gone through many copies of _Impossible Things_. So many copies--giving my copy away and replacing it, handing them out as gifts, etc. I'm probably a cottage industry for Willis just on my own. I'm happy to be so. This is an amazing book by an amazing author, and one that anyone interested in--well, *anything*--should read.

So, am I unusual in this? Do others have a book or books that are their "Buy-for-others" book? I'm not talking books you recommend. I mean, seriously, you have bought several copies of this book because you keep giving it away. If so, what is it, and why?

Cheers!

So, I was waiting to post anything til it was all signed sealed and delivered, but I have some awesome news. I just got hired as an assistant acquisitions editor for an academic press in Washington DC! I'll be acquiring for their anthropology list, about 30-40 titles a year to start. I'm moving to DC at the end of the month, and I start on October 1st.

So, like, whoa!

Details about goodbye parties, etc, will be forthcoming. For now, I must spin...

There's a discussion happening at Smart Bitches right now about the writer-as-god, with the corrollary that it is tantamount to sacrilege to question or critique the way a writer decides to take a story, or the arc of particular characters. This is in response to writers like Anne Rice, Laurell K. Hamilton, Robin Hobb, and other authors (most recently, Charlaine Harris, apparently) who have taken flack for a variety of reasons over their authorial choices. Rather than go into the whole thing, you can read it here if you're really interested:

http://www.smartbitchestrashybooks.com/index.php/weblog/a_book_is_not_a_child/

Since I have an interest in folklore, fairy tale retellings, and fanfic, I find these kinds of conversations very interesting and sometimes a little frustrating. In this case, I responded most strongly to the following quote, pulled out of Harris' blog entry:

"The writer is determiner of fate for his or her characters. Writing is a lone pastime, not a group endeavor. It doesn’t take a village to write a book. It takes one person, shut up in a room for hours on end."

I vehemently disagree with this (as do the Smart Bitches, although we disagree for different reasons). A writer is constantly drawing from the public domain of collective stories, imagery, assumptions and archetypes. The writer's contribution to this is to spin all these ingredients in new, interesting and engaging ways. There are more great writerly quotes about writing taking the familiar and making it unfamiliar (or vice-versa) than I could list here. The imaginary of writing as some noble, solitary endeavor divorced from the world or lived interactions is a very popular one that some writers like to trot out, but I think that "bullshit" can be called through the pairing of these two quotes. They come in sequence on my favorite quote site, and the gender-theorist in me loves the irony of it:


What no wife of a writer can ever understand is that a writer is working when he's staring out of the window. ~Burton Rascoe


The best time for planning a book is while you're doing the dishes. ~Agatha Christie


Who the fuck is Burton Rascoe? (answer: a little known turn-of-the-century literary critic and journalist who is best known for writing about other writers). I'd much rather be like Agatha Christie. Writing is no more a solitary process than living is. If I had to acknowledge everyone who contributed to even my smallest piece of writing, I'd go mad.

But that is only one end of the process. There is also the entire aspect of reception and reading of a text. As much as the process of writing is a conversation between the author and the world she inhabits, the process of reading is a conversation between the reader and the text the author has produced. The idea of claiming that I (or any writer) should have some control over that conversation, that process of interpretation, seems to be laden with hubris.

I feel some proprietary interest in the particular ways I construct a story. I don't think it is right that other people should economically profit from the products of my labor, but I think it is hypocritical to try to shut down all dissent, alternate readings, or reinterpretations (whether that be in the form of literary critique, audience disappointment, or fan reimaginings). This comes from the way I understand the text. I see it as a conversation between the people who inspired the story, and the people who read the story, with myself not as a God/Creator, but as a mediator, a translator, a worldwalker.

Y'know, most of the time I think Robin Hobb is bit of a crackpot with her somewhat luddite stance regarding the internet and writers:

http://www.robinhobb.com/rant.html

but then something happens like today, where I sit down to take a brief break from writing, and end up spending an hour on Youtube because I found some new and cool thing and got distracted.

Today's distraction: Speed Painting.

This one's my favorite. Fricken' Mascara, man!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0sahHSNy_Uk

Uh. Back to work. I'm pretty sure I have a character's life to screw over. That's easily as fun as speed painting, right?

(for the record, I love Robin's work, I just think she's a little too on the "what's bad for me is bad for everyone else" side of the fence).