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Sunday, November 17, 2013

Local authors and publishing options

Yesterday I went to my local downtown library (the library system in the town I live in is fantastic by the way) to see a panel discussion by eleven local authors (although two were coauthors on the same book). Most of them were nonfiction, self-published, and/or for adults, which doesn't exactly fit what I'm doing. I mean, I might as well say that I've never really considered self-publishing. I want to be an author as a full-time profession eventually, even if that means waiting, and I would like some professional guidance. But it is tempting. (And then I remember that I'm in the process of major rewriting and I can't just send it off soon anyway.)

I'm rather shy about the whole "I wrote a book when I was young and have spent years editing and working on a sequel" thing, even though there was another very young (self-published, not-trilogy work) author there. But eventually I talked to one traditonally-published author who writes historical fiction books about kids and teaches creative writing at a local university (also her son apparently goes to the same school I do, and is a year ahead of me). She suggested that I submit something to Scholastic's yearly young author competition to get used to deadlines, although that seems to be either for elementary and middle schools or about picture books from a quick Google search and I am...not an artist. (Although I have a friend who wants to be an illustrator...) I also got her card and was invited to email her, although I don't exactly know how I would go about that. I suppose I could just email the first couple of chapters I have (mostly) edited...sometime...I'm always so nervous though. I've heard that getting a mentor is a great idea though. Even though I'm not planning on publishing for years...

Sunday, November 10, 2013

So I just realized it's NaNoWriMo

That's National Novel Writer's Month, by the way. I'm not participating of course - it's 10 days in already, I don't have the time, and I need to focus on editing my existing work (which is coming along nicely, if I might say so myself).

For those who don't know, NaNoWriMo is a challenge to write a novel in a month, and it happens every November. There's an online site here, and the Young Writer's Program part of the site is here. I've heard of it before - someone who attended the same house we did for Thanksgiving in the town I used to live in would participate eery year - but I've never even thought about participating, and I'm not sure I ever will. Aside from the fact I've got school, I don't think I could ever just write, as fast as I can, without regard for editing or planning. And yet there's something rather irresistible in just being able to write. Heck, I haven't just written something long in years, because I've been editing. Sometimes I just want to look at a blank piece of paper or screen and write.

And so far all those participating, I salute you, and envy you.

Saturday, November 9, 2013

Some Words on Book Censorship

This post has been gaining a lot of views lately, so I've copyedited it because jeez my writing has improved.

I'm so behind. I've had a few posts going for a while but haven't been able to finish them. On the plus side, I have been editing more!

I've always been intrigued by banned books. Everyone is, after all: we want to read it for ourselves to see if it is really that bad. Like all controversies, banning a book just gives it more attention. As Hermione wisely remarks in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, the fact that something (in the book's case, the indie paper Harry gave an issue questioning the school's defense program) is banned means that more people will read it. (I like to believe that this was a line J.K. Rowling deliberately inserted as a nod to how her books did extremely well despite being banned for having "witchcraft".) Similarly, just about every popular book gets banned because someone thinks, "Now I've got to check this out before my kid gets into it." (I'm still scratching my head as to why The Hunger Games is sexually explicit.)

Not to mention, you know, that the majority of banned books are the ones taught most often in classes: To Kill a Mockingbird, The Catcher in the Rye, Lord of the Flies, Animal Farm, and so on. This isn't surprising, since books are often banned in schools after the books have come to the parents' attentions through class reading assignments. Sometimes I wonder how many of these parents read the same books when they were in school. And while shielding their children is the instinct of all parents, many reactions are knee-jerk and with either a lack of appreciation for the minds of children or failure to realize they know things about the horrors in life and won't be scarred.

And then most books are banned at the mere mention or implication of sensitive material. Looking at the commonly banned books list, there are books specifically designed for kids to teach them about puberty and such. It's rather baffling. Are we going to ban school health books now?

My favorite example has to be The Giver. It's been a little while since I've read it, but a few months after I did, in eighth grade, one of my best friends did not want that to be the book she had to read in class (there were several different groups; she ended up reading Lord of the Flies), because she looked it up and apparently the content was iffy and refused to read it. Naturally, I got a bit angry. It's not inappropriate. It's not pornographic and doesn't even have anything happen - not even a kiss! All it is are dreams, called Stirrings, in which the main character, if I remember correctly, happens to be shirtless in a bath room with a female character, and he remarks that he wanted her to touch his chest. The interesting part is that the government gives these kids pills so they no longer experience these dreams, like it's a bad thing (that should be censored, hmmm?). It's just feelings; nothing bad actually happens.

Dreams are funny. We don't control them; they act upon our inner thoughts and emotions, some things we don't allow ourselves to think about. When I read The Giver when I was 13 or 14, I recognized the sort of dreams and feelings - just some small, innocent and curious thoughts - and they'd been going for at least two years at that point. So what does censoring The Giver for this reason tell us? Innocent, fairy-tale romance is okay, but human impulses aren't? Kids are taught to feel awkward about this, an alien and adult world hidden to them that it's scary when they start becoming a part of it. It's something that is normal, and it shouldn't be covered up by the government. The book is clever about this. It will go over the heads of younger readers and those who are old enough to have experienced this these note the eerie similarity, and are invited to think about whether the government is right or not, or if they are overstepping their bounds. And parents who want to censor this material from their children are further alienating and are not any better than the government in this book. You can't give children back their innocence, and it's not a negative thing when they lose it. You just have to educate them about how not to act stupidly with their new feelings.

