I'm a naughty boy, and I like it!
When I go to conventions, I tend not to go to panels these days; I don't feel that I have enough published in real life to justify being on the panel, nor do I really need any wisdom imparted upon me from the panel. I went to two writer's panels this weekend and, quite frankly, didn't learn anything new from them.
There's always one person in the audience at a convention panel that wants the panel discussion to be about him (or her). There's always two distinct impressions I get: one, they're never going to finish the book they're writing, and two, if they did, nobody would ever publish it. One said that he could never write from a woman's point of view; he could never trust that anything he'd ever read about "how women think" (as if there was only one way!) because women have an enormous capacity to lie. The other got upset because I didn't write stories "from my heart" but frequently wrote genderqueer stuff to tweak the reader and mess with the reader's mind. I mean, by chapter four of Sterling's most of my readers are completely accepting of the phrase "her cock," and let it go without blinking.
That I cackle with glee to re-orient my reader's brain that way, rather than write with a compassionate need to convey the feelings and tribulations of genderqueer people accurately, makes me somehow a bad (in the naughty and evil sense) writer.
Ah, well. I don't care. On to my "let's take the Sterlings and flip the story on its head" story.
There's always one person in the audience at a convention panel that wants the panel discussion to be about him (or her). There's always two distinct impressions I get: one, they're never going to finish the book they're writing, and two, if they did, nobody would ever publish it. One said that he could never write from a woman's point of view; he could never trust that anything he'd ever read about "how women think" (as if there was only one way!) because women have an enormous capacity to lie. The other got upset because I didn't write stories "from my heart" but frequently wrote genderqueer stuff to tweak the reader and mess with the reader's mind. I mean, by chapter four of Sterling's most of my readers are completely accepting of the phrase "her cock," and let it go without blinking.
That I cackle with glee to re-orient my reader's brain that way, rather than write with a compassionate need to convey the feelings and tribulations of genderqueer people accurately, makes me somehow a bad (in the naughty and evil sense) writer.
Ah, well. I don't care. On to my "let's take the Sterlings and flip the story on its head" story.