Granted, there are other, more violent things that happen in The Giver, but I don't believe my friend was as concerned about those. Furthermore, the horrible stuff is supposed to be horrible and disturb you. As with everything, it depends on the maturity of the child, and every child is different.

On this issue I happened across a quote from Jay Asher on his novel Thirteen Reasons Why, which was the third most challenged book last year and which I should really get around to reading sometime. He hits it on the nose:

"I was writing a book about issues that make most people uncomfortable, including me. That alone, I knew, could make it controversial. But these are issues people do experience. To emotionally reach people, I had to write my story honestly. But I also wanted the book to be available to as many people as possible, so I did write a slightly less-graphic alternate version of one scene. I let my publisher decide which to publish, and they correctly chose the more intense scene because readers needed to feel uncomfortable there to understand what the character was going through."
 (Courtesy of CNN.)

In my ninth grade English class, we read Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried, which I have to say comes highly recommended. It's fictional, but it's tricky. It's by Tim O'Brien, a Vietnam war vet, and dedicated to several real war buddies, and it's about Time O'Brien, a Vietnam war vet, with those who the book was dedicated to as characters. But the majority of it (I take the part about him saying he's a writer and why he wrote things to be true) is fabricated, and on purpose. For instance, he can cope with how he felt if he writes a graphic depiction of the dead body of a man he killed, even if he never actually killed anyone. It was fascinating.

To be fair, there was a mixed reception from my friends: some felt the language and violence was excessive and inappropriate, some just didn't like it, and others like me loved it for - well, in my case anyway - its exploration of writing as a medium. I personally felt the language and violence was fine because it helps illustrate the shock and chaos of war, and is probably realistic; after all, in typical school hallways kids are exposed to language that is not much tamer (if not at all). Pretending that doesn't happen is censorship to begin with. Plus, being as realistic as possible helps the book's theme and intent of expressing truth through fiction that sounds real.

The most ironic banned book scenario, of course, is Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451, which incidentally is a favorite of mine and which I am currently rereading. The entire thing is about censorship and why it's awful. It's from the McCarthy era, after all. And the book has ironically but inevitably been banned on a couple of occasions. Some of these concern language and violence, but one of the reasons cited is because the Bible is burned in the book. So, a book against censorship was censored because it contained censorship. You are supposed to be horrified about the burning of the Bible, and the main character doesn't like it! I mean, does no one consider the meaning and intent? Have they even read the whole book? Or are they mostly knee-jerk reactions? (I also find it funny that the parents of the girl who was disturbed by the Bible burning also protested the depictions of firemen in the novel. Like they resemble real firemen and would have had kids disrespecting real firemen.)

The thing about censorship is you can't prevent people from reading things, and you can't impose what you deem respectable for your child on all the others in that age group. Heck, you can't even deem what's right for your own children most of the time, as they're often less naive than you think.

To round this all off, I've got to confess my inspiration to writing this post, which is admittedly not book related. It's television related, and it's Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season 6. If you're not familiar with this, well, it's apparently one of the most divisive seasons of the show, as it features pretty much every character except Tara acting questionably, and there are several controversial plot developments (for various reasons). It should also be noted that this was the first season to air when Buffy moved from The WB to UPN (neither network still exists; they combined to form The CW), which was a newer network that and they were allowed a bit more freedom in content. One of the major storylines involves violent and unusual sex that Buffy eventually deems as wrong for her personal emotional well-being. The villains for the majority of the season are three geeky guys: the leader is a misogynist whom viewers already dislike from a previous episode, but his two follows consist of a lovable recurring character and a new and also rather lovable character. They bicker about various science fiction shows and seem to not be much of a threat, but there is something sinister underlying: these ordinary guys are willing to murder and even rape (and then pass off their guilt onto another, but I won't go on about all the fantastic stuff in "Dead Things") at times. They are dark mirrors of us.

I read this essay from Slayage (yes, there is an online journal of essays about Joss Whedon's work) about how editing done to the original BBC broadcasts of certain episodes not only distorted some of the meaning of some episodes, but did so in a way that avoided the moral questions raised by what was intended to be depicted. In addition, I found that the Parents Television Council named season six the worst show of the year (in terms of family viewing), which left me intrigued. (By the way, the PTC also listed seasons four and five among the worst, though not as high; I don't believe five is that bad, and they are so wrong when they claim one-night-stands in season four had no consequences...she was devastated and the player wasn't portrayed unsympathetically for a reason, y'know.)  As stated before, the discretion to be taken is different for each teen. But what bothers me about this censorship (and publicization; I also read that Fox News played a clip of the initial violent sex scene as an example of corrupting America) is that the point of these scenes is not glorification (well, maybe aside from some shirtless Spike scenes). It's not saying that this is right, not at all. (Note: It's not that I think it's wrong for there to be consensual rough sex, but that this wasn't an emotionally fulfilling relationship, and so shouldn't be seen as an "OTP." It's a game.) Buffy herself is ashamed by the relationship and keeps it a secret, and there are loads of questions for viewers to think about in regards to this storyline alone. We don't have to preach to the audience. They can decide for themselves.

Censorship: never the answer to the questions it avoids.